Do People Ever Think You Are Stupid?

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Only when my fact-based claims conflict with their faith-based fantasies.

For instance, my aunt insisted that if I helped my alcoholic cousin get a job, he would appreciate the chance to turn his life around, go on the wagon, go back to school, and generally become a responsible adult. I insisted that if I helped my cousin get a job, he would show up late (if at all), drink on the job (that's how he lost his last four jobs), forget about finishing his degree (they wouldn't let him drink in class), and generally continue his downward spiral into the gutter.

So I set him up with a loading-dock job (where just about everyone without a college degree starts around here), and guess what? He showed up an hour late, reeked of alcohol by noon, passed out in his car at quitting time, and was found there about midnight by the night security guard who was going to prep school during the day.

Guess who my aunt blames for his continued downward spiral into the gutter?

That's right; me.

According to her, I was stupid for getting him a job that he couldn't handle; I was stupid for expecting him to conform to expectations; I was stupid for not checking up on him every five minutes; I was stupid for not providing a chauffeured limo service for him; and I was stupid for letting him get himself fired after his first day on the job.

In other words, I was stupid for being right.

Yes. I think part of what drives me to do well in university - "in your face" name-callers!

I either come across as utterly brilliant or depressingly idiotic. I don't have an inbetween. It just depends on the situation...

I think it's really sad that you think that about yourself.



If people thought that of me, it was because I was disabled and quiet. They knew I had CP, that I could walk without braces or anything else, and believed, vehemently, that I was "mentally young" until I proved them otherwise.



I have the same experience for the most part. Only my Ohio friend/cousin-in-law acknowledges how intelligently different I am.



The only way you were stupid was in getting him the job in the first place. You did everything else right.

Not so much ... as I said, the loading dock is where we start people out who have no college degree. This means that practically anybody can get the job, and we expect most of them to not make it through their probationary periods. My cousin wasn't the only one who lasted only a day -- some last even less. Usually, we hire temps for the job, and my cousin went through a temp agency, so there was at least one layer between his bungling and my "stupidity". Since our last names are not the same, and it's been a couple of years, I have what's called "Plausible Deniability".

Besides, I've fulfilled my family obligation, and he hasn't bugged me ever since.

I feel people still do not fully understand or even heard of Aspergers Syndrome which most of the people that live in the set of units I live in admited today that they had no idea what Aspergers Syndrome is and that they do not understand me or how to go about understanding me that is why they make fun of me all the time. Its the unknown that people fear. Its sad that people still generalize people with disabilites as being, dumb, stupid when we are not. That is why I stand up and speak at public meetings about Aspergers Syndrome to educate people that we are not the people they make us out to be. We do not have to prove anything or justify ourselves to anyone all we want is people to accept us for us not for someone they assume us to be.

This could potentially be due simply to our different style of information processing.

Generally speaking, and from what I have read and connect with - NTs have more efficient long range connections in their brains. This means they have better connections between the main brain areas. Hence, they can process multiple pieces of information a lot faster than us. I believe this also leads to inaccuracies also, but it does mean that they come to a conclusion which is often supported by the majority - faster. Or, they just take on other people's theories/ideas from the majority and never question their accuracy - for them, that theory IS the entire fact.

On the other hand, us aspies have weaker long range connections. We process information more sequentially. We need to take each piece of information and process it in order to come up with our conclusion. Our conclusions are often more accurate (generally) and closer to the "truth", but we take a lot longer to get there. Socially, it is a nightmare, because we are trying to process every single bit of information and it takes too long to be able to interact with others in real time. By the time we have come to our conclusion, they have moved on with the conversation.

Hence, we are "slower". People often equate slow with stupid.

Yet, this is ridiculous, because generally we are a LOT more accurate than those who are "fast"!

Oh, okay, gotcha. My bad, you didn't do anything stupid.

The younger girls at my first job thought I was stupid and they treated me like I didn't have any feelings.

Stupid, no. The direction people sometimes take with me is more along the lines of recreational drug user. Because I speak slowly, phrase my sentences in atypical manner, and don't outwardly show emotion in ways that are expected, sometimes the interpretation is that I have a marijuana habit. There is frustration with me about perceived apathy, detached lack of caring, that sort of thing. I don't use street drugs for a variety of reasons, but that seems to be one of the common misinterpretations of my mannerisms and disposition.

Most of the time no but back when I worked at the supermarket, they did. It was very fustrating, everyone thought I was slow and didnt understand but funny thing is that I understood much more then i showed. People typically think Im very smart if they've seen proof in my work or they know my educational background.

All the time, but I live in Salford so...yeah.

Most of the people I meet recognize my intelligence pretty quickly since I tend to bombard people with facts.

Same here. Because I have a delay in processing speech, especially in unfamiliar situations, people tend to treat me like an idiot at times. But in other situations, like work or school where I'm comfortable with the subject matter and can take my time to prepare my work, I get a lot of admiring comments and people often ask me to help them with something they're struggling with. It can get a bit confusing to have such drastically opposite reactions from people, often within minutes of each other.

I was so oblivious in my younger years I didn't know what my peers thought of me. My mom said I had small smart, which means the intelligence you're blessed with, but lacked big smart, which means wisdom and life experience. Well I was a teenager then, of course I didn't have the second one.

This would definitely be applicable here too. I've also had the "stoner" accusations here and there, which I never understood at the time. I was fired once for it, and I had a counselor refuse to speak with me because they thought I was high. I ended up eventually heading out and staying stoned for a long stretch. Sad part is, I never experienced the same camaraderie since.