Are you as NTs see you?

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Is your opinion of yourself influenced by what NTs have said about you (therapists, diagnosers, family, friends, employers)?

Last edited by Greentea on 28 Jul 2007, 2:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.

i dunnow..I have a difficult time describing myself...and I have never really had much experience with therapists etc..i was diagnosed as ADD by a general practicioner.

When I describe myself to most folk I don't mention AS. Most folk don't know about it and the rest immediately switch to a look of pity on their face. Apart from WP members only a handful of people know I'm an AS sufferer.

Ed Almos

Yeah, I tend to use other peoples descriptions of me to describe myself. One time when I didn't know how to describe myself I said I am the person in the room witha huge grin pn his face The person that I was meeting thought that was agreat way to look at myself. The funny thing is she found me in a crowded room.

My descriptions of myself have nothing whatsoever to do with anything that various NTs have said about me - because not one of them has ever been able to perceive the real me.

I have always thought of myself as very shy and nervous, but not when I am motivated, and no, that is not influenced by NT's!

Mostly what I answer is I don't know. I feel like I'm lying, whatever I say. Sometimes I'll repeat what others have said about me, if it seems appropriate or to be what the asker is looking for.

Sorry, I didn't express myself clearly.

What I mean is: is your opinion of what you are like based on what family/friends/others have told you that you are like?

I ask because in my case I've learnt that what NTs say about me (including therapists) is too shallow and full of wrong assumptions for me to buy as a true description of myself.

No...mostly it is based upon my own self-image.

If I ever describe myself, i tend to be self-deprecating, but not excessively so...and I never go very far in-depth with it myself.
(Short swarthy woman-child)..or something like that.

I think that, at some level, other people opinion have to influence my own, anyway I believe my own opinion about myself is fo far from other people opinion about me that probably this influence is very litle.
Another point is that I know very few about other people opinion.

This thread makes me remind about something recurrent about AS tests: most of them describes aspies as we are seen by NTs, not how do I feel, what makes me punctuates low scores at aspie tests.

YES, and NO! I am like the elephant, and they are like the blind guys, in that old chinese story!

No, because counselors and parents see anyone with a disability or "disability" as a forever child, too stupid to be independent. They treat us like we're 5 yrs old forever, they don't take anything we have to say seriously, typically it's the same mentality that lead my forefathers to run the native americans off the land and enslave the blacks. We're systematically dehumanized and whenever we bring up their stigmatizing and patronizing ways against us, they deny it as a defensive mechanism.
Just the other day on the democratic primary, when they had a disabled representative to do an add for disabilities on the liberal agenda, it was a sheer minstrel show. They found the lowest functioning, cross-eyed and drooling, wheel-chair guy they could find, and put cards in his hands that read what they wanted him to ask, something dealing with a medical bill or something irrelevant like that. I can't remember the last time I seen a successful, high functioning disabled person representing the disability community on a substantial stage to challenge our stereotypes. The medical and "advocacy" fields holds us to these stereotypes too.
But they always overlook the core of our civil rights struggles, the rights to self determination, self advocacy, protection from work/educational discrimination, protection from media discrimination (reinforcing disabled people to be held to stereotypical standards through such minstrel shows as I just refferenced), sexual and reproductive health rights, the right to be taken seriously in the work/educational field, both as individuals and as a people, wrongful institutionalization, institutional abuses, societal abuse, as a matter of fact we are the only group of people it's generally considered "ok" to stereotype and put down, even by "liberals".

As I've grown more financially successful I see how surprised many people are by this. It may sound harsh, but many of my old "friends" seemed to have had a stake in my failing. At one point my dad suggested that I had the makings of a produce manager at the local super market.
My point in all this is that I have always felt that people underestimated me and I've been very firm in the conviction that things would turn out okay, despite the appraisal of others.