NT/ Aspie THread

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If I'm not doing well and I don't want to talk about it I say "alright" in a neutral tone of voice. I've found that this usually ends the exchange without any further inquiry. I don't like saying "good" when I'm not really feeling well. "Good" is is reserved for when my mood is either neutral or higher. A sub-par mood is simply "alright".

If I'm not doing well but wouldn't mind talking about it I might just do a little grunt or sigh and give a downcast "so-so" expression (not sure how to describe it). Then if the other person wants to talk they'll ask what's wrong. If they don't want to talk they'll just say something like "oh sorry, one of those days" and walk away.

I can't stand being completely fake.

Last edited by marshall on 23 Jul 2009, 12:39 am, edited 1 time in total.

I can't do that. Saying "good" when I'm feeling awful is just too weird for me. The best I can do is "alright" or "fine". Is this considered acceptable?

As for the 'why are you so quiet?' comment I usually say 'I talk when I have some important to say.' It usually gets a 'oooooh' because I calmly insulted that person.

Oh me, me! Pick me! The NTs in this thread are being so helpful I feel the need for some decent and detailed payback.

This paralysis (for me, and recall we're all different) is caused by "intense focus". Try these Helpful Tips(TM)

Example #1. Driving
If I say "Do I go left or right here?" and get "left" or "right" I'm totally fine. But if the answer I get is "Well, you could go either way", I freeze up. Well, that's not accurate; I don't freeze up. I'll tell you exactly what happens. I start processing the routes from that point all the way to the destination. I visualize the routes and the turns and try to take factors into consideration like distance to target, relative traffic density, are the road types this way safer (freeways) or more dangerous (narrow backstreets), etcetera. And those are just the things off the top of my head. The thoughts come quickly and because of the intense focus, they fill my thoughts to the exclusion of all but the most pervasive of external stimuli. The net result of this is my sitting there going "doieeeee, doieeeeeee" with drool coming out of the corner of my mouth until the guy behind me starts beeping and I find myself going straight. Gaaaaah!

Example #2. Mealtime.
Structure is very helpful. If I get something like "Would you like to go out or eat in or should I cook spaghetti or do you want to try that new restaurant" I don't have sufficient time to "deep think" each option. The ideal solution would be to suggest something you want to do in a yes/no fashion (Hey do you want to go to Olive Garden?) but this is not always feasible. In this case, your best solution (if you were dating me anyhow) would be to follow a flowchart kind of idea. Start with two options at a time. "Would you like to go out to dinner or eat at home?" If the answer is "go out" then offer your own top two choices, "Would you like to go to Black Angus or China Bay or... (and you can trail the sentence off here)". If the answer is eat at home, pick the top two things YOU want to eat "Would you like to have Bleu Cheese Stuffed Flank Steak or Brook Trout Almandine in a light bouillabaisse sauce"? Etc etc. This type of structured decision making will work wonders for de-stressing the both of you.

Oh, and I'm not kidding about the at-home food. Get him a cookbook. I bet you'll find he's awesome at following the directions exactly and creating some truly spectacular dishes. Of course, don't expect more than one dish at a time. Oh, and you'll have to get all the ingredients at the store yourself too... but the payoff will be worth it! If you usually cook, this can be a fun activity for both of you. If you prep the food so that it is minced/diced/sliced and he starts cooking as you are doing that beside him, you can enjoy your time together and he'll likely be very stress free.

Jeez, now my fingers are tired . If this was helpful, please pay it forward and help one of the AS questioners with understanding your world too!

-- Vip

Why hang around in boring places with packs? (Parking lots, telephone booths disappeared long ago around here). It isn't the place that is holding one's interest, it's the people. The place is irrelevent.

Cruel gossip isn't good.

I despise the "r" word used as an insult and did long before my daughter was born. I think we have a generation gap here so I can't explain it. I am middle aged and your avatar looks young. When I was young, people my age didn't use the "r" word as an insult. Instead they used the "f" word. This was before the gay rights movement took hold. Now that it has, the "f" word has fallen out of favor (though some still use it I'm sure) and the "r" word has replaced it. This will stand until the intellectually disabled have a civil rights movement of their own. I think it would be less hurtful if it stopped being used as a medical term. Once doctors stop putting it on medical records, it will lose a lot of its bite and become like "idiot" is now. Or the intellectually disabled will have a rights movement and a whole new concept will spring into being for insults. But there will always be insults.

I never get tired of socialising. If I go too long without doing it, I start to feel weird and disconnected and horribly lonely. But I'm an extrovert and I figure it's different for NT introverts.

Oh sure. The format is ritualized but the exact words aren't. The tone of your voice- rather than the actual words- is what tells the other person if you really are good, if you feel bad and want to talk about it or if you feel bad and are also in no mood to talk about it.

Thanks for that. I get tripped up at mealtimes with my daughter sometimes. I have discovered that asking "what do you want for lunch?" doesn't get me anything but "I don't know" so I make whatever and she eats it or doesn't. This structured format could work better. Thanks.

Aspies are just as bad.

Hi drowbot!
This is a really good suggestion. I started one here myself and it does seem to help. I can say things there that I can't say on the boards. And I can imagine for an aspie, having a place to off-load the "script" could possibly make room for other interests in his head!

I'm also searching for a common interest that both of us can dive into together. We tried religion and that was a complete disaster! It is now a taboo subject in our home. Sad, too, because we both are so darn into the subject! I think we might look into futurology, since we're both pretty insightful about where it looks like the state of the world seems to be heading. We're also both into the reasons for space travel, so that could be fun! And finally, we're both into learning everything we can about AS, so maybe that could be a subject of "special focus" we could both enjoy hearing each other "lecture" on!

Any other ideas for possible mutually share-able special subjects would be helpful and fun to hear about!

Bad is generic. What does it mean ?

I assume she means that aspies can also be guilty of having, to use a visual metaphor, diarrhea of the mouth.

In this colloquial use the idiom, "just as bad" means, "with as much frequency and intensity", in other words, "Aspies also talk too much."

That is because the NT interprets your repeating back in rephrased form as evidence that you are following his meaning.

Uh, really ?

For some reason its important to me to soften the impact of my responses, and avoid generalities. I might have interpreted her statement as "NTs don't have a corner on that" but that too is visual metaphor, so on WP I would have been inclined to interpret her statement to mean "Aspies can also be guilty of talking too much." But I also often cannot tell when someone is teasing. For instance. Does Rainbow-Squirrel's response reflect offense or banter?

Last edited by willmark on 23 Jul 2009, 10:51 am, edited 1 time in total.

Yes, really... I know from when I have gone on an aside about something that I was interested in only to realize/be told later on that those around me were uncomfortable from the verbal barrage.


M.