to feel sad at NT resentment of / disgust at people with ASD

[kiritekanawa]

I guess it's like anything where the "better" people despise you for being inadequate - I tend to wonder why, if they're so much better, they don't have any spare mental capacity for kindness, empathy, compassion or humility.

Perhaps I'm too systematic in my approach to being nice, kind and compassionate, and reliable and dependable - but I refuse to be bitchy about others behind their backs, I refuse to change plans on a whim just to deliberately assert control over a situation in a way that makes it difficult for others, I stick to rules that make sense for the greater good (and quietly say nothing and ignore ones that are just silly). The NTs in my family all seem to spend their lives being bitchy, nasty, whimsical, selfish and unreliable - but they all despise me, think I'm humourless and unimaginative and a social weight around their necks.

My NT sister and BIL spend a lot of time rubbing my and my father's (ASD) noses in the fact that I and my father have embarrassed DSIS since I was born, and their child is SO MUCH better than me/DF IN SO MANY WAYS because their child is neurotypical. "D"SIS seems to resent everything I've ever done in my life, and gets together to recount stories of how my father and I are embarrassing and inadequate, with "D"BIL and our mother (who incidentally clearly also has ASD but lacks social insight to a point that she doesn't really see what she's being led into).

When I get together with my aspie academic friends - we don't spend the time bitching about our selfish, unreliable relatives - we talk about interesting ideas and stuff.

AIBU to get a bit depressed at being thought of as an embarrassment and a liability?

This is an interesting thread. Op I think your family are not NT... NT families don't delight in ripping other members to shreds for the hell of it. Unfortunately it sounds like you have some pretty unpleasant people there.

But you can't stereotype people with autism any more than you can stereotype neurotypical people. If you've met one person with autism... you've met ONE person with autism.. every ASD person is unique.

I am on the spectrum. Reasonably able and manage my life and job with enough success to copy the social norms, though I have had to learn appropriate responses to situaltions (especially emotional as I simply don't have that) My youngest son is autistic and much less able.. (special schooled etc) and every social response he has, has been explicitly taught. He is kind and friendly in his own way but needs a lot of support.

I honesstly don't think that able (by that I mean..functioning, verbal, able to live independently) autistic people are in any way more genuine

OOps posted too soon...
than NT people. Everyone is an individual.. some are decent, caring, interesting. Some people just aren't!

That's really interesting kiritekanawa , thanks for sharing. I can completely understand where you're coming from actually. I'm NT but I almost never show negative emotion in public and wouldn't let myself cry at my own father's funeral (I can clearly remember the physical pain in the my throat and having to tip my head back to stop the tears coming down my face). I also have really inappropriate thoughts and instinctive responses to other people's emotions and misfortune but have learned not to voice or show them (for example, on the father death thing - my dad died when I was 22. Recently a 55 year old colleague's father died and she was in bits and not coping for ages. My internal reaction was 'get over it, he was old, did you really expect to keep your parents much over the age of 50. My Dad didn't even get near your age let alone your dad's. Stop whining!' Luckily the horror of my own thoughts made me over compensate on the sympathy and I covered her duties, sent supportive cards etc. Probably nobody has a clue about the terrible thoughts I had!)

So I don't think you're a sociopath!!

Come to think of it, it's kind of an information-triage problem that i described above. I tend to think my way far, far down long, straight paths and not notice that others are on a totally different path.

NT people at the funeral understood that socially-appropriate behaviour was the important thing among lots of other competing things. I juggled the competing things differently and came out with grieving honestly on top, which obviously didn't mesh with others' interpretation. It didn't occur to me at the time that this could be misconstrued.

Medusa would you agree with the idea of information-triage as being a pervasive issue in ASD?

manic - i think you describe the info triage thing very well there - you were using information triage and self-control to make sure you got the most socially-approriate outcome.

Some of the people I know with ASD might have instead gone for the most honest outcome there. I'd probably have been among them 20-30 years ago, but these days would probably have just managed the situation badly and tried to fade into the background, rather than be honest to the 55yo colleague.

It's hard to think yourself into someone else experience. Its impossible for me to imagine what my DB's world is like on the spectrum and he can't understand the inside of my brain. It's easy, however, to be kind and just assume that we are both coming from a good place when we do things.

I might get a bit peeved at my DB's lack of spontaneity and his lack of interaction with the family dynamics. I'm sure he finds my drama, loudness and over-investment in family nonsense ridiculous. We rub along though. Because we aren't gits.

Unlike your family, who sound like gits.

MrsTerryPratchett you have done a great job of saying exactly what I suspect I really wanted to hear. So I think you've thought yourself into my head and navigated in there more effectively than I do!

I'll tell my DB that I've learnt something!

BubblesinMyBath - I definitely agree that it would be lovely to get away from the state of viewing others as less - and it would be lovely to embrace diversity.

How that meshes with dealing with grumpy pointlessly negative gits I don't know, but I guess a bit of distraction is always a good thing. oh DSIS! yes sorry about the last 39 years of social horror, but hey! isn't it great that you are such a wonderful chef!!!

Absolutely..information triage very much pervasive in the majority of people with ASD that I know, including my son..even though his learning disabilities also affect his thinking processes , he still pretty much goes through a 'sort through what I know, what I can make sense of.. dump the rest' process.

Having more cognitive ability I'd say I have learned to do a short version , based on many stored experiences , and come up with a vaguely appropriate response (most of the time). It helps that I am more aware that I don't have a natural response, whereas my son does not.

Sometimes however I just say things and am only aware I have got it wrong when I find people looking at me oddly!

Medusa yes i get that too!

Some years ago I worked in an academic environment where the majority were either clearly on the spectrum or "a bit aspie", and the norm was thinking down long straight paths and having intense discussions about minute details of abstruse topics. It was AWESOME and I miss it every day. I remember there was a guy there who didn't fit in at all, and was viewed with some suspicion by his colleagues - he was like a flea, never getting below the surface, and jumping all over the place intellectually - he was always getting into discussions where the other person would be patiently (with mild irritation) pointing out why his analogy or academic leap of faith didn't quite work. God it must have been frustrating for him - he was probably the most "normal" person there!

We're all on the spectrum somewhere. But if we were all at the bubbly socialite end, we'd still be sitting in caves, round campfires, singing. Without people further along the spectrum, we would have no engineers, no mathematicians and physicists, no IT. Basically, we would not have civilisation. I firmly believe that one reason that ASD is so common is that humanity would be up the creek without a paddle without people at the milder end of the spectrum.

No we are not all on the spectrum. the autistic spectrum is not a spectrum of sociability with bubbly people at the mildest end. it's a disabling neurological condition.

Having autism doesn't equal being good at Maths or a science either.

It's a nice fluffy idea but just...no.

nocoolnamesleft - you were being nice and encouraging, and that's most appreciated - and to some degree what you say is kind of right. Being more academically precise about these things, though, I ...um.... suspect that fanjo is also right.
People like Adrian Bird at Edinburgh do seem to know enough about the developmental genetics/ neurology now to be able to say it's a definite disorder rather than part of normal variation. The "we're all on the spectrum" idea in public currency seems to come more from the Simon Baron-Cohen male vs female brain idea, which was probably an oversimplification when first advanced and would now be regarded a bit doubtfully...

It's not an NT thing, it's a not nice person thing.

I'm NT my (19 yr old) DS has AS...I'm proud of him, he's a funny, kind, clever young man. Yes, we sometimes have conversations where we end up with one of us going because we've completely lost the other one, but that just makes life interesting, lol.

Things like saying there's something wrong with not crying at a funeral are just, well, wrong...nobody deals with that sort of situation in the same way. People cry because they're upset, not because it's expected.

I'm Aspie - just offering a quick perspective. One of the things I'm realising is part of my aspie-ness is to get disproportionately concerned by what and how other people are relating to me. I feel that I can understand and articulate their behaviour very clearly - as you have done. But the real need here - which I am practicing - is to step back from this process. I think it is because we are attuned to detect and respond to criticism and difference so very sensitively - our sensors are set very high, too high, because it is our mechanism for making sense of the social world. But it must be possible to let go of all this a bit and say, so what if we got criticised? So what if they think this or that? A good way to roll with all this a bit more is to work on turning up the love and affection. Pays off, IME. And also just sit with the awareness that we are superior beings a bit different and thanks heaven for that!

Yes, I can identify with your post balaboosta. I'm an Aspie too, and it took years not to take stuff too personally. I think the not-taking-things-personally is something that can be learned, as with so many of our responses to what can, at times, be the totally barking world of the NT . It helps to just practice going: "They're saying that because they're the ones with the issue/ it's their problem/ they're having a bad day. It's not necessarily anything to do with me".

But that's not to say that your family are right, or nice, OP. Reading this has reminded me of a group of friends I used to have. They were very "cool"- at the centre of a buzzing social scene, always saying and doing interesting stuff, which fascinated me. I remember one time, at a festival, a friend of theirs- with a reputation of being a bit of a bitch- totally laid into me- criticising, attacking, twisting my words- it was like being back at school. I could not believe that not one of them said anything to defend me! It took someone on the periphery of the group- a markedly less "cool" person- to later say- "My God, she was being totally out of order, wasn't she?"

Needless to say, I don't have anything to do with that group of "friends" any more (for a lot of other reasons, not just that incident). I suppose what I'm trying to illustrate with that example is that NT doesn't necessarily mean kind, or reasoned, or mature. Observing some (and I stress some!) NT people and their social interactions can be fascinating, and shocking- the jockeying for position, the little tricks to increase status ("Oh, sorry I didn't turn up for coffee- I was so busy busier than you, you saddo. "Mmm...thanks for the invite, I'll see if I can come or if a better offer turns up), the deliberate inclusions and exclusions.... the kind of behaviour that Aspies find difficult to understand, because why? Why do that??

I do stress that the majority of NT people aren't like that, but just wanted to flag up that the judging goes both ways! And of course your problem, OP, is that your family are like that- and it's not as easy to slough off your relatives as it is a toxic group of friends. Perhaps work on building up a protective carapace, or focus on what their issues could possibly be? .

By the way, I'm not denying that anti- Aspie prejudice is out there- America blaming Vladimir Putin's behaviour on having Asperger's anyone???? I couldn't believe that! Because jackbooting around slapping your dick on the table and attempting to invade neighbouring countries is such a typical ASpie trait.... It would be more pertinent (although not by much) to say that he behaves like that because he's a man!

Hi OP

Thank you for starting this discussion as I've found it really interesting to hear your point of view. Of course I realised that people with ASD found it difficult to deal with the NT world at times, but it hadn't really crossed my mind you might find NT people rude sometimes because of their NT traits.

I do think you are unlucky in your family though, they simply don't sound very nice rather than representative of how NT people all do things.

I'll cut through it for you. They are just twats and there is no more to it.

I'm afraid that if it's wrong to stereotype all people with ASD as behaving in same way, or in a bad way, it's just as wrong to stereotype people who are NT. Who are all different. It's just you happen to be related to some not nice people.

But the point is - that not everybody is nice. And we have to deal with that as a fact of life. And these kinds of conflicts with the NT world

... Oops. These kind of conflicts with representatives of the NT world is Asperger's. I mean, dealing with this dissonance is what living with Aspergers is all about. So you can complain about them all you like but the cause is in the disjunction between you and them, the gulf between you. It's not just about them being twats, which they might be. But we still have to find a way to deal with them. The condition of being with Aspergers is defined and delineated by such difficulties as these.

And I speak from complete experience of this!