The low after the high

Post Reply New Topic

Yeah. If you can get your confusing NT friend to communicate in words, they won't be nearly so confusing to you. And possibly if you can get them to understand that your body language and whatnot will probably confuse them, then maybe they'll listen to words-only and get more of what you're trying to get across. I think you just have to find a person who's Ok with learning a different style of communication to talk to you. I mean, there's people who've learned different languages so they could communicate with someone they loved, and that is at least as possible as learning to understand a different neurology. I know... hard, and if you've been rejected a million times it has to be pretty scary, but... well, logically, there's nothing about it that's actually impossible.

A couple hours ago I was sitting with a colleague smoking a cigarette after the dinner break, and I was thinking she's an OK person, I wish I could have a normal relationship between colleagues with her, and yet nowadays I know that'll never be possible. Because I'm on a cloud regarding what's going on inside someone like her, she's on a cloud regarding what's it like to be someone like me, and most of all, just like everyone else, she wouldn't be caught dead seen with me. This is why I sometimes have company for dinner at work but hardly ever at lunch, when everyone is around.

I think my opening post didn't come out clear enough. I wasn't hoping for encouragement about the potential of my future relationships. I know what the potential is. I was trying to find the answer to how to live and how to relate to others when you now know you'll never have an OK relationship with (almost?) anyone. And how do you live and relate when, as you are talking to someone, you're thinking that you're missing 75% of what they're saying and becoming alienated from them, and they're getting angry at you or losing respect for you as the conversation progresses.

When I meet someone new and they treat me fine, I'm telling myself how this person will start treating me with contempt when they get to know me better or when they see how their friends treat me, what position I have in the group. I know what they'll feel before they know it.

I once saw a movie that had an exchange like this:

A) Let's get married!
B) But I hardly know you!
A) That's why I want to marry you now, because the more you get to know me, the less you'll want to marry me.

Hope and optimism are not the solution for everything. Sometimes being realistic and finding a method to cope with reality is more satisfying. I'm nearly 50, at this stage I prefer to find a realistic method to live than try and convince myself of some optimistic lie about the future.

Perhaps I'm still on the high, but it would appear to me that it is the presumption of failure that now exists, that is truly affecting you. While repetition of results might serve as proof in scientific process, it is wholly inapplicable in the inscrutable science of social interaction. You may expect challenges... this would be rational, and healthy. Nothing really comes easily, in my opinion. But to assume that you will alienate, that you will 'fail' as it were, is to ensure defeat.

We are assured of suffering when we demand that the world meet our expectations when it does not.


M.

This is my point of view, and I know most of you will not agree with it, but I feel that I can add something on this Theory of Mind, as you defined Greentea. First, I even before know anything about AS I've been aware of other people internal life, and always had a great respect about their feelings, thoughts, and desires - but I always knew that I could never understand their internal life. So, I had respect to something that I had no idea about. As I grew up, I had to learn to deal with people, and soon I realized that they were very empty: that things that I thought was in their mind, simply wasn't there. After I realize it, I started to think about people as I think about rats in a lab... They have the very same need, desires, thoughts... there is nothing about them that deserves your sorrow. Yes, they have a complex behavior, and we can get into troubles because we can't understand et cetera... but every move is part of a silly game. We know that it's a game, they don't.



PS Sorry for my solipcism... but it really works... as Dan Dennett says, "there is nobody home"

Shhh... we aren't supposed to know that

Ever tried pushing water uphill? Or nailing jelly to a wall?

NT's use words to obfuscate as much as communicate. They don't like communicating what they really think, they mainly want to communicate what an *outstanding* member of the herd they are. So their words become whatever is needed to achieve this.

I sometimes get that feeling. It can be sad for me knowing I have an ASD. But what helps make me feel better is the good sides. It gives us many talents.

What goes up, must come down, and then go up again topic

Like the economy. My doctor thinks I am depressed because of Asperger's. I am depressed because of how others view my Aspergers. In this uncertain economy anyone who does not fit in is going to be turfed because the last thing NT business needs is a realist, that is, someone who knows it is a game. Toadies are desireable when business is on shakey grounds. Join the coalition.

Sorry, Greentea.

[quote="ManErg"']their words become whatever is needed to achieve this.[/quote]

This is something I've learned recently about ToM, indeed. That a lot of the time NTs use words to create an idea in your head, rather than to express / communicate their reality spontaneously. I was observing my colleague today, she told herself loudly how cold it was in the office (she was actually trying to get our boss to hear her. She told me a few days ago that she's planning on trying to get the company to buy an electrical heat diffuser for under her desk.) This is her way to start preparing the ground for her request for the purchase. To me, this is incredibly complex and sophisticated manipulation. To NTs this is totally simple and often even unconscious. And the listener intuitively knows what they're trying to do, and accepts the game as part of them both being human. The reality is not that our offices are cold, on the contrary. But she starves herself to be thin and wears thin clothes in winter to look sexy(she's desperately looking for a husband) so she's always cold, of course. Everyone knows it's all a game, and everyone accepts it in others because they're the same way.

Just like when somebody tells you that they like the sweater you're wearing. They know that you know that their intention is not to express a liking for a certain sweater they're seeing, but to hint that they're interested in being on your good side. When they're not interested in ingratiating themselves with somebody, somehow they never seem to have the need to express how much that sweater that's on you appeals to their eyes. And if they're trying to get on top of you in the hierarchy, they'll find your sweater ridiculous and have a sudden need to express it when many other people you care about are in the room.

I'm 34, female, and still waiting for an official diagnosis. I want to live life, but there is always something in the way.

?

What kind of people did you grow up with? People are people. It sounds like you're looking for something unreasonable in them.

Anyway, you don't know your going to alienate people, you should search for people who you can be comfortable around. There are almost certainly some out there.

Whats usually in the way IS life, its just usually not the bits we want lol

This is something I've learned recently about ToM, indeed. That a lot of the time NTs use words to create an idea in your head, rather than to express / communicate their reality spontaneously. I was observing my colleague today, she told herself loudly how cold it was in the office (she was actually trying to get our boss to hear her. She told me a few days ago that she's planning on trying to get the company to buy an electrical heat diffuser for under her desk.) This is her way to start preparing the ground for her request for the purchase. To me, this is incredibly complex and sophisticated manipulation. To NTs this is totally simple and often even unconscious. And the listener intuitively knows what they're trying to do, and accepts the game as part of them both being human. The reality is not that our offices are cold, on the contrary. But she starves herself to be thin and wears thin clothes in winter to look sexy(she's desperately looking for a husband) so she's always cold, of course. Everyone knows it's all a game, and everyone accepts it in others because they're the same way.

Just like when somebody tells you that they like the sweater you're wearing. They know that you know that their intention is not to express a liking for a certain sweater they're seeing, but to hint that they're interested in being on your good side. When they're not interested in ingratiating themselves with somebody, somehow they never seem to have the need to express how much that sweater that's on you appeals to their eyes. And if they're trying to get on top of you in the hierarchy, they'll find your sweater ridiculous and have a sudden need to express it when many other people you care about are in the room.[/quote]

If you can figure out all this things you are a god for me. Wow. So, she wants the company to help her to find a husband! Wow again.
I could never think about something like this by myself. Actually I can't even understand when some colleague is trying to make it very clear for me. This year a friend had to tell me that all the things a that co-worker was doing for me, all the things she was talking about, was to make clear that she has a crush on me. I thought she just needed my help to get her a Ph.D finished.
Now it makes me wander how many times this happened before I know about my AS. We can miss the signs people broadcast around but (as we know about our AS) we are able to ask people we trust "what is going on?".