#projecting the neurodivergent 'wait why are you mad at me for this NOW why didnt you tell me before' experience

[qoldenskies]

I wanted to share this, since I really connected with ccDonnie abt it: Ive never been diagnosed, but Im fairly sure Im on the autism spectrum, and a big reason is that I am. really bad at social cues. But i never connected it to what i assumed was autism, bc most of what i heard was, like, autistic ppl thinking someone was being nice when they were actually being rude, that kind of 'optimism', while i kind of read every facial expression as mildly angry at me even when they werent. I always just assumed it was some kind of social anxiety until I talked about it to a grownup and they said it sounded similar to Aspergers and I did more research into it and a lot of other things about me kind of clicked as well

Anyways personal story aside (sorry for the dump), I definitely feel like ccDonnie is going to struggle forward with not knowing how the ppl around him are feeling, but instead by jumping towards the worst case scenario, like he's done a few times already. Theres plenty out there about ppl thinking someone is nice when theyre actually mean, but its harder when its a person you are logically sure has to be nice to you but you keep reading them otherwise. For example, I misinterpret focused expressions as angry ones; I wouldnt be surprised if Donnies trauma associates even small, technically harmless things his brothers do to be signs of irritation

this is absolutely true!!! there's really signs of it all over; he's already so traumatized from how inescapable the punishment was in CL, how there was no right answer, and this is significantly worsened by the fact that he ALWAYS feels like he's stumbling in the dark when he tries to appease them.

i think its most apparent in chapter 6, because you can TELL donnie is guessing the whole time. april says "is that a no?" in a way that is barely even harsh at all and immediately he's fumbling and stammering in an attempt to say what he thinks will make her feel better, but he doesn't actually KNOW. and then april looks hurt, and leo tries to step in and console him, and donnie's even more confused, because they just told him what they wanted, isn't this what they wanted?? isn't it better that they get what they wanted?

and that's really what his frantic "i dont know" meant when leo cornered him about his meds. eventually he cracked open out of fear and called for his dad, but the ONLY thing he was focusing on was providing leo with the answer he thinks would make him the least angry at him, but everything he does only seems to make leo more upset and it doesn't make sense, he doesn't know what to do, he's sorry and he didn't mean to make him angry, leo's telling him i dont know isn't an answer but he doesn't have one-!

donnie just cant intuitively read and empathize with people, even though he's turned into such a people pleaser now. he's honed his compassion(? selflessness?? the way he puts their needs above his own and acts kind to please them, even at his own expense, in an attempt to mitigate their anger/distress) as a survival technique, but he really doesn't seem to notice that they're holding onto feelings until they directly confront him with them, still.

its really just a nasty combination with problems he already had-- the exact ones that sent him down into the mines in CL LMAO. when leo snapped at him and told him there had ALWAYS been a problem, despite the clear gaslighting from the reader's side of things donnie was genuinely shocked because the idea of it being a surprise isn't unfamiliar to him at all!! sometimes he's not aware of his behavior being harmful and it takes a while for it to be directly communicated to him. i think there was always a bit of a struggle for them to realize the indignant and confused behavior he exhibits when confronted with shit he's been doing for a WHILE is genuinely just because he was 100% unaware. they just had to tell him the second he pulled that shit and they didn't.

donnie hasn't stopped being a shitty liar in cc, but its still hard to wring the complete truth out of him when he was so blunt before, because he's thinking only in how his words might upset them, and he struggles to understand why his desperate, stammering people pleasing only makes them upset. he take their hurt reactions as him giving the wrong answer instead,

he's doing what they want. he's giving them what they want, he's giving to them and telling them its up to them. he's putting himself into a position where he WONT fail because it isn't up to him. he can't make the wrong choice if he's not thinking about himself at all.

so why is he still wrong? why are they still upset (mad. he thinks they're mad) at him? he's trying to fix it. why does everything he does just make everything worse?

(he already knows the answer: it's because there is something fundamentally wrong with him. there's no curing whatever he has.)