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Can you become autistic from being on Wrong Planet too much?

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Mdyar
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25 Oct 2011, 5:14 pm

btbnnyr wrote:
Mdyar wrote:
SammichEater wrote:
In my case, I stopped trying to read body language. I never gave myself a chance. I also allowed my special interests to consume me, instead of suppressing the desire. The desire to ignore people was always there. With WP, I lost the urge to be social.


Take eye contact, for example. Before I knew about AS, I thought it was strange that looking people in the eyes made me uncomfortable. I did it anyway, because I knew that I was expected to, but the moment I learned about AS, that all changed. There was a shift from "I can do this" to "I can't do this" after reading about other aspies who can't do it. We all know what happens when one believes one cannot do something.


Well, sammi, apparently you have the hardware. You've got it. And I believe this would then exclude BAP people. You are not BAP. 8O

Really though, do BAPS fail or can they fail in the use of the non-vebal?

Any citations in the literature?

Thoughts anyone?


Are you saying do BAPs read body language?

I don't know. I am pretty sure that my father is BAP, and he seems to have a good handle on body language and NT ToM. He has many of the ASD cognitive traits, like excellent memory/focus/visualization skills, while also having enough of the NT social-emotional processing to get along in society. He doesn't do the social/professional power play though. Other than that, he seems to have the best of both worlds.

It's funny that whenever my mother behaves in her natural NT manner in casual social encounters, my father tells her that she is being fake.


Interesting and thanks for the reply.

I guess ascertaining whether or not he made natural eye contact, short of a direct question is speculation.. Could you ask?

My spotty eye contact has been brought to my attention. . I believe they center in around executive functioning though, i.e. one track thinking and you lose your place, so to speak. Other less loaded times I communicate well with the eyes.

I have to watch myself because most of the time this is fleeting in nature, and people have been suspicious of me.

Direct eye contact has not been on my top list of things to do.

The instinct isn't there for it. I always thought I was so wrapped up in thought that the incoming verbal is all I can handle or considered relevant.

But I can read the eyes well though.

Maybe I have some traits after all.

What you think, btb, sw, or WP?



Eloa
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25 Oct 2011, 5:39 pm

SammichEater wrote:
Take eye contact, for example. Before I knew about AS, I thought it was strange that looking people in the eyes made me uncomfortable. I did it anyway, because I knew that I was expected to, but the moment I learned about AS, that all changed. There was a shift from "I can do this" to "I can't do this" after reading about other aspies who can't do it. We all know what happens when one believes one cannot do something.


With me it was different. People used to tell me that I should look to them and not on the floor.
a) I was not conscious about it, because I lifted my head higher, so I faked for me as if I would look at them, but in fact I watched the floor
b) Even when they told me I didn't got the point. I did some effort, but forgot it constantly.

After being diagnosed last year I got to know that it was an autistic trait and "it's not done when being with people". That made me get conscious about it, that I now observe if I look into people's eyes or not. I liked it more being unconscious about it, meaning not knowing that it was a trait, because now I am constantly observing myself in that, what makes me feel more unnatural of the way I just am. So now I'm trying...and even worse watch myself trying.

Edit: my edits are corrections for my english



Last edited by Eloa on 25 Oct 2011, 5:42 pm, edited 1 time in total.

btbnnyr
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25 Oct 2011, 5:42 pm

Mdyar wrote:
btbnnyr wrote:
Mdyar wrote:
SammichEater wrote:
In my case, I stopped trying to read body language. I never gave myself a chance. I also allowed my special interests to consume me, instead of suppressing the desire. The desire to ignore people was always there. With WP, I lost the urge to be social.


Take eye contact, for example. Before I knew about AS, I thought it was strange that looking people in the eyes made me uncomfortable. I did it anyway, because I knew that I was expected to, but the moment I learned about AS, that all changed. There was a shift from "I can do this" to "I can't do this" after reading about other aspies who can't do it. We all know what happens when one believes one cannot do something.


Well, sammi, apparently you have the hardware. You've got it. And I believe this would then exclude BAP people. You are not BAP. 8O

Really though, do BAPS fail or can they fail in the use of the non-vebal?

Any citations in the literature?

Thoughts anyone?


Are you saying do BAPs read body language?

I don't know. I am pretty sure that my father is BAP, and he seems to have a good handle on body language and NT ToM. He has many of the ASD cognitive traits, like excellent memory/focus/visualization skills, while also having enough of the NT social-emotional processing to get along in society. He doesn't do the social/professional power play though. Other than that, he seems to have the best of both worlds.

It's funny that whenever my mother behaves in her natural NT manner in casual social encounters, my father tells her that she is being fake.


Interesting and thanks for the reply.

I guess ascertaining whether or not he made natural eye contact, short of a direct question is speculation.. Could you ask?

My spotty eye contact has been brought to my attention. . I believe they center in around executive functioning though, i.e. one track thinking and you lose your place, so to speak. Other less loaded times I communicate well with the eyes.

I have to watch myself because most of the time this is fleeting in nature, and people have been suspicious of me.

Direct eye contact has not been on my top list of things to do.

The instinct isn't there for it. I always thought I was so wrapped up in thought that the incoming verbal is all I can handle or considered relevant.

But I can read the eyes well though.

Maybe I have some traits after all.

What you think, btb, sw, or WP?


So you can read the eyes, and you automatically do so, once you remember to look at, then actually look at, the eyes? But if you don't remind yourself to look at the eyes, then you don't automatically look at the eyes?

If we assume that looking at the eyes and reading the eyes are both NT traits, then a lot of autistic children would miss on both. But it seems that a person can develop one, the other, or both during development, just not to an NT level or with the ease of NTs.

When talking to people during important interactions, I remind myself to look at their eyes, so I do, but I don't glean any ToM info from the eyes. I am too focused on the topic of conversation and all the physical details of the environment, so no mentalizing for me without the auto-mentalizing of NTs.

During random interactions, like with the cashier at Walmart, I won't remember to look at their eyes, so I will be giving them the spacey Aspie stare.



Janissy
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25 Oct 2011, 5:48 pm

btbnnyr wrote:
If we assume that looking at the eyes and reading the eyes are both NT traits, then a lot of autistic children would miss on both. But it seems that a person can develop one, the other, or both during development, just not to an NT level or with the ease of NTs.

.


That is the assumption, that both looking in eyes and reading eyes are NT traits. That assumption cost my daughter about a 2 year delay in diagnosis. She truly likes eye contact, to a far greater degree than most NTs (and most decidedly more than most autistic people). As I wrote in an above post, her desire for eye contact far outstrips many peoples' desire to give it (so she turns to cats, often). She also seems to be getting information from this eye contact but in a very simplified form, "angry", "happy" and so on. Nevertheless she is autistic. One neuropsych found the eye contact so intense that she thought it might actually be a seizure.

It seems that for so many things that autistic people always/never do, there are exceptions. This really confounds things.



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25 Oct 2011, 5:49 pm

swbluto wrote:
Depressed people don't "burn out" of being depressed and an NT who's convinced of being autistic is undoubtedly a depressed soul, because no reasonably content NT would wish themselves to have such a malady.


Have you ever been depressed?

The only reason you don't burn out on depression is that it would take too much effort.



Last edited by Verdandi on 25 Oct 2011, 5:55 pm, edited 1 time in total.

btbnnyr
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25 Oct 2011, 5:51 pm

Janissy wrote:
btbnnyr wrote:
If we assume that looking at the eyes and reading the eyes are both NT traits, then a lot of autistic children would miss on both. But it seems that a person can develop one, the other, or both during development, just not to an NT level or with the ease of NTs.

.


That is the assumption, that both looking in eyes and reading eyes are NT traits. That assumption cost my daughter about a 2 year delay in diagnosis. She truly likes eye contact, to a far greater degree than most NTs (and most decidedly more than most autistic people). As I wrote in an above post, her desire for eye contact far outstrips many peoples' desire to give it (so she turns to cats, often). She also seems to be getting information from this eye contact but in a very simplified form, "angry", "happy" and so on. Nevertheless she is autistic. One neuropsych found the eye contact so intense that she thought it might actually be a seizure.

It seems that for so many things that autistic people always/never do, there are exceptions. This really confounds things.


I think one way to approach this confounding issue is that some autistic people have NT traits, just like some NT people have autistic traits. So your daughter is autistic with this particular NT trait, but she has many other autistic traits, making her more autistic than NT.



btbnnyr
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25 Oct 2011, 5:56 pm

My mother has the autistic trait of stimming excessively, but there is no doubt that her diagnosis is NT.

My father, who is at least BAP, if not ASD, does not stim at all.



Verdandi
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25 Oct 2011, 6:01 pm

The eye contact and body language thing that Sammicheater brings up is interesting.

I wasn't really aware of how much eye contact I made with people, but I found attempting to make eye contact was uncomfortable - even painful - and distracting. I do not make less eye contact than I did before reading WP, but what I do is make more attempts at faking it. I knew my level of eye contact was atypical as people have commented on it at times.

With body language I was simply unaware that a lot of it meant anything. I couldn't try to "read" it when I didn't know there was an "it" to read. That's not to say I didn't pick some up, but I once got into an argument with a friend over whether or not nonverbal communication really conveyed that much information (I insisted that it didn't). I didn't think there was anything there to interpret.

I have been told elsewhere that I come across as more autistic since my diagnosis, which doesn't surprise me. Given that I did stop doing a lot of things I didn't see the point of holding on to because I didn't feel the cost was worth the benefit, it's only a logical consequence.



btbnnyr
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25 Oct 2011, 6:06 pm

Verdandi wrote:
With body language I was simply unaware that a lot of it meant anything. I couldn't try to "read" it when I didn't know there was an "it" to read. That's not to say I didn't pick some up, but I once got into an argument with a friend over whether or not nonverbal communication really conveyed that much information (I insisted that it didn't). I didn't think there was anything there to interpret.


Ha, this was me too. I had no idea that people were not saying eggsacly what they meant.

I became both more and less autistic from WP.

I became more autistic, because I found out how little I knew about social interaction and how idiotic it was for me to try to apply that lack of knowledge in real-time. So now I just act like myself most of the time.

I became less autistic, because I learned more about these nuances of social interaction, like the fact that non-verbal communication exists.



Eloa
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25 Oct 2011, 6:09 pm

Eloa wrote:
SammichEater wrote:
Take eye contact, for example. Before I knew about AS, I thought it was strange that looking people in the eyes made me uncomfortable. I did it anyway, because I knew that I was expected to, but the moment I learned about AS, that all changed. There was a shift from "I can do this" to "I can't do this" after reading about other aspies who can't do it. We all know what happens when one believes one cannot do something.


With me it was different. People used to tell me that I should look to them and not on the floor.
a) I was not conscious about it, because I lifted my head higher, so I faked for me as if I would look at them, but in fact I watched the floor
b) Even when they told me I didn't got the point. I did some effort, but forgot it constantly.

After being diagnosed last year I got to know that it was an autistic trait and "it's not done when being with people". That made me get conscious about it, that I now observe if I look into people's eyes or not. I liked it more being unconscious about it, meaning not knowing that it was a trait, because now I am constantly observing myself in that, what makes me feel more unnatural of the way I just am. So now I'm trying...and even worse watch myself trying.

Edit: my edits are corrections for my english


One addition: Because I mixed up "lifting my head higher" and "looking into people's eyes" but still watching the floor, my eyelashes were closing even more. There are many photo's of me where it seems that my eyes are completely shut.



Last edited by Eloa on 25 Oct 2011, 6:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Verdandi
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25 Oct 2011, 6:43 pm

btbnnyr wrote:
Verdandi wrote:
With body language I was simply unaware that a lot of it meant anything. I couldn't try to "read" it when I didn't know there was an "it" to read. That's not to say I didn't pick some up, but I once got into an argument with a friend over whether or not nonverbal communication really conveyed that much information (I insisted that it didn't). I didn't think there was anything there to interpret.


Ha, this was me too. I had no idea that people were not saying eggsacly what they meant.

I became both more and less autistic from WP.

I became more autistic, because I found out how little I knew about social interaction and how idiotic it was for me to try to apply that lack of knowledge in real-time. So now I just act like myself most of the time.

I became less autistic, because I learned more about these nuances of social interaction, like the fact that non-verbal communication exists.


I think my most common statement on the internet in arguments has been:

"Where did you get that? I said exactly what I meant."

Of course other people would be like "How'd you get that from what I wrote?" and it was exactly what they wrote, but not what they meant.

Also fun are people who insist the implied meaning is an explicit part of what they said.



btbnnyr
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25 Oct 2011, 6:48 pm

Verdandi wrote:
btbnnyr wrote:
Verdandi wrote:
With body language I was simply unaware that a lot of it meant anything. I couldn't try to "read" it when I didn't know there was an "it" to read. That's not to say I didn't pick some up, but I once got into an argument with a friend over whether or not nonverbal communication really conveyed that much information (I insisted that it didn't). I didn't think there was anything there to interpret.


Ha, this was me too. I had no idea that people were not saying eggsacly what they meant.

I became both more and less autistic from WP.

I became more autistic, because I found out how little I knew about social interaction and how idiotic it was for me to try to apply that lack of knowledge in real-time. So now I just act like myself most of the time.

I became less autistic, because I learned more about these nuances of social interaction, like the fact that non-verbal communication exists.


I think my most common statement on the internet in arguments has been:

"Where did you get that? I said exactly what I meant."

Of course other people would be like "How'd you get that from what I wrote?" and it was exactly what they wrote, but not what they meant.

Also fun are people who insist the implied meaning is an explicit part of what they said.


It's also krapperiffic when people tell you that the supposedly implied message that they got from you was an explicit part of what you said, but you never said that.



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25 Oct 2011, 7:04 pm

btbnnyr wrote:
It's also krapperiffic when people tell you that the supposedly implied message that they got from you was an explicit part of what you said, but you never said that.


YES. Extremely so.

I'd built up a database of statements that sound like one thing but really mean another (a lot of these amount to "concern trolling"). When I first came here, I saw kfisherx using one of these phrases and asked her if she meant the other thing, which of course she did not. I love not having to use that database here. Much less work.



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25 Oct 2011, 7:22 pm

Verdandi wrote:
btbnnyr wrote:
It's also krapperiffic when people tell you that the supposedly implied message that they got from you was an explicit part of what you said, but you never said that.


YES. Extremely so.

I'd built up a database of statements that sound like one thing but really mean another (a lot of these amount to "concern trolling").


Did you actually build a ... "database" on your computer? (Like a text file or something?) If so, I wanna a copy. :D



Verdandi
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25 Oct 2011, 7:41 pm

swbluto wrote:
Verdandi wrote:
btbnnyr wrote:
It's also krapperiffic when people tell you that the supposedly implied message that they got from you was an explicit part of what you said, but you never said that.


YES. Extremely so.

I'd built up a database of statements that sound like one thing but really mean another (a lot of these amount to "concern trolling").


Did you actually build a ... "database" on your computer? (Like a text file or something?) If so, I wanna a copy. :D


No, in my brain.

I've been building a word/phrase/response database in my brain since I was... earliest I remember using it was four or five?



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25 Oct 2011, 7:41 pm

swbluto wrote:
Verdandi wrote:
btbnnyr wrote:
It's also krapperiffic when people tell you that the supposedly implied message that they got from you was an explicit part of what you said, but you never said that.


YES. Extremely so.

I'd built up a database of statements that sound like one thing but really mean another (a lot of these amount to "concern trolling").


Did you actually build a ... "database" on your computer? (Like a text file or something?) If so, I wanna a copy. :D


A technical database actually isn't a text file, it's it's own file type. Of course, he could be using the term loosely.