I understand that I don't understand

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The most important realization (so far) in discovering my place on the spectrum is that at least when it comes to navigating the human world, I now understand that I don't understand.

An example was an incident in high school (I may have already told this - sorry for the repeat). I came to school one day and nobody was in class. It was weird, Some lower class-men were there, but just about everybody was missing. I wondered what was going on, but didn't ask. I later walked by the gymnasium and it was full of all the "missing" people. Huh? Why were they there and I'm wandering around out here? Well it turns out they were taking their SATs. The thing is I had no clue what SATs were. The whole concept of taking your SATs, applying to college, planning a future - that whole "normal" trajectory of a high school student did not exist in my mind. I literally mean did not exist. It wasn't something contemplated and rejected. I hadn't decided against college or anything like that. The entire process was a void in my understanding of what "normal" students do. The teachers must have really wondered what the hell because I was alternately really really smart then really really dumb. Grades from A's to F's on my report cards.

It's really quite shocking as I work through memories and see these things over and over again. I am thunderstruck at how, even now, I am utterly clueless regarding the standard processes of the social structures in which I live.

But I understand that I don't understand. It's a start, I guess.

Yes it's a milestone, conscious incompetence!

Next stop is conscious competence.

Can an asperger ever achieve unconscious competence without drugs or meditation? Science has no answer!

[quote="wavefreak58"] The whole concept of taking your SATs, applying to college, planning a future - that whole "normal" trajectory of a high school student did not exist in my mind. I literally mean did not exist. It wasn't something contemplated and rejected. I hadn't decided against college or anything like that. The entire process was a void in my understanding of what "normal" students do. quote]

I didn't know my husband when he was at school but I imagine he would have been much the same as you.
he has only recently been diagnosed. he never thinks about anything to do with "future planning" - career, holidays, our children's education, housing etc. he also has no recall of what he wanted to do when he left school. In fact he has very limited recall of his childhood apart from living a fairly regimented / structured lifestyle.
Now, my husband and I are coming to terms with the concept that we do not understand things in the same way. It certainly does help to acknowledge this realisation. My husband is mid 40's and only learning about all of this now.

I have alot of social que theory but I'm still real iffy on the practice.

Simple things like noticing when someone is angry. I take any agitation, frustration, moodiness, etc... and immediately ask if that person is mad at me. I logically know it could be any number of 'negative' emotions going on but I always ask the same stupid question anyway. Actually, I don't ask the question out loud anymore... I let things play out until my name is actually brought into it. But I do still think it very loudly and feel incredibly uncomfortable. I suppose learning to shut up is the best tool I have mastered.

Apparently, missing these things makes one dumb. Apparently, one can be so smart that they are stupid.

What's often shocking to me in that regard, is that when I look back, and when I hear other people talk about how they were at certain ages, I'm often stunned to realize how large the gaps in my understanding were, and how deeply they ran. (I'm sure they still do, I'm just unaware of what the current ones are, naturally.)

I can't think of any really good examples, aside from the fact that object permanence has little permanence to the concept for me, and I learned it quite late to begin with (and developed an entire way of dealing with the world that allowed for its absence). But like, even now having the idea that things are still there when I can't see them, is kind of... well first off it's shaky, and requires thought (but still exists at that point), and then if my brain is taken up by too much else, then it's just not there.

That example at least shows how deep and important and basic some of the skills I was (or doubtless continue to be) missing can be. Sure, I'm missing a bunch of high-level social skills. But I also have all these massive gaps in my cognition that I keep discovering one by one. I'll often discover them by seeing other people describing having them, at ages when I clearly didn't have them. Or worse, when other people treat me like a liar because "everyone knows ________" and "if that were true, why didn't you just _________?" and then I eventually figure out some skill I am or was expected to have at a certain age, and it's always something I didn't have, or had only in a really shaky manner.

I've also noticed that when I was a teenager, I either didn't have certain skills, or just had some of those skills coming into being for the first time. And the skills in question were ones that babies and toddlers know without even trying. And it's so weird to climb painstakingly to the top of a mountain, only to find that to everyone else it was a gently sloped hill that they climbed in infancy without even trying.

Oddly enough, the lack of some of those skills was taken as "maturity" by some people when I was at the age most people have them (because you're supposed to "outgrow" the most obvious uses of them) but yet it was actually a pretty long developmental delay. I've heard of things like that happening often to people who are delayed in certain areas.

Sorry for the lack of detailed examples, but it's outright weird staring at these enormous gaps in my development, gaps that even most autistic people I know don't appear to have, and yet knowing those gaps are invisible to many other people. They're invisible because most people cannot imagine having certain skills while lacking ones they consider so "basic", or sometimes because people just cannot imagine being missing skills that "everybody" is born with or acquires very early in life. (Although to others they're visible, but only because they see me as lacking pretty much all skills.)

In all these cases, the actual full picture of my skills and the structures they form, is missing. I see it as sort of... most people have a structure made of "basic" skills holding up "more difficult" skills. Whereas my skills have all these gigantic gaps throughout both the lower and higher level structures, and the skills I do have are either propped up precariously, or built on top of skills that only someone like me would have but that most people wouldn't. I'd describe them in more detail if I could but then I'd lose the ability to describe what I'm describing already.

But... yeah. I have a lot of ongoing experiences where I go "How do you expect me to know that!?!?" And then I find out that whatever "that" is, people are born knowing it or acquire the knowledge in infancy back before they can even remember lt. And I get these responses from enough online autistic people to know that my delays in this area are far from universal in autistic people, but still seem to be tied to my particular expression of autism.

Again, sorry for the lack of detail. In some cases, I really didn't have a way of remembering (at the time of writing this, due to there being no particular memory-trigger attached, among other reasons). In other cases, I do remember but didn't feel comfortable going into the details, either because of embarrassment or because of not wanting to be asked certain questions and have to answer. Suffice to say there are a lot of delays like this, and it's obviously not a universal autistic thing but it seems tied into the things that get me called autistic. And it seems to explain a lot of the ways that I have enormous trouble doing or understanding things, including especially very "basic" things.

I hope that relates in some way to your topic. It seemed to be triggered by your topic anyway.

Oh man. I had the exact same experience in high school with SATs. My parents were completely unaware of college and how to support me and I just simply missed all of the hoopla. I am going back through my life now too in a similar way. My shrink is having to talk me down from some of this stuff because it is pissing me off for some reason...

I joined the military. I then had kids and did not go to college until I was in my 30s as well. I never finished either though my reason for not finishing is more about opportunity elsewhere then my inability to finish I think. I was riding the high-tech boom wave in the early 90s and had the chance to go take a very cool position at an up and coming technology company but that position would take 60 or more hours a week. I knew that the time to get rich was happening and so I jumped. That positition led me to great wealth and my current career so I do not regret that decision. I have gone back to school for classes here and there over the years and it is a huge mind screw as the kids in college now are younger than my own (and also pretty stupid in my mind) I haven't made up my mind yet that I want to go back. It is expensive and not really needed so haven't yet come up with the ROI. Still since Intel would pay for it, I may do it after I finish my football career.