Intuitive Social Situations Demystified

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Thank you, Morgana.

Had a social situation today - was in hell. Suffered terribly through it, worried continually, and I just can't relax even tho it's been over for 3 hours. I just keep running things through my head and thinking how stupid I am and how inappropriate that was and what that person must be thinking. Unfortunately the person knows others that I do business with and interact with so I'm so worried that I've shot myself in the foot big time and they'll repeat what an idiot I am or how I said something wrong or didn't get the right 'cue' at the right time or whatever. It always happens - always has, always will. I haven't had one of these things in nearly 5 years and it's on purpose - I've just kept away from people and meeting new people and being in situations like this. It's the best way to avoid the fallout. JUST DON'T let yourself be subjected to it.

This one was a bit out of my hands and in a weak moment I agreed. I think it's been too long since the last bad experience or something, if I'd been able to keep that fresh in my mind I never would have said yes.

I'm cringing over and over reliving the day. Most of the time I feel that my Aspergian traits are a bonus, times like this I just wish so hard that I was somebody else.

Bleah.

earthmom, I could've written that post, word by word! The worrying, the cringing when reliving the situation, the slipping in a moment of stress, everything...it's so me.

Thanks so much for the validation - I really appreciate it. (and I love green tea - drink it everyday!)

And also the only damage-reduction being minimizing contact with humans.

By the way, I totally identify with R.W. Emerson, and often quote him too. My signature here, for 2 years, was: "It is the wounded oyster that mends its shell with pearl" - R.W. Emerson

Sorry to hear about your situation, earthmom. Yes, these things can, and do, happen...

Today I had an interesting experience, in that I met with a student to talk about a past, as well as future (possible) projects. During the conversation, he started telling me all about the school; social hierarchy stuff, how this or that teacher acts, who sucks up to whom, intrigue, etc.: basically, all that social stuff that I never really pick up on. It was quite fascinating, and a real eye opener! It also explained, finally, many of the interchanges I´ve had with various teachers and other employees in the past. (In other words, things I didn´t understand before now make more sense).

I don't know if you've read 'Look Me In The Eye' - a wonderful book by John Elder Robison, but I was jumping up and down and saying "YES!" outloud several times while reading that book! He explains perfectly several things that I've known or experienced but didn't put into words.

One of them is a suspicion (sp?) I've had for years now - I'm 48 and I realized that as I age I'm better at some social stuff. Just by practice, observation, training myself, practice, trial and error, all of these years - I've picked up some good standard small talk that is acceptable and have learned more every year about ways to pass undetected. That's what I always feel that I'm doing - just passing. I learned how to plant grass a few years ago - not because I liked grass and not because I wanted to pay the extra water bill and mow it and take care of grass, but because I bought this house and the first year there was nothing but dirt out front and it causes a stir. It was "weird" and talked about by the neighbors and socially unacceptable. To be socially acceptable you have to have grass (or a landscaped alternative that is low water like stone or cacti). So I learned the basics and now have grass. And I'm passing in that regard.

But I digress - we all learn and improve but what I've long seen too is that I have LOST some of my edge - some of my intensity and focus - some of my flashes of genius, basically. Not that I was a freakin savant ever, but John Robison admits to looking at electronic circuits that he designed in his teens or early 20s, and now in his 40s he can't understand them. But his social skills have improved.

I can look at computer programs that I wrote 10 or 15 years ago and I don't understand them. But my social skills and interpersonal skills have improved.

He draws the parallel to the book/movie 'Flowers for Algernon' - which was a story that captivated me in a big way. I read it several times as a child and saw the movie several times. It's fascinating - a man with a low IQ gets this experimental drug that makes him a genius. Then it's so sad as the movie goes on he loses the genius and reverts back to his low IQ. In some ways John Robison feels that happening to him and in some ways I really do, too.

Maybe that's a very good thing - we end up balancing out. And maybe that's a message that all young Aspies need to hear - that it's not always this drastic. It's like going through puberty, you can tell a teenager that things get better, but for Aspies it's almost like puberty lasts for decades instead of just a few years. Since the awkwardness and not fitting in and being 'weird' lasts longer than it does for NTs, maybe we need to get the word out that there IS a light at the end of the tunnel if you don't give up, keep practicing, keep observing, look for your niche.

We need to play up our strengths and minimize our weakness. Focus on what you do well, even exceptionally well or better than most, and try to exploit that in your favor. Then continue working on the social stuff.

I think many Aspies are afraid to step forward and claim their niche and be who they could be and say what they do well, because they're held back by the social problems. Just tell yourself you'll work on that later.

I knew a guy who spent all of his energy and life studying - he got several Masters degrees, he was unpleasant to look at and just obese to boot. He cared nothing about his appearance, was absorbed in his studies (I don't believe he was Asperger, by the way) and whenever health or weight came up he said he was busy now but he would deal with all that "later". He was a young guy. I thought he was foolish and risking a heart attack at a young age but get this - after excelling and earning his degrees he secured a high level very well paid position in a big company. Now he had education, and money.

He started a big health program and lost half of his body weight. Then bought nice clothes to fit his new lean body. Then attracted a nice woman, married, had twins and later 2 more kids.

Happy ever after? Sort of. He just had a really healthy long term outlook. He knew that he personally couldn't handle making all of those improvements to himself all at once, so he only focused on one at a time, basically. And somehow it worked out for him. I have to add that he's a bit of an arrogant jerk and I've lost touch with him by choice - lol - but overall it's an interesting approach to compartmentalizing ones life and working on excelling in areas you can handle for now, leaving others to later).

For young Aspies - it gets better. I believe it really does. I still have problems but I sat here thinking about what this recent situation would have done to me 10 years ago and it's like night and day. I didn't make half the gaffs this time, I didn't get even half as upset, it just was dulled compared to where I used to be.

Wow, this is a really interesting thread! Like Morgana, I had absolutely no idea NTs did so much purely on gut feeling. I also don't think I've ever had an intuition of this sort

Earthmom's message made me very sad. You're saying that I can learn to be sociable and get along more "normally", but I have to pay dearly for it by losing my "edge"? That's the very thing that defines me. I love being great at what I do, and wouldn't want to miss it for the world.

Dammit, I guess I have some soul searching to do

Yes, that's what NTs do, in a nutshell. Life is a constant compromise between the False (social) Self and the True Self, as they say.

I too always explain it by set theory, because indeed society is formed by the intersection (commonalities) between everyone's circles.

However, your circle and those of others are not simple circles but each of us has a set of concentric circles or rings. (I wish I could draw here what I mean.) We have an inner core circle which will never intersect with anyone else's - that's called the innermost self. The rest of the circles, each circle shares more of our True Self with others the more internal that circle is, and shares less with others the more external that circle is (excuse my poor English).

We Aspies function like this:

Basis: Our center of gravity is in the innermost, meaning our reactions are more to what's going on inside us (the inner circles) than what's going on outside us in society (the outer circles). Eg: lack of empathy, egocentric talk, lack of reciprocity, obliviousness/lack of intuition for nonverbal cues/rules). Very social people are more attuned to what's going on outside them in others than inside themselves.

Result: Massive rejection, which causes us to only intersect with people in the most external of circles (eg: colleagues don't confide in us, don't become closer friends to us, people only do smalltalk with us, we don't have close friends, family relate to us in a formal, polite way but share deeper issues with your siblings and not with you, etc.) and this often gives us a wrong impression that "everyone is so false", "everyone is so shallow", "everyone is so different from me", "everyone is so illogical", etc.

At the core of AS is the imbalance between the inner self and the outer self, and the inflexibility to flow from one to the other as needed. So what you mention (which is my frantic, hopeless endeavor every day when I get out of the house) is impossible to achieve for an Aspie to a satisfactory level. We never reach a satisfactory balance that gives us both a satisfactory social life and an authentic (rich, creative, self-satisfying) life at the same time. Examples of famous people who had this problem (whether because of AS or anything else it's unknown: Van Gogh, Nietzche).

Trying to become more flexible in this regard is like trying to become more blue-eyed when you have brown eyes. It's impossible, frustrating, energy-sapping, and ultimately kills us because it leaves us both without ourselves and without others.

I think that for normal people, the impressions they gain during social interactions are something like what I experience when I smell smoke. There's no intellectual process involved, it's simply something that I recognize.

I can detect differences, wood smoke, cigarette smoke, gunpowder smoke, burning rubber.

I couldn't explain what it is I'm experiencing. I guess I could, particles in the air contacting chemical receptors in the nasal passages triggering nerve messages to some part of the brain, but that would have nothing to do with what I'm experiencing when I instantly recognize the smell.

I'm not sure about the time delay. One of the things that thoroughly confuses me is trying to detect what's actually going on in a normal conversation. I find it like watching a soccer game if I couldn't see the ball. Like a bunch of people seemingly running around at random, obviously doing something, but I have no idea what.

I never knew about the concept of "after the fact." Wow, that's important. Why?

So I know NT's figure me out intuitively. Throughout the years, I've figured out how to read them more and accurate, and a lot of that now is becoming intuitive for me. My problem now is communicating to them. They seem to misread me more so than I misread them.

So, every time I talk to them, I'm always looking for facial cues to where they seem to change their opinion of me from just a normal person to something less than that (i.e. someone who can't be trusted). I have been very perplexed as to why someone will act like I'm a very cool person when I talk to them, but later, they act different. Now I know why. I don't really know how to offset that, but at least I now know they don't really formulate an opinion about me while I'm talking to them and that it isn't until I'm probably not around at all do they do so. So, now I have to consider memory, which I'm sure keeping things short and to the point helps them remember better what I was saying. That's easier said than done, but I'm working on articulating myself better. I have to with my sister or she totally twists what I'm saying which is awful. Like when she tells a bunch of black guys I'm racist because she confused "I think certain black people like so and so feed into their own stereotype" into "So and so are this stereotype because they are black." This wasn't what exactly happened, but it's a perfect example how she twists my words around into the opposite of what I say. But she's not NT. She's very irrational, like taking normal to an extreme where it's really not normal.