"You're so lagged behind in life, you need to buck up"

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How often do you hear these words from the people around you?

My mom just spoke these words to me yesterday, she said that her hairstylist's daughter is 26 years old and already had a stable full-time job and had recently gotten married. And she asked me why I'm still so lagged behind in life, and that I need to buck up.

"Misery loves company"

People say that stuff because they themselves are incapable of breaking out of the herd, so to speak. "Everybody else is doing this AND that, so YOU SHOULD, TOO, or BAD THINGS WILL HAPPEN. So, 'buck up' and be miserable like us"

I’ve read something before stating that speed doesn’t matter. Keep going, one step at a time. I consider myself to be a late-bloomer in some ways.

I used to get a bit of that. There was this guy at work who seemed to think everybody should have their careers planned out by the time they were 20, and should have "drive." And there I was, happy to just stick to the job I had until I couldn't stand it any more.

I never paid much attention to the criticisms. Moneywise I always had more than enough to pay the bills, and my job satisfaction never seemed worse than anybody else's, judging by some of the things people said about their jobs. If anybody had pointed to a specific, real problem I was heading for, I might have taken it more seriously, but all this "you're unusual, therefore you're wrong" stuff is based on shaky subjective assumptions. Nobody's ever demonstrated that following the American Competitive Dream is the key to happiness, and there's some evidence that for the wrong person it can lead to misery. I'm sure I could have made a rod for my own back by trying too hard to maximise my potential, and I see nothing fundamentally wrong in being content with keeping myself comfortable in the here and now, as long as it's sustainable.

In my view, the "purpose" of life is survival, mitigation of discomfort, and a bit of hedonism to inject some fun into the mix. I do tend to push myself quite hard, but not conspicuously, so people might easily think I'm not really "busting a gut." It's very much focussed on specific tasks that I've decided for myself I want or have to take on.

In the end all sane people want to be happy, and how to get there depends very much on the individual's nature.

Yes but the thing is, when you do 'buck up' and do the conventional things other people do, and follow their trajectory, such people get jealous!

When I was at school/ university/ my first job, I was constantly told to grow up, sort my life out, start fitting in with everyone else...then I met a man when I was 23, got engaged, married, had a child.

And my former friends/ colleagues/ family didn't like it! They put me down, criticised me for doing the wrong thing, made fun of me...because I'd stopped being 'the loser' and become 'successful.'

How confusing that was! So I realised that people like that PREFER us to be 'the loser', downtrodden, unpopular. They don't like it when we outshine them.

So just do things at your own speed. People will be happy or sad for you, it's more about them and their problems than you.

^That sucks, which is why I get totally irked when people mention autism and lack of empathy in the same sentence. A lot of posts I see here of our experiences with NTs in general demonstrates a lack of empathy on their (the NTs) part. The people who run us down or get jealous aren't considering our feelings, they're just thinking of themselves.

My family have never run me down about my successes. They always say how proud they are of me that I am coping rather well and have matured into a lovely woman with a good heart, despite the bitterness and resentment I often feel inside about different things, mostly about my past and also losing my mother (which is my worst ever fear come true).

I got run down a bit by people in my family when I was a teenager because of my lack of friends. My brother (now an Aspie himself) used to make fun of me for not having any friends, and a couple of my cousins would lecture or criticise me because of lacking friends, and my uncle would say that he'd hate to see his kids in their rooms on their computers all the time (even though I had no choice, as I didn't have any decent friends to hang out with), and even my mum got frustrated when I spent weekends and school holidays under her feet crying for a friend. It broke her heart, which she expressed through frustration. Sometimes she'd cuddle me and feel sorry for me, other times she'd yell "for f**k sake why can't you be normal??" - whatever normal was, but I think my mum's definition of normal was having a decent crowd of friends and going to sleepovers and being invited out on shopping trips and other social activities.
Yes, I think I came from a culture where having friends was the most important thing in the world and people who lacked friends were shameful. But once I was out of my teens my family no longer judged me on my social life.

Yes I don't get the lack of empathy thing either. NT empathy seems to consist of berating others for not doing whatever it is they think we should be doing. But autists seem to think carefully about others and if they've upset them.

How lovely that you have such a nice, supportive family. I'm trying to do that for my daughter, I hope I'm doing it right. I wouldn't call my mother supportive. Sometimes she said nice things to me but as I got older she just got nastier and nastier. She nagged me because I wasn't married and still living at home. Then I got married, but she was jealous and angry. Then she nagged me because she wanted a grandchild. I had a child, but she was jealous and angry. Then she nagged me because I didn't have a career. I got myself a career, but she just said I was lucky and became angry.

I stopped thinking of her as my mother decades ago, she's just my jealous older sister. I think she has a mental health condition or illness. She only has cognitive empathy, where she uses empathy to seem nice and kind, but is really only manipulating others. i.e. she learns the right phrases to say to make herself seem caring, but if you challenge her on what they mean, she doesn't know.

The only good thing was, my mother was brilliant at social life. She organised lots of parties, holidays, fun events, she was Miss Popular and because of that, I met lots of people, learned how to socialise, had a nice group of friends, which pleased my mother a lot!

But since I became pregnant with my daughter, alone in this unfriendly village, I haven't had friends.

Anyway, that went off on a tangent didn't it! lol.

I second this sentiment. It is important to keep moving forward. Even if you don't have a clear picture of a destination, continuous progress will get you somewhere.

Yes, 'it doesn't matter how slowly you go, as long as you don't stop.' the saying goes.

Although that is definitely unhelpful and feels hurtful rather than supportive, a way of looking at it could be that parents worry about their kids, and maybe this is her way of trying to help motivate you. I'm not excusing her insensitivity. But although I myself am not a parent, I know parents can get very fretful and worried.

I'm sorry that you had to hear that. This has happened to me too, more often in my teens and 20s. I'm now in my 40s.

My stepfather was always rounding up my age. "You're almost an adult." "You're almost 20." "You're almost 25." And so on.

When I was in college, he complained that my workload wasn't enough. He claimed most people my age took classes full time, worked full time and raised a family (and all without breaking a sweat, apparently). I mentioned that he hadn't done all of those things when he was my age and he said I was trying to deflect what he was saying by making it about him. I think he was projecting his insecurities onto me.

yes, what's that saying 'Different strokes for different folks' or something?

We. Are. All. Different.

I wish that parents/ family/ friends/ society/ the world would pay attention to that fact!

I am so glad to see that I'm not the only one who has had this experience!

This has happened with a lot of aspects of my life, but the one that sticks out the most is fitness. ll my life I've been very average physically, but my parents (and friends and other relatives and romantic partners) would constantly tell me I was "fat" and make me feel bad for my "poor choices" (really, my parents' choices because I was a child). I distinctly remember one girl I dated repeatedly telling me that I should have a six-pack

I'd felt ashamed of my body for over 30 years. Then, the pandemic starts and I suddenly have a lot of free time due to working from home. So, I start running to reduce stress/burnout. Consequently, I lost a lot of weight very quickly. All the people who criticised me for being "fat" all those years immediately switched their opinion and told me I was "exercising too much" and I was "going to injure myself", despite the fact that all I was doing was moderate running.

I agree with your approach. Do whatever you want/need to do at your own pace and don't pay attention to the peanut gallery. No matter what you do, someone will have a problem with it.

Yes. People eh? Never satisfied I ignore them and focus on what I'm doing, these days.

There's that saying 'you can please some of the people all of the time. And all of the people some of the time. But you can't please all of the people all of the time.'

It's true.

"You should have a six pack" Honestly! How rude.

In high school I recognized I was lagging behind socially and consciously threw myself into trying to make friends. Very mixed results.

Around my college years I got really tired of people telling me they were worried about me wasting my potential. It was a lot of "you're smart so you should be a whiz at school and get a fancy degree and such."

I think he's right, but I also think the reality is most people (ND or NT) aren't there. They haven't figured out who they are or what they really want, or they think they have and later figure out they were wrong.



Sounds like a very NT mindset.

I believe anyone who just cares about surviving doesn't deserve to.

I see human life as having no inherent value. Every person needs to actively justify their existence. It's determined by making a positive contribution to the world. That value and contribution is not measured by money. If anything, the accumulation of wealth actually decreases a person's value because rich people have a moral obligation to use their money to make the world a better place.

I reject that idea that happiness is or should be a choice. If terrible things happen to you yet you're still happy that's irrational. You might recover from those bad things to become happy again. Happiness should be a byproduct.

Thoughts, feelings, and reality need to be brought into alignment - for everyone. Ugly people who think themselves beautiful, skinny people who think themselves fat, strong people who feel weak: all disconnections from reality. All problems to be fixed.

I remember I was severely "behind" until I was 4 or 5 years old. A non-verbal autistic.

When I was 5 years old many, really many thing changes. My language delay became less severe, since I thought I have to change this. I had to learn to speak, to write, to read, so several communication skills. Without real therapy, but I had to "buck up". The delay greatly disappeared and I became a highly intellectual child. I was way ahead intellectually. I got a very good sense of place: Where am I? I learned to play a musical instrument, an organ, learned to read musical sheets, chords, chord progression, when I was 6 or 7 years old. My IQ was about 140.

I already know I was a bit different, children didn't like me. At 8 I tried to learn German. I became a polyglot at a pretty young age. I was still far ahead.

Finding work was a bit difficult. The difference between me and others are disappearing. Also because of being bullied. I wanted to work on social skills and learn to make friends. Girls find me interesting, but I failed to get a girlfriend. I failed terribly.

Now I had an entry job, hoping to advance. I could help the school where I work, with computer problems. But the school had different plans. I wasn't aware of it. It "diagnosed" me with a learning disorder. But I think the principal was very frightened of me. High intelligence doesn't disappear. I still want to "buck up", but I failed due to various manipulation tricks. I daredn't apply for a different job, because I would fail after a few months, because of questionable reasons. The autism stigma destroyed everything. I don't want to pay for it much longer, the school has to suffer, and I will make it suffer!!