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HoxtonPaul
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27 Nov 2005, 5:07 pm

NEUROTYPICALS

This is how I see them.

THEY CAN RELATE SO WELL THEY SET THE STANDARD FOR ‘RELAXING’. Imagine a space, a room or a beach, whatever the safest most comfortable place in your life, or your mind, is. You are there, completely relaxed. That is, what usually preoccupies you, or that you feel must be considered, is not in your mind. You are enjoying a profound state of calm and tranquility.

Now, another person enters your space and joins you. That’s fine. You want them there. So there the two of you are, sitting or standing or whatever you both want to do.

You are now both enjoying a common experience. Its something you both feel. Its great, and neither of you want it to end. You look at each other, and its great being together. No words are needed, gestures made. A feeling of sharing something lovely is happening.

That’s what they can do, that gives them power over us. That’s what happened in school, with failed friendships, with bullying and rejections of all sorts. Bad/dirty looks. Odd behaviour that we cannot understand. Being told things that don’t make sense – and the NT’s think its funny. Rejection, isolation, alienation.

Terms like, intimate, relating, empathizing, sensual. Synchronizing, on the same wavelength, getting the idea. We don’t.

What I have always done is act. Simulacrum. An image or representation of someone or something I can go along with them so well, it often fools them. In shops, jobs, in the street, I can get a laugh and a warm smile. But really, the further back you go in my life, the more I have been found out.

The isolation made me really egocentric, particularly in my early twenties. It was my way of coping with a world that didn’t relate to me. I didn’t know or understand that I couldn’t relate to it. I thought I could.

I could not work out how to stand up to someone bullying or threatening me, when I had the body and strength to do it. Years of martial arts training helped a little, but I still freeze when challenged. Don’t ask me how to sleep with someone. The woman has to want to do it, and more or less allow me to approach her and them go through with it. I usually make a fool of my self-approaching someone, and hate being flirted with. It’s too ambiguous.

I am generally at the mercy of the world, and can only be seen as intelligent if the people around me want that. If they want dumb – they can usually find that too. All depends on what they really, truly want to find.

This I see as the opposite of Neurotypical.

THEY ALSO DO ANYTHING THEY WANT. They obey urges and feelings we cannot have or understand. They run around relating, get drunk or do things exclusively because of how they feel. Sometimes there is no reason for what they do. One Buddhist teacher seriously reckoned that a lot of ‘people’ are not actually reborn as such. He reckoned they were still animals, but in human bodies this time around. I can quite believe that.

They can feel, empathize, and they can be irrational and without any sane reason for their actions. There are a lot of films that we can watch, to understand this. Love stories and ‘Chick Flicks’ are good for that. Dysfunctional family stories too.

THEY ARE USUALLY NOT VULNERABLE TO WHAT WE ARE. Sounds, smells, light, it doesn’t affect them. They can attend rock gigs with tens of thousands of people, listening to tens of thousands of watts of power, and love it. They share the adrenalin too.

They abseil, bungee jump and parachute from planes. They can do things many of us would think insane.

They can filter out experiences that preoccupy us and distract us from everything else. Background noise, smells and being looked at in a certain way, for example.

THEY CAN TALK TO EACH OTHER. They can learn how to communicate, and can change their ways of doing it, to suit others. Their sense of self is such that such things don’t matter.

Hope that’s helpful. (Know what I mean? Nudge nudge, wink wink…)


I wrote this for another Web Group. What does everyone think?

Paul. x



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27 Nov 2005, 5:50 pm

Excellent!

Thanks for posting it.

I relate alot to it.



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27 Nov 2005, 6:02 pm

I think what your talking about is a beautiful illustration of 'inside the box' society - people who are in the dead-center of the normal curve or even farther to the other side than we are. With what you said about people being able to just relate, enjoy silence, and 'feel' eachother on a deeper level, I realize that I feel that with a lot of my real and close friends but that I can't feel it with other people because they tend to throw up more barriers toward it, crtitique my every motion and thought, etc. etc.

I'm not sure if you have that problem of not being able to connect with friends as well, if you can't I'm sure that has to be immensely frustrating and I know when ever I felt it, it was like a lot of things that go with the territory of AS that NT's don't understand - I understood their problem with it, understood why they felt the way they did, and felt real guilty about the fact that I couldn't level with em. When you talk about being able to just be, enjoy yourself, do what you like, and live on impulse though, I really don't think that's them being more animalistic than us than it is the magic of natural conformity - something that just happens by luck to where they had the right 2 parents who had the right personalities, the kid just happens to have a personality that society likes, and it's mostly luck of the draw. If you aren't born right on point with that and your NT, you may be quiet, in one of the outgroups, more alternative, but then in your 20's or so you tend to merge back in and are able to help yourself with what parts of the common psyche that you weren't feeling as much before. Regardless though, to really be free, natural, make whatever you say flow well, and be lit up in a way that really attracts people, it takes you really being yourself and when society can't relate to who you are they usually end up absorbing all out momentum, ignoring you, blowing you off, being fake, and at worst treating you like someone's kid.

On people being animals though I think we all are, AS, NT, or otherwise, though I do believe that many NT's are lucky in the sense that even as kids they're naturally more connected with that side of reality. As I found out the hard way though a healthy dose of science, religion, or cartoons can take us way off point from that. I took part in all 3 like a lot of geeky kids but I really believed in the religious base for things, god's presence made us all inherantly equal, and our whole mission in life was to be good and be good to eachother - right? Sounds like a good philosophy to a point BUT it ruled out competition, pecking order, etc. because when looking at it that way none of those things had any place or even made any sense. It took me years before I was able to really get it down pat and feel myself and other people arround me as just high-tech animals but animals none the less.
If I had been in touch with that reality and had myself centered on the animal side of things, I don't think I would have had nearly the ammount of problems I was having in school, I wouldn't have felt like there was everyone else and then there was me, my empathy skills would have been on a better level, I would have been more on-point socially, and while I still would have been made fun of a bit it probably wouldn't have been nearly as bad.

I don't know what other people's experience with this has been but again, my childhood was spent in a world that had nothing to do with the human condition and where I was living on this wierd scientific/moral plane and yeah, it was a happy and beautiful place untill I had to deal with other people and their ish. IMO, to be happy in this world and not run from things, to be well adjusted, and to have people see you and treat you as such, you really have to be well grounded in the hard realities of this world. Part of that is writing your expecations of people way down because when they sheist you you won't feel hurt and betrayed, if anything you'll be laughing at them in your own mind like "pfff, figures" whereas when they don't dissapoint you its more of a positive. Heck, I could be wrong, but I wouldn't doubt that a lot of NT's who have problems with depression, anxiety, etc. are having it because they're dealing with an animal world that their center and thought processes aren't based in.

Sorry to ramble on but that was definitely a very good, insightful, and well thought out post you dropped. Sounds like you are or were on a quest for knowledge on this stuff and I respect that a lot.


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27 Nov 2005, 6:09 pm

As did I.

I think anyone who has been rejected or had things not go their way can relate somewhat to that. Including, ironicly, NTs.



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27 Nov 2005, 6:44 pm

I see neurotypicality as being socially conscience of what's going on, and prioritizing their lives to get the most out of social contact as possible.

And then there are the super NT types, I.E. "leader of the pack" people - people everyone else wants to be like and be with.

Male super NT's tend to the jock type, where as Female super NT's tend to be highly extroverted and empathetic or stuck up.

You would think that the supers would be the least emotionally fragile, but in reality, I've noticed there the most fragile. A male super may pick a fight if he feels his emotional stability threatened, where as the female super may sob uncontrollably after being emotionally hurt.

I don't connect with NT's, I feel like I'm living with in a glass cube, I can see, hear, communicate with, but I can't connect with NT's. Having spent the first 18 years of my life living pretty much in my own world, I can say I did myself a favor by avoiding much of the emotional tramua that some of us go through when we try to break out of our shells and face the inevitable rejection.


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27 Nov 2005, 8:01 pm

How do I see NTs?
As being just like aspies, with fewer fringe benefits (personality-wise; Not to say there aren't a lot of quirky NTs) but more social skills.
Personally, I'd like to have both an intriguing personality -and- strong social skills.



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27 Nov 2005, 8:07 pm

Hoxton,

Your write-up echos exactly the way I've felt for so long as an island living in this sea of humanity -that is in a sense that everybody else seemd connected to one another in a seemingly pre-arranged setting.

When I think back, I too became egocentric in my 20's and like you say, it was my way of coping that I knew in no other way, and yes, that attracted tremendous hostility in nearly all jobs I ever had as well as any time I met strangers for the first time. I was an instant target for reasons I neither knew nor could make sense of.

And yes, I'm sure you experienced it too. Stand up to your aggressor(s) if you dare and such a move was tantamount to stirring a hornet's nest. How was it that it seemed so easy for your opponent to always have a mini-army behind them when you always seemingly stood alone? It was a mystery to me and it still is, but with some of the moves I know now, I don't think twice about confronting with an aggressive posture. I haven't put anybody in hospital so far but I have had some Mexican stand-offs that have left some NT's backing off and leaving the scene.

And the business of playing the dating game... Yeah, I know what you mean. It's like navigating a mine field without a map. I play it anyway in good faith an angel will understand and accept me for what I am, one day. Tell me if I'm acting in futility :?

I'm sure you too have seen NT's commit with impunity acts we Aspies could never think about doing. How do we get around that one? That's one really good Q :?

All in all, it's true NT's can and do take for granted simple things that present epic struggles for us Aspies. What becomes a permanent thorn in our sides is nothing more than a very minor or non-existant annoyance to them. OTOH, we just "can't get it out of our minds" :?

Anyway... thanks for sharing. It's good to know I'm not alone.


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27 Nov 2005, 8:49 pm

With regard to the original post...

Part 1: Well, I don't exactly set standards for relaxing. Neither do my sisters, even though they relate more "normally" than I do. There are tons of anxious NTs out there - even if you can do all the body language, emotional mirroring, and self-censoring, people are fickle and things can still go wrong, and even an NT's NT can worry about this. Relating to others...well, might depend partly on the "others," and what level they relate on. I can talk to people just fine, and apparently not repel them. I have never been that big on engaging people on an emotional level...my feelings are kind of "egocentric." I often don't get pissed off at what pisses other people off. Intimacy just seems like a huge mess...it seems to be all about relating to people on an emotional level, expressing love through gestures and "I miss yous" and such (I rarely "miss" people, and sometimes even wonder what the hell that is)...it's a mix of arbitrary and uncomfortable. I mostly like being distant. From what I've heard I was probably born this way - legend has it that I was a toddler without separation anxiety, wandering off on my own.

No trouble with body language - if I had such trouble, I would have related to the descriptions of NVLD when I was investigating it as a possible explanation for some of the un-NT-ish things about me. I can have some trouble with censoring myself and with paying attention to the right things at the right times, historically attributed to ADD, but few people other than my mother and other immediate family members have directly voiced concerns in that area. I don't really try anymore to communicate in the way my mother would want (although with e-mail, where I have time to censor my words and she has time to censor her reactions, it works pretty well), while the rest of my immediate family seems to have learned to accept it but will sometimes point it out just for fun or perhaps for future reference.

Part 2: Well...I don't drink or hook up with people, but I do seem to have a fair capacity for behavioral flexibility, acting on a whim...which, unfortunately, often appears in negative forms (excessive procrastination even after plans to procrastinate less), but within this same flexibility lies the hope of altering that destructive pattern. A change of plans is rarely a problem, except when I was looking forward to something and suddenly get teary-eyed and negative if things don't go my way or don't look like they will. More consistently, I react this way to failures or other things that reflect negatively on my sense of value.

Part 3: Very true for me, although not to the extreme of thrill-seeking. I can be uncomfortable at first, but get over it fairly quickly, be quite stoic about it. If it fazes me, it doesn't faze me for long. Unlike my Aspie friend, I can often shut down in the midst of chaos without needing to physically retreat, although on Thanksgiving I did briefly experience feeling frazzled and thought that I might have gotten a taste of what it can be like for him. It's funny...in some ways he's much more socially aware than I am, in that he pays close attention to how people look at him or seem to feel and is always hypervigilant to a faux pas, whereas I'm more "whatever" about it all.

I'd say the flexibility (Part 2) and the hyposensitivity (Part 3) are things that I mostly like about NT-ness.

Part 4: I fly by the seat of my pants. I will talk to people as I feel like it, and click if I click and not click if I don't click. Doesn't matter what their neurology is, although personality and interests do come into play. I think some "personality differences" and other variations among any two people regardless of whether they're on the spectrum or not might be just as significant and organic as the differences between spectrumites and NTs, and sometimes the former are more likely to create large communication gaps than the latter.



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27 Nov 2005, 8:52 pm

I see NT's as people that don't understand us and are scared of us. I used to want to be like "them" wanting to socailize, ect. But I found the socilzation, pretending to be intrested in what they are saying, being fake, very draining. Why pretend to be someone you are not for no reason? I'd rather be myself. Why would I want to be in they're world when all they do is give me strange looks, ect when they don't understand me.
I see people with AS as the next step in evelution. We don't need to BS with social cues, ect we are direct, more effecent. The NT's see this and they know they're days are numbered.
The revoution is coming.



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27 Nov 2005, 9:01 pm

NTs are to me people who are wired for a different level of perception and action that allows them in some ways more efficiency but with a tradeoff of missing some things altogether. At least that is a brief summary.

Edit: And I am an animal and so are they.


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Last edited by anbuend on 27 Nov 2005, 9:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.

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27 Nov 2005, 9:35 pm

I see things much the way you do. I don't get anywhere with most neurotypicals. They can't see it, but most of my relating to them is only mirroring them, throwing them back at them. It makes me seem fake but it helps me survive in their world. The cost is the way it makes me feel. Sometimes I wonder if my problem is so much a chemical imbalance, as I have been led to believe, as a reaction to the world. Their world, not mine. That's the way I see it.

I understand your acting as it's what I've done too. Am doing. And what you did in your early twenties has been the story of my life. The part of me that they haven't managed to subdue is focused on itsself. Insular. Lately I've been letting it out because I realise that that part isn't part so much as it is me. Much more me than the mirrored facade. Much more me than the act. So I let them see now and then what I really am, knowing that they will hurt that person and not caring. Such is the need for freedom.

In the case of us and them there is a mutual lack of understanding. And a lot of it is because we are approaching the situation from two different angles.

I don't think very highly of most of them. I agree with what you've said about animals. They are very much like animals. And not like intelligent animals either.


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27 Nov 2005, 11:16 pm

I find them inordinately emotionally and logically baffling from a personal perspective. Of course, I can say the same thing about some Aspies, too...

But I understand NAs a lot better via psychology and cause and effect. However, without figuring such things out or having a general idea, I jes' don't get 'em.


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HoxtonPaul
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28 Nov 2005, 8:54 am

I am very grateful for all the feedback. I feel a lot closer to everyone, and my own experience. :D

It is very good to read so much that I wish I'd seen 25 years ago. Ah well, at least I made it this far. Now, can get a perspective together and understand the whole experience of being who and what we are.

Recently on the British/London centered Yahoo chat groups I have been active on, I am beginning to hear from people less functional than myself. Great, a world I dont understand, and could even be NT' style insensitive to. Now I can learn. I want to get together a perspective on all of us. I have found anything like that missing in all the books I have looked at.

Its really good what you all have together on this site. Be coming here a lot in future - now I feel so welcome!!

P.X



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28 Nov 2005, 9:59 pm

I agree with you. So many people would hate me for it. But I do. I stay out of their world. I'm almost afraid of actually getting diagnosed, because I don't want to be forced out of my world. I like it in here. It's comfy. There's no reason to ever be lonely in it. I can move anywhere in the world and be home because like the turtle, I carry home with me.

There's no reason to pretend you are someone you aren't. I'm just glad that I'm not the only one who sees that. I flat out don't socialise with them when I don't want to. I see them and I see them on the border of my world and I want to tell them they don't belong here.

I agree with the last part too. We are human without the BS. Without the lying, without the need for other humans, without the drama.




KenM wrote:
I see NT's as people that don't understand us and are scared of us. I used to want to be like "them" wanting to socailize, ect. But I found the socilzation, pretending to be intrested in what they are saying, being fake, very draining. Why pretend to be someone you are not for no reason? I'd rather be myself. Why would I want to be in they're world when all they do is give me strange looks, ect when they don't understand me.
I see people with AS as the next step in evelution. We don't need to BS with social cues, ect we are direct, more effecent. The NT's see this and they know they're days are numbered.
The revoution is coming.


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29 Nov 2005, 6:01 am

IMO most NT's are trying to live by a certain unwritten set of laws, in which socializing goes above everything. Your social skills sometimes even make or break your career: if you're a good doctor but don't have the connections nor the talent to lobby, it's hard to get a promotion (unless you're a real genius.). That's hard for me to comprehend.

Just like when you don't follow their social pattern and behave like they do; then your just 'odd' or 'weird' rather than different. That's logical in some way, as it's natural for the majority who does seem to function with most others to condemn everything else as odd. I'm not approving it, but why doubt about your own behaviour when you're functioning in society and others clearly don't?

So as long as they're the majority it's 'the others' who have to do the adjusting, and not them. We have to do the self-reflection, which in my case led to me questioning the justice of 'the law of the majority' in this case. Now I could rant a fortnight on the contents of my ponderings, but that would derail this thread.

I certainly don't feel superior towards them, I know I have my flaws. It just disappoints me that I too few NT's discussing today's Western Society's meaning of what is 'normal'. Everybody knows there are problems in their system, then why aren't we solving them?



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29 Nov 2005, 6:24 pm

Kiss_my_AS wrote:
Society's meaning of what is 'normal'. Everybody knows there are problems in their system, then why aren't we solving them?


I think the trouble is that as a society, the consensus of what reality is, how things really are, etc. clash so much that even if somone's dead on-point with getting the big picture people are going to challenge the validity of their opinion over anyone elses untill it's blown right out of the water.

Personally I do believe there is one underlying reality and that we all share it, but the affects of our environments and genetics do a lot to ratchet with what our nervous systems can percieve and give us as feedback obviously. As long as people's feelings matter more than truth though, I think it'll be like this for a long time to come.


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