Board index › Coping in life › Social Skills and Making Friends

About not missing anyone

Page 1 of 2 [ 19 posts ]  Go to page 1, 2  Next

Previous topic | Next topic

nurseangela
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 27 Nov 2014
Gender: Female
Posts: 8,017
Location: Kansas

09 Jul 2016, 3:12 am

Dreadful Dante wrote:
C2V wrote:
Quote:
I had an Aspie guy friend who told me that he never missed anyone. People he considered friends he never thought about until they were literally right in front of him. Out of sight, out of mind. He even said that he never missed or thought about his father who passed away several months earlier even though they had a great relationship. I have to say that it really bothered me even though I never told him this. I never let on to him that he was strange or anything for feeling like that, but I can't say how much it really bothered me to the point of making sure that I didn't become any closer to him because he was probably just going to forget about me anyway, so what did our friendship matter?

This is a common response, which is why so many alexithymic people "fake" everything. So people don't respond this way. I don't experience this kind of "out of sight, out of mind" amnesia your friend did - it's more of a lack of emotional longing. And though people will experience this differently, it is just that in many ways - different. Not less. For example I just sent a message to an acquaintance asking if they would like to meet up, because a comment made by someone else reminded me of them. I consider this person to be intelligent, interesting, good natured and one of the very few genuinely "nice" people I've met. Thus, the comment brought them to mind, and I thought it might be good meeting up again and hearing all about their studies and what they've been up to. We can meet up and chat and have a great time.
However I also have not spoken to this person for several months, and that has meant nothing to me. I have had no sense of loss, no emotional attachment to the idea of this person, to cause me any distress when they're not there. I have not "missed" them. Which does not mean I don't value their company when we're together and have no interest in friendship. It doesn't mean I would not help them out in any way I could if they asked me to.
It's that I have no perceivable emotional investment, no attachment, no "heart" in it.
And never have, for anyone in life. Which doesn't mean I don't value any of the people in it, or dislike them.
This is so damn hard to explain to someone of a normal emotional makeup !
My point is your friend may not have intended to relay that he cared nothing about you, was not interested in being friends, didn't value or enjoy your company, etc. It may have just been that the element of emotional dependency and attachment is missing. And it's not deliberate.



Exactly it!


One thing the Aspies told me over on AC was that time never changed how they saw and related to a person - they just picked right back up again where the relationship left off. That doesn't happen with me. With me, my feelings go away for someone after not hearing from them after a certain amount of time. If enough time goes by, I forget about them and consider the friendship/relationship over. The Aspies couldn't understand this and thought I was the weird one. :mrgreen:

Like my one Aspie friend I was friends with for a solid 2 months texting did hours everyday - took me several months to not think of him after he stopped talking to me, but now I still have his picture on my computer and I feel nothing. If it wasn't for the picture, I would have forgotten him. Same with my Aspie friend that I exchanged gifts with - I have his picture, but feel nothing. My Aspie friend of 2 yrs I don't think about much now (over a year later) , but if something jogs my memory about him I just start crying uncontrollably. I don't understand why I can't just forget him like the others. Anyway, with any of those, I could never just pick up where the friendship left off. It would have to start pretty close from the bottom again. I don't know if this is making sense because I'm tired. I'm going to get some beauty rest.


_________________
Me grumpy?
I'm happiness challenged.

Your neurodiverse (Aspie) score: 83 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 153 of 200 You are very likely neurotypical
Darn, I flunked.


Dreadful Dante
Raven
Raven

User avatar

Joined: 13 Jun 2016
Age: 27
Gender: Male
Posts: 114

09 Jul 2016, 7:16 am

Red, I appreciate your answer! I, too, having found people with relatable experiences feel much more normal and comfortable with myself.

I actually googled this for almost a decade and asked everyone around me over and over as a child and adolescent before I could find the answer.

Mike, I know people with similar behaviours and some simply don't express their feelings. I'm not saying this is the case, I'm saying it's good to consider.

I have family members who believe they should be elegant 24/7 and that means hiding every expression of "vulnerability" (emotion). They do feel them, but they believe being affectionate is somehow shameful. This isn't at all alexithymia (as I read it to be), it's just pretending to feel nothing and acting intentionally cold.

I'm just widening the range of possibilities. I like to have them all.

Peacefully,
Dante.



mikeman7918
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 7 Mar 2016
Age: 26
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,929
Location: Utah, USA

09 Jul 2016, 1:21 pm

Dreadful Dante wrote:
Mike, I know people with similar behaviours and some simply don't express their feelings. I'm not saying this is the case, I'm saying it's good to consider.

I have family members who believe they should be elegant 24/7 and that means hiding every expression of "vulnerability" (emotion). They do feel them, but they believe being affectionate is somehow shameful. This isn't at all alexithymia (as I read it to be), it's just pretending to feel nothing and acting intentionally cold.

I'm just widening the range of possibilities. I like to have them all.

Peacefully,
Dante.

The reason I believe that most of my family members are alexithymic to some extent is because they all have trouble identifying emotion despite their best efforts.

My 13 year old brother is a textbook example of someone with alexithymia, he fits basicly every criteria. He doesn't show much emotion and he has trouble figuring out when he's hungry or thirsty.

My 17 year brother sometimes gets angry at someone and then an hour or so later he occasionally may comes back to them and says something like "I have figured it out, I was jealous".

My 11 year old sister gets upset to the point of crying very easily, but when asked about it she usually has no idea why.

That is why I suspect that they are all alexithymic to some extent. Alexithymia is largely genetic, so that's not really too surprising.


_________________
Also known as MarsMatter.

Diagnosed with Asperger's, ADD, and Generalized Anxiety Disorder in 2004.
In denial that it was a problem until early 2016.

Deviant Art


Dreadful Dante
Raven
Raven

User avatar

Joined: 13 Jun 2016
Age: 27
Gender: Male
Posts: 114

09 Jul 2016, 1:54 pm

Indeed they sound like it.

As I didn't have anyone's help with social skills and emotional intelligence, I started using various therapeutic methods by myself (I didn't know they were therapeutic when I started).

Here are things that help me and may help your family too:

- Group therapy to talk about types of love, how love works, how to be loving to someone and how to identify when someone needs love.

- Reading books os Neurology, Psychology and Psychoanalysis, plus watching lectures on these topics (this one has helped me the most).

- I keep a journal to write confusing experiences and figure it out later.

- Poetry writing and reading (Literature helps me identify which emotion I feel when reading certain things).

- By watching youtube videos, series and movies I started to figure out names to what I wanted to express and still learn a lot nowadays (in English only. My mother tongue isn't as thoroughly descriptive).

The last one is to have a very patient someone to talk to. Hard to find, but not impossible!

Peacefully,
Dante.