Expressive vs receptive communication and masking

[Angular Chap]

While looking deeper into the specifics of me going non-verbal, I discovered 2 main types of communication: expressive and receptive. A great discussion on here the other day inspired me to elaborate further. Maybe this will help other people fine tune their thoughts on their own communication strengths and weaknesses.

Put simply, expressive communication is approaching other people, while receptive communication is being approached by other people.

Expressive communication

A few components of expressive communication include:

- Output (vs input for receptive).
- Active (vs passive for receptive).
- Talking.
- Making yourself understood.
- Allows creativity and flexibility.

A few examples of expressive communication:

- Initiating a conversation with someone.
- Making an appointment.
- Attending the appointment.
- Creating a thread on here.
- Asking a question.

To use myself as an example, my expressive communication appears to be good and at the very least, competent. I’ve even had compliments at times. My autism diagnosis report called it commendable. One of my strengths was “Extensive and elaborate vocabulary” and the clinician said I was articulate. I guess I understand how to be polite and respectful and why it matters. My expressive communication almost always seems to be positively received. If I do make a mistake with my expressive communication, then that’s my fault because I was the one who initiated.

Receptive communication

A few components of receptive communication include:

- Input (vs output for expressive).
- Passive (vs active for expressive).
- Listening.
- Understanding others.
- Requires comprehension.

A few examples of receptive communication:

- Taking a phonecall.
- Answering the door.
- Listening to and following advice and instructions given by a medical professional.
- Responding to someone requesting your attention.
- Observing a situation and figuring out what to do.

My receptive communication is where I have the vast majority of my issues. It is how I learned about being non-verbal. If anyone approaches me, calls me or knocks on my door and and they are not asking for tech help, then I’m lost I don’t even know how to react and so there is a high chance I will go non-verbal, or even further and just go blank, shut down and become completely non-communicative. If I do respond, my responses are met with anger, indignation, scorn, ridicule, all kinds of negativity and I have no idea who is at fault. I may have an “extensive and elaborate vocabulary” and I’m flattered to hear that from a medical professional, I may understand the words spoken to me and what they mean, but when it comes to knowing how to respond to someone else’s words or actions, I’m lost.

Expressive communication came naturally to me and developed well, but my receptive communication never really developed, even despite spending several years in a customer facing retail environment.

Expressive vs receptive masking

After learning about the above, I noticed patterns in the way people talk about masking and came to the realisation that autistic masking has expressive and receptive components.

A few examples of expressive masking:

- Wearing makeup that you find uncomfortable to attempt to fit in.
- Wearing the same or similar clothes as peers to attempt to fit in, even if you find them uncomfortable.
- Watching a TV show you have no interest in and learning as much as possible about it so you can talk about it with friends to try to be more accepted.
- A desire to fit in being a common pattern.

A few examples of receptive masking:

- Saying “yes” a lot as a response.
- Merely validating people rather than having an honest conversation.
- Having a set of pre-prepared responses memorised and using them when approached.

- Focusing on trying to give the “correct answer” all the time rather than an honest response.
- Protecting oneself from upsetting people being a common pattern.​

My expressive masking is almost non-existent. The reason for this is: I never felt the need. I always approached people with politeness and honesty and they seemed to respond very well to me. Peers usually accepted me for who I was. Interestingly enough, my expressive masking is pretty bad and any time I attempted it, I usually made a bigger fool of myself than if I had just been my true honest self.

My receptive masking is huge. It started through necessity when I was very young and had to continue even to this day. Skills had to be honed, otherwise I would just find myself in more and more trouble. No matter how hard I tried to be polite, humble, open, honest, accountable or humorous, it just didn’t work. So I resorted to all kinds of tricks and techniques to placate people when they approached me and became pretty good at flipping their magic happy switch, to use my favourite analogy. I became so good at receptive masking that people only saw through the mask when I chose to let it down. If I had begun all my social encounters with receptive masking instead of honesty, people would have been even more surprised when I came out about my autism.

I noticed that when it came to masking, the 2 were flipped. My expressive communication is good but my expressive masking is bad and unnecessary, while my receptive communication is bad but my receptive masking is good and is necessary to protect myself.

Maybe this will help others to identify which type of communication is their strongest and which is their weakest, or both strong or weak. Thanks for reading.

 

[Outdated]

To use myself as an example, my expressive communication appears to be good and at the very least, competent. I’ve even had compliments at times. My autism diagnosis report called it commendable. One of my strengths was “Extensive and elaborate vocabulary” and the clinician said I was articulate. I guess I understand how to be polite and respectful and why it matters. My expressive communication almost always seems to be positively received. If I do make a mistake with my expressive communication, then that’s my fault because I was the one who initiated.

This is also very true for me. I was always a good talker and a good advocate, and if I have a goal in mind I can be a fairly good conman too, a hustler. In general I'm always honest though simply because it creates less complications in life but I can also be a very smooth liar diplomat when I need to be.

My receptive communication is where I have the vast majority of my issues. It is how I learned about being non-verbal. If anyone approaches me, calls me or knocks on my door and and they are not asking for tech help, then I’m lost I don’t even know how to react and so there is a high chance I will go non-verbal, or even further and just go blank, shut down and become completely non-communicative. If I do respond, my responses are met with anger, indignation, scorn, ridicule, all kinds of negativity and I have no idea who is at fault. I may have an “extensive and elaborate vocabulary” and I’m flattered to hear that from a medical professional, I may understand the words spoken to me and what they mean, but when it comes to knowing how to respond to someone else’s words or actions, I’m lost.

I have problems here but I'm usually very quick to recover. I don't go non-verbal or shut down or anything but some of my initial responses might be a bit jumbled and confusing. Whoever it is ends up just as confused and discombobulated as I am and we both shrug and start again. I have no anxiety over this, it's something that has happened all my life and there seems to be nothing I can do about it so I just let it slide. Life just happens sometimes.

My expressive masking is almost non-existent. The reason for this is: I never felt the need. I always approached people with politeness and honesty and they seemed to respond very well to me. Peers usually accepted me for who I was. Interestingly enough, my expressive masking is pretty bad and any time I attempted it, I usually made a bigger fool of myself than if I had just been my true honest self.

This is also very true for me. I was never able to really hide my differences and often highlight them instead. I'm used to being an odd one, it's part of my identity. If people take umbrage with my differences I have the vocabulary, the intelligence and the quick tongue required to put them back in their place pretty quick. I was raised on banter between Poms and Scotts.

For the receptive masking I'm a little bit different, I was never a Yes man and I'm often too opinionated to try and placate others just to be part of a group, I have no need to be part of a group. There's two points I do resonate with:

Having a set of pre-prepared responses memorised and using them when approached.

I have tens of thousands of them, no matter what people are talking about I have a list of preprepared responses I can choose from. I have anticipated almost every question anyone will ever ask me and I have a selection of ready answers for all of them. On the odd occasion when someone asks me something unexpected pure honesty rolls off my tongue before I get chance to think about it. Brutal honesty a lot of the time. My mouth is often quicker than I am.

Protecting oneself from upsetting people being a common pattern.

I think my friendliness is an aspect of this and possibly why I don't suffer any of the social anxiety that so many others do. When I approach people and start talking to them it's disarming them and getting them to be friendly to me. To me that's a lot less stressful than sitting on the edges of a crowd and wondering what you can do to try and fit in. I don't try to fit in, I bulldoze my way in kissing hands and shaking babies.

 

[FayetheAspie]

Going by your descriptions in the original post, I am presenting how I seem to fit into them below.
expressive communication - I can communicate what I want to quite efficiently and have an excellent range of vocabulary, though some might think that I speak too loudly and too monotone and/or with some kind of "accent" at times. (I have received both complaints before.
receptive communication - I can struggle with certain aspects of this. It can be difficult to know how to respond appropriately in real time. This is especially true if the comment, reaction, or other form of interaction was unexpected. In addition to this, my mind can wander during a conversation.
expressive masking - I do very little if any of this. While I do wish I had a couple of friends my age, following trends is of no interest to me. I don't truly comprehend why so many people pretend to like things they don't just to fit in. I actually find it quite annoying when I realize that someone else was lying about liking something to "fit in" with me.
receptive masking - There are a lot of those examples that I don't do either. I tend to say what I really believe, not just back up whatever the other person said. If I agree, then of course I am willing to agree, but if they are wrong I have even retrieved reference books to show them as much before. I do; however, do the part about scripting some responses ahead of time.