I am a piece of s**t

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I think the main problem is that I am very confident in what is right. I don't insist on being right for the sake of being right. I insist that logic is correct. I insist that the laws of physics and the laws of the universe are correct. If I am wrong, I have no problem admitting I am wrong and changing my views because I don't have an emotional need to be right just for the emotional sake of feeling right. That is not an insecurity that I have. I know that it's real and that other people have it, I respect and understand that. It's just not an insecurity that I have. To me, what makes sense is logic, when things are right according to the laws of the universe. So I end up being right in many things because I understand logic and that is the predominate mode in which I understand things. I am also an analytical savant. So I am able to see things very deeply and very clearly.

But most people, especially most nt people that I have encountered, are not that way. The have very high emotional and social investments to what they think, believe, and feel. Because logic is more important to me than any emotional or social connection, I don't have a high social or emotional investment in what I say, think, or believe. If you show me that logically I am incorrect, I will change my thinking and beliefs and views immediately because logic and actual real truth are what make sense to me.

So here is what happens every time. I will use the specific example that happened to me on Monday to illustrate the point. I won't go into all the details because they are not important. It's the concept that matters. So on Monday, someone did something that was very disrespectful and hurtful to me. I realize that the person did not know that they had hurt me. I am convinced that it did not even hit their radar. I understand that. But whether or not they intentionally did something to hurt me doesn't matter, it was still hurtful and disrespectful even if they did not mean it or even if they did not realize it even happened. Now from years of past personal experience, I knew that confronting them about it, even very politely mentioning it to them, would be utterly pointless and that they would just dismiss me, invalidate me, and hurt me more. So I just left. But I was very hurt.

So I told one of my family members whom I am close to because I just wanted to express that I was hurt. This family member, as he often does, then proceeded to yell at me and discipline me for "blaming other people for everything" and for, as he erroneously believes, "me thinking that anything and everything anybody does or says to me is a personal attack." Often times, when other people hurt me or disrespect me or bully me, he will tell me that I must have done something to deserve it because there is no possible way that anyone would ever bully me or disrespect me unless I did something to deserve it. So if I am hurt or bullied or disrespected, it is always 100% of the time automatically my fault. He then told me that I am always instigating trouble.

So I tried to tell him that that isn't actually true. I don't instigate trouble. If I did, I would happily admit because I have no emotional need to look good or to appear to be a better person than I am. I have a deep spiritual and emotional need to BE good, not to LOOK good. I believe in fairness and actual righteousness, not self righteousness. These are just deep convictions that are ingrained in me and have been since very early childhood. It's just part of my nature and my design. I don't take pride in that, I just recognize it and am very grateful for it.

But I also understand that many people are not that way. Their need is to look good, to always appear righteous even if they are not. And because they have no theory of mind, they assume, that I also need to appear righteous even if I might not be. So they viciously accuse me of doing just that. What they don't realize is that I literally spend hours and hours analyzing and fully vetting every situation I am in because it is so important for me to make sure that I have not done something wrong or unfair or hurt someone else. I need to know that I have done things correctly and that what I understand and feel about each situation is actually correct and inline with the laws of logic and nature and the universe. This is important to me because if my understanding and thinking and actions and even feelings don't match actual reality, then nothing makes any sense. For me, it is extremely important for everything to actually be correct as far as reality goes. I have two therapists, a psychologist and a neuropsychologist and a counselor.

My counselor is also one of my best friends, he and his entire family are all Autistic. He is also a psychologist. He is also extremely analytical, extremely intelligent, and extremely well versed in communication and human psychological behaviors. Those are special interests for him. My neuropsychologist is the person who diagnosed me with Autism in 2014, literally this week in 2014. He is an nt but also a parent of an Autistic adult. He is also chief of the department and extremely intelligent. My other psychologist therapist is also an nt but exceptionally intelligent and exceptionally understanding of my issues. I also have two other people I am very close to who are also Autistic, one is in school studying psychology and the other has a degree in psychology. One of those is actually a member of WP but I won't say who it is.

So when I say that I fully vet every situation I am in, I really mean that. I literally analyze every detail to death and actually ask these people if there is any point in which I did or said or even felt something wrong or inappropriate and if there is anything I should have done, said, or even felt differently. I very fairly recount everything that was said or done, often verbatim with no exaggeration or embellishment because I need to show a fair and honest representation for fair and honest feedback. And I do have the ability to represent something objectively because I have the ability to detach myself from the event emotionally and to express it as I am able to see it for self analysis, from a third party perspective as if I am watching a mental movie of myself re-experiencing it. I can change the angle of this mental movie at will so that I can analyze and understand everything that has happened from as many perspectives as possible. I make it a point to deeply understand the other person's perspective and to always be compassionate to it. This is incredibly important to me because it's the only way that I can make sense of the world and survive in it. I have been analyzing everything like this ever since I was a little kid. It's how I survive in a world that I am designed to survive in.

So after I have fully vetted, I know if I have done or said something wrong. I also spend huge effort to deeply understand everything I possibly can about the other person's perspective. If I have done or said or believed something wrong, I immediately change myself and apologize if that is the appropriate thing to do. That is extremely important to me because if I don't then life can't flow because for life to flow, things must stay in logical and righteous order. So if something is logically correct, I stand my ground, not because I am right but because it is right.

Those of you who know me well here, know that the minute you prove me wrong about something, I change and I always try to understand and respect the perspectives of those who think or feel or believe differently than I do. I never try to just be right for the sake of feeling right just because it feels good even if it's wrong in reality. That just makes no sense to me. I don't see a point in it as it just causes disorder and chaos and confusion. It takes away any foundation or standard for functioning and only gets people hurt. So it's just not what I do.

So what happens is that this person I was talking to, like many people, has a need to feel like he's right even if he is completely wrong factually and completely nonsensical. He will literally argue to the point of death even if something is absolutely nonsense and totally ridiculous that even a toddler can see that it's nonsense just because he has a need to feel like he's right. I am sure that many of you know these kinds of people. And my problem, is that I know and encounter these kind of people ALL THE TIME. They seem to be the majority of people that I encounter like I some kind of magnet for them. If I were to stop interacting with them at all, it would only leave me literally a handful of people left to have in person interactions with. And these certain people that I am close to bring great and wonderful and important things to my life in other ways so not interacting with them at all would really hurt me deeply so I choose to take the good and unfortunately have to deal with the parts that are bad and can be very abusive.

So I was telling this person what happened on Monday and he kept insisting that I done wrong even though I had done absolutely nothing wrong. In my logical self, I corrected him and told him that I had done nothing wrong. He wasn't there so he has no idea what happened in the situation. This is always the case since he lives far away. But as usual, even though he wasn't there, he always insists that he knows what happened better than I do and that I must have done something to deserve the disrespect because of course, no one on the planet would ever disrespect or bully or hurt a vulnerable Autistic person unless she deserves it. (For those of you who have trouble understanding sarcasm, that last sentence was sarcastic.) So my basically trying to very calmly and objectively and fairly explain to him what happened, just because I needed to feel supported for having been hurt, turned into him screaming and yelling and cursing at me and telling me I am a s**thead because I insist on being right about everything and anytime anyone disagrees with me I have a fit. Basically he was, as he always does, projecting on me exactly what he was actually doing to me.

Because he has a need to feel right even when he is wrong, anytime anyone disagrees with him, he has a fit and attacks them. That is what he was accusing me of doing as he was doing it to me. The problem with people projecting their issues on me like that is twofold. The first problem is that I am emotionally four years old. So I receive that kind of abuse as a four year old and I have no defense for it. The second problem is one that is unique to me as far as my support team of doctors and therapists understands. I am the only living adult that they know of with this issue. I have no psychological/emotional protective shield. As far as my doctors and psychologists and counselor have told me, this disability is so rare that it is virtually unheard of and anyone who is thought to have had this issue has never survived past their teen years. It is a deadly issue and the cause of death is always suicide. It is not possible to survive the emotional and psychological impact of not having any psychological or emotional protection. It is the psychological/emotional equivalent of not having actual skin. So if you can imagine how long a person could physically survive without an epidermal layer, you get an idea of how long someone could survive without a psychological/emotional "epidermal" layer. The answer is not long. No one has been able to understand how I have made it to adulthood, let alone to my mid fifties. So when people tell me to just get "thick skinned" to people's comments and whatever they say or do, or just to blow it off or not think about it or not let it bother me, or to let it go, I have no ability to do that. Those functions do not exist in me. The ability to do those things are actual brain functions that are done by that protective or public persona. I do not have that. So this is why I tell people that they can't hurt me.

I don't tell people that they can't hurt me as some kind of tough girl threat like I am going to retaliate. I tell them they can't hurt me because I have no defenses just like with an infant. If they hurt me, they damage me beyond repair and the effects are life long and cumulative and literally damage and weaken my neurology and affect my entire body's ability to function. I am actually critically vulnerable to psychological and emotional stresses just like someone without an epidermal layer or someone like the boys in the bubble, children like Tod Lubitch and David Vetter, who have no immune system. If they ever left their sterile bubbles they would immediately catch infections and die. So when I tell people not to hurt me, it is a plea for protection. But people do not understand this because this is not a condition they have ever heard of and because they have no theory of mind, they choose to think I am exaggerating and they don't believe me. I have been talking about this disability openly for many years and it is so rare that in the near decade that I have been talking about it, I have only heard of one other person who may have had it and he committed suicide in high school which would be a normal outcome for this.

So when people project their issues on me and especially when they do it in such a brutal way, the consequences can actually be deadly for me. I have to really do a tremendous amount of effort to actually survive the blows every single time. And because I have no brain functionality to release the trauma, every time I go through it, it builds onto a massive pile of 50 + years of PTSD that I keep reliving all the time so you can only imagine how hard that is. So that is a big reason why I have to analyze and vet every situation so thoroughly and examine my part in it from every angle. It is critical that I understand if I have done or said or believed something incorrect and change if I have because that helps keep me stable so that I can literally physically survive the psychological and emotional impact of not having a psychological or emotional shield. So my needs to be honest about myself, to fully understand, respect, and appreciate the differing views and opinions and positions of others, to really have a grasp of logic and actual reality and how they work and to always respect them and make sure that I stay within their confines and make sure that if I have done or said or believe something incorrect, that I correct it, are vital to my ability to actually stay alive. This is why righteousness, rather than self righteousness are so important to me. So anyone who accuses me of self righteousness, wanting to be right just for the sake of feeling right even if I am wrong, or of emotional or psychological manipulation, or anything like that, or of being deliberately dishonest or of being disconnected with the facts of a situation, they are just incorrect to accuse me of those things. Even if I don't fully know all the facts, that is different from distorting them. I am very desiring and willing to be corrected or to understand the facts better or to learn something I don't know. That is very important to me because it helps me make sense of everything and that helps keep me alive. But to accuse me of whatever nonsense you are projecting on me, to accuse me of your issue and to punish me for your issue, that is incredibly dangerous for me because I have no protection from that. I do not have the brain function to diffuse it or deflect it or blow it off or let it go. Those functions don't work in me.

But when people project their issues on me and force me to have to deal with that, if I say, "No, that is not actually my issue and I have fully vetted this situation and I am actually correct," I get psychologically abused, bullied, and punished for saying that. And in this particular situation that happened on Monday, I was yelled at and called a s**thead more than once for explaining to the person that I had been hurt and not agreeing that I must have done something to deserve it.

The problem is that the very non-emotional analytical part of me that understands and has compassion for everyone else's perspective, understands the situation fully. The emotional four year old part of me does not and cannot. So when I am yelled at and called a s**thead, the four year old part of me reacts to that abuse the same way an actual four year old would. And if you do that enough times to an actual toddler, they believe you. My therapist actually explained that to me. The biggest problem is because I am "high functioning" and look normal, and speak well and analyze deeply, NO ONE other than my therapists and counselor actually believes that I am as emotionally vulnerable and psychologically more fragile than a toddler. No one believes that I am affected by Autism in such severe ways that I am actually not only not a level one but in some ways even more severely and critically affected than a level three. I have an Autistic friend who has very accurately coined me, and all of my therapists agree, as beyond spectrum because a couple of my disabilities, including the one I just explained to you make my Autistic issues magnified a thousand fold. But because I am intelligent, articulate, and have a normal physical appearance, no one (other than my team of therapists) actually believes that I am as critically vulnerable as I am. I even have people argue with me that I don't need what I need. So this puts me in a difficult position. Unlike the boy in the bubble, there are no protections that exist in society for me. That is why no one survives this. And if I ask for people to be considerate and protect me, they fight me on that. So, just like a physical toddler, when you get the message all the time from almost everybody, you believe you are a s**thead.

But I am very grateful for everyone's posts and comments. I think that this is a problem that many Autistics experience. Of course, not as deeply as I do because of my unique situation, but I think that many of us have repeated experience in being treated with this kind of abuse where people project their issues onto us and we don't have the social and emotional sophistication to really do as much about it to protect ourselves as other people might have. So it's definitely a topic that is worth discussing on a deeper level since so many of us can relate one way or another. Even just supporting each other by relating goes a very long way. Thank you so much for all of your input. I am really grateful.

^^
skibum, right there with you. Yesterday my husband and I were negotiating a health risk. As usual, I wanted to proceed more carefully (reduce 20% to 10%) and he wanted to be less careful (wing it at 80%). Typically he would walk away with 25% of the discomfort and I would walk away with 75% of the discomfort. I am asserting myself more, so told him I knew it was uncomfortable (for both of us) and wanted to find a good middle ground for us. I provided my viewpoint. (I guess I was supposed to ask for his first?) He felt I was against him. He lashed out at me with an irrational "fact" (which he tried to defend but later admitted was just anger). True, I was asking him to further modify his behavior, just as he was asking me to modify mine. In the past I would have given in or lashed back but b/c I am at my wits end with what has the impact of emotional abuse, I cried and cried and cried --- all these years of my mom and others doing this. I provide ideas or theories or information and they are offended and attack. My mom did this on her last visit. She said "no, no, no" to a completely reasonable theory. I asked her why she said "no" and her answer was - I kid you not - "because you are usually right". Wouldn't that be useful? I am not acting as a know-it-all, I am humbly and genuinely considering ideas "what about?" "how about?" "maybe..." There are some people who are not offended by this - people who get and further my ideas. But there are too many people who are. I am continuing to work on my internal and external assertiveness in these situations.

Said people maybe projecting or misreading your intentions ..

At what point to they say this to you ?

Is it completely uncalled for .. or do you go round purposely pissing others off .

There's a reason they say this .. and it might be nothing to do with you as a person

You're the opposite of a piece of s**t. You're a Sweet Pea.

If the person doesn’t know he/she disrespected you, that person will never know you were offended. Therefore, that person won’t change his/her behavior, and will continue to offend you while the person is oblivious to the offense.

It’s like when my wife gets mad at me for something. I’ll ask why. She’ll say I should know why….but I don’t!