When you were in someone’s situation before

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I’m curious if it happens also to you from time to time. When I have experienced something in the past, it often doesn’t mean that in the future, even the close one when my memories are still fresh, I’ll be able to comprehend it on a different level than a purely cognitive one.

What I mean is that while in the past I could be in some difficult situation, like I was having problems with something (for example that for a long period of time I couldn’t master a skill, acquire some new knowledge etc. ), even if this problem was serious (but still mild enough to make me able to deal with it on my very own, without any external help or if I could solve it myself thanks to my personality traits that came in handy there), later on when I observe those in the same sad plight I used to be in before, I can’t put myself in their place again although after all I used to be like them. It’s like “if I managed to help myself it means it can be done more or less easily so if Mr. Smith or Mrs. Jones can’t overcome the difficulties they are facing now, it means that they aren’t trying hard enough, that they don’t really care about it because if they did, they’d be more determined to look for a way out of their ordeal.”

Does that mean that you consider others as yourself?
With same forces, same weaknesses, same knowledge, same age, same gender and all?

Do you treat the same a baby and an old person as well?
A cat and a dog?

A euh I don't know. So many examples, silly or serious.

For me, I can't understand that way of doing things. I know it's common, usual, among autistic persons but I don't do it and I know others who don't either.

Actually, it's not only an autistic thing.
For exemple: when I was working in restaurants, I once had bosses (a couple) who told me: "We learnt the hard way. There's no reason you learn otherway."
I didn't stay long there. I was not lazy but they really pushed very hard on people.

One of the first restaurant I worked in, it was quite the opposite: the widowed lady, who was also a very good friend's mother of mine, usually said: "I know how hard it is when you start that job, I'll show you how to do it better and easier." I loved to work with her and I learnt quite a lot.

Even if those people in the same situation as mine was in the past are more or less like me (I can’t expect for example a ret*d person or a young child that they’ll be able to help themselves) I have problems when I try to imagine why they can’t do this or that because I have a hard time imagining that I could not possess the personality traits, intelligence etc. I actually have, imagining how it would be to be a person unlike that.

So, it's only a lack of imagination.
Don't you like to imagine things?

Or to compare and deduce at looking at people in the streets for instance (or anywhere you may be)?

I have really very rich, vivid imagination but it changes when it comes to a situation I must imagine another person’s internal world like it was real – because it’s almost as if I didn’t believe that others aren’t just natural size dummies for whom it’s impossible to have any different thoughts than I have (and as a child and until some point when I was well into my teens I really seemed to believe in this).

http://www.wrongplanet.net/postt59183.html Now I learned to deal with this problem of mine from the past as I wrote in this thread.

But now, since you are aware of it, things can change if you want to.
More or less but it's possible. 25 is not that old, you're not calcified yet.
Do you know how to ask questions?

In my opinion, it's still and has always been the better way to know what's going on on people's mind (if you are interested)
To learn from them or to give them some insight.

Edit: I see you added something.
So I guess I was all wrong.

What was the purpose of your first post? I think I got it wrong.

I was just curious if others experienced the same thing.

Anyone else who also observes it in themselves?