Edit: A few people have interpreted the title as serious, so I wanna clarify that it was meant as a sarcastic joke about how little sense the neurotypical world makes to me, but it is still legitimately me asking for help understanding said neurotypical world.
Was having a conversation with a friend today about why I seem unapproachable to people online. Apparently it’s for 2 reasons.
One is that I say “K.” all the time, as a short way of saying okay. She pointed out that most people find this rude and offensive. This kinda baffled me, because like why? She explained that like, if somebody were to give a long emotional speech and I just responded “K.” that would be offensive. That confounds me. So it’s rude in one context, and neurotypicals have decided to be offended by it in all contexts? But the reason it’s rude is what confuses me more. Apparently it’s considered lazy because you could have just typed out the word, but like, that applies to all text speech and nobody’s mad about people shortening those words.
But it got more confusing when she explained the second reason, which is that I end all of my sentences with proper punctuation, which she said “makes people feel like I’m done with the conversation and not interested.” But just a second ago improper grammar was rude, and now proper grammar is rude instead.
It baffles me. You can’t just use proper or improper grammar. Use too much improper grammar and you’re lazy and rude. Use too little and you’re also rude. But you can’t just use any improper grammar, you have to use the very specific subset of improper grammar that’s been deemed acceptable and not lazy (even though it’s exactly as lazy as what they do consider lazy.)
To be clear, I’m not bitter, and I’m definitely gonna adjust my behavior to hopefully seem a little less rude to people. I think that’s just a nice thing to do. I just find the neurotypical mind utterly fascinating. I don’t think they even realize how many contradictions exist in the social rules they all so easily accept.
They are not in charge. It’s just that autistic people sometimes take non-critically not even what they are told, but the situation and the emotion as something normal, because that other person is more social and knows how it is.
The rules are different for every tone, discourse, context, etc. Adjusting for one of them won’t do much good even.
You won’t ever lift the weight of adjusting yourself for such expectations well enough. Putting more trust in your own perception of what’s rude and what isn’t is the only way to deal with it.
I mean, probably a therapist would say that. Still ask your therapist and not Lemmy.
The funny part is I asked here specifically because I was directed to by a psychiatrist. They thought the best people to ask would be other people with autism who’ve already learned better how to interact because they’ll understand what I need to hear better.
She also told me to consult the friend mentioned in my post, which is how that conversation started.
The reason I’m trying so hard to understand is because I keep having mental health crises over my inability to communicate and the fact that I have a habit of making people really mad and not knowing why or what I did to cause it. Being not only an outcast but having everyone hate me and not just imagining that is very stressful.
Trusting myself to know what’s rude doesn’t work. I piss people off extremely easily and don’t even notice I did until they’re refusing to speak to me.
I have the same problem.
When a conflict arises, just tell them what you think about it and that they are assholes both for deciding to be offended without asking you and for thinking that their idea of being nice is the only right one. Be more aggressive and open about what you think both when behaving like you do and when evaluating their response and opinions on that. And don’t ask, beg or otherwise put yourself in a dependent\lower position.
Some of those people will get pissed off even more, because they were consciously abusing this, to be honest. Like with bullying at school, liking it that you’re “wrong” and they are “normal”. And if you feel yourself cut off, that succeeded and they are fine with it, and if you don’t, they really won’t like it. Expect mischief and cowardly shit behind your back from such.
But some will understand you better and won’t make that mistake further. Well, after a few such aggressive actions, because it’s not easy to understand immediately. These are much more numerous than you’d think.
Never try to track your own reactions, “mistakes” and correct for those. You’ll get overloaded with depressive thoughts and indecisiveness.
Those people are smart enough to understand what is what. Some of them will if given better context, which I called aggressive. And some of them are consciously attacking you because they can.
As far as I understand, people generally assume I’m being rude and dismissive, but they don’t tell me that, they just kinda stop talking. Then they go and ask my friend why I’m like that, where she explains to them that I’m not being rude, I just have difficulty communicating, at which point they usually accept that, but still don’t talk to me much because I’m just too difficult to get close to. Or at least they think I am, because they don’t realize I’m enjoying their company because I don’t express it, because I just assume they’d know because I’m paying attention to them.
That’s what I’m working on. Showing people that I’m genuinely enjoying their company, that when they ask me questions I’m happy to answer, and so on. So it’s not so much a problem of people not being willing to adapt to me, but the fact that they as much as me don’t know how to adapt, so I need to meet them in the middle.
That may be true, but many times you’ll find out that the other side considers only meeting at their side the polite behavior. Because they’re “normal”.
Because it’s not that hard to meet in the middle, just remembering that people are different does that.
I’m aware, and thanks for the advice. I’ve experienced a little of this already since I’ve been applying the advice I’ve gotten here. Luckily, so far, most have been willing to put some effort in now that I’ve shown I’m willing to as well. It’s easy enough to just not talk to the people who won’t, because they’re already not trying.