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Life Divergent
Tune in to listen to us as we discuss our experiences of living life divergently.
Life Divergent
EP 17 - Over-Explaining as a Neurodivergent Person
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Do you over-explain? Let's explore reasons that might explain why you do.
If you've ever sent a three-paragraph reply to a one-line question, this episode is for you because today we're talking about why so many neurodivergent brains overexplain and where the habit comes from and how to be a little gentler with ourselves about it. Hello and welcome to Life Divergent. I'm Trina.
SPEAKER_02And I'm Jason. Before we get started, quick reminder as per usual, we are not doctors or licensed medical professionals. Please do not use this as a substitute for professional medical advice or amateur medical advice. Nothing resembling advice should come from this.
SPEAKER_00Nothing. Alright then.
SPEAKER_02So back to over-explaining, as I might have done. What it actually looks like. Sorry. It's not just about explaining too much, it also involves explaining when you don't need to. Examples include pre-apologizing, which is leading with the word sorry. Before you even started saying anything, start with an apology.
SPEAKER_00Sorry, would you say?
SPEAKER_02Exactly. People will oftentimes apologize for something that they didn't do or don't need apologizing.
SPEAKER_00Yep.
SPEAKER_02You can also try to justify your no response. It's okay to just just say no.
SPEAKER_00Like so when you could just say, like, if someone asks, invites you to something, and you're like instead of just saying I can't make it, you're all, well, you know, and you give them like a whole synopsis of your next week.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, it becomes like an hour-long conversation when one word, yeah.
SPEAKER_00Or four words, I can't make it. Yeah. So yeah.
SPEAKER_02You'll also get what's called receipt mode texting. Basically, anytime you're doing anything, whether that's a footnote or just adding additional context to something, or you have to give it timeline, like, oh yeah, you know, I'm doing this, and then five seconds later you think of something else to add, and then something else to add. Because you just have this constant need to explain or clarify, and you just rapid fire text.
SPEAKER_00There you are, sending um screenshots of your calendar, that kind of stuff. I can't. All right.
SPEAKER_02And then you could also replay conversations and not just in your head. But many of you may have done this where you look at a text thread perhaps a while after it happened, maybe add a clarification, edit something. All of a sudden it's like six hours later, and I get a text from my mom with the clarification of something. I'm like, yeah, no, that was clear.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, long after the moment has passed. Um, I love when I get like a text or something and I'm sleepy and I respond with some nonsensical word because I was half asleep when I typed it and hit all the wrong letters, and it's something that contextually you could make sense of, and then yeah, it's six hours later, and I send um a random text with just a corrected word in it. Yeah. There I am overexplaining what you just explained. Okay.
SPEAKER_02Absolutely. Now, why? Why do we overexplain?
SPEAKER_00Because we like it. All right, really, overexplaining is very rarely about the words or about just saying things, it's kind of a form of safety, and oftentimes um that need for safety springs from things like um being misunderstood on a regular basis. So when you're a person who um doesn't really think typically, um, when your brain connects ideas in a different kind of way or an unexpected way, you really spend your life learning how to spell out every step so people can follow along. Um because again, you feel like you've often been misunderstood in the past, so you it's a kind of a learned behavior that you over-explain.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, you could also overexplain because you've been doubted a lot of your life.
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02You explain something, clarify something, and the person you're talking to might look at you inquisitive, inquisitively. I don't know what the word is. Inquisitively? I don't know what the word is. Inquisitively, seriously, doubtingly, incredulously look at you like you don't know what you're talking about. You explain something, people say, Are you sure about that? And then you start to second guess yourself, then you have to like explain why you came to that conclusion. And a small digression. If someone says, Are you sure? just say I wouldn't have said it if I weren't, you know, shut them up right away.
SPEAKER_00Right. I don't typically speak until I am sure. Thank you very much. Goodbye.
SPEAKER_02Yep.
SPEAKER_00But of course, we're not gonna just say that because you're gonna overexplain. Yeah, of course. So another reason that people can overexplain is if they found that they often got in trouble when they were younger, or even maybe as an adult, but typically in childhood, um, if you felt like you had to explain yourself to stay safe, like again, I think it comes from a trust thing where adults didn't believe you or trust you, um, and it made you uncomfortable or nervous or whatever because you were always afraid you were gonna get in trouble, you found yourself over-explaining things. I think that there's probably some of that in me. But yeah. Yeah, I think um all these things are basically forms of masking.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, as we neurodivergent people in a neurotypical world have to translate. Where you might want to say, where you might be able to say no thanks. What you end up doing is giving three sentences of context plus the apology, when the truth is it's okay to just decline whatever it is without apologizing, and without the um three sentences. Yep, don't need the preamble, just land the plane immediately.
SPEAKER_00All right, we all love um similes and metaphors and platitudes, and so anyway, yeah. Um so um I think that oftentimes we feel very excited about something. I consider this um in a way like when you're info dumping because you're just so excited about something and you're just telling everything about that topic, but you'll preface it uh with a couple of disclaimers like, you know, this is a lot, I'm sorry, or you'll do it after the fact. Um, Kitty.
SPEAKER_02Um I know I'm a lot right now, sorry.
SPEAKER_00Right. Um, but you know, it's okay to be excited about something at the level that you experience it. You don't need to apologize, you don't need to disclaim in any way, really.
SPEAKER_02A fun tip that you should never do instead of saying the word sorry, say the words deal with it. So you might be able to say, I know I'm a lot sorry, but you could say, I know I'm a lot deal with it.
SPEAKER_00He's joking. Okay.
SPEAKER_02Don't actually, don't actually. Hey, this is we already said this isn't advice. Do whatever you want to.
SPEAKER_00Right. It's for entertainment purposes. I hope you're entertaining. All right.
SPEAKER_02And then it's okay to be excited if you're extremely excited about things more so than those around you. That's fine. Yeah, don't apologize. Don't tell them you're a lot. They'll they'll if you're a lot, they don't need you to call it out. They know.
SPEAKER_00They know.
SPEAKER_02Trust me, they know.
SPEAKER_00I mean, and just like you know, they know. All right.
SPEAKER_02And then um Yeah, if you are making a decision and you're confident in that decision, you don't need to pre-justify or volunteer a timeline of every step you made or every thought you had that led to that decision. You're okay with letting people know that this is something I've decided. If they are curious and ask questions, sure. But the the preamble, the every single thing uh building through and I've been doing that recently. I noticed very recently that I do that.
SPEAKER_00Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_02I'm confident in something, or if I'm proud of something I decided that ended up working, it's like I I have to explain everything that built into it. Like be proud of me and with me and excited for me.
SPEAKER_00Uh I think also that um oftentimes the people around you, like in your you know, immediate environment, when you get used to them questioning or um I I don't want to say not trusting you, but you know, just as we said before, like the are you sure or just that kind of thing. So you kind of just cut it off before it has the opportunity to happen again. You get into this habit of all right, this is how this person always is with me. So you just e go even further to overexplain in advance when you don't really necessarily need to.
SPEAKER_02You know, growing up, people develop this. It's one of the things we commented on. But there are there are times where your people do this because of the friend group that they're in. Right. It makes me wonder what kind of friends do you have if if they're doing this to you?
SPEAKER_00Yeah.
SPEAKER_02They're questioning you, perhaps gaslighting you, or whatever, where or making you feel bad about your decisions if you can't make it, for instance. Like I don't know. Maybe consider the company you carry.
SPEAKER_00New friends.
SPEAKER_02You shouldn't be carrying anyone with that bad back.
SPEAKER_00Is it bad back or bad knee?
SPEAKER_02Well, I just said bad back. I know you did, but it was a vague reference to Ferris Bueller, but yeah.
SPEAKER_00Is it bad bad knee in Ferris Bueller though?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, I think it is.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. Ed.
SPEAKER_02What are the costs?
SPEAKER_00All right, what are the costs? So over-explaining can be very um energy draining because I find that a lot of neurodivergent people, when they go into the whole overexplaining, they're using their whole bodies and just really getting into um the thought process, because as I think we've said in other podcasts, um some of the stimming and the hand gestures and stuff um help you think and help you, or at least seemingly help you relay the information that you're trying to get across. And um just a thought process can be exhausting. So um I find that over-explaining, especially if you do it on a regular basis throughout the day, can be very exhausting mentally or physically.
SPEAKER_02These are also in instances stress responses. That's possibly why you feel the need to overexplain. So if you're feeling that even if it's an unconscious stressor, it's still there taxing your mind and you're taking away from your energy. Right. That's a real thing. Another issue is authority, that's what you lose whenever you have to justify or with the preamble, the timeline, the apology, because it calls into question your confidence, and even though confidence doesn't correlate with accuracy, there's a strong perception that it does. You don't appear confident, people aren't going to take you seriously in some instances.
SPEAKER_00Right. Um, and then there are connections, you know, people can mistake your explanations for anxiety and stop um recognizing the warmth behind it or your intention behind it. Um so they basically will just start to tune out, and um, overexplaining can also give the impression that you think that the other person will respond negatively to you um if you just you know say what you have to say without overexplaining, um, but it can really cause rifts um and maybe even um stop you from forming new connections if you're overexplaining all the time.
SPEAKER_02A lot of costs.
SPEAKER_00Yes, there are a lot of costs.
SPEAKER_02Um yeah, when going over this with you, I there are some things here I didn't consider, but they're very real things.
SPEAKER_00Yep. So um basically I think that a lot of this is leading to the idea that over explaining is a conditioned survival skill.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, somewhere along the way it it worked. Yeah, a lot of times, you know, growing up, the the question why became a bad thing. The parent says, Why are you doing that? The implication was what you're doing is wrong, and you need to explain yourself, yeah. So that habit can form.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_02There was a relationship I used to have. I asked someone why they were doing something because I didn't understand it, and the immediate response was, I'm sorry. It's like what? Like, what I was just I was curious, I was asking a question, but that's part of growing up sometimes. So there's the pre-apology, then all of a sudden that you get that that explanation, the justification. It's like, I just that's the wrong direction. We don't that's too much right now, but it's conditioned.
SPEAKER_00Yeah. You know what I think is kind of interesting about this is that um oftentimes, as we've said, people will overexplain because they don't want to be misunderstood. Um, but at the end of the day, sometimes the overexplaining has led to you being misunderstood or overlooked or dismissed. Um, and so it's almost like I don't know if I want to say counterintuitive, but you know, you almost feel like um you can't win, you know, you you feel like you have to overexplain because you've been misunderstood in the past, but then your overexplaining can lead to you being misunderstood anyway, or again, just like people are just like wow, and they'll like turn away from you or kind of dismiss everything that you said because they tuned out like two sentences into the giant monologue.
SPEAKER_02I don't know that giant is the right word, but the monologue that you were given, giving um you tend to repeat yourself too when you're over-explaining and trying to find different versions of it. So less is more, and try to make everything you say sound like clickbait to keep people focused.
SPEAKER_00Like a hook to a podcast, yeah. But really, there are things you know, if you feel like um you're over-explaining is um a problem or just something that you want to work on, there are some things that you can try um to help with it. So these aren't rules, they're not productivity hacks, they're just small low-sticks experiments that you can do um, you know, on a daily basis, um, to see if it helps, to see if they help. All right. So the first thing that you can do um is if someone sends you an email and asks you something or texts and just asks you a question, just answer the question without providing all the extra, I don't want to say nonsense, but without providing extra. Um, if they want further clarification or they need clarification, give them the opportunity to ask, but you don't have to offer it up if it's not asked for.
SPEAKER_02You know, there are times when I'm at work, I'm typing in our team chat, I don't want to ask a question because there's one person. I know when I ask a question that's a yes or no, please just give me one of those two words, I'll get a phone call from that person with a 15-minute conversation tied to the question, where I will eventually get the answer that I'm looking for, which is yes or no.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so it's funny because you're turning that around, like we're talking, you know, about how we can do those things, and I think sometimes we don't stop to realize or to think about how do I feel when people overexplain to me. You know, it's like so I could respond in a similar way that I expect other people to respond. Um, if I ask them a question.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, what's great is like you're saying that you can add you can always add more context if asked. Someone asks you a question, you can just say yes or no, whatever the quick answer is, and like let me know if you need more details.
SPEAKER_00Right. Because I I think about that, like I know I over-explain things a lot, but if somebody over-explains to me, I feel like they think that I'm stupid. I mean, honestly, so I mean, I never really thought about that until this moment. That maybe uh when I'm starting to launch into over-explanation, I should stop for a minute, take a beat, and say, How do I feel when people do that to me? Hmm. I learned something today about myself.
SPEAKER_02So let's talk about the apology. One of the things you can try this week is noticing your your apology before it leaves your mouth. Can't one sorry day. So something I said before is don't apologize for things that aren't your fault. Now, there's the whole the, you know, I'm sorry for your loss. Obviously, you didn't create the loss in many instances. But if if you didn't do something wrong, why are you apologizing for it? Right? So the thing about that, the thing about that is even if somebody has a negative reaction or feels bad about a decision that you're making or something that happened that you have to be the messenger on, you know, stand by what it if you if it's the deliberate decision you would make again, then don't apologize for it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Because saying I'm sorry means you did something wrong. If you did something wrong, why would you do it again?
SPEAKER_00So right. And I think that um by employing the tactic of, you know, especially like when you're emailing or sending a text, you know, you're proofreading, hopefully, your text or your email, unless you know somebody woke you up as I was talking about earlier. But um if you're proofreading, if you did say sorry, delete it, and that would be a good way of forming a habit that if you're not doing it in written form, then perhaps it will kind of remove it from your vocabulary. Now, I'm not saying never say I'm sorry, that's not what I'm getting at here. But as Jason said, if there's Nothing to apologize for, then don't apologize. Why are you doing that? Um, I'm guilty of this. I mean, I think I said it to you yesterday when you said, Why are you switching slides? And I'm like, sorry, blah blah blah.
SPEAKER_02Like, I was just trying to see if we were done with uh one of the slides.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_02Are you switching slides accidentally? Are you switching slides because we were finished with this one?
SPEAKER_00Right. You don't have to apologize, just want to know if we're moving on.
SPEAKER_02But yeah, why is okay? It's a good question to ask. Also, small digression. If you're going to stop apologizing, um take out the word just. If you're not talking about justice, you probably it sucks all the authority out of what you're saying.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_02If someone says, uh, oh, so what are you doing? You could say, I was going to the store, or I was just going to the store. That makes it seem like you're trying to justify or explain away something that maybe you're not doing right. Yeah. I I happened upon an article of like the top ten things that uh take your power out of conversations, and the word just was number one on the list.
SPEAKER_00Huh.
SPEAKER_02It's like you're trying to excuse or justify behavior that even isn't isn't even wrong.
SPEAKER_00Interesting.
SPEAKER_02It's real. I try to use the word just list.
SPEAKER_00Good. I'd never thought about that or heard that before. That's interesting.
SPEAKER_02If you think the more you think about it, the more you'll see how right it is.
SPEAKER_00Uh-huh. All right. So then um you can uh choose to if you're uh if somebody asks you why you're doing something, you it's okay to say because I want to. Um, you don't have to, you know, and now we're coming to justifying, you don't have to justify everything that you do or everything that you want to do. Um, you know, not every choice that you make needs to be defended. So the other thing is you probably don't owe people an explanation, so you don't need to overexplain again. This comes back to the if someone needs further clarification or wants more information, they can ask for it. You don't have to provide it, you can just say, I'm going to the store. It doesn't need to be a monologue.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02Uh bear in mind that there's simply the there you may need a monologue or want to monologue just for the purpose of conversation.
SPEAKER_00Like we're not talking monologue, kind of isn't really a conversation though, is it?
SPEAKER_02Well, no, it's like I'm going to the store, I want to pick up XYZ. Like the other person may not care about what you're going to pick up, but you know, if it's someone you're living with, partner, friend, whatever, they can say, Oh, yeah, don't forget XYZ that you're talking about. So there's some value sometimes in doing that.
SPEAKER_00Exactly, but just in general.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. And then um something you touched on a moment ago, which is being on the other side of the monologue, the overexplaining.
SPEAKER_00Right.
SPEAKER_02You know, if you're asking questions or trying to get information, how often do you need that much of an explanation? You know, you think about clarifications you think you're providing in your overexplaining, but assume that the person you're talking to is also reasonably intelligent. If they need more information, they'll ask.
SPEAKER_00Right. Um yeah, because you don't I'm gonna overexplain. Yeah. Um, you don't want to make them feel any certain kind of way that um unintentionally that you would feel if they were doing the same thing to you, basically. So um I feel like we could probably wrap up now or risk over-explaining, over-explaining. Do you have anything to add?
SPEAKER_02I'm sure we could talk about over-explaining for a while. Lots of examples, lots of tricks of the trade, but I think we hit the nail on the head.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, so um, I think um in the next episode we're gonna be talking about executive dysfunction and the shame spiral. Um, so tune in for that. In the meantime, um, yeah. I guess bye. Take care of yourselves, be happy, be well. Stop over explaining.
SPEAKER_02Yes.
SPEAKER_00Yes, bye.
SPEAKER_02Bye.
