Two extremes: negative thoughts and excessive arrogance.

[Suzanne]

I have NEVER spoken about this, let alone faced it head on; always a sense of shame and pushing away ie let's please not go down there etc, but the reason I am posting here, is because suddenly I had a little bit of understanding.

I feed off what other people say to me about me. I have always known I do this ( once a certain amount of understanding came into action).

When I was a child, let's say that my "family" were the most looked down on, in our housing estate and it was not hard to see why. I believed ( as an aspie would; despite not recognising this) when mother would say that the reason the house is in such a state ( she promised from our old home, that the new one would be looked after), was because father is unemployed. I took her at her word and it made living in such awful conditions a bit easier for me.

It was only when I made a sort of friend, who lived about 6 door's away from us, that on being invited to spend a few hours with her, it smacked me in the face that something was wrong. Her father was also out of work, so how come their home was spotlessly clean? I became exceeding mortified and questioned mother, but she brushed it away and my eyes went from "being closed" to fully opening. In that short space of time, I became so aware of the truth about my family, that I started to live on my wits.

Many other things occurred, but this post is not about that. Basically, some adults who lived in the same area would say to me that I was different. They could not put a finger on it, but just that I was not the same as the family and I would surely amount to something? I felt both complimented and frightened, because when you live in a dreadful surroundings and you are different, you get attacked and so I was often ( mentally). Mother confused the heck out of me with my femminity and I think that is what caused me to feel very uncomfortable around my own sex ( not as in what is my sexual preference).

I feel sure now, that is where the sometimes excessive self imporance hits me and makes me feel dreadfully uncomfortable. When I am with others, it is quite apparent that I am not as superior as I think I am, when I am on my own.

As it happens, I guess the amazing achievment I had achieved is living in a different country with a different language and being able to communicate enough; but it is all completely hidden, due to the excessive social anxiety. Lol in this way, my excessive glorifying myself ( at home) comes to 0 since I feel quite the opposite when I am outside.

Naturally, when negative things are said to me, they also stick like super glue and I will always remember them, even though I want to forget them.

In the eyes of successful people, I would be considered very sad indeed. I do not have a licence; I do not go out to work. I do not have any amazing abilities that would sky rocket me into a world of wonders! And so forth.

But I love my Creator and I do believe that is where my "difference" lays.

 

[OlLiE]

happy new years to everyone by the way

at every job interview i have done people have explicitly commented that i am very intelligent, a very quick and logical thinker and that i have immense potential, however every job i have done i feel i have fled because i see myself as a failure and feel it is only a question of time that will be exposed as a failure, towards the end of each job i have always ended up extremely frustrated and at odds with most colleagues and bosses because i just don't fit in, i usually think that my way of doing things is the best because it is logical, what people feel about it doesn't matter, reality however has shown that it is not

when i was a child i always was aware that i didn't fit in, i always thought that something must be wrong with me, one day that morphed into me being convinced that it wasn't my fault but that my quirks (discipline, honesty, logic, unemotional, punctuality, control freak,..) actually made me superior. even if that is the case, reality has shown that i am not

i guess that my feeling superior could just be a coping mechanism to cope with not fitting in and not being able to function based on other people's perception of successful behaviour

like you, i also only remember my failings (that i perceive myself and that are pointed out to me), i am unaware of my strengths and have difficulty accepting compliments, i always think that someone is trying to manipulate me

at the end of the day, i am now unemployed and have no friends
i know i can fake my way into a good job and friends but realise that it is not sustainable and self destructive

if feeling superior gets me nowhere, and creates more barriers than solutions, then what's the point
if putting myself down all the time achieves nothing and makes me feel like a victim and feel miserable, then what's the point

i am very lucky to have found a really good woman who i married recently and who loves me for the way i am and accepts my shortcomings

so at the end of the day, i just want to find an environment where i can be me, and i can try to stop falling into my own stereotype of the intelligent superior victim who isn't understood,
if the world requires emotional intelligence to be able to implement pure intelligence effectively in order to be successful, then effectively i'm not superior,
it's like trying to pretend that a car with no wheels is superior because it has a superior engine and drive train, no matter the revs, that car isn't going anywhere

i just want to start over with simple and attainable things that make me happy, if i can improve from there, great, if not at least i will have made choices that make me happy and don't overextend me

starting job counselling next week,
hopefully they can point me in the right direction.

 

[OkRad]

That was brave to post something you never even talked about! I think your story resonates with a lot of us.

I know that I also can be terribly impacted by what other people say. Not so much anymore. I am a serious, hardcore isolator now, so it does not matter.

Also, I am reminded how little it all really does or every DID matter. that is what is hitting me in the face right now. As I get older, I look back to the intense eomtions and ways I tried to make things work. Most came to zilch.

I am glad I did those things because it made me who I am , but I can't do them n ow. In the last two weeks, it's like I hit a serious wall. I cannot do even the fndatmentls of what I could to maintian finctioing.

I don't know what's the matter.

 

[Flammie91]

I have a lot of the same experiences you have, in fact it seems as if though I have alternate personas that I switch between depending on my mood and things going on in my life, although I wouldnt go so far as to say i have dissociative identity disorder or anything. Like ypurself i tend to have my hubris states when im alone, as when im with others my shortcoming are more blatantly obvious, thus im kinda the opposite. Like someone mentioned above i think it is a coping mechanism. I just find life throws a lot of curveballs and theyre hard to predict, so its easy for them to wreck your self image, the hubris is a sort of healing mechanism I think.

 

[Nervous Rex]

I heard one old A.A. member describe himself as "an egomaniac with an inferiority complex". I feel like that's a perfect description of me.

At work, my thoughts alternate between "I'm the smartest guy here! Why am I not paid more?" to "I'm an idiot and they're going to fire me as soon as they find out." I try to be aware of the way my own thought patterns skew my perception of myself and reality, but it's hard to tell your brain to ignore what your brain is telling you.

 

[Judge]

I heard one old A.A. member describe himself as "an egomaniac with an inferiority complex". I feel like that's a perfect description of me.

At work, my thoughts alternate between "I'm the smartest guy here! Why am I not paid more?" to "I'm an idiot and they're going to fire me as soon as they find out." I try to be aware of the way my own thought patterns skew my perception of myself and reality, but it's hard to tell your brain to ignore what your brain is telling you.

Perhaps even worse is to at some point discover in your life that it's not what you know so much as who you know that aggrandizes the lives of so many people, whether it's deserved or not.

A dynamic that IMO puts many of us on the spectrum at a distinct disadvantage no matter how smart we may actually be. I've just witnessed it once too often in the workplace myself.

 

[Suzanne]

So happy I posted this thread.

Perhaps it is not so unique? Maybe many who are NT's who suffer from an inferior complex, have the same issues ie one part saying how useless they are, but the other part, cannot help but acknowledge that in certain situations, one is superior in thought than everyone in the room or something like that?

 

[OkRad]

I just say, I never felt superior at all. Maybe when I got a first place in sports, I felt on top. But that was about it.

It's been a sea of shame

 

[Suzanne]

I just say, I never felt superior at all. Maybe when I got a first place in sports, I felt on top. But that was about it.

It's been a sea of shame

I honestly envy you, OkRad, because it is a very uncomfortable feeling when that "I am better than such and such" comes into my head and I push it away immediately, because it makes me feel so terribly nasty inside.

 

[ftfipps]

It sounds like you grew up having not much money. I was raised by my mom mostly who was a school teacher so I can empathize with you there. Society is a place where there are unspoken rules that dictate behavior, but people don't care enough about other people to let them in on these unspoken rules. Basically, they are the rules, but nobody voices them out loud. In this day and age, people are scared of their neighbor, rather than open and kind. As far as superiority, no I've never felt like I was better than anybody. Usually when people exhibit these behaviors they hate the man in the mirror.