You see, this is one of the things NTs just don’t get. They say “Hey, try to be flexible.” etc. I am quite flexible. I get other people have other views, etc. When someone says to someone (anyone, regardless of mental state), “You need to be more flexible.” everybody knows who is actually the inflexible person.
NTs are all the time claiming to be one thing when in reality they are the opposite. It’s part of the deceptive nature of the personality. When an Aspie says they are flexible, they are almost certainly flexible.
Accusations like that are probably intended as wishful social control. And in fact they have a one-two punch effect that might serve to indulge the speaker’s righteous anger. Not only pseudo-Aspies and faux-ADHDs, but actual diagnosed Aspies and ADHDs, get the message that they should shut up and stop asking the real world to give them a break.
Strange? Well, I admit I’m different from the majority. That doesn’t make one strange. And in particular, “strange” is a loaded word. Lots of negative connotations.
Being in the minority does not make one strange. Are left handed people strange?
Angriest? I’m sorry. I misread the thread title. I should have posted this in the “Things that annoy you as an aspergery personality” thread instead of the “Things that make you jump for joy as an aspergery personality” thread. I should have been posting all the happy, fun things I see in others, right?
Inflexible. You have no reason to believe that. Quite the opposite in fact.
Again, it’s been my experience, as well of others including NTs, that the person claiming someone is inflexible is really the inflexible person. (Since this is something I’ve talked to with others, it’s hardly something I’ve just discovered.) It’s a standard sleazoid argument strategy.
Sometimes it’s difficult to “read” a person’s emotions, and sometimes it’s difficult for me to tell when someone is fucking with me. Those are AS symptoms, aren’t they? Either way, both those things suck.
No. But they still sometimes have trouble operating in a world designed for right-handed people.
If you have a term that describes 99% of people (like “neurotypical”) and state that you find those people confusing or problematic, the problem is probably with you.
The fact is, most people would respond to a query “do you know where the widget is” with a “yes”, “no” or “I don’t know”. So based on your example, there may be a couple of reasons you are receiving the response you are getting:
“You think I’m hiding it? What’s the matter with you?”
Your tone may be angry or acusatory. Or the item you are asking for doesn’t make sense in the context of the relationship.
“What do you need it for?”
You are asking for something that in a particular context might seem strange or unusual. “Where is the beach umbrella?” “Why do you need it? It’s January and there’s a foot of snow outside.”
“What makes you think I know where it is?”
The person you are asking has no connection with the item you are looking for. “Do you know where my favorite mug from freshman year in college is?”
It might make sense in your mind. But since an outsider has no insight into the thought processes that led to your question, it just sounds random and out of place.
msmith537, nice response. Yeah, it gets to what is the big gulf between Aspies and NTs. I don’t get people trying to read emotion into basic statements. Why do people ignore the words and try to second guess emotions anyway? Baffling. If the topic had emotions implied, e.g., “Where do you think this relationship is going?”, then trying to read emotions is great. But for simple informational transactions, just stick to the simple stuff.
I can expect weird responses from people who don’t know me, but it’s the people who’ve known me a long time, e.g., my mother, that gets me. Why haven’t they learned how to communicate with me? (I try hard to cope, but others don’t is what I’m getting at.)
Let me give my favorite example:
A few years ago, I was up on a ladder doing some stuff with my mother’s gutters. I had a little springy downspout guard thing the bounced away well out of reach. So I called down to my mom to hand me up the rake. The rake was a few feet away from her. She instead went into the garage and came back a couple minutes later with a hand cultivator tool. I asked her what was going on. The usual stuff about how she was trying to figure out why I needed a rake and so she guessed I really would prefer the little tool. No, mom. When I asked for the rake, I want the rake. What is so hard about this?
And this is someone who literally has known me my whole life.
(BTW, I tried for a while to preface questions with things like “I’m going to be asking you a question. I’m not trying to imply anything so please don’t read anything into it.” Of course that just made them try to dig for “meaning” even harder.)
NTs are just inexplicable in their language failure.
I never even heard the word, Aspergers until I was 60 – I had always just thought I was a kind of a wierdo who never seemed to fit into office politics etc.
Then, when I heard about AS and looked it up and said Holy Crap That’s Me, it was like discovering Lao Tze and realizing The Tao is what you have always been, and then never needing to think about it anymore because you have now become congruent with some recognized reality. Suddenly I understood why I felt uncomfortable with groupthink washing over me, and that made it possible to structure my own defensive bulwark against drowning in it.
Trying to live in the world of NTs is like trying to socialize in a country where you can speak and understand the language only by translating it into English and back again, but never getting the idioms. In a short time, you become exhausted by the effort, and so do the people you are trying to communicate with.
So, when I learned that AS was the reason I was such a social mess, I could then more easily predict the kinds of relationships I was going to have in social organizations, see the warning signs, and sidestep them. For example, I knew that is somebody said somethng to me about Topic A, and I replied about Topic A, it was unreasonable or even naive to think that the person actually wanted to talk about Topic A and I should then shut up and wait to be asked about Topic B, and make one vapid comment about B and then shut up again, because that is now NT socialization works.
This is just bizarre. I’ve asked people “hey, do you know where the [whatever] is?” countless times and I’ve only got “no” or “it’s over there” as response. I suspect this is typical. If you’re getting the responses you report, the problem is with you. i expect you come across has hostile and aggressive, and that you make people defensive or aggressive in response.
Look, normal people respond to tone and gesture. If your tone and gesture is aggressive, people will respond in kind. If you are typically getting that, look to your presentation, not the words you are saying.
As the old saying goes, Aspergers isn’t an asshole license.
Why would they? I wouldn’t. It’s not worth my time to understand why the rude person is being rude. Better to just walk away.
What the hell are you talking about? What difference does it make? Is anyone actually confused by this or has anyone complained about someone capitalizing–or not–their user name?
Well, someone is certainly language deficient and behaving socially inappropriately. On that, we agree.
I’ve just read an incisive and perceptive essay from a fellow neuro-atypical on what it’s like to live with AS. I’d welcome any constructive commentary or discussion.
AFAIK my husband and I are both neurotypical, but when we talk it seems I can never get him to simply answer the question I ask. A neutral question, asked in a neutral tone, but he will make assumptions about where I am coming from, why I am asking, and address the assumptions rather than the question.
What time is karate tomorrow?
oh, it’ll work to do the shopping before, instead of after.
Where is the wrench?
oh sorry, I meant to get to that. I’ll fix it for you.
Usually it ends with me saying “can you just answer the damn question”. It drives ME nuts, and I would imagine it could be more frustrating for someone with Asperger’s.
I have always hated condescension, for some reason most people seem like they want to know who you are and where you are coming from so they can tailor their response to you. But not in a way that would help you understand, but to talk down to you or something.
I also hate how most people seem obsessed with creating narratives out of whole cloth, read a newsarticle about anything and you see it. It is like they have a picture of the world in their mind’s and they interpret everything through that.
Or it could also mean “life is filled with people a whole lot crueler than a company wanting to make a profit, and you will need the skills to deal with them or they will crush you, these skills come through experience and learning”.
Ugh I remembered another which is that people that knew me as a child with much fewer skills STILL to this day treat me like that child. This boils my fucking blood! and yes my parents are included.
My mother when speaking to my now dead mother in law on the phone asked if I was behaving and being a good boy and not being disruptive, my MIL was absolutely baffled and said my mother must be nuts(she is) and my wife as well is baffled how my family can think of me as retarded. They actually say that too, retarded!
Me:Hey mom meet my wife.
Her:Hi…you do realize he is retarded right?
Wife:Um WTF are you on about lady?
I’m NT (I think?) and the above situation drives me positively bonkers, but I’m not sure it’s necessarily part of the NT/Asperger dichotomy. (Though sometimes it makes me fantasize about having married an Aspie).
Please note, it’s many NTs that have the habit of not grasping direct questions and statements, not Aspies. An Aspie will tell you where the widget is if you ask.
If you know someone who answers simple questions with responses for an entirely different question, then they are highly unlikely to be Aspie.
Another difference is that NTs focus on specific examples of NT/Aspie interactions and think that one example is easily explained, not a common thing as opposed to an Aspie who sees it as merely an example of something that happens with astonishing frequency.
Also, Aspies are good at noticing odds things. So saying that “That sort of thing never happens to me.” means you don’t have the skills of an Aspie who notices and remembers these things. Of course it happens to you all the time, you’re just an NT who is oblivious to the weirdness of your world.
One thing that’s very easy for aspies to forget is that NTs aren’t all alike. They’re not a magical hive-mind, though they’re better at faking it. They all have their own quirks and getting to know one person doesn’t automatically unlock the secrets of everyone else’s minds. They also aren’t immune to social awkwardness.
So the “Have you seen my…?” problem? Might have been your tone - or it might just be this weird thing your mom does. Either way, framing it as us vs. them won’t help much.