The reason the rule is rigid is so I can avoid getting hurt. I don’t want to delve too deeply into my psychiatric history but let’s just say I have a ton of anxiety and instability in my world views relating to being shamed by my family in the past for doing the “wrong” thing, and them reacting in a way that is wildly disproportionate to what I did wrong (I once had a family member give me death threats for forgetting to turn a lamp off, for example). Doctors have said I may have BPD.

Not neurodivergent. See the longish reply I posted above for context.

See my comment above, I explain the context for this.

Not neurodivergent no.

I remember many years ago my mom said not to do something on April Fool’s Day, and she was pranking me the day before that and also the day before that. She has a very dry sense of humor. The reason to not do that something seemed very silly and like the setup of a joke especially given the context. So I ended up doing the thing and my mom got pissed at me for it, calling me stupid and shamed me. I told my mom it’s April 1st, and she asked me why I assumed it was a joke, because she didn’t say it was a joke.

So, in order to avoid stuff like that again, I’ve implemented a kind of policy in my head where I must automatically assume someone is being completely serious unless they tell me right after that what they just said is a joke.