Symbolic Forest

I’m one of those people who has trouble reading others. I can’t spot body language until it’s too late. I can’t spot inflection either. This isn’t good, when dealing with other people, but I’ve got used to the fact that I just can’t do it.

Now, that’s fair enough, but there seems to be another side to this that I’ve only just started to realise. Not only can I not spot other people’s feelings; other people can’t spot mine either. If I’m in a bad mood, people never seem to notice; if I’m not in a bad mood, I nevertheless constantly get comments like “why are you so pissed off today?”

There are two possibilities here – well, three really. Firstly, it could be that being useless at spotting other people’s emotions makes me useless at displaying my own, or that I am useless at spotting them because I’m useless at displaying them. Secondly, though, it could be just that everybody is as terrible at I am at this sort of thing. I just assume that it’s easy and natural, when everybody else is actually having just as much trouble as me.

Keyword noise: body language, emotion, feelings, inflection.