Picking Up Social Situations Intuitively....

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Alba, "not being interested" from birth in joining the fake social game is in itself caused by the neurological difference. You can't attribute a baby's focus to conscious choice. At 6 months old my sister already knew she had to smile from her cradle to get people's favor, while I learned it at age 44 when a colleague explained it to me that I'd better smile when the bosses are around. I don't believe that I missed these clues as a baby because I had more interesting things I was born choosing to focus on. Rather, because I was blind to the social cues and became isolated from a very early age, I developed an over-interest in other things. I was 2 years old when my mother told me that the whole extended family hated my guts. It's been 45 years since then, and the hatred has only changed for the worse. I have no contact with any family at all. I know the reason as well as I knew it at age 2: no idea.

Yes but what do you mean by neurological difference. Combination hard-wired plus software programming? Or just hard-wired. Genetic predisposition set in stone or open to the possible capability of upgrading it?


No. It is an unconscious process. Autistic egos may be so fundamentally different from NT egos that they almost immediately show profound differences in relating to attention and socialization. I remember as a toddler and child absolutely hating strangers paying the least bit of attention to me. And I only enjoyed attention from my family if it concerned my interests. Most NT youngsters thrive on and crave attention of any kind. In relation to NT ego, the autistic ego might be considered weak and with too narrow a focus. But it isn't quite fair to judge by NT standards which would generally tend to portray the autistic ego as flawed and/or pitiful.


As a baby, you may not have been interested in getting people to notice you. You may have preferred that they didn't...which set up a lifelong pattern. But that didn't necessarily stop you from noticing many details about them.


Well this is one theory - that you were always blind to the social cues. I'm suggesting that you may have picked up the social cues very well but were clearly not interested in them ---all this going on subconsciously. You may have preferred isolation because it was easier on your overly sensitive sensory perceptions and the isolation enabled you to eventually establish a predictable, comfortable routine. Many of us on the spectrum couldn't tolerate much change in our routines. There were some things that did get your interest so you focused primarily on those. However you may have surreptitiously paid attention to social happenings and social cues when you thought no one was watching you. Which probably would have further pushed you in the direction of avoiding social encounters if possible. Treating social cues as garbage is something many of us may have learned as a technique of avoiding unpleasant or uncomfortable social situations.




You aren't the only one who was told that.....but age 2 is way too young to hear it. However knowing it is probably just as bad as hearing it. My mother has always hated me and blamed me for everything that goes wrong in her life. Sometimes she denies it and sometimes she justifies it, depending on her mood. I remember often being called a problem child.

Last edited by alba on 05 Feb 2009, 10:56 am, edited 1 time in total.

mm scapegoats! I'm the family scapegoat. I don't enter into their fantasy of themselves, mainly because I don't 'see' it. You have to remember we're "The emporer is naked" people, that's not going to be liked or rewarded.

Not that anyone here is going to miss my not contributing anymore to this thread or any other for that matter, but I am having a problem communicating at the moment, as I have a very limited ability to interact or communicate, probably due to my being not only extremely introverted and having to translate my visual thoughts into words, but also having difficulty getting overwhelmed with too many thought streams at once when something sparks my interest (I think I heard someone (millie I think) on a different thread refer to themselves as having 8 brains, maybe this is what she means) this is probably why I have been on this site for a few years and only have 46 posts and most people still think I am new, anyway I have so much to say about the conversation and am very distressed about not being able to get it out, so instead of beating myself up about it, I am just going to say that, wow it is really amazing to be in a place that I can relate so much and the people are so interesting that I could spend all day on here (if I could handle sitting in front of a computer that long).

Be back as soon as my brain recovers some extroverted functioning.

we love you too aufgehen.

there's the other side of the coin here too though, the people who you feel you have nothing in common with.

Yes. The indepth tendency of our brains has been obvious to most everyone.


IMO some of our neurodiversity is essentially hardwired and some of it is analogous to software programming. With a little or a lot of effort a percentage of us, maybe even most of us, can eventually learn to edit, update or over-ride portions of our initial software programming. It is highly likely that many of us have already done just that in certain select areas of our functioning.

It seems to me the two main qualities or axioms that define autism spectrum neurodiversity are: [1] our hyper-sensitive sensory wiring and [2] our demand for indepth exploration of favorite interest(s). Using either of these as starting points for analysis of spectrum neurodiversity, we could engage in vast speculation as to why we get sensory and information overload, why we stim, and why we are to a great extent anti-social.

My hypothesis is the same as Aufgehen's - we have been suppressed and made to feel bad about ourselves.. and are more numerous than we think. Spectrumites have been intentionally compromised, disenfranchised, disempowered and often brutally conditioned at the hands of well intentioned parents, and not so well intentioned bullies and various members of the NT society. The attitudes held by the majority of people towards us is that we are Freaks and need to be kept in our "place"-----whatever that is.

These attitudes are severely damaging. They injure us and hijack our energy-- energy often construed as bad or unhealthy and generally unworthy. If we want to show that at least some of us can be very usefull indeed to society at large, we must take back our power. Which was stolen from us. I firmly believe that the more of us aspies who reclaim our power, the easier it will be for the low functioning autistics who face more severe challenges and debilitating social condemnation. I believe we who are blessed with a greater array of behavior options and increased level of functioning-- have an obligation to build a pathway and forge the opportunities for all spectrumites.

Whatever it is, our place hasn't been very comfortable for most of us and for many of us it has been downright unpleasant. To the point where many of our lives are so wretched we would rather not thank you. Many conclude arfter years of more than enough suffering -- they don't want to participate at all in this thing we call life. The opinions and attitudes secretly harbored against us border on the sinister. We have been deliberately discredited and only the negative parts of our neurodiversity and our challenges have been emphasized.

It is entirely possible that the majority of our suffering can be rightly attributed to our being hounded by various elements of the "normal" society which apparently wishes us to be cured or to go away. At the very least they want to make sure twe stay in our rightful "place"...again, whatever, wherever that is. We need to demand they restore to us our rightful power. And we can figure out for ourselves where our rightful place is.

When we do pay attention to social cues, we tend to process too much information and as with most other things our overabundance of data drives us to the core of things. We see too much. We know too much. We get overwhelmed. And we don't seem to be able to modulate very well. We're very much like digital computing devices - the gate is fully open or it is entirely shut down. Not a whole lot of inbetween.

I have contended that we aren't incapable of processing social cues and discerning their meaning. Rather the opposite. Our capacity for processing everything, including social cues, is so adept and complete that we have to eliminate much of it by default in order to keep from being overwhelmed. Not to mention that what we are interested in is our prime directive and everything falls into place subordinate to it.

Not only are we unmotivated to pursue social interactions which exclusively emphasize the superficial ....but many of us, perhaps most of us, have been painfully condition one way or the other to believe we are inadquate, inferior, have a "disorder", are mentally ret*d or mentally deficient in some other way. People shun us, reject us, throw figurative and literal stones at us...etc. ad nauseum.

Is it any wonder we have been taught to believe that we CAN'T figure it out? That we are just too inadequate to fit in...that we actually are too dumb or too something to be able to read social cues. The truth is that we have a problem with conforming to a set of superficial standards which not only bore us but seem illogical. We have a problem submitting to an authority which makes no sense to us. And being more than capable of figuring out just what is going on, we come to the inescapable conclusion that we're possibly on the Wrong Planet.

I say it is nonsense. Many of us, perhaps the majority, can read social cues just as well as NTs, often better. And many LFAs do this well enough to figure out what is going on to their own satisfaction. But we literally can't cope with all the information----given the way we're wired..something has to go. Something has to be filtered out.

Aufgehen, sorry to tell you this, hope you're not offended, but you need my permission to leave and I'm not granting it.

alba, so you agree with my family that I could grasp what people expect from me if only I tried harder.

Not at all, Greentea. <sigh> If what people expect from you is the opposite of what you want from yourself, what choice do you have? Our appraisal of social situations is primarily instinctive and unconscious. We would have to get a conscious grip on unconscious processes in order to meet social expectations tailormade for NTs and not autistics.

Additionally, it's not rocket science for a toddler to figure out they aren't wanted and/or are felt to be defective. Society in general considers us defective and ruined any chance we may have had to succeed with organizing all our incoming data. Which is kind of a Herculean task mentally, perceptually and emotionally. If we are to tackle it, we need encouragement and support..not condemnation and the defective label.

With executive function being a challenge for us, how would we go about organizing all that incoming information? Either we take it all in or toss it all out. We don't know what stuff to keep and what stuff to discard. That isn't our fault. It's who we are.

What I honestly think most of us can do is take 2 minutes to size up the social situation and where it is heading. If it's something we will be required to effectively deal with, we can usually arrange to take a break, think through our strategy, and return with a plan in hand. Undoubtedly most of us will need to develop techniques of minimizing our time spent socializing and maximizing our effectiveness in dealing with whatever requires our attention.

Last edited by alba on 05 Feb 2009, 5:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Looking forward to your return!

I'm not sure if you were commenting on what I said, or just using that as a taking off point. In case if was the former... Note that I wasn't commenting on the dynamics of one on one and small group interactions. I was describing the kind of social skills I do have, versus those I don't.

@MR

Sorry if I'm misunderstanding the point you're making. It is appreciated that you are clarifying that point which I still don't understand. I'm not trying to be stupid. It would be appreciated if you would further develop your point. [Sometimes people think I'm deliberately acting stupid. It's not an act.] I also don't understand what a talking point is--specifically in terms of how talking points are used to derail or twist up a discussion. Would appreciate if you can explain what you mean there. I'm aware that I can talk too much which is irritating to people, but can also be offensive. If I have offended you or continue to do so, please know that it's not intentional.

IMO "everyone equal social skills" is an ideal as opposed to being a reality. It's an ideal in that it rarely manifests in the real world. It's what many aspies and NTs sincerely want and would likely be more comfortable with. But I don't see anyone really succeeding with encouraging or implementing "everyone equal social interaction". Maybe here on WP some of us try to do that.

Do you have any suggestions as to how we could manifest "everyone equal social skills"?

I think you misread. I said taking off point, not talking point. No L, and with an off in between.

"You must enter a message when posting."

Last edited by Ingevar on 08 Feb 2009, 3:31 am, edited 1 time in total.

Wikipedia, May 30, 2711. Absolutely awesome, down-the-spine-shivering poem. It was written by Marc Louis Hebert, the famous poet from the 21st century who never published any of his works. Some of his poetry was recovered from internet websites, bound together and published post-mortem in his name by a friend of his later years who went by the pen name of Greentea. Many questions will remain unanswered forever, such as who was really Marc Louis Hebert? Some scholars believe it was a group of writers working together to promote a better world. These thinkers would have predicted the advent of another bout of Dark Ages and tried desperately to make the world aware. Other Literature academics, like Simon X. White, claim that Hebert actually existed and had Aspergers, which was largely unknown and misunderstood 700 years ago, and was called a "syndrome", even listed in a book of maladies back then. People with Asperger's lived largely as recluses, often shunned by society, which may have accounted, White contends, for Hebert's reluctance to publish his works.

The ranking system is especially disgusting for women to deal with. I have wanted to kill myself over virtually "nothing" because I justify my views, and cannot agree with what I see people doing, and there's nothing I can to do stop the immediacy of another person's ego when it should be stopped- yes, helplessness.

One thing that I'm going to say is that Aspies have egos too, and in some ways they are similar to NT egos. My ego has obviously been wounded a few times as I have compared myself to NTs by figuring out whether I have AS or not. The process includes everything prior to even knowing what AS was; roughly 25 years of not knowing anything about it, but yet having experiences that dealt with it directly and indirectly.

The ego has many facets, but Aspies and NTs wear a different set of masks from each other with dissimilar expressions. Both can be naive, it's just the scenarios that will set them apart. Both can be irrational, but the subjective reactions conclude different types of behaviour. Both can be competitive, but with different foci and motives. Both can, in fact, be empathetic, but the signs aren't identical.

This thread has been brilliant from the get go thanks to Morgana. I hope it continues.

alba's theories are thought-provoking.