The "Getting Nasty" Thing

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oo, that makes sense! You're right, I'm not totally sure why I didn't know that before. I knew about toxic people, but never specifically connected it somehow.



Ok, I know I'm not being particularly objective at this point, because you sound an awful lot like me and he sounds an awful lot like some people in my life who, thanks so serenity, I know know were Toxic. I could be wrong.. but this guy is messing with your head from another continent. Do you really think it'd be a good idea to give him the chance to mess with you even more? If it's AS, he'd likely be much worse in real life.. it's easier to communicate online when there's no body language and stuff to worry about. And if it's not AS, and he's manipulative and toxic, you'd be giving him even more of a way to hurt you.. and it sounds like he's already hurting you.




Well, I guess he's right in the thing about you being a typical woman.. just wrong about how.. he thinks you're blaming him for stuff, I think you're not blaming him for enough. He's contradicting himself, doublespeaking, twisting things you say, and you're making excuses for why he's doing that to you. Lots of women do that. I don't think he's misunderstanding, I think he's manipulating.

Point taken.

I think a year is enough to give someone the benefit-of-the-doubt? If there was even a chance he was being misunderstood, I wanted to try and sort through it. I didn't want to dismiss him because he wasn't 'normal'. But, I think what stands out the most to me is his unwillingness to work through problems and find realistic ways to 'cope'. That's kind of a deal breaker. One person can't carry the burden of a relationship alone. That kind of defeats the purpose.

Thanks, Maggie.

I'm glad that I was able to help. It's something that I've honestly been struggling with myself lately. I used to have no clear boundaries, because I was so confused as to why other people were the way they were, and I am the way that I am. I couldn't define what it was that I was trying to get away from, or why. It didn't help that I couldn't put these issues into words, so if I'd try to describe the situation(s) to someone else it always looked like I was the one misunderstanding, and the one with the problem. The cycle just continued, especially with my mother who I do believe is borderline. I came across this site http://counsellingresource.com/distress/personality-disorders/understanding/index.html while I was looking for answers, and it did help to define the kinds of behaviors that I could never put into words. While I think the guy that runs it uses the term personality disorders a little too liberally for my liking, it did help to see a list of characteristics of toxic people that I need to avoid for my own sanity.

StudentM, I'm sorry that your friend has treated you so badly. It does sound like he has some additional issues, if he has AS at all.

Ok, so after a few PMs with StudentM, I'm seeing a pattern that's happened to me, I think has happened to most aspies, and has certainly happened to any aspie who has been in a relationship with someone with a personality disorder.
(Oh, BTW, you're an aspie for the purposes of this post, StudentM. )
The "misunderstanding" thing.. we're so sensitive to it, we want to understand, we've been misunderstood and we've misunderstood, and it's become like a magic word. All someone has to do is say "you misunderstood me" and suddenly everything changes, because we relate it to how we've been misunderstood. We've tried to say something, it's come out wrong, and we've been yelled at, so there's this ultra-sensitivity. (OK, this "we" I'm using is "we" as in aspies, not like a royal "we" or a pronoun problem "we." It's "me and people like me who have experienced this.") So someone says we misunderstood, and no matter what it was that happened, suddenly we're on the defensive, because we figure it's the same as the misunderstandings that happen when someone gets angry because we tried to share an interesting piece of information or when we got yelled at for answering honestly when someone asked us if we want to do something when they intended that "do you wanna _____" to be an order, or when someone interpreted silence as malice.
I think people with personality disorders (or maybe NTs in general?) have a different definition of "misunderstanding"... I think to them it means "you didn't react how I wanted you to react."
(OK, also, when I refer to NTs I don't mean "anyone who doesn't have an ASD." It's more kinda a way of thinking. People with kinda sub clinical ASDs are not NTs. I've said a bunch of times that people like geeks and engineers are aspies without a major dysfunction, so when I say "NT" they're not included. I need some new words here..)
(Oh, and the "OK" at the beginning of something in parentheses denotes that I've just noticed something and I'm going off on a little side thing to explain something I think might otherwise be, er, misunderstood. Yea, I definitely need some new words for some of this stuff..)
Maybe I'm saying "NT" when I mean "manipulators".. I think I'm kinda confusing them cause all the doublespeak we talk about NTs using is kinda a manipulation thing. Or maybe it's only manipulation if it's not recognized correctly? Like we (aspies) feel manipulated because we don't understand it, while someone who is fluent in that doesn't, because they're doing it too? Or because they recognize and comprehend what it means?
So anyways, there is a fairly large subset of people who will say "you misunderstood me" when they mean "you didn't respond how I wanted you to respond," and then we bend over backwards trying to understand, because there's this feeling that if we just understood, their behavior would make sense to us, everything would be alright and we'd be liked.. that there's something fundamentally like us underneath all their nastiness, just like how things we say are interpreted as nasty when we didn't mean them to be. But some people DO mean to be hurtful, and don't even need a reason for it. Helping those people understand us won't make them be nice to us.. it'll make it easier for them to hurt us. (Is that what it means to lack Theory of Mind? To not quite be able to wrap your brain around the concept that other people don't think the same way and won't come to the same conclusions given the same information? In a kid lacking ToM means not understanding that other people don't know everything you do, but obviously for aspie adults, it's more complicated than that.)

Just a quick mention about theory of mind, and how it plays into this sort of situation that we're talking about. When dealing with these toxic people, it's hard for me to see their manipulation for what it is, until I've already been manipulated several times by them. I think a big part of that for me is that if I can't imagine doing something to someone else, then it never occurs to me that someone else would do it to me. I have a hard time putting myself into someone else's head when they're being particularly nasty, because I wouldn't ever treat anyone else that way. It keeps me going in circles trying to correct the misunderstanding by trying to fix the way that I read the words, when it's not about the words, but about how I responded to the person,or lack of response.

Exactly.. is that an aspie thing or a human thing, though? I mean, when someone acts a certain way, most people interpret it to mean what that behavior would mean if they were doing it, don't they? Are NTs just more similar to other people and therefor more likely to be right? Or is it more about projecting their own insecurities into your words? Or is the process completely different?

It feels like I'm either a good psychologist or a good sociologist (but never able to save myself from being in the middle of the next situation). I wonder if I'd actually enjoy life if I trusted people the way I'm supposed to (very little).

Thank you, serenity. I know it'll all work out for the best.



I agree with this. Unfortunately, my first and most intimate exposure to this type of behavior was with both of my parents. An example, which happened quite frequently when I was growing up, was if I did something they disapproved of, they would stop talking to me - for days. And it wasn't like an aspie 'I need some space' silence, it was more of an 'I'm angry with you, and so I'm withholding love' kind of a thing.

I'm sure it's one reason I'm hypersensitive to the mistreatment of others.



Exactly. Last night I was at a support group, and two people gave examples of how their former spouses had treated them. I was in disbelief. And these folks are not what the NT community would label 'toxic'. These people would seem quite ordinary to other NTs, but I found it astounding, because like you, I can't imagine acting in such a way.



I think it's a human thing, and what you've described is precisely how I take in information. I interpret the actions of others in terms of how I would behave.



Well, I think perhaps it's a little of both.

I do believe that NTs definitely project their insecurities onto others. And that's pretty much based in fear, I'd say. As an NT, this is one of my weaknesses - I've always been a 'people pleaser'. When someone around me has a scowl on their face, I immediately think it's my fault and that I need to find someway to alleviate the other person's discomfort. In reality, it's probably not my problem at all. But because of how I was raised, thinking that someone might be upset with me is too much to bear. Right now, one of the biggest lessons I'm learning is how to sit in the discomfort of a situation and not 'manipulate' those around me in order to make myself feel better.

It might be possible that this is what's happening with LabPet's coworker. This woman isn't being malicious, but LabPet's behavior brings out her insecurities and so she makes inappropriate suggestions to LabPet in order to relieve her own uneasiness. Maybe?

But, I also think, in the NT world, some of it is cultural - that the similarities of how we were raised or the dominant views of the community greatly influence the way people interpret the meaning of another's behavior.

Someone in another thread posted an article about a woman who's being put to death for adultery because she was raped. In Africa, I witnessed a little boy torturing a dog and there were adults all around him who didn't say a word or even look concerned. In some cultures families still arrange marriages. In a different part of the world, a man can legally be polygamous or openly have a mistress.

None of these I just listed would be considered acceptable by the majority of NTs in the States, but nevertheless, they're embraced and celebrated by those who collectively share space around the globe.