Do others regard you as pompous?

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Interesting, but NOT unique! I am the SAME way!

Steve

Yeah, they think I'm pompous.

I get called an elitist a lot.

At work they say I don’t need to read confidence books because I have too much.

My father and step-mother have called my pompous but they prefer the term "arrogant." (to be fair, this have been much better as of late)

I guess that we have to be popus to stand up to those NTs when they start getting all leiry. I made a point when one of my work mates said it was bad luck to eat chocolates from the Christmas calendar before that day. To an NT that might be an innocent sane statement but for me it is cobblers and madness. So even in an atheist country like UK NT folk gravity towards superstition and spirituality; the only reason for them leaving Christianity in first place is that it that Christianity condemn fornication, getting helplessly drunk, being selfish and greedy, and never going to Church on Sunday.

NTs are full of crap, I tell thee.

Same here. Nervous wreck, or distant and arrogant. Wouldn't mind being distant and arrogant all the time, in fact :p

NTs see us this way because they see everything through the filter of identity and social hierarchies.
We don't do social hierarchies.

I can't think of a time when I've ever been called pompous. However I have been called things like stuck-up, snob, smart-ass, know-it-all, or high-minded.

If we have this degree of acuity about how others perceive us, it doesn't augur well for the theory-of-mind-deficit believers!

Well, many NTs would tell me that there is no hive mind controlling their decisions, and that they are not obsessed with and filtering everything through their own identity. They would also call someone pompous (or similar) and at the same time claim that they are not judging them through the filter of social hierarchies. They may even call my account of this delusional and/or not objective.
I find this amusing.

I get that

I definitely have theory of mind deficits. I tend to automatically assume that other people think and perceive things the same way I do, and still get horrible surprises sometimes when I find out that they don't.

Most of the time, I don't have much idea how other people perceive me, unless they tell me directly, or make it obvious in some other way. Sometimes I can extrapolate it based on past experience, but this is different from having real-time discernment.

Having a really obsessive nature, I will analyze things every which way. In time, I may come to a really thorough understanding of how a person thinks. And then I may say things that are startlingly perceptive of them, hence they may think I'm being a smart-ass.

But despite that, under real-time pressure, or just plain naivete, I may still fall back on the old assumption that they think just like I do. I realize it later and feel like an idiot, because I know better...I've already collected enough data to know better, but it's like my brain just couldn't access that information in the critical moment it needed to do so. It's very frustrating, and really gets me burned sometimes by jerks.

Different people see me in different ways. Partly this depends on context, their relationship to me, how well we know each other; even where the first meeting takes place (social, professional or casual?)- lots of variables.. I know that different close friends have each described me differently when people ask them "what is she like?". So far as I know they haven't ever said 'pompous' though perhaps they were being kind!

Also, I respond differently to the different personalities of my friends and family - these are interactive encounters and the sum is greater than the parts that each of us brings.

It may be that this kind self-consciousness (how do they regard me, what do people think etc) is to some extent wasted energy, because people tend to see others from a very personal base of perception, into which there is usually some element of projection.

Curiously, I think a lot of people see me as confident, yet I am full of self-doubt consistently.. perhaps they see what they want to see, or they confuse my wide ranging knowledge with confidence? They suppose someone who has one must have the other?

That is exactly how I find things. I am often very surprised by how different the perceptions and thoughts of others are.

I have a large vocabulary and was accustomed to use it with precision. My parents were literary people and I grew up hearing and reading a lot of archaic English. As a child, I may have employed some turns of phrase that were more Edwardian than modern. I believe people thought of me as pompous or pedantic because of that.

In college, I realized what was happening when I overheard two instructors saying negative things about me. I deliberately simplified my speech and peppered it with filler words. Like, you know, kinda talked about the thing without the, like, precision that I used to use. My grades went from a C to an A. I have continued to speak in this imprecise and clumsy way ever since and I believe it has been helpful at school and work.

It was harder to adjust my written style to suit the demands of the situation, but a general guide has been to keep the tone and language as simple as possible and always err on the side of sacrificing precision and subtlety of meaning for simplicity and brevity.

When I was young the other kids thought I was a "snot/snob" because of how shy I was about saying hello and how I always had my nose in a book, and because of how I talked. I got picked on very badly for it.

As an adult, people don't generally think I'm pompous except in writing. I realize I do get "professor"-ish (not an intelligence thing, BTW, I am very average intelligence-wise) when I'm making a point, or trying to, especially when it's in writing/on the internet, so I always make an effort to just sound (so to speak) normal on the internet or when making a point in person. I use far fewer words and I just...leave out that high-horse-ness (or what it's interpreted as), if that makes any sense.

Just recently on this forum, I was starting to get "into it" with an NT person, who was attempting the very things that I realize make me sound pompous (or perhaps was doing so unconsciously...I should be fair about that point), so I simply begged off and let him have his way rather than pinpointing exactly where he was wrong and why, taking apart the areas where he was obviously manipulating with his words, etc. as I knew exactly how I'd sound, and I just...didn't want to sound that way. I preferred just letting him feel he was right to getting into my "professor zone," which is just never attractive to anybody, in any capacity.

It's not that I'm bowing down to conformity or that I "just want to be liked" or anything like that (usually)...it's that at a certain point, the person takes such offense to my tone (even though it's my natural tone) that s/he no longer even hears what I'm saying, meaning the communication is over, and at that point, what use is it to anybody, including myself?