What is it like being neurotypical or Aspie?

[Rayner]

As an autistic I'm wondering what's it's like to be a NT? What is the innate way your brain function?for the sake of including everyone If Aspies want to say what it's like being an aspie they are more than welcome too.

 

[Southern Discomfort]

Being an aspie feels like seeing the world through a telescope. When looking for things I tend to miss them because I'm not looking directly at them, they're just off to the side and they might as well not be in my vision at all.

 

[LoveDream]

Very difficult to give a general viewpoint because, being that as an NT, I didn't know until very recently that there was a difference. But, if you give me questions or topics, I can share my experiences. Does that make sense?

 

[LoveDream]

I can share this:

My brain processes everything through my "heart", so to speak. Meaning, I take in the world around me, through an emotional filter. I see what makes me feel good, what makes me feel happy, what makes me feel unsafe, what makes me feel loved, what makes me feel appreciated etc...I generally process actions based on how I feel about them and how they make me feel. I also believe it's the "thought" behind the actions that is the most important.

I view the world in a positive light and I try to find the "good" in everyone. I had a very difficult and traumatic childhood, entering into foster care at the age of 7 and living my entire life in and out of over 25 foster homes. I experienced a lot of pain and abuse from people that were supposed to at the very least protect and care for me. Yet, I still choose to see the "good" in people and live my life as positively as I can. Love and Hope outweigh all the pain and abuse, always, for me.

I openly share my heart, love, kindness and friendship with everyone around me. I hate conflict and I prefer to always uplift someone than put the down. I hate bullies, I hate disrespect and I hate mistreatment of any kind.

These above examples, are to hopefully, explain why I am so emotional, so empathetic, so vulnerable. Because of my childhood, I understand what is like to be want to be loved and feel connected and not receiving it. I know that feeling and I wouldn't wish on my worst enemy.

 

[LoveDream]

The goal of NT's is to "feel" an connection to each other. We do this innately, it's not always conscious, its the same as breathing to us.

We smile when we hear kids playing/laughing. We cry, when we see or hear something sad, we celebrate when our team wins the big game, we get mad when we our car breaks down...we feel emotions in everything that we do and we share these experiences with each other, often, in the most simplistic ways.

When we talk about the weather, or give a compliment about someone's shoes or show off our children's school pictures...what we are communicating is the shared experience and emotions of these things. When we talk about the weather,for example, Bill tells Tom, "Whew, it's 100 degrees today and they say it's going to get all the way up to 108 by the end of the week", we are really saying, a million other things (like its way too hot, need rain now, remembering how cold it was this winter so we should appreciate this heat, wondering about how the garden is doing, if our dogs are ok in this heat etc...) It's like a snapshot of experiences flow through our minds and while different, there is a common theme and the common theme is "the 100 degree weather". It's over in mere seconds, yet, we connected to each other.

When we give a compliment, its not insincere, we freely give the compliment, in relation to how it will make the other person feel. Sure, I may personally, dislike Rebecca's lime green skirt for myself. But, I know Rebecca really likes to dress flashy and so I will tell her that I like her skirt. Rebecca is happy and feels a little bit more confident. I feel happy, just by seeing her happy. More importantly, it took maybe 30 seconds for me relay to Rebecca that I appreciate and accept her style, all by saying, that simple sentence.

Our chit-chat serves a point for us and it usually adds to our emotional bank. We constantly give and seek emotional validation from our environment and everyone around us.

We think figuratively rather than literally. We think subjectively, and emotionally. Majority of the time, our heart is in the right place, even when our actions suggest otherwise. We 'act' before we think, meaning, we express our emotions first, then process the issue last. This is necessary for us because we cannot separate the two. It's why, we often end of up saying, "we didn't meant what we just said". We honestly didn't mean it, especially, now after we processed our emotions behind it. It just that in that one millisecond timeframe, we felt that emotion the words described, but by time the next millisecond happened, we no longer feel it and have moved on. It's like stages for us, we feel and have to express all these stages of emotions before we be objective and logical.

I hope this helps, it may be confusing and I understand, if it is.

 

[Beverly]

As my NT body guard tells me when we discuss actions if I were seriously threatened, he'd shoot first and ask questions later, I'd ask questions first and, might not shoot at all.

 

[Jonathan Lees]

???????????????

 

[Rayner]

I'm an Aspie among other things. It diffuclt for me to connect to people socially. It's not that I don't want to connect to others. My emotional bank is quite small so I save it for a few people close to me. I love logical, concrete things in high detail, because that's how my brain innately proccess everything it senses in the world

 

[Beverly]

???????????????

He means that he would react to stop whatever we were both afraid of then, figure out what actually happened and why while I would figure out what was happening and why first, then act to stop it.

 

[Robby]

For me even though I am mildly on the spectrum, I've always just felt even as a young kid that I am highly intuitive, notice things other people don't, part of why I am such a perfectionist & a neat freak I guess. It's kind of like I see even mundane things in technicolor but everyone else is living in black and white. I just notice everything. I tend to pick up on little things in people too, I know a lot of people say that autistic people have major problems reading body language or nonverbal cues, but for me it's just the opposite, as a highly verbal person, I always notice the subtle little gestures people make or certain eye rolls or facial expressions that can tell me a lot about the person that others might miss. Sometimes it's a curse too because I can read too much into things, and overthink people/things/situations, but by and large it's an asset. It's kind of like an extra built in set of senses I have, that let me size people up pretty quickly, innately, and this serves me very well. Because I tend to usually be right.

I'm a fairly social person, but I definitely have the Aspie trait of needing my personal space and me time, at least a few times a day, to recharge my batteries, stay centered.

 

[Jonathan Lees]

He means that he would react to stop whatever we were both afraid of then, figure out what actually happened and why while I would figure out what was happening and why first, then act to stop it.

i wasn't saying ? to your comment Beverly, i was saying ? to the thread generally, i.e. how it would feel to be a neurotypical.

 

[LoveDream]

As my NT body guard tells me when we discuss actions if I were seriously threatened, he'd shoot first and ask questions later, I'd ask questions first and, might not shoot at all.

That may be his professional training coming into play more so than being an NT. "Reasonable Fear", I think is the term, where if it's a viable threat to your life, you take out that threat immediately then ask questions later, or something along those lines.

I'd ask a million and one questions, try to find some common ground with my attacker, try to connect and evoke something in the attacker that hopefully would save me. I don't think I could shoot either.

 

[LoveDream]

I'm an Aspie among other things. It diffuclt for me to connect to people socially. It's not that I don't want to connect to others. My emotional bank is quite small so I save it for a few people close to me. I love logical, concrete things in high detail, because that's how my brain innately proccess everything it senses in the world

Good morning Rayner,
I find it very interesting when you say you're emotional bank is reserved for a few people who are apart of your inner circle. That's common among us NT's as well. We often will know someone 'socially' but not really know them. It's like they aren't close enough to considered friends but not entirely strangers. Also, it depends on how much you want others to know, if you are a private person, then you reveal very little in public. But, open yourself up to your true friends. Or, you can be an open book to everyone, depends on your personality. We are all more common than we know.

It's very cool how your brain sees the world. I love details too. I wish I could be more logical in lots of ways.

 

[Vinca]

When we talk about the weather, or give a compliment about someone's shoes or show off our children's school pictures...what we are communicating is the shared experience and emotions of these things. When we talk about the weather,for example, Bill tells Tom, "Whew, it's 100 degrees today and they say it's going to get all the way up to 108 by the end of the week", we are really saying, a million other things (like its way too hot, need rain now, remembering how cold it was this winter so we should appreciate this heat, wondering about how the garden is doing, if our dogs are ok in this heat etc...) It's like a snapshot of experiences flow through our minds and while different, there is a common theme and the common theme is "the 100 degree weather". It's over in mere seconds, yet, we connected to each other.

When we give a compliment, its not insincere, we freely give the compliment, in relation to how it will make the other person feel. Sure, I may personally, dislike Rebecca's lime green skirt for myself. But, I know Rebecca really likes to dress flashy and so I will tell her that I like her skirt. Rebecca is happy and feels a little bit more confident. I feel happy, just by seeing her happy. More importantly, it took maybe 30 seconds for me relay to Rebecca that I appreciate and accept her style, all by saying, that simple sentence.

I find what you have written very helpful. I've observed, it particular, amongst the ladies at church, the giving of compliments and have been trying to build it into my interactions with them, but I never really understood the reason why they do it or what they are really saying when they give a compliment.

Carrying on with the example of Rebecca's lime green skirt, do you think that Rebecca would be able to tell that even though you are complimenting her about the skirt, there is a part of you that doesn't like the skirt? I ask this because sometimes it's as though a person can read what's in my mind, so I worry that they would know if I don't actually like the skirt, for example, I'm complimenting them about.

Our chit-chat serves a point for us and it usually adds to our emotional bank. We constantly give and seek emotional validation from our environment and everyone around us.

Have you ever found that the level of emotional validation that a person is seeking from you is very high? And that it exceeds what you are able to give/ is draining?

Do you think that there is alot of variation amongst NTs' ability to read when another person is seeking emotional validation and in their ability to know what to say to meet that need?

(Sometimes, I assume that being an NT means a person must be an expert communicator, but that seems like an overgeneralization.)

Sometimes I get a vague impression that the person I'm talking to is looking to me for a response (not a 'yes' or 'no' response, but they have some form of emotional need they are asking me to care for/about), but I have no idea what that emotional need is or what I could say that would satisfy that need. It's as though they are speaking a foreign language that I've been trying to learn but I'm not fluent in, and I still need to translate their language into the equivalent in my language, which I am slow to do, so if I do ever figure it out, the conversation will probably have already finished. Also, I frequently mistranslate and give a response that isn't what they want or need.

 

[Beverly]

That may be his professional training coming into play more so than being an NT. "Reasonable Fear", I think is the term, where if it's a viable threat to your life, you take out that threat immediately then ask questions later, or something along those lines.

I'd ask a million and one questions, try to find some common ground with my attacker, try to connect and evoke something in the attacker that hopefully would save me. I don't think I could shoot either.

It isn't a matter that I couldn't shoot - I do have a concealed carry permit and, I do train on realistic human like targets as well as silhouettes. I simply NEED to process every detail of any situation I am in before I choose a course of action. Feeling threatened alone is not reason to shoot, however if I am threatened, the presumed attacker really is staring at me, he has a gun, held in a manner that tells me he is prepared to fire then, I will fire. If however, he has his eyes on another target, does not have a gun, or is holding it in a manner that shows he does not know how to use it or, is not aiming it at me, then I'm not going to fire my weapon.

"Scalper" would react emotionally, out of fear for my life and fire before analyzing the situation as thoroughly as I would. Either way, it would be over in under three seconds, we are both trained that that is the time limit for saving a life in such a situation. Yes that would be pushing overload for me but, that's where training and practice helps. I'm able to process such situations quickly because the mock versions I train with are familiar to me, the only difference is that the human is real instead of a human looking target on a track or cable to make it move.

 

[DogwoodTree]

My brain processes everything through my "heart", so to speak. Meaning, I take in the world around me, through an emotional filter. I see what makes me feel good, what makes me feel happy, what makes me feel unsafe, what makes me feel loved, what makes me feel appreciated etc...I generally process actions based on how I feel about them and how they make me feel.

Curiosity question...do you know your Meyers Briggs personality type? This sounds like an F (as opposed to a T) type to me, and might have more to do with your personality type than simply being NT. I don't think that a thinker (a T type) would have described their inner experience like this at all, but that's just a guess based on what I've learned about MBTI types.

 

[Cosmophylla]

When we give a compliment, its not insincere, we freely give the compliment, in relation to how it will make the other person feel. Sure, I may personally, dislike Rebecca's lime green skirt for myself. But, I know Rebecca really likes to dress flashy and so I will tell her that I like her skirt. Rebecca is happy and feels a little bit more confident. I feel happy, just by seeing her happy. More importantly, it took maybe 30 seconds for me relay to Rebecca that I appreciate and accept her style, all by saying, that simple sentence.

This is something I struggle with. There have been a very few occasions when I have complimented someone on something I don't actually like simply because I think they will feel good about it when I do, but it feels like lying. I don't like that feeling of being insincere and I especially don't want someone to be insincere to me, because I have trust issues and have been betrayed by many people. Honesty is vital for me.

That all said, I'm aware of the role of complimenting others in social situations, and so if I can't say something positive about Rebecca's ugly lime skirt I will try to find something else nice to say about her. I do consciously try to avoid compliments on weight/body size because women have enough pressure about body image without me reinforcing it. So I will try to find a compliment somewhere else, like admiring how strong she is in the way she handled a stressful situation at work or with her kids, or something similar.

For me, telling Rebecca that I like her skirt (when the truth is that I find it hideous, or that it really doesn't suit her) feels like I'm insulting her with an untruth. It feels a bit like I'm manipulating her. As someone who has been manipulated by men, it treads on dangerous ground. So I avoid it altogether. If you can't say something nice, then say nothing, right?

Moreover, if I ask my husband how I look I expect an honest, objective response; I want a critique with possibilities for improvements offered to me. I don't want to simply be told I look good because that isn't what I ask. I don't fish for compliments, I want honesty. The cliched question is, "does my bum look big in this?" If I were ever to ask that question, I would expect an honest reply. Not a blanket "of course not, dear". (My husband took a few years to accept that I wasn't going to be offended if he had something negative to say, but now he knows that I really just want someone else's straight up, honest opinion. )

 

[Beverly]

Oh I know false compliments are given to make a good impression on the one you're complimenting. The old "Darling, that chartreuse blouse is fabulous and, your last single was brilliant." (Yeah fabulously hideous and, brilliantly suitable for the inside of the rubbish bin.) I can play the game too, but it's just that a game, it isn't sincere or real and, it's meaningless to me and, giving the compliments like that is lying through my teeth, plain and simple.

It's a white lie true, but a lie is a lie, is a lie PERIOD. All the same. Saying an ugly outfit looks good or saying the sky neon yellow, or that Donald Trump isn't a multimillionaire, all blatant lies, all the same as far as I'm concerned.

Yes I have to do it to make an impression or, preserve my image of belonging at an award show or something but, it's still lying and, I do it only because I have learned that I must and, have memorized a long list of false compliments to dole out. Clothing and career are always good things to compliment, even when you hate the person you are complimenting and, don't find anything good about their work or sense of fashion.

People do it to me too, I know they don't all love my music or my edgy fashions, I know they want to win the award and, think I suck big green ones, just as I want to win and think they suck big green ones. Still we mill about praising and complimenting each other for the evening.

That's public socializing with NTs, a dishonest, pointless, meaningless game to me. Not that I don't have NT friends with whom I am very close but, they understand that they need to stick to the less than obvious facts and, not get upset about my honest comments in conversation with me.

 

[On the Inside]

We constantly give and seek emotional validation from our environment and everyone around us.

Forgive me if this seems negative, but that sounds exhausting, but perhaps you are exaggerating. I feel that I could wait around forever before my emotions would be validated by someone else.

What form does this emotional validation take? I can understand compliments, I like getting them and try to give them often, but I don't equate that with emotional validation. I have emotions, they are caused by certain events, people, places, memories, but I don't feel a need for validation, they are my emotions, they effect my thinking, physical sensations, hopes, fears, they come and go, sometimes they can get out of hand, but even then, they will pass. What about that needs validating?

 

[Beverly]

On the Inside I agree, seems to me that one could wait forever for their emotion to be validated and, odds are, they wouldn't be feeling the same one by the time anyone did validate it.

To me, emotional thinking is the cause of poor decisions. If you are making choices based on emotions, or to feel a certain emotion then, you are ignoring the facts and, more often than not, doing that results in a bad decision. You'd buy the pink car that's going to need a new transmission in a month over the blue one that just had a new transmission and new engine put in it last week because pink makes you feel pretty where blue does not. (that's a general "you" no meaning anyone specifically.)

You'd also sit around waiting for someone to tell you that it was good to buy the pink car because you want your emotions validated. For me that's totally confusing. The sensible and, expedient thing to do would be to buy the blue car because it is the more mechanically sound of the choices available and, not to worry about what anyone else thought of you buying a blue car because you know you bought the best one of the two you could have purchased, knowing you were right based on facts needs no validation. Why would you want validation for a bad decision that was based on emotion, or even validation for feeling a certain way when there is no reason to be feeling that way in the first place, or allowing that emotion is not productive, does not further your goals, does not aid you in your schooling or career and, wastes energy that could be better used to do something productive rather than react to an emotion that accomplishes nothing?