NT thinking ur struggles are normal for everyone

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Don’t you hate when NT miss understand the struggles you go through and think that the your struggles are just normal struggles that everyone goes through and that your just over reacting? That bugs me so much. Do you agree?

Yep

I had a discussion with my CBT therapist about this very issue today. I told her about a scenario that annoyed and upset me a lot and she gave an example of something that had happened to her that she seemed to think was similar but which was nowhere near as bad.

I think that a lot of my autistic problems, like sensory issues, are outside the range of NT eggsperience, so they can't imagine what it is like to be so hypersensitive to light, for eggsample, so they think that my hypersensitivity to light is like them not liking the Sun shining directly into their eyes while driving at 5pm.

Yeah, seriously. If, for instance, social situations are as stressful for them as they are for me, why do they seek them out to "unwind"?

"Oh, I hate eating sounds too!"
Do they make your ears hurt, your body pour sweat, and you burst into tears and have to leave the room?
"Oh, I don't like looking people in the eyes!"
Do you feel unable to think, frozen, pressured, or intimidated when you make eye contact?
"Oh, I don't know how to tell when people are flirting with me!"
Are you SO bad at it that you have never been on a date because you can't read social situations AT ALL?
"Oh, people's body language is so confusing too!"
Have you ever experienced not ever being able to barely identify the emotion people are trying to show you?
"Oh, people can be so contradictory sometimes!"
Are they so confusing to you that you never understand them and avoid them because you end up making horrible
mistakes?
"Oh, I know how you feel!"

No. No you don't. Your struggles pale in comparison to mine. When you feel physical pain at every stimulus, can't read or feel other people's emotions, and don't project any of your own (although you feel them quite strongly) then you can say I'm over-reacting.

Till then, shut up.

(All this was what I really want to say to someone who accuses me of "over-reacting.")

I was spending a day with my brother at the beach and later my psychologist asked me about my perception and I said that I did not understand how people could endure lying in the sun.
She said that probably they do not "endure" it but actually "enjoy" it and I did not understand that they could enjoy it at all.
Now I learned that people actually enjoy lying in the sun.
I get allergie from direct sunlight, rash on my skin.
Visually I find direct sunlight difficult and it leads to overload and sunlight directly into my eyes makes me ill in my stomach.
I like twilight.

Why go to the beach if you don't like lying/being in the sun?

Because I live close to the beach and my brother far away and he asked me to go there with his little daughter.

I like twilight too. It's my favorite kind of light. I want twilight during the day, all day eberryday, then the normal amount of night. That would be purrrfurrrt. Low light for the day and darkness for stargazing.

Did you wear sun tan lotion?

Yes this is annoying.....why so people do this? Is it a natural inclination to try to relate to what a person has said or to another person's experiences? If so how come sometimes when people have been talking- for example when my co-workers sitting next to me at my old job were talking about about playing sports as a kid and I said something like "I hated and still hate sports because they involve noise and crowds and I'm uncoordinated' or people are talking about watching the Olympics and I said "ohh I don't watch that.....I don't like sports" there was this dead uncomfortable silence and the conversation was brought to a screeching halt? However other times NT's will talk to each other and say "oh I was always really shy" and the other will say"really I never was...." etc. What I mean is sometimes it's okay to talk about differences in experiences or likes/dislikes etc. but other times the person seems to think they have to relate to you or they expect you to relate to them and not be different. It must be another one of those things where in certain situations or contexts you can talk about differences and other times you're supposed to try to relate....but I don't know when you're "allowed" to be different.

Once my friend (who now lives in Korea) was talking about her childhood experiences. She has ADHD but is very socially adept. I told her that as a child I was always in "my own little world" , twirling a string in front of my face or walking around in circles and daydreaming about the novels I read/were read to me ect. She said that she was like that too. I was really surprised and asked if she twirled a string in front of her face for hours on end or walked in circles talking to herself. She said not really but she used to sing to herself and she used to fiddle with things. Then (later on in the conversation) I asked her about her imaginary world and what she daydreamed about and she said "lots of different things" and that she loved to play games with her friends where they would pretend to be famous singers etc. These are not at all the same things! When I tried to tell her that I never played imaginary games with friends just by myself she said she also daydreamed on her own. She kept trying to relate to me her experiences were really different from mine and I was just pointing that out, essentially just saying that because I'm autistic my experiences in childhood with regard to whatever she was talking about were really different from hers. I don't understand why it wasn't like the case of the NT talking to another NT described in the above paragraph where one girl says she was shy as a kid and the other says she wasn't she was really outgoing. Why did she feel the need to make her experiences the same as mine.

Last edited by daydreamer84 on 06 Sep 2012, 7:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I don't know why NTs do this "I am just like you" thing with eberrything either. I don't do that, and I don't know if it is a social norm to do that. When someone tells me about their eggsperiences that are different from mine, I usually say, "Really?", and wait for them to tell me some moar details, then they do, and once I hear the details and discover that their eggsperiences are like mine, then I might say that I do the same thing, but if the details are not like my eggperiences, then I will say that I have never done that or thought like that.

Twilight is my favourite too.
In the darkness I did stargazing with a telescope my father had on the attic.
If I had a telescope now I would do it frequently.

Yes, I did.

Last edited by Eloa on 06 Sep 2012, 7:32 pm, edited 1 time in total.

I think that's what I do too.

Apparently it's better not to try and match someone's experience with one of your own - it's better to just let them talk and listen. People can find it annoying if the other person keeps relating the conversation back to themself - I have great difficulty not to do this myself though.