NT reactions that blow your mind?

Post Reply New Topic

Share your stories of confusion and frustration.


For me, it's that nobody ever seems to give two damns about anything good that I accomplish. And when I feel like they think I am lying, or over exaggerating, I " rant " about it and they get upset. Although I rant about it because I want them to believe me and be happy. I only tell/explain things like this to people I care about, and I do it rarely, and every time I do they seem to not care at all.

My latest example is with how I taught myself a LOT of chemistry, having never taken it before, in about a month. With that I also received some time extensions for exams, and realized a lot of things. Over the course of about the last month I finally, without a doubt, realized that I was capable of things I had known, but of which were constantly doubted or put down by my " friends ".

Before I absolutely confirmed it with my prof and chemistry advisers, I had thought that maybe I was just delusional or actually over exaggerating... at times before this I would stop doing anything of the sort for months because I thought I was going insane. Nobody ever understood my theories besides an occasional professor, and with everyone putting me down I figured maybe I had just thought that up. Everyone likes the odd/random/weird dumb me... but the smart me is hated, as though I was a pathological liar by default, regardless of truth. If I do anything other than talk about dumb pointless **** people get quiet and avoidant of the topic.

I dealt with that all my life... and my first girlfriend ever, after 21 years, was one of my two friends who would listen and believe me, be supportive of these things, and made me realize that my friends were just jerks. She supported the mild " hard work " improvements at the very start, but when I started to absolutely tear through the concepts at ridiculous speed she started to get like everyone else. Her, of all people, started to get that seeming doubt, and became intolerant of my rants about how everyone else refused to believe me, or encourage me. Then she became like everyone else. The girl who insisted I go to class, and do all the work, and study hard so I could do well, was annoyed with my saying that I had skipped all of that work and just taught myself. Whats better still, is that she left me because of it.

And when I was with her I was too busy teaching myself weekdays and going to see her (100 miles away) on weekends to stay in touch with my normal friends... now I'm left with nothing really. I can quit all this again, and go back to being drunk, self medicated lovable me, or I can keep doing this, solving outrageously complicated chemistry concepts in my imagination, and having to keep it to myself... because if I share it with my friends they get upset. Upset because I am doing well... imagine that. You can never be better than " above average " in something... otherwise people get upset.

Well, I recently went through something where one of my neighbors seemed to be ducking me every time he saw me. This was shortly after I had disclosed that I had Asperger's. I thought it was weird, and felt hurt and confused every time that he did it. He had always been pleasant, and at times friendly, for nearly 2 years. So this behavior really bothered me. I let it bother me for about 2 weeks. I wanted badly to ask him what was wrong. Finally I decided to ignore it.

A friend advised me to remind myself, every time that I saw him look uncomfortable when he saw me, or hurry to enter his home before I was within speaking distance, that whatever it was, I had done nothing horrible, and that it was probably his own s**t.

Now, he is being cordial again! Go figure. I'm glad I didn't say anything. But I really couldn't understand this, and it caused me much mental anguish before I let go of it.

Not jumping to conclusions or obsessing over what it might be is something I learned the hard way. I'm glad it worked out for you though.

I believe that NT's think that the only way to learn things is to go to school or have someone else teach them. It seems to blow their minds when someone can open up a book and learn the subject on his or her own. This is how I learned software engineering, but being in an NT world, no value is attributed to my knowledge. When I write something people seemed amazed or dumbfounded that I actually knew what I said I knew. They always wanted to know where I went to school to learn it..

You've touched on the essence of why a career in science is an uphill battle. Are you sure you want to do this? People with science/engineering interest are treated as geeky social outcasts and it's difficult for them to get money. I know this because I went all the way to the PhD.

Why is it that people readily believe what they can’t see, or pay so much attention to things that are of strictly entertainment value, but they’re put off and refuse to give attention to facts and tangible, functioning equipment placed directly before them? People just want to be entertained by pointless BS, and they'll hate you for giving them something real to listen to because they don’t want to be saddled with the burden of possibly having to understand something that can be understood.




Which one made you happier? Is it really necessary to keep the problem solving to yourself? I've had to learn the hard way that complicated sciencey stuff is off limits with girlfriends and casual friends. What you need are friends who are not casual about sciencey stuff. Write about your ideas. Have your professors show you how to publish in peer reviewed journals and write patents. That's the next step, if you're serious about this. Don't just talk at people who can't understand what you're doing and who aren't in a position to do anything with it. Believe me, it's much more rewarding to write something better than you can ever say it, and at the end of the day a published work doesn't just fall onto the ground and disappear, unlike conversation.

Science = Work (maybe not for you, but it is for them!)
Drunk and Lovable = Play

Work hard by day, publish and get recognition. This will drain any and all impulse to share, for you've already shared it with the right people.

Get drunk, listen to music, watch movies and hang out with friends by night.

Last edited by sgrannel on 05 Mar 2009, 3:07 am, edited 2 times in total.

I talk to people that study photography at college, whereas I'm self taught. I don't think I should go learn what I already know at a college, just so I could find work.

When you communicate in a clear and logical way with people in authority and they respond in the opposite way. They might tell you pigs fly and would expect you to just believe it. They use doublespeak and zero logical reasoning and think it consitutes a valid response.

Ntstanch: Sadly many people do believe that the only way to get knowledge is if some "professional" gives it to you.

On top of that, many of the friends that people make in this life are only really interested in talking about trivial crap when in a "socialising environment" . Clearly you are someone who's mind thrives on knowledge and learning, just not in the boring conventional way. You like to feed yourself with information - fantastic. You have yet to meet people as enthusiastic as you, but it will happen, as I have found. Only recently have I met people with the same level of interest and knowledge of music production that I have and it is SO enjoyable to sit and talk for ages about production techniques and so on. In time you will meet the people you want to, just keep your mind and heart open. Please, for your sake - resist the temptation to give up and become another clone like everyone else.

As hartzofspace said: just keep in your mind the knowledge that if anyone else has problems with you being the person you are then it really is just their problem. As long as you are not harming others, keep on being yourself. I know it is easier said than done but, would it be easier to give up and live a life of monotonous emptiness that does not in anyway fulfill you?

All the best,
Rikki

I've learned to accept, but still get "blown away" at how NT people will tell you to do something then be shocked when you do just as they said.

I found it strange when i went to see a school play my son was saying a few lines in. All the children in his class had a turn to stand up and say what they wanted to be in the future.
They stood and said things like famous singer and football players ect. I could hear lots of parents saying awww and making all kinds of laughs and things for every child except for my son. When he stood up and said in a very formal voice he wanted to be a famous inventer and invent a flying car everyone was quiet with exception to the slight mumbles and coughs.

(Explanations for this if possible, please):

Once we watched a video about domestic abuse at school, and at the end I said exactly what my reaction always is to these kinds of scenarios: "Why would anyone stay with a guy who hits them?" The NTs around me acted like I'd said something awful. The correct answer, it would appear, was, "How could anyone do that to someone they love?" (which IMO is a stupid statement, cos they obviously don't love them if they are abusing them, do they?). I am baffled as to why I got the negative reaction, when the boy next to me had said, "That video was rubbish, there wasn't enough blood!"

@Gina: They so desperately want someone to "Love" them that they will stay with anyone that claims to love them (and demonstrates it some of the time). NTs actually know the feeling. That's why we have so many domestic abuse victims.

They say we are weird. I have observed that most NT women are drawn to men to treat them like crap.

We look like normal personified by comparison.

I've run into this myself when I was a kid, except I used to say: "I want to write programs on a computer". Keep in mind, that back then, in late 80's to early 90's, computers weren't as "normal" as they are now. So I got the same reactions from adults. I could never understand why. But when I'd ask: "what is so wrong about wanting to work on a computer?", people would never give me a straight answer. (If you think about it, it's kind of sad that a child needs to lie to keep himself from feeling embarrassed.) Although, my obliviousness to social cues due to AS probably softened the crushing blow of embarrassment from people's shocked silence.

So I came up with a fake answer, to save myself the mental anguish of the reaction you described. When anyone outside my family or my group of friends (who knew the truth) asked me what I wanted to be, I'd tell them I want to be a doctor. To make my answer even more plausible, I'd mention my pediatrician (who I really did think was a good doctor and felt comfortable being around) as an inspiration. Although I didn't like the "awww" reaction either, it was much more tolerable than a shocked silence. (Apparently, at some point along the way, I managed to learn that "awww" = "you said something that pleases us", and that a shocked silence = "WTF".)

If your son is troubled by people reacting like that as well, maybe you can teach him the same tactic. Yeah, it's lying, but after a certain age, lying becomes a necessity. If it saves him the embarrassment, and doesn't hurt anyone, I say it's fine.

Last edited by Aspie1 on 05 Mar 2009, 10:48 am, edited 1 time in total.

I always hated it when people said "aww" at stuff I say, it means they ain't taking me seriously cos of my age. Back in Year 7 the older students all thought we were cute cos we were the youngest in the school, so when they were going, "Aww, they're so sweet!" I went up to them and I was like, "What've you got to say to me, bruv?" getting all up in their face, cos it was funny, LOL.

[quote="orngj They so desperately want someone to "Love" them that they will stay with anyone that claims to love them.[/quote]

That's so not true! They won't give any "loving" Aspie the time of day, let alone accept abuse from them and remain with them.

Gina, that's the story of my life, making that kind of comments where you give responsibility where responsibility is due, and everyone else treats you like you're the pervert. Nowadays I know better than say that the king is nude and point at the pink pig everyone's pretending is not there.