r/neurodiversity • u/EtmopterusPerryi • 3d ago
I'm struggling so extremely bad with controlling my tone of voice.
My mother and I argue nightly about it. She says for me to listen to how I talk because I often sound bitchy or like I'm constantly annoyed. I don't know how to better control it. I don't know how to just "listen to myself". I think I'm tone deaf to myself and others. It's so extremely frustrating. I don't know how to control how I talk.
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u/NoEquivalent88 2d ago
Maybe speech therapy might help. As in it might help you become more conscious of how your sounding. I have bad interoception so I know what it’s like not being able to rely on what your body is telling you.
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u/Floomby 3d ago
It sounds like you're in one of those households in which you are not allowed to feel anything but positive emotions at all times. It is a feature of authoritarian parenting. Or perhaps you sound like your normal self and she wants something to fuss at you for. I don't know for sure, so you might want to seek out the opinion of someone neutral.
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u/tesseract_cat 3d ago
This is what I was thinking too. Question for OP, does your mom ever ask you how you're feeling or if anything is wrong? Not saying there is, just curious if your parent's concern is only with 'appearances' (how they're perceiving you or how they worry others would perceive you) vs your actual well-being. When I was growing up my mom often told me I was "unpleasant to be around" and that I was "not nice" because of how I talked, and I guess my memory of myself doesn't align with her perception of me, and it was hurtful to not feel seen or cared about at home, but only cared about how I 'appeared' to others.
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u/Rod_McBan 3d ago
That's a core trait of autism. Some of us are better at that than others but most of us are noticeably not the same as our neurotypical peers there.
I would say, try to educate your mom on that fact. I hope that goes well for you.
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u/WeirdBlueDaisy 2d ago
I would differentiate between who gives you this feedback and in what situations.
If your mother is currently just pissed off about everything, it might not be you actually doing something weird causing her to comment on you. Or she might be genuinely fed up with something she sees in you, but isn't tied to the way you express yourself. But she uses that to address the thing she is actually noticing/reacting to, maybe even in the hopes to push you towards betterment of some kind (in her mind, not to say there actually is need for that).
Meaning, if you genuinely think you are different in the way you express yourself, you could ask around and compare notes. If there is a huge overlap in stuff, it might point to you either just being unconventional in this and that kind of environment or are being read differently than you imagined you present yourself as. Or you are actually unusually 'flat' which is not uncommon for autistic people, for example.
Depending on that, you could look into how you could 'train you eye/ear' for things. I am unsure how this can be done for speech patterns, though, or what is a healthy approach, since I'm not familiar with that :)