Callista wrote:
"Not talking" is not the same as "not there"!
You'd think they'd get that eventually, but apparently NTs are caught up in the idea that they can read everybody the same way, so they use their "reading another NT" coding to read us... which really doesn't work any more than reading German while convinced it must be English and unaware that languages other than English even exist. Not that they can't learn; NT family members of autistics do it all the time; but lots of them don't even realize that it's necessary to learn how different kinds of people communicate in the first place.
Apparently how my autism looks to other people is a very smart, scattered, hyper sort of person... my stimming comes across as hyper or nervous depending on the interpretation. If I'm not lecturing on a special interest I can be taken as ret*d, which isn't too far from the truth in the actual area of socializing. Oddly enough, it is almost better when people think I'm not smart, because people who know you're smart expect you to be able to do lots of things, some of which you might not be able to do. Like, "You're too smart to miss me telling you to stop talking about surgery at the dinner table!" when they never said any such thing, just telepathed it and expected you to be able to listen. But then, people who think you aren't smart will also expect you not to be able to do lots of things which you can do, and will often be really flummoxed when you unexpectedly bring out the random facts you learned about string theory the other day.
Good post. I agree with you very much.
"Not talking" is not the same as "not there"... so true, and isn't it ironic that NTs think it's the same, when they are the ones who are able to read body language? And in said case it's suddenly only verbal language that matters?
The same as when people say about nonverbal people (autistic or not), that they "have no language"... hmmm I thought that body language was said to be even more important than the verbal one?
When I hear people say so, I always say "but they do have body language, right?" They have to agree with me.