Poll: How do you react when NT's ostracize or scoff at you?

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I was ostracized today more so then any other day in recent memory due to my eccentricities. Pretty much everything that has ever gone wrong for an aspie when trying to function socially went wrong for me today. I was scoffed at for being enigmatic to other people due to my lack of facial emotion, my absent mindedness, etc. When scoffed at by NT's I used to snap sometimes and act *extremely* bizarre, but today, I just ignored them and accepted their reaction as a result of their ignorance (realizing their intentions were not malicious).

I am getting better at coping with the criticism but as an aspie such a task is difficult. How do you react when NT's ostracize or scoff at you? If you ignore them do you feel insulted and have trouble coping with the inherent criticism that must be brewing in their minds? Do you explain that you have AS?

I get offensive and attack them.

I ignore it.

Tim

i ignore it, unless i've had a really bad day and i will ocassionaly just burst,eg if life at home school and work get to much for me i'll snap quit easily!

I withdraw even further into my shell to hurt and think; then I gain an even greater understanding on the nature of humanity, i.e., questioning why they do this.

Does it matter if they are NT or not ?

Such things USUALLY arise from their stupidity or are just DUMB! Sometimes I actually LAUGH in their face! LITERALLY! I almost always do mentally. Nobody is going to NEVER make mistakes. HEY, I have to remember many thousands of things. Some are learned almost in an instant for ONE customer. I won't TRY to remember things that change ALL THE TIME, so I should be forgiven for forgetting one little mummbled point. My background is eclectic, and I know a LOT. I can't know every little regional saying. I'm not into sports, etc... so don't be surprised at failings there. In short, I realize I should be lauded for what I CAN do, and not ridiculed for what I can't.

Frankly, I don't ridicule THEM for the stuff they don't know. If I did, they would often probably react towards me as I do to them.

Luckily, I tired of that garbage LONG ago. My mother kept torturing me emotionally, but I learned a new trick a couple years back! The HANG UP! I just NEVER hung up before that. Also, I once was within HOURS of writing her out of my life FOREVER!

HECK, she STILL thinks my solitude is simply because of my personality. I have paid thousands, and spent many weeks, but it doesn't really help. I think I have given up THERE also.

Steve

For the most part, I don't react, but my resentment tends to fester inside me, like an open sore.

Which leads, at certain points, to explosive outbursts of anger. Not my finest moments, sadly...

There is no way to delete this. I think I'm slightly humiliated that I interpreted this all wrong.
Unfortunate.

Last edited by agentcyclosarin on 27 Apr 2007, 10:51 am, edited 1 time in total.

I do the ignore and see it for what it is. I don't have to be friends with everyone and these people have nothing to offer me, nor me them.

I don't react when they do this. They are just having difficulty because they can't read me. I can't read them either. It's mutual. I find them just as strange.

No, I don't feel insulted or have trouble with their criticism. It's silly for them to think the world revolves around their way of communicating. The universe was here long before their silly manmade rules and will still be here long after they are gone. They mean nothing in the scheme of things. As a matter of fact, those rules were not around since mankind began. Evidence of that is found in different cultures who all have different methods. In some cultures, looking into another's eyes is an affront. So it is not universal, despite what a shrink might tell you. That's nonsense.

Having said that, it's not my place to judge them because this belief is what makes them comfortable. I don't engage with them when they act like that because there's no point and I'm not interested. That's kind of the bottom line. If they continue to push it, I just tell them that in order for their words to hurt me, I have to care what they think and I don't. That stops it right there because they now know exactly where I stand. There is no more confusion.

I've dealt with this long before there was AS. I have always told them my synapsis either misfire or don't work (at least I always knew it was my brain that was different) and that I will never get what they are trying to tell me unless they just say it. That actually avoids much of the first part, which I rarely, rarely get. I even tell them, when they make pop culture references that they all seem to know that I don't have a clue what they are saying.

For the most part, they think I'm just reclusive and shy. I think they put it down to that. Unfortunately, I think people are more hostile to male Aspies because of the way they read non-verbal cues. Culture teaches them to believe that in a woman it is shyness, introversion, living a sheltered life, being old fashioned and being naive. They are taught not to view it as threatening, so they have a tendency, with me and some like me, to shelter and protect us because that's their perception of us.

For Aspie men, that same non-responsive looks that I have can be interpreted as cold, unfeeling, detached, unempathetic, evasive, dishonest and threatening.

So when that happens, I think you just have to realize that they are responding to you on an instinctive, almost animalistic level. They've been taught their whole lives to read these clues, some of which they pick up without conciously being taught, and they are just responding to that. It isn't about you as a person, it's just a societal thing because humans are social.

Rather than AS which is so convoluted it is hard to explain, just say, the part of my brain that controls those expressions doesn't always work right. That will turn it around and force them to reposition or conciously act like jerks to you. If they don't, society won't accept their response. That's really what is going on and you are better off just telling them so they understand why you aren't doing it and they quit expecting it.

If you want to try to correct it, at that point you can say, "I'm trying to teach my brain to reroute so it can do that. So if you work with me to try, it would really help."

Now, you've handed the responsibility for part of it to them and if they don't take it, they are doing a socially unacceptable thing. Most adults will try to help you at that point. Just make sure that's what you want. You may or may not learn. I never did, but we are all different and many do pick up some.

Hope that helped.

Last edited by ZanneMarie on 27 Apr 2007, 9:11 am, edited 1 time in total.

Your posts are getting longer Zanne.
I can't read all that.
But i am sure it is good advice.

Sorry Kosmonaut. It's the writer in me. Just ignore it.

They mean NeuroTypical, not iNtuitive Thinker.

Agreed. I have a limited capactiy for social interactions and I don't waste them on people like that.

I’ll look for a flaw in them or try to twist their words to try to fire a witty insult back at them.
Extremely effective sometimes, as it shifts the attention off you and onto them.

I've gotten used to it but I still don't understand it. It's odd to me that personal feelings are not to be imposed on others, or so it would seem, and yet it seems NTs are somehow able to get their way regardless. As long as I don't know how to play the game, I figure I will either be taken advantage of or alienated, because I've found that as long as the group can do as they please around me, I'm OK but as soon as I start standing my ground, they sort of move away from me.