Underneath my yellow skin

Tag Archives: intuition

The art of being rude

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I’ve talked many times about how I am really good at getting people to talk. It’s on of my strengths, and, it’s one of my weaknesses as well. Or rather, it can do harm unto myself. There have been several letters lately to Ask A Manager about how to get someone else to shut up. But politely, of course. Got to be collegial.

One in particular was interesting to me. It was from a woman who was the only woman in her department who had to deal with the men (all men, six of them) in the database team. Things would start out normally, but then she would ask how they were doing, and they would dump on her. Or she wouldn’t even ask how they were doing and they would dump on her. She wanted to know how she could cut it off at the pass without being rude. Alison opened it up to the commentariat (which she does once a week), and there have been a wide variety of responses.

One person was really mean to the writer and said that having a dead brother as a young child can really mark you. First of all, the LW never said the dead brother was from a young childhood (it was one example she gave). Even if it had been, though, dumping that info on your coworker is not cool. Bottom line. Most people have traumatic shit in their lives. That doesn’t mean we get to dump it over our coworkers willy and, indeed, nilly.

I couldn’t help think, however, that she may have to be what she feels is rude to shut this thing down. In normal and polite society, there is an unspoken agreement that interrupting is rude (yes, I am aware that this is not true of all cultures, but for the sake of this post, I’m stating it to be true. Especially in offices).


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Reading people for filth

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I’m good at reading people. Not in the current vernacular and how I put it in the title (though I can do that as well. I just mostly keep it to myself), but in knowing them better than they know themselves. Back when I actually worked around people, I was able to tell when they were pregnant before they revealed it to other people. My best friend, too. We were at a bar, and I just blurted out that she was pregnant. She dismissed me because even though she and her husband were trying, it hadn’t been very long. I was right, however, and I was right about the birth gender. Oh, that’s the other part. I can say the birth gender about the baby as well. I have been wrong once out of a dozen times. And in that case, that person is now questioning their gender.

I was also able to call certain sports moments, too. Like the 12th inning of the BoSox, er, Yankees I think post-season game. When Big Papi stepped up to the home plate, I suddenly knew he was going to hit a homerun. I said it out loud to my mother, and then he did it. I also knew he was going to win the next game, though not how. My mom has joked that I could make a killing if I bet on games, but it doesn’t work that way. It only happens in the moment. Like, we were at a local tennis match and I automatically said, “Double fault” as the person served. It was a double fault. My mother demanded I do it again, but it wasn’t a conscious thought on my part.

I called that my party trick because while it’s amusing, it has no practical usage. And, that’s not really reading people, well, the sports part isn’t. That’s predicting the future. The pregnant part, though, is reading the person without meaning to. I don’t intend to figure out if someone is pregnant or not–it just happens. When I worked at the county, there was a woman I worked with. I looked at her and knew she was pregnant with a boy. I did not tell her, of course, because that would be creepy and weird. I left that job because it was always temporary, but my mother worked there. Two or three months later, she told everyone at work that she was pregnant–with a boy. My mother told me, and I was glad to have my confirmation.

My brother is having the time of his life living his teenage years. He never got to really date around so he’s doing that now. He dropped by last night to talk about it. He called me his therapist. Funnily, it doesn’t bother me when he does it the way it does when my mother does. It’s because he’s done so much for me. I can never repay the lengths he went to when I was in the hospital. When I tried to thank him for it, he shrugged and said, “We’re family. It’s what we do.” Which, yes, it is. However, not everyone does it so well and with nary a complaint. So if he wants advice while he chews over his dating life, I’m here for him!


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Using my intuition–or not

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Yesterday’s post took off on a tangent from which I never returned. I started out talking about my intuition about people, which I want to continue now. I mentioned how there are two YouTubers on different sites that I have watched and the first time I saw them streaming together, I instantly knew they were banging. Or if they weren’t banging at the time, they  were very attracted to each other. When they came out with a tweet that they had been together for a year (at a later date), so many of their fans expressed surprise. Whereas to me, it was so obvious. Take a look at the video below and tell me if you can guess who they are.

Another time, I was talking to my brother about why I don’t like movies. He said of course I didn’t like them because I could see what was happening a mile off and they weren’t authentic enough. I was surprised he had said that not because it wasn’t true because it was pretty perceptive of him to pick up on it. He has made comments since then about my ability to intuit things about people that most people can’t.

Related, there was someone on one of the advice blogs I frequent that said empaths aren’t real. Um, what? Yes, we are. The way she stated it so confidently shook me to my care. If she had said she didn’t think it was real, that would have been one thing. But to state it as if it were a fact when it’s just her opinion? It’s the same when a woman flatly told me that women don’t imagine how strangers would be in bed after I had just told her I did that.

Then, of course there was the classic of what happened when I told my mother I was bi. Why I told her, I don’t know. Unwarranted optimism that since she had just supported my cousin as coming out as gay and she was a psychologist, I thought she’d do the same for me. Nope. She was horrified, to say the least, and she trotted out the classic, “But what next? Animals?” Which, why is it always animals????

When someone denies who you are, it’s hard not to let that shake you. When it comes to the perception thing, I have such a heightened sense of others, it can be intrusive. You know how we all have masks when we’re out and about in the world? It’s a necessary thing and one that I support. Unfortunately, I’m someone who can pierce that veil without even trying. I learned at an early age that I can unerringly know the cruelest way to hurt someone without even really thinking about it.

If I talk to you (general you) for ten minutes, I can find it. 90% of people will hand me the information I need to cut you to pieces. And when I get angry, of course I want to go for the jugular. I try really hard not to do it, but I can’t say that I have never hit a low blow.


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Piercing the veil

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I was re-watching a video with two people who are a couple (from different websites), but didn’t announce it until they were together for a year. There were so many messages to them on Twitter gasping in delight (and shock) that they were able to hide it so well.

Except, they didn’t. The first video with the both of them (included in this post)that I saw, I immediately thought, “They’re bonking.” This might have been before they officially hooked up, but it was just so obvious to me. Have a look and see if you can tell. It was just a flash of thought and I did not dwell on it, but something about the way they were bantering screamed ‘couple’ to me.

I’ve always had this ability to read people–and it’s more a negative than a plus. It’s one reason I prefer being on my own The inundation of unwanted emotions from other people was always getting in the way of day-to-day life.

It’s a question of chicken and egg to an extent. I can’t remember a time when I wasn’t responsible for my parents’ emotions, which meant that I had to attune my sensitivity radar to eleven to make sure I never made a misstep. My father was the only one allowed to have big emotions whereas my mother couldn’t stop whining in my ear since I was eleven. I really struggle with the concept that we can’t hold the victims of abuse responsible for their own actions when they in turn abuse other people, including their children.

There’s a letter to Ask A Manager about a woman who was being abused, given the name ‘Jane’. In order to talk to the cops, she framed her coworker, named….ah, Mary? Sandra? Let’s say Mary for fraud. The cops came and arrested Mary, who was forced to move out of her house and in with her father because of the turmoil. It was Jane’s manager who wrote in–and it was an investment firm so fraud is a big deal. oh, and the husband, ‘Joe’, worked at the firm as well–and after the investigation, Joe was arrested, but Mary’s life was in tatters. She wanted to know how to deal with the situation.


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Let me tell you about yourself

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My brother was over yesterday helping me with my new compy. I ordered Thai to thank him for his help. We were eating yellow curry (chicken and potato–outstanding!) when he said, “I thought about what you said a few weeks ago.” I looked at him expectantly because I didn’t remember what we talked about a few weeks ago. I mean, in general, yes, I could remember, but I wasn’t sure what he meant specifically.

“When you said I was probably somewhere on the spectrum, it made so many things clear.” Oh, damn. Yes, I had said something about him being on the spectrum, but I thought that was obvious. Like, he’s the stereotype of someone on the spectrum and his son was also clearly on the spectrum when he (the son) was very young.

I apologized to him because I normally don’t tell people about themselves. It’s not a nice thing to do and it can really freak people out. I understand that. I don’t like it when people think they know me better than I know myself (but it’s usually because they don’t) and I don’t want to do the same thing to other people (even though I do know them better). But for some reason, I thought he knew. We’d talked about it before, but perhaps it didn’t sink in. Or maybe the other times I didn’t tell him explicitly that he was on the spectrum. I’m pretty sure I have, but it doesn’t really matter.

He cut short my apology and said that he was glad I had said that because it had explained so many things. We recounted the ways it made sense. He’s not aware of feelings. I mean, he can tell broadly if someone is happy or sad, but not the more nuanced things like distraught versus upset. Miffed versus irritated. Giddy versus exuberant, etc. Nor can he always tell why someone is in that mood. He joked that all his sensitivity for emotions was given to me instead, which isn’t really a joke. I have double the dose and he has less than half the dose.

Other ways he looks like he’s on the spectrum: when he was younger, he could not look people in the eyes. Being very interested in mechanical things (taking things apart at a young age), being hyper-focused on one thing for hours. Some others I didn’t mention: not great social skills (though we’ve talked about that ad nauseam), fidgety, and being rigid on how things ‘should’ be done. To me, it was a textbook case.


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