What's the worst thing an Aspie has ever done to you?

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A lot of people are very sensitive to bluntness. Aspies tend to be blunt. QED.

I think people often look a lot more secure than they are. All the self-doubt that makes them vulnerable to criticism is hidden deep inside them. If they show it, the vultures move in and fleece them. If they hide it, then blunt people accidentally hurt them instead.

Yes it's like walking on eggshells. But I think in some cultures bluntness is much better accepted. I read that New York Jews can often argue as if they hated each other, when in fact it's just the way they negotiate, accusations flying everywhere but it doesn't bother them at all.

I actually didn't know that!

I have this problem with trying to understand my emotions regarding a confusing situation. The worst part is that they keep changing while I'm trying to figure out what I'm feeling about something and why. So sometimes I'll settle on one explanation, but then my emotions on the matter change, so I'll come up with a new explanation, and that seems to confuse and hurt others that don't get me all that well.

I finally figured out that many people go through this, but once they feel the first emotion, then they don't dwell on it after that. If emotions and thoughts about a situation change later, they more or less seem to ignore it and "let bygones by bygones" instead of over-analyzing it like I do.

I find it ironic aspies get upset with bluntness. It's called being human.

Alexithymia has a lot to answer for. It's as if all we can hope for is an intelligent guess at what our feelings may have been. And as you suggest, the dynamic nature of feelings doesn't help. No wonder my gut reaction is to go quiet and withdraw when I start feeling bad in a social situation. To grow socially I need to do the opposite - to engage with the people and convey the right stuff to sort it out - but without knowing what I feel, trying to talk about it is very likely to make it worse. And of course if I'm feeling bad, then I'm not going to find it easy to exit gracefully.


I agree it's ironic. Aspies can't easily do as they would be done by, not on an emotional level.

Pertaining to the original post:
A good friend relied on me for dealing with her emotions, and I made the mistake of trying to understand it and solve it for her. That ultimately ended up hurting her even more. Other people just want to FEEL their emotions, not SOLVE them. I think the most I have done to hurt others is to not understand this concept in a timely manner and to accidentally cause more trouble for the other person. It was never on purpose, but I'm starting to understand why, "There, there now," and soothing the person is all they really want sometimes, rather than me psychoanalyzing the situation for them.

This falls back on the "I really don't understand people sometimes" motif, because they really aren't interested in solving the problem. They seem perfectly content on having the problem occur, not going too deep in understanding it, and then moving on like it never happened, and this absolutely baffles me sometimes. Yeah, I have a hard time knowing what "the right stuff is" that I'm supposed to convey, although I surmise that it is a matter of needing to learn how to be less solving and more allowing the other person to simply feel. That's why they always think I'm being uncaring, because I'm too busy solving it for them instead of empathizing with them, so they interpret my type of caring as uncaring simply because it's not the same type of show of caring that they are expecting.

A friend once confounded me by complaining that I only seemed to offer words and no "real" help. Before that I'd been quite proud of realising that people often didn't want me to solve their problems. My gut reaction is to dream up a solution for them.....it's hard to know which they want though. It might be wise to begin with the emotional empathy thing, and then when they're feeling better, ask if they think it needs anything doing about it, respond appropriately. Though I suspect that men are prone to gloss over the nurturing phase rather like Aspies do, but for different reasons.



Yep....to me, if something hurts, one wants to stop it hurting. But I guess it's a great help just to share the angst with a significant other, to be strengthened so they can solve it themselves if they need to.


I first felt this from "their" end of things when I told Dad that my cat had just died. He immediately said "get another one!" I guess that's an extreme case, but the cause is the same - jumping to a search for solutions skips the expression of the sorrow.