Thinking people like you....finding out they don't?

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great advice, especially about respecting people. Since I lost my job over a year ago I have lost contact with many of the friends I made. This has kind of encouraged me to get back in touch with them. I think if someone is being hostile to you and you still respect them it also shows your strength of character.

Hi, Paddy26. I'm glad you're getting back in touch with your old workmates. Don't be too disappointed if the relationships have changed a little- when you see people regularly at work, you automatically have things in common, but if you haven't been in contact for a while, things might feel a little awkward at first. I still think it's great that you're getting back in contact, though- it's always nice to catch up with old friends and find out what everyone's been up to.

I think respecting other people is very important and if someone is rude to me and I respond inappropriately, I feel more annoyed with myself than with them. I do expect to be treated respectfully in return, though, and I will establish clear boundaries with people who aren't able to do that, either by distancing myself from them or by speaking to them about it. Respect should be a two-way street. Jenny

I usually assume that other people don't like me. I don't like most of them, so why should I expect them to feel the opposite way?

I'm so sorry, Cyanide- that must be a lonely way to live. I find I like most people, and usually the better I get to know them, the more I like them. Your avatar and the name you've chosen don't exactly project friendliness, I guess. I'm sure you have your reasons for feeling that way. Have you had a lot of bad experiences with people? Jenny

@several people

Just because someone complains about you, behind your back or to your face or both, doesn't mean they don't like you, or that they never liked you and you were misinterpreting earlier signals. Especially people you have to be around all the time, like roommates, are going to get annoyed with you, your behavior, your smell, whatever--it REALLY does happen among neurotypicals, and it's hurtful, but you get on with it. I can't tell you how many times I've heard roommates talking about me behind my back, or been complaining light-heartedly in the flow of conversation about a roommate to someone else, only to have said roommate come into view from somewhere where they surely heard.

I've had mental illness all my life, and I'm further "weird" for a whole string of reasons, and my therapist suspects I have some aspie traits of some sort, but I can definitely read other people's emotions and the social situation and pick up on norms and the like. But I have never been able to consistently conform to social norms even when I want to, and I do get people who really do dislike my behavior telling me so directly, but there's all kinds of complex types of feelings they (and other people) might have to me:

1. Outright dislike, annoyance at my presence, wanting me to leave or preferably never have appeared in their plane of existence. This is a very narrow-minded emotional stance, and you wouldn't want to socialize with these people anyway, even though you do have to tolerate them.

2. A civilized, wanting-to-be-empathetic and actually caring about me as a person stance from someone who still finds themselves hindered by my presence, unable to "reach" me in the way they expect to be able to reach people, and so annoyed. They'll try to bite their tongues as long as possible, and may keep it to themselves forever (although it's more likely that a friend bringing up the subject of my undesirable behaviors behind my back will be able to drag some complaints out of them--that's just natural, and it would take someone particularly principled or at least not loose-tongued to avoid it), or they may confront me--or act passive-aggressively, or ask someone else to confront me or take action to remove me.

3. A little bit of (2)'s position combined with a wanting to be my friend or work with me--a loneliness and calculating sense that I can contribute to their life, even their emotional/social life, in a positive way, and they want to keep me around. Sometimes/most of the time. When I have this feeling about someone else, I feel guilty, because I'm probably rejecting them on grounds that they don't conform to the norm, being seen with them brings my social status down, and they can just be really tiresome when they drone on about the detailed plots of their favorite fanfiction series or whatever, and perhaps because they've failed to understand me or have hurt me emotionally even when I gave them every chance to connect, or because I disapprove of their lifestyle and they won't change--any number of things, but I keep them around not out of genuine liking but because I need someone around.

4. Curiosity, liking, being drawn to you or charmed by you in the early stages of their friendship with you. This can later fade to (2) or (3) if they find out your personalities, interests, and lifestyles just don't mesh.

5. Other people, usually with high social status and self-confidence to spare might be reaching out to you to try to "save" you from your social ignorance, low self-confidence, and low position on the social rung, as they see it.

6. Some people are truly empathetic and compassionate, regardless of how high their social status is or how low yours is. These are the ones who might not always have time for you but who will sit and listen to your worries, offer their best attempt at advice and commiseration, and not be bothered by the idea that you might bring their social status down. I'm not one of them yet, but I'm trying. ^_^ Note that even people who are generally like this can start drifting away from you and stop inviting you to places if they see you as too much of a burden on their lives--this doesn't mean you'll always be seen as a burden to everyone: it just means that the person has other things to worry about, may be less socially all-inclusive than they aspire to, and/or may have had a bad experience, like someone they befriended in the past who had "issues" that ended in suicide or other disaster, or just long failure to improve (I don't know how much of an issue this'll be with you guys, but it is with mentally ill people like me).

7. Some people LIKE you. They share common interests, think you're funny or insightful or knowledgeable, like to be around you, and all that. They're still not going to like everything about you, and in different phases of their lives (and yours), they might like you less. [Edit: Oh, and my point was to imply that once things change again, or a certain condition's removed from their/your life, you'll become close again.]

8. They're indifferent. They don't feel strongly emotionally about you one way or another--they work with you, live with you, or go to school with you, so they're around a lot, and they treat you civilly when you're there, maybe even nicely, or coldly, or whatever their default style is, and sure they've got complaints about you, and maybe at some point they'll see the need to raise them, but mainly they just want to keep going along with the more important things in their lives while you pay the other part of the rent, do your share of the work, or make sure to return their lab notebook if you borrow it. You're just someone who's there. They have a different relationship to you than does a complete stranger--say, they could argue passionately for or against something based on empathy for your experiences that they know more about, or based on attitudes of yours that they disagree with and that to them represent a larger ill cutting through many members of society (or maybe that's just me ^_^)--but words like "like" or "dislike" aren't great here. "Fond" or "annoyed" might be more appropriate, or perhaps both.

9. They don't know enough about you. They're in the same situation as the person in (8), but you haven't shared enough of your personal story with them for them to feel like they can identify with any aspect of your life or beliefs, and this makes them uneasy. They don't know what you do in your room all day, or where you go, and so their imagination might get the better of them. You don't communicate much--you're some sort of social deviant--so does that mean you're a stalker? A hacker? A potential shooter, filled with violent rage? Again, these ideas might be raised or intensified by friends of theirs who casually meet you and then bring to their attention how you're "weird" or "quiet" or "gave them this creepy look".

10. They see you as something of a little sibling. Quirky, limited in some ways, impressive in others, tolerated, perhaps with an underlying emotional intensity that's something like love, protectiveness, fellow feeling, the sense that they have a special understanding of you--and these will defend you against others, but that undercurrent can be overwhelmed with disillusionment if they start seeing you in a different way, as less useful, more limited, static--someone who will not change no matter how much they care for you, or someone who will never reciprocate the sort of relationship they feel--or...I don't know. Just the general feeling of disillusionment, that can disengage the connection, and then they can reject you. Maybe this sort of feeling happens more often among people with depressive episodes like mine, so I can't say if it's more general.

So, uhh, the "I thought they liked me" formula is a little simplistic, as is the "I found out they don't!". It might be good to ask questions like "How bad is this?" "How long has this been going on?" "What changes in me would change your attitude to a more favorable one? I can't promise I can do them, but your perception that I can't simply because I haven't may be better explained by the possibility that I didn't know I was supposed to, even if you felt like it was obvious or that you gave clear clues. Or maybe I need help and support to make this change, if it's something I've been wanting to do, and maybe it would be better if you and I look for outside resources and brainstorm ideas."

Sorry for the long post. I hope it's at least somewhat coherent.

Hi, HoldingLight. I think your post is extremely coherent (and comprehensive). I'm both impressed at how perceptive your comments are and concerned at the number of difficult social interactions you must have experienced to have acquired these insights. Like you, I think I also aim to be a Type 6, at least in a small way, although the "curiosity" you mention as a characterisic of Type 4 is also a big influence. I like people and find them interesting, and my impulse is always to reach out if someone appears to be struggling. However, I agree that the "burden" aspect has to be a consideration, especially at an emotional level, plus I think it's important to be respectful and not treat unhappy people as charity projects. (I'm too middle-aged and uncool to have to worry about the "social status" stuff.)

Thanks for your interesting post- it made me think hard. And welcome to Wrong Planet! Jenny

holdingLight, thank you for sharing your insight, it was a huge revelation to me and, indeed, those are the types I've met in my life. It's going into my folder of great WP member quotes.

By the way, I'm amazed at how different Aspies and Neurotypicals are. An Aspie couldn't come up with this kind of insight, probably not even after research of many decades like I do. I can clearly see that Aspies and NTs' insights are based on totallly different neurological behavior, which causes totally different sets of input, which in turns cause totally different insights.

Its not a question of like or hate, really. Most are indifferent. The people who you catch trashing you, don't really think about you much. It isn't like these people are planning your demise or something.

Some people are s**theads, and enjoy trashing others behind their back, sure. But in my case, I am "nice" to those who I dislike or find annoying, because its easier to keep the peace, then to make bad blood. I assume most feel this way, so if I caught a co-worker or an acquaintance trashing me behind my back, it wouldn't ruin my day. Just because someone engages me in small talk or is my facebook friends list, does not make me their friend. I think a lot of aspies make this mistake, sometimes we get carried away.

Outside of family, there are 2 people who I truly consider my friends. Likewise, there are very few people I can say I truly hate.

This is exactly what I fear people think of me. Thanks for confirming that it's real and not just me projecting out of self-consciousness, as my family members will insist. I don't happen to have a "personal story" that I'm comfortable sharing. I spend almost all my spare time on the internet because I have no idea what else to do and nothing else seems worth doing alone, besides maybe hiking every once in a while. So basically the only way to get people to like me is to conform to the NT lifestyle so that I have things to talk about that NT's can identify with? Ugh.

I'm constantly told I have to "reach out" to people yet how can I when I have nothing to talk about? If I want friends I need them to be type 7. A 4 or a 6 doesn't do anything for me.

Thanks for that post holding light. I found it really interesting. I think you're right about aiming to be a type 6. I've only met a few like that but they are the most well respected and liked people I know. The funny thing is they get trashed by some people as well. It must be insecurity or something.

Thank you! I was worried my schema might have been too personal/subjective and not generalizable to other people's experiences, so that provided me with some validation. ^_^



Actually, most neurotypicals don't think like me and probably wouldn't have been able to come up with that, either. I could say a lot on the matter, and I might do so in another post, because it kind of relates in that some of my problems are the exact opposite of Aspie problems.



I'm slightly alarmed at your reaction--didn't mean for it to be taken that way. Remember, I have an anxiety disorder and obsess over worst-case scenario social things. Yes, I have heard people brand asocial types as potentially threats or other sorts of undesirables, but it's only a minority view, and most people actually tend to have a positive overall view of quiet people--they respect what you have to say more when they do say it (I think that's a biologically ingrained reaction), they see you as pretty "chill", and they're glad that you keep to yourself and don't cause problems. This will especially hold if you only speak when you have something to contribute--they see you as someone who contributes. I know I enjoyed some of these benefits in my last roommate situation, even though I didn't realize it until they told me. Even if you display tendencies that are outright odd and stigmatized by society, people will probably still basically respect you and have mild positive feelings toward you if you keep to yourself. They prefer to explain your quirkiness in ways that are not alarming, unless they themselves are suffering from some poor habits of thought and/or anger/anxiety.

Your worry (and mine) that people will react like I described is not completely delusional--it happens--and your family should understand that, but it is irrational if it's keeping you from making attempts to interact in some settings. In fact, few people share much of their personal stories with most people they meet or even interact with on a regular basis--maybe some interesting details, but nothing to give a coherent picture. It's common to be surprised at finding out something major about someone you've known for months or years and talked to regularly--their sexual orientation, a traumatic past, a passion for Yorkshire terriers, that they went to MIT--anything you'd think you'd know. I meant that point specifically as applying to a long-term roommate situation, and one where people might already be getting uncomfortable/nervous, and then their worries got out of control. It also happens amongst some small-minded social cliques, like high school in-groups, but they're probably just trying to be vicious and entertaining and don't even believe what they say. Very, very few times will people have this reaction.



I know! It always astonishes me when people trash someone who's so big-hearted and generally awesome, but it makes sense when so many people get their social standing from viciously establishing dominance--people who treat everyone as an equal are a real threat to that. Or else the reason such awesome people get trashed is because the trashers by their nature need someone to trash and pick their targets more-or-less randomly and simply miscalculate their ability to seem like the awesome person's better.

It's the rare NT that analyses to this level, indeed. But what I mean is that an Aspie analysing to this level could never reach these conclusions, simply because we work from different neurological input (data). The input you use is available to all NTs, should they want to research it.

I used to have the same problem. Then I simply assumed that people didn't like me, and stopped feeling stressed about it.

Ultimately, it doesn't matter whether people like you or not. It matters that they treat you okay, but they don't have to be friends to do that.

Sometimes, very occasionally, I'll make a friend. I've got exactly two friends who I keep in touch with. I have no friends from school, no friends from university, no friends from previous jobs. I'm not someone who lends herself to friendship. It always seems like such hard work figuring out what people want from friendship, as opposed to a professional relationship.

I get on okay with people in the office, even though I can't always read folks vibes. There's one woman who seems very nice, but she says things to undermine me to others. I don't know why she does that... smiles to my face, and picks at what I'm doing behind my back. But she seems to do that to everyone, so I don't feel too bad about it. If I can pick up on it, perhaps everyone else can... I can't imagine she has many friends.

There's another woman who is very quiet and seems sweet. For some reason I find her unnerving... I can't read her body language at all. But most of them, I do my job, and ignore them while they talk about the soap operas and sex. I'll talk about their families or pets if it comes up, but that's the nearest I can get to small talk.

I assume that none of them like me though. And that's okay. If they do like me, it's an unexpected bonus.

/nods

I thought more about that last night and think I got more of a picture of that difference between NT and aspie and me and your average person. Since I'm intellectually gifted and NT, I process emotional and social information, mm, I dunno, faster? more in-depth? more automatically? but I don't have access to different types of information or ways of encoding that information than neurotypicals do, you're right.

It's funny, though, because I think it's a separate style of thinking that many neurotypicals couldn't do. For instance, my brother probably would really, really struggle to have such insights into his own emotions or other people's emotions on this level--the empathy/emotional processing/whatever needed to communicate effectively and generally be a neurotypical doesn't necessarily involve understanding how emotions work, being able to "see" different constellations of emotions or social relationships in your head, being able to follow in exquisite detail someone else's moods and their probable causes and results, or whatever it is I can do.

I think it's a lot like how some people think mainly in pictures, and others have trouble making pictures in their heads or maybe even can't, and then there's all sorts of dimensions like spatial thinking vs. pictorial thinking or whatever. Some people think mostly in words, and other people don't--and some of the people who think in words see the words in their heads, other hear them, and for me it's definitely a mix along with all sorts of different ways of conceptualizing a word, including associations with the physical movements needed to form a word and with various, often emotional contexts... I don't really think much in sound or music, and I know other people do, but I do think a lot in emotional connections and social meaning, and I can store a whole lot of information in an emotion. For instance, when I was in ninth grade biology and learning about the bases of DNA (adenine, thymine, guanine, and cytosine), I imagined a different personality to purines vs. pyrimidines, and from that I was able to make further associations to remember the ring structures of each, which base pairs were purines and which pyrimidines, and which paired together. Others preferred verbal mnemonics. And this is a super-simplified example, because the information I tend to have encoded in an emotion is enough for me to write an essay from--I tend to be pretty good at analyzing any number of things (literature, speeches, interpersonal situations, societal things, social or historical trends or forces, the effects of government policy, whatever) because I'm very sensitive to subtle distinctions in the emotions I feel and can connect those to all sorts of meaning.

Actually, I think this is a case where I use several thinking styles effectively together: verbal, visual, and emotional, but the emotional side is most central to my direction and reasoning when I write or speak, and I think that's why I do so well on many academic assignments and in "dialogue" situations. I've seen things about different learning styles but they always seem to omit the emotional, which is puzzling to me.

In a nutshell, I have a style of thinking that makes heavy use of emotions in a way that many neurotypicals would find incomprehensible.

I didn't choose it and it can be rather agonizing (I see more possible reasons someone might be opposed to whatever I'm doing or however I am than the people who are actually opposed to me do, for example, and also by a point in middle school I had more insight into my parents' emotional lives than they do, but I still can't communicate to them to stop being verbally emotionally abusive because they just don't see what they're doing, even when I explain it in painstaking terms), and I don't choose to analyze things either--the analysis just springs to mind fully formed, although sometimes I have the information available to me but don't investigate the emotional imagery.

I like people with Asperger's syndrome a lot of the time because they're more genuine and in a way more sensitive to the way they and the world operate on an emotional and social level than are many neurotypicals, who take too much for granted. Neurotypical social norms hurt me because (a) I can't conform to them due to mental illness and (b) I see through them and see them as generally oppressive and hurtful and deceptive. I don't want to be normal because normal's wrong, blind, limited, giving too much importance to things that don't matter except in that people will judge you if you don't conform to them or else in that many people haven't heard or thought of any alternative, even though they exist, and ignoring interesting, meaningful things as well as any sort of suffering that they can't see or can see but dismiss as "nothing to do with me" or "can't do anything about it" or "they brought that on themselves".

And that^ is why it's possible to make friends with neurotypicals even without conforming to social norms or having good social skills or "acting NT" (reference to "acting white"). As many people have pointed out, some people express being NT in a way that seems more like a disability--they get caught up in things that don't matter and even directly hurt other people in order to have higher social acclaim and all sorts of other things--and as someone with enough emotional and social insight to feel confused and sick about about that state of affairs while feeling somewhat caught up in it due to the contagion of emotions and social patterns, an aspie perspective can be very refreshing.



I'm going to think about that. I think it will be valuable to me as an idea or principle.

Mental illness does make people more honest with themselves in many cases, I've observed. And that leads to greatness in many cases, great findings, great expressions, great breakthroughs. I can totally see why someone with mental illness could feel more things in common with Aspies in many cases. holdingLight, you'd be an amazing asset to our NT/AS OPEN HOTLINE (in the General Discussion Forum), should you ever wish to glance at it. I'm very curious as to your feedback on the questions there, as compared to the other NTs there. I think you and everyone else might discover an awful lot about ourselves from your participation.

Sorry for replying so sarcastically to your serious post. I realize you put a lot of thought into it and weren't trying to offend anyone, just help. I just felt a little bitter reading it because of my past experiences.

People used to get on me all the time for being "too quiet" in middle and high school. I got called "stalker" for sitting at a table with a clique and not saying anything. The situation was unavoidable because there were no tables to sit alone at and my friends had a different lunch period. I only sat with the same clique because it was too nerve wracking sitting at a different table with different people every day. I also had a group that used to come up to me in the hall and make insincere small-talk just to make me uncomfortable. I could never decide whether to play along with their game or walk away. I was clearly just entertainment to them. Even my friends would tease me with "you talk too much" and I found it so irritating.