List one NT thing you do not understand.

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One thing that NTs do that I don't understand:

The need for fitting in and conformity.
They will go to ridiculous heights to achieve this, even at times going against their own moral values.
They will bully/make fun of others who don't conform to some group standard, go out and buy clothes that everyone else wears, or do some unwise and potentially unhealthy thing just to fit in.
This is especially prevalent in NT teenagers.

I don't 'fit in' in a bunch of ways, and I could care less.

Rose, I do shake hands but I do not like to myself. I don't know how hard or loose I'm supposed to grab the other person's hand. It feels ackward to me. Rose, I don't like it when random people try to hug me as well. It feels ackward. I do not know how to respond correctly. Personally, I would rather do a bow like they do in the asian areas.

Here is another problem with shaking hands. What about germs? My wife who is NT does not like to shake hands as well because of this. Why can't we all just do a bow or some salute or something?

With Satellite TV, maybe he figured it was cheaper. Here is the thing with asking what's wrong, I am AS as well but I may not want to talk about what is wrong at that time when someone asks. When I say that, that person still persists. Maybe I need to calm down somewhere before I can rationally talk about it.

I've been reading a book on body language and the thing to do is grasp their hand as hard as they do you. Any harder you seem controlling, any softer you seem submissive. Also make sure your thumb doesn't end up pointing down, keep it on top or you'll seem submissive yet don't try and force theirs down or you seem dominant. This is if you want a scene of equality. Hope this helps.

Contradictory instructions are something I have a great deal of trouble with. Mentioning talking reminded me of when I was heavily criticized, almost verbally abused, by someone for keeping myself to myself too much and not talking to them. So I made a particular effort to seek out and talk to them more. Then they had no interest whatsoever in anything I had to say, and it was quite obvious, even to me, that they could not wait for me to leave.

Gossip and spreading malicious rumours about people.

What do people really gain out of this?

I would never ever do this.
It would be hurtful to the other person and I don't see the point.
It also wastes valuable time


Also, the idea of people making their private relationships public by broadcasting them to the world, talking about boyfriends/girlfriends, family members etc with a million other people. Also discussing relationships with other people at great length and describing the person's personality such as:

"Oh he's so wonderful. Blah blah blah. He has such a nice personality. He's so supportive."

It would never occur to me to do this.
Not because I wouldn't care about the other person, but because I'm discreet.
To me, a private relationship is just that, private, my own and the other person's own private businesses.

I wouldn't see the need to tell hundreds of people or phone into a radio show about it if I'd made my feelings clear to the other person and we were happy together.

I'd say to a person directly and honestly that they were wonderful etc. if that's how I really felt, or maybe one other person, but not an entire organisation or as many people as possible.

It's odd, but I wouldn't plant "good rumours" either and spread them around about someone either. Women do this a lot and I have no idea why.

I really don't understand this.
Surely it's enough to just tell the other person that s/he is "good" honestly in private and leave it at that?

There also seems to be this need for other people to ask:
"How are you getting on with so and so?"

And if you want to keep that information private, you are considered "rude".

Or if you're with another person of the opposite sex, intrusive questions are asked, even if you and the other person are just friends or on business. Then inaccurate rumours and assumptions are spread about your private "relationship", without even consulting you first.

I cannot tell anyone they look good if i think they dont. I really dont know why they would ask me if they didnt want the truth

Hi Janissy, thank you for what you wrote here. I appreciate that.

You wrote: "Doesn't it make sense that it is just as hard for her to go against her wiring as it is for you to go against yours?" and: "Going against her language wiring is just as hard for her as it is for you."
Yes, it makes a lot of sense. I have thought about it that way myself.
However, it is almost always portrayed like we on the autistic spectrum are the ones who don't understand, who lack empathy, who lack Theory of Mind etc., while the NTs are portrayed as the ones who understand others (without specifying which "others"), have empathy and Theory of Mind, who can "read" others' minds, etc.
So, does it make sense that I find it a bit confusing that those people who are said to understand "others", apparently don't understand us - and that it seems like they don't always use their Theory of Mind towards us, so they presume we think the same as they do?

But then again, I have a theory that all people lack understanding, or if you will, empathy / Theory of Mind towards people who are not like themselves. And since we are the minority who doesn't understand the majority, it has been assumed that we don't understand people in general, and thus have a disorder in that area. On the other hand, it's not considered a disorder when the majority misunderstands the minority, but just a natural thing.
(We may have a disorder in that area, but maybe we could say the same about the NTs if you were the minority?)
Hope that makes sense?

By the way, it was the person in question herself who told me that she had used a "hidden meaning".

I need to explain that I fully understand that she can't just stop using hidden meanings or such. (And I'm not that literal by the way - I just didn't realise that the sentence "you should find a two-room apartment instead of a one-room apartment" meant: "I think you should find..." etc., rather than being a kind of "piece of good advice" that I ought to follow in order to do things the right way, since she has given me such a kind of "pieces of good advice" often before.)

What I talked about was rather the fact that she wondered that I misunderstood, and that I couldn't "read" her mind, since she knew about my AS diagnosis and thus ought to know that I might have such difficulties. It was not the fact that she said something I misunderstood, as such.

Hope that is somewhat clear? Or you may ask again.

I think Theory of Mind is just that: a theory that people have about what is going on the minds of other people. This theory is based on their own minds and cross-referenced with a huge database of experiences in which they found out what was on other peoples' minds and correlated that with a vocabulary of facial expressions and body language. People do a probability analysis of what other people are thinking and use body language/expressions/verbal response to estimate if their guess was right or not. After enough thousands of interactions where it was correct, it starts to feel like an ability to predict accurately what another person is thinking. But it's just a prediction, not mind reading, and sometimes predictions are wrong.

I think people (like this woman) have a hard time wrapping their heads around the fact that you are not using the same probability analysis "software" that they are, especially if you are the only person they have interacted frequently with who isn't. (They probably don't remember aspies they had fleeting encounters with and didn't pause to wonder about their minds). You can say it. They can agree with it and say they understand it. But it is a very hard thing to actually understand, much less figure out how to correctly accomodate for. You told her you can't read minds. She can't read minds either. What she can do is use her probability analysis software to make an educated guess what another person is thinking. It's a guess that has been educated by decades of interaction with NTs so it falls apart with you. She may nod her head agreeably and agree that yes, yes she understands you can't read minds. Even so, if every person she's ever known well has probability analysis software similar to her own, she's going to have a very hard time really uinderstanding what it means to not have it. It's one heck of a lot harder than understanding something more obvious like blind or deaf (and even so Spokanegirl said she'd sometimes accidentally shown things to a blind coworker and said things to a deaf co-worker).

I know it's unfair that NTs only are asked to accomodate 1 person out of the hundreds they know wherease Aspies are asked to accomodate everyone. That isn't fair. But the mere fact that it is so lopsided means that there are very few NT people out there who are going to be able to communicate with Aspies without miscommunicating. Saying "just don't play mind games" doesn't mean anything. Most people (outside of certain professions like show biz or professional poker or organized crime) don't go about their days intentionally playing mind games. They just go about their business and talk to people and assume the people know what they are talking about and are right until they run into an Aspie who says "don't play mind games" and then they get flummoxed because they didn't think they were. They just thought you would know what they meant because everybody else does. Ansd when you say "well I'm not everybody else so talk plainly" they aren't sure exactly what they're supposed to say or not say in response to that.

I understand that at core that was mainly just a vent because it isn't fair. But this miscommunication problem seems to be what causes the most stress to adults. (To kids it's bullying. Other kids aren't as interested in communicating as adults are). I don't have a solution because I don't have a Babel Fish that would make everybody understand each other. And a Babel Fish is practically what it would take.

When someone says:

"I can't live without you!"


Well, he obviously could live before he met you.
He has lived since he was born up until the point he met you.

If he hadn't been alive before he had met you: he would be dead.

Therefore, he wouldn't be able to talk to you now.
He has contradicted himself.

So maybe the person was lonely, happy or whatever before he met you, but he was still very much alive. So he could live.

You can't, by definition, miss or not be able to survive without someone that you haven't met yet.

It's kind of interesting how some people want to depend on others as a kind of "life support system" and expect miracles from them.

I dont understan why they ask a question if they are not really expecting an answer, and then look to you oddly for actually answering.

Oh my god yes!! !!

And you know the two biggest points of irony in this?

1) They all like to think and act like they are all unique, quirky individuals,
2) Yet when they meet someone who truly is weird and unique in a natural way, like an Aspie, and not in a try-hard-unnatural way... they reject them, accuse them of being weird in a bad way, freaks, and treat them harshly.

LOL!! !

this somehow reminds me of something I wanted that was popular in the very early '90s; I thought it looked cool on everyone else, and wanted it myself, but didn't know where to get 'em:

slap bracelets.

Everyone had 'em, and I kept asking where they got 'em. Everyone just said "you can get 'em everywhere"...well, I never saw 'em everywhere.

Years later, I finally know where to buy 'em...and now I don't want 'em.

Faith.

I don't get it... how can you say you know something is true, when you don't actually have evidence or reason to say it is true?

wanna hear something extremely creepy and dangerous about faith?

It is believed that much of Hitler's anti-Semitic beliefs were attributed to the ideals of Martin Luther, the founder of Protestant Christianity.

Martin Luther hated Jews due to his belief that they were responsible for the death of Jesus Christ....though even my Dad pointed out that as the story goes, Christ's death was necessary for the salvation of the human race or something.

So, Hitler is inspired by Martin Luther, and has almost the entire Jewish people exterminated.

How is this creepy and dangerous, you ask?

Hear me out:

Hitler has factual, existing people exterminated based on his inspiration from Martin Luther, who's entire reasoning for hatred of the Jews was based on an event that absolutely no one can prove, and one must have faith to accept happened.

It would be like me demanding the extermination of real-life clowns after watching the Joker in The Dark Knight...

Faith is not an NT thing exclusively (and I'm glad that it isn't). There are aspie believers in both Christianity, Judaism, Buddhism and everything else, I think.
There are not so few Christian aspies here, or other believers.

I'm an aspie theologian myself.

At work, the first train leaves from work at 4:55 AM. We have only caught that train about three times. Well what doesn't make sense is why do people at work want to catch that train if it doesn't make you get home any faster because then you have to wait for the bus and they sure run less early in the morning. So when I get off downtown, I would have to wait about 17 minutes for the bus to come to take me home. I don't like standing out in the cold that long so why bother catching the early MAX if I get home about the same time as always? Do other employees get home any faster when they catch that early MAX? If no, then why bother catching it then? I skipped the early one on purpose and wait for the next one to come.

I know one man did because he only had to walk a few blocks home after getting off at his stop at the transit center where three color lines connect. But most of us take buses and trains to get to work and back.