Better word than "Alien"

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Therapists can be amazingly myopic.

My parents starting sending me to shrinks in...I dunno when...elementary school.

Decades later they would tell me about how the shrinks would 'intimidate' them.

When I was a kid I would "draw stories". Divide a big sheet of paper in blocks running right to left, and top to bottom, like the cells in the Sunday comics. And then use pencil and crayon to draw the action in stories I made up. And my parents would explain this to the shrinks, and retell how I would call each installment of these adventure stories "episodes".

The shrinks would get angry at my parents and snap "NO eight year old child would ever use a big word like 'episode'".

If these shrinks had ever ...pulled their heads out of their asses, and had ever watched the Sixties TV shows that their own kids were watching back then they would have noticed that every episode of....Bullwinkle Cartoons, Batman, the Green Hornet, and "Get Smart" (a TV comic spoof of James Bond), always ended with a voiceover guy announcing "that its for this episode of the show. Stay tuned for next week's episode!".

It was the most natural thing in the world for a kid with crayons to ape television, and call his creations 'episodes' like how they do it on TV. But the word 'episode' is also a jargon word used by shrinks and social scientists themselves in their own trade- that has a certain meaning. So I guess they get stuck in the rut of their own jargon, and cant even see the obvious non jargon usage right in front of them.

I told my therapist there were times growing up that I felt like an "Alien".

She invoked CBT and asked me if I could thing of a more positive word than "Alien".

Feeling a bit contrary I listed all the words I had been called that were decidedly WORSE than "Alien".

So: What word would you call yourself (or like to be called) to replace "Alien" ?

My therapist has adopted several children from foreign countries.
Perhaps the word "Alien" for her carries especially negative connotations.

Yes. It could be that she associates the word 'alien' with immigration, and 'illegal aliens' crossing the border from Mexico. And is oblivious to the fact that even most children use the word 'alien' in the pop culture sci fi sense of meaning "little green men from Mars who arrive in flying saucers".

Therapists can be amazingly myopic.

My parents starting sending me to shrinks in...I dunno when...elementary school.

Decades later they would tell me about how the shrinks would 'intimidate' them.

When I was a kid I would "draw stories". Divide a big sheet of paper in blocks running right to left, and top to bottom, like the cells in the Sunday comics. And then use pencil and crayon to draw the action in stories I made up. And my parents would explain this to the shrinks, and retell how I would call each installment of these adventure stories "episodes".

The shrinks would get angry at my parents and snap "NO eight year old child would ever use a big word like 'episode'".

If these shrinks had ever ...pulled their heads out of their asses, and had ever watched the Sixties TV shows that their own kids were watching back then they would have noticed that every episode of....Bullwinkle Cartoons, Batman, the Green Hornet, and "Get Smart" (a TV comic spoof of James Bond), always ended with a voiceover guy announcing "that its for this episode of the show. Stay tuned for next week's episode!".

It was the most natural thing in the world for a kid with crayons to ape television, and call his creations 'episodes' like how they do it on TV. But the word 'episode' is also a jargon word used by shrinks and social scientists themselves in their own trade- that has a certain meaning. So I guess they get stuck in the rut of their own jargon, and cant even see the obvious non jargon usage right in front of them.

There are a lot of candidate words for how you were perceived: odd, quirky, etc.

But those terms describe what other people feel about you.

I think "alien" is an excellent description of how you felt.

Like the Island of Misfit Toys.
"Why am I such a mis-fit
I am not just a nit wit
just because my nose
glows
WHY don't I fit in?'

I hate being referred to as an alien just because I got a stupid ASD. I also hate it when autistic people think we're superior and that NTs are the humans while we're the aliens.

It's just as offensive as calling black people aliens and white people the humans. Same sort of thing. Autistic people are not aliens. We all came into the world the same way as everyone else, and we have all been bred by humans like everyone else. Some may feel like an alien at times but we're not. We're humans. We're people.

It's not a descriptive of what we actually are. It's a descriptive of how we are made to feel by non Autistic people.

Yes but there have been some members here who are adamant that we're not humans.

I dont think alien is negative. That’s her putting a stigma onto the word. I would fire a therapist if they said something like that to me.

I dont think alien is negative. That’s her putting a stigma onto the word. I would fire a therapist if they said something like that to me.

]It's not descriptive of what we actually are. It's descriptive of how we are made to feel by non Autistic people.

There are a lot of candidate words for how you were perceived: odd, quirky, etc.

But those terms describe what other people feel about you.

I think "alien" is an excellent description of how you felt.

Well, there is one thing that would be better than "alien"...your name.