Egocentric

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Different people say that I'm egocentric, focused on myself and don't have any empathy. I only think about myself and not about anyone else.

I think it's because I don't know where to draw the line between being helpful, and being abused.

Anyone else have this problem, and how to know when it's good to do something for someone else or change you behaviour, and when it's bad to do so because they'd be misusing your goodness?

I've been called Egocentric many times. The problem is that I do not notice that I am doing it, until after it's been pointed out to me. THen when it is pointed out, I do not understand why it is I do it, Im not trying to be mean or deliberatly nasty. It just happens.

An example was one morning when My roomate and I were going to have some coffee. He put out two cups and filled them with sugar and coffee, I went into the fridge and grabbed some milk, and put it into my coffee only. I did not even think about the other cup and put the milk away. I was not thinking about his cup, and when I was confronted on why I did this, I began to say things like, "well I wasn't sure how much milk you wanted so I didn't do it" Btu then I noticed that this was not true, because I didn't even think about the other cup.... THis is just one example with something small and simple, But there are many times when I am considered to be egocentric.

Yeah, I think I tend to err on the side of being a selfish ****.
There's a quasi-Aspergian person in my life who does the opposite, and always ends up being used.
I think I'd rather be a loner than have that happen.

I’m very egocentric and rarely have any emotional connection to anyone. However, I have this weird morality where I do things to help people just for the sake of helping. Often people I am helping think I have this connection to them and that I am a great and loving friend or a samaritan. Most of the time, this isn't the case. I help people when I feel it is the right thing to do and that’s it. There rarely are any empathetic or sympathetic reasons for my actions. I am helpful to others because I am rigid about adhering to my own moral codes. Not helping others would be unrighteous and I want to think of myself as being righteous.

Because of this morality, there have been times in the past others may have taken advantage of me. There also may have been times when others consciously were taking advantage of me, but didn’t realize I was helping for different reasons than they assumed. Most of the time, I expect no rewards when I assist others. Even excessive verbal thanking makes me uncomfortable. But lately, I have grown tired of helping an old friend who always needs rescuing and I am “cutting him off,” so to speak, because helping him disrupts my life too much.

Over the past year I have truly began to notice how egocentric I am. For instance, a friend may write to me, telling me of her newborn child. My response to her letter will include one sentence about her child and a five-page word document on how I perceive the world, my troubles with loneliness, etc.

I feel I am learning to draw a line between being helpful and being abused, but on the basis that being too helpful interferes with my life, not because I am concerned that others may perceive me as being egocentric.

When someone writes to you about a "big deal" in their life, and you write a responce that is A) about you, and B) off topic . . . that tends to piss off people. It's good that you don't need the emotional connection because you won't get them being like that!

I'm also egocentric. It's hard for me to talk at length about someone else's problems. If I do, the only way I can do it is to give anecdotes about times when I was in a similar situation. Then I say how I solved it as advice.

Most people are on the egocentric side, IMHO.

I am egocentric and i do only care about myself, luckily i enjoy many "altruistic" appearing behaviors.

I make a great connection with a few females in my life, but otherwise I'm mostly ego-centric.

Boy, do I recognize myself in your words, synchro.

Sometimes I get p***d off about it, actually -- I mean, why do we (people in general) expect others to be as fascinated by what's got hold of our attention as we are? I wish people wouldn't get offended by my not reacting with intense interest to news they share. I wish our species just innately accepted that others won't generally share our interests, and that a one-line "oh that's good" is a normal response.

I even feel kind of "put upon" sometimes when people share news with me. You know? Like, now I have to give a response, and I'm not even interested, how rude of you to share your new baby's birth with me .

You are right; I probably pissed my friend off after that! Hopefully I didn’t hurt her feelings. I realized later that I acted inappropriately and did email her an apology for the way I wrote...haven't heard back from her either. Unfortunately, I have little feedback to give others who are in situations I cannot relate to. Even when I try, my replies don't really express much feeling. I may think they do at the time, but later find out that I didn't say enough, or didn't say the right thing.

I too try to compensate my egocentrism with active altruism, because otherwise I just won't. What helps for me is that I'm genuinely curious; when I feel like it I can turn into the 'talking pole' for someone (though for a limited time).
However, the curiosity for other persons is mostly restricted to the time I'm actually with them. In other situations, they'll never cross my mind. Though I make exceptions for my family members every now and then, other thoughts are then dominant in my head, not necessarily involving myself.

My egocentrism is mostly endorsed by my ambitions; I want to as much as I can do reach my goals. Social distractions are sometimes in the way of this, and though I'm willing to be as nice as possible to other persons my personal ambitions go above almost anything (except for family and close friends of course). Depending on other peoples views one can see this as devoted or egotistic. I don't mind how they call me either way.

this sounds just like my guy. I've agonized in the past over why he doesn't care about me and my news when I find everything about him interesting. I often get "oh, that's good" or "that's no good." It's puzzling. I wonder how he can be interested in so many other things but not me.
Im coming to understand that for alot of NTs, personal relationships and the people we love are OUR obsession.

Tracy, I think that's beautifully put! I never thought about it that way, but it makes a lot of sense (and also lessens "The Divide" between NT and AS; puts everyone in the obsessive category, if that makes sense).

By that reasoning our obsessive behaviours aren't a part of Autism at all. We can't be obsessively social unlike NTs, so we find alternative obsessions. Yet obsessiveness is fundamental human behaviour.

So:

1) We're living beings; we're supposed to be social and we're supposed to reproduce. Anything that makes this harder means we're less likely to pass on our genes. By evolutionary standards this is a defect. Autism is a defect.

2) The only reason we excel in certain endeavours because our brains aren't worrying about the social bit as much. If we could do the social bit, we most likely would. Instead we have to focus on other things; like mathematics and art. Autism doesn't directly make us good at those things, it's just that without social skills being developed, other skills are more likely to develop better, particularly ones used by our obsessive interests.

3) The human intellect that we are gifted with despite our lack of social talent allows us to mitigate our lack of social talent, and fulfill our fundamental desires with alternative methods.

The bottom line is; NTs have the choice to either be obsessively social or be Autistic. Autistic people simply don't have that choice. The view that we are superior in different ways is a misunderstanding.

This is not necessarily my view I'm just following the line of reasoning.

I've just had another idea. What if, there is no biological/neurological reason for some persons to be Autistic. And that when we were really young, like, 1-3 years old - we decided not to develop social skills. It wouldn't have happened like us suddenly thinking "I don't want to be social", but for some reason at that early age we programmed our brains to ignore that bit.

It wouldn't hold truth with all Autistic persons because there's plenty of evidence to show that neurological disorders are passed genetically. But maybe some of us turned out that way by a sort of 'choice' to ignore a skillset that by the time we realised was important was too undeveloped to save. Meaning you have 'true' Autistics and 'self-inflicted' Autistics.

Before I was diagnosed I always blamed myself for my lack of confidence in social situations so this reasoning might be residual from that.

That isn't exactly what I was aiming at, but it's kind of in the right spirit. I just think we should remember that NTs are people too, and anything that helps us relate to other people as people first, NT / AS / other second, is good.


This assumes that evolution has a purpose. Evolution has no purpose. It just is. Genes that don't get passed on, don't get passed on. Not better, not worse.

More so, it assumes that evolution has an opinion, namely, that passing on genes is good and not passing them on is bad. Evolution has no opinion. No inherent meaning at all.

On a side note, lots of genes get passed on that are debilitating or at least not helpful; as long as they don't impede reproduction and survival of the young, they go along for the ride.


I think this is true. At least, I often think I'd have gotten much further with my interests (languages et al) if I hadn't had to spend so much energy on social things that I do purely out of a sense of obligation and an irrational fear of being sent to the loony bin if people discover how different I am from them.


I don't think NTs have that choice at all. They simply are obsessively social (and not all of them are, for that matter). I think they're better wired for sociability, and autistics are less wired for that. Because NT sociability is the norm (in the sense of prevalence), societies generally tend to be designed to function well for sociable people.

I also subscribe to the spectrum view, and think there are NTs and Aspies who could equally well be placed on either side of someone's arbitrary dividing line.

I think each person has a unique neurology and biology. The only value to a diagnosis of autism or Asperger's (as I see it) is that it identifies (some aspects of) an individual's unique neurology that are in some ways at odds with more mainstream neurology, thereby enabling that person to support and structure that assist him in living life fully (however he defines that).

I wholeheartedly agree.

Yes I went off on a bit of a tangent. Your point that Autistic people weren't necessarily so different from normal people was a good one. I'm sorry I clouded it with my wierdo diatribe.



I hadn't thought about it like that.



Yes and by accepting that I'm not as special as I orignally first thought is humbling and depressing. I'm just socially awkward again with no 'advantages', other than mitigating factors due to human intellect.



Someone told me there's a line of thought that everyone is on the Autistic spectrum, and NTs are just more higher-functioning to the point where they can function normally in society.


But we are inferior, socially. That's a minus and really the only true defining characteristic of someone with AS.