Is there a NT that keeps pointing out how different you are?

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Is there an NT somewhere (Like, say, online) who seems to have nothing better to do than to point out all of your differences?

I know such a person and it annoys me to the extreme. I don't freaking care if my friends are "different" from me and I in fact entirely expect that given that I haven't found kin anywhere except on Wrong Planet, but this one person I know acts as if it's some kind of cardinal sin. What gives? Why the hell are they so focused on our differences?

This person claims I lack an instinctive revulsion to not "being myself", whatever "being myself" means.

Nobody points out my differences, but they do point out my quirks.

Apparently I ''look over people's shoulders'' all the time (meaning I join in the nearest conversation to me), and one person noticed this and she was probably waiting for me to do it again so that she could point it out to me in an inappropriate way. So when the stupid foolish me did join in a conversation, she yelled, ''I wasn't speaking to you!'' then explained afterwards why she said that to me and that I ''have a bad habit'' of jumping into conversations all the time. I should have yelled, ''well YOU have a bad habit of attacking people when they're only trying to be friendly!'' But I didn't say that. Instead I burst out crying.

I'm surprised nobody's pointed out that I have a bad habit of showing weakness!

My "lack of feeling" has been pointed out to me a few times, mostly in an uppity fashion, like I'm someone to be observed and commented upon. (How cold is that?) I often sense there's a delay between what I feel and how/when it surfaces that confuses others.

At this point in my life, I like myself and know that others like me as well - because they've said so. When someone's being a jerk, I no longer waste much time on them. I know it's not always easy to up and leave a situation and you might have friends in common, but I'd put some psychic distance between myself and the Critic if I can.

Maybe this annoying person can't stand it when someone else is not conforming to whatever he thinks is the One True Way, i.e. his way.

Heck yeah...pisses me off...it's thankfully quite rare that it happens, I mostly seem to get it from extreme extroverts and narcissists. It did happen in the recent past with a former boss who was totally that type of personality - despite my being in an analytical job, she would nitpick every manifestation of my behaviour that didn't jive with her ultra-NT standards (sometimes even lying and inventing transgressions just to torment me). Thankfully I no longer work there, neither does she, a downsizing occurred which axed both of us.

Frequent comments were "no, no, don't say X, because it MIGHT be perceived as you trying to say Y. Think about it from the other person's point of view." Well, I thought, if that other person wants to make a certain assumption, I'm helpless to prevent them from doing so; and sometimes a cigar is just a cigar. This was really paranoid criticism of my tendency towards literal thinking in interpersonal settings. Also, she tried to fundamentally alter my thought process to me detriment, by giving me "advice" such as "don't try to memorize your mistakes and extrapolate the correct behaviour to the next situation, just be more fluid and learn from it, use your spontaneous judgement, you're making things harder for yourself than they need to be."

Such people are infuriating, they think that they're entitled to live in a world w/o exposure to 'undesireables' such as people who think differently from them. If it wasn't for laws and history lessons, they'd probably try to get me and my kind sent off to internment camps or something.

Yep, pretty much my whole family, and some of my friends, and uh...everyone. Oh well.

What really irks me is when someone hardly knows me and starts saying how "unusual" or "atypical" I am...gawd, don't they have any restraint?

~Kate

I wrote in another thread that people do this to me all the time, but I am still confused about why they do it. I could care less if they think I am different or weird, but why do they make it such a big deal and point it out so much? I thought it would be socially unacceptable to tell people how weird they are, but I guess it's not? Do NTs do this to each other? Wait, duh, of course not, because they are not weird to each other, duh. So maybe it IS socially acceptable to point this out to people who are felt to be really different, maybe in the hopes that the weird person will change to conform? I don't know. I have no clue at all.

A lot of NT people are floating through life with little self-reflection (or at least when they're young). All of their natural reactions are valid in the world that they exist in, so they can't really conceive of something outside of that. They are like fish who don't know that they're in water because they've always been in water.

If they are hurt and cry, it is recognized for what it is. If they are joking, it is understood. Of they are happy, others can tell. If they are spacing-out it's because they are high. And if they look guilty it's because they did something wrong. No need to use systematic analysis in order to figure out human interactions -- just "go with the flow, just be yourself, and things will pretty likely turn out ok," which, for them, will usually be true.

So, when they see someone behaving in ways that are outside their norm it is literally beyond their comprehension. They never conceived of a such a thing and if such a thought did spontaneously arise in their brain they'd dismiss it for being frightening, ugly, and unnecessary. And, from a lack of ever having had a reason to expand their Theory of Mind they can only guess that the behavior is a put-on (manipulation), or some pathological state of mind in which makes sense to them if they reverse-engineer their own motivations (which doesn't work because the model is wrong).

So, they say, "be yourself," but what that really means is, "be like me. Be like what I know and understand."

It's egocentric, but impossible to explain, because when someone is in the majority (the group that does not get a label) they are by definition the center of the universe.

Some people tend to get better about that as they get older, I think. Their life experience expands their Theory of Mind to more and more dissimilar people. But some other people don't.

^^^Apple_In_My_Eye, this completely makes sense. It's why truly "being yourself" doesn't work, because people only view the concept of "yourself" as a variation of their own behaviours. It took me years to come to a similar conclusion about most people.

Two years ago around the end of last month, I told my mum that I was going to be myself from now on. She said, "I can't wait to see what that's going to look like." I guess that what she was trying to say was, "Are you going to be like your same sex peers from now on?" The week that I stayed over in hopes of mending the bond between my parents and I, my mum didn't seem too thrilled to see me being myself again. She wasn't thrilled, because I didn't dress or wear my hair like the average young woman.

I'd hate to break it to you mum, but being myself means doing the things that I did before the first Austin Powers movie was in theaters, in 1997. It doesn't mean being like everybody else my age who has a vagina. I'm still doing those things right now, even two years later and that's what makes me happy.

Getting me to live for today in the present is like pulling my teeth out, because I've burned myself out doing just that in 2007, 2008 and early 2009. The only thing that kept me going were those energy drinks. Did I just say that? Now you know what kept me alert and happy as a punk. You know my secret, mum. Oh, no!

My father

Funnily enough, he has loads of AS traits himself and he also has OCD.

Luckily, I do not have anyone telling me that. It's understood that I'm different. I'm upfront about it to people and I can jokingly say I'm a little bit nuts. But it doesn't become a topic of conversation usually, except in jest.

If I did have someone constantly bringing that up to me (especially in the form of criticism), it would get old quickly. I'd probably not remain friends with them if they kept up the behavior. I've got enough to worry about in my life without considering how strange or atypical I am.

Also, I agree with pretty much everything Apple_in_my_Eye wrote. It's pretty spot on, in my opinion.