I think I have the opposite problem with phones that people on the spectrum have, which is that I get incredibly anxious when I am talking to someone but can’t see their face. Or is that the issue with ASD people too? I know looking people in the eye is often a difficult thing if you are on the spectrum, so I’m wondering if it is still the same.
Even though I’m not good at eye contact or reading facial expressions, it scares the shit out of me if someone’s wearing a full face mask or mascot suit or something where we’re in the same physical space but can’t see their face at all. Over the phone is fine though, so this might just be a weirdly specific phobia.
I don’t know if I’m the best example because I’m kind of an outlier among autistics because I prefer calling over texting for many situations. It’s because 1. I’m almost entirely reliant on tone of voice to read any intent/emotion at all, and 2. sometimes it’s the fastest way to get something over with and not have to stress out over it anymore. Although, I strongly prefer it to be pre scheduled and not a surprise.
I ran into an issue involving just this problem a few years ago. I met someone while I was living abroad. We fell in love but we both had to go back to our respective countries eventually. We tried a long distance relationship for a short whole but agreed it wasn’t going to work out so we just remained good friends and spoke often to each other over video call for a number of years.
When we first met, I found it super easy to talk with her because I was able to read her emotions from her facial expressions. She had a very expressive face which made it easy for me to understand subtext with her compared to other people. When we started talking over video call, I was still able to read her face so the conversation quality didn’t drop any noticeable amount.
About half way into 2020 she moved to another country and wanted to have voice calls as her living conditions changed. Between standard voice quality loss in modern technology, my brains voice audio processing issues (voices in noisy backgrounds are muffled or garbled but I can hear a coin drop in a noisy automated manufacturing plant) and the loss of using video chat felt like I couldn’t talk or understand her anymore. I was using more mental energy to talk with her.
Without video, I could no longer read her face. I could no longer understand her. She did not want to express her feelings verbally to help me understand things which didn’t help. It was a very confusing experience at the time because I didn’t understand what was happening until I was able to piece it together at a later time.
Turns out I hate phone calls because I can’t read a person’s face to help build extra context about what a person is saying. I may not always get context right in face to face conversations but any little bit of information really helps. Facial expressions, body posture, tone and whatever else a person does while talking is all super useful information for me and a phone call strips all of that away.
Eye contact is pretty bad but I’m more self accepting of bad eye contact. The loss of all those visual cues due to a phone call is stressful for me.
I think I have the opposite problem with phones that people on the spectrum have, which is that I get incredibly anxious when I am talking to someone but can’t see their face. Or is that the issue with ASD people too? I know looking people in the eye is often a difficult thing if you are on the spectrum, so I’m wondering if it is still the same.
Even though I’m not good at eye contact or reading facial expressions, it scares the shit out of me if someone’s wearing a full face mask or mascot suit or something where we’re in the same physical space but can’t see their face at all. Over the phone is fine though, so this might just be a weirdly specific phobia.
I don’t know if I’m the best example because I’m kind of an outlier among autistics because I prefer calling over texting for many situations. It’s because 1. I’m almost entirely reliant on tone of voice to read any intent/emotion at all, and 2. sometimes it’s the fastest way to get something over with and not have to stress out over it anymore. Although, I strongly prefer it to be pre scheduled and not a surprise.
I ran into an issue involving just this problem a few years ago. I met someone while I was living abroad. We fell in love but we both had to go back to our respective countries eventually. We tried a long distance relationship for a short whole but agreed it wasn’t going to work out so we just remained good friends and spoke often to each other over video call for a number of years.
When we first met, I found it super easy to talk with her because I was able to read her emotions from her facial expressions. She had a very expressive face which made it easy for me to understand subtext with her compared to other people. When we started talking over video call, I was still able to read her face so the conversation quality didn’t drop any noticeable amount.
About half way into 2020 she moved to another country and wanted to have voice calls as her living conditions changed. Between standard voice quality loss in modern technology, my brains voice audio processing issues (voices in noisy backgrounds are muffled or garbled but I can hear a coin drop in a noisy automated manufacturing plant) and the loss of using video chat felt like
I couldn’t talk or understand her anymore.I was using more mental energy to talk with her.Without video, I could no longer read her face. I could no longer understand her. She did not want to express her feelings verbally to help me understand things which didn’t help. It was a very confusing experience at the time because I didn’t understand what was happening until I was able to piece it together at a later time.
Turns out I hate phone calls because I can’t read a person’s face to help build extra context about what a person is saying. I may not always get context right in face to face conversations but any little bit of information really helps. Facial expressions, body posture, tone and whatever else a person does while talking is all super useful information for me and a phone call strips all of that away.
Eye contact is pretty bad but I’m more self accepting of bad eye contact. The loss of all those visual cues due to a phone call is stressful for me.