The Whole Story: Completeness - where there is inaccuracy, there is chaos

I just heard it's an autistic thing.

Having to tell the whole story and not miss anything out. Because we don't know what's relevant. We don't want to miss things out in case we are later chastised for not telling anyone, when we were just trying not to overdo it and take up too much time and lose people in a sea of information. We didn't know anyone wanted to know that particular bit of information; they didn't ask for it. We don't know which bits will and won't be useful to someone else so we need to put it all in.

Or else we have learnt that the "whole story" approach is not acceptable (attention-seeking, boring, demanding, over the top, time-consuming, pedantic, annoying) and so we rely on people asking the right questions, and if they don't the issue never gets discovered, never mind solved. 

We can swing wildly between these extremes dependent on context, how recently we have been bitten by one or other approach (making us more likely to err on the side of the one that hasn't recently made a problem for us), general mood and who knows how many other factors. I tend to assume if somebody hasn't asked, they don't want to know. It is hard for me to know what they would want to know if I don't have specific instructions.

Also pertinent is the issue of things needing to be complete and correct in general. Unfinished tasks are torture. Open but unfinished packets of things make my brain messy. 

And truth. Autistic people tend to be very concerned about truth. If things aren't true and correct the world starts falling apart, because what can I depend on if something I thought was true was not dependable - how do I know what else is or isn't? Where there is inaccuracy, there is chaos. We tend to find lying difficult (or we just can't understand why people would do it!). Sometimes if the story isn't complete, it doesn't feel true because all the details aren't there. I haven't relayed it faithfully and may have missed some of the essence, giving the listened a false idea of what happened. To avoid misunderstandings, people must know Everything.