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SharonB
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16 Aug 2021, 10:01 am

I assumed my experience of life was normal and that other people somehow coped or controlled things better than I did. Albeit I remember key times I noticed others weren't behaving like me (or I wasn't behaving like them). I thought it was a reasonable variance. Self-delusion?

I help strangers when I can. It nearly breaks my heart when I don't. I thought most people felt this way - apparently not. On the other hand, the help I provide friends is research and information and I was embarrassed that apparently I was supposed to provide meals.



Joe90
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16 Aug 2021, 11:52 am

When I was a teenager I thought it was normal not to go out to parties and getting drunk/taking drugs behind their parents' backs, and sitting in your room every weekend was normal. I just seemed to have a lot of innocence up until I was 20, when I realised that I should have been doing rebellious things from the age of 14 onwards.


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Kimmi1009
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16 Aug 2021, 1:03 pm

That’s me. I also think I felt odd virtually at every social interaction (because for me, socializing is about sharing intellectual ideas, because WHAT ELSE COULD be the reason to socialize?!) and therefore I gravitated to other “odds” because I feel sorry for them. Because I understand them . I had a long series of careers with a tendency to quit with no notice, due to ASD overload- meltdown. I ghosted people who teased me, or were “cruel” without explanation. But folks who were like me were “safe.” I worked as a Sped Teacher for years and loved my ASD students because they were no BS logical all the time. That’s my zone. I didn’t need to be taught how to ABA because if, like me, you have to rely on only words and visuals of impending emotional outbursts from others, NT’s included, from birth because I CAN’T UNDERSTAND OTHERS’ EMOTIONS. Unless you explain it verbally and I can intellectualize and memorize. Which isn’t the same as understanding either how you feel or why you feel it. So noticing verbal (not tone) signals and physical symptoms was a life strategy developed early. For example, I have a normie friend. She is tiny, shorter than average. I have a verbal habit of saying others are little when referring to others ( like that “little guy who lives in Florida.), regardless of stature. Just colloquially. But she hates that, I discovered after like, the third time I called someone a little girl. Duh! So then, I had to memorize not doing it around her anymore and emphasize that I don’t think she is “little” meaning less than. And I consider her a freaking LION and would never belittle her. See how much effort that is? Sheesh. Because I’m mind blind, I can love her as a friend and never once think about her stature, because my focus is always on everyone’s brain and personality. That’s a lot of mental extra work because of my freaking social blindness.



ToughDiamond
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16 Aug 2021, 1:15 pm

My favourite definition of normal is:

"An adjective used by boring people to make themselves feel better."

https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=normal



Mona Pereth
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17 Aug 2021, 11:37 am

Kimmi1009 wrote:
That’s me. I also think I felt odd virtually at every social interaction (because for me, socializing is about sharing intellectual ideas, because WHAT ELSE COULD be the reason to socialize?!)

That's how I tend to feel also, which is why I've always sought out intellectually-oriented people who shared my interests. I was startled and annoyed to discover that even those people often seemed to prefer what seemed to me to be mindless meandering chitchat.

I also remember being greatly annoyed, as a child, to discover that most people seemed to think that the main purpose of conversation was "either to butter someone up or to tear someone down," as I remember putting it at the time.


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League_Girl
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17 Aug 2021, 12:44 pm

I thought everyone had violent thoughts and had fantasies about doing things to get rid of people who upset you and the only reason why no one acted on them was because of laws and no one wants to go to jail for it. So basically I thought everyone was a sociopath and a sociopath was someone who acts on their thoughts.

I thought everyone only had sex to have kids, not having sex to make love. So I was confused about how babies can be unplanned and I thought teens wanted to be moms so they were having sex to get pregnant.

When I was 6 and 7, I thought it was normal to go to school and do your ABCs and copy words from a board and do subtraction and addition and go on tons of field trips to places and go to play grounds a lot and have a teacher read a picture book to you and doing toy time. I also thought my teacher assigned certain rules to each student and each student had their own special rule that had a rule that didn't apply to them so I always shrieked and did other inappropriate behavior at school because I thought it was normal behavior there.

I assumed no one had control over their sneezes and farts and burps so I couldn't understand why people would call these things rude when these are normal part of your body and they do it on its own without your consent and get mad at you whenever you would fart. I even lost recess for it too once because a big loud fart came out of me and I laughed out of embarrassment. I had no idea you could hold these things in and I thought it was normal to wet yourself when you laugh too hard.

I assumed everyone got obsessive but kept it to themselves.


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StrayCat81
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17 Aug 2021, 5:30 pm

League_Girl wrote:
I thought everyone had violent thoughts and had fantasies about doing things to get rid of people who upset you and the only reason why no one acted on them was because of laws and no one wants to go to jail for it.

Wait, how do you know they don't have them? Humans lie a lot... :3



naturalplastic
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17 Aug 2021, 5:53 pm

League_Girl wrote:
I thought everyone had violent thoughts and had fantasies about doing things to get rid of people who upset you and the only reason why no one acted on them was because of laws and no one wants to go to jail for it. So basically I thought everyone was a sociopath and a sociopath was someone who acts on their thoughts.

I thought everyone only had sex to have kids, not having sex to make love. So I was confused about how babies can be unplanned and I thought teens wanted to be moms so they were having sex to get pregnant.

When I was 6 and 7, I thought it was normal to go to school and do your ABCs and copy words from a board and do subtraction and addition and go on tons of field trips to places and go to play grounds a lot and have a teacher read a picture book to you and doing toy time. I also thought my teacher assigned certain rules to each student and each student had their own special rule that had a rule that didn't apply to them so I always shrieked and did other inappropriate behavior at school because I thought it was normal behavior there.

I assumed no one had control over their sneezes and farts and burps so I couldn't understand why people would call these things rude when these are normal part of your body and they do it on its own without your consent and get mad at you whenever you would fart. I even lost recess for it too once because a big loud fart came out of me and I laughed out of embarrassment. I had no idea you could hold these things in and I thought it was normal to wet yourself when you laugh too hard.

I assumed everyone got obsessive but kept it to themselves.


The first thing IS rather normal of people.

The second thing seems to be a common thing among children...being surprised to learn the folks "sometimes have sex when they DONT wanna have babies? Whats THAT about???"

The third thing...Im a bit confused as to what you're talking about about school rules.

My childhood self, and probably many small kids, are shocked to learn that you're expected to CONTROL things like farts, burps. In some culture the guest shows appreciation for the host providing a great meal, by ...lying back and sending forth a loud belch! Why cant we be like that? Lol!

The last thing. Im still trying to suss that out. About how obsessed other folks get with things.
:lol:



Joe90
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17 Aug 2021, 6:37 pm

I learnt that it is inappropriate to fart in class when I was about 6, which apparently is average I think. I used to volunteer at a nursery for children age 3-5 and they often 'let off' without a reaction from themselves or each other. Also they'd pick their nose not realising how gross it was.

I think it's inappropriate to burp or fart in public because it's natural for most humans to see humour in it, and because every burp and fart has a different sound/smell, it can be more distracting to others and can gross some people out. Although coughs and sneezes sound different from human to human, most of the time each human produces the same sounding cough or sneeze each time so it's less funny. One person's farts, however, can sound differently each time they fart, and be unpredictable. Same with burps. So letting out burps and farts loudly in public can say a lot about one's personality.


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StrayCat81
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17 Aug 2021, 6:41 pm

naturalplastic wrote:
The second thing seems to be a common thing among children...being surprised to learn the folks "sometimes have sex when they DONT wanna have babies? Whats THAT about???"

Heh, true. But when I've learned that orgasms are fun, I got different conundrum that puzzles me to this day. Why people obsess about finding others for it, when doing it with yourself is much easier and almost always better? :3



ToughDiamond
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17 Aug 2021, 10:03 pm

naturalplastic wrote:
My childhood self, and probably many small kids, are shocked to learn that you're expected to CONTROL things like farts, burps.

Farting can't truly be controlled IMO, only delayed, and there's a limit to the feasible delay time. It's often possible to acquire the necessary skill to mute the sound, but I'd have thought an audible stink warning would be taken as the height of courtesy. In some ways humans have drifted a long way from common sense.



Earthbound_Alien
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18 Aug 2021, 4:29 am

Joe90 wrote:
I learnt that it is inappropriate to fart in class when I was about 6, which apparently is average I think.


'Let your wind go where'er you be, for the holding of a fart was the death of me' was an epitaph my mum once read on a gravestone.

You just reminded me of it.

*ahem*



League_Girl
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18 Aug 2021, 2:19 pm

StrayCat81 wrote:
League_Girl wrote:
I thought everyone had violent thoughts and had fantasies about doing things to get rid of people who upset you and the only reason why no one acted on them was because of laws and no one wants to go to jail for it.

Wait, how do you know they don't have them? Humans lie a lot... :3


My therapist told me it wasn't normal and lot of people didn't have them. Now that I am an adult and on my own, my violent thoughts are pretty much gone so I guess he is right and I only had violent thoughts because I was frustrated.


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League_Girl
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18 Aug 2021, 2:29 pm

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The third thing...Im a bit confused as to what you're talking about about school rules.


Because I was in a self contained classroom where rules were inconsistent because rules didn't always apply to a certain student. That was because each of us had a disability and our own scale and I wasn't the only kid in that class that was mimicking other students so it reinforced it in me. Also they didn't give us normal school work regular kids were learning at our age so I didn't know what I was missing out on at school.

One boy was allowed his own basketball and didn't have to share and he was allowed to shout the number 9 every time we did counting and the teacher would tell is "Don't do what Sammer is doing."

There was another boy who was allowed to run in the class exposing his penis to us and the teacher would always give him attention for it and then the rest of us started doing what he was doing so we can get the same attention and the teacher finally told us to no do what Joey does.

So I thought this was our teacher assigning special rules to each student and we each had our ability to have a rule we can each break and get away with while that rule applies to everyone else in class. So I would always test rules at school to see what special rule I had. To be fair lot of kids test their limits but I was doing this to figure out the rules and because I was confused. My mom blamed this on my issues about rules and me having troubles figuring our right from wrong if kids didn't set good examples for me about what are the rules and they always had to be enforced so I knew what the rules were. This is also what pushed me for an autism diagnoses in 6th grade.


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League_Girl
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18 Aug 2021, 2:30 pm

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The second thing seems to be a common thing among children...being surprised to learn the folks "sometimes have sex when they DONT wanna have babies? Whats THAT about???"


I was a teenager, pretty old to have this thought. :roll:


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naturalplastic
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18 Aug 2021, 3:02 pm

League_Girl wrote:
Quote:
The third thing...Im a bit confused as to what you're talking about about school rules.


Because I was in a self contained classroom where rules were inconsistent because rules didn't always apply to a certain student. That was because each of us had a disability and our own scale and I wasn't the only kid in that class that was mimicking other students so it reinforced it in me. Also they didn't give us normal school work regular kids were learning at our age so I didn't know what I was missing out on at school.

One boy was allowed his own basketball and didn't have to share and he was allowed to shout the number 9 every time we did counting and the teacher would tell is "Don't do what Sammer is doing."

There was another boy who was allowed to run in the class exposing his penis to us and the teacher would always give him attention for it and then the rest of us started doing what he was doing so we can get the same attention and the teacher finally told us to no do what Joey does.

So I thought this was our teacher assigning special rules to each student and we each had our ability to have a rule we can each break and get away with while that rule applies to everyone else in class. So I would always test rules at school to see what special rule I had. To be fair lot of kids test their limits but I was doing this to figure out the rules and because I was confused. My mom blamed this on my issues about rules and me having troubles figuring our right from wrong if kids didn't set good examples for me about what are the rules and they always had to be enforced so I knew what the rules were. This is also what pushed me for an autism diagnoses in 6th grade.


But your autism diagnosis was AFTER you were in this class? Why were put in a special class if you didnt yet have a autism diagnosis?