oblivious?

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okay, someone needs to reassure me that i'm not the only one with this issue. if i am, then i can sever the connection between this an AS and keep trying to figure out where it really lies but right now it's a safe bet otherwise...

i am basically oblivious to everything. i find that i lack common sense in multiple areas. for example--and this has happened so many times at work--i'll be looking for something, and i'll look for it until i'm sure that it's nowhere to be found, so i'll get someone else to help and it'll turn up in some obvious place that i managed to miss. this happens ALL the time. it's like my mind is in a different place. i'm also oblivious to details--i won't notice things until other people point them out for me. since i just got done watching the show i'll use this as an example--there's this sitcom called "the nanny," and the main character always wears these ridiculously eccentric outfits. this might sound weird but i never really NOTICED that these outfits were eccentric until someone went ahead and said "WOW, those clothes are just out-of-this-world weird." it's like i don't notice little insignificant obvious things that normal people do. i don't even think i have to mention that if my parents ask me to do something 1000 times, i won't remember, and then i get yelled at for using the excuse "i forgot" so many times because according to them, i simply CHOOSE to not remember these things.

not to mention i don't know how to tie my shoes (i'm 18), and i don't even have a permit because hey, i don't know how to tie my shoes, do i really think that i can learn to drive?

i feel like i'm constantly oblivious to everything around me, and i'm not the only one who notices. my friends and family consistently point out my lacking common sense because i ask incredibly stupid, obvious questions on a daily basis. is a common sense deficit a common symptom of AS?

Yes...quite oblivious....

The only progress I have made is that eventually I have become aware of how oblivious I have been.

okay, great. i've been worrying about this for a month or so (can you believe i just realized this was an issue? :/) and i finally found the root. any idea on how to work on this? i try to be alert, but it always ends up with me missing vital, obvious clues no matter how hard i try.

Definitely not just you! I am oblivious to the majority of things in my day to day experience. I seem to notice and retain only things that I am seeking or have the intent to retain. Physical attributes of my surroundings and the people around me escape me the most. Appearances in general are unimportant to me so I don't notice or retain what I see. It would take an extreme change for me to notice a difference in someone's appearance (though there is still no guarantee, it was recently pointed out to me that someone I see on a daily basis had dropped over 50 pounds and I hadn't noticed). This is also true of my environment. I mentioned in a seperate posting that I recently pointed out that the trim of my neighbor's house had been painted (I noticed because it looked "Christmas-y", and I love the season). It was then pointed out to me that the entire house had been painted half a year ago. You would think I would have known that...

Yeah, definitely, me too. XD;
ex: I suck at shopping because I search the same shelf 5 times and don't find what I'm looking for, then someone else looks and finds it right there in plain sight. OTL

I think the thing that happens is.. my brain gets caught on something and skips like a CD player, so I miss chunks of the things I'm supposed to be paying attention to. >_<;;
Or it just dismisses things before I become conscious of them, (like the crazy outfits, that kind of thing) but I don't know the reason for that. Not when it's things that should be noticeable.

You sound like me when I was your age.

And her age would be what? Note the emocon, and the fact that he states "at work". I don't know of too many 10 year olds, much less, 10 year old Aspies that have a job.

Prism_tail_rainbows, it seems oblivious is a fairly normal state of consciousness among autistics. At one point someone had posted a Youtube video of a profoundly autistic woman boiling water. This simple act took hours! Although I would be considered extremely high functioning, I immediately understood what she was going through as I suffer from the same type of overload from too many sensory inputs. My bet would be that you suck at multi tasking too. If you were to put 20 tools in a pile on a table, I might not be able to find the one I need. Too much to look at. Might explain why my house is a mess also.

completely oblivious all the time.

teens

My son recently had an OT eval and they had me fill out a form regarding his sensory profile. One of the questions was whether he could pick out an object in a ( I think) similar field situation. I might be wrong on the term but it was basically finding something in a crowded drawer of similar items. So the inability has some significance. I definitely have problems with this too. I have been known to try and find something in my closet and taking each hanger one by one to search and not be able to find it, only later to find it right there. To compensate, when I'm trying to find something I mentally picture one distinctive aspect of the object and scan. I got pretty good at finding Elmo that way in my son's Elmo book. Anyway it's like it's a kind of mind blindness.

Socially oblivious: Probably yes.

Oblivious to physical details around me: No.


I've met some so called 'normal' people who are socially very astute, but are oblivious to their physical surroundings. People who lose objects or don't often notice interesting details or wildlife. They wouldn't think to look. They don't even think to question how something works or why something is where it is. They wouldn't consider these details interesting relevant to their lives. They just carry on chatting or doing whatever they were going to do socially. It's understandable really and fair enough. Different people are interested in different things.

It's much harder to analyse and observe the details of the surrounding physical environment in depth if you're focussing on chatting to someone. I appreciate that you can share useful ideas on what you've seen with other people, but this isn't the same as observing the object at first hand in detail yourself.

Because it just simply doesn't occur to me that I need to focus on talking to people first, my eyes are already keyed into observing the surrounding physical environment or what I'm thinking about.

Other people would focus on social interaction first by default, so might miss some of these more obscure physical details.

This is why I sometimes notice physical details that others do not.
Perhaps I notice too much detail that other people would consider 'irrelevant'.

If you asked me to remember an event, I'd tend to give you the physical details first. Where I was; what the buildings looked like; details on the buildings; how the food tasted; what the patterns on the crockery were; whether I've eaten off of that crockery set before; the surrounding wildlife; the interior decoration and design; what my task for the day was; details how I got there etc. Then I would say briefly say who I was with.

With some other people, I've noticed that they almost exclusively talk about who they were with and those people's personalities when they remember an event. They hardly recall any physical details at all, if any.


This is why I believe that there are in fact many different kinds of 'being oblivious'. Some are just more socially acceptable in some situations than others.

I also think that everyone has things that they don't know or points of view that they weren't aware of, so I think that everyone is oblivious to something because no one person can know everything.


I don't think that I'm completely oblivious to observing people's interactions from a distance though. I can notice if someone is being bullied, ostracised or being taken advantage of from that distance. Some consequences of interactions aren't so obvious up close. I can also notice that people organise themselves into groups. I also notice who's friends with whom or which people don't talk to each other often.

I keep saying that I am going to make myself a cape with a large letter "O" on the back, so that I can say things like "Captain Oblivious strikes again!" Yeah... it is not just you. I wish that I had some suggestions for you... the closest thing I can come up with is trying to be overly mindful of the details in your surroundings... like inspect everything as you would for an experiment. The down side to this though, for me anyway, is that when I get too hung up in the details that I miss, I become more oblivious to what is going on around me where people are concerned. I just cannot be too aware of too much at once. My brain short circuits on me or something.

People are suprised when I lack "common sense". Which surprises me, as if common sense is merely common rather than "universal sense", there will be people without it.