Why is it easier for NTs to feign?

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I know that many NTs' behaviors do not come naturally to them, same as for us Aspies they need to feign. Things like ass-kissing, cocktail party mingling, white lies, etc.

But they feign with much less effort than us (not to mention, more effectively too, but that's another topic). Why is it easier for them?

There's a saying that goes "Fake it till you make it". So if you fake a behaviour for a while, it because so ingrained into you that you might as well have had it from the very beginning. So I dunno really, my be a case of you get better at thing the more you do it

Perhaps such people can more easily compartmentalise, separating their true selves from their personas.

because the world is designed for them

My therapist used to say that I had to develop my False Self (according to the theory of the True and the False Selves, I forget the author).

Practice,practice,practice.

The things you learn how to do when you are very young become such second nature that you don't even realize how you are doing them anymore as an adult.

Neither the NT 3 year old nor the Aspie 3 year old has the slightest idea how to feign, fake it till you make it etc. Both go bumbling around, blurting out the wrong thing, bursting into tears and making the other kid burst into tears. But the NT 3 year old really, really WANTS to be in the group while the Aspie 3 year old really , really WANTS to work on or learn about whatever his special interest is. Parents and preschool teachers immediately begin lessons on how to feign to fit into the group. These lessons take hold with the NT 3 year old but not with the Aspie 3 year old because they are trying to teach him how to do something he has zero interest in doing.

I think the most common feign/fake it till you make it lesson at that age is the forced apology. "Tell Billy you're sorry you took his toy" says mom or the preschool teacher. Whether the 3 year old in question is actually sorry or not is irrelevent. It's not about telling the truth (probably neither the NT nor Aspie 3 year old is actually sorry at that young age). It's about smoothing things over and calming the other person's hurt feelings so that group dynamics can return to normal. This is important to the NT 3 year old. And utterly irrelevent to the Aspie 3 year old. (I'm projecting, but probably not that far off considering the animosity to white lies.)

The things you start practicing at 3 years old become so ingrained that they are literally second nature. The things you start practicing at 17...not so much.

Because they don't really care about people or anything else,
The NT brains wired in such a way that it cannot see the connections between different things so they do not and can not understand the implications of their behaviour
it takes a developed and balanced personality to really get the importance of honesty and it takes a soul to get how critical it is to make real connection with another human being,
NT doesn't have a soul so all they can sense is a very short term goals and very fragmented reality where things never add up to anything meaningful so they have no problem in destroying themselves and the others,
that's why they considered to be healthy by the pro's who are the most soulless of all critters/

Beautifully said. The majority of people on the planet are jackasses and the single common denominator in all my personal issues is the rest of the world. I've never heard pure hatred put so poetically.

Good luck with that.

why then, enlighten us on your soul and compassion filled philosophy how people should be

Quoting Jannisy:

Oh, that's a very good point. Especially when a child is forced to apologize for something he or she really didn't do or is humiliated into issuing an phony apology. I can see how that would start the ball rolling towards a false self. And Aspie kids would be stubborn enough (at least my kids) refuse no matter what the consequences. But, I never expected or asked my kids to do that kind of thing, other authority figures did though, like teachers, neighbors. But they certainly didn't do it in my presence, I can assure you.

Also, I have always been against the idea of making kids share their toys or personal property. If they did it on their own, that was fine. After all, adults aren't forced to share their personal toys or property, why should children have to. "Share and Share Alike" - bah humbug. I'd like to know who came up with that proverb. It wasn't an Aspie.

And Greentea - You always come up with such good thread topics.

Thank you, cosmiccat. These topics are the many questions I ask myself all the time, and I post them as they pop in my head.

I enjoyed your reply very much, wish I'd had a mom like you.

Oh no, another "Asperger über alles" post.

Hmm, that sounds more like an AS than an NT.


Sounds more AS too...


What, all NTs are bloody liars? I thought NTs were supposed to be better, and more interested in, making connections with others, anyway.


I'm intrigued by this. What does it mean? The concept of 'souls' are bunk anyway.


How are NTs more short-term than AS?


That also sounds suspiciously more AS.


There you go with 'soulless' again.

Fun fact: replace the first two 'NT' in the post and replace it with 'AS', and it makes as much sense.

lol

(tho deep inside i agree NTs are on autopilot during social interaction, which disables long term goal analysis)

I'm going to guess it's as important to the NT 3 year old as it is to the AS 3 year old. Apologies are important to adults, and apologies are an early part of conditioning children to socialize in their later years. Kids just want their toys back.

My mom taught me the apology of omission, which means "I'm sorry (I didn't get away with it)" and "I apologize (for making you tattle and get me in trouble)" except you leave out the parts in parenthesis. It makes the apology a lot more sincere.

Later, someone explained that "sorry" isn't always an admission of guilt, you can be sorry your actions hurt someone without being sorry for committing the act in the first place.



It's pretty easy for any forum of like minded people to deteriorate into a hate forum.

Janissy deserves A HUGE THANKS for giving her thoroughly explained insight as an NT in this kind of threads where we Aspies are so totally clueless.

And I say this regardless of whether my values concur or don't concur with the NT values reflected in her posts. I'm not on these threads seeking validation for my values but to try and understand the NT mentality better so I can fit in better when I need to, and also out of healthy curiosity.

Janissy also deserves a special resilience mention for continuing sharing her insight with us unswervingly even in the face of our typical and inevitable Aspie rejection of NT values.

Honest, straightforward, clear explanations from NTs to Aspies is one of the most difficult things to find in this life. I know this after 50 years of seeking, including 30 years of therapies that prove there are some things that money can't buy.

I have a question about the forced apology thing. I still have issues when a person I've had a conflict with demands an apology when it appears to me that they are still strongly invested in "coming out on top" rather than making honest amends.

It's especially problematic when the other person, in their anger, has said things that are much MORE blatantly and intentionally offensive to me immediately before demanding the apology. Even if I can mentally accept responsibility for starting the conflict my gut reaction to such a demand will always be "no way in hell". It's like they want me to hand a them my gesture of apology as if it were a little cap stone they can use to feel even more self-satisfied in their self-righteous feelings. If the other person says things that hurt me much more intensely than my statements could have possibly hurt them it feels like a grave injustice.

As a 3 year old I know I didn't have the level of awareness to think this way, but I do have vague recollections starting around the age of 6. I distinctly remember temper tantrums that escalating to violent levels due to the aggravation of my being forced to apologize. Of course at that age I had no way to communicate the feelings described in the previous paragraph. All I knew was that I constantly dealt with these perceptions of injustice that were centered around being forced to play by certain social rules that I found unfair. These incidents spurred on all my most violent rages where I would hit or kick adults and end up locked away in some room. The adults didn't get what was going on with me and often claimed that my rages, refusals, and bitter grudges with adults were "manipulations".

Anyways, it'd be nice to hear some input on this from aspies and NT parents.