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Eloa
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17 Jun 2016, 4:35 pm

When young I did not really perceive people other than a coloured noisy mass (like in kindergarden).
Except I could differentiate familie when being at home.
But my brother being in kindergarden at the same time as well at kindergarden he became part of the coloured noisy mass.
But I knew and know all names of the children in my group, forenames and backnames.
Same in lower school, and later.
But then it was like I woke up in "another time" and all the children have suddenly grown up, they had haircuts which were all the same and clothes and fashion which were all the same around I was 14 or 15 and before being merely observer (into nothingness) I started to sense a kind of otherness, me being different to other, but I had no words in my mind to describe it.
Age 27 I had a thought, still believing that all people experience the world the way I did, with all anxieties and not knowing and unpredictability of what is going to happen in human encounter and severe sensory sensivities et al.
"What do they do to be the way they are, to accomplish what they accomplish, to do what they do?" (Like making contact to people, chit-chat, getting work, driving a car and stuff).
In that state I felt I was in, not realizing it was not their state of perception.
How did they cope with all that anxiety and unpredictability and no cluelessness and sensory stuff?
Now I have learned a lot and know that everyone is perceiving the world differently but still I tend to forget and I have a hard time "putting myself into other shoes" cognitively.
But I know in general:" They don't have autism, different perception".
This does not mean I cannot feel for people, I can be emphatic in that I am also very prone to be abused by people, but then again, I cannot read people well that they might have abusive intentions.
Can anyone relate in that you observed people but thinking they experience the same way youself do and you were wondering how they are able to cope that well?
And that you still have to remind yourself of it?
Psychologists stated that I am very mind-blind and context-blind, but I am not a bad person.


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AnaHitori
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17 Jun 2016, 4:45 pm

Yeah, it gets to be a bother when people tell me I'm just overreacting to things. But to them, it's somehow no big deal and I'm the strange one!

*sighs*


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Unfortunate_Aspie_
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17 Jun 2016, 6:03 pm

Eloa wrote:
Can anyone relate in that you observed people but thinking they experience the same way youself do and you were wondering how they are able to cope that well?
And that you still have to remind yourself of it?
Psychologists stated that I am very mind-blind and context-blind, but I am not a bad person.


:( i relate to this- SO MUCH. I can be SOOO mind-blind, I have to remind myself to consciously think of and about others. It feels like a switch I can turn on and off- sometimes I forget to "switch on" my more NT-like social reading... and sometimes, I'm just tired :shrug:



kraftiekortie
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17 Jun 2016, 6:06 pm

You're a good person, Eloa.

You just have a different world-view than most.

Now that you are able to articulate it in writing, it means you are open to the world-view of the "typical" person, and are able to compare your world-view and their world-view, and to begin to successfully understand all the world-views which you encounter.



Marybird
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17 Jun 2016, 10:21 pm

When I was young I went to a catholic school. everyone wore uniforms and school was very orderly. I didn't make friends or talk to the other kids at school. I didn't know how and I didn't know I was supposed to.
I played with younger kids in my neighborhood but not at school.
In 7th grade at recess I noticed instead of playing, the girls were standing around gathered in groups and talking like they were grown ups. I didn't know how to be like that. I sat by myself.

In high school I was always by myself. A school counselor asked me why I didn't have friends and I told him I was different than the other girls.
They had a psychiatrist or something like that come to the school to talk to me because I didn't have friends, had poor grades, but a high IQ and should have been getting good grades. Nothing ever came of that and I ended up dropping out of school.

As a young adult I let people use me because I didn't know any other way and didn't know how to defend myself. I just thought I wasn't as good as other people.
I didn't understand people and believed everything they told me.
I had a boyfriend who said I was not playing with a full deck.
I made friends with black people who were nice to me. People of other races were kinder.
I didn't think about how other people experienced the world or wonder how they coped.
Other people were just somehow better than me.
I was very immature and didn't have an understanding of the world and other people.

It wasn't until I was old that I became aware that there was something terribly wrong. I was always waiting for my life to begin and be normal, but I was always alone.

I remember back in the 80's and 90's, looking at magazines in bookstores that had articles about autism and was very interested because I identified with autistic people and thought I was like them but it didn't occur to me that I might actually be autistic and didn't think of autism at all unless I was reading something about it.

My grandchildren were seeing a therapist because of issues with their father and the therapist suggested that my grandson had aspergers and that was the first time I had heard of it. I looked it up and it was a new condition that little boys get, but I wasn't worried because my grandson was (and still is) the sweetest boy in the world and he's fine just the way he is.

I was seeing a doctor for a physical problem and was referred to someone for an autism evaluation but I didn't go because I felt pathetic.

I finally read more about autism after hearing other people thought I was autistic. I thought it was just being closed of from the world but when I read about the repetitive behaviors I knew exactly what they were talking about because it was all me.



HighLlama
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17 Jun 2016, 10:26 pm

Unfortunate_Aspie_ wrote:
Eloa wrote:
Can anyone relate in that you observed people but thinking they experience the same way youself do and you were wondering how they are able to cope that well?
And that you still have to remind yourself of it?
Psychologists stated that I am very mind-blind and context-blind, but I am not a bad person.


:( i relate to this- SO MUCH. I can be SOOO mind-blind, I have to remind myself to consciously think of and about others. It feels like a switch I can turn on and off- sometimes I forget to "switch on" my more NT-like social reading... and sometimes, I'm just tired :shrug:


I can relate to this a lot, too. I wish I knew when I was young! I wouldn't have spent so many years thinking I had to accept being so uncomfortable and anxious all the time.



Eloa
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18 Jun 2016, 6:45 am

Thank you everyone for replying.


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Eloa
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18 Jun 2016, 6:48 am

kraftiekortie wrote:
You're a good person, Eloa.

You just have a different world-view than most.

Now that you are able to articulate it in writing, it means you are open to the world-view of the "typical" person, and are able to compare your world-view and their world-view, and to begin to successfully understand all the world-views which you encounter.

This sounds like a lot of work to do.
Thank you for calling me a good person.
You yourself are a good person too.


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animalcrackers
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20 Jun 2016, 10:48 pm

Eloa wrote:
Can anyone relate in that you observed people but thinking they experience the same way youself do and you were wondering how they are able to cope that well?


Sort of....

I was about 21 or 22 when I first started to compare myself to others in terms of wondering about their experiences of the world, and how they might be different-than/similar-to my own experiences. Before that, I can't say I assumed everyone had the same inner experiences and perceptions as I did......I just didn't really think about it, mostly.....the inner workings of other people were a mystery.

When I started to become aware that I was different in my early twenties, and then to slowly see that I might be veeeeeeery different, one of the first things I noticed was that people seemed to expect a lot more of me than was actually possible and I didn't know why....it took me time (and help from others -- I'm not sure they always knew how much they helped, or if they just thought they were stating the obvious for some reason other than to educate me) to realize it was because most people could do things I couldn't do. I developed a sort of curiousity about the inner experiences of other people that hadn't been there before, initially because I wanted to know how and why I couldn't do things that were apparently normal things that people are supposed to be able to do.

It's not that I never, ever thought or wondered about other people's feelings or thoughts or sensory perceptions before....it was just very different, rarely comparative (i.e. them compared to me), and happened less often....it was very "ad hoc" like wondering why someone was crying or angry in a specific situation, or trying to understanding what someone meant when they said something I couldn't comprehend, or a fleeting thought about a stated opinion or preference.... It's hard to explain.


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ZenDen
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21 Jun 2016, 9:12 am

What you said, Eloa: "When young I did not really perceive people other than a coloured noisy mass (like in kindergarden)....."

....was exactly how it felt for me. Until I was in the 2nd grade I couldn't see well enough to recognize other kids on the playground or read the chalkboard from the front row. After I got my first pair of glasses I could see better but never made friends......I was always the kid with the thick glasses in the back of the room who never participated or did homework....

...until they tested our I.Q. in the 6th grade and Mr. Hays (my teacher, natch) saw my scores, and surreptitiously began to interest me in mathematics. On our last day of class he announced everyone had "done well" on the tests earlier in the year, "...but the smartest person in the class, with an I.Q. -"I wish I had"- is "Dennis"...as he points to me. Followed by lots of brilliant exclamations such as "What?".

By this time I had learned numbers and mathematics were "pure." This inspired me, so when I got to Jr. High and High School I crammed in every technical subject I could find (didn't believe I'd be allowed to go to college).

But even today I'm not well able to anticipate others thought or actions. I think if you grow up without the social contact of peers, and the rapid and frequent social interaction they experience, you will never learn to understand them, in a "Theory of Mind" fashion, as they understand each other.