Episode 13: Improv and Being Misunderstood, Part 1.

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Welcome to the Neurodiversity and Improv Podcasts from FlatImprov.

:: 00:21

I'm Jen deHaan, and I like improv, and I do improv things, and I like thinking about all of it, or overthinking.

:: 00:32

And these podcasts, I'm not gonna be telling you what to do, I'm just explaining improv things to help classes and teams and whatever improv spaces be a little bit more inclusive.

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They are not for diagnosing yourself or anyone else.

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And this week we're talking about Being Misunderstood.

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So I'm also hoping that some of you feel seen and understood a little bit more.

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So before we get started, I also just want to quickly mention that I'm gonna be changing the release schedule for these podcasts a little bit.

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I'm going to be publishing podcasts every second week.

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And the other weeks, I'm going to be publishing a written article because I tested a couple and it seems like people might want those too.

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So I'm gonna alternate podcast and written articles.

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If you are subscribed to this podcast and not the Substack, you will be able to find those written articles on the Substack site, which is linked in the show notes.

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Also, I'm changing when I publish, so you will find these articles and podcasts published mid-week now instead of on Sunday.

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So if you've noticed a change in that, good on you, hello.

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So this week, I'm talking about Being Misunderstood.

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And this is a part one of a unknown length series.

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I have part two and part of part three written and I don't know how far deep we will dive on this subject, but there is a lot involved in Being Misunderstood as a neurodivergent person and improviser.

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So this episode will just start at the beginning and give you some of the basics about what Being Misunderstood is about in a neurodivergent sense.

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Of course, we're all misunderstood from time to time.

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We need to clarify.

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We need to help people understand what we meant when we said something.

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That's common.

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However, neurodivergent people, we have it happen to us a lot more often.

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Many of you will understand what I'm talking about, that it's something that we have dealt with for probably as long as we can remember and have this happen just all the time.

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And this is of course about communication differences.

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So let's start with an overview of what this is all about.

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So I am mostly going to describe the communication differences between autistic and allistic people.

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Now, allistic means non-autistic people.

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So it might be neurodivergent and allistic.

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It just means anyone who is not autistic.

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And the reason I'm using this information is, well, first of all, I experience it as a autistic person, so I can speak from personal experience.

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But also there is a lot of research and science that exists about the communication differences between autistic and allistic people, which I can refer to.

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So that is why I'm using it as an example.

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But you can apply this, of course, to many different situations where communication breakdown occurs.

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This can occur between people in many different demographics, including cultural differences, regional differences, and just speaking different languages in general, of course.

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So of course everyone can be misunderstood and is misunderstood from time to time in improv scenes and outside of them.

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But as with many things in this series, we are talking about the complexity, the intensity and the frequency of these situations, which is oftentimes much more complex, intense and frequent for people who are neurodivergent.

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So one of the research articles that I looked at described what they call the double empathy problem.

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The double empathy problem is a framework that describes the communication mismatch between autistic and allistic people.

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Now this describes a situation where autistic people, we struggle to read other people, especially other neurotypical or allistic individuals.

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Allistic individuals, they fail to understand us and this goes both ways.

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Hence the double empathy problem.

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Allistic people, they don't understand autistic people.

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Autistic people have trouble understanding allistic people.

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And this is communication in several different ways.

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So we have difficulty in figuring out what each other are thinking and feeling.

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We misunderstand and we are misunderstood.

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However, it's also very important that despite it going both ways and that both of us have these communication issues, that autistic humans, we are part of the neurotype minority.

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So as such, it's pretty rare for allistic individuals to be forced to try to understand us or to meet us at our perspective.

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And that's kind of part of the problem that we as autistic people often have to adapt to the majority of people that are out there, the majority of our teammates, the majority of the learners in the room.

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We are forced because we are part of the minority to try and learn neurotypical ways of communication and learning and every other thing pretty much.

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And this is why we end up masking because we are trying not to be misunderstood.

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We're trying to communicate with a generally neurotypical world.

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And as such, we need to remember that we do not necessarily need to pathologize this communication style.

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This is a different language.

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It's not necessarily a pathology.

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We are being forced really to conform to the norm by expressing ourselves in a manner that is atypical to us, but it's not necessarily a deficit.

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So this study also mentions one that was run that compared the communication between autistic and holistic individuals that showed some of these disconnects and autistic communicating with other autistic individuals, showing that the communication was much easier between those individuals than it was when it was mixed up.

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The communication broke down when there was differences in neuro types.

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There is also a study performed that looked at the unconscious bias towards autistic people and how that affects mental health.

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That can be tied in, of course, with our feelings of being perceived because we have this unconscious bias placed on us almost immediately.

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And this can lead to anxiety of interacting and so on, because we know that people are making those decisions almost immediately.

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But of course, that sort of unconscious bias is not limited to autism at all.

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Of course, this can affect many other demographics.

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And despite this bias, this sort of almost immediate negative reaction towards autistic humans, it's important to remember that there are studies that demonstrate that these are not communication deficiency.

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Autistic people have a very distinct way of going about social communication.

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It's just different.

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It's not a pathology.

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But because of these breakdowns, because we are part of this minority, these communication issues can jeopardize mental health because it's very isolating.

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You know, when we feel alone in the middle of a group, just because we cannot communicate in the same manner, we have this different way of expressing ourselves, of communicating what we mean.

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And as such, this can have implications, of course, in both improv scenes and outside of them, as we do in real life all the time on our teams and in our improv communities.

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This can lead to frustration when you can't communicate thoughts and feelings to other people in a way that they perhaps understand.

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And when this happens, I mean, science, these studies have shown that the other people, when someone can't understand us, they have less interest in engaging with us.

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And again, that can happen almost immediately.

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Science has showed it can happen in seconds.

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And what's also interesting is they studied it both in-person verbal engagement and also in-text.

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And this doesn't happen when only text is involved.

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So this is the, not the substance of what's being said.

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It's the style.

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It's the social element of how it's being communicated.

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The how is where the breakdown has happened, not with the what.

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And this, of course, impacts Improv in the style of Improv that we choose.

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More verbal-based communication, where it's more about what's said and not how it's said, that we aren't doing, say, subtext or these other sort of nuance, fine nuance, speaking without words, communicating that way.

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The more that that comes into our Improv, it can highlight some of these issues, maybe a little bit more.

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But of note, of these studies that I've mentioned so far, it's important to know that these have been performed on teens and adults and autistic individuals who are highly verbal and do not have intellectual disabilities.

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So there are fewer barriers that exist in this communication.

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So it could be true that there are other or bigger communication issues that exist in autistic people with higher support needs.

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Another thing that the study did not attribute or did not consider is the familiarity between the individuals communicating.

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So it didn't compare people who are strangers versus people who have long relationships with those that they're engaging with.

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So it might be true that people who have a long, very intimate relationship with each other, their family, their close friends, they might communicate better because of that familiarity.

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For example, if you've been on a team with the same people for a very long time, you may have built up ways of communicating with each other that work.

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However, there is other research out there that has shown that sometimes when we think we know someone, we make a lot of assumptions when we communicate with them.

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So as such, there is research out there that show that we don't listen as well, and hence we sometimes don't understand what people are saying, what they're really trying to communicate when we do know them really well.

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So a lot of assumptions can also lead to miscommunication.

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But of these studies, I've learned why I just love text communication.

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Science has shown why I do.

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But let's summarize for a second.

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So basically, avoiding misunderstanding, avoiding being misunderstood, it takes a lot of work, especially when there's people with different neuro types, especially between autistic and holistic humans.

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We need to attempt to avoid making assumptions.

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We need to try to avoid jumping to conclusions.

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And we need to work at inquiring, at asking questions.

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If we hear something that might not make sense, or if we hear something that might have been delivered in a way that doesn't seem nice or we don't understand, or it seems overly direct or blunt or whatever it is, if it doesn't make sense, asking questions, answering them, seeking clarification, giving clarification, these are all things that can obviously help.

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And it helps us to remember that we have people of different neuro types, of different wiring, of different forms of communication involved with us in improv.

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And let's also remember, of course, to actually listen to the response, to use the response as our basis of understanding and not the original thing that might have happened.

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And let's also try to take those responses in good faith, as long as they seem to be.

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I'll put the studies that I've mentioned in the show notes, so you can refer to them, read them yourself, and interpret them in the way that's the most relevant to you.

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And with that, let's go on to the improv now.

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So now the improv, I'm going to start off with an example of what I mean about being misunderstood, or just it's more about communication differences.

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And this example is from some classes I took in dramatic narrative improv.

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Now, this isn't a style of improv that I'm familiar with.

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I was just taking some classes because it's sort of at the opposite end, I guess, of the spectrum of improv from the style that I do, which is game based, game of the scene based improv.

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So I did these dramatic narrative improv classes, and they were excellent classes.

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And between all the scenes in the long form set, the teacher would stop us and have everyone in the class give their scenes.

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Their scene analysis of what happened between the characters in the scene.

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What sort of non-spoken elements existed between these characters?

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What was the relationship like?

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What were they thinking about?

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And essentially every student in the class gave their read on the subtext, on the nuance, on what was going on between these characters.

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They were reading between the lines of what happened between the characters in the scene.

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All the things that weren't said in addition to the things that were.

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And of course, that's what misunderstanding is between autistic and holistic people.

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It's that subtext.

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It's reading between the lines.

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It's all those elements that differ between us.

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It's like we're speaking a different language.

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It's all the stuff that is not the actual content of the words that we say.

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So in this class, I had a front row seat at all the things I missed because it was everybody in the room seeing all these things or most people in the room.

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And I was sitting there going, wow, I missed that nuance.

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I missed that subtext because it wasn't said outright.

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And what was quite interesting about my characters, and this was sort of alluded to by several, but was overtly said by one person later on in the class, was my character was described as a psychopath.

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This character that I brought back through this long form set, because my character just said everything that they were thinking, literally out loud, which is part of the style of improv I do in general.

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I'm just very used to it.

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But also, I mean, it's what I'm used to like as a human being of just say what you think.

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I wasn't leaving anything to mystery or nuance.

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I wasn't being coy, but I was also coming across apparently as a psychopath because they said, who in real life even does that?

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But the other thing I noticed, of course, through all of this is my read was off.

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It was different than the read of many other people or most of them in that class.

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Now of course, some of this or a lot of this perhaps was because I was participating in a style that I'm not all that familiar with.

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I have not done much of, of course.

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So with more practice and more confidence in that particular style of improv in dramatic long-form narrative, I would potentially be maybe better at the read of my scene partners.

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But again, I find that style and what we were doing is much closer to what happens in real life outside of scenes.

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And that sort of gave me just a hint at some of the difficulty that can happen in certain styles of improv, especially if they hit more on reading nuance and reading the things that aren't said in addition to the things that are.

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And now I need to say that autistic people, we can read between the lines.

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We can read subtext.

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It's not that we are completely devoid of that ability.

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We do.

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It just takes more effort.

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And we might not read it correctly nearly as often.

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Just what I was seeing in that class quite firsthand.

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It doesn't come as easily to us.

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And in some cases, we are just going to have a complete disconnect.

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But I will say that when I first heard Don't Be Coy in a Scene and then understood what that meant, that was music to my ears.

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I loved that so much.

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And that's probably why I gravitated to the style of improv that I ended up doing.

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And you know, even in my style, I'm going to have times when there is that disconnect, even when you do barf out most or all of what you think in a scene, I will get some of it wrong.

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But also that is the fun of improv.

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And that also sometimes leads to some free comedy.

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So now I'm going to talk about what happens in the style that I'm more familiar with and what is just common in improv in a very generic sense.

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Obviously, misunderstanding, as I said, it happens between everyone, regardless of what neurotype you have.

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We are all misunderstood sometimes.

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This has nothing to do with neurodivergence, being misunderstood.

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It has to do with listening to each other.

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It has to do with just learning improv.

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We're going to make mistakes because we're thinking of so many other things or not really mistakes misunderstanding or misunderstanding or seeing partners because we're thinking about improv and we're not listening as much as we should yet, or we forgot to listen, or we're going on our own thing, or whatever.

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We're being human.

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These things happen.

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Again, it's just when we are dealing with neurotype differences, it might just happen more frequently or in different ways.

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Now the other thing that we can run into, I saw a comment on the improv subreddit on the Reddit website recently about not understanding the spoken language in the improv group that they were participating in or they were going to a class or something and the spoken language used wasn't one that they were very familiar with and they were wondering if they could still do improv.

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Of course, we also deal, you know, I do a lot of online improv and we have people from all around the world.

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That's very common.

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And also regional references, we might not understand a regional reference or some sort of phrase or saying or whatever it is.

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Whatever it is, we can always ask in character.

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Just stay in character and ask the question as your character would.

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Just being honest.

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You honestly don't know.

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Just ask your scene partner as your character.

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Very easy to do.

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It's not a problem.

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You're not getting marks off.

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It's the best thing to do because if you don't know, maybe some of the audience doesn't know.

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And that is the same thing if you just, you might be from the same region speaking the language that you were born speaking, and something might just not make sense to you.

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It's probably not going to make sense to someone else who's listening.

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So just ask, get that clarification.

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This isn't a problem.

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This is perfectly good.

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It might make the scene better.

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You might discover something else.

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So it's not bad.

:: 22:33

Remember, that is always an option to you no matter what.

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So those things are not neurodivergent based.

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They're just misunderstanding.

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I'm not understanding what my scene partner is getting at.

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So what about something on a bigger scale?

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What about when neurodivergence gets in the way?

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What if it's an emotion or something else?

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Something, some subtext that you can sense but you don't get.

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What about that?

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What if you say something and it's misinterpreted?

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It's misunderstood by your scene partner and you can see, and you know what's going on because we've experienced this stuff for our whole life.

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We know what the look is, right?

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Well, there's several different options and unfortunately, is going to depend on the scene.

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It's going to depend on what's happening in the moment.

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And you just have to make the choice that's the best for the scene.

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And this is going to come down to reps and experience again, as it does often on this podcast.

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But I'm going to start off by saying this is actually what I love about Improv.

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This really to me, it kind of feels like one of those situations where you leap before you're looking, because this is going to happen.

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This is just going to happen.

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Like you're not going to expect it.

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And to me, this is something I love about Improv.

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I almost find that these sort of things, these sort of quote unquote mistakes, they're not really mistakes, but things that happen that just almost blindside you, like they just have that to me oftentimes leads to some of the best scenes.

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So don't be nervous about this sort of thing happening.

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It almost breathes life into you again, because you're just like, oh my goodness, what's happening?

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So it's not really an issue.

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So what you want to do is just sort of get what the reaction is from the other person, and you're either going to clarify or you're going to roll with it.

:: 24:47

And if you roll with whatever it is, sometimes it could lead to a secondary game.

:: 24:54

It might make things more interesting.

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Or maybe you do feel that the scene needs some sort of justification for whatever misunderstanding it was.

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So maybe you kind of make that justification, make those discoveries and then roll from there.

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Maybe you have some questions for clarification from your scene partner.

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Maybe that will help the audience understand what's going on, and it might make the scene better.

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And if there are any very specific scenarios that you're thinking about or you've experienced, feel free to send them in, and maybe it'll be an episode.

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The main things to remember on this one is we don't want to deny anything.

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So say some of these misunderstandings happen right at the beginning of the scene, maybe when the base reality is being set, you don't want to deny anything.

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So if you've said something and there is a misunderstanding, you're misunderstood or you're not understanding your scene partner, you don't want to deny anything.

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So just be careful that you don't deny anything.

:: 25:59

If that comes up, clarify it, reset that base reality, whatever you need to do to make that work, you want to make sure that that happens.

:: 26:09

Then again, if it is a misunderstanding and it isn't anything to do with denial, it's just disconnected somehow, the next thing you want to do is just think about what is the move that is going to best serve the scene?

:: 26:26

Is it going to be pointing it out and clarifying?

:: 26:29

Or did your scene partner just interpret it a different way than you intended?

:: 26:35

And that just makes sense too.

:: 26:37

You know, and the audience is not going to be confused.

:: 26:40

That's the time when you might want to just roll with it, because going back and clarifying is going to be adding a lot of clutter to the scene, and that might make it worse.

:: 26:49

So if you are doing that sort of clarification, justification, whatever you need to do, make sure that it's going to serve the scene best, that there is a confusing element that needs that clarification.

:: 27:01

But if not, and it's just your scene partner took it a different way, and there isn't that confusion, just roll with it and go with it and see what happens.

:: 27:11

And all of this, you aren't necessarily gonna be standing there thinking about it, thinking about the audience or confusion or what is most of the time, it's gonna be a fairly automated response.

:: 27:25

You're just gonna kind of know from your gut what the right choice is.

:: 27:28

So don't worry about getting confused or standing there that it's gonna be this big thing.

:: 27:34

Most of the time, you're probably just gonna know what to do inherently.

:: 27:39

That's what the reps are for, that's what you're getting the practice for.

:: 27:42

And all of this, of course, is highly generalized.

:: 27:47

I'm sure that there's specific scenarios and a lot of exceptions as well.

:: 27:52

And that's what makes Improv so much fun.

:: 27:56

We're always learning, we never stop learning, and that's what's great.

:: 28:01

And of course, this will also depend on the type or style of Improv that you're doing.

:: 28:07

For example, I was talking about the dramatic narrative long form earlier.

:: 28:12

That, of course, is very different.

:: 28:14

And the advice for that is going to differ.

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There's gonna be a lot more subtext and nuance and subtle communication in that style.

:: 28:25

I think, as far as I can tell, at least what I took.

:: 28:28

So if anything is confusing or doesn't make sense or doesn't seem to apply to what you're doing, just talk to your coach or teachers about this.

:: 28:37

If it's something that's on your mind or adjust your style or experiment and see what works for you.

:: 28:46

That's usually always the answer in the make-em-up.

:: 28:49

See what works for you, see what makes you happy and what makes the audience laugh or pay attention or cry.

:: 28:57

That's what's wonderful.

:: 28:59

There's so many creative and unique ways to approach this and we don't need to worry so much about miscommunication and misunderstandings when it's all made up and the stakes are pretty darn low most of the time.

:: 29:14

So in summary, we have a lot of different ways of communicating, we have different neuro types involved and that can add so many challenges to what we say and what we do and how we are understood by others and how others understand us.

:: 29:32

And listening and communication is such a big part of all of Improv on the stage and off.

:: 29:40

And we're lucky that we do have research into how we communicate with other people.

:: 29:47

So you can refer to that and start understanding how other humans take.

:: 29:52

And the more that we understand about ourselves and the way that we communicate, it helps us understand that, hey, other people are going to be doing it differently.

:: 30:02

And so the more that we listen and that we take time and that we're patient with our teammates and our scene partners, the better we're going to do in general and really the happier we're gonna be when we communicate with other people and we listen to them.

:: 30:17

So doing this kind of work and this kind of thinking I think will benefit us a lot.

:: 30:24

It's not a waste of time.

:: 30:26

So I'm gonna get more into some of the off the stage communication between improvisers in other episodes.

:: 30:35

So hopefully you'll stick around for part two and three and however many parts this series ends up being.

:: 30:44

All right, so before I go, I'm gonna add some plugs.

:: 30:50

I teach improv classes in addition to these podcasts and articles and stuff.

:: 30:56

I teach classes at World's Greatest Improv School.

:: 31:01

So you can go to that website and you can find them there.

:: 31:04

That's wgimprovschool.com and I will probably link some upcoming classes that I have in the show notes.

:: 31:13

So you can find them there.

:: 31:15

I also have a website called FlatImprov at flatimprov.com.

:: 31:20

And I have a newsletter that I send out every two weeks, so twice a month.

:: 31:25

And that details jams and teams and improv shows.

:: 31:32

I have some other shows that go online that you can watch and other fun improv things.

:: 31:39

So if you want to get more improv news, go to flatimprov.com and sign up for that newsletter.

:: 31:46

So on that note, I want to thank you for sticking around, for listening.

:: 31:52

And I'm sure that I am probably not explaining some of this clearly.

:: 31:59

You might misunderstand some of this.

:: 32:02

I'm probably going to be misunderstood.

:: 32:05

And that's why I use lots of words.

:: 32:08

I'm sorry.

:: 32:09

Anyways, have a good time and I'll talk to you later.

:: 32:13

Thanks for listening, Improv friends.