Here's a new question for NT's about how you perceive other people.
There is another thread about a TV show called, Watchmen", which I know nothing about. But that thread sparked an idea, and I thought I'd bring it here so as not to steal that one (as I tend to do.) I started to post it there, but I decided to cut and paste it here instead.
drowbot0181 wrote:
One of the things that really stuck with me was the statement Laurie made about John's view of people, how they are just "shadows in the fog" to him. That's how I feel a lot of the time. And my obsessive interests are like giant spotlights, drowning out the shadows around me.
I have not seen "Watchmen", so I can't comment on that. But the thing about people seeming like "shadows in the fog", well, that's how people seem to me, except for the few people who I am close to. But, this might sound ridiculous, but do NT's
not perceive people that way?
I mean, I know that other people are real, and have dreams and aspirations. There are a few people who I love deeply, including one I've never even met. So I know people aren't really "shadows in the fog". But that's definitely how they seem to me. And I believe that's how I seem to them.
If I need to interact with someone (aside from my immediately family), I feel like I need to step out of my world and into theirs. It's like, I'm a character in my own book, but most people are characters in other books, and I need to step out of the pages, and travel to their own, but I'm not always able to do that.
As a person who doesn't know where she fits on the spectrum, and who has been told, "Asperger's? I'm not seeing it." I really wonder how common it is for NTs to see people that way. And if you are NT and don't see people as shadows in the fog, then how
do you see them? Do you feel like the other people in the grocery store or at work or wherever are in phase with you, and completely present in your experience, even if you aren't interacting with them? Do you feel like you are all characters in the same book, players on the same stage?
I hope some of this makes sense.
Shadows in the fog? No. That analogy wouldn't apply for me. So how do I percieve people? That's a hard one. I percieve people that are physically with me mainly by their physical presence and the "feel" I get from interacting with them. I am "with" them whether we are interacting or just sharing physical proximity like passing on the street. If I know anything about them then their backstories and our shared experiences are like a web that we are both in that connects us.
WrongPlanet is my first experience interacting on a longstanding basis with people I have never met (I personally know everybody that I interact with on Facebook). I perceive people here not by their physical presence (which I have no conception of) but by their posting styles, opinions and backstories.
A few nights ago I had a nightmare that made me wonder if I have absorbed too much pain from posters here. I dreamed I died and went to heaven. I was standing on fluffy clouds and all around me were clouds but I was alone. For the time, that didn't bother me because it was so cool walking around on the clouds of heaven. Then I started to get lonely. I saw some people off in the distance. "Shadows in the fog" at that point, since the clouds billowed up around them and I couldn't make them out too clearly. I ran towards them yelling greetings and ran smack into a chainlink fence. I yelled through the fence but they couldn't hear me. I tried to scale the fence but it went up an indinite distance. Then a voice said "just because it's in the clouds doesn't mean it's heaven". I woke up in absolute horror. That would be Hell for me (according to the dream)- to walk around in a nice enviroment yet be separated from everybody else by a chainlink fence that I can see through and yell through but not actually communicate through and people move around like, well, like shadows in the fog. Very literally my idea of Hell. And for some posters here it is Hell. And for others it would be Heaven to have a chainlink fence between themselves and the rest of humanity that they want little to no contact with. So I suppose my dream mixed those two broad groups of posters together and the "vibe" I have absorbed here to come up with that dream.
Long story even longer, "shadows in the fog" is exactly the opposite of how I percieve people and perceiving people that way would be a literal nightmare for me as it was that night when I dreamed it.
20 Nov 2009, 11:37 pm
Not a sticky anymore?
