How 'Under the Radar' can you get?

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New here, do not know how to do the quote thing... SilkySifka got it spot on. It is a huge relief to learn that Im not the only one 'on the wrong planet'. It has always been such hard work keeping up the act sort of thing.
For me a lifetime way of coping with relationships has been to let them die off 'naturally' by keeping moving every few years and not keeping in touch with people from 'before' ie not letting relationships get too complicated for me to be comfortable with. Dictated my choice of way of earning a living (need to have skills that 'travel') and has meant Im currently in New Zealand, which is great actually!

Wow thats a lot of responses, all of them interesting!

Out of interest, has anyone ever encountered two people by accident who both knew you separately, both in very different ways. Perhaps one is an old friend who knows you properly and you were planning on meeting that day and the other a work colleague who only knows your 'work' persona who turned up by chance. What do you do - go for the 'work' persona to protect yourself or try and be more 'yourself' so as not to confuse your old friend?

I don't let that happen, ever.

Im with GullyFoyle on this, I too am very careful not to let that sort of thing happen. I try to avoid seeing work related people outside work, and have always been careful not to have 'overlapping social groups' if that makes sense. Otherwise it all gets too confusing and stressful.

this has happened to me on more than one occasion - i would always try avoid it, but found it impossible to avoid. i can't handle more than one person at a time. what makes it worse is how when i'm in the situation, i forget to do things like introduce them to each other, etc. couple that with me being extremely introverted, i go very quiet and say nearly nothing at all other than responding to something directed at me. i almost always try to escape the situation.

@Gullyfoyle - thanks for asking that. this isn't something i ever actually considered.. i always knew i felt "uncomfortable/awkward" when it happened, but it hasn't happened since i discovered AS 7 months ago - now it makes perfect sense!

it's weird how we all have such different perceptions. i'm not sure if i said it in a previous post in this topic or another topic altogether, but my perception was always (until i discovered AS) that everyone felt the same. i was never lonely - not because i was surrounded by friends, i tend to naturally prefer being alone all the time.



i'm not sure if it's my fault, but i think you misunderstand me - i didn't have bad experiences, it's just mine were different. yes, many of them got me into trouble, but never anything serious - luckily. some were very close. i definitely learnt a lot from those experiences and i'm quite happy with the outcome.



you had the quotes formatted 100% correctly

It is weird about our different perceptions but it is interesting! I am very happy being alone, but I was glad to find out that I wasn't the only person in the world that felt that way.




It is most likely not your fault. If misunderstanding things counted as a savant skill then it would be mine! That's really good that you learned from your experiences and that it turned out OK in the end. I usually have to repeat my experiences (and mistakes) quite a few times before I get the lesson.



If I've got it right this time I shall reward myself with a cookie.

very interesting, indeed. yep, happy being alone, but as i said, i thought everyone was the same.. now, i'm still happy being alone, but now i have a reason and i know i'm different. i've never "analysed" or thought about myself and why i do the things i do - it just never occurred to me that i was different. and, amazingly, there are others like me - comforting to know



oh, i don't think i ever learnt anything first time.. making the mistake and then later thinking about the situation helped. whether it was to figure out how to do it differently, or to try and avoid in future.



have a cookie!

I had a very nice chocolate digestive

Welkome to WP

Mick

Very much so. I originally signed up here a long time ago when I first learned about AS but ... I wasn't really ready to deal with it at the time. Only recently have I really got involved here. It's been a big help, in just a short time.

There is for me an opposite problem now. Many of these things defined me as a very unique individual. The flip side of feeling isolated by them is feeling - special. Unique. That's something I feel like I'm losing.

I think I understand what you mean. I've always wanted to be like everyone else and have searched fruitlessly for the where I belonged. I've never really valued my Aspie traits (I don't have a special skill apart from an unnerving ability to remember useless facts) so I don't feel I have lost anything by knowing. Of course in the future I might learn to value those traits a bit more and then I would feel the way you do. I think you are a little further along the path of self-discovery than I am.

I'm a little concerned about how my boyfriend will feel. We're in separate countries just now and I want to discuss the Aspergers thing face to face so even though I have known for months now I haven't mentioned anything. A lot of the things he thinks are interesting about me are Aspie traits and I'm not sure how he will react to knowing that.

I do not believe so. When I was a young child and developing my social identity, I was not so much concerned with avoiding rejection or being perceived as different or even being accepted, as none of these things seemed possible or valuable. I was concerned, chiefly, with not being feared and identified as a threat or monstrosity (and no, I wasn't a violent child in the least - I was a perceptive and honest child, given to reckless and sometimes devastating observation)

My experience with people as an adult is very much in line with what's typical around here, but my childhood seems to have been quite different. I encountered less hostility, because of the skills I developed in heading off defensive responses (most aggression is actually defensive in nature, something I appreciated quickly).

I would not say I was marginilized as a child. I think of it more like an isolation in parallel. My peers even admired me somewhat, from a distance. I think, too, it was only possible in the time frame I grew up in. You're 20 years older than me; I don't know what it was like during your time as a child, but I grew up in the 70s and 80s. This was a sort of overly sentimental time, I think. It's difficult to imagine car advertisements like this today:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rX-Zk_LNZWg

I do not know what came before, but I can well imagine it did not feature the same sort of sappy sentimentalism, which seemed to be pervasive. I learned to exploit it - which depended in large part on valuing my uniqueness.

As an aside: you can imagine, all this worked fine as a child, but as I approached adulthood, these coping mechanisms became maladaptive. My response was to let slip the dogs of war and unleash that calm monstrosity within. That, is when I became marginilized.

Our experiences have obviously been very different. I imagine that the 70s in Canada was quite dissimilar to Scotland in the 1990's.

Nobody would ever have been frightened or admiring of me, and unlike you I didn't feel that I had any control of the situation. Like a moth near a porch light I just threw myself at people and situations which invariably ended in disaster. You seemed to have more of a strategy, but you are right what works in childhood does not work in the adult world. When I was young I imagined that the adult world would be easier to navigate but that was incorrect.