Do you do this when people put you down?

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When people call me names like ignorant or ass or jerk or stupid, etc. I quit cooperating and do the opposite what I do. I throw it back at them. I told someone in email since I am so "ignorant" and "stupid" and an "ass" and a "jerk", why should I care or understand if I am those?

My mom did it too when she was a teen, I don't know if she still does or not but when she was a kid, her mom did lot of name calling. Always calling her stupid and dumb bunny when she make mistakes. So my mom quit helping out and one day her mom was looking for her reading glasses and my mom saw they were on top of the fridge but she didn't say anything because she was "stupid" and stupid people wouldn't know they were on top of the fridge. After hearing that story from her, I thought what a great idea it was to deal with being called names. Throw it back at them to give them a hard time. My shrink told me in high school that is sarcasm I am doing when I act that way.

I recently did just the same thing, with an online friendship with another AS person that went horribly wrong.
I severed contact with this person, which was a good thing for me. In the end I felt I was constantly being picked apart and was under scrutiny for every way i expressed myself or behaved. It felt as if my human inconsistencies were not ok with this person.
I was told I was confusing, inconsistent and a few other things, that one could not understand me....
Earlier I had said to them they were "blunt, acerbic" and something else and they took offence. I did not mean it as offence at all.

I felt so hurt that when I wrote and severed contact I DID mean to hurt. after, I regretted that, because it just isn't nice to be like that. I don't want to be like that. It was as if the situation "brought out the worst in me." That is not how I want to live. I feel i did the right thing to sever contact, but I wish I had not reacted with so much volatility and anger when i wrote to them. I felt horrible. I'm ok now, but i just want to try to be a better kind of person with clearer and kinder behaviour than that which I exhibited.

For a day I had the following rolling in my brain over and over again like a mantra from childhood:

"two wrongs don't make a right, two wrongs don't make a right, two wrongs don't make a right....."

That wouldn't happen to be the same person would it?

I made a new aspie friend and everything was fine until she told me I don't sound sound AS/autism to her and I lost it. We were both throwing insults back and forth in our emails and then she decided to send me an email attacking me about a post I made at AFF about Temple Grandin calling me an ignorant ass and said I was provoking people. There was nothing wrong with my post. Then she said I was stupid and said she is sitting there laughing because I don't know how stupid I am. I think she is stupid too for not reading my post right.

You see I hate the "You don't have AS" people and I have no respect for them. I would not be their friend or trust them. I am thinking of making a list now before I become anyones friend and show it to them and if they meet one of the above, bye bye. Certain things set me off and I am not nice anymore.

don't you all wish people would just get along? earth ["the world we all live in"] is a closed-loop system, all the nastiness we put out just reverberates all around and round, with nowhere to escape [and the ETs are damned glad of that i bet!]. yes, 2 wrongs do not a right make, but sometimes 3 do? this is an understatement by leagues! we live in modern times in which cold pricklies have driven all the warm fuzzies into hiding. among the hiding places are self-segregated forums [such as WP and EP] within such that aspies can take refuge- but when aspies themselves start throwing cold pricklies about, then where is the refuge? i had no idea temple grandin was capable of such behavior [as described elsewhere in this forum]- what a disappointment!

If I were you I'd be the strong person and just ignore the name calling. Throwing it back at them is just immature.

I can't remember being called stupid.

If someone seems to be trying to put me down (they need my consent to actually succeed) I have a number of options for dealing with this.

Here are a few;

1. I look 'through' them as though they don't exist

2. I counter-punch with a fast, sarcastic, intellectual retort and watch them melt into the floor

3. Laugh

4. Look at them as though I was looking at bacteria under a microscope (I think this is probably my favorite)

No it isn't

I saw what you did there.

no you didn't

Undown topic

I am ascerbic and blunt, intense, provocative, obsessively focussed and lytically anal.

If others call me that, I am almost flattered. I say almost because I am not influenced so much by what people call me. I know myself better than that.

I try to get along with others, but if something happens, then one can always move on.

I guess my tendency is to punch back or just show them somehow that it's not going to do them any good. If it's an authority figure, they might just find that I'm not quite so co-operative with them as I was before. Sometimes I'll choose to overlook it, if I can see how it might just be because they were stressed out......though it's interesting how few people have later apologised.

I think it's important to be reasonably intolerant of verbal abuse like that. It's one thing to apply a bit of give-and-take, but it's another thing to never challenge abuse in any way.

Sometimes i think its how we interpret the tones (since we cant tell by non-verbal language). For example, my mother will be yelling at me to do something, but to me i associate yelling with anger, so i get frustrated that she sounds frustrated and she gets at me for yelling back at her with "angry eyes" . . . whatever the hell thats supposed to mean.

I am too, at times, and that is why I did not perceive what I was saying as an insult in the example I cite. In fact, in my country "bluntness" is even perceived as a good thing - we say "what you see is what you get," and we can take pride in that.

However, I do know that I often do not understand why I offend - which is related to my poor ToM in some respects. I am not offended by what I say, so I assume others will not be. This happens a LOT to me, and causes problems in my relating. BUt,
The REAL problem for me arises NOT with the misunderstanding, so much as with the rebuttal of an honest explanation. SO, when I try to explain my intention and meaning (no harm intentionally meant) and then someone pulls out a dictionary and tells me I do not mean what I mean at all, because the way i was using certain vocabulary does not accord with a dictionary definition... and their breakdown of perjoratives, THEN I take offense and move on....as I have already tried to explain my intention which is denied in favour of dictionary meanings that do not even resonate with the cultural usage of such words in my country.

It is actually very hard to be around someone who tells you that the meaning of what you were saying is not the real meaning, even though you have told them your real meaning and intention which DOES NOT accord with theirs. That is polemical thinking at its most problematic. State that your intention was not as was perceived, and still, there is no room for an alternative perspective that dislodges the certainty and adherence to the way they perceive it.

I struggle with this myself, but feel it is worth suspending my judgment at times and being open to other perspectives. It takes me longer and it requires some cognitive work which can be tiring.

Asperger's does not equal being an A..hole.

Still, the whole experience has been a learning curve for me. The other person is actually quite amazing in many ways.

And what I do believe is I let myself down when I retaliate directly in an unsavoury way.

When people put me down, I normally get pissed of, but I don't do anything since I've learnt physical altercations only gain sympathy for the attacked.

My sister calls me names sometimes, too.
It makes me sad.
I used to insult myself very often, I would call myself stupid and lazy and not grateful enough.
I would also bang my head against things when I would call myself stupid.

When I was younger I didn't know people were putting me down. Others used to ask why I put up with it but sometimes people have ways of saying things that sound ok, but if you can't read behind the lines, then you don't know they are being nasty.