NT thinking ur struggles are normal for everyone

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Unfortunately, unless you are an Aspie/Autistic yourself, you will NEVER understand what it is like. All the descriptions in the world can't even begin to describe how someone feels on the inside about things. NTs will never understand…

I also always try to compare people to me and bring the conversation back to me rather than commenting on the person's experience in another way.......and sometimes interrupt or don't listen long enough but the comparison is sometimes "oh I'm not like that at all...I'm like......" not always trying to find something I have in common with the other person but a difference.

Me: "I don't know how to talk to him"
Them: "oh it's easy - just be sociable"

Yes I'm the same - I seem to always think of things relating back to myself and want to interject with them immediately, as if what I have to say is of more importance. Sometimes I tell myself to just keep quiet and listen and I can tell the other person likes this better as you can see them getting irritated when you interrupt. Even though I know it annoys the other person when I interrupt I often seem to be incapable of not doing it.

I think this applies equally to mental illness as to autism. Before I had any real idea what autism was about I would be trying to explain depression and extreme anxiety to people and they would try to relate it back to some period in their life when they felt down for a few weeks - what they call "depression" - "I just kept myself busy and I soon felt fine but you just sit around the house all day". If I could change things by keeping busy don't they think I WOULD HAVE? Don't they think that if I could "change the way I look at the problem" then I WOULD DO SO without hesitancy? Argggh it makes me SO angry!

Doctors don't even really understand/take it seriously. Unless you're flipping out right there in the office they assume you are fine. They don't seem to understand that after a lifetime of mental illness you have learned to portray a more "balanced" or "normal" image lest people think you are totally insane and it isn't easy to just switch that image off.

Edit to say: If all the doctors you see are like that: carry on looking! I recently found the best GP ever who takes *everything* I say seriously. He referred me to be tested for autism within 5 minutes of mentioning the word "aspergers" and also sent me to a rheumatologist when other doctors have refused to do the same for two years.

I love twilight. I especially love autumn twilight.

I hate being in direct sunlight. I don't enjoy it.

I think neurotypicals are such hypocrites when it comes to this. I, too, find it impossible to understand HOW a person feels unless I relate it to my own experiences, and this, of course, is often seen as being "insensitive" or "self-centered." But whenever I try to explain the suffering caused from my neuropsychiatric disorders, people always go, "Oh, yeah, I know how you feel. I get really worried about stuff, too!" THIS is insensitive if anything is!


SO true! Sadly, unless I have a breakdown in front of people, they assume I'm "exaggerating" my problems or whatever. They have no idea just HOW much effort it takes to appear "normal" every day, and that I only expend this effort to look relatively "normal" just so I can function in society.

Yes that is frusterating...for instance for some reason talking over the phone makes me really anxious, unless it is someone I really know well. So someone might say 'everyones nervous about phone calls' and I am thinking 'not so nervous that it makes it unpleasent considering the amount most people talk on the phone'.

I dislike this also. It is almost as if they are dismissing your diagnosis right then and there by saying - "Oh, is THAT all that Asperger's is, yes I am like that also hence you must be making it all up just to get attention"... And then yet, when you react differently to them to situations as they occur, they act as if you are totally weird and overreacting!

However, I think people relate things back to themselves in all sorts of situations. Just try telling someone you are pregnant, and you will hear ALL about their pregnancies and birth stories until even you yourself forget that it was you who started the conversation with news about your own situation! After they finish telling their stories, they don't even come back to you, they shift into something else... *sigh*

Yet, as others have said, I also can't help but connect what others are saying to my own experiences. For me, it is a way of connecting with them, and trying to find empathy. If I can find my own experience that can match theirs, then I can try to understand how they are feeling. Hence, maturity can help with this (i.e. the number of experiences you have had) because the more experiences you have had, the more chance there is that you can relate to them.
However! No one's experience is the same as another persons! And if someone is wanting to share something with someone, they don't want to hear your story, they want you to hear theirs!
Hence, it can be a better approach to try to find a similar experience of your own, and ask the other person a question such as "Oh, did it make you feel like [insert the feeling that you experienced]?" So they will feel like you are connecting with them, but you are keeping the spotlight on them still. And, if you are wrong (which often we are!), then you haven't just dismissed their own experience, and you can learn more about their own individual experience with a more open mind.

Yeah, it gets annoying at times. In a sense, they are dismissing my difficulty. Its like, oh everyone faces that. And NTs tend to think I am way to strung out.

They're really good at denial.

My favorite is summer twilight. It's such a relief when the Sun goes down, but it is still light outside, so I can go outside and frolick and feel normal and not be blinded or brain-fried by too much light.

Yep it does. I get this about stress and people don't understand how bad it is for me. I know stress is hard for everyone and that it effects them too but it actually impairs me. Other people seem to deal with it better and can still function.

I have also gotten that school is hard for everyone. I know what I go through is not the same for them in school or else everyone be in special ed and be on the IEP. I have also been told college is hard for everyone.

I usually don't talk about my problems so this doesn't happen often.

I think people do this to make you feel better or they truly don't understand. I am sure people do it to themselves too because they don't realize how different it is for them because they assume it's the same for everyone else too. I used to do it to myself and still do. I honestly don't know if it's the same for everyone else too. I will read stuff and then think oh that's normal for what I go through because it happens with other people too. I thought the same with interruptions and misunderstandings. Then I learned that everyone's minds worked different so I couldn't understand why it was a big deal that mine worked different too. I asked mom about that and she had to explain it to me. Some peoples minds worked so different, it causes them issues so they need extra help so they can be on the right path as everyone else. Everyone takes different paths but they end up in the same spot while I wouldn't be in that spot and I be somewhere else so I needed help so I be in the same spot as everyone else while taking a different pathway like everyone else.

Really? How does anyone know what another person is experiencing - NT or Aspie? Surely this comparison works both ways!

Well, I'm a NT, but I want to disagree a bit. I notice that people with AS tend to overreact on little things. For example I have a friend with AS that went crazy over the fact that he was getting bad grades. He was crying, screaming, yeah all the torture. But we NT's also stress and struggle the same way, we just find ways to overcome them. We go through stress too, at times it feels like suicide or death for us too...but we just don't overreact about it. I can tell you why we do it. I do it too and I also have helped my friend overcome his grief by relating. I relate to his experience and say, "hey, I have had bad grades too you know, it felt like s**t.." and she goes,"yeah, but you don't get it, I can't deal with it". Then I say, "you know I used to cry about my grades when I went to bed and I would put my head down and cry in the library" and she is surprised. She never thought I can also feel that much s**t over grades too. Then I say, "my friend failed the same class you took 4 times! So you got a bad grade, so what? People are worse off than you". Then she felt much better and started to get better grades by studying. So why do I relate? So they can stop overreacting, so they can see the bigger picture that we as humans experience stress and pain the SAME way.

You just have to change the way you DEAL AND LOOK AT IT.

I do not think its true that humans experiance stress and pain the same way.....its more true that different people typically have different ways of experiancing and dealing with stress and pain. For instance some people get PTSD when exposed to a traumatic event, some people exposed to the same traumatic event don't get PTSD. That is two different reactions.

Also your example to me only shows that you were better able to cope with the stress of bad grades than the autistic person.

Do neurotypicals like it when they get upset and people accuse them of over-reacting? well autistic people don't typically appreciate it either even if the ways in which we express our upset seem more extreme. I swear ever since I was a child I have seen plenty of times when neurotypicals totally lose control over what to me does not seem like a big deal but I wouldn't tell them they are over-reacting.

Also though while both neurotypicals and people with autism struggle with some of the same issues, it is kind of ignorant to claim that neurotypical people deal with 'all of the same things' you guys don't have severe sensory issues that make normal amounts of light or noise too loud unless you have hang overs......imagine feeling like you have a hangover any time you're in a bright loud environment? You don't have the same trouble with social interaction that people with autism do.....I could go on but that should get the point across. Main point being if people with autism only had the same struggles as neurotypicals autism would not be considered a disorder that interferes with functioning. I mean while you probably have lots of difficulties in life......do they make you unable to function in your day to day life on a daily basis or prevent you from finding employment? That is the sort of thing disorders like autism can do. I guess the point is it kind of offends people with disabilities when people without them claim to have the same problems and then tell the person with the disability they should just get over it or deal with it better without truly understanding what that person is going through.