Tired of NTs telling me I need to change my personality

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Most people seem to enjoy my eccentricities. But a few are rather bugged of my occassional distancing from people. One example would be at the Homecoming dance a few Saturdays ago. A few people tryed getting me to dance. After the first hour, somone decided to grab me and pull me unto the dance floor. I took it as flirting, especially since she had no guy with her. She basically yelled at me, "Ben, you're going to dance". I later learned she has a boyfriend. And thier are a few other similar stories like that.

I have learned it is far easier to conform to them than to do our own thing. We live in their world, not the other way around. If you want to be successful, I would suggest being more like them.

It's not all that simple or easy to fake NT. I can be miles out of my comfort zone, putting on quite the NT circus act (to me, it feels like a circus act) and people can *still* tell it's fake.

I have had to fake it as well. I think people don't know i'm being fake. But I don't like acting that way, at all. I fell being fake is not being real and honest with people. If people don't like you for who you really are, then they are not worth it anyway.

Oh I've been told things like that all my life. What's more I always believed them when they said I could be just like everyone else and assumed it was because I wasn't trying hard enough or that I was stupid.

No wonder I ended up so insecure.

Since I also get these kind of derogatory remarks, is it any wonder why most of us are unhappy?

"You must have a girlfriend -- to live!"

"You must get drunk -- to live!"

"You must get out more!"

That's not making me independant, that's just conditioning me into being just like they are in this co-dependant society.

In short, go jump off a bridge and spare me this "holier than thou" bollocks. I couldn't care less anymore.

This thread is so depressingly true.

I've heard pracitically everyone of these NT ignorisims (hey is that a new word? )at some time or another. At least after a while the sting of it wears off a little.

We could always retort with AS versions of these ignorisims?

i.e.

"Why do you always feel the need to talk?"
"Why aren't you stimming like me?"
"Quit making small talk!"
"Why can't you hear the TV buzzing, is there something wrong with you?"
"Why can't you ever take anything literally?"
"You're so normal!"
"Why can't you just stare blankly like me?"
"Why are you so lacking in originality?"
and of course..
"Can't you just TRY to be more Autistic?"

That'll fox 'em!

I like that one, alot. I'm going to use it.

That one's growing on me too. The more I think about actually using it, the more I want to giggle. I think that's a good sign!

The Good News is that most of these "Why don't you's....." dry up in the end. It must be hell for the younger set being on the receiving end of these criticisms from their relatives, but once you get to an age where you are mostly on your own (ie 41 or so), there is a degree of social invisibility that occurs purely through ageing.

Phrases that I have heard the most:

"why are you so quiet?"
"how come you're not so talkative?"
"You're a weeeiired kid"
"Comon, Ed! Smile some more will ya"
"How come you always talk to yourself?"
"there are places to go and people to meet" (my dad)

If I ever laugh involuntarily (not just a manually expressed "haha"), somebody will always point out, "SEE!! Even Ed thinks its funny!"

But there was one moment that clearly takes the cake:

About 4 months ago, my dad had his crew of gamers over at our house for a BBQ. My dad was in the middle of a conversation with some guy there I hadn't met before. I think they were talking about me because as I approached the table, this guy looked at me, then looked back at my dad and said something like "really! You can talk to him? ...In plain English??" He then gazed at me for a good 5 seconds or so with a puzzled/worried expression on his face. Whatever the heck that was all about, I was just baffled. I retreated my room for the remainder of the event.

I've heard alot of those too. The personality one is my mother's favorite. She insists I need to more personality and be more glib, whatever that means. I can still remember her screaming at me about not getting good grades because I wasn't glib and didn't have personality. When I would respond "but grades are based on work," she'd fly off the handle. I couldn't ever understand how you grade personality, I was never mean to anyone, never called people names or anything like that, I just preferred to mind my own business and do my work. They would even insist I wasn't nice, even though the school never complained about me, and they never witnessed my behavior.

I always got the stuff about being depressed too. I was never allowed to feel bad, I had to repress my anger all the time. Even if I slightly raised my voice, all hell would break loose in the house about how one day I'm going to "blow up" at someone and it will be all over. I never understood why I had to pretty much take whatever was dumped on me and supress my feelings while my sister could have all the temper tantrums she wanted, which usually concluded with her stomping upstairs to her room and slamming her door so hard things would fall off the wall. More NT double standards I guess.

I'm sick of NTs' crap.

"You need new NT's."

My folks allowed my younger brother and sister to get away with so much crap plus they were allowed to do and say whatever they wanted. Whereas if I cried, got angry at the way I was treated or didn't act "invisible", it was hell to pay. And the trippin' part was my parents blamed me for my siblings' bad behavior saying they act bad whenever I was around even though they tore up my stuff, hit and disrespected me and I never did anything wrong.

So they would ship me off to my great-great-grandmother's house every single weekend so they could have peace and quiet although I hated it. Now how backwards is that? I think aspies experience just as much bullying at home as they do in the outside world. And they wonder why so many end up with depression.

I don't have Aspergers, but I can't understand why anyone would try to get you to change who you are. At least you arent pretending to be something that you aren't, which is something that the rest of the world is too busy doing to notice that you're comfortable with yourselves.

People are scared of anything or anyone who is different.

I know how that feels. My parents favorite reason for letting my sister get away with things was "she's a girl." My mother was also obsessed with my sister's self esteem, yet didn't care about mine. I think one reason my sister was allowed to treat me so badly was to artificially boost her self esteem, to hell with mine.

My brothers weren't raised the crap I was raised with either. Their lives were for themselves, while mine wasn't for me. I have one brother who rarely did anything but sit in his room with the door shut reading books about history and my parents never tried to stop him. When I wanted to do my thing, it was just too bad if my sister wanted to do something else. Like I said before, I figured the same rules that applied to other family members would apply to me as well, and of course, they didn't. More NT double standards I guess.

I once saw an episode of "Nanny 911" where a child had a tantrum and the father was taking care of it letting the child just burn off their tantrum. The mother wanted to go in and give her hug and make her feel better, but the nanny wouldn't let her. One thing the nanny said that hit me was "How is your child supposed to learn to deal with her emotions if they are always suppressed?" That is the worst part of all, I still have trouble dealing with emotions, especially the negative ones. Often when I'm upset like a reflex, I shut down and and stop talking, bottling everything up. Occasionally when I'm alone, I sometimes have a random outburst of anger where everything comes back at once. I've even broken things during these outbursts. I sometimes even feel guilty for my negative feelings, and for even having needs.

It's just so hard.