General Guide to NT Thinking

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What are you hoping do do with your bio major, careerwise?

Earlier, you wrote:


Is it too late to do a double major (perhaps attending college for one extra year)?

Anyhow, you also wrote earlier:


Has socializing become easy and effortless for you most of the time, after enough practice? Or do you still have to remind yourself to, for example, make frequent-enough but not too-frequent eye contact?

Many of us do learn at least the basics of how to socialize, but continue have difficulties due to underlying neurological issues.

For example, I seem to have much greater-than-normal difficulty with multi-tasking and shifting my attention from one thing to another, which has the following consequences for my ability to socialize:

1) I have difficulty paying attention to body language while at the same time paying attention to the verbal content of a conversation. In particular, I have difficulty with eye contact for this reason.

2) In conversation, I have a strong need to focus on either a person or a topic. Thus I can handle one-on-one conversation reasonably well (at least on the phone, or with a person who doesn't mind my unusual body language), and I can also participate reasonably well in highly-focused, structured group discussions focused on some specific topic that is of interest to me, but I have extreme difficulty with informal group chit chat which bounces around from topic to topic.

I don't think there's anything that can be done about this; it's just the way my brain works.

I’m probably going to be a researcher.

Yes, it is too late for me unfortunately.

Yeah socializing is easy & effortless now and making eye contact is easy unless I’m lying or something.

I am good at multi tasking and I like informal chit chat, although I think it is easier in general for female NTs to multi task and socialize.

How far are along are you in college? (Your displayed profile says "Age: 20," so I'm guessing you're either a sophomore or a junior -- is that correct?)

Since you seem to have some regrets about your career choice, I'll share the following thoughts in case they turn out to be of any help to you:


By "researcher," do you mean just an applied biology research technician, or more than that? My impression is that you would not be able to attain any position higher than that with just a bachelor's degree. (I could be wrong, but my impression seems to be confirmed here: Careers in Biology Research: Job Options and Requirements.)

Since a high-paying job in biology research would likely require quite a few more years of schooling anyway, is it too late for you to go for at least a psychology minor? That plus your biology bachelor's degree might be enough to get you into a psychology master's degree program, or perhaps even a psychology Ph.D. program, if/when you decide to go to grad school.

So it seems to me that it's probably not too late for you to change your longterm career path, although you might want to work as an applied biology research technician for a while before going to grad school.

One other possible concern: have you looked into job opportunities in your local area, or in any area you could reasonably move to? Many kinds of technical jobs (and I would expect "applied biology research technician" to be one of them) exist only in some places, not in most places.

(On the other hand, psychotherapists can probably find work almost anywhere, at least if they have an in-demand specialty such as autism diagnostic evaluations for adults.)


Good for you! Sounds to me like you probably were indeed misdiagnosed.

Do you care about social status? What is it like to be able to read body language?

Yeah, I care about social status somewhat.

I’m not sure. Reading body language is mostly unconscious. It lets me know how they’re feeling & what they feel about me or another person & whether they would be friendly to me, etc.

I care a little bit about social status too. So it's not a black-and-white, Aspergers vs. NT issue there.

Body language is something I try to read too but a lot of things get lost in translation!

Please, Tiana, do keep informing here; I'm sure you could help a lot of people with your eye for social life if they should want to try improving their functioning.

How often do you pick up on body language?
What do you mean you care about social status somewhat?

I pay attention always, it is automatic.

Honestly I don’t know what I meant by that statement, but I guess it is unconscious. I don’t really care consciously.

Glad to see NT perspectives here on WP - an active WP discussion thread (with around two-dozen responses within one-week).

I've long advocated for involvement of trusted NTs familiar with AS/HFA - which might just prove most helpful concerning AS/HFA. Yet, such important involvement remains elusive, and by "chance and accident" at best!

Oh, joy...

Another virtue-signaling NT assuming that we are neither observant enough to see what NTs do nor smart enough to understand their motivations.

We get it. NT social behavior is all about tribal status and increasing one’s social superiority by either making more ‘inferior’ people the butt-mokeys of their cruel jokes, or by expressing their own ‘superiority’ through smarmy condescendence and happy-clappy aphorisms that really don’t apply and don’t mean much in the first place.

If you are really here to help, then access the “Love and Dating” forum and look for any one of dozens of members who cannot get girlfriends. Maybe they will appreciate your perspective and advice.

Hi Tiana, it's great that you are trying to explain this. I already knew it a little bit but it was quite hard to figure out if you are mentally another way and nearly unable to read body language unconsciously. But you have to know that others do for dealing with them right.
If it comes to autism there are even a lot more problems. For many here it's not only body language but also getting emotions of from spoken language (humor, irony aso.) or facial expressions aso. But there are many things more...

I was just writing from an NT perspective, to try & help you understand how NTs see the world and process things. Okay, yeah I get what you’re saying about NTs being barbaric. Humor & slang & jokes, it’s how language evolves. Most NTs pick it up from their friends, relatives, or Tv & use it to bond with each other. Yeah it’s rather tribal, we are all just evolved primates.

I will give some advice in the love & dating forum since I am an NT woman & know what women look for in men. I’ll try & make a guide.

Pardon me if I'm saying something obvious here, but it may not be obvious to everyone.

For the AS and NT folks who haven't picked up on this, body language is second-nature to NTs. It's just there. One of the main things they just don't get about AS folks is that the body language that came naturally to them is a foreign language to us. Some of us can learn it, a few may learn it well, but it's not going to be a native skill for us, ever. It's a similar story with a lot of social skills.

If you can stand to be around NTs enough, after 10 or 20 years you might begin to figure it out. Then you can waste spoons acting sort of NT when you have to, then get away from them and recharge.

Good question. I noticed that some NT girls immediately got in touch with me after I brought a s**thead to reason. Strange stories but I can't really tell whether it's good to care about such women. They are into something that I really hate to be.
Other young women in the clubs seemed to like me once they noticed that the guys around did like me and noticed me being a self-confident way towards them. That's a lot better but I don't get how something like that influences a girls mind.