"You definitely don't have Asperger's!"

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I don't even have a good relationship with my mother. I experience no affection/liking/familial love etc. associated with her (and same with my father and one of my sisters). Honestly, I don't really feel as if they are my family, more like people with whom I must constantly live and put up. I will move out as soon as possible.

The relatability is strong in this one. Very, very, VERY STRONG.

For AJ,

I find that being comfortable reduces the need for acting and that lowers the fatigue level from acting NT.

Some NTs always say "OMG, I'm so awkward!", or "OMG, I'm so weird" but the truth is that they usually have no clue what really being awkward means, and call themselves 'awkward' to be seen as a special snowflake that is in need of attention.

They think "Big Bang Theory" type of awkward is the only awkward there is. Or that eating pizza for breakfast makes them somehow unique.

There is still people out there who say "I'm so bipolar" when actually they're only bitching for not being able to watch the new episode of their fav series.

When we're ACTUALLY comfortable with someone that will indeed look at our embarrassments and say "It's okay, do you want help with this?" and not leave forever and never look the same way at us after a wrong... Now, THAT'S being helpful and understanding.

That allows much more socialization, because there is no pressure to always act appropriately. I think if I had that, I'de be much more able to enjoy people's companies and although it would still be tiring, it would certainly be worth it.

I think that what you stated about is that even mostly appearing NT, there are still those ever existing autistic traits. Even when we seek for social skills development and "master" it, we still don't function exactly like NTs. And for someone to understand "that we're normal but not typically normal" without clearly seeing the differences, it takes a long long walk.

Peacefully,
Dante.

Last edited by Dreadful Dante on 25 Jun 2016, 11:00 am, edited 1 time in total.

Very insightful, Dante. I agree. As close as I can get to normalcy, there's always going to be something that's a bit "off" in the way I behave. People do pick up on it!

I'm learning to work on my tones/ trying to bounce less between extremes as I've had that all my life. And what is Discourse Analysis, as it sounds interesting. I've learned from being in recovery from harmful addictions that life is about a series of practices and learning to do better, one step at a time. Even if it takes a while to take that step and even if it is small.

And aww I'd give you a hug too I'm glad you like the gif. It's from one of my favorite tv shows, Orphan Black. It has quite a few awesome characters, including an Autistic hacker, who I happen to think is a pretty awesome character. I highly recommend it.

It's an area from Linguistics that studies the verbal and non-verbal communication. It's a thing from my College course.

It's ultimately "reading between the lines". Here's a short and simple example of what it's like:

"She killed the man and had a good reason"

Is different from

"She killed the man, however... She had a good reason"

The term "however" gives the idea of opposition, even more so if said with emphasis and a pause (provided in this case by the suspension points). It implicitly shows that her ideologies are against her actions. The term "and" gives only the idea of addition, just that. Because "however" creates expectation on the listener, when you finally finish the sentence, the expectations will be gone and the listener will feel relief because "However" has an instictive, intuitive, and implicit sense of justification in it, so the woman instantly becomes less guilty to those who listen to the second sentence. Got it?

That is used by lawyers, politicians and salesman (artificially), even regular people (unconsciously), but they apply it with a different name. They call it "NLP". Neuro-linguistic Progamming (NLP) is considered pseudo-science because it only uses the practice, not the theory nor the analysis (it borrows it from DA and adds Psychology and Neurology to it).

NLP just sets a specific linguistic element to create a specific response, with a little disregard for the actual textual evidence and proof of it. This is the reason NLP is still not a science (it's still works wonders, though). For someone to prove it, they'd need to register field studies with evidence and with such a relative practice, that's a tough job.

The main difference between NLP and DA is that NLP serves shaping behaviours and reactions and DA is a bit more abstract, working with ideas and their expression in a tangible/visible way. It's like DA = Theory and analysis / NLP = The focus is getting a result, not to show what, how, why and where.

Discourse Analysis uses textual, vocal, sign, ideologic (etc) evidences, so it involves PLENTY of theory and learning to identify the subtle linguistic patterns and PROVE it. If you can't prove it, it doesn't exist. In NLP it's more like "Oh, it worked. But why? Proved or unproved, it works the same way, so let's just keep using it!".

I'm not diminishing NLP, I study NLP too and it's AWESOME. It's just not the same thing.

I hope you understand. It's SO COOL to study this. I can basically analyse anything. I recently wrote a scientific article analysing a sculpture called "Le génie du mal" (The genius of evil) by Guillaume Geef. I used Discourse Analysis to do it (I just love it).

It's a long message, however... You asked for it!
This is my passion, my everything, my ALL.

Thank you for reading about my cool field of interest. My SUPERPOWER. I work hard for it.

Peacefully,
Dante.

Dante,

Have you seen the show Criminal Minds? Cause that's what it reminds me of. My dad has been sorta teaching me how to do this all my life. Although he gets mad when I apply it to him instead of the sales people I should be using it on XD

It sounds fun! I like observing people in the streets and analysing them. Apart from compensating for my social skills, I also use it to teach more effectively... And yeah, you should already be making some MONEH. I can almost hear the dollar-counting machines.

I love the quasi-condition descriptions and believe I share them too. I also have found that traits are more helpful to me than diagnoses. Though I try to figure out why I am the way I am, I don't really believe that I can put my problems into convenient diagnostic labels. I believe that my problems/weaknesses/deficits/whatever don't make me a bad person and that I'm still learning.

It is really fun and I tend to use my observation skills for writing and creating characters. I really should but like I get nervous / self concious and don't want to be rude/ have been told I've been abrasive so I just shut my trap and online shop XD

I read university psychology textbooks in order to understand people. This helps me determine the motive of people (which NTs seem to be able to do almost instinctively), though through an extremely unnatural and studied process. I apply this to all manner of things, including textual analysis (both literary and visual), and people I know in real life. I have also studied (informally) gross body language and posture interpretation to increase my naturally low ability to gain meaning from body language. It makes me happy to be able to analyse characters using psychological techniques.

I have not seen the show Criminal Minds. What is it like? Is it good? Why is it interesting?

DataB4 wrote:
I love the quasi-condition descriptions and believe I share them too. I also have found that traits are more helpful to me than diagnoses. Though I try to figure out why I am the way I am, I don't really believe that I can put my problems into convenient diagnostic labels. I believe that my problems/weaknesses/deficits/whatever don't make me a bad person and that I'm still learning.

Depressive realism and defensive pessimism are discussed in more depth on Wikipedia, in case you haven't seen them there yet. I hope my potted descriptions didn't drift too far from that.

Some folks think all psych labels have just been made up to sell drugs. I wouldn't go that far myself, but I think there's likely some truth in it. Presumably the reality of a supposed condition can be validated by demonstrating a cluster of traits in a population, and by those labelled with the condition reporting that a lot of things about themselves became clearer when they studied the condition. I wonder to what extent that kind of thing gets done? As for good and bad, I think that boils down to a judgement of whether or not there is harm to self or others, which can get rather subjective and debatable unless we're dealing with a homicidal maniac. Wherever plausible, I like to use the "I'm OK, you're OK" perspective, and I think normally it's best left to the individual to decide what they like and don't like about themselves, and what they want to change.

That makes sense about the clustered traits, TD. It does sound like a scientific way to create diagnostic labels. To be clear, it's not that I don't believe in them. It's just that my particular issues don't all fit into the boxes. At least, not as far as I know.

Psychology rules! It's a life saver.

^^
I see them as constructs that can be helpful to a degree as long as they're taken with a pinch of salt. I strongly suspect that real people rarely fit the labels perfectly, and that a lot of shoe-horning goes on. If they had it all properly worked out, there'd be no need to update the DSM. I saw an interesting documentary in which a panel of psychs were asked to diagnose a number of people who had already been diagnosed. The original diagnoses were not revealed to the psychs until they'd made their assessments. They didn't do very well.

When I was in my teens and twenties, I thought labels were only created for those who were annoying and people can't stand because those people are so difficult to be around. I thought people can just choose to be whoever they want so if they wanted to quit, they would. I thought personality disorders were just choices people did because they're annoying and difficult to be around and ODD was created because kids with it are jerks and bullies and use violence to get their way for control. I decided to try having ODD to get my way so I wouldn't have so much anxiety because everything would be going my way and things would be calmer at home and I would be more relaxed. I was just mimicking Frankie because he had ODD and I saw how much he was in control of his mother so I had found a short cut to my problem but it backfired.

Now I know labels are created when they cause someone an impairment and impacts their life. Like bereavement for example. They had decided to add that as a condition because some people with it are grieving so much it impacts their life that they actually blame people for someone's death and are convinced someone is guilty of it so they continue trying to "prove" that person did it even though they have been cleared of the crime and science has showed there was no link between that person and the murder.

How about moms who lose their babies from stillbirth or because they miscarried so they are grieving so much they attempt to kidnap a baby or cut a baby from another mom's belly? That should be a condition because their bereavement is impacting their life they have to resort to murder or kidnapping or both.

And there is gender disappointment condition because some moms are so disappointed in what they are having they actually resent their child and take it out on them while most moms would get over it like I did with my first because I was having a boy instead of a girl. It's all about degree. If you were disappointed in what you were having but you get over it and you don't get depressed over it or resent your child, then you do not have that condition. It would only be called gender disappointment than disorder.

And there have been conditions I felt skeptical about like Stockholm syndrome or executive functioning. I realize now Stockholm syndrome is not like what you see in movies where victims love their kidnappers or bond with them, that is not what it's about at all and also executive functioning is not what I thought it was when I first started hearing about it, it does not mean not cleaning your home or not getting up to make a bowl of soup or not being motivated to do things.

There is a chance that you might be less severely affected than others as you had managed to adapt enough to not make it noticeable. I have issues adapting as I cannot read emotions well but can read tones of voices like a book, telling whether people are insecure or lying. People usually have to get used to me and the way I act. I am lucky however to have such open people around me. If you get along well in social settings, see it as a blessing, because others have it worse.