From a NT's view

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Perhaps you could explain it. Right now when I read it all I get is what I understood when I read it the first time. If you intended some kind of implication or other meaning that is not obvious, I will never get it no matter how hard I try without further explanation.

As far as exaggeration goes, I can really only think of one person who struck me in that regard, who possibly also had a personality disorder and was shoving everything under the "autism" category rather than take responsibility for it. However, that person no longer participates here.

And I see you did not understand what I meant when I explained why the NT label was coined in the first place, because what you're saying makes no sense to me.

Google "unmarked majority". Here's a paper that discusses the concept: http://www.soc.ucsb.edu/faculty/mohr/cl ... marked.pdf

Why try to reduce my attempt to explain a sociological concept as an "emotion." something that "feels" right? Why try to assign all of this meaning to what I said that simply isn't there? All I did was explain that it is sometimes necessary, as a practical matter, to mark the unmarked majority. It's not about feeling better, and it is largely not a personal thing to begin with, but an acknowledgment of institutional bias against those who are in marked categories (such as disabled, female, black, gay, lesbian, transgender, etc) as compared to those who are in unmarked categories, and thus assumed to be the default (able-bodied, white, male, straight, cisgender, etc), when language that does not specify a category it is assumed to apply to the majority.

With labels like neurotypical, you can specify the majority in relation to autistic people. That's what it means. Instead of making up reasons to explain why it was coined, it might even help to look up explanations of the word's origin.

Per Jim Sinclair:

On this page:

http://www.tinygracenotes.com/2013/07/i ... thing.html (I disagree with the blogger in question, presenting the link for informational purposes.

Just to clarify Littlebee, I am not trying to say you meant what I thought you meant. More that, I can't tell what you meant if it's not what I read, not without more explanation.

First of I need to mention something you may or may not be aware of, which I know causes a lot of confusion in general when it comes to the diagnosis of autism even among psychologists, Asperger's has overlap with numerous personality disorders, and often a person who turns out to have Asperger's will first be wrongfully diagnosed with for instance borderline, narcissism, anxiety disorders, ODC or any other disorders and often a variety of them.

Because it is sometimes hard to determine if someone has a combination of personality disorders, or autism, or a combination of both autism and a disorder, it is not always easy to spot for someone from the outside how severe for instance their anxiety is, it could be very severe to them, but not be severe enough for a diagnosis using DSM.

Not every person with autism will receive the appropriate kind of help after their diagnosis such as psycho-education or a coach who helps them pinpoint and separate their autism from their personality, what this means is that people will come here with questions about traits that they conceive as autistic as they see their personality as autistic, this can sometimes cause people to mistake a common trait that they simply share, for something that is part of autism, just as any "normal" person can share a trait with another which they see as being normal.

I say "normal" as the norm is created by the majority of people who fit a certain standard, which in itself is biased as no human being is truly able to determine which set of personal traits is ultimately desirable to all mankind.

There is a "danger" that you can indeed become vengeful towards society as you feel it is hard to fit in, and sometimes your own annoying behavior can simply cause people to act differently towards you because you are not aware of the way you are acting towards them, and then you will make a forum thread about how unfair that is, and causing a certain us vs them atmosphere.

For people with autism it is a lifelong struggle to seem normal, because to most of the people with autism that means having to play a character, as if life is a constant stage play , you can try as hard as you want, but sometimes you still do not fit in and that hurts, and that makes people angry, and the fact that you can talk about that frustration with other people who have the same difficulties is very healthy and comforting.

Scapegoating is never very effective but isn't that really something most people do, if not nearly all people, you blame your alarm clock because you were late , you blame the supermarket because they do not have your favorite product 5 minutes before closing, and just as people blame trivial things for their mistakes in general, so do people with autism sometimes blame people who are NT for theirs.

Sometimes they will be right and that NT person will indeed be rather insensitive, but so will this person be towards anyone who doesn't fit his description of a normal person or towards anyone in general, but we only see the one instance where this person did not act nicely towards us, and since this person was NT and we autistic, the connection us vs them is easily made, however how this person who vented deals with this later you will never know, that part of life doesn't play out on a forum and he/she may have realized his/her opinion about NT's in general was invalid, but simply never posted that in his/her venting thread.

I think I get the idear of thinking of own diagnosis of autism as doorway to freedom or prison that one builds around oneself. It's not about not distinguishing autism from nt, but more like how one uses information about being autistic and different from most people.

(change topic)
I admit that I don't like those is this an autism thing threads. Someone posts some bizarro things, and a bunch of people agree, and boring.

I agree this can happen. Its a trap I have fallen into in the past.

When I was at school, I was very miserable and couldn't cope. My friend, meanwhile, was very happy and cheerful, despite coming from a very dysfunctional family with a history of abuse etc. This made me feel worse, as it made me feel like I was just being whiny and that I didn't have a right to be unhappy, since on the surface my life looked so much better than hers. I kept looking for bad things in my life that would somehow justify how utterly depressed I felt, but I was never entirely successful in this. (Now looking back I realise that I did have huge problems relating to people that as I child I wasn't able to understand or acknowledge, and that my breakdown was understandable)

In the same way, I can understand how someone with a "mild" case of aspergers who feels very very unhappy and screwed up about it, could look at a happy person with more severe and obvious symptoms and not understand how they are not equally mentally disturbed. That person with mild aspergers may therefore be scared that they are just weak or whiny, and may consciously or unconsciously exaggerate their external symptoms to themselves or others, in an attempt to feel like their misery is justified.

As I grew older, I learnt that mental distress can have very subtle causes that can be very hard to track down and get to the bottom of. Its often not at all related to how bad your life looks on the surface, (or in the case of Aspergers, how severe your symptoms look to other people), and its nothing to be ashamed or guilty about.

Thanks, and thanks to the others who responded to what I wrote. Verdandi. I realize I didn't explain it that well...I will be back when I have some time....maybe tomorrow... a lot of stress right now....

It's not necessarily your explanation. It could also be my literal brain.

Anyway, I do hope your stress situation improves in your favor.

Thanks. The thing is one of the problems with my own theory of mind, which I have written about somewhere on wp is that I think/feel people will understand things when they really don;t, as perhaps they do not have the same context as me. I just assume they understand my context. That is a way of devaluing them, putting them into a box.It is causing me almost unbearable pain to write this....partly because the acid in very weak coffee I made (but I am drinking a lot of it starting with somewhat stronger coffee left over from yesterday) is burning my stomach to some degree and it is translating to me as emotional pain, but if somethings were not bothering me psychologically I do not think I would be feeling this pain. I hate to think of anyone else suffering like this or much worse, yet I know some people are.

I read these messages again today and some of them are disturbing to me. I think people can feel very cut off and alone because no one understands them. so when one finds people lke themselves that is really very wonderful. My situation, I have two grown daughters who live in my area and we talk practically everyday and sometimes more than once on the phone and these conversations are somewhat philosophical often verging on deep, and also I sometimes see them. These children are from different fathers, but I picked unusual brains to mate with, and troubled brains, so let's just say their thinking is unique....as is mine, though we are all different. Plus I am around the public all day and am very verbal and communicative, very skilled in communication, much of it learned with much difficulty. Plus I am a writer and in deep conversations with certain people on the internet, the same people, for many years....plus know quite a few autistic people, thiough no one like myself, as I live in a large urban area.

I can only imagine how a person in a small town, say in the UK feels when he discovers there are others like himself and that there is an explanation for the hell he or she has been going through....Also, NT's where I live are probably not like NT's in other areas that are more isolated and insulated. It must be very joyful to discover others like themselves.

When I discovered I was autistic it was like a giant door opening and many things were explained....I went through a major rite of passage....but then buckled down to deep enquiry about what was happening with me and why....this was about five years ago...I only found out because I heard by chance a program on NPR (national public radio) and so discovered one of my children was autistic (and it made me very angry that all these years I was trying to get help and no one could help me with her...it was really hell we went through), and she did a lot of research and eventually helped me realize I too was autistic. It didn't even occur to me before that, but then the blocks began falling into place with a gigantic (and tad magical) thud.

Now I understand that different people here are from different locations and at different levels of understanding and processing regarding their own experience and how they are seeing it, and whether or not they are able to integrate and process these different labels and information. I am an older person and way abnormal you could say...plus I have had years---meaning decades of various kinds of mind training and study and I suppose all kinds of advantages that some here have not had....though only with the most intense effort have I been able to begin to sort things out for myself, so I can only imagine wjhat some others here are going through. It can be like being in hell, and I in no way mean to discount anyone's suffering.

The concept of autistic encapsulation is most extraordinary. The way I found out about it is that I literally found a psychoanalytical journal---that one issue which was devoted to autism, and it was like having a veil lifted from my eyes. I could not believe what I was reading as it explained so much. At some part when I began to understand I was yelling out loud...oh sh*t...oh sh*t...(have mild tourettes:-) I literally could not believe it how this explained so many things (and was also very angry that no one had ever given me this information, people who should have known and given it to me, and that this kind of information was held very exclusively by a kind of in group....then I had to stop reading for several months in order to begin to process it all...It is a little difficult to understand the principle of autistic encapsulation, but it was probably easier for me to catch onto because I was already on the track of discovering how the brain organizes and reorganizes data by making a framework that is encompassing. This framework is a form of encapsulating. Basically the brain kind of makes a circle out of certain information and then temporarily (or permanently) functions inside of these reference points.

Littlebee, can you explain to me what encapsulation is? I have a feeling I might be dealing with it, so I just want to really understand it.