The Irony Alien

The past few years of my life have been particularly-enlightening. It feels like every few weeks are as exciting as they are humbling. I’m learning to define and acquire tools for things I consciously or subconsciously knew were present—like guilt and shame, depression, anxiety, and social confusion. Sometimes, my view of the world and my relationship with it is flipped on its head.

We recently watched Atlas of the Heart on HBOMax. In the series, Brene Brown presents a simplified version of her new book (aptly named Atlas of the Heart). She explores how understanding and using the correct emotional language changes our literal experience and outcome of life situations.

She and her team brilliantly use movie clips to quickly demonstrate the differences between some nuanced emotional differences. Each set of movie clips connected with me really well. She and her team are clearly brilliant at choosing the right movie moments to illustrate each emotion. And then… she talked about irony.

People with ASD have been stereotyped as not easily understanding irony. I was quick to discount this for me; I understand irony—or so I thought. People have always talked about irony, and I’ve never had a moment where I realized I was lost. This was probably because I discounted my perceived importance of it. When Atlas of the Heart’s movie clips played illustrating irony, I DID NOT get them. I DID NOT GET THEM.

I asked Carrie to pause the show.

Wait… why did I not get these moments? I understood every other emotional example so potently.

As soon as we talked through each ironic moment, I understood them, but that’s different than inherently getting them in context. I realized I’ve been pretending my way through irony my whole life. It’s not that it’s always lost on me, but I’m realizing that I’ve disregarded it as being a wasteful communication style instead of a brilliant way of communicating.

This realization felt similar to the moment I realized I have significant hearing loss in my left ear and some in my right ear (from not wearing hearing protection in jazz band where the band is to the left of the piano player). I no longer hear what most people do; as a musician, this is a frustrating realization. It feels how I’d imagine it would feel to discover I was color blind and unable to see colors that most other people have seen all along. It’s humbling. It’s mind-blowing.

There’s a whole world in social communication I don’t inherently understand—like not being able to see the color blue.

I talked to my therapist about it.

She asked if I wanted to talk/learn about irony. Strangely, I had to think about it, and was equally-perplexed that I had never wanted to learn more about it.

After agreeing, she kindly asked me to describe irony. 

Willing and excited about the exercise, I awkwardly laughed. After a bit of a pause, I told her I didn’t know how to describe it. She encouraged me to take my time. I took some time and fully realized how stumped I was. 

I get the irony of an illustrated situation when it is explained to me—like asking someone to explain the punchline of a joke.

Yeah…

As a person who feels reasonably-intelligent, it feels exposing to realize I don’t understand something so pivotal to society’s communication (movies, lyrics, jokes, etc.). 

Enter today. 

We were with some really close friends who decided to play a game involving two sets of cards—one with pictures of people’s faces (sometimes interacting with each other) and the other with text references to moments in a TV show. The point of the game was to choose quotes that would (in my best estimation) “ironically” match a quote to the pictures. 

The players had to first take into consideration the emotion of the people in a relevant photograph. The second step was to a read and understand the emotional relevance of a TV-Show quote. Lastly, the ultimate goal was to match said photo with a movie quote that best fits the picture in a way that will best match the decision-maker’s perspective of the most ironic (or appropriate) matchup.

I lasted a few rounds before I left—I felt comfortable to leave because I know the people I was with understand that I might need to process and wouldn’t be offended by my momentary absence. Thank you, friends. :)

In hindsight, I realize I could have stayed, picked random cards, loved that others were enjoying it, and enjoyed others’ fun-having. Next time, I will do this. I just needed to grasp why I was struggling with every concept of the game.

I don’t care about winning games like this (or many) at all. Losing would be emotionally inconsequential to me.

I did, however, need to take a break to unpack the complexity of what I was feeling. When I was there, it wasn’t loud, bright, or otherwise overwhelming. It was the first time in a while (if ever with my current skill sets) that I’ve been able to connect the lack of social understanding to over stimulation. I see this as a gift.

There’s a lot more for me to process in the future, but this was an important moment for me to realize the impact on me for social overwhelm without sound, lights, etc.