Is this what the feeling is like?

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I heard that bieng a neurotypical is like being permantly 'drunk' as in you are more relaxed etc...?

Is this true?

Sometimes it seems like that to me. Like NTs can just coast along with life or work everything out on automatic pilot without thinking too deeply or worrying too much.

I am too wacky to know how normal feels.

Being an NT is not like being drunk.

We're as anxious as the next person. The difference is that we don't get as anxious because we feel bonded to the people around us, which for most people equals some kind of safety.

That makes a surprising amount of sense.

Maybe aspies need to get drunk more often?

Most people seem to deal with chaos, confusion, and the illogical nonsense of the system we live under much better than I do though. Some days its like I can barely go out of the house without getting so stressed that I have the urge to break something or someone. It isn't just about feeling unbonded. Sometimes I wonder how you people even have the time to bond. In most environments I can't even get relaxed enough to deal with other people.

To me, people equal an upset to my delicate balance of individuality, special interests and alone time. I like being with my two good friends, who understand me, but I also like to be alone, in my apartment.

Neurotypical=/=free from stress. It's just different stress (and sometimes, the same stress, as you can easily have social anxiety unconnected to AS).

You can bond without thinking about it. Now i can't speak for other aspies here, but that's something I cannot do!
I have to decide to bond, then it's almost like I have to MAKE myself bond. I spend the entire time worrying that I'm bonding wrong, because what i want isn't the same as what the person I'm trying to bond with wants.

Everything emotional has to go through my conscious thought process. I don't have a way to divert it to some subconscious level. It just has to be thought out. And not everyone can just shrug it off and let it happen.
It's that very thing that gives me a constant and daily identity crisis... Because even I don't know whether my own actions are sincere or if they're faked. If i were talking from my mind, yes, they're sincere, but from by body, no they're fake. (no i'm not a dualist, but it makes it easier to describe)

And that too adds into the worry, and it's something that doesn't just go away, or that can be shrugged off, it's a constant nagging issue that no matter what I do, keeps coming back into my head begging to be answered, but there IS NO BLOODY answer!

If i'm drunk, yes, I can shrug off things, and just surrender to whatever flowers or crap life throws at me.
When i'm sober, no i can't.

So, if you wanna say from an NT perspective that being NT isn't like being drunk as an NT, maybe you have some validity. But I can tell you, what happens in my brain (body control aside) when i'm drunk.. that IS the same thing as I see daily in NT's.

Consider this... a good analogy i think... imagine if you had to think through every muscle movement in the process of walking, and i mean consciously hash it out, debate it in your head, weigh the pros and cons of each movement, so that you could learn to walk....
Can you imagine the difficulty with that?
That's what it is like for me to do the one thing I most want to be able to do in this world... and that's to bond with someone... Even one person would be a breakthrough.

Btw, add to the above analogy, that by the time you think through each muscle movement, you're legs have already gone on and done a hundred different things in the time you were trying to figure out what you should do next. Because by the time you figure out one little facet of a person, and a way you think you can get closer to them, they've already changed everything, and essentially what you just figured out doesn't really apply anymore.

out of analogy, i'll use one example... reading faces... while someone is talking, if i am to read their face, by the time i've figured out what they might have meant by a facial expression or an inflection on a certain word, they've already said the next 10 sentences, which i totally missed because i was trying to figure out what they meant by some unsaid thing.

It's not the aspies that have a mental disorder... AS is a cure for the disease called humanity, and their idiotic way of putting meaning in non specific terms and expecting everyone to understand it.
Further more.. how the HECK can you read a person's expression if you can't even look into the eyes of a person, even the people you most love (actually it's even harder with those people)

Inversely, Autism is like that overwhelming sense of panic little children have when they look up from something interesting in a huge store and realize the parent they came with is nowhere to be seen - except that it never goes away. Probably because that sense of bonded 'safety in numbers' is permanently missing. We're always alone, even with someone we love.

Oh crap! I'm quoting Waylon Jennings!


::singing:: Mamaaaas, don't letcha bay-bies grow up to be Auties...

Considering a lot of people i know are drunk most of the time, id say yes

Though being serious, i'd actually say it was a bit of the opposite. I'd say when im drunk, i do anything which i feel like, i have no instinctive common sense (and really need to think though things logically), terrible memory, little balance skills, have absolutely no care for anybody else, certainly no empathy. These are all things which are ONLY exasberated a bit compared to when im normal though, so id say its quite similar to my Autism.

The major thing which does completely change though is im much much more talkative, so in that respect i guess you could say so.

However, id say it all depends on the person, both the aspie who is likely to be different to me, and the NT who would probably have different experiences compared to when im drunk

Last edited by gassy on 06 Jun 2010, 4:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Living with someone who is basically Neuro-typical I can tell you that he does not at all understand my level of anxiety. He tries but sometimes he does get frustrated with me, which is not helpful at all. Dont get me wrong I am very happy and my husband is not a jerk he just doesnt "get it" ALL the time.
I think Temple Grandin described it best as saying Autistic people can sometimes be like a prey animal. That pretty much describes what my anxiety level outside my home feels like.

There's probably something very neurologically accurate to that - it would go a long way toward explaining why we have this mysterious way of attracting bullies. Its as if they can smell vulnerability and attack out of predatory instinct.

Many NTs don't realize that AS and social anxiety are completely different. You can have AS without having any social anxiety, but many of us happen to develop social anxiety over time.

I am an Aspie who has no social anxiety at all. I can be quite calm and happy around people as long as they don't force me to converse or participate in activities when I don't want to. When I am around people, I primarily want to observe them. If people attempt to make me join in on something, then I usually just want to leave.

Last edited by dyingofpoetry on 06 Jun 2010, 6:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

That is true, but the majority of people with Asperger's and Autism have anxiety. I sometimes wonder if my husband has Asperger's but he seems to have no difficulty in social situations and regularly does public speaking. He does have difficulty with my high anxiety sometimes but he also can explain things to me about other people that I dont understand. If he does have AS he is very mildly affected. He does have other aspects of it....certainly not the degree that I do but I always say he must have enough Aspie in him to be in with love me .