Here is the quote:
sinsboldly wrote:
Hey there,
Guess I qualify as an AS whippersnapper as you put it. Mind if I throw out a question for someone older and wiser - however you may dispute the latter?
I've tried about everything in my power to fake my way through NT life, and despite my success at spinning the illusion, I live in permanent anxiety of making the one misstep that belies the whole thing. Just the slightest facial tic (or lack thereof) blows my cover and the entire chain of impressions I'd been garnering up to that point, and like the others who commented, it royally sucks having to live this way.
Nothing new for you to hear there, just more of what you seem to have been doing far longer than my 26 years walking the earth. But you said in your post, that it does not get any easier with age?
The only motivation that's kept me walking over these hot NT coals in past years was that it would eventually become easier, perhaps natural. I've been starting to lose faith, even doubt that, and now what you said changes the picture further.
I really don't have any specific questions. But you're quite good at expressing yourself from what I've seen thus far, and I would just be interested in hearing you speak further about how your AS has changed or not changed over the years, especially with regard to adapting to an NT world. If you could, then anything you have to say would be of tremendous help to me, and I would appreciate every word of it.
Jerry
Hello Jerry!
When I first realized I was AS it was last year. I called up a phone number of someone that posted on line. It turned out to be Roger N Meyers, a real mover and shaker of the Portland, OR Adult AS community, but at the time I didn't know to be impressed, but now I am suitably so.
I revealed to him my terror that now that I know I have a neurological condition I was horrified that other people might know, that some how my perfect shell would be shattered by a wrong word or act and they would see me revealed. To Roger's credit, he heard me out and listened to my fears of being 'discovered'. When I had spewed it all out, he disarmed me completely by telling me to not worry about all of that because if I WAS AS, they simply 'already knew.'
"Already KNEW??" was he KIDDING?? I was so careful to match peoples words, listen to their words make sure I nodded when they nodded, smiled when they smiled, laughed when they laughed. . .
"No," said Roger, "they already know internally, that you are different than them. Their own neurotypicalness can spot you a mile away, and if they don't know it immediately, they will later on, and it is nothing you can change or mask. If you could change or mask it, you wouldn't be AS. All that elaborate dance you do to try to keep it from them just puts stress on you and really distracts from any real progress in working with others."
So much for the gloom and doom of 'never fitting in", Ben. That is just your loneliness talking. If you find you are yearning to be fulfilled by social contact, consider the idea that maybe you don't feel the social fulfillment you already find. Consider for a moment that interactions and emotions other people feel from social contact do not perform the same chemical reaction (if you will) in you. It really opened my eyes when I thought about it in that way. That people WERE giving me the social inclusion and warm fuzzies and what ever else it is they get from social interaction but it was ME THAT COULDN'T PROCESS IT. So all that tippy toeing around thinking that we 'had to get it right' so we could get the pay off 'being included' was for naught, anyway.
so, I suppose my advice to you is to give yourself a break. I have found the biggest shortcut to working with NTs is to PUT THEM AT THEIR EASE AS QUICKLY AND AS OFTEN AS YOU CAN.
Lighten up around them, use gentle humor, chuckle appropriately. This relaxes them and they can take a lot of your idiosyncrasies when they know they can get your NON DEFENSIVE attention about something and you are OPEN to other opinions and ways of considering events.
So I would say work on your sense of humor, develop a grace of bowing ineveitably to what you might consider absurd about them. Learn to find your own center when the boat is rocking and be there, rather than concentrating on every dip and heave of the social give and take.
I still haven't figured out how to respond when people step on my toes. Any retaliation I can devise is usually too muscular for what they consider appropriate ( in my youth, I would just go for their eyes and I had to wear a muzzle for a while , when I was later in elementary school I was made to wear a sign for my second grade year warning "I BITE" because I did retaliate to those who teased me.) Over the years my sense of social justice is very finally tuned, my moral compass always points to 'what will impact my negative karma the least and my positive karma the most.'
If you try to 'fit in' and 'be like them' ah, Jerry, that's the struggle. If you are true to your own nature and become a 'good guest' in their world, then you relax the struggle and become welcome into their society. This gives you and them a break. As I learn, I would be honored to pass what ever I learn along.
and as for being a young whippersnapper. . as that ancient musical band of my youth, Devo, would say "snap that whip!"
your friend,
Merle
02 Oct 2015, 9:01 am
no, just a way to find again a post I liked...
