There was this English language exam assessment method: compare and contrast two pictures. I have noticed that contrasting is what I do habitually quite often. When I meet a new person, it is always important for me to point out where I am not like the other person. I realise that it may come across as not liking someone, which is usually the opposite - the more I am interested in someone the more details I notice.
Where does this habit come from? I think it may be coming from being told as a child a lot about how I feel, what I like, and what I want. Negating other people's preferences has become my only way of self expression. If I didn't contradict my parents, I would have to become a zombie through which they could live. For example my mum would tell me that I should come join her eating cabbage because it is so good, and I would say I didn't like it. Then she would go on and on about how I like cabbage but just don't know about it, until I would point out some other fact, like for example that she also likes cabbage soup and I don't like the soup so it proves that I do not like cabbage. Sometimes I would have to list a whole bunch of things in which we differ so that she would temporarily accept that I am a different person with different likes and dislikes than her. I still have to do a lot with her today, and it is very tiring.
Pointing out where I do not agree with someone or have different preferences has also become a way of telling them about who I am. I see it as an efficient and fast way of outlining the most important facts about me when someone has just met me. I guess that sometimes that may sound like a rant about someone :S
I realised it at work while listening to someone who previously agreed with me on some topic and later he was agreeing with other people on that topic - but what those people said was something totally different. First I thought: how hypocritical! But then instead of getting pissed I continued to listen and I realised that what he is actually doing he first finds common parts where they agree, and once he has their attention, he tries to gently direct them into our direction. That worked. People agreed with him on topics that I could get get across to the same people, many times.
Action plan: I will try to look for visual similarities in whatever objects or people I see around me. Sounds stupid and naive but I believe that brain likes patterns so much that it will eventually copy those pattern of looking for similarities in visual stimuli to noticing similarities on a more abstract level.