"mind blind"?

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I've heard the term "mind blind", and since my diagnosis, I've begun to understand the term as it applies to me.

Sometimes I feel alone in the world. I don't experience other people on the same level as me. They don't feel as real to me as I am, because I can't access what they might be thinking or feeling. I spend a lot of time alone, and when I interact with people, it doesn't seem to affect me very deeply. I wish I could explain this better, but it really feels like I am real and everyone else is just kind of there.

Every so often I will randomly manage to have some sort of insight into what another person might be thinking or feeling, and it shocks me. All of the sudden, I'm not alone. But the feeling doesn't last, it fades back into the background and I am once again living my life completely blind to the people around me.

Does anyone else feel this way? And also, is there a way to learn to recognize people as more than just background activity? I almost feel like I'm not human.

Of course you're human, Dots. There are many ways to be human.

The term "mind blind" refers to being unable to receive information about other people's state of mind, at least in the usual way.

Think of the way blind people (the kind without eyesight) manage. They find other ways to get information about the world--touch, sound, various devices, help from a dog or another person. Autistic people are similar: While we don't receive information the usual way, that doesn't mean we can't receive it some other way. You can ask someone about their state of mind. You can study it theoretically and work it out by logic. You can simply get to know someone well enough that you start to be able to read them.

Everyone is essentially alone. When NTs feel like they're not alone, it's really an illusion caused by their ability to perceive and copy others' emotions easily. The aloneness you're experiencing is just the state that everybody lives in, and I don't think it needs to be distressing. It can be peaceful. You define yourself as a person, unique from those around you; and then you connect only when you wish to connect.

Think I sort of know what you mean, sometimes I get in a state of mind when everything just fades into one and things seem less real and people become more like phantoms with no individuality. Although I feel quite alone, I don't really get depressed about it, this is just what happens when you can't connect with others around you, you can just turn inwards.

I have the opposite of this, it's one of the things that makes me dubious about whether I fit the Aspie profile or not.

I sense other minds very well, obviously I can't read minds but I have a pretty keen sense of how the gears are turning. I perceive it as something almost like a visual symphony.

I actually envy you guys ... I wish I knew less about how people think. It frustrates me. Their minds work differently than mine and it's so often juvenile and petty and predictable. And the lying!! It's so obvious.

Also it makes people nervous and fearful. Sometimes they lie and it's just so obvious and I try to play like I can't see it but I'm not very convincing sometimes.

I recognise what you're describing, Dots. On a related note, in the X-Men comics I read, there's Jean Grey who's a telepathic character who at one point lost her telepathic powers, and subsequently referred to herself as 'mindblind'. I liked the word, so I've begun to apply it to myself.

Yes, I too have felt as though I'm mostly unaware of the emotional presence of other people around me. As if the minds of other people exist in a hazy cloud my senses can't pierce through. Unfortunately, I've not yet found a way to compensate for this.

I believe Callista gives good advice in her post, though.

Thanks, all of you.

Callista, I understand what you're saying. I guess it's a matter of acceptance - I'm not going to suddenly become non-autistic, and I'm never going to learn enough to make me non-autistic. It's just that in those moments of realizing other people, I also get the feeling that I'm so different from the norm.

I haven't been able to accept that I'm permanently unusual yet, but I think I'm getting closer.

Cyclops, there's a Star Trek TNG episode too where Deanna Troi loses her empath powers and she gets really upset that she can't sense other people's minds any more. I related at least a little bit, but not completely - if I never had it, how can I tell that it's missing?