EsotericResearch wrote:
Has anyone here found that after a while - maybe in their late 20s, late 30s, 40s that you stop being able to have many NT friends or try to humor them through simple disclosure - 'I have autism', and now are just unable to bridge the communication gap? Things like them 'detecting emotion'. 'Did I upset you'. When in fact you are not upset but there is possibly a sensory stimulus that is uncomfortable at the moment.
'I feel' instead of saying what they actually mean. 'You need to work through'. 'As a woman we all have body issues'. Saying things like issues, instead of stating what it is that someone means. How can someone 'self esteem' be the problem and not an external and pragmatic reason. 'You need to work through your anxiety' when you do not feel any anxiety. Asking for advice and getting "do what feels right" when you cannot conceptualize "feels right". Being told "go with your gut". When you do not have instinctive reactions, but just the hallucinations created by a colorblind person who tries so hard and thinks he's able to see something he thinks is red.
These are individuals, close friends who know that you are autistic and who have done the reading. Yet there is still a sort of huge gulf and it becomes impossible to communicate honestly. Does anyone have suggestions for dealing with this situation?
i really wish i could say that i do have some helpful suggestion, but if i did then probably i would have more friends than the single one that i do have (--who himself has many spectrum traits). everyone else sort of....disappeared over the years.
i guess the best i can offer is that i feel your pain. and possibly that--at least this has been the case for me--the more time that has gone by, the more i begin to wonder if i'm actually better off without them. it's hard to miss being so fundamentally misunderstood by people who are supposedly "close" to you. being misunderstood by strangers from a distance is less painful.
24 Mar 2014, 9:45 pm
