Theory of mind/sense of self

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I can't remember a time when I didn't have a sense of self as separate from other people.

I can't remember thinking much about what other people felt until I was a teenager, although when I was a little kid I would sometimes respond to other people's feelings when I noticed them; When I was a little kid I would give my parents hugs if they were really, obviously sad (meaning if they were crying--otherwise I don't think I could tell when people were sad, given that I still have a hard time figuring out when others are sad). I just never thought about feelings--mine or anybody else's. Feelings were just there when they were there, and sort of dropped out of my cognitive world when they weren't.

I didn't think much about what other people thought until my early twenties. I still don't think much about what other people think because I'm largely unable to do so....I can do it when I have clues about someone's thoughts from what they've explicitly told me about those thoughts (I don't get very far in figuring them out, really....and it makes my brain go fuzzy because it's so hard to do). But I'm fairly sure that I had some vague conceptual understanding that each person has their own mind full of their own thoughts by the time I was about 9 or 10.

I believe I started developing it at a very young age, but I am not sure when. I've always felt very seperate from everything else though.

I also had to realize at some point, maybe at 5 or 6, that other people were thinking differently. Also by surprising reactions. People have also told me stuff that was meant to be insulting/constructive (and everything else), which had no (or the opposite) effect on me, and I also keep experiencing that people insult/etc. me when they dont meen to. I have no troubles with understanding that people think differently now, only the other way around: when people dont realize that Im not affected the way they assume. That means that most people fail to understand the border between us, and that Im very aware of it myself.

I think this life long problematic has made me an expert in the point of this thread, so that I now easily spot the peoples real intentions, but still I cant help being secretly annoyed about how Im being misunderstood.

When people cry, Im not affected like a normal person, but at most annoyed, still I have no huge problem with it and I comfort them by talking. I would whish to have the same in return, because you cant comfort me with hugs or a nice sounding voice.

I was able to make that distinction from the earliest time that I can remember.

For me reading about "theory of mind" per se in college was a breakthrough. Perspective had been in my vocabulary before but I hadn't kept it in mind that in general other people don't draw on a universal store of generic "general knowledge," rather that knowledge and experience of the world are profoundly individuated.