Episode 054: Am I talking too fast/moving too much/using too many qualifiers?

Isabelle and David explore more strengths of neurodivergence, such as adaptability and responding in crisis/pressure situations (like a Ferrari on a racetrack, versus the parking lot of practice), and explore the question: why do we use so many qualifiers? Saying things like “I know I’m talking too fast,” to “nerd alert!” to “I know you hate me and want to kill me, but…” thinking about how we try to make ourselves appear aware, or harmless, or signal our vulnerability or fear of being put into a box, and how curiosity can work in our favor to make this a conscious choice rather than an automatic habit. 

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David shares the stat that is most closely tied to income (not your test scores or math scores or writing ability)…but your vocabulary, the words you understand. It’s connected to travel, how well you can shift between different environments and understand things. We’re so used to thinking about things in different ways we may not even realize how adept we are at traveling between worlds. Isabelle recognizes how the oral tradition, storytelling, there’s some things she doesn’t take away from the written word that she takes away from hearing about it. How wonderful is it that she found her way into a profession where her role is a listener. She may not regurgitate all the info or nail that standardized test but If you look at her facility to adapt to novel or unusual or crisis circumstances, she wouldn’t trade all her masking for that ability, because she can chameleon her way through a lot of situations. She was recently on a panel and hadn’t been in front of so many humans in a long time. And she noticed that she doesn’t necessarily have the same stress response others have. When they were practicing for the panel, she didn’t do as well and the other amazing panelists seemed at home. When it came time to do it, she got in the zone, and their nerves were visible and it changed their performance. They went from being so organized and put together and getting nervous, whereas she noticed she was more at home and at ease under pressure. All these intangible but real things that we don’t give ourselves credit for. David names that her brain has always been a Ferrari, and when they’re doing the pre-planning, that’s like driving around a parking lot. It would be clunky. The panel itself was the racetrack and she could let herself go. This brings David to something he noticed lately when talking with his lovely colleague; he said “I know you’re going to kill me and hate me, but…I like football.” And his colleague pointed out that he says that sometimes. And his brain opened up the neurodivergent qualifier canyon—“but, I dunno, is it? I do” All the “am I taking up too much space? Talking too fast? Moving too much?” It’s something David has worked on so much. When we’re qualifying, we’re taking ammo out of someone else’s arsenal. We say the thing we’re scared someone is going to say to us, then when someone says something terrible to us, we’re not upset. David notices he does this with things he really, really likes but that he has a conflict around.  He’s owning that he’s a really, really big football fan. And he’s the only football fan in his family, this wasn’t handed down, this was something he stumbled on that he loves. He’s also spent the last 30 years studying brains, trauma, and behavior, so it’s complicated, but he still loves football. He says “don’t kill me, I love football” as a way of saying “don’t worry, I know football is bad, it’s a guilty pleasure.” But in all moments when qualifiers come out, we disrupt other people’s agency. The questions need to be okay. The conflicts need to be okay. We’re allowed to be guarded, we’re allowed to be vulnerable, but it’s not always easy liking little shiny things, because you might like a shiny thing that someone else doesn’t like. The qualifiers are the ways we use language to soften blows for ourselves, to stop our rocket from fully going wild across the field, they’re like really sophisticated bumper guards. It’s a part of having self esteem hits from ADHD, but it’s not all bad. This makes Isabelle think of how many qualifiers she uses in a moment let alone a day. It also makes her think of how she first came across qualifiers in a book on negotiation that calls them accusational audits, where you disarm someone’s argument by naming the thing you think they’ll use against you (e.g. ‘I know I’m young and experienced, but…”) She also thinks she uses phrases like “nerd alert” and “get ready, I’m about to geek out on you…” because there’s a lot about herself she was the last to find out about. She feels like she’s the last to know and she misses a lot. That’s also a strength/vulnerability of neurodivergence, the sense of our own self-appraisal being off, and/or really knowing our own limits. It’s like a way to broadcast to the world, “hey, don’t worry, I may be ten steps behind, but there’s a thin line of awareness here, there is a fin on this rocket, it’s way back here, but don’t worry!” Like a little person holding a kite string to the rocket. David is also joining this, qualifiers aren’t good or bad, “how come I didn’t know that?” But noticing where it shows up in safe and secure relationships. Qualifiers around “did that make sense?” And “I’m going to sum it up here” all make sense as cues to the listener, but where are we most vulnerable and what things make us create qualifiers. It’s interesting to David that it comes up at work, where he doesn’t feel very guarded—it doesn’t strike him as a choice, it’s part of the ADHD repetoire. If he thinks about it as a symptom, it feels gross. If he thinks about it as a behavior, he feels better.  A behavior is just a thing, it’s neutral on it’s own: this is my dunking the basketball behavior, this is my crying the corner behavior, it’s just a thing. So, to make sure she understands, Isabelle checks that qualifiers are indeed the judgments you say about the thing that you fear someone will say about the thing that you put out there ahead of time. Maybe another way of saying “vulnerability alert, vulnerability alert” or “no harm meant!” Showing your soft underbelly. But yet, we’re often saying qualifiers about the behaviors we’re doing that are automatic (like talking quickly, changing topics, going on tangents, talking a lot, etc.) and also the qualifying itself is a behavior that is connected to ADHD. David explains that you know it’s automatic when you don’t choose to do it (or not do it). The first thing we do to change a behavior is to observe it, just observing it changes it. He doesn’t need people to hold him accountable or say it to him while he’s talking, but he wants to notice it so he can choose where it happens so that the qualifiers don’t get in the way of building intimacy. It’s like the idea of toastmasters, if you’re trying to practice doing something like speaking, you gotta take away the qualifiers. It makes Isabelle think of pickle ball and how she was clunky and loving it but found herself qualifying and apologizing a lot, and her friend/coach told her “when you do that a lot, you take the fun out of it.” It sets you up to accept yourself differently, she just accepted she’s a poor pickle ball player and it was more fun. And it also means you get to play more because you need safety and trust to start to play. It’s so hard to play when you’re busy going “don’t hurt me, don’t kill me.” It’s like farting in the waiting room. No one wants that. It’s like two dogs doing cute little play bow, and one dog starts going “i’m sorry, I’m sorry,” the other dog stops going play. It’s not unlike saying sorry to objects when you bump into them. “Why am I apologizing for existing in space?” So many habits served you at some point, it was so your friend, have you outgrown it? How hard it was to stop doing something, how easy it was to do something instead, to replace it. What’s something else she could do when she wants to take up less space: curiosity. Get curious about what’s going to happen. If I’m throwing out the qualifier, I’m certain someone is going to say something. I need to be curious and uncertain, see what happens next, trust I can handle it. There are places in his life that it gets in the way of his ability to play and fantasize. People getting smaller when they apologize; it’s interesting what we do to try to take up less space or not be put into boxes we don’t belong in. Qualifiers help us be put into different boxes. It’s not dissimilar to the opposite of fear is curiosity, and the opposite of depression and survival is play. Curiosity will invite a big gap into fear. 

So how does vocabulary link to income outcomes? It has to do with how socioeconomic level is tied to language exposure and learning--for example, the 30 million word gap and it's myths (article from Purdue)
see also: Psychology Today article on the vocab gap between rich and poor children;
Early Childhood Research Quarterly study on socioeconomic status (SES) and vocabulary
APA fact sheet on socioeconomic status and outcomes for kids
Stress about money suppresses parents talking to their kids as much (expanding word gap)
For more down this rabbit hole:
-bridging the word gap (Atlantic 2013 article)

Negotiation book mentioned by Isabelle: Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Christopher Voss and Tahl Raz also Christopher Voss (former FBI hostage negotiator)'s Ted Talk

ISABELLE’S DEFINITIONS

Qualifier: when you say the judgment you fear you’re getting out loud before or after the thing you say (e.g. “I put this together last minute, it’s not really done, it’s a work in progress…”) Also known as “Vulnerablity alert, vulnerability alert.” Also could be a way of saying “I mean you no harm” and “I don’t want to be put into a box.” Getting curious about when we use them and choosing when we want to use them. 

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Cover Art by: Sol Vázquez

Technical Support by: Bobby Richards