Coping, or NT?

Post Reply New Topic

So I function well. A lot of it is due to my current environment. I have a job where I essentially eliminated the position I was hired for by optimizing the processes in that job through an obsessive interest in process improvement / corporate engineering. Rather than being laid off I got a promotion to continue to influence in that sort of way (Dream situation for me too bad it didn't come with a bigger raise! lol but at least it does include travel ).

I am still not sure about eye contact or social situations because I think I am good at those now a days, and I know I wasn't always. These things are a couple that I focus on a lot the last couple of days and it occurred to me.

I have to figure out:
is this that neurologically I am closer to being NT than a typical asperger's person
or
Am I that used to coping and that skilled at it now a days that in my current lucky environment that it feels somewhat effortless (although still they are things that I am very conscious about... they just don't stress me out and I am able to manipulate my behavior in those cases.)

This is sort of my debate for myself so far, that maybe I am too typical to be a part of this club? I know it seems silly but it is something that concerns me especially because I love forums/message boards and I especially like this one so far.

Anyway don't answer the last part about the club. What I am more curious about is are there others who have doubted where they were on the spectrum because they couldn't tell if they were great at coping with something or if it just wasn't a significant neurological difference for them personally. (You don't have to be super functioning for this sort of thing to happen either, I am sure there are some who are deeper on the spectrum that can relate as well)

I had this too. Both my mom and I doubted my Asperger's. The reason why I am absolutely sure I am on the autism spectrum is that, even with my good skills with friends, I fail to relate or socialize with people who I am acquaintances with, or strangers. I seem distant and aloof. I have virtually no social skills with these people unless they are around me all the time. And, despite my good social skills with people I know well, I meet almost every other criteria in the diagnostic manual. A telltale sign, but now always, is that you find yourself constantly clowning, but not actually relating, in a crowd. This is my way of coping with social situations, and suddenly I find myself to be extremely popular...more than what I'd like. This sort of bothers me too. So yeah, I am not one of those extremely high functioning folks. Instead I might even be closer to moderate functioning autism than most people think.

I do not have very good social skill and cannot make eye contact or like to shake hands and in my job I put on the best act I could and by the end of the day I was exhausted from all the effort to try and "act" normal-still people treated me badly so I finally gave up putting on an act and just let it go-I feel better at the end of the day and the people still treat me badly as much as they did when I put on the act.

Thanks for the feedback jamieevren, That's sort of how I am (unsure how to act with people i don't know) but over the years I've developed techniques to fake it. Crap useless topics that I have absolutely no interest in to talk about, and just stuff to break the ice. The problem is, I think this is something that NT people do as well.

To radiofixr: funny thing is, no matter how easy it is to put on the act I still am always exhausted when I have to deal with people and put on an act. It's very tough to keep my focus on a situation when I am constantly putting so much effort into figuring out what things to do in order to seem like I can interact smoothly. I usually just don't notice until its done. One coping technique that I use is when being given instructions or learning something, I pretend to pay attention for the most part and then using whatever I can remember later I'll reverse engineer the situation to figure out what the message actually was. It's rather wasteful really but I think it makes others more comfortable so I do it to build their confidence in interactions that they have with me.

Having spent my teens deeply focused on people's behaviors in reaction to bullying as a child, then spending my 20's un-doing the self esteem issues now I find myself confident about things and so to try to determine my place on the spectrum I think I am too positive thinking to have an objective point of view on it.

It's like I only got the good parts of aspergers/autism (which I am definitely not complaining about)

A lot of NT introverts will say the same things that you are saying, OP, so you may be an NT introvert, if you can do the casual social things like small talk and faking something other than what is inside your mind in a fairly convincing manner that does not get you labeled as a freakoweirdo by others. On intjforum.com, a lot of introverts talk about faking extroversion and social niceties, like we talk about faking NT here. On that forum, some posters will wonder if they have ASD, and other posters will say that they do not, and these same others will share their personal perceptions of autistic people that they know, and I will wonder how they know several autistic people, and I don't know any for sure.

I would say that the socialization difficulties of autism extend far beyond the inability to engage in small talk or NT-faking. I would say that it is more like having very little clue what normal is, having very few signals to pick up on about what is being communicated if not one-to-one relationship between said and thought, having very few impulses to drive how to normally behave in any situation, having limited social knowledge of the normal pattern due to the preceding, having limited automatic social processing in real-time so limited social knowledge may not ever be applied, limited thinking in terms of social hierarchies and complex social behaviors, etc etc etc. From what I have read on introvert forums, NT introverts have much greater ability and knowledge in all these social areas, but they do not enjoy applying these in social situations, which they find exhausting as well. My guess is that they can handle more minutes of socialization than autistic people can, and they probably do not have shutdowns and meltdowns if socializing goes on too long. They just feel tired afterwards, not braindead.

When I'm talk to a new person, I blush, stutter, and talk pretty much monosyllabled nonsense. They make some wrong assumptions which I'm not going to talk about now.
I do not make eye contact, even to good friends. Some have tried to stare into my eyes but I just close them.
I make strange expressions when I talk. Once I looked into a mirror as I talked to myself and started laughing. No wonder they took me as a clown.
After too much socializing, I literally hid under a Christmas tree.

amazing feedback btbnnyr and jamieevren very helpful and while the information contained does not help me decide it does help me understand.

meh, I'll figure it out later...

for now I'll just keep my sig as is and participate anyway

Thanks for explaining this, because this is the kind of stuff I wonder about. I am pretty sure that I do have AS but I know I will continue to analyze it and agonize over it indefinitely.

I am not even sure if I am truly an introvert. I don't enjoy spending time alone that much. I have always come out as an introvert on personality tests but when I read the actual descriptions of introversion vs. extroversion it seems like I'm about half/half. I don't enjoy being alone that much. I HAVE to talk to other people at some point during the day or else I get really weirded out. I just find it really frustrating to interact with people. I don't understand their behavior or their reactions to things, and a lot fo the time I just flat out don't understand what people are saying. Sometimes I enjoy the act of talking to people but I have no idea what to talk about so I run out of things to say. I never know when it's my turn to talk, and I feel railroaded by other people who talk a lot. I tend to let other people direct my interaction with them because I don't know what to do, and that leads to my feeling manipulated or taken advantage of. I used to seek out social interaction more than I do now but I guess after years of "failure" at it I've given up. I spend almost all my time alone, but I don't like it that way. I don't feel settled and comfortable with it, instead I feel restless and I am constantly wondering "where in the world are the other people I can connect with?"

I am simultaneously energized and exhausted by being around other people. I know that sounds contradictory but it's like this...I get sort of excited and perked up when I talk to people. But I find it really confusing and disorienting. It feels like it takes more mental resources than I have, and after awhile I shut down. I get tired but I'm still charged up over whatever happened, and usually have to vent about it, pace the floor etc. until I that energy finally runs out and I can crash. Then I end up sleeping a long time, and/or maybe spend some time alone just trying to recalibrate myself. And days or months or even years later I still replay conversations in my head, either because I didn't understand what the other person was getting at, or else I didn't know what to say and still go round and round thinking of different responses I could have had. I also have incredibly delayed reactions to things and will find months after the fact that something I thought I was okay with, is really upsetting me a lot.

What does all that sound like? Anyone? Does my ADHD alone explain it? Sorry OP not trying to derail the thread from your questions.

Actually I am happy there is reason to keep talking... I am feeling a little awkward about the thread at this point.

A lot of the things you mention sound like diagnosis criteria, but something I've noticed so far is that you can attribute symptoms of AS to other things, and it would be possible for someone without AS to completely be able to seem like they did anyway just based on alternative factors...

bleh... I am starting to get sad about it all in general so it's probably time I take a break from considering it one way or another

I read that the majority of people are neither introverted or extroverted, but ambiverted. I guess that means a mixture of introverted and extroverted behaviors being manifested in different situations. I am like you, dianthus, both energized and exhausted by people. I am very quickly drained in casual social situations, but I can also be very active if there is someone to talk to one-on-one. Once, I rode a train from DC to Chicago, and spent the whole time, 12 hours or so, talking to the person sitting next to me. The person seemed to enjoy talking to me too, as she kept bringing up more topics for us to talk about. I probably exhaust other people when I am like this, unless the other person is an extrovert who is energized by this incessant chatter, and I do tend to get along better with extroverts than introverts. I don't even know if the introversion vs. extroversion thing really works or is a good measure in the context of autism. It seems to have been designed by and for NTs, so I don't know how well it works on autistics. On intjforum, there are at least two recognizable groups, one considering INTJ as the most superior personality much superior to others and another group thinking of introversion as a debilitating disease. Hmmm, sounds familiar...

Today, at the store, my mother complained about me talking "too much too loud". So apparently one of the social rules that everyone supposedly knows is that you are supposed to talk softly and not too much to each other while standing in line bored out of your mind or looking at stuff on the shelves. The reason I talk too loud is because I can't hear myself or others talk in the store. I talk loud like an old person losing their hearing talks loud.

Volume is difficult to judge in any situation I assume. Just like I doubt myself because some things that are AS focused are easy for me, there are other things that seem to be a part of the AS diagnosis that I look at and think "isn't that something that everyone deals with"... but when I think deeper, it makes it seem more realistic how people seem so natural about it...

I think this site really breaks down my reality about the world, because I have taught myself so many things in order to function in my environment... and I know, whether this is me or not that I have conditioned myself in ways that no one else does... but of course I already knew that, I just am realizing it was in a few areas that I had forgot about...

Set a goal for a behavior, study and reverse engineer it, then execute... later practice until it becomes more comfortable to do and eventually automatic... then forget about it and the fact that it was even learned in the first place...

I assume this is life for everyone... or perhaps just those who learn best through a sort of internal scientific approach? who knows...

Yeah. I was wondering if autism, or social impairments in general, could mask extroversion.



That does sound familiar!