First, I'd like to echo everyone's previous suggestion to seek out professional therapy. It's not all about sitting in a comfy couch and getting told that all of your problems stem from pent-up sexual tension. Rather, you get to talk to someone who has been trained in the art of communication, sympathy, and the workings of the mind. Most importantly though, you need someone with an objective view that is free of any conflict of interest or hidden agenda. This (unfortunately) means you're going to go to a complete stranger. On the bright side, some health insurance covers counseling, which might bring this option into the affordable range if it isn't already.
I am by no means a substitute for professional counseling, though I would like to share some observations and personal experience.
I read emotions and meaning just fine, but intention, not so well.
As a result, I ask stupid questions. A lot of stupid questions. An insane number of stupid questions.
People are horrible at communicating. They make noise, more often than not, that noise meets syntactical rules, but its semantics do not truly reflect their thoughts. If you've ever had a woman tell you "I don't care, just do whatever you want.", you should have an idea of what I'm talking about.
Through a somewhat pragmatic process, I've found that asking completely reflexive questions does little to solve this communication problem. For instance, in response to the above example, "I can do whatever I want? Are you sure?". You're just using the same words that your conversational partner is using, and that doesn't help expose the latent disconnect between speech and thought. Instead, I try some other approaches, depending on the situation:
* Make an assumption. Go out on a limb and use intuition. This path by far carries the highest risk of loss of face (generally mine), but in informal social circles, a small error caused by a bad assumption is easily overlooked. In a forgiving environment, this approach is great for fine-tuning intuition.
* Explain my understanding and intentions before taking action: "I'll summarize what we've discussed in a change request and get that back to you in an hour for you to review.". This is geared more toward a work environment, where mistakes carry a bigger penalty, and ass-coverage is absolutely necessary. In this approach, I'm now in control of the communication and can be as precise as I need. If there's a difference in understanding or my intentions turn out to be wrong, no worries. Nothing bad happened yet and since no damage was done, both parties get to save face.
* Get to the root cause: "You need the root password? What are you going to do with it? ... Oh, you just need to change a configuration file? I'll show you how to do that without the root password." This approach is also more geared towards a work environment. People will sometimes (often in my line of work) come to me with a solution to their problem. That solution, however, does not account for a whole slew of factors that they are not aware of. Sometimes I have to prod a bit and find out what a person's real motivation is, often using one or both of the other two approaches. The trick here is asking precise questions that do not belittle the respondent or make them defensive. I've yet to master this technique, as I first have to get over intimidating people with my mere presence.
* Do something impulsive and make a mistake. Sometimes I'll just end up saying or doing something completely inappropriate. It happens to the best of us, and it's not the end of the world for all cases (minus epsilon). Aside from their obvious pragmatic value, small mistakes are still beneficial -- they show others that like them, I have flaws, and that I'm not too proud to hide them.
People are also proud, sometimes overly so. They have this notion of "face", which can be thought of as the antithesis of weakness in a social context. You may have seen me use the term "saving face" -- or in other words, "not looking like a dumbass". While it sometimes feels good to squash a person's ego, it's almost always in your best interest to set up a situation that lets them save face. That satisfaction of figuratively rubbing someone's face in the dirt lasts for a moment; the misery unleashed by a butthurt person can last a lifetime. Even if ego-squashing isn't your intent, certain pointed questions can feel like a setup for humilation. I don't know what sort of questions you ask, but if they fall into this category, that can certainly cause negative feedback, more so than the process of providing an obvious answer.
Finally, I find some comfort in precision. When I know exactly what a person wants, I know exactly what they expect of me and I can either meet their expectation or work on lowering that expectation into the grasp of reality. There's little to no risk of being wrong and disappointment is almost always mitigated. As a technical person, you're probably of the same mindset. In some cases, seeking precision is perfectly reasonable, such as in a work environment, where surprises are a bad thing. In social circles, not so much. There's no time to work out the specifics, but plenty of room for ambiguity and improvisation. Try to make a distinction between the two, and when the situation permits, take advantage of that freedom to express your relevant interests to the group, and see what lies outside of your comfort zone.
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I am by no means a substitute for professional counseling, though I would like to share some observations and personal experience.
People are horrible at communicating. They make noise, more often than not, that noise meets syntactical rules, but its semantics do not truly reflect their thoughts. If you've ever had a woman tell you "I don't care, just do whatever you want.", you should have an idea of what I'm talking about.
Through a somewhat pragmatic process, I've found that asking completely reflexive questions does little to solve this communication problem. For instance, in response to the above example, "I can do whatever I want? Are you sure?". You're just using the same words that your conversational partner is using, and that doesn't help expose the latent disconnect between speech and thought. Instead, I try some other approaches, depending on the situation:
* Make an assumption. Go out on a limb and use intuition. This path by far carries the highest risk of loss of face (generally mine), but in informal social circles, a small error caused by a bad assumption is easily overlooked. In a forgiving environment, this approach is great for fine-tuning intuition.
* Explain my understanding and intentions before taking action: "I'll summarize what we've discussed in a change request and get that back to you in an hour for you to review.". This is geared more toward a work environment, where mistakes carry a bigger penalty, and ass-coverage is absolutely necessary. In this approach, I'm now in control of the communication and can be as precise as I need. If there's a difference in understanding or my intentions turn out to be wrong, no worries. Nothing bad happened yet and since no damage was done, both parties get to save face.
* Get to the root cause: "You need the root password? What are you going to do with it? ... Oh, you just need to change a configuration file? I'll show you how to do that without the root password." This approach is also more geared towards a work environment. People will sometimes (often in my line of work) come to me with a solution to their problem. That solution, however, does not account for a whole slew of factors that they are not aware of. Sometimes I have to prod a bit and find out what a person's real motivation is, often using one or both of the other two approaches. The trick here is asking precise questions that do not belittle the respondent or make them defensive. I've yet to master this technique, as I first have to get over intimidating people with my mere presence.
* Do something impulsive and make a mistake. Sometimes I'll just end up saying or doing something completely inappropriate. It happens to the best of us, and it's not the end of the world for all cases (minus epsilon). Aside from their obvious pragmatic value, small mistakes are still beneficial -- they show others that like them, I have flaws, and that I'm not too proud to hide them.
People are also proud, sometimes overly so. They have this notion of "face", which can be thought of as the antithesis of weakness in a social context. You may have seen me use the term "saving face" -- or in other words, "not looking like a dumbass". While it sometimes feels good to squash a person's ego, it's almost always in your best interest to set up a situation that lets them save face. That satisfaction of figuratively rubbing someone's face in the dirt lasts for a moment; the misery unleashed by a butthurt person can last a lifetime. Even if ego-squashing isn't your intent, certain pointed questions can feel like a setup for humilation. I don't know what sort of questions you ask, but if they fall into this category, that can certainly cause negative feedback, more so than the process of providing an obvious answer.
Finally, I find some comfort in precision. When I know exactly what a person wants, I know exactly what they expect of me and I can either meet their expectation or work on lowering that expectation into the grasp of reality. There's little to no risk of being wrong and disappointment is almost always mitigated. As a technical person, you're probably of the same mindset. In some cases, seeking precision is perfectly reasonable, such as in a work environment, where surprises are a bad thing. In social circles, not so much. There's no time to work out the specifics, but plenty of room for ambiguity and improvisation. Try to make a distinction between the two, and when the situation permits, take advantage of that freedom to express your relevant interests to the group, and see what lies outside of your comfort zone.