kc1199224 wrote:
For years I've had an issue regarding the need to not conform to whatever I'm doing no matter what. I'm bad at explanations but the best way to explain is using the activity of Marching Band. For the past 3 years, I played in my high school marching band. As most may know, marching band is mainly about being one unit and moving as one unit. Moving the same way in what I view to be a robotic-like pattern. This was my major issue. It wasn't that I just wanted to be some "cool angsty teen" but I genuinely could not conform to this. It made me have this awful feeling in my stomach that I can't explain. I get the same feeling when I touch things that aren't mine or things that I don't intend on buying or just hands in general. I was yelled at many times for the non-conformity band thing, but I couldn't form the words to explain what it was. I think it has something to do with the fact that people are doing something they wouldn't normally do, and they're taking orders from someone and really the value of discipline or being compared to a soldier (even those words make me get the feeling). I don't know what it is, or if it's really due to having Aspergers or ADHD. Sorry for my bad wording on this post, it has just gotten to the point where I need almost verification that this is something other people deal with, that I've been actually struggling for years with, and I have an inability to verbally say it even though I am actually quite social. I do not even have the "guts" to ask other people in band who are on the Autism spectrum, because to me they appear to not have any similar issues (which is immensely understandable since we are not all the same) and also only one person in the band knows of me having Aspergers because it is only till one gets to know me that they see I'm not NT. I am also not in band anymore so there is not really a way for me to ask anyone in a form I would like to do it. I don't know how coherent this is due to the fact that if I proof read it I will get the feeling so I'd rather not, and sorry if there are any typos!
I've never understood crowd mentality, at all.. for the simple reason that when there's a bunch of people doing something all similar to one another, I have an overpoweringurge to get out of there fast, and go in the totally other direction. So I completely understand where you're coming from. I'm also quite sociable, I like people though I find them exhausting, but I hate the feeling of us all being a unit, just as you do, and with the same kind of strong gut feeling about it. i've often thought it's very, very strange that people do stuff 'because everyone's doing it'. To me that's a darned good reason, all by itself, to NOT do it. I know that's not really rational..
By the way my husband says to me 'I thought I was non-conformist, till I met you'. I think being non-conformist is part of being Aspergers, and looking around me at what's going on in the world, i think it's a very good thing too, as a lot of things really need to change. You can have great, close friends and family, a beautiful life, while not conforming in the way society now seems to want us to. Conformism to the extent we are often encouraged to practise it, i.e. aiming for uniformity, and interchangeability (which is probably what me and you really have a gut reaction against), is quite a modern concept and accelerates with globalisation, while I believe diverse talents and characters were accepted (and in fact even considered a bonus) in small communities.
07 Sep 2016, 11:41 pm
