I am also better with body language, word choice, anything that pervades and influences all details taken together, as a Gestalt, and (indeed) focusing on any detail, just what is being said at any one time, is more or less difficult (not so much when manic, but definitely when manic).

So basically, being sometimes distracted by pervading expressions of emotion and thought.

And when manic, seeing those expressions as being meaningful as if they were mine, which is a recipe for interpretation disaster.

All pretty much subconscious with regard to the "parsing"/parsing and most of the interpreting.

A maybe somewhat (but not really very much) related thing is what they call microexpressions.

But verbal/regular natural language is a lot more similar/related (as I see it).

But isolating details is very difficult for me: it's easier for me to use the emotional/subconscious expressions or microexpressions of others as a mirror than to use an actual mirror.

Any similar experiences?

Edit:
Basically, are you more of a conscious detail-integrator or (too) subconscious/automatic? Or do you do one after the other: experiencing something off/meaningful and being able to figure out what it is?

The last possibility would be reasoning backwards (maybe abductive reasoning or "deduction").