Taking instructions too literally?

[Crumpets]

I don't know about anybody else on the forums but one of my biggest weaknesses with my AS is I take instructions TO THE LETTER! A good example of this is from way back when I was in school I had to see the headmaster with my mum to discuss my recent diagnosis. The headmaster wanted to speak to my mum privately so he asked me to "hang around outside" I can't imagine how confused he was when they came out to see me walking around looking up at the ceiling for something to hang off of! There have been plenty of times like this that have been funny but it doesn't always end well, I seem to take every single word as is. Anybody else have these kinda problems?

 

[Southern Discomfort]

Nothing quite that literal but I do have literal thoughts to instructions. For example when I was learning to drive, the instructor told me to put on the windscreen wipers but didn't tell me to do it off bend in the road so I just put them on. I had to tell her that I don't leave much to the imagination of instruction.

I used to be a lot more literal apparently according to my annual reviews from school.

 

[Suzanne]

Yes, I am a literal person and although it can be funny; it also is horribly not. It actually makes us look as though we are idiots and I know this, because my husband has a poker face (not literally) when he is joking and so, when he has pretended to take something literally, I am ashamed to say, I have got annoyed and nearly said: for goodness sake, not like that! It is MORTIFYING to think that way, even if the other one is teasing, because it shows me exactly how others see me or anyone who is a literal thinker.

Someone said to me not so long ago. I can smell English people a mile away. Now, I know that expression, but before I could reason on it, I blurted out: oh, really, what do we smell like? Oh boy, did I get it. I was JOKING. Get it, I was joking and she walked on.

My husband was the first one to alert me that I am a literal thinker and honestly when he said it, I looked at him and said: no way am I! I then looked it up and was shocked to see that indeed I am one and suddenly things started making sense. All the misunderstandings and all because I take people at face value.

What happens to me is that I SEE the literal meaning in my mind's eye. I cannot say a sentence involving birds and stones. I have to say: save two birds with one net, or something, because I SEE the stone killing them.

Also the saying: I wish I could be a fly on the wall. Uhh, no thanks. I rather be a butterfly.

I remember seeing part of a film and this girl was describing her first experience with taking things literally. Her family were watching a sports event on tv and suddenly, they jumped up and down with delight and said: they broke the record. So, she thought. I want my parents to be like that with me and promptly got some records and started to break them and well, she did not get that reaction from her parents!

 

[Suzanne]

Nothing quite that literal but I do have literal thoughts to instructions. For example when I was learning to drive, the instructor told me to put on the windscreen wipers but didn't tell me to do it off bend in the road so I just put them on. I had to tell her that I don't leave much to the imagination of instruction.

I used to be a lot more literal apparently according to my annual reviews from school.

That is exactly what I would have done too.

 

[Sabrina]

I don’t remember taking anything so literal like you did, but yes, I do. I used to think that everybody was like that (not in the use of idioms, but believing that they always said what they meant) and I would get angry at people for not doing so. Now I know that it’s me, not them, and I can reassess my reactions (not always).

I am like @Suzanne, I see the image of what’s being said in my head. If someone says ‘he threw me down the bus’ , I see it all, the push, the fall, the crash, the blood, the driver screaming and stopping the bus, etc, like in a movie, and it takes me a few seconds to remember that it’s just a saying.

Taking people at face value made me very naive in the past, because I assumed everybody was telling the truth. Now I am aware that it’s not like that.

If something doesn’t make sense, I step back for a second, and try to see an alternate meaning of the words, or try to decipher body language, or (easier) I ask for clarification (for example, saying ‘what do you mean exactly?’).

But, if there isn’t anything obviously nonsense with what they’re saying, I’d probably take it at face value (misinterpreting what was said).

 

[pjcnet]

Yes, but as I've got older I've learned many of the more common phrases so I know not to take them literally any more, for instance you now know that "hanging around" doesn't mean "hanging" literally because you've learnt the phrase specifically, but NTs somehow seem to understand and correctly pick up on phrases such as this a lot easier than many people on the autistic spectrum. There are still occasions however when unfamiliar phrases are used that I can take literally, it's also common when someone is trying to use sarcasm and/or humour when I misunderstand believing the person really means it. This has even happened a couple of times on this forum when my literal understanding of a comment reflected in my detailed reply and then it was later explained to me that it was just a "joke", on the last occasion the member I replied to was especially pleasant about it and sent me a friendly private message just to let me know so to cause me as little embarrassment as possible, he also fully understood why I'd taken it literally and I think he might have regretted what he'd written since taking things literally is a common autistic trait.

 

[OkRad]

I am OK with verbally getting what people are saying most of the time. Sometimes I do not get when tehy are joking. I take jokes literally and I also have trouble reading between the lines. If someone did not like me and where glancing at others, I would not get it.

However, when it comes to doing things I overshoot. At school, if we were to decline a Greek noun and maybe do just the first three verbs on a list or maybe just nom and gen, I would have to do it over and over with pages and pages and pages of nouns, full declensions, not just endings or certain ones because I wanted to master it.

this causes a LOT of trouble in life. I agonize over things all the time

 

[Gritches]

I follow instructions to the letter for two purposes:

1. Plausible deniability. "Well, you told me to do XYZ, and I did XYZ".

2. It trains NTs. Next time, they know that if they tell me to do something, I will do it exactly as they have specified.

 

[Progster]

Yes, I have a tendency to either take something meant to be a joke literally, or to misinterpret. For example, here there is an idiom "to lift the table" meaning to clear the table. When I first heard it, I took that to mean literally lift the table, and I was wondering why they wanted to lift the table. But it's plausible - perhaps they want to create more space so want to move the table aside. If the literal meaning is something implausible, or something that I can see with my own eyes that it's n ot true, such as 'raining cats and dogs', then I know to look for a metaphorical meaning.

Over time, I have learned the meaning of most idioms and expressions, but I still sometimes come across something I don't understand which confuses me.

Also, with some, although I know not to take them literally, my mind goes to the literal meaning and a funny image comes to my head and they make me laugh - such as the expression "wear your heart on your sleeve". I found that very funny when I first heard it, hadn't a clue what it meant though.

 

[Progster]

For me that hardest thing is not knowing whether somethind is meant to be a joke or not.

 

[Bella Pines]

A while back someone at work said that he'd like to "touch base" with me at some point. I told him he wasn't going to be touching anything of mine and he looked really embarrassed. Ages later I discovered this actually meant make verbal contact...