When people bring up my body language what do they expect?

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Not healthy, indeed. In my opinion, what we need is to build an autistic-friendly subculture (including autistic-friendly businesses) in which all this stressful, tiring, utterly unnatural crap is not necessary, freeing us to devote our energies to more productive things.

That's my dream, and I believe it's doable if enough of us (autistic, autistic-like, and autistic-friendly people) are willing to work toward that goal.

Yes indeed, if other groups of people can have a subculture why not us?

I have to agree. I mean it's not causing anyone any serious damage so i don't get why you have to constantly try to do something that costs you so much emotional energy..

Just explain that your body language doesn't reflect your emotion well and that's just how you look. You shouldn't have to pretend and be self conscious constantly.

I look sad all the time

And when you do smile, do people run away?

My husband has a blank face that is routinely commented on as looking...

Angry
Annoyed
Patronizing
Extremely bored.

PP wrote you can't look blank and angry. I know people from the UK that skill down to a mad science.
Not everyone does the stereotypical over the top angry face. I know people (especially in the work place/school.., when they are full bore furious have a dead/blank looking face. They don't scream or yell. There was going to be serious hell to pay later on.

I told my husband, if you can't do "happy" with your face, he's gonna have to verbalize it. I'm having a good time, thanks for having me. My day is going well, hope yours is too. That backs people off your ass.

The angry blank stare is really really common in the work place, school and in other social situations where "losing control" is really frowned upon. That is why people assume you are pissed off and angry. The blanker the stare in an NT, the more furious the person is.

Each one of them expects that your actions, statements, thoughts , and emotions, suit them. At All times.

They expect you to do whatever they want. It does not matter if, what they want you to do is unreasonable or anything like that.

They expect you to be telepathic

Each one of them expects different things

I got tired of people telling me to smile. Now I walk around with an expression that could be anything from a beatific smile to full-on scary clown rictus. It does use up some of my valuable brain-processing space though and can be stressful.

A complete stranger walked up to me once and said I looked scared... that was a new one.

What do they expect?

Too much, Things that are impossible or very difficult for us to do.

To show an open mind and little smile isn't really difficult to do if you want them to like you and to accept you as being nice. It's the simplest way to make friends. I'm used to it because I know it now. Two years ago I didn't do it at all.

Last edited by quite an extreme on 14 Nov 2018, 2:58 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I have no advice, the same thing happens to me. Recording myself to try and see what they see hasn't helped, frankly I think neurotypicals just over think stuff. They insist my body language has a meaning it doesn't, they won't tell me what I'm doing that makes them think I'm aggressive but they've thought so my entire life. An underweight toddler was very scary, apparently. And that's the problem, neurotypicals don't look at details they glance at the over all, not noticing how anything is connected and highlighting information that has nothing to do with them. It seems to me they are just paranoid.

If so then read my answers please and ask if you have still any questions regarding the problem.

Your advice about only having to smile while looking at someone only works in Europe. I'm American (sadly) and the neurotypicals here expect you to look and act a certain way at all times, I don't have the mental energy to wear a costume constantly and I shouldn't have to. My happy, calm, and comfortable self gets criticized just as commonly as my irritated self. Neurotypicals don't understand what they are looking at anymore than Autistics do, there are just more of them. And right now, under Dear Leader(sarcasm) we are at the mercy of whoever's gun is bigger. Pacifists like myself don't have a chance against the angry authoritarian American neurotypicals who think that people like us are a waste of space on this planet.

Every time you or I endorse the concepts of Autism, Asperger's, or Neurological Difference, we are further marginalizing ourselves, and we are encouraging child abuse.

Right now as you are reading this, there are parents driving their child to the doctor, simply because they find the child to be an embarrassment. And these are children whom the parents did not need to have, they merely did so hoping that they would be able to give themselves an unstigmatized adult identity.

So I no longer talk about Autism-Asperger's, or Neurological Difference.

You become better in more social situations just by the experience of entering them.

So rather than asking what other people expect in body language, why not ask yourself what you hope to accomplish in the interaction? Then with practice you will learn to be able to better get what you want.

Richard

That's a really bad idea if it comes to look other people angry or emotionless in their eyes. And she wouldn't have ask if it would be so easy to find out because she already tried it and didn't understand the reactions. People who lack deep empathy aren't even aware of mirror neurons and all that feeling like others look like sh*t. And also not that feeling nonstopping emotions thing. But they are always judged by NTs just because of this. Because of this it's right to ask and to talk about this stuff.

Last edited by quite an extreme on 15 Nov 2018, 4:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I have spent plenty of time pushing myself to enter into social interactions, and have made a point to try to educate myself about what other people's social expectations might be, and how they go about achieving this themselves. Does this help? To a certain extent, yes; but it does not overcome the inherent barrier imposed by the fact that the way that my brain processes sensory stimuli interferes with even perceiving the necessary information required to put what I have learned into practice at the pace required in real time interactions. I learned this long before anyone, including myself, tried to "marginalise" me by insinuating that my problems were cause by a concept called "autism".


I hope to accomplish befriending people.
I have learned that this requires that they are comfortable in my company.
I have learned that expected non-verbal communication helps them to be comfortable.
So I need to know what non-verbal behaviour they expect, even if only so that I can negotiate a modification to these expectations rather than attempt to meet them.

Your advice makes the original question no less relevant, as it is an implicit component of achieving that which we have decided to try accomplishing socially. People's answers to your proposed question are likely at the root of why they have taken an interest in this thread.


You have repeated this often enough that I imagine remote peoples in the rain-forests and deserts of the world know it by now. You are not going to win people over by irritating them with constant repetition and stating it in every single topic you post in (besides which, it is present in your signature in every post you make, anyway). Your philosophy may well have improved your quality of life, and I am in no position to assert otherwise, but your monomania is doing you no favours in trying to relate to the people here, and is likely to cause them to doubt whatever merits your position might have (and you do make some interesting points, IMHO - when you manage to stay on-topic!)