The Relief of Not Having to Explain
The relief of not having to explain can be surprisingly profound. Interaction feels easier with some people because we don’t have to translate every reaction, justify every need or find exactly the right words for an experience that is difficult to describe.
They might be like us.
Perhaps they are neurokin.
Sometimes they simply happen to understand us in a way that makes the translation unnecessary.
And when we’re already struggling, that can make an enormous difference.
Check out The Outsider Within: The Songs Playlist here.
When the inside is so much bigger than the outside
One of the things I’ve noticed, both in myself and in the people I work with, is that what is happening on the inside can be so much bigger than what is visible from the outside.
Someone can be carrying a whole weather system internally while appearing quiet, functional, distracted, cheerful, irritable or simply… fine.
The outside might contain very little information about the size or intensity of the internal experience.
That creates a particular difficulty.
If someone asks, “What’s wrong?”, we may not have an answer.
- We don’t know ourselves
- Perhaps the experience is too tangled to explain
- Maybe we’re already using so much energy managing what is happening that finding the words feels like another task we simply cannot do
- Or it could just feel that the words we have don’t seem big enough
When ordinary words aren’t enough
Language can be wonderfully precise.
It can also be completely inadequate.
There are experiences for which sad, overwhelmed, anxious, angry, happy or tired barely scratch the surface.
For some neurodivergent people, communication may also involve scripts, familiar phrases, sounds, songs or lines from films and television that carry a much larger emotional meaning than the literal words suggest.
Gestalt Language Processing is one framework used to describe a style of language development involving larger chunks of language, including scripts and echolalia. There is ongoing discussion about the evidence and the limits of applying GLP/Natural Language Acquisition as a broad explanation of autistic language development, so I think it is useful to hold the terminology thoughtfully rather than treating it as a universal description. What is well recognised, though, is that echolalia can have communicative functions, and autistic people have described the importance of scripts and familiar language in communication and regulation.
The idea itself fascinates me.
- That phrase from a film might carry a whole emotional landscape
- A particular sound might instantly transport us somewhere
- Maybe a song lyric might express something we couldn’t formulate ourselves
- Or a seemingly unrelated reference might actually be incredibly precise
The words are not necessarily explaining the feeling.
They are carrying it.
The people who just get it
This is where the idea of PLU, or people like us, and neurokin connection becomes particularly interesting.
There can be enormous ease in being with someone who understands the underlying language.
We might say something that would require a paragraph of explanation to another person, and they simply nod.
We might use a familiar phrase and know that they understand what we mean.
Perhaps we don’t even need to say the whole thing.
That shared understanding can reduce an extraordinary amount of cognitive and emotional labour.
There’s no need to stop the conversation and explain why a particular situation is difficult.
No need to prove that something really is overwhelming.
There’s no need to construct a carefully reasoned argument for why we need to step away.
No need to translate ourselves into language that another person will find acceptable before we can simply be ourselves.
Sometimes there is just:
“Yep. I get it.”
And we can keep going.
Being understood isn’t the same as being completely known
I don’t think we need another person to understand every detail of our internal world.
In fact, that would probably be impossible.
We can be deeply understood without being completely known.
Someone might not have experienced what we’re experiencing. They might not know exactly what is happening inside us. They may simply have enough familiarity, empathy, curiosity or shared language to recognise that there is more happening than can be seen from the outside.
That can be enough.
Perhaps this is part of what makes neurokin relationships so nourishing for some people.
There can be less translation.
Less performance.
Less explaining.
More room simply to exist.
When we don’t have to turn ourselves into an explanation
There is something exhausting about constantly explaining yourself.
Not necessarily because other people are asking too much.
Sometimes the explanation is happening entirely inside our own heads.
How do I make this make sense?
How do I explain why that bothered me?
Why can’t I just say what I’m feeling?
What words would make someone else understand?
How can I describe something I don’t completely understand myself?
Eventually, even the act of explaining can become another layer between us and the experience.
The relief comes when that layer isn’t needed.
Someone –
- Notices
- Understands the reference
- Recognises the pattern
- Simply accepts, “This is where you are right now.”
And we don’t have to build a case for it.
Perhaps this is one kind of belonging
I’ve been thinking about belonging differently lately.
Perhaps belonging isn’t always about being surrounded by people who understand everything about us.
Perhaps sometimes it is the much quieter experience of not having to translate quite so much of ourselves.
There is a softness in that.
We can speak in our own language.
When we can use the “strange” reference.
We can go quiet.
We can say the thing that makes perfect sense to us, even if it would take someone else five minutes to understand.
And when someone responds with recognition rather than confusion, we don’t have to scramble to explain.
We can simply be there.