Quick background: I live in a house with my sibling and their parents. My sibling is not legally or biologically related to me, but they ARE my sibling. My sibling's parents are not my parents, but we are collectively a 'family,' in many senses of the word. I call my sibling's parents "the Elders of Plumley" as Plumley is the name of our house, they are the oldest members of our household, and they are sources of great wisdom. I myself am in my late teens (no longer in high school.) My sibling is in their mid teens (still in high school.) All of us in the household are various hues of neurodivergent. (I have ADHD and my autistic friends are all convinced that I'm also autistic; my sibling is a fellow ADHDer and may or may not be autistic; Elders are ADHD and ??? (cluster of traits that are definitely something but remain undiagnosed) respectively.
Main thing: So, I have this communication issue with my younger sibling. (They're in their mid teens, I'm a few years older than them.) Sometimes I'll be trying to tell them something, or ask a question, and they won't respond; if I say their name a few times, they get frustrated with me (or, they make a noise that sounds frustrated, I'll admit that I don't know exactly what all their noises mean.) This isn't as much of a problem for me as it is for their parents. The elders of plumley have trouble communicating with them, and it has been known to cause arguments/distress. My sibling responds to them in ways that are harder to decipher, and they tend to make more irritated noises. (Or maybe they just get interpreted as irritation more often. I'm not sure.)
My sibling has previously described processing/registering that someone is talking to them, but not feeling the need to respond. I've asked about how we could maybe work out a means of more regularly communicating the fact that they're listening and similar, but they kinda just shrugged at me and made a confused noise. And to be honest, I feel quite similarly about the whole thing too! So, I turn to you lovely internet folks. Do you have any strategies for this kind of thing? Are there things I should be doing on my end to make communication easier? Are there alternate ways of saying "I'm listening" that aren't just saying the words?
I don't know if this is happening in this situation, but sometimes I get into a place where I really can't do like, the whole interacting with people thing. It's not that I can't or even won't talk, but it ends up getting stressful when I feel like people are demanding that my attention focus in a particular place, especially if they're not getting to the point.
I don't mean this in like a motivational sense of just not liking talking to people or being irritable, it feels physically uncomfortable. My muscles tighten, my skin gets prickly, the world shifts focus and my brain feels like a car stuck between gears with another car behind it blaring the horn demanding that i move immediately.
This is why the words 'we need to talk' are a sure fire bet that I won't be talking to you. It's why I don't do voicemail and why I don't really pick up my phone.
Usually it happens when I'm in the middle of something and am keeping track of something elaborate in my head, or trying to work through some bullshit so I can get back to work. I'm better about setting boundaries and communicating about it now, but I wasn't so much when i was younger, and in the past I'd sometimes totally shut down because of it.
Anyway, if it isn't something like that, maybe just slip some questions in and try not to monologue?