My life is a series of misunderstandings

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dianthus
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13 Dec 2011, 9:26 pm

Actually what I was going to say is that my life is a series of humiliations. But I guess most if not all of those of those originate from misunderstandings.

For years I've had all these unanswered questions about the way things happen with other people. Like why do people get mad at me and I never really know why? Why do they get these crazy ideas about what they think I'm doing? How can a whole group of people get an idea about me that is totally wrong, and yet they all believe it and think they are right and won't hear any other possibility?

Why do people just seem to see something about me, when they don't even know me, and they automatically treat me different? Just like I am marked in some way I don't even know about.

Why do I seem to always have a different idea about what is going on than other people do? And I just have to gradually figure it out, because no one tells me, they just assume that I know.

It's been a lot of different situations, all different kinds of scenarios with people and some are too embarrassing to even mention. Really awful, humiliating experiences. I replay a lot of them in my mind still trying to figure it out.

For the first time in my life, I feel like maybe I have an answer to all the whys: Asperger's. It is the simplest explanation for why I am so clueless and all these bizarre misunderstandings happen to me.

I don't want to make any assumptions about whether or not this is really the answer so I am really trying to learn as much as I can about it and study it objectively. I am still looking for other possible explanations.

I am just wondering, does knowing the cause of the misunderstandings help anything? Does it make some of the misunderstandings go away?

I don't feel like there is even one person in the world who really gets me or knows me at all, and that is the real loneliness. It would not matter if I am surrounded by people, if none of them ever understand me.



cinbad
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13 Dec 2011, 9:47 pm

Is it so hard to explain yourself? I find the same thing with someone I care about. It hurts to think they see me as something other than as simple as I really am.


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Lucywlf
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13 Dec 2011, 10:05 pm

I can definitely relate.

Some of the worst experiences of my life have happened because of what you describe here. I've been called selfish, stupid, and bad by people for reasons that were way beyond my comprehension and nobody would explain. People just expected me to "know better"



fraac
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13 Dec 2011, 10:10 pm

Quote:
For the first time in my life, I feel like maybe I have an answer to all the whys: Asperger's. It is the simplest explanation for why I am so clueless and all these bizarre misunderstandings happen to me.


Does that explain why people think you're something you aren't? That means you don't know yourself. You're a crazy person. Is that true?



dianthus
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13 Dec 2011, 10:11 pm

cinbad wrote:
Is it so hard to explain yourself? I find the same thing with someone I care about. It hurts to think they see me as something other than as simple as I really am.


What do you mean? Explain myself in what way? Your post doesn't make any sense to me.



btbnnyr
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13 Dec 2011, 10:13 pm

My life is also a series of misunderstandings and humiliations that I have now habituated myself to experience with metamucillian and fiberconic regularity.

I think that knowing the cause of the misunderstandings does help to alleviate or prevent them. There is often an identifiable pattern to the misunderstandings. For example, you expressing your sentiments on a topic not enough or too much, compared to the neurotypical standard, which seems to be a fairly narrow range of behaviors, perhaps even restricted and repetitive. The possibilities are endless of deviations from the accepted norm.

Anyway, asking for clarification also seems to help. If someone says something, I will repeat it in the way that I interpreted it, and if that's not what they meant, then they have a chance to correct me. If I say something, and I am not sure what someone else interpreted, then I will ask them what they thought I meant, and if they repeat back something other than what I meant, then I have a chance to correct them.



cinbad
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13 Dec 2011, 10:25 pm

usually if I am misunderstood, I try to exlain what I meant by what I said. But in a different way.


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dianthus
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13 Dec 2011, 10:33 pm

cinbad wrote:
usually if I am misunderstood, I try to exlain what I meant by what I said. But in a different way.


It is usually not that kind of misunderstanding. It's not about any particular thing I have said. Or if it is, I never know what it is that I said. It's more like people infer things about my behavior. Or vice versa, I don't infer things about the way other people are acting, that I guess they expect me to know.

But explaining anything has never done a bit of good because once people have their minds made up, they won't hear anything else.



dianthus
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13 Dec 2011, 10:36 pm

fraac wrote:
Quote:
For the first time in my life, I feel like maybe I have an answer to all the whys: Asperger's. It is the simplest explanation for why I am so clueless and all these bizarre misunderstandings happen to me.


Does that explain why people think you're something you aren't? That means you don't know yourself. You're a crazy person. Is that true?


What are you getting at? Are you trying to say that other people can know my own intentions, and I don't?



btbnnyr
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13 Dec 2011, 10:43 pm

dianthus wrote:
cinbad wrote:
usually if I am misunderstood, I try to exlain what I meant by what I said. But in a different way.


It is usually not that kind of misunderstanding. It's not about any particular thing I have said. Or if it is, I never know what it is that I said. It's more like people infer things about my behavior. Or vice versa, I don't infer things about the way other people are acting, that I guess they expect me to know.

But explaining anything has never done a bit of good because once people have their minds made up, they won't hear anything else.


I call this the Project-O-Matic 3000 - people inferring things from your behavior based on what would be going through their minds if they behaved that way, except that your mind doesn't work their way and what would be going through their minds is not going through your mind and possibly has never done so in your entire life. Or rather, this is how it is for me.

I just ask directly now what people think that I am thinking, and I expect a direct response from them.

Or I might tell someone what my behaviors actually mean. Like "If I happen to look distracted while talking to you or listening to you talk, it does not mean that I am uninterested in our interaction. That is just my natural look, and I can't remember to modulate it into something else all of the time. If I kept thinking about modulating my facial expressions, then I wouldn't even be able to have an interaction due to lack of brain resources to do both at the same time. You can do both at the same time, because one of these - the modulating of the facial expressions to the accepted norm - is automatic for you. I don't have that in my brain."



fraac
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13 Dec 2011, 10:45 pm

dianthus wrote:
fraac wrote:
Quote:
For the first time in my life, I feel like maybe I have an answer to all the whys: Asperger's. It is the simplest explanation for why I am so clueless and all these bizarre misunderstandings happen to me.


Does that explain why people think you're something you aren't? That means you don't know yourself. You're a crazy person. Is that true?


What are you getting at? Are you trying to say that other people can know my own intentions, and I don't?


That seems to be what you're saying.



dianthus
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13 Dec 2011, 10:52 pm

fraac wrote:
That seems to be what you're saying.


Can you just make your point and stop playing these word games? What exactly are you trying to say?



fraac
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13 Dec 2011, 11:04 pm

How can Aspergers be the reason that other people have misunderstandings of you? They don't have it. It can only be the reason you have misunderstandings. Hence I think your solution doesn't work.



dianthus
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13 Dec 2011, 11:09 pm

fraac wrote:
How can Aspergers be the reason that other people have misunderstandings of you? They don't have it. It can only be the reason you have misunderstandings. Hence I think your solution doesn't work.


Why didn't you just say that to start with?

Does anyone else agree with this? Does having AS mean you only have misunderstandings of other people, but other people cannot misunderstand you?



fraac
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13 Dec 2011, 11:12 pm

That directly conflicts with your personal experience. If it's true you must be insane.



dianthus
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13 Dec 2011, 11:18 pm

fraac wrote:
That directly conflicts with your personal experience. If it's true you must be insane.


What exactly conflicts with my personal experience? What aspect of my personal experience are you referring to, and what are you saying conflicts with it?