Do euphemisms get on your nerves?

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That came out very funny!

This thread is becoming fun.

My thought exactly.. I'm really not liking the things GreenTea's therapist is saying.
NT-ness is a spectrum too. There's people who lie and mask the truth all the time, like politicians and lawyers. Then it goes all the way down to people who would be totally offended by the term "neurotypical," like engineers, who are pretty much aspies without major dysfunction.
Yea, some people want to be constantly complimented, but plenty also realize that compliments from someone who constantly compliments have no meaning. What feels good is a compliment from someone who tells you what they don't like, too. And with that type of person, you also don't have to be constantly worrying about what they're thinking-- they'll tell you!

Greentea, your therapist is WRONG. Just like she was wrong about the thing about using social savvy to get jobs you're not qualified for.. Nobody likes people who do that! Very few, anyways. Your therapist, I think, is convincing you that you're more pathological than you really are, in an effort to mask her own problems. She's manipulative, and she wants to make that kind of manipulation seem normal. It is not. It seems in a large way like you've given up because you can't possibly act as NT as your therapist makes NTs seem.. That might be some of your trouble in getting a diagnosis, as well. Many of the things your therapist says are aspie traits are traits of honest people. I'm not saying you're not an aspie.. Just that not all NTs are politicians. So if you go to a diagnostician saying "I think I'm an aspie because I can't manipulate people"... they're gonna have trouble believing you're an aspie because very few people consider being manipulative to be a good thing. Your therapist is harping on all the wrong things, and giving you extremely bad advice..

(Seriously, check into a university counseling center... They may be inexperienced, but I can't imagine them being much worse than the one you're seeing, and would probably be more willing to listen and learn. Hey, maybe if you saw a student therapist, they'd go on to become an expert in AS in women! .. and it wouldn't be expensive. The most helpful therapist I've ever seen was a student intern, so I guess I'm biased.. but really, what have you got to lose? Besides your antisocial therapist..)

I hope that made sense and didn't come out offensive.. cause I really didn't mean anything offensive.. well, not towards you. Just your therapist. She should be offended by my post.

Maggie, you made a bit of a salad between my ex therapist and the Organizational Counselor who delivered the workshop last week, and also between reality and ideal in society.

i dunno about the whole gender culture thing. it's a blind date, though. doesn't that by definition mean "stranger?" is it unreasonable to not want to be in a small enclosed space with a stranger of either (any) gender at night?

i mean, it's not horrible i think, if someone's okay with that. but if you have a problem with that---shouldn't it be respected? especially by a therapist?


i can't think of any euphemisms for what i'm thinking right now.

Of course it's respected. But each person sees their side in the interaction, and has to protect their own interests in the exchange, by a little manipulation rather than stating the logical truth. That's the NT world.

*blinks*
But didn't you say the thing about the therapist saying to use social savvy to get jobs you aren't qualified for before that job thing you went to?
I know that it's true that most productive people use both social abilities and job qualifications to get and keep jobs.. But there are also some people who use mostly just one or the other. People who are awesome at their jobs but refuse to suck up may not climb the corporate ladder well, but usually they do a good job and are well respected by anyone who actually knows anything.

You are totally right about my issue with mixing up real and ideal. I have so much theory and reading and study.. and so little of anything that's actually of any use. I keep hoping my multitudes of theory and info will have some value.. just kinda wishful thinking.

But shouldn't a therapist be able to help you work with what you have? Like, it sounds like you have a lot of experience in a career that you're good at.. your goal in therapy shouldn't be to learn the social skills of a politician, that's probably not possible. But do you actually need politician-level BS navigation?

Of course, this is why I usually kinda hide from the world..

I do recall using the expression "social savvy" but I don't remember in what context...

I too have lots of knowledge of how NTs' minds work but it doesn't help me at all.

I thought "visually impaired" and "hearing impaired" meant that those senses were impaired, but not totally absent. Like if someone has a hearing aid, and you have to be careful to talk on the correct side, and speak loudly, then they're hearing impaired, not deaf. A deaf person wouldn't be able to hear if, say, a fire alarm were going off.. someone who is hearing impaired has trouble hearing in order to have conversations and stuff, but has some sense of hearing. Same with a visually impaired person... some ability to see, some shapes and colors, might not bang into things, but not adequate sight.. As opposed to a blind person, who wouldn't have any response from optical nerves at all, and might not even be able to tell if the sun is shining or not. So hearing impaired and visually impaired are broader than deaf and blind are.
Am I totally wrong on that?

You said it was your therapist's response (I assumed you meant the manipulative b***h therapist) to your being sent to job interviews for positions you were completely unqualified for... It wasn't about the job seminar thing.


The thing about knowledge not helping seems to be something that therapists don't understand. It doesn't matter what I learn, because in the NT world, it's not about rational responses, but about the correct immediate responses. I don't know how to get a therapist to understand the waste of time, money, and pain that is caused by the therapeutic concept of learning how to cope with things when that learning isn't going to help me one tiny bit when I actually need it. It just leaves me more frustrated in the present and more likely to have meltdowns because I'm already on the edge.

Maggie, maybe you can find a quote to what you're referring to, because I don't recall talking about jobs I don't have the skills for or ever discussing that kind of jobs with my therapist. Maybe that was interpreted from something I said, but it's not what I meant. In any case, I fortunately discovered the truth about therapies and therapists a few years ago and stopped wasting my hard-earned money on putting their kids through university back then. I have many posts on WP about how detrimental Psychotherapy is for the AS itself (not for comorbids).

About therapists treating you ineffectively for AS in the ways you mention: the only way to stop them doing that is not going anymore. As long as you go there, they'll continue claiming your problems are Psychological and not Neurological, and giving you all kinds of advice that Aspies can't follow effectively.

Hmm, I guess I misinterpreted something you said.. I'll poke around for it a bit, but I probably just took somethin' out of context. (Or misremembered it, or remembered the wrong context.. lol)

It's so difficult to see a psychiatrist without seeing a therapist, though. Most psychiatrists around here are of the mindset that if someone wants medication without talk therapy, they're just an addict. Mine current psychiatrist has not said so, but she certainly thinks that talk therapy is important and helpful and all that crap.. Switching is not an option, I got accused of the most horrible things by the two psychiatrists I saw before this one, and there aren't many in this area.. and none at all that are covered by insurance that would do anything but harm me. (Harm as in take me off everything that has ever worked and toss me onto antipsychotics, despite the fact that I have no psychotic disorder and a history of reacting very badly when taking them as sedatives) Maybe I'll ask my mom to simply refuse to keep paying for therapy, then my psychiatrist can't really blame me for it.

That's just what I was going to say. They can't force you if you don't have the money. And even if they force you to go to free counseling, the wait list is usually very long and the amount of meetings very small, so you won't have a problem.

Wouldn't your Psychiatrist be able to understand that what you need is a kind of therapy geared to Aspies? Are you diagnosed with AS? Any other diagnoses?

I seem to do OK with euphemisms most of the time, but other contextually implied meaning situations trip me up alot. The other day I was out with my wife, and she was talking to someone saying, "We belong to the Little Theater", and I made the mistake of clarifying her statement by saying, "We have season tickets". After the conversation she turned to me and said, "Why did you feel it was needed to point that out? Belonging to the Little Theater, and having season tickets for the little theater is the same thing." I explained that it doesn't mean the same to me. If we belonged to the Little Theater, we would be helping to build sets, or running the light board or whatever. She replied, that is being participatory, so I said, "What about our friend who used to have season tickets to the Dallas Cowboys games? Couldn't I then say he belonged to the Dallas Cowboys?" and she replied, "No! You don't say you belong to the Dallas Cowboys if you hold season tickets. Saying you belong to the Dallas Cowboys would mean you play on the team, or are part of the coaching staff." Then I said, "Well why does that rule apply for the Dallas Cowboys, but not for the Little Theater?" and she got frustrated with me and wheeled around and walked off.

There seem to be a lot of things in this world that most people seem to just know, but I don't know why I keep missing them.

Last edited by willmark on 07 Jul 2009, 12:12 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't have any conclusive diagnosis... lots of crap like depression and anxiety and attention problems.. all symptom kind of stuff. My psychiatrist has recommended I go for psychological testing, but again, that will be expensive and there are no guarantees. I had a very bad experience with psychological testing before. I'm on disability, I'm not entirely sure what the diagnosis for that is. It might just be the whole mishmash of symptoms... or maybe agoraphobia? It was never quite clear.
And as you know, finding someone who feels qualified to make an AS diagnosis in an adult female, let alone know what kind of treatment might be needed... is pretty much impossible.
Of course, for all I know, if I just take the diagnostic criteria and show her that I meet them completely, maybe she'd just diagnose me with it.. it sounded like she wanted to make me do all the Rorschach crap and stuff with a psychologist, though. (Yea, I know Rorschach may have some value somewhere, but I've only ever seen psychologists totally abuse and misuse it.)