Complaints that you're "too tense"

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One of the complaints from NTs that I find totally absurd is along these lines:
"You're a very tense person"
"You're too tense"
"You need to stop being so tense!"

...and they say it as if it's a big mystery, why somebody like you would be "tense".
I got this much less as my adult life went on, but it peaked in the teens. But again, what always bothered me was, it was so frikkin' obvious why I was tense - I mean if you lacked the inherent street smarts of others, if you couldn't automatically intuit the intentions of others, if you were bullied up the yin-yang and back, WHY THE BLOODY HELL WOULDN'T YOU BE TENSE???! !!?

Yet they say it as if we're totally irrational.

And those who say it tend to not be very positive contributors to relieving that tension, either.

Go figure!!

They had no clue of your struggles.
I know how it feels to be tense around EVERYONE.
I've had that constantly for a long time and still do occasionally...

I think that even without all the social stuff,
I'd be "too tense" just from sensory issues.

I'm at a point in my life where I'm trying to cut down on the stress.
This includes getting a Swedish massage,
trying to eat healthier (I need to try harder),
Epsom salt baths or at least a facial now and then (I should do this more often),
getting enough sleep (this varies).
There may be more that I'm forgetting just now.

There are some things that can help,
and that you can help control.

And guess what?
When you do what you can to manage the physical stress in your life,
it helps you to be able to deal better with social situations.

...

Yeah! I got that said about me too just last night at work and it's because work is very stressful for me. Oh wait, but I'm NT.

My mom and my sister say that I'm "too tense" all the time.

NT's can be tense for sure, no one is denying that. Now imagine that the stress from work was constant anytime you're dealing with other people-- you'd probably be getting that comment much, much more often.

Yeah, it sucks getting these kind of dumb remarks from people who had no idea what we had to go through, and that we didn't choose to be "that way" with others. I almost want to retort back to them "well, if YOU didn't intuitively know who to trust or whether you'd offended somebody, you'd be pretty damn tense too!!" but that would likely just cement their perception of you as some nutcase

It's not like with say a Holocaust survivor, or somebody who survived 9/11, where you'd have to be a complete idiot to point out that the person seems "too tense".

Maybe with better understanding and acceptance of Aspergers, this sort of comment will diminish - but don't hold your breath on it. The onus is very largely on YOU to overcome the mentality that puts you in tense mode, and it took me YEARS.