I’m sure lots of ADHDers know what I mean. Situations where you’re not meaning ill intent, but the way that a situation turns out makes it seem like you’re the bad guy/girl.
How do you handle the situation without seeming like a victim or that you’re making excuses for yourself? Do you explain the situation or just accept it and hope that enough time will reveal your true character?
Poorly. I handle it poorly.
Every time it happens I end up feeling like an idiot, being percieved as awkward and verbally clumsy, and I feel guilty about having ruined the conversation. I haven’t found a good way to cope with it yet … but it’s one of the reasons why I prefer things like SMS, email and chat for communication rather than talking to others directly. I can delete and rewrite text as often as I want to until it reads okay, but I can not rehearse an entire conversation beforehand and then just rewind whenever I said something that “doesn’t fit”, so I have to deal with the consequences. Smalltalk with coworkers is the worst.
One thing that’s helped me out with verbal clumsiness is trying to use my hands more when I talk, it gives me an extra layer of conveyance and I kind of engage more with what I am saying as I say it, YMMV though
This is so true for me that I started sitting back from the camera during teleconferences so people could see my hand gestures.