Do you know how 'neurotypicals' think?

Page 1 of 4 [ 49 posts ]  Go to page 1, 2, 3, 4  Next

limau
Tufted Titmouse
Tufted Titmouse

User avatar

Joined: 23 Sep 2011
Gender: Male
Posts: 43

28 Sep 2011, 7:39 am

If the answer is no, then how do you know that you are wired differently from them.

Those information with regards to Aspergers that can be found on the web, are they written by nt(s)
how do they know so much about us, and we understand and identify with what they write?

maybe they are just describing the outward physical symptoms, but as an asperger are you aware of your own thinking that is behind these symptoms? Like how you feel that cause you to avoid eye contact when speaking.

or is it to be diagnosed as an Asperger, means you are not able to be aware of the reasons, the thoughts that cause you to behave as such.

if we know where our short comings are, does this syndrome make us unable to change, to develop nt traits, or is it if we manage to appear normal, it is always thru an 'aspie effort.

NB. same applies for other symptoms including singular interests, repetitive routines etc.



LizzyLoo
Tufted Titmouse
Tufted Titmouse

User avatar

Joined: 11 Oct 2009
Age: 51
Gender: Female
Posts: 39

28 Sep 2011, 8:03 am

NT's probably found out how people with ASD think by asking them. At least that's how I find out about my childrens behaviours...I ask them.

Apparently for my son clothing tags feel like sandpaper and eye contact with strangers is so uncomfortable that it is almost physically painful.

Apparently for my daughter socialisation is exhausting because she has no idea how to interact so she watches and mimics.

Not all NTs think the same way, the same as not everyone with ASD thinks the same way.

We have taught our kids some automated socially acceptable behaviour to make life easier. Ie. When we have visitors, what my son really wants to say when they leave is 'good riddance and thanks for leaving' but what we worked with him and now he says 'thanks for coming'. He also says 'thanks for the lovely gift' when what he really wants to say is ' I hate this gift'. In our home, with us he can be 100% him, but when socialising there are just certain behaviours he needs to practice and use.



Halligeninseln
Deinonychus
Deinonychus

User avatar

Joined: 22 Sep 2011
Age: 70
Gender: Male
Posts: 382
Location: Central Europe

28 Sep 2011, 8:13 am

"Thanks for leaving". That's cool.



btbnnyr
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 18 May 2011
Gender: Female
Posts: 7,359
Location: Lost Angleles Carmen Santiago

28 Sep 2011, 8:18 am

NTs don't know how autistics think. Some of them, researchers and clinicians, like to delude themselves into thinking that they do. Most of the stuff written by them about us is wrong. I understand what they wrote and where they went wrong, but I don't identify with it. Most of it sounds like the usual NT--->autistic projection.



Phonic
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 3 Apr 2011
Age: 31
Gender: Male
Posts: 1,329
Location: The graveyard of discarded toy soldiers.

28 Sep 2011, 8:19 am

I don't know how anyone except myself thinks.


_________________
'not only has he hacked his intellect away from his feelings, but he has smashed his feelings and his capacity for judgment into smithereens'.


techstepgenr8tion
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 6 Feb 2005
Age: 44
Gender: Male
Posts: 24,149
Location: 28th Path of Tzaddi

28 Sep 2011, 8:32 am

I'm not sure how you're broaching this question - from the NT or the AS perspective but I'll give it a try.

limau wrote:
If the answer is no, then how do you know that you are wired differently from them.

I think the answer is yes for me, then again I'm quite mild in a lot of senses - PDD-NOS in fact.

limau wrote:
Those information with regards to Aspergers that can be found on the web, are they written by nt(s)
how do they know so much about us, and we understand and identify with what they write?

For the people who have expertise worth listening to - its their job. They get to observe us all day and look at traits to see if they can come up with what the functional mechanism differences are. In that sense also, their giving an NT perspective to it is valuable as an AS perspective although inherently different due to point of reference.

limau wrote:
maybe they are just describing the outward physical symptoms, but as an asperger are you aware of your own thinking that is behind these symptoms? Like how you feel that cause you to avoid eye contact when speaking.

Well, they can't imperically know what it 'feels' like to be AS, not much we or they can do about that one.

As far as eye contact difficulty, while I'm not generally terrible with it the stress that causes people to not make eye contact I think comes in a couple different ways:
1) Often times our nervous systems have a bottleneck resource-wise for processing the whole train from seeing a persons expressions to interpreting them to reacting in kind - in the amount of time that we're expected to. For us that's like running a marathon in less than a second and the best thing I could tell an NT - your eyes aren't made to filter the sun, it 'feels' a bit like that for us - like having floodlights shined in our faces; the more emotion coming out the more intense that feels.
2) A lot of us are simply used to not getting normal reactions from people - likely because our facial expressions or responses are out of sync, or even if we know what to do, what we 'think' we're facially displaying literally won't come out right - hence, from boombastic reactions from people around us it just seems too unpredictable and threatening whereas if we don't make eye contact it gets the same mediocre result that's at least safe, stable, and predictable albeit not what we want but may seem to be the healthiest available.

limau wrote:
or is it to be diagnosed as an Asperger, means you are not able to be aware of the reasons, the thoughts that cause you to behave as such.

Again, for a lot of us I think its neurological bottlenecks. You can absolutely know your weird and, even if you don't like it, be helpless to do anything about it. Much like you can know what you're supposed to be doing socially but know that your brain won't allow the workflow to make it happen. Then again this is the whole way that personalities sort themselves out at all or how people end up distinctly different; strengths in some places, brick walls in others, much like these things define the differences you see between NT's and othere NT's they also define the differences that you see between NT's and those on the autistic spectrum.

limau wrote:
if we know where our short comings are, does this syndrome make us unable to change, to develop nt traits, or is it if we manage to appear normal, it is always thru an 'aspie effort.

Knowledge and understanding help us find ways to meet people half way better, they give us ways to know what 'not' to do, what to do, and while knowledge in that sense can only fundamentally change our functioning so much it can make us much less abrasive (for the lack of a better term) and enhance our relationships a great deal.


_________________
“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” - James Baldwin


Joe90
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 23 Feb 2010
Gender: Female
Posts: 26,492
Location: UK

28 Sep 2011, 8:49 am

Who knows how anyone else thinks? I kind of know how my close relatives think, but that's only part of it. I don't know fully how they think, and they don't fully know how eachother think, and they don't fully know how I think. Everybody's an individual, nobody knows what's going on in somebody else's mind. Humans haven't got bluetooth built into us.

I do not know how most people's minds work. It's like when you're friends with somebody, then they start bullying you for no reason. Or like when you read about these things in magazines and newspapers where somebody happily gets married to a man and then about X months/years down the line the man is found suddenly beating the woman up for no reason (or vice versa). Or when people are released from prison and they suddenly commit another crime - they could have lied and lied to get themselves out of prison, but nobody knows how their mind was really working.

The mind is a very complex thing.
NTs don't just sit and think about when they're next going to be socialising. You never know - they could be similar to us when thinking, but it might just come onto the surface a different way, I don't know. I'm not sure how their minds work whilst interacting. I'd love to be NT to actually find that out.


_________________
Female


1000Knives
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 8 Jul 2011
Age: 33
Gender: Male
Posts: 5,036
Location: CT, USA

28 Sep 2011, 9:15 am

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Vw2CrY9Igs[/youtube]

I always figured it was like this...



animalcrackers
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 26 Feb 2011
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,207
Location: Somewhere

28 Sep 2011, 11:21 am

limau wrote:
Those information with regards to Aspergers that can be found on the web, are they written by nt(s)
how do they know so much about us, and we understand and identify with what they write?


I can identify with the descriptions that NT's write, but not so much the explanations. NTs don't know as much about Asperger's/Autism as they think they do. A lot of what NTs write about the way that autistic people think is just guesswork. The rest is based on research and asking autistic people questions.

limau wrote:
If the answer is no, then how do you know that you are wired differently from them.


Before I was diagnosed, I didn't know I was differently wired--I started to suspect I was based on:

How I didn't understand what other people said about things, and how they didn't understand what I said;

How I seemed unable to do thing that others found really easy;

Noticing that most people appeared to know things I didn't, and that they were surprised and confused by the questions I asked them (often, others wouldn't/couldn't believe I didn't know the answers already);

Asking people questions about how they experienced sound and light, and finding out that not many people had sensory sensitivities (some people thought I was crazy when I said that certain sounds hurt, or that I could hear tiny sounds they couldn't hear.)

limau wrote:
as an asperger are you aware of your own thinking that is behind these symptoms? Like how you feel that cause you to avoid eye contact when speaking.


I'm aware of some of my thinking, yes.

I avoid eye contact for a couple of reasons. One reason is that I can't look at people's eyes and listen to what they say. Another reason is that eye contact is really intense and it freaks me out (I think I instinctively respond to eye contact like a cat.....eye contact=threat.)

limau wrote:
if we know where our short comings are, does this syndrome make us unable to change, to develop nt traits, or is it if we manage to appear normal, it is always thru an 'aspie effort.


I think everyone has the capacity to grow and change. But I can't say how they do it--I think it's different for each person.


_________________
"Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving." -- Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

Love transcends all.


TheWingman
Snowy Owl
Snowy Owl

User avatar

Joined: 1 Sep 2011
Gender: Male
Posts: 162

28 Sep 2011, 3:00 pm

There are no such people as Neurotypical. This word as just been invented by aspies to make them feel beter. Each brain has 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 connections, there are different in each brain, each brain is unique, none is typical.



XlugonPyro
Tufted Titmouse
Tufted Titmouse

User avatar

Joined: 22 Oct 2007
Age: 31
Gender: Male
Posts: 44
Location: Wisconsin

28 Sep 2011, 3:02 pm

TheWingman wrote:
There are no such people as Neurotypical. This word as just been invented by aspies to make them feel beter. Each brain has 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 connections, there are different in each brain, each brain is unique, none is typical.
Super literal response! Go you!



Mdyar
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 28 May 2009
Age: 58
Gender: Male
Posts: 2,516

28 Sep 2011, 3:37 pm

Yes, I know the NT mind.

I'm there as far as ToM goes.

But I'm introverted and Inattentive . One can miss the normal social hueristics with introversion, and this is taken further out with what one misses with ADHD.
I'm pretty sure I know how spectrumites think by my own executive issues. When I read what is written here on the board, I get it all, less the sensory issues and the meltdowns.



I think someone empathic would know how someone thinks on the spectrum, given enough exposure. Other than, a bright NT with enough contact, could read the Asperger mind. Just projection here, as I have no evidence, but there are some skilled folks out there, that can read these social hieroglyphics.



techstepgenr8tion
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 6 Feb 2005
Age: 44
Gender: Male
Posts: 24,149
Location: 28th Path of Tzaddi

28 Sep 2011, 4:50 pm

TheWingman wrote:
There are no such people as Neurotypical. This word as just been invented by aspies to make them feel beter. Each brain has 1 000 000 000 000 000 000 connections, there are different in each brain, each brain is unique, none is typical.

And hence we live in a world of definitional generalities for the sake of being able to communicate nebulous concepts.


_________________
“Love takes off the masks that we fear we cannot live without and know we cannot live within. I use the word "love" here not merely in the personal sense but as a state of being, or a state of grace - not in the infantile American sense of being made happy but in the tough and universal sense of quest and daring and growth.” - James Baldwin


EurAsianGirl
Tufted Titmouse
Tufted Titmouse

User avatar

Joined: 24 Nov 2010
Age: 31
Gender: Female
Posts: 45
Location: California

28 Sep 2011, 4:54 pm

One thing I do know, NT's are definitely not wired for honesty even when honesty would probably be the best solution to a situation. NT men are especially like this, they love to make everything complicated and to play games.

I just don't get how or WHY NT's have a problem with honesty.



Wayne
Deinonychus
Deinonychus

User avatar

Joined: 15 Nov 2009
Age: 49
Gender: Male
Posts: 365

28 Sep 2011, 5:09 pm

I thought I knew how NTs thought. I figured they thought kind of like me except they kept better track of protocol and tasks and things like that and didn't worry so much about every little thing.

Now... I know I'm clueless. I don't know what they think about all day. I can barely imagine what their world looks like, a world where people are by far the most fascinating things in it and everyone emotes like crazy and most things are understood without being said. Where you can count on a friendly conversation or a smooth successful flirtation (and often more than that if you choose) just about any populated place you go.



Tuttle
Veteran
Veteran

User avatar

Joined: 26 Mar 2006
Gender: Female
Posts: 3,088
Location: Massachusetts

28 Sep 2011, 5:21 pm

I know that when others describe how they perceive and interact with the world their descriptions don't match what I go through.