I hate how NTs ignore stuff I say

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I get this all the time, even from my family members. It seems as though whenever the NT either doesn't agree with me or thinks something I say is irrealevent, they simply act like I never said anything at all!I honestly would prefer for them to say something negative or to simply say "that's irrelevent" than to ignore me like this! This has begun to enrage me! I sometimes feel like screaming "Hey! I'm here! I just made a statement or question.Give me an Fn response!" NTs just plain suck sometimes.

NT or not, it's horrible when people do this to each other. I hear ya because my family were like this to me ALL the time. I had such serious issues with feeling deeply ignored, dismissed, not heard, someone who doesn't count, that I married the first person who actually listened to what I said when I spoke, which felt like a brand new experience for me -- how sad is that -- and I was still talking about it in therapy as an adult.

Instead of referring to people as "NTs", why not simply refer to them as "people"?

Because no aspie I ever met has done this.

I have been ignored by people who seem like they may be Aspies who have power over me. So I have wondered, do I get ignored just when I confuse people, because they don't understand me? Or do people ignore because they want their way, and some are ok with ignoring anything or anyone in the way. Probably both play a part at different times, with different people.

But I have observed the same thing with ignoring can happen here, even at least one thread by someone upset over feeling ignored at WR. Just here I think it happens less and maybe differently or for different reasons.

I concur.. I've had this done to me by many NT's, never aspies.

First NT to do this to me was my parents and siblings.. I find it offensive and frustrating but I came to the conclusion that we just don't make sense to them sometimes... it would be like an aspie talking to someone with down syndrome or borderline personality disorder.. sometimes what those people say is so off-the-wall and irrelevant that after a while we just ignore them or dismiss them... it's easier... it's less stressful.. and their line of thinking is just... so unrealistic and out there that giving them a response in this case would be more counterproductive than anything.

I think this is how NT's react to us... they don't get us.. they think what we say is unrealistic and just out there and irrelevant... so they dismiss us.

Every now and then I try to record my conversation with NT's just to go back to it an see what it is I said that completely shut them down... the more I do this the more I understand and the more I wonder WHY did I say this? or WHY did my mind even go to such a weird random place? Our minds do that sometimes and it's harmful to conversations and relationships.. if you can study your own behavior you can improve it.

It's definitely not just an NT thing.

In my experience, the Aspies I have known selectively ignored what I said because they rather play a video game than listen to me. Whenever I felt like we actually had a good conversation flowing (which is rare for me in general) I would eventually realize that they had no engagement whatsoever - they would be playing their video game the whole time or doing random stuff and not considering anything I had said. It's like having a partner or best friend whom when you're telling them something important pulls out their phone and starts texting someone else or reads up on a website.

This seems hugely insightful.

I think the problem is that the people who do this are not getting the feedback they expect in a conversation. The person who starts to ignore is feeling that you have already shut them out and they are reciprocating. Because you aren't picking up on many of the signals they send and are not giving the expected response.

It's like handshaking in communications systems. If you don't respond to the part that establishes a communications protocol the other system will give up and terminate the connection.

Even the use of the term "handshaking" for this aspect of communications tells you something about the psychology of interpersonal encounters. I have seen threads here saying that real physical handshaking is a pointless activity, when it's pretty clear that it's considered a foundational activity for establishing a communication channel between people.

This is problem is part of the reason I have tried to adopt a general position of reserve, blend into the background and keep cool: if I can go through formulaic handshaking when first encountering people, then wait until the parameters of the conversation are fairly well established, I can join in in some way without violating all the protocols that the others are operating under. If I just plunge in, I am likely to miss signals and do something unexpected that disrupts the communication or to actively offend by omission of some expected response and trying to push the conversation in a direction the other(s) clearly don't want to go in.

I found Mark Twain's riff on Proverbs to be words to live by: "It is better to keep your mouth closed and let people think you are a fool than to open it and remove all doubt."

Adamantium, I get what you're saying, but isnt this also starting to sound a tad bit like 'blaming the victim,' though? While someone on the spectrum is certainly capable of what you describe, such as not reading signals and jumping in with a poorly judged contribution to the conversation, are they not also capable of saying something valid, coherent, and valuable -- and still get ignored or dismissed? Because that can happen even when someone has said something valid, but its on the listener to realize something valid WAS said by the ignored person, no matter who is Aspie or NT in the conversation (NTs can do this to each other too).

I was ignored and had my comments or opinions go unheard or dismissed until I moved completely moved away from my family and old friends and met new people who had a very different reaction to me even though I was still "me" offering the opinions and the same mind.

When I first met someone who actually thought I had something perfectly valid to say and who respected me, I realized it wasnt in fact something I was doing wrong but my unsupportive and dismissive family who had taken it for granted that I had not become an intelligent force to reckon with, because they still had the tantrum throwing and troubled infant in their heads.

Remember that that very easily happens within family and others who take you for granted via you just being there all their life, and they literally haven't noticed that you've become someone with something to contribute.

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I used to find this a lot. I think that sometimes it's easier for a person to ignore a confusing interaction than to deal with it. If interactions from a particular person are regularly confusing for the listener, then those interactions will be routinely dismissed.

That doesn't make it any more fun for the person being ignored.

For me, this cleared up when I left home and started meeting new people.

I look at it as a communications breakdown thing. Words are going back and forth but neither party has a clue what the other is really trying to say. So, someone just stops talking.

One can argue who is right and who is wrong but I think really neither party is to blame.

The challenge is finding better ways to get ones own ideas across in a manner that is effective and maintains the attention of the other person. I've worked hard at trying to incorporate a bit of humour and to make use of analogies in my speaking ("So, it's kinda like this..., etc.).

I'm not always succcessful but I'm better at it that I used to be.

I long ago realised that what seems to me like a brilliant insight into one of life's great mysteries comes over to NTs as just another one of my weird ideas.

These days, I am painfully aware of my inability to take on board the information that people give me during the course of a normal conversation. If I see somebody I know, my first reaction is to move away. But if I cannot avoid contact, I immediately go into panic mode as I try to remember who they are, or what I know about them. But mostly I don't even recognise them, and as we pass each other in the street or wherever, I sometimes have to stop and try to improvise a conversation with someone who clearly knows me well, but who I don't even recognise.

This, especially if it's out of context, like on a train, or out of a car window.

Great input from all of you. I admit that maybe I do say stuff out of context. Group conversations are the hardest for me to participate in because I feel I can't keep up. Maybe I should start recording my conversations, espeacially ones with more than one person at a time. It still seems so complicated to me. There are so many ques to follow.I do admit I occasionally get through and at times I have even changed the subject of a group conversation only to find myself unable to get through again.

Whenever people do this to me I just leave the conversation. If they ignore me, why should I pay any attention to them back?

I am sure this happens all the time inside families, or even in small towns where everyone watches each other grow up. But in other contexts, if people are doing this, it's likely a broader breakdown in signalling. If you get to the point of "us" and "them" thinking about it, it is probably not just your family seeing you as the child they knew.