One Way To Spot An Unsafe Person

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I've worked out ONE way to know if someone is toxic/unsupportive/unsafe. I'm in my 50s so I'm pretty late to do this

It is if they immediately jump to the defence of someone you are having a problem with, even/especially if they don't know that person. Instead of defending you, who is present and their friend.

e.g. when a man drove his car into my fence and broke it, a friend made excuses for him- maybe he was tired, ill etc. No. You sympathise with me, the injured party, who you know. Not a stranger. We had to get a new fence made, it was a big hassle.

e.g. when I complained about someone treating me badly, a friend made excuses for her, even though she'd never met the person and she wasn't there. No. You sympathise with your friend, not the person who's treated them badly.

e.g. when my daughter wasn't supervised at nursery, fell and got a severe cut on her head, my mum made excuses for the nursery workers. No. You sympathise with your granddaughter, not the ones who hurt her.

So I'm going by that rule now!

judge them by the fruit of their labors.

I'm clumsy, with poor impulse control and a pretty major self-destructive streak; I'm unsafe.

Oh wait, you meant for other people.

You see them wherever you go, and they always seem to be looking at you.

Totally agree with your assessments. It took me til later in life to embrace this philosophy as well. Now it forms the foundation of all my relationships. If you say I’m important to you, then you better have my back or those are just empty words. It doesn’t mean I’m right no matter what, but you sure batter start there and give me the benefit of the doubt.

Thank you. Exactly. People who leap to the defence of unknown strangers instead of me are not my friends.

I think it was because I was brought up by a mother who did that 99% of the time. If I had a problem with someone, she would leap to the someone's defence. So I thought it was normal.

But now I know it's far from normal. I don't do it to my (few) friends, I side with them, not strangers!

Also I think having a child clarified this for me. I have got my daughter's back NO MATTER WHAT. I even take her side against her dad sometimes.

I've no idea what the rest of you are talking about apart from beady

Usually people just side with the NT party, because everyone (even other Aspies) think that the Aspie is in the wrong because we're ''not thinking about their feelings''.

Usually this dialogue comes to mind:

An Aspie is feeling overwhelmed and doesn't feel like talking. A friendly neighbour says hi but the Aspie ignores her. The neighbour takes this personally, being so the Aspie is usually friendly back. The Aspie is told that no matter what mood he is in it is rude to ignore friendly people and that he could have just said hi back even if he is feeling how he's feeling, otherwise their feelings will be hurt.

An NT is feeling overwhelmed and doesn't feel like talking. A friendly neighbour (Aspie) says hi but the NT ignores her. The Aspie takes this personally, being so the NT is usually friendly back. The Aspie is told that the NT probably wasn't friendly because he had things on his mind and was feeling overwhelmed, sad or anxious, and that the Aspie should think of them instead of themselves and so not to take it personally (in other words, taking it personally would be lacking empathy for that person).

Oh you are partly right about what I meant, Joe. So unfair isn't it! Autistic people always get the blame.

It would be like if you talked about your horrible noisy neighbours making your life a misery, if I said 'oh but the poor neighbours, you should think of them, they probably have so many problems they're dealing with.'

When I haven't even met them and they aren't even on Wrong Planet.

Sorry if I have done that btw, I've been conditioned by my mum! But I try not to side with strangers these days, I try to side with my friends.

Kitlily, I know what you are getting at because people tend to make excuses for people's behavior anymore.

E.G- A roommate bullied and abused me emotionally years ago because I didn't meet her expectations as a roommate. I.E- She lied about having a birthday party and that I wasn't invited because I didn't fit in. She also did this because she wanted me to move out.

When I told the other roommate what was going on, she told me that she wasn't there enough and wasn't going to get involved. She also hinted at me moving out in a nicer way by asking me to think about putting up signs at my community college. Additionally, she openly told me they were just looking for someone to help with rent and chores.

People have done that to me on a Facebook chat group specifically FOR people living next to inconsiderate neighbours. Whenever I ranted about my neighbour's latest inappropriate behaviour, even just to get it off my chest, the people in the group sided with my neighbours instead of trying to understand my perspective of the situation.

This is where I know that not understanding feelings from a person's perspective is not exactly an autism trait, it's more like a human trait.
I mean, they were calling me the problem! Even if they couldn't see how I should have the right to complain about my particular situation, they still knew my end of the story more than my neighbour's, and I was the one seeking emotional support in a Facebook support group aimed at people in my situation, so they could have just offered their sympathy. It seems they couldn't think of any advice so they decided to make me feel bad instead. But giving support doesn't always have to mean advice. In fact there is little I can do about my situation at the moment, but that doesn't stop me feeling helpless so sometimes it helps to speak out on a forum, just to have a rant or whatever.
This is why I'm glad people on WP seem to understand.

That roommate situation is a clear case of someone taking sides against you isn't it Summer Twilight.

That is crazy of those Facebook people isn't it! It's exactly what I mean- siding with the person who is harming you and who isn't even there. Basically siding with an invisible person. Siding with the person they know nothing about whereas they know you and can see you there in the group. It's ridiculous.

That's one reason I gave up on Facebook groups- they were too argumentative. Even the Highly Sensitive People group was too argumentative. People just love arguing, bullying and disagreeing, I reckon it's just for the sake of it.

Yes we just need a rant sometimes don't we! Not people saying 'You should do A, B and C then your problems will be solved. Byee!' We all need to get our feelings out sometimes.

I agree, humans just can't be bothered to understand things from other people's perspective, it's not an autism thing. I think autists try harder because we're told to do that so often!

Yes. I mean, we've all done it sometimes but when someone is trying to reach out the best one can do is perhaps be more impartial; they're entitled their opinion of course but still show that they understand the distressed person's view too.


I joined that group for a while but found some of the people there couldn't seem to empathise and just threw irritating cliches at me. Those cliches might work on the really tough, extroverted types who don't have any mental health issues or anything, but for HSP (Highly Sensitive People) it is just useless and insensitive.



Often some people on WP blame this site and say that there's often bickering going on here because the nature of autism means we don't understand anything emotional-wise, which I think is false as well as quite offensive. Any internet forum or chat group can get toxic. I've been on plenty of non-autism-specific chat sites where people were bullying each other, simply because they could only see situations from their own perspectives rather than listening to others. So this is why I become defensive whenever people on WP say that we're the ones who can't understand other people's issues and all that.

I agree that it's not cool to "immediately jump to the defence" of the other person.

That's just weird.

I don't automatically jump to the defence of anyone, unless it's an obvious case of someone going to hit someone else or needing physical protection. Otherwise I don't automatically defend my "friends" just because they're my friends. That amounts to clique mentality for some people. I think in some cases it could be premature or unfair to "immediately" defend anyone without knowing the whole story.

If my friend had an issue with someone else I'd want to know the details. Most of my friends would want an honest or impartial opinion from me about what was happening, so I wouldn't just tell them they're right "because you're my friend". I might be thinking in my head that my friend is probably right, or wanting to defend my friend, but in the absence of more information I don't make a snap judgment on anything or anyone.

Chances are, once I get the information to see both perspectives or see "evidence" of what happened, I'll defend my friend because chances are my friends have the same values I do and 100% I care about their mental wellbeing. I wouldn't be their friend in the first place, if I hadn't noticed a long pattern of me aligning with them - or them earning my respect and protection through shared values.

I think that's what you're trying to say, but I just thought I should put it in my own words. I'm trying to say it's repeat incidents of me determining "Hey, I'm on your side" that make me consider someone a friend, rather than me friending them first and defending them automatically - no matter what happens - later on.

Indeed to blithely declare that all of us on the spectrum lack any empathy is a falsehood and indeed I think those who do lack it, are a minority and would tend to have co morbidities such as narcissism. But plenty NTs are narcissistic too and they can't seem to sympathize with others when they're having issues they want to discuss.