First time in history!! !! The NT/AS open hotline ! !! !! !

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I was gonna say "learning by trial and error," which doesn't help much. But Janissy has pretty much nailed it. Via trial and error from a very young age, we NTs learn to pick up certain non-verbal signals or interpret certain verbal signals in certain contexts in a way that tells us "we'd better change our behavior or we'll just get the person more pissed off at us." And generally these signals follow a behavior of a sort that, in certain similar contexts, we have historically gotten in trouble for - initially when we were kids someone would verbally tell us to cease and desist, but as we got older we didn't need that anymore. Somehow I figured out long ago that when my older sister turns and looks at me a certain angry way when I'm being talkative, it means "shut up." But my AS-ish boyfriend had no idea what that signal meant when he first hung out with my sister and got on her nerves. He knows some simple nonverbal signals, but has to learn others, and even the ones he knows can confuse him when he's in a state of stress.

There are also general rules of thumb for certain situations...like, if you're hanging out with your friends for fun, it's fine to wear t-shirts and jeans and swear, but you might not want to swear at/around your parents and would not want to either wear t-shirts and jeans or swear at a fancy restaurant or a job interview. Also, be quiet in a library. Stuff like that. Otherwise it's an individual matter of looking for these nonverbal signs or contextual verbal signs of annoyance or anger, or, alternatively, approval, immediately following something we've been saying or doing. We act, we see nonverbal cue, we mentally associate nonverbal cue with what we just did and have a subconscious emotional memory of getting in trouble for this kind of thing in the past, and voila! We change our behavior.

You're welcome, and nice to meet you too. Though I didn't vote in your poll, I thought this thread was a cool idea when I first saw it. I hesitated to post on it, though, 'cause I didn't feel like I had much of anything to say about NT-dom that other NT's had already said.

I guess I do have a question, now that I think of it. (I also had trouble coming up with a question for the Spectrum folk.)

For all Aspies, Auties, PDDers, etc., and NLDers:

How do you handle change, when you must? Do you know what it is about change that unsettles you? Is there anything that can be done by an NT who cares or recommended to a nervous Spectrum person to help change become easier to deal with? I know many Spectrum folks have trouble with this (and NLDers often do too even if they do not have an AS diagnosis - I had an NLD friend in college who also reported trouble handling change), and it seems to be one of my boyfriend's more prominent Spectrum traits that sometimes leads to conflict between us.

Thanks.

I'm a PDDer. It isn't change itself that unsettles me. It's the removal of my comfort zone. I can handle temporary new experiences as long as I know that I can go back to my comfort zone afterwards. The idea of irreversible change is scary to me.

I can go to a new restaurant as long as I know I can always go back to my favorite restaurant when I feel like it. But if my favorite restaurant changes their menu so that they no longer serve my favorite dish it'll upset me for quite some time. Even if they serve something very similar I'll be constantly reminded that it's not the same as it used to be and this will interfere with my ability to enjoy the new dish.

I'm also a bit of a pack-rat with regards to my book collection. I'll go completely insane if I lose one of my books even if it's something I haven't read in ages. The whole idea that a particular book can never be replaced (because it's out of print for instance) bothers me. Therefore I'm hesitant to lend to anyone.

I'm not quite as bad as when I was little. As a child having a toy break or losing a special stuffed animal felt like bereavement. I could be put in a bad mood for weeks at a time.

Anyways, the trouble is that having certain environments and/or special activities that I can always retreat to and enjoy is necessary. It's the only way I can wind down after a stressful day and re-center myself. Otherwise I feel like I have no escape from my anxieties. Even temporarily losing my connection to the internet within the comfort and privacy of my home can be completely paralyzing to my life. Being on the internet in a public place just isn't comfortable to me.

Last edited by marshall on 17 Jul 2009, 12:26 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't like permanent change, either. I recently learned that my next door neighbor moved out. I became paralyzed with dismay. I had gotten used to him-he was quiet, and was often away. The neighbor before him was pure hell-loud talking, exuberant, extroverted. Constant door slamming (this is a duplex, so any thing that happens in one, jars the other house.) I was constantly having to leave my comfort zone and ask this man to keep the noise down; especially after midnight. Finally the landlord, because of my complaints, asked him to move to another unit. So the quiet guy moved in, and I found him easy to put up with. Now he has moved out, and I don't know what to expect. It is this that has me paralyzed with dismay. The unexpected, the unknown. So, I guess I don't handle change well, if it is something that has the potential to cause me major problems and discomfort, over which I have no control.

I certainly hope they're not patronizing you, Marshall- that would be extremely rude. Perhaps they just aren't sure that you really know what you're doing and they want to make sure that you do. However, if that's the case, they really should say that, not just ignore your opinion.



I'm NT and reasonably bright (if I do say so myself ) and I sometimes have this problem, too, especially when someone shows me something complex and technological. Instructors tend to just say, "Do this, this, this, this, this, then this!" and hit lots of buttons and I'm left TOTALLY confused- I certainly can't do most complex tasks after being shown just once. If I think this is likely to happen, I'll ask them to explain SLOWLY while I write down each step. I'll also ask lots of questions-"So, WHY do I have to do that? What does THIS button do?" until I feel reasonably confident. Then I'll get them to watch while I repeat the procedure, using my written notes as a guide. If that goes well, I can say, "Thanks for that! I think I've got the hang of it now." Then I'll do it again a few more times immediately after they've gone, just to drum it into my head while it's all still fresh in my mind. After that, I'm usually fine.

I hope this is helpful- I know it works for me. Jenny

I have a question for my AS friends:

What makes you want to "shut down" and not talk to people? How long does this last? What can your NT friend do to help while you are in a non-social mode?

I have an ignorance question. What is NLD?

I am probably not an Aspie so this may not count, but when I shut down, it's either because my feelings have been wounded, or I just need "me time", or I am trying to avoid exploding from frustration, but most often it's one of the former reasons.

They call this kinesthetic learning style. You learn by doing. Merely watching another do it doesn't teach you anything. I am this way too. I hate taking training classes where they project the computer desk top on a screen and demonstrate how to do an exercise and then ask the class to now go do the same thing they just saw demonstrated. When I then attempt to do the exercise myself I know nothing, and I'm starting from scratch. Everyone else in the class usually finishes the exercise quickly in the time it has taken me to get halfway through it, and eventually the teacher says, "Ok class, time is up, we need to move on now." and then he demonstrates the next exercise on the screen and then the class proceeds to do the second practice, but each one is dependent upon the successful completion of the former, so I then have to go back and complete the first exercise and then start trying to accomplish the second and of course I don't complete that one on time either, and by the end of that day's training, I am three or four exercises behind and I am feeling like I am hyper stupid. It reminded me of my years in grade school where I could not excel no matter how hard I tried. I would have done much better if they had just given me the training manual and a computer and let me figure it out for myself with the instructor just being handy in case I have any questions.

There is a book that you might find useful, if it's still available. I got my copy used from Amazon.com. It is called "Try To Feel It My Way" by Suzette Haden Elgin. This author is a Linguist. She argues that people who are what she calls "Touch Dominant" tend to speak a different language, even though it is all English, and people who are Visual learners or Auditory learners often misunderstand them. Now I wonder if Aspies also tend to have Kinesthetic learning style.

They're talking about it on some other threads...it's nonverbal learning disorder, which is a condition that causes difficulty with visual-spatial reasoning (often paired with compensatorily excellent verbal and auditory memory and reasoning) and picking up body language and nonverbal cues, without *necessarily* having the distinctive cognitive and perceptual traits of the autism spectrum such as sensory processing difficulties (which lead to stims) and so on. However, apparently a lot of Aspies also have NLD.

Thank you. I just looked it up. Now I wonder if NLD or NVLD might be the cause of most Aspies inability to interpret body language and non verbal ques. I am now also wondering if right brain dominant Aspies might be non existent.

The first paragraph - that is exactly my own experience! Too many times. It's incredibly frustrating. And this is despite consistently being told that I'm the brightest student in the class.

I always feel as though I'm either lagging behind and completely lost or else I'm way ahead of the instructor and just sitting there bored. It always feels like I'm wasting my time. I think my problem is that I have to really work things out to learn. I need to know why certain steps are taken. I don't ever learn much of anything in lecture or in a "training session". All my learning takes place later on my own. Yet in the end I have a much better understanding than other students and outperform on the tests. My intuition is just better.

I also struggled in middle school when I was forced to take notes and follow along. I would get so angry at being constantly left in the dust that I would make a scene. I'd tear up my notes and storm out of the classroom.

And you say you're neurotypical in your profile? You don’t seem very neurotypical to me for some reason. Are you sure you don't have some kind of PDD?

Oh gee. Another acronym that I don't know the meaning of. I suppose you might call me an atypical neurotypical. My MBTI type is INFP. That alone can make one rather atypical. I have been diagnosed with Auditory Processing Disorder. I am a High Sensation Seeking Highly Sensitive Person. Have you read the online essay called "I think in Pictures, You teach in words"? Not all of this is me, but for the most part it describes me rather well. The parts where she describes the problems of translating between visual memory and words, makes it sound worse than I think I experience it. I'm the inverse of NLD. I'm a visual spacial learner with an auditory sequential processing difficulty. Spelling is not one of my gifts. I use Mozilla Firefox because it has a built in spell checker. I constantly fight word recall problems, and tip of the tongue phenomenon. When something I hear doesn't make sense, I assume I misunderstood, because I frequently don't hear the same words as what were spoken.

Something I am very good at is finding commonalities between diverse groups. I suppose I have been mainly talking about the things I have in common with folks who are Aspies.

Edit: Ok, I found it: "pervasive developmental disorders". No, evidently not. I have a couple of things that could be called learning disabilities. When I tried to get myself diagnosed for ADHD, the result came out as borderline. Lots of attributes of it but no cigar. My work history was a biggie. I've had my current job for 19 years, and the one before that for 10, and the one before that for 5.

Something else I have become good at is listening to or reading someone's description of what it's like to live inside their head, and relate that to some small attribute of myself, and then when I speak to another who experiences what the former person goes through, I am somehow able to explain it in a way that makes it sound like I know what it feels like to be them.

Last edited by willmark on 17 Jul 2009, 3:11 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Willmark,

PDD = pervasive developmental disorder ~= the autistic spectrum. He's basically saying that you sound autistic.

If I have AS, I'm pretty sure I don't have NLD. The only reason I would ever suspect it is because I have trouble finding objects which should be "staring me in the face."

Willmark,

PDD = pervasive developmental disorder ~= the autistic spectrum. He's basically saying that you sound autistic.

If I have AS, I'm pretty sure I don't have NLD. The only reason I would ever suspect it is because I have trouble finding objects which should be "staring me in the face."

Yes, I experience that too. It can be hyper annoying. I think its a figure ground recognition problem. I have to look at each item one at a time, and even then I might not recognize it. Like this morning when I could not find the toothpaste because it laid down with the label turned down and the back of the tube is the same color as the counter top, so I couldn't find it. My wife had to come behind me and point it out to me. Sometimes for me it's a little like being blind, except I see well, and a little like being deaf, except I hear well.

I have discovered that many feel a connection via an extroverted function via conversation. I feel connection with an introverted function, or it feels like I connect from my inside to the other person's inside. I don't usually feel any connectivity from conversation, but I use conversation to create the feeling I crave. Like you, I can usually intuit, sometimes even before I speak to them, whether they would be receptive to me. I just feel it in them. When I find someone, even with a total stranger, I often strike up an impromptu short term friendship with the person. I just somehow magically know how to proceed, what to say, but my goal is to create a feeling in them so I can co-experience it. When I manage this, it gives me a real high, and it might put a smile on the other person's face too.