interaction filters
Mar. 25th, 2013 10:53 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jinianI've been working on this post for quite a while. Lots of things that I wanted to put in don't fit. I'd like feedback if you have time.
Something that I learned today/ People don't think the way I do
The Fastbacks, "T.H.I.N.K."
I was both validated and upset to read Kathy Sierra's take on being AS.
"Asperger's -- in my one, personal, case (the only one I can speak to), was a beautiful rose-colored lens softly buffering me from just about everything."
(I am filing this under "why some nerds don't hate Big Bang Theory.")
I doubt I'm at all diagnosable any more, I've changed a lot, but as a kid? I was supremely oblivious to social cues and unbothered by the vast majority of jerky behavior by my peers. I could perceive some of it, but I didn't get why it would matter. At one point this got me a boyfriend: apparently I didn't act like I was better than other people the way those other girls in the accelerated track did. I was all ??? but sure, why not, I am curious about dating, let's go.*
There was no reasonable way that boy and I were going to understand each other. I was never going to perceive or purposely give subtle cues, and in retrospect he was very sensitive that way. Yet we had a reasonably good time together because we were kind and respectful.
Sometimes it upsets me that the only relationships we can have are filtered through what we've got, and what we've got is what we are. Our minds and bodies and cultures are integral to the experience of being us, but also things that get in our way: they mean we can never totally understand any other person, and for a lot of us they mean we have to overcome obstacles to interact at all. If you accept me when I am awkward and silent as well as when I am goofy and inappropriate, I feel like you get me, because those are both me, squeezing past my inabilities and expectations.
That filters are all we have is depressing but to me also makes things better, in that we are not uniquely alone. (m-pig and hattifattener are laughing right now, because I've totally internalized this from our therapist.) It's hard for me to be reconciled to the fact that some people have so much more pain and heartache than others, though. Surely those lucky people without depression or bad joints must have an easier time having relationships. Well, here is where I'm a bad person: part of the reason my favorite people are my favorites is because they have problems. We learn to deal with difficult stuff and it makes us more awesome.
I wish I could think of a way to say it that was less inspirational and dorky, though.
It feeds on itself, too: the ways we are determine how we react to events, which determines how we are. Some of that is stuff like my autistic-spectrumy background, which made me very sensitive to some kinds of problem and oblivious to others. I react differently now depending on whether I've had bad experiences, and whether I had bad experiences was determined partly by my neurology. It's not like no one ever tried to bully me, it's just that I was the kid that annoying jerks tell bullied kids to imitate, whose reaction was generally a mild "wtf?" and moving on. I was lucky that no one ever cared enough to make me a real target, or things would have been different, but the ordinary jerks pretty much bounced off.
Yet, like pretty much everyone, I feel traumatized by my childhood. Because one of the few things that really got through to me was systematic invalidation. Not that my parents meant to say my emotions in particular weren't okay, it's that no negative emotions from anyone were acceptable. This worked as well as you might think -- blowups were frequent from Dad and rare but epic from Mom. As for me, I had to teach myself to yell, and I haven't entirely figured out how to let feelings out appropriately yet. (My pediatrician was so surprised when I didn't make pained noises when he poked me in places that hurt. Well, he didn't say he wanted me to tell him where it hurt, I thought he was feeling for something.)
During season 3 of Community, Abed starts looking like he's becoming more autistic, error-alarm "eeee" noises and catatonic states. I was disturbed at first, thinking the writers were making him more pathological (and that's still a concern), but I realized it's also something I've felt. It's being able to output your state at all and not being good at it yet. That whine of distress is Abed letting his friends in.
I mean, it's also bad writing, I'm not saying it's entirely consistent with the character as set up previously. But I identify with some of it.
Anyway. I think one of the ways to overcome our isolation is with more different ways of interacting. We're all really lucky to have so many options now: not just the various voice/text/video options, but music and gifts and books. And I think this kind of community-blogging is especially valuable, because we can all say just what we want to and find out more about each other without worrying about entertaining someone in particular. I'm glad to have you all here.
* Come to think of it, this kid was pretty interesting overall. He was more experienced but fine with my not being, and vastly less pushy than I had expected from the literature. (That may have been related to his love for his little sisters.) He's the one who started dismantling my coercive expectations of sexuality, which I'm pretty happy about overall. All he had to do was question them! On the other hand, the question remains: why exactly was he specifically looking for a girl in the accelerated track, which he wasn't in? Like I said, interesting.
Something that I learned today/ People don't think the way I do
The Fastbacks, "T.H.I.N.K."
I was both validated and upset to read Kathy Sierra's take on being AS.
"Asperger's -- in my one, personal, case (the only one I can speak to), was a beautiful rose-colored lens softly buffering me from just about everything."
(I am filing this under "why some nerds don't hate Big Bang Theory.")
I doubt I'm at all diagnosable any more, I've changed a lot, but as a kid? I was supremely oblivious to social cues and unbothered by the vast majority of jerky behavior by my peers. I could perceive some of it, but I didn't get why it would matter. At one point this got me a boyfriend: apparently I didn't act like I was better than other people the way those other girls in the accelerated track did. I was all ??? but sure, why not, I am curious about dating, let's go.*
There was no reasonable way that boy and I were going to understand each other. I was never going to perceive or purposely give subtle cues, and in retrospect he was very sensitive that way. Yet we had a reasonably good time together because we were kind and respectful.
Sometimes it upsets me that the only relationships we can have are filtered through what we've got, and what we've got is what we are. Our minds and bodies and cultures are integral to the experience of being us, but also things that get in our way: they mean we can never totally understand any other person, and for a lot of us they mean we have to overcome obstacles to interact at all. If you accept me when I am awkward and silent as well as when I am goofy and inappropriate, I feel like you get me, because those are both me, squeezing past my inabilities and expectations.
That filters are all we have is depressing but to me also makes things better, in that we are not uniquely alone. (m-pig and hattifattener are laughing right now, because I've totally internalized this from our therapist.) It's hard for me to be reconciled to the fact that some people have so much more pain and heartache than others, though. Surely those lucky people without depression or bad joints must have an easier time having relationships. Well, here is where I'm a bad person: part of the reason my favorite people are my favorites is because they have problems. We learn to deal with difficult stuff and it makes us more awesome.
I wish I could think of a way to say it that was less inspirational and dorky, though.
It feeds on itself, too: the ways we are determine how we react to events, which determines how we are. Some of that is stuff like my autistic-spectrumy background, which made me very sensitive to some kinds of problem and oblivious to others. I react differently now depending on whether I've had bad experiences, and whether I had bad experiences was determined partly by my neurology. It's not like no one ever tried to bully me, it's just that I was the kid that annoying jerks tell bullied kids to imitate, whose reaction was generally a mild "wtf?" and moving on. I was lucky that no one ever cared enough to make me a real target, or things would have been different, but the ordinary jerks pretty much bounced off.
Yet, like pretty much everyone, I feel traumatized by my childhood. Because one of the few things that really got through to me was systematic invalidation. Not that my parents meant to say my emotions in particular weren't okay, it's that no negative emotions from anyone were acceptable. This worked as well as you might think -- blowups were frequent from Dad and rare but epic from Mom. As for me, I had to teach myself to yell, and I haven't entirely figured out how to let feelings out appropriately yet. (My pediatrician was so surprised when I didn't make pained noises when he poked me in places that hurt. Well, he didn't say he wanted me to tell him where it hurt, I thought he was feeling for something.)
During season 3 of Community, Abed starts looking like he's becoming more autistic, error-alarm "eeee" noises and catatonic states. I was disturbed at first, thinking the writers were making him more pathological (and that's still a concern), but I realized it's also something I've felt. It's being able to output your state at all and not being good at it yet. That whine of distress is Abed letting his friends in.
I mean, it's also bad writing, I'm not saying it's entirely consistent with the character as set up previously. But I identify with some of it.
Anyway. I think one of the ways to overcome our isolation is with more different ways of interacting. We're all really lucky to have so many options now: not just the various voice/text/video options, but music and gifts and books. And I think this kind of community-blogging is especially valuable, because we can all say just what we want to and find out more about each other without worrying about entertaining someone in particular. I'm glad to have you all here.
* Come to think of it, this kid was pretty interesting overall. He was more experienced but fine with my not being, and vastly less pushy than I had expected from the literature. (That may have been related to his love for his little sisters.) He's the one who started dismantling my coercive expectations of sexuality, which I'm pretty happy about overall. All he had to do was question them! On the other hand, the question remains: why exactly was he specifically looking for a girl in the accelerated track, which he wasn't in? Like I said, interesting.
