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Why do people pretend to care?

The basic question , how are you doing? Did you enjoy this or that?...

Well, i think that we need to rationalize those situations in order to give the appropriate answer.

You are in a situation with people you dont know much, you want to socialize with them and this is a cool context, i mean you are just hanging out with them.

What could be the appropriate answer if someone ask you if you appriciate the moment?

Should you say everything to someone you barely know in a crowned place during a fun time?

I think not, and i think this is normal, yes this is weird because they pretend to care, i nd rather say that they care to a certain degree.

If your response is too negative, someone else might think you dont like him/her or that you dont want to socialize.

In this situation be as basic as possible, say that you are not used to bowling or that you are tired whatever, talk about the persons that had the best score,compliment the person you are talking too, the person that did a stike etc...

I never went to bowling with people i dont know, with my friend the few times i was there ,i was just never there xD, distracted by the screens the musics and the other playing, i miss my turnd often xD people need to remind me off it.

And i just dont try to make a score, i throw it and whatever can happens i dont care xD.

But at the end i say to my friends that it was cool even if i suck at it and i stay as positive as i can because in the end they had the nice intention to invite me.

Hope this can help
 
You can't build any relationship instantly.

At first if you think you could be friend with someone you need to build that relationship and ofc this is unnatural at first...

And , we fear failure, so, to imagine that no matter what , the others doesnt care , is just a way to defend ourselves , we rationnalize our fear and just give up.

But hey, Who am I to talk about this? I spend most of my time in my room and i dont even have 10 friends ^^

I just think that the way I managed this was bad , i mean , I have closed myself , and i dont think this is what we need, we need to know ourselves.

Our problem is that we have a hard time finding the good people that actually cares , because we have more difficulties understanding social clues. So we get and feel rejected, missunderstood, and from our experience we create that false belief that protects us from a certain point of view, but also closes us from the world.
 
Support workers aren't what they used to be. Now they are all stool pigeon types, or smarmy, know-it-all sheep. My sister may actually be allowed to claim PIP with her FND situation. She's under 30 and getting that in her life now? It just doesn't seem right.
 
I think a lot of people pretend to care because it's the nice thing to do. For some people, it's the nicer thing to do than saying: "Yeah, I'm just asking because social rules tell me to." I'm guilty of that myself (when time doesn't permit me to listen to the full-length answer). (Example: We have exactly two minutes to talk, and there is still someone behind them waiting to greet me). I would love to talk to them one-on-one for hours and hours and hours about how they are doing. Some of them also would love to talk to me for hours and hours and hours about how I'm doing. But who has that kind of time? "I gotta feed the dogs", "I have to go to work", "I have laundry to take care of", "I gotta start making dinner", "I have to go to a doctor's appointment", "I have to study for finals". And they're genuinely not making excuses! Society and life in general just makes us so busy. So we need to make time. And we all have to remember what's important. Invite that one person to lunch, or give them a call when they do have time, and just talk about what's really going on.

Also, all of us have a million problems. It's probably true that a lot of people don't care. But there are also a lot of people who do. It's uncomfortable to talk about unpleasant problems, and I think out of politeness people don't talk about these too in-depth. Like, why make life more unpleasant by discussing the unpleasantness of life? That's not how I see it, but it is a real perspective no less. The problem is that we all need to talk about our problems now and again to stay mentally and emotionally healthy.
 
Usually relationships start out from superficial questions like "How are you?" or "What's your favorite color?" Even though the answers to the questions usually don't matter to people, they help to forge trust and connection between people so that more specific and deep questions can be asked.
 
Dwoops said:
Thanks for all the insightful replies.
I still think it is kind of stupid how people don’t act how they think. I understand that most people want to fit in, but why must they do it in a way that makes people feel worse.
I find that whenever I’m feeling down and someone asks me how I’m doing, it makes me feel worse. I don’t know why but it may be that I don’t like that fact that attention is being drawn to my life and thus causes me to think about it. It’s part of why I try to seclude myself when I’m feeling depressed, but that makes me get even more depressed for different reasons.
Why must people be so complicated with how they interact. It’d be so much simpler if people could speak their mind and others would respect them for it.
Click to expand...
This seems to be true even amongst supposedly close family members.

I have given up attempting to have any true understanding or appreciation of the value of social interaction for me (as a ND person) - the risk out-weigh any possible benefits.

It is disappointing and rather sad a times but a logical conclusion based on my experience.
 
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Gritches said:
, imagine a world where everyone still greeted each other with "how are you doing?" but instead of saying "fine" they dumped their purse all over the floor (figuratively) and you and that other person spent the next several hours trying to work through each others' unsolvable psychological issues. It would be an utter cluster-F. Nothing would get accomplished.

.
Click to expand...

Nothing would get accomplished, but people would be happier in the short term.

Although what you depict here is an extreme case to illustrate a point, that’s what happens, in different degrees, in other parts on the world, where there is more compassion and humanity among people in general.

Here in Mexico, as well as in other parts of the world, people are not expected to act like robots. It’s ok to show feelings and emotions, to say that you are sad, or mad, or extremely happy... and (gasp!) talk about it.

Maybe that’s why in many aspects this country is not “civilized”; but that’s also the reason why I am happier here, and feel more alive here, than in the “first world”. People care more about other people (about me, a foreigner, for example) than in more “civilized” countries. They have known pain in the past, and they received compassion from their own kind, so they are not afraid to show compassion to others. It’s the normal thing to do.

In other more “civilized” countries where I have lived, it happened the same to me that happened to @Dwoops : sometimes I would sit alone in a party and nobody would care, nobody would ask me what happened to me. They would just live me alone.

Not here, never here. If I do that here, there’s always someone concerned.

There’s kind people and mean people everywhere in the world, but the society where they live influences how they behave. I know because I’ve done it. In other parts of the world, I’ve had to become less “nice” and become “rougher” in the way I presented myself to people in general, or otherwise I would have been eaten alive by them.

Here I feel I can be more myself, and that I can turn off many of those defenses.

My point is, @Dwoops , that what you think is all the people in the planet, is in fact just the people of your social circle, or the place where you live. There’s a big world out there.
 
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@Sabrina That sounds really, really nice actually. Being able to show emotion without that being equal to showing weakness would be so freeing. Now you've got me pining for Mexico, or maybe Uruguay :)
 
Sabrina said:
Nothing would get accomplished, but people would be happier in the short term.

Although what you depict here is an extreme case to illustrate a point, that’s what happens, in different degrees, in other parts on the world, where there is more compassion and humanity among people in general.

Here in Mexico, as well as in other parts of the world, people are not expected to act like robots. It’s ok to show feelings and emotions, to say that you are sad, or mad, or extremely happy... and (gasp!) talk about it.

Maybe that’s why in many aspects this contry is not “civilized”; but that’s also the reason why I am happier here, and feel more alive here, than in the “first world”. People care more about other people (about me, a foreigner, for example) than in more “civilized” countries. They have known pain in the past, and they received compassion from their own kind, so they are not afraid to show compassion to others. It’s the normal thing to do.

In other more “civilized” countries where I have lived, it happened the same to me that happened to @Dwoops : sometimes I would sit alone in a party and nobody would care, nobody would ask me what happened to me. They would just live me alone.

Not here, never here. If I do that here, there’s always someone concerned.

There’s kind people and mean people everywhere in the world, but the society where they live influences how they behave. I know because I’ve done it. In other parts of the world, I’ve had to become less “nice” and become “rougher” in the way I presented myself to people in general, or otherwise I would have been eaten alive by them.

Here I feel I can be more myself, and that I can turn off many of those defenses.

My point is, @Dwoops , that what you think is all the people in the planet, is in fact just the people of your social circle, or the place where you live. There’s a big world out there.
Click to expand...

I found that going to america sort of.

Europe = no talking until you've been firmally introduced.
America = they talk you first.
Thankfully the kind of nonsense I spout in here can also convert to real life.
Not with everyone, thankfully.
It sort of self weeds those without a brain.
My defence mechanism means I got lucky


Im more confident than I used to be
Am happy to show weakness -it tells you a lot about the other person.
I'm also less likely to care :)

Still it's all about balance.
 
Fridgemagnetman said:
I found that going to america sort of.

Europe = no talking until you've been firmally introduced.
America = they talk you first.
Thankfully the kind of nonsense I spout in here can also convert to real life.
Not with everyone, thankfully.
It sort of self weeds those without a brain.
My defence mechanism means I got lucky


Im more confident than I used to be
Am happy to show weakness -it tells you a lot about the other person.
I'm also less likely to care :)

Still it's all about balance.
Click to expand...

Course half the time people talk to me I'm still a zombie.

In my personal nowhere.
 
Gritches said:
@Sabrina That sounds really, really nice actually. Being able to show emotion without that being equal to showing weakness would be so freeing. Now you've got me pining for Mexico, or maybe Uruguay :)
Click to expand...

I have not been to Uruguay, but I’ve been to Argentina, and culturally speaking, they’re very similar. Uruguay, Argentina and Chile are very different from the rest of Latinamerica, a.k.a. their social attitude is a lot colder than the rest of Latin America (I lived in Chile for three years).
 
I think people are 98.3% only interested in themselves. Myself and everyone included. I think it was Nitzche who said that much of what we think of as morality, is actually just cowardous. People act nice because they want to avoid the consequences of not being nice.They aren’t motivated by some internal good. I hate to be so glum about the human condition, but we are all pretty egocentric even those that pretend to be this virtuous social creatures, are still 98.3% guided by the impetus of thier own self preservation. It’s a sad way to look at people, but that does not make it untrue.
 
This thread reminds me of the time I got so fed up with the shallow nature of "How're you?" I replied "Do you really want to know or should I just say "I'm okay"?"

Seriously, it is aggravating. I have plenty to process that I struggle with daily, but no one outside my relationship is there to actually talk things through with, so when this is asked, I feel like calling them out on their fake concern.

They know my health problems since I don't hide my diagnosed one, but still expect me to act not disabled.
 
Lia said:
When I sit by myself and don't interact with the other people around me, my body language screams "don't talk to me". So people usually leave me alone when I do that, because they do care and believe that is what I want. I want people to talk to me though, so I have to keep working on my body language to make me seem more inviting, because people aren't mind readers. Yes, autism makes it harder to interact with people, but it's still my responsibility to work on my difficulties. We can't expect people to help us or understand what we want unless we show them.
I definitely agree with Dorkasour about seeing a therapist. Depression will lie to you and make you believe that no one cares. It will make you look at the world as a cruel and ugly place, when the truth is that the world is filled with caring and compassionate people.
Click to expand...

This is actually the best response on this thread, even though I hit the “agree” several times with other responses. People ask because it’s polite, and they ARE interested. Interested for a quick nanosecond. If you were positive they might engage further, but being negative is not something they are prepared to respond to. People gravitate towards smiles, positive people, and happy responses. Negativity, depression, frustration, and anti-social behaviors are natural turnoffs to most humans who do not have self awareness, let alone awareness towards other humans.

I work in mental health as a counselor, and it’s taken years of training to look into and understand human feelings. I work with people living with schizophrenia, bi-polar, and severe depression. I have empathy, and genuinely care about others. When I ask others how they are feeling, I DO care. This is not normal for most people, because most people want to keep life very surface level and dumbed down. One is not supposed to truly express their true feelings, and that really gets me frustrated on a day-to-day level.

In social settings, if I express that I hated something, and I am angry, people tend to move away and no longer speak to me. If I express that I am happy, and everything is fine, that keeps people engaged- on a minimal, polite manner. Totally unreasonable in my aspie world, but I have learned when to express true inner feelings and when not to. In social settings with people who are not deep close friends, just keep everything light, nice, and stupid!

I agree that with my own sensory issues, avoidance of the activities that most people do is the best protection and self care I can do. No parties, bowling alleys, amusement parks, bars (pubs), or busy places for me. I simply cannot understand why people like those places with high sensory overload!
 
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