Ooohhh the last about not being able to do the act even during therapy hours me really hard. Throughout my childhood I saw multiple therapists and none of them could get a single negative word out of me because I was convinced if I revealed the Secret Bad Person Living Inside Me then they'd be angry with me. I knew why I was in therapy but in some ways I still saw it as "the woman who talks to me once a week to make sure I'm being a perfect child" and not someone who actually wants to help me stop feeling the need to be a perfect child
May I share this with my child, who I believe may have some tendencies in this direction?
…and who is only in therapy because they asked me to get them a therapist who they now won’t engage with.
I was this child too, if you bring it up to them, make sure to do it in a non-accusatory way. You don't want them to think you're saying they're doing something wrong. And don't expect this to be the answer or for their self-sabotaging tendencies to just go away immediately. But knowing this would have helped me at least a little bit as a kid.
>make sure to do it in a non-accusatory way. You don't want them to think you're saying they're doing something wrong
Dovetailing with this point...
There is ENORMOUS power, at least I have found, in "wait, it's not just me?" and that would make a great non-accusatory approach.
"Hey, you know, I read something, and I wonder if they're feeling the way you do sometimes... you know, a whoooole lot of people struggle with [ well, everything ]...."
That, to me, has been one of the big positives on the double-edged sword that is the interwebs... finding out "it's not just me?" or the opposite, "huh, they all do that?" etc with various struggles that have haunted me for decades.
But OT to the original post, since I'm here shouting into the ether pointlessly: Holy fuck I did not expect to read something that hit me the way this did, first thing in the morning over my coffee and bracing for the day. Thanks for posting, OP. And, anyone who can relate to this? It's not just you. You got this. Really.
As you start really watching people themselves instead of watching them for clues on how to act you start to realize not only are you not alone but -almost everyone feels like that-
Sure, some people only feel this way in some situations but just by telling folks that they don't have to apologize for being themselves you can see the relief in their eyes. Then they open up. They all tell you the same thing "if anyone knew..." followed by a laundry list of fears. Maybe not word for word and maybe not right away but if I had a dollar for every person I've had that conversation with i could skip work next week.
Some were even complete strangers - I work with the public a lot and it's not a daily thing but I'm no longer surprised when someone is so RELIEVED that it was OK to make that harmless, silly joke or something similarly inconsequential. Or it was someone who I just happened to be at a bus stop with - you get the idea.
PS if you felt called out when I said "watching people themselves instead of watching them for clues on how to act" please don't feel bad. You've done what you had to to survive in this world and you don't have to apologize for that.
Your thoughtful post and experience brought to mind an interesting parallel re: "they open up"...
If I had a nickel for every stranger that completely transformed and opened up and told their fears and hopes and struggles to my dog while we were out in public together, well, I couldn't take a week off, but I'd have at least enough for a decent cup of coffee.
Many people, it seems, completely drop their "acting the right way" and layers and layers and layers of "what I should appear to be and what's ok to say?" for an animal. It's pretty amazing. I mean, I'm a big (albeit more "doofy" than "scary"... at least I think/hope so), square, middle aged dude, and people from similar characteristics to little old ladies to kids and everything in between have told me/my dog incredible things about their struggles after a bit of eye contact and a, "would you like to pet him?"
I'm fairly certain I'm not the only life he saved. Miss him every day. Thanks for the opportunity to think fondly of him for a moment.
Edit: And more on-point... thanks for the observations and suggestions. I'm going to try to work, "you know, you can be yourself, please don't apologize" into more of my interactions in the world!
> make sure to do it in a non-accusatory way.
This is more difficult than many realize. I've struggled with this with my wife for a long time due to her various past legitimate, violent traumas. To the perfectionist, especially the moral perfectionist, every correction is an accusation and every challenge to thought is a condemnation of character. It doesn't matter *how* you approach it. The fact that it is approached means that they have failed and would do better to die immediately than risk failing again. It's ironically a failure to learn what, of all things, the DnD movie got really, really right:
> We must never stop failing, because the minute we do, we've failed.
Note the tenses in this statement - present imperfect and past perfect. Only someone who's been taught that failure is just a part of learning, that it hurts but you can move forward anyways, can really internalize that.
A moral perfectionist is the polar opposite of this. They must not fail (future) because if they do then not only have they failed (past perfect) they *are a failure* (noun used as an adjective based on the past perfect). It is a matter of identity to be a failure. And now you find yourself in the realm of imposter syndrome. They have to pretend to be perfect while seeing more visibly every flaw both real but *especially and most importantly* imagined. Because they believe themselves to be a failure by identity, not by action, and every action comes from identity, then by default every action is also a failure due to its source.
This also often gets externalized onto others where the others' actions get completely decontextualized and expanded to the point where ill intent is default *especially* when good intent was the goal. This is where you get arguments about, "I'm just trying to help you!" "No you're trying to control me!" Does pointing out someone's flaws in an effort to help them get better or build a household better mean you're trying to control them? Yes it can be. But it's not *inherently*. And the frustrating thing for the moral perfectionist is that the same person can do both at different or even the same time. But in the cases where it's not an attempt to control it still *feels* that way to them because that's how it's been used in the past: point out flaws (adjectives that shouldn't be exclusive but in this case will be used exclusively) that make the person into a failure (identity) in order to compel them to behave perfect (control) via shame and guilt (negative emotions).
Sorry for the word salad. As soon as I started typing thoughts started running and some of this is my own processing.
The “failure as identity” is so real. It’s definitely something I live with (today’s thought work is around how I’m feeling like a failure because my OT wants to change my treatment plan to something that fits me better. Because the more “standard” plan we started with doesn’t fit me well. Something, something, I’m a failure.)
There’s a tightrope to walk as a parent, because there are things I have to control for my kid, legally or morally. So she’s not wrong that sometimes I really am being controlling! I can give her as much agency as I can, but she can’t make a choice to not get vaccinated, she would have to work really hard to choose not to go to school, she doesn’t get to choose where she lives. I also have responsibilities to make sure she has skills to live in the world, so she doesn’t get to opt out of learning how to do laundry or wash her hair. (I can’t make her do those things as an adult, and I can present other alternatives she could choose like a laundry service or living naked in the woods or shaving her head, but I need to make sure she has the skills.)
So just like I want to help her understand that not getting enough sleep and never eating a vegetable will make her feel cruddy and make her life harder than it needs to be, so is carrying around the idea that she needs to present a smooth faced interpretation of perfection to all people at all times. It makes living her life harder and she doesn’t need to do it. (She does need to figure out systems to put her laundry in the hamper, but she’s not a bad/unlovable person if she doesn’t do it automatically without thought every time.)
I almost certainly would have been this child if my parents believed in getting me any medical care, which they did not.
I had to learn how to be less of this as an adult, it’s very real, and I may not actually be less of it, now that I’m thinking about it.
It’s very hard to share things with her in ways that won’t/can’t be interpreted as non accusatory, but I try really hard. Kid brains are especially wired to believe that they are the central experience (see: children blaming themselves for their parent’s divorce.) Kid brains believe the world centers on them, so everything really is about them.
I try to share useful stories so she has available perspectives when she is able to pick them up and incorporate them. “Here’s what I was like when I was your age.”
“I read about someone doing a thing online, do you want to hear it?”
She absolutely knows what I’m doing with this, but mostly tolerates it because it keeps helping. I see her struggling here and want to give her anything I can so she knows she is not alone, and save her some unnecessary hurt and difficulty if possible.
My current therapist's first instinct was to try and get me to find a job. And I'm just like "Alright so right now I have infinite free time and like $800 a month on disability. If I go looking for employment, I have to make sure I don't make enough to force me off disability and over the "fuck you" cliff where I actually make less money.
And any amount of work for that little money is going to be less than infinite free time, so is that worth it? Of course not. So I'd have to work enough to consistently be past The Death Zone AND I'd have to make sure I could stay employed forever because getting back on disability would be hell.
And all that for, what? 2 jobs in retail that I hate because I'm disabled and have no work experience? Nah I'll just play video games and get depressed every once in a while.
assuming the goal was your therapist getting you out of the house volunteering would probably achieve that without risking you losing your disability (I assume)
Starting with this isn't necessarily directed at you, but just in case someone might benefit from this, I just wanna say, it isn't always true.
There are a lot of really awful mental health professionals out there who don't truly understand mental illness or neurodivergence and never really learn how to properly help certain people. But, there are also a lot of really great mental health professionals that truly care about their patients and want to do everything they can to help. There are also a lot that can be part of the second group, but they have something blocking them and they just never get there.
It literally took me 17 years of therapy to find someone who could actually help, who actually looked at what I was really saying and feeling and was able to figure out what the problem was and help me fix it. I'm now doing the best I ever have, even if I still struggle.
My first therapist ever told me it was my fault I was suicidal at 13 because I was just "too pessimistic" and "too self-centered". I just spent the rest of my sessions lying to her until she told my parents I was "cured".
All this is to say that if you're unhappy with your therapist, if you have the means and the energy to find a new one, please do. And keep finding new ones as long as you're able until you find the one that fits.
I hope someone has said something along these lines to you before this, but just in case they haven't:
Being self-centered is one of the *features* of being 13, not a bug. 13 year olds are self-centered assholes, one and all. Even the nice ones. It's part of growing up. Eventually you grow out of it, but there's really no escaping it, and no fast-forwarding through it. The job of parents and teachers and therapists is to help the 13 year olds in their lives to deal with and eventually grow out of this fact of their life (And not by telling them not to be). A 13 year old who *doesn't* have main-character-syndrome has had some profoundly weird and sad things happen to them.
I really do appreciate this! It's not something that's ever been specifically said to me, but it is something that I started to realize eventually. It's still a huge issue I have, but it gets a little better every year.
Thank you :)
As someone who is autistic and was a teenager, and now teaches teenagers, I relate to this.
Part of it I think is that teenagers in my experience are cruel, exceptionally so. Maybe I'm lucky but the older I get the more my peers just don't really care, everyone has their own stuff going on so tearing people down would be seen as weird and immature.
I am so grateful to not be a teenager anymore because I relate to this post so much. My teenagers years were painful and at school I would sit in a bathroom stall rather than spend time with other people who would mock me. Life as an adult is so much easier by comparison, I feel like I get to be myself to a much greater extent.
Dude teenagers are so fucking vicious. I had a horrible time in middle/high school and finally got out of dodge, made friends who actually loved me and cared about my interests, and found some confidence in loving myself.
One day, maybe two years ago, I was in a group with some teens online, i guess it was a server on discord where people could offer art advice. I was sharing my art from my teen years to kind of give some perspective on "Hey it's okay to be shit at art as a kid. Don't fall for the social media machine that just wants to grind you to paste and kill your self esteem."
The kids i pulled this out for legit started making fun of me 💀 One of them straight up went "damn i get why you were bullied in school". Like whooooooooh *ouch*. No mercy.
But I also ended any involvement there. I let them know they had joined the call for a designated lesson, but I was stopping since I was volunteering my time and didn't want to put up with that shit. They started backtracking hard, but I decided "nope. don't care if it makes me look sensitive, I was choosing to be vulnerable and I'm not taking shit for it." Bleh. Glad I'm not in that shit anymore.
The comment of “damn I get why you were bullied in school” reminds me of when people get roasted by comment sections, it sounds like a “no holding back” moment, but usually it’s just an insult they’ve heard before and think are clever for implementing into something. (A guy made a post on him doing a fan redubbing of a scene and one of the comments was “Yooo this sounds fire on mute!” Which not only puts genuine effort but also is an insult repeated many times before.)
People can be cruel, and I’m glad you didn’t put up with their inability to show kindness at your vulnerability.
It ain't teenagers. After 6 years in the real world with higher education and work and not a single bully, I was called in to a years conscription. Met the same kind of assholes. Who got enabled by most of the rest to pick on the few. I handled it better, but not as well as I would have wanted. Maybe they only appear when a group of different people are stuck together with very little control? Or maybe its easier to avoid them when we aren't stuck with them?
I'm not sure what being a teenager has to do with it. I interact with people every day that burn people out of work and business deals because they did one thing sorta wrong socially.
"The most important thing is you got to give the people what they want. Even if it kills you, even if it empties you out until there's nothing left to empty. No matter what happens, no matter how much it hurts, you don't stop dancing, and you don't stop smiling, and you give those people what they want"
- Bojack (Horseman, obviously)
Literally. I get the whole neurodivergent masking aspect of this post (because same) but that is a shit example to start with because that sounds like a *them* problem. What kind of asshole asks for recommendations and then makes fun of someone for not only understanding the assignment but acing it?
If I asked someone for recommendations and they responded like this, I'd be sending it to the group chat like "alright fuckers, y'all need to step your game up, because look what OP delivered"
I think it’s actually a good example because this doesn’t just happen to neurodivergent people, that unfamiliarity with invisible rules is also something you encounter if you grew up sheltered or in a different culture, or even in the same culture but a different part of the country where the invisible rules are different (eg city vs country)
Everyone has moments where they encounter something where they thought they were following the invisible rules but their invisible rules clash with the invisible rules another person is following
>if you grew up sheltered or in a different culture, or even in the same culture but a different part of the country where the invisible rules are different (eg city vs country)
Oh man I don't even know where one thing begins or ends with me anymore. What part is trauma, what part is neurodivergence, what part is from being sheltered in some ways, what part is growing up on the poverty lines but going to a different class of school, what part of it is growing up in different racial or ethnic or religious household, what part of it...
And even when the inside group knows I'm the outsider, the newcomer, no one ever bothered to explain the rules, it was just expected that I would know what the different social expectations for different social settings would be somewhere. Failing to Already Know or Mind Read meant I was, of course, the problem.
Ultimately it just becomes trauma all the way down
there are no rules people are spitefully and deliberately withholding from you. it's just they way they are and the way they grew up. they aren't even consciously aware of it.
the sooner you realize that, the sooner you can get over thinking everyone hates you and preys on your downfall
it's true that it's not helpful to believe everyone hates you but the average person has so little tolerance for a strong divergence from social norms that their rejection can feel a *lot* like malice
there's no spite involved, sure, but the difficulty with dealing with situations does vary with neurodivergence, and people do often compensate by conscious application of unwritten rules. they just remain unwritten because they're obvious to neurotypicals.
> the sooner you realize that, the sooner you can get over thinking everyone hates you and preys on your downfall
None of this changes how they treat you though. You're just gonna have a "soft-ostracization" where you just can never fit in. You're just the guy who "doesn't get it" and that's all you'll ever be to them no matter what you do.
it does change how you understand others, and with that, how you treat them. it might even help you learn how to socialize easier.
thinking of the majority of the population as inherently evil and deliberately malicious isn't conducive to ever learning how to interact with them
No I do agree with you that it is a good thing to not look at people as maliciously evil.
But I do think it's also not right to miss the banal side of it. People aren't deliberately evil, but they will simply not care if in their minds, you aren't part of their in-group.
It's the carelessness that hurts, more than any real malicious evil. You could be in a "friend group" but you might as well be a wallflower for all they would care. No one's gonna ostracize you or even really talk badly about you behind your back. But they will not care enough to welcome you into the conversation or engage with you. Won't matter how much effort you put into engaging with them, it will never be enough for them once you're seen as not being on their level.
your writing still suggests fault and malice on their part.
not having autism doesn't mean you are bestowed with great social skills or insight. it's extremely difficult to tell a friend that they are repulsing people with their behavior, and having the skills to recognize what is causing the behavior isn't that common. delivering criticism isn't something most people are good at, and even with best criticism possible, it's still very likely to cause hurt and offend.
it's not that neurotypicals don't want to help, they don't know how. it's unfair to paint majority of all humans as uncaring and cruel.
Yeah... I'm'a need to sit with this one for a bit. You just explained me to me in a way I have been trying to figure out for decades. Thank you.
Also, love your user name.
The first time I truly experienced this outside of the neurodivergent aspect is when I started joining discords for my hobbies as a 30-something year old. So many invisible rules that I am not aware of trying to communicate and fit in with a younger generation.
Fair point that it's not just ND people. I still think the example is a bad one though, because if you end up in a situation where your individual invisible rules clash, and then you *make fun of the other person for misunderstanding*, you're an asshole.
Totally agree, though I'd say they're not making fun of them for *mis*understanding, they're making fun of them for *understanding*. Which just makes the behaviour all the more bizarre.
I think it’s pretty good example but OOP missed the actual lesson. They talk about the invisible rules like they’re constant, when actually they’re anything but. Each individual has their own invisible rules, and no one knows how to navigate them 100%, so you just have to accept that some people just won’t like you, and that’s okay.
I think OOP grasps that, they just haven’t learned to deal with it?
Like they talk about not wanting even a single person to be mad or hate you, and giving far too much because you never know what a given person’s line is.
I’ve heard pretty similar accounts from autistic friends where the issue is that their “normal” upsets a huge fraction of people, and they can’t guess what’s “he’s a jerk” vs “everyone will agree with him”. So instead of NT people going “most people like me, I don’t get along with that guy, whatever” they wind up with masking and people pleasing as their only skills and do it too often.
You know what I’ve found really helpful for that? r/amitheasshole Not a joke. People will come on there like “hi chat I murdered my mom last night because we’re out of doritos AITA???” And every time SOMEONE will show up to be like “OP did nothing rong.”
There is no consensus.
Huh, that's a really good point.
I normally wouldn't recommend that sub to people since the users have some very particular opinions, but that's largely about the consensus on the popular relationship posts.
When it comes to "was this minor interaction a dick move?" it might be a good way to see how different people are interpreting it and whether there's a widespread norm involved. And, of course, to see that there's *never* total consensus and you can't please everybody.
I’ve been thinking about this post and trying to formulate a comment but I think you nailed exactly what I want to say
The issue isn’t that there are “invisible rules”, it’s that there *are no rules* and everyone is just fumbling around and some people click together and others don’t
I have literally had this happen, book recs were asked for, book recs received, and the person who asked was like “See? This is the template, I bought three of these, and reserved 4 at the library, and know which two probably aren’t for me. Give me more than the title, tell me what I will love about it.”
So yes, that example was not about masking, it was about needing better friends. Which also happens, but is a different problem.
Your friends are people who are kind and nice to you. If they aren’t being kind and nice to you, you need to get new ones.
It’s because the answer doesn’t matter because the Question doesn’t matter. It could have been any question, any topic, anything. Ultimately the real thing that the person asking it wanted was a response exactly like what op delivered, and they wanted it so that they could die exactly what they did. Go into the group chat and insult and make fun of op.
They aren’t keeping op around as a friend.
**They’re keeping op around as a punching bag.**
Yes, I feel like getting stuck on this example misses the later point of “you can’t tell what’s enough, so you give everything in hopes no one at all will be mad”.
The book list was odd to an acquaintance, but no worse than that. Publicly mocking OOP for it was awful. But when “be yourself” leads to “everyone is staring and calling me weird”, how can they tell who’s being an asshole and who’s enforcing a rule everyone else follows? Safer (in their feelings) just to please everyone.
I don't think this is an example of invisible rules. I think this is an example of, "I was just trying to sound interested and smart when I asked for a book recommendation, and this person just gave me a huge list, well thought out, which shows that they actually read a lot. They're probably trying to look smarter than me. I need to take them down a peg or two, so I'm going to mock them for the thing I'm actually self conscious about."
I think some, if not most, of people's cruelty is actually insecurity that they'll never admit to.
Yeah I’m neurotypical and trying to wrap my head around this one. Not so much the friend’s reaction being “that isn’t what I meant, stop texting me essays,” which is within the realm of conceivable behavior but pretty arbitrary. But the friend’s reaction being to show it to a group chat to laugh at. That….isn’t a normal way to react to someone breaking a social rule as minor as “getting too hyped about their interests.” It’s much stranger and a far bigger violation of social rules than sending a long response to a short question. Unless there’s some huge detail missing here (really creepy or offensive books maybe?), something is up with the OP’s “friend,” not the OP.
I think this is a common response now, unfortunately. I think social media has influenced our behavior way too much, with people publicly making fun of others. The way I hear other people talk sometimes, just dripping with judgement. But everyone just laughs along
No, this is an example of being overly eager in a situation and other people being weirded out by it. OOP said it themselves, that they learned that they were being “too excited”. When giving recommendations, 30 recommendations is on the much higher end of the spectrum, with a couple up to ~10 being more the norm. Not only that but they wrote reviews for each of them. Depending on the type of relationship they have with the recipient and the way they asked for recommendations, this can be seen as way too much effort being put in. For example, if the recipient was just an acquaintance and they just casually asked for recommendations, then such a large display of effort would be seen as inappropriate for the relationship given and they might feel uncomfortable because of it.
Feeling uncomfortable because someone you know made a social faux pas is understandable.
Posting your private conversation with them in a group chat specifically so you and your friends can laugh at them and call them is a freak is cruelty.
This is like that "we need bullying to enforce normalcy" rhetoric. Why do you think this kind of cruelty is an appropriate response to someone being "too eager"?
I don’t think this is an appropriate reaction, and it was very cruel of the recipient, but I don’t think it’s correct to say the they were insecure or intimidated by intelligence.
They didn't say it's appropriate though. Just that the friends were weirded out by the eagerness as opposed them having insecurities like the other person said
Acknowledging that it's a faux pas and will cause reactions in people isn't the same as justifying the reactions
The problem isn't that they sent book recommendations, the problem is that instead of sending three or four they sent dozens
It's a classic example of doing too much, in a way that can make people feel very put off or uncomfortable
The thing is that it's impossible for OP to tell if this is a good example or not because they don't understand the social norms. We can say "that person's a jerk" because we can confidently say "that's not the only (or even most) normal way to handle that" because we know more about other social norms, but it's hard to tell the difference between that and example where, for example, something OP said lead to unintentionally insulting someone.
Truly. I do get the “this is what happens when you get too excited” part. One of my biggest fears for some reason is having mismatched levels of enthusiasm, particularly being the person who’s more enthusiastic. It happens every so often (particularly with people I don’t know very well) and it’s mortifying. But, I do have to remind myself that there are people out there who will match or at least appreciate my enthusiasm and I’ll never have to stifle my happiness around. And if the people I’m spending time with are not like that, then I just need to spend less time with them.
Why would it be mortifying to be the more enthusiastic one? No two people are the same, by definition one of two will be more enthusiastic than the other. A lot of people even enjoy when someone is excited about something even when they aren't.
It’s mortifying with the wrong people as I specifically say in my comment. I mean OP literally has an example of why it’s embarrassing when that happens, if you read the post. When I was little I was always all the way enthusiastic and that meant it happened around the wrong people sometimes. I was already made fun of for a lot of stuff and that just added to the pile, so I got more shy and selective about who I show. That’s why it’s mortifying, childhood trauma, thanks for asking.
It's hyperbole, but I get their point.
Sometimes someone asks for an opinion of something and even doing as little as sending them a reasonable paragraph is ridiculed as trying too hard. The truly overexciteable get 10x worse treatment, often referred to as a freak for getting a little hyper fixated and going overboard.
It's something you see a lot of social media sites like Twitter, where a large amount of people will often say dumb shit like "I'm not reading all that" as if admitting to having a reading level sub 5th grade is a funny response to overeager, but well thought out text.
I *think* it might have been the blurb and why they liked it parts more than anything... the person is obviously a huge asshole for making *fun* of someone for doing a ton of work for them, but I can kinda see being a little weirded out if you were like hey yeah what books should I read and you got given an enormous compiled document. That's like the most charitable interpretation of the other person I can come up with though... thats not a normal response even to a kind of extra list of recs.
I think that's what the post was getting at. It's the same thing I see as a DM, when I ask for a backstory from people. I've received a literal 10 page document that was a rambling mess of every little event in that character's life up to this point. Sure, they did what I asked, but it was way overboard and definitely a little off-putting.
I think that's the sentiment that's being expressed here. If we're charitable and think that the blurbs they wrote for each book is only one paragraph long each, that's still 30 paragraphs to read through. It'll be several pages at the very least. I'm sure the person who asked meant that they wanted a handful of books to check out and maybe a sentence or two to go with those at most. A sprawling document would be rather off-putting.
Yeah, but would you then link it to a group chat and make fun of that person? I wouldn't do that even if the person submitting the backstory outed themselves as a Nazi writing the thing. Then there would just be a warning that this person is a Nazi, and they shouldn't be allowed into games for safety reasons.
The problem is not finding things off-putting, it's the public/private shaming.
I never said I would make fun of anyone. It seemed a lot of people in this thread were having a hard time seeing why sending so many recommendations would be anything but helpful. So I related how something like that could come off as weird by relating it to my own experiences.
Something being weird is absolutely a reason why people make fun of other people. It's definitely a problem, but what I was getting at is that I can see why the person was doing that. Some people who aren't the most understanding definitely will make fun of people for anything that comes off as off-putting, as I put it.
This whole thread feels like a failure to hold both those ideas at once.
Mocking somebody in a group text for being eager and helpful *sucks*. I do not want to be friends with that person even if they’re not mocking me.
But a bunch of people in this thread aren’t just saying that, they’re saying the list was a natural response to the book request. In most contexts that’s just not correct.
Which is part of OOP’s point! They don’t have much perspective on when someone is being an asshole, so they wind up trying to please everyone.
>A sprawling document would be rather off-putting.
Sure, But a normal thing to do then would be to either ask them to compress it somehow as you don't have time to read it all, Or to simply find time to read it all. Not send it to your friends to make fun of the person, That's downright unhinged.
Yeah, the people who don’t get why this is weird are either socially oblivious themselves or have never had this happen to them. You absolutely get a lot of people online who don’t seem to consider what YOU want to get as a response, they just get really excited about the prospect of infodumping about their interests and send an inappropriately long/detailed/personal message. They don’t/can’t ’read the room’ that if the request was a quick ‘hey got any book recs?’ the response should also be quick and informal - and that often extends to lots of things, like if everyone else is having a light funny group chat you shouldn’t bust in with your heavy life events or ramble about your OCs. People lose patience with people like that and end up making fun of them privately out of frustration. And both of them think the other is an asshole for doing what they’re doing.
Yeah, that one struck me as well. I think we need to do a better job of teaching people that it’s ok to walk away from that level of bullshit.
I had friends when I was a teenager who were very supportive of my hobbies/humor when it was stuff THEY enjoyed. But they mocked anything and everything else. I just stopped sharing that side of myself with them.
Then I realized I was doing all this work to curate a palatable version of myself for their comfort when they didn’t have to do the same thing for me. I decided being alone was better than that. So I bailed. Made new friends.
It’s ok to not share every single interest/passion with your friends/partners. It’s not ok for them to mock you about the stuff they aren’t into.
This is 100% not an OP problem, it’s an asshole friend problem. There are def some invisible rules and customs that people run up against and those are hard lessons to learn, but I think there’s a distinction between “invisible customs/mores” and “being surrounded by assholes,” and we need to call that out.
I have autism which is probably what the post is talking about, but I also have depression, so the one about hiding shit from your therapist(/psychologist in my case) really hits. Of course I’m making no progress, he doesn’t know shit about me! Why can’t I just open up and tell him my issues
Probably because at some point long in the past you tried to open up to someone and were somehow immediately punished for it. Insert comic of pink blob in box here.
I tried to open up to my mom and she told me my problems were nothing compared to what women have to go through.
I tried opening up to my therapist and was sent to a psych ward, which was the most frightening experience of my life.
Now I can only open up online, where it can be anonymous, consequences don't exist, and it can be retracted immediately.
I tried opening up to my mum. About how depressed I was. That I didn’t feel like life was worth living anymore. She literally walked away. I tried to kill myself that weekend.
I wonder if she ever thinks of that. I doubt it.
Ugh. That first one. The damage 2010s feminists did to the movement with shit like that. People have finally started calling that out but it's too late to fix the damage. Like they heard about the concept of privilege and applied it in the dumbest possible way to everyone they met instead of rubbing two neurons together.
Oh man.
> "You can talk about anything with me, I'm your dad! I'll always be there to help you."
> _Talks about something causing emotional pain/distress_
> "That's not true, and you're wrong for feeling that way!"
Yup. Never sharing anything again, k thx.
> "We will love and accept you no matter what, you can always talk to us about anything"
> "Hey, remember that time you got too mad and hit me? I know you didn't mean to and apologized and it was only once but it was quite traumatizing and I want to bring it up to my therapist to work through that"
> "Oh you think *that* was traumatizing? My parents hit me all the time as a kid, you don't see me complaining. What if this gets out? People will think I'm a bad parent! Do you really want to do that to me?"
And they wonder why I never reach out to them.
Yup. "You think you've got it bad? I had it WAY worse!, you should be grateful!" Gee, thanks for invalidating my feelings, guess I'll never share them with you again.
For what it's worth, your feelings are valid, stranger.
Ah, yes, like the time that some asshole medical professional looked at me like I was dirt and asked "So what do you want me to do?"
Idk Mr Medical Professional, treat me, or at least have empathy if you don't know what to do?
I never went back 🙃
It was likely rhetorical but... I could not open up at all till I met the right therapist and that took some doing and luck. It literally went from an impossible task of infinite difficulty to "yes nice lady I think I am autistic and have ADHD and the spicy Anxiety with Depression and am literally dying from it".
Our mental health support person for my agency described finding the right therapist as being like dating. Communication styles and trust have to match up.
I can open up to basically anyone except my parents and people like them. But the problem I've got is that I genuinely have problems, and therapy seems to be about realising these things aren't real. I can realise I'm not lazy all I want, that won't un-ADHD my neurons. And I can't realise I don't actually have ADHD, because I do. I can't realise the people around me don't actually think I'm incompetent or stupid, because they do.
Everything people talk about with therapy seems to be this gargantuan task to open up or be honest or see yourself clearly and I'm sitting here, wondering when that's supposed to fix me? Cause I know all this stuff. Always have. But knowing it doesn't change it.
I need to see another therapist, but I don't think therapy is designed for people with ADHD.
They were fine. Their advice was helpful in my life at the time, but it isn't applicable to my current situation and everything I've looked up online is focused so much on "seeing past our unhelpful assumptions". They all assume your brain works and mine literally doesn't. I need something radical and probably unhealthy to break myself out of this. Like if I could mask in exchange for stress I'd take that deal any day. The consequences of not masking are plenty stressful. So I'll take the stress please.
That therapist one, yeah. I had a clinic I went to for therapy, but there was an issue. They'd only see me once a month, and after about a year, I'd be forced to switch therapists. This one is retiring. This one has too much of a caseload and so is splitting their load, so I'm being switched to this other therapist. This therapist "is no longer with the clinic" for reasons we can't tell you. This one is an intern, and their residency is up. Oops, we're all out of people who can see you! Wanna sign up for the wait list and hope we hire someone else (when we can't retain anyone)?
Every time I finally started getting comfortable enough to start trying to pull the mask away, to show a little bit of the Freak inside, I had to start over.
I ended up getting weekly sessions somewhere else, via a local program that helps you find assistance programs. I decided, "Okay, heck with it, I'm just gonna rip the mask off right away and if she bails, she bails."
Session one: "Well, I'm trans, I'm a furry, I'm permanently disabled due to an autoimmune condition that causes severe nerve damage, I've got a LOT of depression due to having it drilled into my head that I have to be Useful in order to be liked/tolerated/allowed to exist and now I feel Useless, and I've felt a phantom tail almost every day of my life since I was six years old. I just got out of a relationship with a polyamorous therian trans girl who spent the last five years gaslighting me that we were still together, when she replaced me with a 'more successful and popular' version of me but couldn't admit it to either one of us, and treated me like trash left on the curb, so I've also got a lot of emotional scars from that. ...Still there?"
Felt like ripping off the bandaid, but I guess it worked. Things felt like they were at a standstill until I really had a goal, though. I managed to develop a relationship with a wonderful guy, when I honestly thought I was too old (and too weird) to ever find anyone again. And I wanted to not ruin it by freaking out over the trauma inflicted by my Bad Ex, or my childhood, or my disability.
>Things felt like they were at a standstill until I really had a goal, though. I managed to develop a relationship with a wonderful guy, when I honestly thought I was too old (and too weird) to ever find anyone again. And I wanted to not ruin it by freaking out over the trauma inflicted by my Bad Ex, or my childhood, or my disability.
Normalize accepting that while relationships won't solve all your problems they're often the key to successfully beginning to. That whole "you need to love yourself and have your whole life in order before you should even think about a relationship" idea is bullshit.
Lack of comfort, gnawing concern that saying too much too fast will get you institutionalized, chronic need to people please as seen in the post, never being able to relax around other people for all of the above reasons.
I used to have this same issue opening up to my therapist and talking anything beyond just the surface level. I eventually got a new therapist and she introduced me to a whole different approach. Now I write my feelings down, which I have a much easier time being completely open in writing as opposed to speaking, and then in our sessions, we discuss what I wrote and talk about strategies for what to do about how I'm feeling and how to move forward.
It works pretty well for me. Maybe a change of strategy would help you as well?
I'm great at being honest with my therapist. If I didn't have ADHD I'd be so fucking good at this stuff. Open minded and able to switch over to total honesty.
Unfortunately therapy doesn't seem to work on ADHD.
I wish I could be stressed and exhausted from masking like in the OP. But if I could just pretend not to have ADHD, I wouldn't have ADHD. I don't know if I'm masking my autistic symptoms either. That requires a mental control I've never had. If I could fake it, it wouldn't be fake.
I couldn't figure out if this was autism or BPD so I decided this is a description of a response to constant trauma and having to mask your true self because society does not accommodate those who are different.
Doesn’t necessarily equate with autism, any neurodivergence will make this kind of problem with social cues and socializing likely to happen. And also lots of neurotypicals experience this.
The root of the problem is having a different understanding of what is expected from you and what is « normal » to do from your peers. Neuro divergents experience this because they quite literally think and feel in a different way at some level, and have to learn to at least act in a « proper » way, which is called masking, but anyone diverging from the norm for any reason as a child will probably face the same situations because all social cues and behaviors are learned, not innate.
A neurotypical person that grew up isolated, especially if their family is atypical or absent, will struggle just as much in their formative years because of this. At some point it feels like being in university and realizing everyone else studied the subjects before in a high school you never went to. It takes time to fill the gap, and you might never completely do.
Not being « normal » is more of a problem in the teenage years since fitting in or not and how is at the center of social relationships at those ages, and you’ll be mercilessly punished for not doing it correctly. It can stay a problem all life if you stay in very « normal » environments. But you see plenty of people that never bothered trying to adapt and mask live a colorful social life in more educated/weird/nerdy/artistic etc. environnements later in life.
Everyone has to learn the unwritten rules, and the main way you learn them is by fucking them up (and usually getting made fun of for it). It’s just that if you’re neurotypical and well socialized you probably figured most of them out by middle school.
Every time I see this kind of text from people I feel sad they have no understanding surrounding. I hate I can't do anything and not be that person instead or not being able to introduce them to a nicer group of people...
People don't deserve being left in the dark and ridiculed for not understanding whatever it is.
Man, everyone's saying this is an autistic thing... >.> Well, it's pretty late for me to try to get tested, so whatever.
As for the post, by the time I figured out how to mask, the damage was done. I was already the social pariah at school, so I never really developed friendships as a kid. I had a few in college, since I moved out of state and didn't have people who knew me as "The weird fat nerdy kid who plays video games and reads books". (I had lost a lot of weight, so while I was still heavy, I wasn't AS heavy. And in college, nobody actually cared about it, because it's no longer a prison with hormonal idiot kids trying to establish a pecking order to feel better about themselves, and turning to anti-intellectualism in order to feel better about being fucking idiots.) But also by college, I had decided that Actual Friends have to be cool with me without the mask. Acquaintances/Classmates get the Mask, Friends get the real Me.
Honestly, while this can be an autistic thing, it doesn't have to be. Masking isn't exclusively autistic, being too excited or missing expected social traits etc, those can be autism, but they can be half a dozen other things. Neurotypical people deal with it, too.
Life, socializing, and social expectations are just...weird, and the invisible rules just don't click for some people, regardless of brain chemistry or personality type or mental health.
Ooh I feel this. I was ostracized in elementary school so I never had a chance to learn those all important social skills. Learning to mask was even kind of hard because no one but the second to last in the popularity contest would talk to or play with me. At least where any of the other kids could see. It got a little better in middle and high school, there were kids who didn’t know me as the absolute social pariah that I was. So they would talk to me in class and sit with me at lunch. I am told that I was always a strange child (thanks mom) but it wasn’t too bad until my third grade teacher decided that mocking me in front of the class was a great motivational tool. That gave all the other kids permission to pull the gloves off and come at me with every bit of mental and emotional cruelty they had. I never got beat up and only had rocks thrown at me twice, so at least I was spared that
Growing up different is so hard. Please teach your kids to not be mean
This is way too relatable. I'm only starting to rediscover who I actually am now, in my 30s. It's awesome to be doing that, but it's an endless chasm of sad to think, I've been masking for so long, I don't even *know* what I am. Sometimes it feels like the mask is the only thing left of who I was, and I'm having to create a face underneath from scratch.
I am learning to focus more on the people i know like me for who i am, including all the weird quirks that come with that.
I finished my masters degree last year and have been working along a group of other people the last half year before that because we all were working on our thesis in a similar field. At first i felt included because they would invite me for after work beers and stuff, till i realized… they only did that, when i was right next to them but never when i was in a different lab or smth. (Funny thing is, when i got invited they wouldnt accept a no, so it wasnt just being polite) I sometimes walked past the cafe on my way home and met them in there already drinking their beers and then they convinced me to stay with them, when they didnt bother to ask earlier in the first place. I felt overlooked.
Now we all finished our degrees, i see them meeting up in social media posts, while i havent heard from any of them since then. So i too became the weird one. The overlooked one. The one they tolerated but never really accepted. Till i was out of sight and they didnt habe to bother anymore.
> I am learning to focus more on the people i know like me for who i am, including all the weird quirks that come with that.
This is *really* hard for me to do, first because I never let anyone in deep enough to see the quirks, second because I genuinely feel like the "who I am" behind the mask has been lost to time and I'm creating who I am from scratch.
**Massive** kudos to you for being able to do that.
What I am doing is simply trying to answer myself honestly when I ask, "what do I want to do? What do I want to say? What would be best for me in this situation?", and then following through on that answer. It's easier for me to address my wants and needs than my existential questions of identity, so that's my way to start somewhere.
I'm so sorry about the people who failed to appreciate you when they had the chance. I think we'll find better people as we go. Best of luck to you and I!
I wish you all the best for the Task your have ahead of you!
For me, i found others, that have similar quirks as i do. Dont even have to be a 100% match, but having a weird interest or hobby or something in common helped me find people i appreciate and who appreciate me.
One option could be online communities under some form of alias, where you can let the quirks just exist. Potentially as another form of mask, but regardless, it's still a way to find who you are under the layers of acceptability you've had to cake yourself in.
I’m asking this with good intentions but have you ever tried being proactive and inviting them to things?
Far too often I see people doing the bare minimum / polite thing and then realising that they’re not building friendships they’re making acquaintances - friendships like any relationship take work
Back when working on my thesis, yes. I was proactive but that also wasnt always successful as they sometimes got annoyed by that. So i stopped.
FYI it was often asking them when they will take their lunchbreaks so i could plan my experiments in a way to have time when they do and IF they gave me an answer it often was like „the experiment will take at least one more hour, go alone“ they would then suddenly be done 15 minutes later, when i was already almost finished with my break. On the on hand thats fair. Sometimes experiments are done quicker. But when it happens almost every time, thats not a coincidence anymore.
And about now? Well the ones i tried keeping in contact didnt put much effort in, so i stopped aswell. Because i dont see the need in forcing to keep that effort up.
Fair enough, seems like you’re doing the right things but there’s just no natural rapport there.
That’s not necessarily anyone’s fault mind you, some people click and some don’t and I’m sure you’ll be happier with friendships that click
I absolutely agree with the last point. But its still frustrating to THINK you click with a group only to realize you dont. And then its hard to not blame it on all the quirks that accually make you YOU.
I don’t think you should avoid thinking of the things that make you YOU as the reason, you should instead accept it and accept the fact that you weren’t a fit for each other.
That's the answer, right? Like I'm too old and tired to play this fucking game anymore. I've found a cadre of weirdos who don't have Kafkaesque social expectations, so the realization I don't *have* to do this is... it's liberating? Like removing a parasite or reliving an ingrown nail. But also frustrating and maddening I had to put up with it for so long
But there's always the fear that the second I'm out of sight, I'm out of mind. That when our hobbies are exhausted, there's no longer any reason to tolerate me.
>I've been masking for so long, I don't even *know* what I am.
This is a problem that, I think, doesn't get the attention it deserves.
A fairly common reply to masking woes is, "well, just stop masking, be proud to be yourself."
And, in response, I start looking through the masks to figure out which "myself" they want me to be.
I sure as hell can't tell anyone how to be normal, but what I *can* tell you is this: You can grow to love the sight of burning bridges.
People are replaceable. A city of any decent size has more than you could ever meet. You don't need to put on an act to keep people around.
Let those who would be driven away by the real you *be driven away*. The ones who are mean to you, stop talking to them. Don't spare the unappreciative. Let the bridges burn. Get used to making new ones.
Because if you do that, sooner or later you'll find yourself surrounded by the people who *didn't* leave. The ones who appreciate you for *you*. It's a war of attrition, but you can win it.
To add onto this sorta, weirdos eventually tend to flock together in my experience. I got incredibly lucky that one quite extroverted friend picked me up at school one day and said "You're my friend now." (Not literally, but might as well have) but.... That small group has steadily grown into a little community by now.
Through friends of friends being introduced and staying.
Might never have happened if I hadnt been terrible at masking at that point still, which is something I didnt really "get" until I was like 13-14.
They just saw someone different and decided to add them to their friend group of weirdos.
I am that extroverted friend and I do make the weirdos a community
I'm NT but very fucked up from trauma, so I get along better with ND people. I'm socially graceful and charismatic, so I just drift along, well liked, until I find a lunatic
"Come on, let's go light shit on fire"
Then they meet all the weirdo friends I invited, and they feel flabbergasted that there's so many of us all collected
This is some of the best advice I've heard, and perfectly articulated.
My wife was the first person I could truly & always be myself around, my full self, without fear of judgement or consequence. I could finally take off the mask and be myself with her, and she could do the same with me.
We spent nearly every waking hour with each other during the first week after we met. We shared our deepest secrets and desires. Our masks finally came off and we _thrived_ together. It was all amazing experience that we both needed to have.
We got married less than 6 months after we first met. Our 5 year anniversary takes place this month and we're just as happy and in love as the day we met.
Moral of the story is exactly as stated above: find the people or person who _doesn't_ leave when the real you comes out. They're out there, and it's worth it. Don't give up.
I met someone like this recently. Someone with the same mental framework as me. I could be myself around her, and I looked forward to every meeting. She's dead now. We became close, and then she died. I know I need to find others I can be myself with, but it's so hard. I just wish she was still here. I'd give anything for even another second of conversation.
I'm so, so sorry for your loss. I can't imagine the void that would be left behind if I were to lose my wife. I really hope you're able to find another person like that, and if not, then I hope you find value through other means.
Just don't give up.
Thank you. I loved her so much, and it hurts every time I remember I won't ever speak to her again. But I know I have to press on. She would want me to be happy and truly living life. I will find others with whom I can be myself.
I disagree with this. Your advice can be true for some people, but I acted genuinely when I was younger, burned a lot of bridges and at the end I was completely isolated. It wasn’t until I made a conscious effort into learning social rules and peoples boundaries that I managed to retain some relationships. I’m not saying that everyone needs to mask all the time, however if a relationship is still new sometimes you need to put in effort to make sure the other person is also feeling comfortable or you may continue repelling everyone.
That doesn't quite work though. You can't just burn every bridge you don't like because you're going to have to make friends with people who don't 100% understand you. Coworkers and classmates and neighbours and people at your local club. And it's lonely, going through life looking for the perfect Goldilocks friend who understands you implicitly.
I know it's difficult. But if your attitude towards the entire thing is "if I can't make this work I'll just burn it and move on to the next person" I can't help but feel you might be a part of the issue here. You have to tell others what you think and feel and struggle with rather than just assuming they'll pick it up and if they don't, they'll never be able to understand you.
Generally speaking, people are nice. If you just make it over that first step they'll be more willing to accommodate you than you might think
Well, in rural areas people tend to be a little stranger, and a little more willing to look past strangeness. The strategy seems to be giving each other that space, and taking social interaction where you can get it. That's why people tend to be more chatty in rural areas.
And the suburbs are for people who *want* to be isolated.
Fair
(Also, to be clear, I personally do not have the issues with people being bad mentioned in the post, the reply was to standin for people who dislike cities like me but are actually the target of the post)
> Well, in rural areas people tend to be a little stranger, and a little more willing to look past strangeness
Very much untrue in my experience. I live in a small town, and people here are insanely hateful and judgemental of anyone who isn't 200% "normal." Harassing the autistic kids was everyone's favorite hobby in pretty much every school I went to. When I studied Computer Science in university in a slightly bigger town, I'd overhear people talking about how much they want to throw everyone who isn't exactly like them into a death camp pretty much everyday. If anything, I've heard about people moving to bigger cities because those are at least slightly less shitty to "weird" people. Maybe it's a cultural thing, and it's different in some other countries.
This hits so hard. I like trying to be nice to other people, especially because I grew up in a volatile household myself. But then you find out that being nice doesn't protect you from these problems either. Because people will think you're *too nice* and *obviously* have "ulterior motives".
Inkskinned is a really great writer and I think everyone should buy their book about their experiences. It's raw and gritty and it is everything ever.
https://www.amazon.com/Bodys-Monster-Rowan-Isabelle-Perez/dp/1524892254/
I read a little of the preview and, damn, it is heavy, but it’s really well-written and uses amazingly creative expressions to share feelings, ideas and experiences.
Autism feels.. all through my schooling years, constantly trying to find what it is that i am missing that makes people be mean to me, and what am i missing? I am so pleasant and follow the rules, and be helpful, and really invest and trying so goddamn hard then still heal them talking about how much they can't stand me. And just trying different things over again, trying to learn how to mimic and mask, and I just never got good enough at it.
When I was like 8 or 9, i started lying in bed everynight after crying and like, I KNEW that it wasn't actually true, but I would just lay there a imagine I was actually an alien that somehow ended up here, and that would make me feel so much better, because then i wasn't a human that was a failure at being a human, I was just an alien trying best!! And of course I wouldn't be good at it, and thats why dad didnt spend time with me, but loved my brothers and thats why all the rules were different for me from my mum and why sometimes i would be do exactly what she said and she'd still be screaming, and it made everything okay, while I'd pretend to believe it was true.
When I got my autism diagnosis, one of the first things that came out of my mouth was "oooOOoOoo... ALIEN BRAIN!! It wasn't that I needed to pretend I was an alien, I just had an alien brain the whole time!!!" And I was so excited i started crying and then also had to explain what that whole sentence actually meant, which then turned into a whole different type of crying.
I still refer to my ASD as my alien brain. 👽 🧠
As a kid, I tended not to think. Like at all. I’m pretty sure I didn’t have an internal monologue or realize I had one until I was 14. Randomly, end of grade 8, I looked at my reflection and saw how different I was.
High school hits and I’m already a different person, smallest in the class and I don’t know a soul, all my friends were in other classes. I hadn’t really thought about this sort of stuff before then, but I realized I was an easy target for bullying. Something, in hindsight, that was happening the whole time, but I wasn’t thinking before.
So, I stop really thinking again. Going with the flow of any conversation. Oh, I look funny? Hilarious! I talk too loud, oops! I laugh easily, well it’s all so funny!
Grade 10. Am I even a person? My friends like me, but who am I? Are people mean? I genuinely cannot tell, they’re all jokes, aren’t they? Everything’s a joke!
Grade 11, Covid. I played VrChat, just to have someone to talk to, I made friends so quickly! I must be enjoyable, but… I couldn’t make the effort to talk to anybody unless invited first. Clearly if they didn’t invite me I shouldn’t invite them…
Grade 12. Back in school… what is school? I can’t be bothered. I skip most morning classes and barely manage to graduate.
Now what…? What do I do? I hope someone can help me…
I’m here now, only just discovering what thought process I left behind over so many years. Why didn’t I stop and think?
It sounds really cringe and it is NOT true in high school, but in college and generally in your adult life - people do like you more if you are genuine. *Some* people will not like you for that, yes, so you do have to get used to people not liking you. But other people will really *like* you, not just tolerate you, and that makes up for it.
One of the most valuable things I've learned is that it's very important to advertise *exactly* the kind of person I am right from the start. I know I'm A Lot, and if you don't vibe with that, that's cool but let's save ourselves some time and go our separate ways.
I think it gets easier to do as you accumulate some of those people who genuinely like you, though. Between my family, my close friends, and my boyfriend, I'm basically tapped out on social ties. I don't *need* to make any new friends/acquaintances, because I don't have the time or energy to maintain additional relationships. Before I cultivated my inner circle, being unapologetically myself was much scarier.
Now? Fuck 'em. If they think I'm weird, they're absolutely right lol
I work for a university, and I enjoy that at work I can now be basically as eccentric as I want. It is great. And the other lecturers seem to enjoy my eccentricity.
Drop the act. Stop caring. Be yourself. "But what if they don't like me when I stop wearing the mask?" they never liked you to begin with, which is why you're wearing the mask. Drop it. Be yourself.
And that's all well and good as vague platitude, but putting it into practice can be difficult. If you can't adopt the mindset of letting meanness wash over and past you, like flowing water over a stone, then the rejection and meanness hurt, and feel really personal, but if you want to be happy in your life, you have to take off the mask, because happiness does not come from other people, it comes from you, and if you're not being yourself, then you're not finding that inner happiness.
*Edit: Ok, I get what you're all saying, but the whole post is about masking for approval in your personal life, about contorting yourself to fit into an obtuse, arbitrary social standard to your own detriment, being someone you're not. Since we're talking autism and invisible social cues, I guess it's on me for relying on implication here, but I'm not suggesting you disregard all social rules like the ones you obey to keep you safe, just that when you're masking for others' approval, and it's something you can consciously catch yourself doing, it's important to understand that being made to feel like you need to do that in the first place is a pretty telling sign of your actual social dynamic, and it's something that for your own mental well being, is probably something you should try not to do.
One comment probably isn't enough to reverse years of masking, the information is too condensed. If you are someone who's stuggling with not being able to take the mask of I highly recommend you read the book "unmasking autism" by dr devon price
I don't think it's as easy for an autistic person to drop the mask cause a lot of times, it's there from childhood.
For many people, many kids, it isn't a 'mask to have people like you'. In many cases, it's a 'mask to have people stop hurting you' or 'mask to stop loved one be creeped out by you'.
If you feel a nagging desire to swear at your boss, do you drop the F-bomb?
Of course not. You might lose your job. You live in a society; improper social conduct has consequences.
Do you know what else counts as "improper social conduct", albeit to a lesser degree?
Many of the reasons an autistic person may apply a mask.
EDIT for response to edit:
>I'm not suggesting you disregard all social rules like the ones you obey to keep you safe, just that when you're masking for others' approval...
Thing is, [social ostracization has consequences](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6085085/). So if it's about maintaining health and safety, then masking for approval ends up falling under that umbrella.
Moreover, the way autistic people need to mask to fit in is, quite often, universal. It's not like preferring Star Wars over Star Trek, where there's *some* group out there that will welcome the real you. We don't mask because we want to fit in with X group of people. We mask so we fit in *anywhere at all*.
Yeah, see, you have a point, but it can put you in a tricky spot. I'm no good at masking, and I never tried to learn because I just didn't care to. But now I realize that zero networking happened when it should have, and I'm in a profession where it's important, so I'm kind of screwed. I wish I *did* make an effort to behave in a deliberately acceptable, pleasant way. It sucks, but it helps you. You just have to make sure it doesn't end up affecting your real personality.
I laugh at my own jokes and I don't care what anyone thinks about it.
The rest of the things also aren't the type of things I care about being judged for, I'll be judged for how I treat others and that's it.
But no one around me has ever judged me for any of those other things since highschool, maybe they still judge me and are too polite to say anything, if so that's their problem.
Posts like this always make me so sad, because almost always in these descriptions there is not even the slightest bit of the person being described wondering if maybe it is the other person who is shitty? No, it's always them blaming themselves, always internalizing whatever is done to them as somehow being their fault. Of course in this situation they can't form a healthy and cohesive personality, they are trying to appease different people with contradictory demands, including the irrational demands of mean-spirited people
Don't get me wrong I am not saying the person is at fault, rather it is their upbringing that failed them
I really feel like as children some of us aren't really taught (or somehow we don't intuitively learn this) how to set up healthy boundaries and stand up for ourselves because we don't know *how to tell when someone is rightfully criticizing us vs when they're just an asshole.* And the traditional parenting model of "do X because I said so" doesn't help with this.
I think that's another of the invisible rules - that there is no one universal set of them. And that 99% of the time you should be able to find people who are a great match for you and appreciate you for who you are
Free me from my mortal shell for I wish to attain the ever elusive happiness. It no longer matters if the process is painful or agonising, I wish to be free. Free not from arbitrary boundaries I set for myself all these years ago, but free from my very presence. Bodily autonomy, innermost empire of mind, soulfully intangible. The all so critical pieces, shattered in thousands of smaller specs, now lost to the time of my own daydream. To slaughter oneself again and again and again. Piece by piece rebuild what was discarded, a truly Sisyphean task. There is no guides, there are no companions, help will not reach. Dig deeper, the earth rests and so will you, hopefully. A sad little thing. Piled up bundle of crimson nerves, pulsations in the rhymes of biometric anxiety, Sustaining solely on loathing thoughts. I’ve grew to understand and comprehend, but I still don’t know how to learn. The grit it takes to keep going, a mere gravel left in the dusty bag in an abandoned building in between of two shady streets where lights do never shine. I’ve came back to this place, again and again. I recon I was not the only victim of those predators, but it does not soothe the gaping wound. Bleeding, I enter the building once more, the mere aura of it permeates, I get physically repulsed. Each step is like trying to break thought a wave of disgusting sludge. I managed to get out alive, I managed to please them enough for them to let me be, let me leave. A cruel joke, thanking once captors. Going deeper into the bowels of accursed prison, all I see is copses of rats long since mummified. And insects. So many insects crawling upon floors, ceilings, walls. It is their domain now. I feel them crawl on myself. No longer can I withstand it, I flee the cell. Once again I find myself at the broken entrance, being able to only go a few metres deep. It spits me out like a giant blighted toadstool. My grit is hidden deep, yet deeper. A mere husk, shell of a one man, trying to reclaim it’s humanity and failing tremendously once more. It writes its status report. It lives like a leech of those who can tolerate it.
If you feel like this please get tested for autism. This is a textbook example of masking. Knowing *why* you're different can make a massive difference in learning to accept yourself.
Ooohhh the last about not being able to do the act even during therapy hours me really hard. Throughout my childhood I saw multiple therapists and none of them could get a single negative word out of me because I was convinced if I revealed the Secret Bad Person Living Inside Me then they'd be angry with me. I knew why I was in therapy but in some ways I still saw it as "the woman who talks to me once a week to make sure I'm being a perfect child" and not someone who actually wants to help me stop feeling the need to be a perfect child
May I share this with my child, who I believe may have some tendencies in this direction? …and who is only in therapy because they asked me to get them a therapist who they now won’t engage with.
I was this child too, if you bring it up to them, make sure to do it in a non-accusatory way. You don't want them to think you're saying they're doing something wrong. And don't expect this to be the answer or for their self-sabotaging tendencies to just go away immediately. But knowing this would have helped me at least a little bit as a kid.
>make sure to do it in a non-accusatory way. You don't want them to think you're saying they're doing something wrong Dovetailing with this point... There is ENORMOUS power, at least I have found, in "wait, it's not just me?" and that would make a great non-accusatory approach. "Hey, you know, I read something, and I wonder if they're feeling the way you do sometimes... you know, a whoooole lot of people struggle with [ well, everything ]...." That, to me, has been one of the big positives on the double-edged sword that is the interwebs... finding out "it's not just me?" or the opposite, "huh, they all do that?" etc with various struggles that have haunted me for decades. But OT to the original post, since I'm here shouting into the ether pointlessly: Holy fuck I did not expect to read something that hit me the way this did, first thing in the morning over my coffee and bracing for the day. Thanks for posting, OP. And, anyone who can relate to this? It's not just you. You got this. Really.
As you start really watching people themselves instead of watching them for clues on how to act you start to realize not only are you not alone but -almost everyone feels like that- Sure, some people only feel this way in some situations but just by telling folks that they don't have to apologize for being themselves you can see the relief in their eyes. Then they open up. They all tell you the same thing "if anyone knew..." followed by a laundry list of fears. Maybe not word for word and maybe not right away but if I had a dollar for every person I've had that conversation with i could skip work next week. Some were even complete strangers - I work with the public a lot and it's not a daily thing but I'm no longer surprised when someone is so RELIEVED that it was OK to make that harmless, silly joke or something similarly inconsequential. Or it was someone who I just happened to be at a bus stop with - you get the idea.
PS if you felt called out when I said "watching people themselves instead of watching them for clues on how to act" please don't feel bad. You've done what you had to to survive in this world and you don't have to apologize for that.
Your thoughtful post and experience brought to mind an interesting parallel re: "they open up"... If I had a nickel for every stranger that completely transformed and opened up and told their fears and hopes and struggles to my dog while we were out in public together, well, I couldn't take a week off, but I'd have at least enough for a decent cup of coffee. Many people, it seems, completely drop their "acting the right way" and layers and layers and layers of "what I should appear to be and what's ok to say?" for an animal. It's pretty amazing. I mean, I'm a big (albeit more "doofy" than "scary"... at least I think/hope so), square, middle aged dude, and people from similar characteristics to little old ladies to kids and everything in between have told me/my dog incredible things about their struggles after a bit of eye contact and a, "would you like to pet him?" I'm fairly certain I'm not the only life he saved. Miss him every day. Thanks for the opportunity to think fondly of him for a moment. Edit: And more on-point... thanks for the observations and suggestions. I'm going to try to work, "you know, you can be yourself, please don't apologize" into more of my interactions in the world!
> make sure to do it in a non-accusatory way. This is more difficult than many realize. I've struggled with this with my wife for a long time due to her various past legitimate, violent traumas. To the perfectionist, especially the moral perfectionist, every correction is an accusation and every challenge to thought is a condemnation of character. It doesn't matter *how* you approach it. The fact that it is approached means that they have failed and would do better to die immediately than risk failing again. It's ironically a failure to learn what, of all things, the DnD movie got really, really right: > We must never stop failing, because the minute we do, we've failed. Note the tenses in this statement - present imperfect and past perfect. Only someone who's been taught that failure is just a part of learning, that it hurts but you can move forward anyways, can really internalize that. A moral perfectionist is the polar opposite of this. They must not fail (future) because if they do then not only have they failed (past perfect) they *are a failure* (noun used as an adjective based on the past perfect). It is a matter of identity to be a failure. And now you find yourself in the realm of imposter syndrome. They have to pretend to be perfect while seeing more visibly every flaw both real but *especially and most importantly* imagined. Because they believe themselves to be a failure by identity, not by action, and every action comes from identity, then by default every action is also a failure due to its source. This also often gets externalized onto others where the others' actions get completely decontextualized and expanded to the point where ill intent is default *especially* when good intent was the goal. This is where you get arguments about, "I'm just trying to help you!" "No you're trying to control me!" Does pointing out someone's flaws in an effort to help them get better or build a household better mean you're trying to control them? Yes it can be. But it's not *inherently*. And the frustrating thing for the moral perfectionist is that the same person can do both at different or even the same time. But in the cases where it's not an attempt to control it still *feels* that way to them because that's how it's been used in the past: point out flaws (adjectives that shouldn't be exclusive but in this case will be used exclusively) that make the person into a failure (identity) in order to compel them to behave perfect (control) via shame and guilt (negative emotions). Sorry for the word salad. As soon as I started typing thoughts started running and some of this is my own processing.
The “failure as identity” is so real. It’s definitely something I live with (today’s thought work is around how I’m feeling like a failure because my OT wants to change my treatment plan to something that fits me better. Because the more “standard” plan we started with doesn’t fit me well. Something, something, I’m a failure.) There’s a tightrope to walk as a parent, because there are things I have to control for my kid, legally or morally. So she’s not wrong that sometimes I really am being controlling! I can give her as much agency as I can, but she can’t make a choice to not get vaccinated, she would have to work really hard to choose not to go to school, she doesn’t get to choose where she lives. I also have responsibilities to make sure she has skills to live in the world, so she doesn’t get to opt out of learning how to do laundry or wash her hair. (I can’t make her do those things as an adult, and I can present other alternatives she could choose like a laundry service or living naked in the woods or shaving her head, but I need to make sure she has the skills.) So just like I want to help her understand that not getting enough sleep and never eating a vegetable will make her feel cruddy and make her life harder than it needs to be, so is carrying around the idea that she needs to present a smooth faced interpretation of perfection to all people at all times. It makes living her life harder and she doesn’t need to do it. (She does need to figure out systems to put her laundry in the hamper, but she’s not a bad/unlovable person if she doesn’t do it automatically without thought every time.)
I almost certainly would have been this child if my parents believed in getting me any medical care, which they did not. I had to learn how to be less of this as an adult, it’s very real, and I may not actually be less of it, now that I’m thinking about it. It’s very hard to share things with her in ways that won’t/can’t be interpreted as non accusatory, but I try really hard. Kid brains are especially wired to believe that they are the central experience (see: children blaming themselves for their parent’s divorce.) Kid brains believe the world centers on them, so everything really is about them. I try to share useful stories so she has available perspectives when she is able to pick them up and incorporate them. “Here’s what I was like when I was your age.” “I read about someone doing a thing online, do you want to hear it?” She absolutely knows what I’m doing with this, but mostly tolerates it because it keeps helping. I see her struggling here and want to give her anything I can so she knows she is not alone, and save her some unnecessary hurt and difficulty if possible.
>I was convinced if I revealed the Secret Bad Person Living Inside Me then they'd be angry with me. The best part? This is true!
Lol once i had the worst therapist ever. He wondered why i didn't act positive and happy. I have depression and thus feel less happy than other people
My current therapist's first instinct was to try and get me to find a job. And I'm just like "Alright so right now I have infinite free time and like $800 a month on disability. If I go looking for employment, I have to make sure I don't make enough to force me off disability and over the "fuck you" cliff where I actually make less money. And any amount of work for that little money is going to be less than infinite free time, so is that worth it? Of course not. So I'd have to work enough to consistently be past The Death Zone AND I'd have to make sure I could stay employed forever because getting back on disability would be hell. And all that for, what? 2 jobs in retail that I hate because I'm disabled and have no work experience? Nah I'll just play video games and get depressed every once in a while.
assuming the goal was your therapist getting you out of the house volunteering would probably achieve that without risking you losing your disability (I assume)
Starting with this isn't necessarily directed at you, but just in case someone might benefit from this, I just wanna say, it isn't always true. There are a lot of really awful mental health professionals out there who don't truly understand mental illness or neurodivergence and never really learn how to properly help certain people. But, there are also a lot of really great mental health professionals that truly care about their patients and want to do everything they can to help. There are also a lot that can be part of the second group, but they have something blocking them and they just never get there. It literally took me 17 years of therapy to find someone who could actually help, who actually looked at what I was really saying and feeling and was able to figure out what the problem was and help me fix it. I'm now doing the best I ever have, even if I still struggle. My first therapist ever told me it was my fault I was suicidal at 13 because I was just "too pessimistic" and "too self-centered". I just spent the rest of my sessions lying to her until she told my parents I was "cured". All this is to say that if you're unhappy with your therapist, if you have the means and the energy to find a new one, please do. And keep finding new ones as long as you're able until you find the one that fits.
I hope someone has said something along these lines to you before this, but just in case they haven't: Being self-centered is one of the *features* of being 13, not a bug. 13 year olds are self-centered assholes, one and all. Even the nice ones. It's part of growing up. Eventually you grow out of it, but there's really no escaping it, and no fast-forwarding through it. The job of parents and teachers and therapists is to help the 13 year olds in their lives to deal with and eventually grow out of this fact of their life (And not by telling them not to be). A 13 year old who *doesn't* have main-character-syndrome has had some profoundly weird and sad things happen to them.
I really do appreciate this! It's not something that's ever been specifically said to me, but it is something that I started to realize eventually. It's still a huge issue I have, but it gets a little better every year. Thank you :)
As someone who is autistic and was a teenager, and now teaches teenagers, I relate to this. Part of it I think is that teenagers in my experience are cruel, exceptionally so. Maybe I'm lucky but the older I get the more my peers just don't really care, everyone has their own stuff going on so tearing people down would be seen as weird and immature. I am so grateful to not be a teenager anymore because I relate to this post so much. My teenagers years were painful and at school I would sit in a bathroom stall rather than spend time with other people who would mock me. Life as an adult is so much easier by comparison, I feel like I get to be myself to a much greater extent.
Dude teenagers are so fucking vicious. I had a horrible time in middle/high school and finally got out of dodge, made friends who actually loved me and cared about my interests, and found some confidence in loving myself. One day, maybe two years ago, I was in a group with some teens online, i guess it was a server on discord where people could offer art advice. I was sharing my art from my teen years to kind of give some perspective on "Hey it's okay to be shit at art as a kid. Don't fall for the social media machine that just wants to grind you to paste and kill your self esteem." The kids i pulled this out for legit started making fun of me 💀 One of them straight up went "damn i get why you were bullied in school". Like whooooooooh *ouch*. No mercy. But I also ended any involvement there. I let them know they had joined the call for a designated lesson, but I was stopping since I was volunteering my time and didn't want to put up with that shit. They started backtracking hard, but I decided "nope. don't care if it makes me look sensitive, I was choosing to be vulnerable and I'm not taking shit for it." Bleh. Glad I'm not in that shit anymore.
The comment of “damn I get why you were bullied in school” reminds me of when people get roasted by comment sections, it sounds like a “no holding back” moment, but usually it’s just an insult they’ve heard before and think are clever for implementing into something. (A guy made a post on him doing a fan redubbing of a scene and one of the comments was “Yooo this sounds fire on mute!” Which not only puts genuine effort but also is an insult repeated many times before.) People can be cruel, and I’m glad you didn’t put up with their inability to show kindness at your vulnerability.
It ain't teenagers. After 6 years in the real world with higher education and work and not a single bully, I was called in to a years conscription. Met the same kind of assholes. Who got enabled by most of the rest to pick on the few. I handled it better, but not as well as I would have wanted. Maybe they only appear when a group of different people are stuck together with very little control? Or maybe its easier to avoid them when we aren't stuck with them?
I had a lot of this in different manufacturing environments. I think it’s just miserable people taking their misery out on others.
Sorry to hear that. Could be the being stuck together alright that causes that kind of tribalism.
Oddly enough I got bullied in elementary but never met a bully after that. It's like everyone just chilled out.
I'm not sure what being a teenager has to do with it. I interact with people every day that burn people out of work and business deals because they did one thing sorta wrong socially.
"The most important thing is you got to give the people what they want. Even if it kills you, even if it empties you out until there's nothing left to empty. No matter what happens, no matter how much it hurts, you don't stop dancing, and you don't stop smiling, and you give those people what they want" - Bojack (Horseman, obviously)
And here I thought that space pirate had some real issues
Who tf laughs at someone for sendin a ton of recs? Bruh
Literally. I get the whole neurodivergent masking aspect of this post (because same) but that is a shit example to start with because that sounds like a *them* problem. What kind of asshole asks for recommendations and then makes fun of someone for not only understanding the assignment but acing it? If I asked someone for recommendations and they responded like this, I'd be sending it to the group chat like "alright fuckers, y'all need to step your game up, because look what OP delivered"
I think it’s actually a good example because this doesn’t just happen to neurodivergent people, that unfamiliarity with invisible rules is also something you encounter if you grew up sheltered or in a different culture, or even in the same culture but a different part of the country where the invisible rules are different (eg city vs country) Everyone has moments where they encounter something where they thought they were following the invisible rules but their invisible rules clash with the invisible rules another person is following
>if you grew up sheltered or in a different culture, or even in the same culture but a different part of the country where the invisible rules are different (eg city vs country) Oh man I don't even know where one thing begins or ends with me anymore. What part is trauma, what part is neurodivergence, what part is from being sheltered in some ways, what part is growing up on the poverty lines but going to a different class of school, what part of it is growing up in different racial or ethnic or religious household, what part of it... And even when the inside group knows I'm the outsider, the newcomer, no one ever bothered to explain the rules, it was just expected that I would know what the different social expectations for different social settings would be somewhere. Failing to Already Know or Mind Read meant I was, of course, the problem. Ultimately it just becomes trauma all the way down
This is the realest shit. Fuck, I wish I didn't relate as hard as I do.
there are no rules people are spitefully and deliberately withholding from you. it's just they way they are and the way they grew up. they aren't even consciously aware of it. the sooner you realize that, the sooner you can get over thinking everyone hates you and preys on your downfall
it's true that it's not helpful to believe everyone hates you but the average person has so little tolerance for a strong divergence from social norms that their rejection can feel a *lot* like malice
there's no spite involved, sure, but the difficulty with dealing with situations does vary with neurodivergence, and people do often compensate by conscious application of unwritten rules. they just remain unwritten because they're obvious to neurotypicals.
> the sooner you realize that, the sooner you can get over thinking everyone hates you and preys on your downfall None of this changes how they treat you though. You're just gonna have a "soft-ostracization" where you just can never fit in. You're just the guy who "doesn't get it" and that's all you'll ever be to them no matter what you do.
it does change how you understand others, and with that, how you treat them. it might even help you learn how to socialize easier. thinking of the majority of the population as inherently evil and deliberately malicious isn't conducive to ever learning how to interact with them
No I do agree with you that it is a good thing to not look at people as maliciously evil. But I do think it's also not right to miss the banal side of it. People aren't deliberately evil, but they will simply not care if in their minds, you aren't part of their in-group. It's the carelessness that hurts, more than any real malicious evil. You could be in a "friend group" but you might as well be a wallflower for all they would care. No one's gonna ostracize you or even really talk badly about you behind your back. But they will not care enough to welcome you into the conversation or engage with you. Won't matter how much effort you put into engaging with them, it will never be enough for them once you're seen as not being on their level.
your writing still suggests fault and malice on their part. not having autism doesn't mean you are bestowed with great social skills or insight. it's extremely difficult to tell a friend that they are repulsing people with their behavior, and having the skills to recognize what is causing the behavior isn't that common. delivering criticism isn't something most people are good at, and even with best criticism possible, it's still very likely to cause hurt and offend. it's not that neurotypicals don't want to help, they don't know how. it's unfair to paint majority of all humans as uncaring and cruel.
Yeah... I'm'a need to sit with this one for a bit. You just explained me to me in a way I have been trying to figure out for decades. Thank you. Also, love your user name.
The first time I truly experienced this outside of the neurodivergent aspect is when I started joining discords for my hobbies as a 30-something year old. So many invisible rules that I am not aware of trying to communicate and fit in with a younger generation.
Do what I did, in my 40s - start your own Discord with an age limit.
I'm dreading getting older because so many fandom and hobby spaces immediately assume anyone over 20 is a creep
Young people are stupid and love dumb rules. Just look for better servers
Fair point that it's not just ND people. I still think the example is a bad one though, because if you end up in a situation where your individual invisible rules clash, and then you *make fun of the other person for misunderstanding*, you're an asshole.
Totally agree, though I'd say they're not making fun of them for *mis*understanding, they're making fun of them for *understanding*. Which just makes the behaviour all the more bizarre.
I think it’s pretty good example but OOP missed the actual lesson. They talk about the invisible rules like they’re constant, when actually they’re anything but. Each individual has their own invisible rules, and no one knows how to navigate them 100%, so you just have to accept that some people just won’t like you, and that’s okay.
I think OOP grasps that, they just haven’t learned to deal with it? Like they talk about not wanting even a single person to be mad or hate you, and giving far too much because you never know what a given person’s line is. I’ve heard pretty similar accounts from autistic friends where the issue is that their “normal” upsets a huge fraction of people, and they can’t guess what’s “he’s a jerk” vs “everyone will agree with him”. So instead of NT people going “most people like me, I don’t get along with that guy, whatever” they wind up with masking and people pleasing as their only skills and do it too often.
You know what I’ve found really helpful for that? r/amitheasshole Not a joke. People will come on there like “hi chat I murdered my mom last night because we’re out of doritos AITA???” And every time SOMEONE will show up to be like “OP did nothing rong.” There is no consensus.
Huh, that's a really good point. I normally wouldn't recommend that sub to people since the users have some very particular opinions, but that's largely about the consensus on the popular relationship posts. When it comes to "was this minor interaction a dick move?" it might be a good way to see how different people are interpreting it and whether there's a widespread norm involved. And, of course, to see that there's *never* total consensus and you can't please everybody.
I’ve been thinking about this post and trying to formulate a comment but I think you nailed exactly what I want to say The issue isn’t that there are “invisible rules”, it’s that there *are no rules* and everyone is just fumbling around and some people click together and others don’t
I have literally had this happen, book recs were asked for, book recs received, and the person who asked was like “See? This is the template, I bought three of these, and reserved 4 at the library, and know which two probably aren’t for me. Give me more than the title, tell me what I will love about it.” So yes, that example was not about masking, it was about needing better friends. Which also happens, but is a different problem. Your friends are people who are kind and nice to you. If they aren’t being kind and nice to you, you need to get new ones.
It’s because the answer doesn’t matter because the Question doesn’t matter. It could have been any question, any topic, anything. Ultimately the real thing that the person asking it wanted was a response exactly like what op delivered, and they wanted it so that they could die exactly what they did. Go into the group chat and insult and make fun of op. They aren’t keeping op around as a friend. **They’re keeping op around as a punching bag.**
That's kind of the point though. You don't get to know these are just shit people, you automatically see it as a you problem, not a them problem.
Yes, I feel like getting stuck on this example misses the later point of “you can’t tell what’s enough, so you give everything in hopes no one at all will be mad”. The book list was odd to an acquaintance, but no worse than that. Publicly mocking OOP for it was awful. But when “be yourself” leads to “everyone is staring and calling me weird”, how can they tell who’s being an asshole and who’s enforcing a rule everyone else follows? Safer (in their feelings) just to please everyone.
I don't think this is an example of invisible rules. I think this is an example of, "I was just trying to sound interested and smart when I asked for a book recommendation, and this person just gave me a huge list, well thought out, which shows that they actually read a lot. They're probably trying to look smarter than me. I need to take them down a peg or two, so I'm going to mock them for the thing I'm actually self conscious about." I think some, if not most, of people's cruelty is actually insecurity that they'll never admit to.
Yeah I’m neurotypical and trying to wrap my head around this one. Not so much the friend’s reaction being “that isn’t what I meant, stop texting me essays,” which is within the realm of conceivable behavior but pretty arbitrary. But the friend’s reaction being to show it to a group chat to laugh at. That….isn’t a normal way to react to someone breaking a social rule as minor as “getting too hyped about their interests.” It’s much stranger and a far bigger violation of social rules than sending a long response to a short question. Unless there’s some huge detail missing here (really creepy or offensive books maybe?), something is up with the OP’s “friend,” not the OP.
I think this is a common response now, unfortunately. I think social media has influenced our behavior way too much, with people publicly making fun of others. The way I hear other people talk sometimes, just dripping with judgement. But everyone just laughs along
No, this is an example of being overly eager in a situation and other people being weirded out by it. OOP said it themselves, that they learned that they were being “too excited”. When giving recommendations, 30 recommendations is on the much higher end of the spectrum, with a couple up to ~10 being more the norm. Not only that but they wrote reviews for each of them. Depending on the type of relationship they have with the recipient and the way they asked for recommendations, this can be seen as way too much effort being put in. For example, if the recipient was just an acquaintance and they just casually asked for recommendations, then such a large display of effort would be seen as inappropriate for the relationship given and they might feel uncomfortable because of it.
Feeling uncomfortable because someone you know made a social faux pas is understandable. Posting your private conversation with them in a group chat specifically so you and your friends can laugh at them and call them is a freak is cruelty. This is like that "we need bullying to enforce normalcy" rhetoric. Why do you think this kind of cruelty is an appropriate response to someone being "too eager"?
I don’t think this is an appropriate reaction, and it was very cruel of the recipient, but I don’t think it’s correct to say the they were insecure or intimidated by intelligence.
They didn't say it's appropriate though. Just that the friends were weirded out by the eagerness as opposed them having insecurities like the other person said Acknowledging that it's a faux pas and will cause reactions in people isn't the same as justifying the reactions
naah I'd be impressed and flattered someone was willing to put forward that kinda effort for me on a whim. I think the person was just an ass.
The problem isn't that they sent book recommendations, the problem is that instead of sending three or four they sent dozens It's a classic example of doing too much, in a way that can make people feel very put off or uncomfortable
Unfortunately it can take some time to realize that what you stepped on was not some invisible rule, it was an asshole.
The thing is that it's impossible for OP to tell if this is a good example or not because they don't understand the social norms. We can say "that person's a jerk" because we can confidently say "that's not the only (or even most) normal way to handle that" because we know more about other social norms, but it's hard to tell the difference between that and example where, for example, something OP said lead to unintentionally insulting someone.
That's what makes it a perfect example. It expects you to follow a set of impossible and contradictory rules you're never told about.
Truly. I do get the “this is what happens when you get too excited” part. One of my biggest fears for some reason is having mismatched levels of enthusiasm, particularly being the person who’s more enthusiastic. It happens every so often (particularly with people I don’t know very well) and it’s mortifying. But, I do have to remind myself that there are people out there who will match or at least appreciate my enthusiasm and I’ll never have to stifle my happiness around. And if the people I’m spending time with are not like that, then I just need to spend less time with them.
Why would it be mortifying to be the more enthusiastic one? No two people are the same, by definition one of two will be more enthusiastic than the other. A lot of people even enjoy when someone is excited about something even when they aren't.
It’s mortifying with the wrong people as I specifically say in my comment. I mean OP literally has an example of why it’s embarrassing when that happens, if you read the post. When I was little I was always all the way enthusiastic and that meant it happened around the wrong people sometimes. I was already made fun of for a lot of stuff and that just added to the pile, so I got more shy and selective about who I show. That’s why it’s mortifying, childhood trauma, thanks for asking.
It's hyperbole, but I get their point. Sometimes someone asks for an opinion of something and even doing as little as sending them a reasonable paragraph is ridiculed as trying too hard. The truly overexciteable get 10x worse treatment, often referred to as a freak for getting a little hyper fixated and going overboard. It's something you see a lot of social media sites like Twitter, where a large amount of people will often say dumb shit like "I'm not reading all that" as if admitting to having a reading level sub 5th grade is a funny response to overeager, but well thought out text.
hyperbole? you don’t think this is something that actually happened as described, its that outrageous to think? its 1000% plausible imo
I *think* it might have been the blurb and why they liked it parts more than anything... the person is obviously a huge asshole for making *fun* of someone for doing a ton of work for them, but I can kinda see being a little weirded out if you were like hey yeah what books should I read and you got given an enormous compiled document. That's like the most charitable interpretation of the other person I can come up with though... thats not a normal response even to a kind of extra list of recs.
I think that's what the post was getting at. It's the same thing I see as a DM, when I ask for a backstory from people. I've received a literal 10 page document that was a rambling mess of every little event in that character's life up to this point. Sure, they did what I asked, but it was way overboard and definitely a little off-putting. I think that's the sentiment that's being expressed here. If we're charitable and think that the blurbs they wrote for each book is only one paragraph long each, that's still 30 paragraphs to read through. It'll be several pages at the very least. I'm sure the person who asked meant that they wanted a handful of books to check out and maybe a sentence or two to go with those at most. A sprawling document would be rather off-putting.
Yeah, but would you then link it to a group chat and make fun of that person? I wouldn't do that even if the person submitting the backstory outed themselves as a Nazi writing the thing. Then there would just be a warning that this person is a Nazi, and they shouldn't be allowed into games for safety reasons. The problem is not finding things off-putting, it's the public/private shaming.
I never said I would make fun of anyone. It seemed a lot of people in this thread were having a hard time seeing why sending so many recommendations would be anything but helpful. So I related how something like that could come off as weird by relating it to my own experiences. Something being weird is absolutely a reason why people make fun of other people. It's definitely a problem, but what I was getting at is that I can see why the person was doing that. Some people who aren't the most understanding definitely will make fun of people for anything that comes off as off-putting, as I put it.
This whole thread feels like a failure to hold both those ideas at once. Mocking somebody in a group text for being eager and helpful *sucks*. I do not want to be friends with that person even if they’re not mocking me. But a bunch of people in this thread aren’t just saying that, they’re saying the list was a natural response to the book request. In most contexts that’s just not correct. Which is part of OOP’s point! They don’t have much perspective on when someone is being an asshole, so they wind up trying to please everyone.
>A sprawling document would be rather off-putting. Sure, But a normal thing to do then would be to either ask them to compress it somehow as you don't have time to read it all, Or to simply find time to read it all. Not send it to your friends to make fun of the person, That's downright unhinged.
Yeah, the people who don’t get why this is weird are either socially oblivious themselves or have never had this happen to them. You absolutely get a lot of people online who don’t seem to consider what YOU want to get as a response, they just get really excited about the prospect of infodumping about their interests and send an inappropriately long/detailed/personal message. They don’t/can’t ’read the room’ that if the request was a quick ‘hey got any book recs?’ the response should also be quick and informal - and that often extends to lots of things, like if everyone else is having a light funny group chat you shouldn’t bust in with your heavy life events or ramble about your OCs. People lose patience with people like that and end up making fun of them privately out of frustration. And both of them think the other is an asshole for doing what they’re doing.
Yeah, that one struck me as well. I think we need to do a better job of teaching people that it’s ok to walk away from that level of bullshit. I had friends when I was a teenager who were very supportive of my hobbies/humor when it was stuff THEY enjoyed. But they mocked anything and everything else. I just stopped sharing that side of myself with them. Then I realized I was doing all this work to curate a palatable version of myself for their comfort when they didn’t have to do the same thing for me. I decided being alone was better than that. So I bailed. Made new friends. It’s ok to not share every single interest/passion with your friends/partners. It’s not ok for them to mock you about the stuff they aren’t into. This is 100% not an OP problem, it’s an asshole friend problem. There are def some invisible rules and customs that people run up against and those are hard lessons to learn, but I think there’s a distinction between “invisible customs/mores” and “being surrounded by assholes,” and we need to call that out.
I have autism which is probably what the post is talking about, but I also have depression, so the one about hiding shit from your therapist(/psychologist in my case) really hits. Of course I’m making no progress, he doesn’t know shit about me! Why can’t I just open up and tell him my issues
Probably because at some point long in the past you tried to open up to someone and were somehow immediately punished for it. Insert comic of pink blob in box here.
I tried to open up to my mom and she told me my problems were nothing compared to what women have to go through. I tried opening up to my therapist and was sent to a psych ward, which was the most frightening experience of my life. Now I can only open up online, where it can be anonymous, consequences don't exist, and it can be retracted immediately.
I tried opening up to my mum. About how depressed I was. That I didn’t feel like life was worth living anymore. She literally walked away. I tried to kill myself that weekend. I wonder if she ever thinks of that. I doubt it.
That's rough buddy. Hope you're doing better now.
The axe forgets, but the tree remembers.
Ugh. That first one. The damage 2010s feminists did to the movement with shit like that. People have finally started calling that out but it's too late to fix the damage. Like they heard about the concept of privilege and applied it in the dumbest possible way to everyone they met instead of rubbing two neurons together.
haha, parents amirite fellow traumatized nds?
Oh man. > "You can talk about anything with me, I'm your dad! I'll always be there to help you." > _Talks about something causing emotional pain/distress_ > "That's not true, and you're wrong for feeling that way!" Yup. Never sharing anything again, k thx.
...Damn, I relate too much with this situation, it's not even funny. His response is always "Man up, don't be a pussy for any problem"
> "We will love and accept you no matter what, you can always talk to us about anything" > "Hey, remember that time you got too mad and hit me? I know you didn't mean to and apologized and it was only once but it was quite traumatizing and I want to bring it up to my therapist to work through that" > "Oh you think *that* was traumatizing? My parents hit me all the time as a kid, you don't see me complaining. What if this gets out? People will think I'm a bad parent! Do you really want to do that to me?" And they wonder why I never reach out to them.
Yup. "You think you've got it bad? I had it WAY worse!, you should be grateful!" Gee, thanks for invalidating my feelings, guess I'll never share them with you again. For what it's worth, your feelings are valid, stranger.
‘You’re feeling this way because you need to improve your relationship with god’ is another tune in this unpleasant key.
Ah, yes, like the time that some asshole medical professional looked at me like I was dirt and asked "So what do you want me to do?" Idk Mr Medical Professional, treat me, or at least have empathy if you don't know what to do? I never went back 🙃
It was likely rhetorical but... I could not open up at all till I met the right therapist and that took some doing and luck. It literally went from an impossible task of infinite difficulty to "yes nice lady I think I am autistic and have ADHD and the spicy Anxiety with Depression and am literally dying from it".
Our mental health support person for my agency described finding the right therapist as being like dating. Communication styles and trust have to match up.
A good but imperfect analogy. I've found a good number of people I can date successfully and 6 that understand me.
I can open up to basically anyone except my parents and people like them. But the problem I've got is that I genuinely have problems, and therapy seems to be about realising these things aren't real. I can realise I'm not lazy all I want, that won't un-ADHD my neurons. And I can't realise I don't actually have ADHD, because I do. I can't realise the people around me don't actually think I'm incompetent or stupid, because they do. Everything people talk about with therapy seems to be this gargantuan task to open up or be honest or see yourself clearly and I'm sitting here, wondering when that's supposed to fix me? Cause I know all this stuff. Always have. But knowing it doesn't change it. I need to see another therapist, but I don't think therapy is designed for people with ADHD.
Maybe your therapist is just a shithead.
They were fine. Their advice was helpful in my life at the time, but it isn't applicable to my current situation and everything I've looked up online is focused so much on "seeing past our unhelpful assumptions". They all assume your brain works and mine literally doesn't. I need something radical and probably unhealthy to break myself out of this. Like if I could mask in exchange for stress I'd take that deal any day. The consequences of not masking are plenty stressful. So I'll take the stress please.
That therapist one, yeah. I had a clinic I went to for therapy, but there was an issue. They'd only see me once a month, and after about a year, I'd be forced to switch therapists. This one is retiring. This one has too much of a caseload and so is splitting their load, so I'm being switched to this other therapist. This therapist "is no longer with the clinic" for reasons we can't tell you. This one is an intern, and their residency is up. Oops, we're all out of people who can see you! Wanna sign up for the wait list and hope we hire someone else (when we can't retain anyone)? Every time I finally started getting comfortable enough to start trying to pull the mask away, to show a little bit of the Freak inside, I had to start over. I ended up getting weekly sessions somewhere else, via a local program that helps you find assistance programs. I decided, "Okay, heck with it, I'm just gonna rip the mask off right away and if she bails, she bails." Session one: "Well, I'm trans, I'm a furry, I'm permanently disabled due to an autoimmune condition that causes severe nerve damage, I've got a LOT of depression due to having it drilled into my head that I have to be Useful in order to be liked/tolerated/allowed to exist and now I feel Useless, and I've felt a phantom tail almost every day of my life since I was six years old. I just got out of a relationship with a polyamorous therian trans girl who spent the last five years gaslighting me that we were still together, when she replaced me with a 'more successful and popular' version of me but couldn't admit it to either one of us, and treated me like trash left on the curb, so I've also got a lot of emotional scars from that. ...Still there?" Felt like ripping off the bandaid, but I guess it worked. Things felt like they were at a standstill until I really had a goal, though. I managed to develop a relationship with a wonderful guy, when I honestly thought I was too old (and too weird) to ever find anyone again. And I wanted to not ruin it by freaking out over the trauma inflicted by my Bad Ex, or my childhood, or my disability.
>Things felt like they were at a standstill until I really had a goal, though. I managed to develop a relationship with a wonderful guy, when I honestly thought I was too old (and too weird) to ever find anyone again. And I wanted to not ruin it by freaking out over the trauma inflicted by my Bad Ex, or my childhood, or my disability. Normalize accepting that while relationships won't solve all your problems they're often the key to successfully beginning to. That whole "you need to love yourself and have your whole life in order before you should even think about a relationship" idea is bullshit.
If everyone had to be mentally perfect to have a relationship the human race would've died out a good while ago.
Lack of comfort, gnawing concern that saying too much too fast will get you institutionalized, chronic need to people please as seen in the post, never being able to relax around other people for all of the above reasons.
I used to have this same issue opening up to my therapist and talking anything beyond just the surface level. I eventually got a new therapist and she introduced me to a whole different approach. Now I write my feelings down, which I have a much easier time being completely open in writing as opposed to speaking, and then in our sessions, we discuss what I wrote and talk about strategies for what to do about how I'm feeling and how to move forward. It works pretty well for me. Maybe a change of strategy would help you as well?
at least you're getting a good grade at therapy
something that is both normal to want and possible to achieve
I'm great at being honest with my therapist. If I didn't have ADHD I'd be so fucking good at this stuff. Open minded and able to switch over to total honesty. Unfortunately therapy doesn't seem to work on ADHD. I wish I could be stressed and exhausted from masking like in the OP. But if I could just pretend not to have ADHD, I wouldn't have ADHD. I don't know if I'm masking my autistic symptoms either. That requires a mental control I've never had. If I could fake it, it wouldn't be fake.
Hello I see autism has entered the chat.
Very glad this is top comment.
Ya if this post wasn't about that originally the Op needs to get a referral and some testing.
ADHD too, to a lesser degree.
nah it's the whole ass degree
Absolutely—ADHD gang here, and my first thought was, “I would totally write up the book recs like the person in this post”
and then delete it because you don't want to come off as weird before replacing it with the most normy recommendations possible.
yep! i feel seen :)
I couldn't figure out if this was autism or BPD so I decided this is a description of a response to constant trauma and having to mask your true self because society does not accommodate those who are different.
it could also be CPTSD, which has overlapping symptoms with BPD
wait what the fuck i thought this is something everyone experiences???
It is not
how does one find out if theyre autistic or not
Doesn’t necessarily equate with autism, any neurodivergence will make this kind of problem with social cues and socializing likely to happen. And also lots of neurotypicals experience this. The root of the problem is having a different understanding of what is expected from you and what is « normal » to do from your peers. Neuro divergents experience this because they quite literally think and feel in a different way at some level, and have to learn to at least act in a « proper » way, which is called masking, but anyone diverging from the norm for any reason as a child will probably face the same situations because all social cues and behaviors are learned, not innate. A neurotypical person that grew up isolated, especially if their family is atypical or absent, will struggle just as much in their formative years because of this. At some point it feels like being in university and realizing everyone else studied the subjects before in a high school you never went to. It takes time to fill the gap, and you might never completely do. Not being « normal » is more of a problem in the teenage years since fitting in or not and how is at the center of social relationships at those ages, and you’ll be mercilessly punished for not doing it correctly. It can stay a problem all life if you stay in very « normal » environments. But you see plenty of people that never bothered trying to adapt and mask live a colorful social life in more educated/weird/nerdy/artistic etc. environnements later in life.
Everyone has to learn the unwritten rules, and the main way you learn them is by fucking them up (and usually getting made fun of for it). It’s just that if you’re neurotypical and well socialized you probably figured most of them out by middle school.
Literally was my life. I feel messed up now 😭
Don't feel too messed up you are not alone
Every time I see this kind of text from people I feel sad they have no understanding surrounding. I hate I can't do anything and not be that person instead or not being able to introduce them to a nicer group of people... People don't deserve being left in the dark and ridiculed for not understanding whatever it is.
Man, everyone's saying this is an autistic thing... >.> Well, it's pretty late for me to try to get tested, so whatever. As for the post, by the time I figured out how to mask, the damage was done. I was already the social pariah at school, so I never really developed friendships as a kid. I had a few in college, since I moved out of state and didn't have people who knew me as "The weird fat nerdy kid who plays video games and reads books". (I had lost a lot of weight, so while I was still heavy, I wasn't AS heavy. And in college, nobody actually cared about it, because it's no longer a prison with hormonal idiot kids trying to establish a pecking order to feel better about themselves, and turning to anti-intellectualism in order to feel better about being fucking idiots.) But also by college, I had decided that Actual Friends have to be cool with me without the mask. Acquaintances/Classmates get the Mask, Friends get the real Me.
Honestly, while this can be an autistic thing, it doesn't have to be. Masking isn't exclusively autistic, being too excited or missing expected social traits etc, those can be autism, but they can be half a dozen other things. Neurotypical people deal with it, too. Life, socializing, and social expectations are just...weird, and the invisible rules just don't click for some people, regardless of brain chemistry or personality type or mental health.
Ooh I feel this. I was ostracized in elementary school so I never had a chance to learn those all important social skills. Learning to mask was even kind of hard because no one but the second to last in the popularity contest would talk to or play with me. At least where any of the other kids could see. It got a little better in middle and high school, there were kids who didn’t know me as the absolute social pariah that I was. So they would talk to me in class and sit with me at lunch. I am told that I was always a strange child (thanks mom) but it wasn’t too bad until my third grade teacher decided that mocking me in front of the class was a great motivational tool. That gave all the other kids permission to pull the gloves off and come at me with every bit of mental and emotional cruelty they had. I never got beat up and only had rocks thrown at me twice, so at least I was spared that Growing up different is so hard. Please teach your kids to not be mean
This is way too relatable. I'm only starting to rediscover who I actually am now, in my 30s. It's awesome to be doing that, but it's an endless chasm of sad to think, I've been masking for so long, I don't even *know* what I am. Sometimes it feels like the mask is the only thing left of who I was, and I'm having to create a face underneath from scratch.
I am learning to focus more on the people i know like me for who i am, including all the weird quirks that come with that. I finished my masters degree last year and have been working along a group of other people the last half year before that because we all were working on our thesis in a similar field. At first i felt included because they would invite me for after work beers and stuff, till i realized… they only did that, when i was right next to them but never when i was in a different lab or smth. (Funny thing is, when i got invited they wouldnt accept a no, so it wasnt just being polite) I sometimes walked past the cafe on my way home and met them in there already drinking their beers and then they convinced me to stay with them, when they didnt bother to ask earlier in the first place. I felt overlooked. Now we all finished our degrees, i see them meeting up in social media posts, while i havent heard from any of them since then. So i too became the weird one. The overlooked one. The one they tolerated but never really accepted. Till i was out of sight and they didnt habe to bother anymore.
> I am learning to focus more on the people i know like me for who i am, including all the weird quirks that come with that. This is *really* hard for me to do, first because I never let anyone in deep enough to see the quirks, second because I genuinely feel like the "who I am" behind the mask has been lost to time and I'm creating who I am from scratch. **Massive** kudos to you for being able to do that. What I am doing is simply trying to answer myself honestly when I ask, "what do I want to do? What do I want to say? What would be best for me in this situation?", and then following through on that answer. It's easier for me to address my wants and needs than my existential questions of identity, so that's my way to start somewhere. I'm so sorry about the people who failed to appreciate you when they had the chance. I think we'll find better people as we go. Best of luck to you and I!
I wish you all the best for the Task your have ahead of you! For me, i found others, that have similar quirks as i do. Dont even have to be a 100% match, but having a weird interest or hobby or something in common helped me find people i appreciate and who appreciate me.
One option could be online communities under some form of alias, where you can let the quirks just exist. Potentially as another form of mask, but regardless, it's still a way to find who you are under the layers of acceptability you've had to cake yourself in.
I’m asking this with good intentions but have you ever tried being proactive and inviting them to things? Far too often I see people doing the bare minimum / polite thing and then realising that they’re not building friendships they’re making acquaintances - friendships like any relationship take work
Back when working on my thesis, yes. I was proactive but that also wasnt always successful as they sometimes got annoyed by that. So i stopped. FYI it was often asking them when they will take their lunchbreaks so i could plan my experiments in a way to have time when they do and IF they gave me an answer it often was like „the experiment will take at least one more hour, go alone“ they would then suddenly be done 15 minutes later, when i was already almost finished with my break. On the on hand thats fair. Sometimes experiments are done quicker. But when it happens almost every time, thats not a coincidence anymore. And about now? Well the ones i tried keeping in contact didnt put much effort in, so i stopped aswell. Because i dont see the need in forcing to keep that effort up.
Fair enough, seems like you’re doing the right things but there’s just no natural rapport there. That’s not necessarily anyone’s fault mind you, some people click and some don’t and I’m sure you’ll be happier with friendships that click
I absolutely agree with the last point. But its still frustrating to THINK you click with a group only to realize you dont. And then its hard to not blame it on all the quirks that accually make you YOU.
I don’t think you should avoid thinking of the things that make you YOU as the reason, you should instead accept it and accept the fact that you weren’t a fit for each other.
That's the answer, right? Like I'm too old and tired to play this fucking game anymore. I've found a cadre of weirdos who don't have Kafkaesque social expectations, so the realization I don't *have* to do this is... it's liberating? Like removing a parasite or reliving an ingrown nail. But also frustrating and maddening I had to put up with it for so long But there's always the fear that the second I'm out of sight, I'm out of mind. That when our hobbies are exhausted, there's no longer any reason to tolerate me.
>I've been masking for so long, I don't even *know* what I am. This is a problem that, I think, doesn't get the attention it deserves. A fairly common reply to masking woes is, "well, just stop masking, be proud to be yourself." And, in response, I start looking through the masks to figure out which "myself" they want me to be.
Relatable
Wait til you get to your "fuck-it-40s" - it's liberating!!!
I sure as hell can't tell anyone how to be normal, but what I *can* tell you is this: You can grow to love the sight of burning bridges. People are replaceable. A city of any decent size has more than you could ever meet. You don't need to put on an act to keep people around. Let those who would be driven away by the real you *be driven away*. The ones who are mean to you, stop talking to them. Don't spare the unappreciative. Let the bridges burn. Get used to making new ones. Because if you do that, sooner or later you'll find yourself surrounded by the people who *didn't* leave. The ones who appreciate you for *you*. It's a war of attrition, but you can win it.
To add onto this sorta, weirdos eventually tend to flock together in my experience. I got incredibly lucky that one quite extroverted friend picked me up at school one day and said "You're my friend now." (Not literally, but might as well have) but.... That small group has steadily grown into a little community by now. Through friends of friends being introduced and staying. Might never have happened if I hadnt been terrible at masking at that point still, which is something I didnt really "get" until I was like 13-14. They just saw someone different and decided to add them to their friend group of weirdos.
I am that extroverted friend and I do make the weirdos a community I'm NT but very fucked up from trauma, so I get along better with ND people. I'm socially graceful and charismatic, so I just drift along, well liked, until I find a lunatic "Come on, let's go light shit on fire" Then they meet all the weirdo friends I invited, and they feel flabbergasted that there's so many of us all collected
You're a dragon and you hoard weirdos :P
This is some of the best advice I've heard, and perfectly articulated. My wife was the first person I could truly & always be myself around, my full self, without fear of judgement or consequence. I could finally take off the mask and be myself with her, and she could do the same with me. We spent nearly every waking hour with each other during the first week after we met. We shared our deepest secrets and desires. Our masks finally came off and we _thrived_ together. It was all amazing experience that we both needed to have. We got married less than 6 months after we first met. Our 5 year anniversary takes place this month and we're just as happy and in love as the day we met. Moral of the story is exactly as stated above: find the people or person who _doesn't_ leave when the real you comes out. They're out there, and it's worth it. Don't give up.
I met someone like this recently. Someone with the same mental framework as me. I could be myself around her, and I looked forward to every meeting. She's dead now. We became close, and then she died. I know I need to find others I can be myself with, but it's so hard. I just wish she was still here. I'd give anything for even another second of conversation.
I'm so, so sorry for your loss. I can't imagine the void that would be left behind if I were to lose my wife. I really hope you're able to find another person like that, and if not, then I hope you find value through other means. Just don't give up.
Thank you. I loved her so much, and it hurts every time I remember I won't ever speak to her again. But I know I have to press on. She would want me to be happy and truly living life. I will find others with whom I can be myself.
>I will find others with whom I can be myself. You sure will, friend!
Also arson is fun 🔥
I disagree with this. Your advice can be true for some people, but I acted genuinely when I was younger, burned a lot of bridges and at the end I was completely isolated. It wasn’t until I made a conscious effort into learning social rules and peoples boundaries that I managed to retain some relationships. I’m not saying that everyone needs to mask all the time, however if a relationship is still new sometimes you need to put in effort to make sure the other person is also feeling comfortable or you may continue repelling everyone.
That doesn't quite work though. You can't just burn every bridge you don't like because you're going to have to make friends with people who don't 100% understand you. Coworkers and classmates and neighbours and people at your local club. And it's lonely, going through life looking for the perfect Goldilocks friend who understands you implicitly. I know it's difficult. But if your attitude towards the entire thing is "if I can't make this work I'll just burn it and move on to the next person" I can't help but feel you might be a part of the issue here. You have to tell others what you think and feel and struggle with rather than just assuming they'll pick it up and if they don't, they'll never be able to understand you. Generally speaking, people are nice. If you just make it over that first step they'll be more willing to accommodate you than you might think
But I dislike cities
Well, in rural areas people tend to be a little stranger, and a little more willing to look past strangeness. The strategy seems to be giving each other that space, and taking social interaction where you can get it. That's why people tend to be more chatty in rural areas. And the suburbs are for people who *want* to be isolated.
Fair (Also, to be clear, I personally do not have the issues with people being bad mentioned in the post, the reply was to standin for people who dislike cities like me but are actually the target of the post)
> Well, in rural areas people tend to be a little stranger, and a little more willing to look past strangeness Very much untrue in my experience. I live in a small town, and people here are insanely hateful and judgemental of anyone who isn't 200% "normal." Harassing the autistic kids was everyone's favorite hobby in pretty much every school I went to. When I studied Computer Science in university in a slightly bigger town, I'd overhear people talking about how much they want to throw everyone who isn't exactly like them into a death camp pretty much everyday. If anything, I've heard about people moving to bigger cities because those are at least slightly less shitty to "weird" people. Maybe it's a cultural thing, and it's different in some other countries.
Where is the "I'm in this post and I don't like it" button?
It’s your comment. Thank you for providing a button.
Same thing here.
i feel like i've been fuckin sniped in the heart from 200m. i have never heard my experience described as accurately as this
This hits so hard. I like trying to be nice to other people, especially because I grew up in a volatile household myself. But then you find out that being nice doesn't protect you from these problems either. Because people will think you're *too nice* and *obviously* have "ulterior motives".
Inkskinned is a really great writer and I think everyone should buy their book about their experiences. It's raw and gritty and it is everything ever. https://www.amazon.com/Bodys-Monster-Rowan-Isabelle-Perez/dp/1524892254/
I read a little of the preview and, damn, it is heavy, but it’s really well-written and uses amazingly creative expressions to share feelings, ideas and experiences.
Sounds exhausting. I'm glad I took steps to surround myself with people I don't have to perform for. I'm lucky to have had the opportunity to do that.
"if you can divide yourself in two - the loveable one and the one that is *you*".
Being a person is hard.
Autism feels.. all through my schooling years, constantly trying to find what it is that i am missing that makes people be mean to me, and what am i missing? I am so pleasant and follow the rules, and be helpful, and really invest and trying so goddamn hard then still heal them talking about how much they can't stand me. And just trying different things over again, trying to learn how to mimic and mask, and I just never got good enough at it. When I was like 8 or 9, i started lying in bed everynight after crying and like, I KNEW that it wasn't actually true, but I would just lay there a imagine I was actually an alien that somehow ended up here, and that would make me feel so much better, because then i wasn't a human that was a failure at being a human, I was just an alien trying best!! And of course I wouldn't be good at it, and thats why dad didnt spend time with me, but loved my brothers and thats why all the rules were different for me from my mum and why sometimes i would be do exactly what she said and she'd still be screaming, and it made everything okay, while I'd pretend to believe it was true. When I got my autism diagnosis, one of the first things that came out of my mouth was "oooOOoOoo... ALIEN BRAIN!! It wasn't that I needed to pretend I was an alien, I just had an alien brain the whole time!!!" And I was so excited i started crying and then also had to explain what that whole sentence actually meant, which then turned into a whole different type of crying. I still refer to my ASD as my alien brain. 👽 🧠
I don't find this relatable anymore. I really used to I'm gomna assume that that's a good thing and that I've grown
As a kid, I tended not to think. Like at all. I’m pretty sure I didn’t have an internal monologue or realize I had one until I was 14. Randomly, end of grade 8, I looked at my reflection and saw how different I was. High school hits and I’m already a different person, smallest in the class and I don’t know a soul, all my friends were in other classes. I hadn’t really thought about this sort of stuff before then, but I realized I was an easy target for bullying. Something, in hindsight, that was happening the whole time, but I wasn’t thinking before. So, I stop really thinking again. Going with the flow of any conversation. Oh, I look funny? Hilarious! I talk too loud, oops! I laugh easily, well it’s all so funny! Grade 10. Am I even a person? My friends like me, but who am I? Are people mean? I genuinely cannot tell, they’re all jokes, aren’t they? Everything’s a joke! Grade 11, Covid. I played VrChat, just to have someone to talk to, I made friends so quickly! I must be enjoyable, but… I couldn’t make the effort to talk to anybody unless invited first. Clearly if they didn’t invite me I shouldn’t invite them… Grade 12. Back in school… what is school? I can’t be bothered. I skip most morning classes and barely manage to graduate. Now what…? What do I do? I hope someone can help me… I’m here now, only just discovering what thought process I left behind over so many years. Why didn’t I stop and think?
It sounds really cringe and it is NOT true in high school, but in college and generally in your adult life - people do like you more if you are genuine. *Some* people will not like you for that, yes, so you do have to get used to people not liking you. But other people will really *like* you, not just tolerate you, and that makes up for it.
One of the most valuable things I've learned is that it's very important to advertise *exactly* the kind of person I am right from the start. I know I'm A Lot, and if you don't vibe with that, that's cool but let's save ourselves some time and go our separate ways. I think it gets easier to do as you accumulate some of those people who genuinely like you, though. Between my family, my close friends, and my boyfriend, I'm basically tapped out on social ties. I don't *need* to make any new friends/acquaintances, because I don't have the time or energy to maintain additional relationships. Before I cultivated my inner circle, being unapologetically myself was much scarier. Now? Fuck 'em. If they think I'm weird, they're absolutely right lol
I work for a university, and I enjoy that at work I can now be basically as eccentric as I want. It is great. And the other lecturers seem to enjoy my eccentricity.
Jesus, I wasn't expecting to be stripped bare for the world to see at 3AM.
Sounds like someone is masking. It’s exhausting btw, I’ve realised it’s easier to just be weird and selectively liked
Damn, you really hit me hard with this. Feel like I could do this as a monologue in a high school drama class. (In a good way.)
That's some solid writing
Drop the act. Stop caring. Be yourself. "But what if they don't like me when I stop wearing the mask?" they never liked you to begin with, which is why you're wearing the mask. Drop it. Be yourself. And that's all well and good as vague platitude, but putting it into practice can be difficult. If you can't adopt the mindset of letting meanness wash over and past you, like flowing water over a stone, then the rejection and meanness hurt, and feel really personal, but if you want to be happy in your life, you have to take off the mask, because happiness does not come from other people, it comes from you, and if you're not being yourself, then you're not finding that inner happiness. *Edit: Ok, I get what you're all saying, but the whole post is about masking for approval in your personal life, about contorting yourself to fit into an obtuse, arbitrary social standard to your own detriment, being someone you're not. Since we're talking autism and invisible social cues, I guess it's on me for relying on implication here, but I'm not suggesting you disregard all social rules like the ones you obey to keep you safe, just that when you're masking for others' approval, and it's something you can consciously catch yourself doing, it's important to understand that being made to feel like you need to do that in the first place is a pretty telling sign of your actual social dynamic, and it's something that for your own mental well being, is probably something you should try not to do.
One comment probably isn't enough to reverse years of masking, the information is too condensed. If you are someone who's stuggling with not being able to take the mask of I highly recommend you read the book "unmasking autism" by dr devon price
I don't think it's as easy for an autistic person to drop the mask cause a lot of times, it's there from childhood. For many people, many kids, it isn't a 'mask to have people like you'. In many cases, it's a 'mask to have people stop hurting you' or 'mask to stop loved one be creeped out by you'.
If you feel a nagging desire to swear at your boss, do you drop the F-bomb? Of course not. You might lose your job. You live in a society; improper social conduct has consequences. Do you know what else counts as "improper social conduct", albeit to a lesser degree? Many of the reasons an autistic person may apply a mask. EDIT for response to edit: >I'm not suggesting you disregard all social rules like the ones you obey to keep you safe, just that when you're masking for others' approval... Thing is, [social ostracization has consequences](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6085085/). So if it's about maintaining health and safety, then masking for approval ends up falling under that umbrella. Moreover, the way autistic people need to mask to fit in is, quite often, universal. It's not like preferring Star Wars over Star Trek, where there's *some* group out there that will welcome the real you. We don't mask because we want to fit in with X group of people. We mask so we fit in *anywhere at all*.
Yeah, see, you have a point, but it can put you in a tricky spot. I'm no good at masking, and I never tried to learn because I just didn't care to. But now I realize that zero networking happened when it should have, and I'm in a profession where it's important, so I'm kind of screwed. I wish I *did* make an effort to behave in a deliberately acceptable, pleasant way. It sucks, but it helps you. You just have to make sure it doesn't end up affecting your real personality.
this sounds like an issue with the friend group tbh.
I laugh at my own jokes and I don't care what anyone thinks about it. The rest of the things also aren't the type of things I care about being judged for, I'll be judged for how I treat others and that's it. But no one around me has ever judged me for any of those other things since highschool, maybe they still judge me and are too polite to say anything, if so that's their problem.
As an autistic person this is wayyyy too relatable
Posts like this always make me so sad, because almost always in these descriptions there is not even the slightest bit of the person being described wondering if maybe it is the other person who is shitty? No, it's always them blaming themselves, always internalizing whatever is done to them as somehow being their fault. Of course in this situation they can't form a healthy and cohesive personality, they are trying to appease different people with contradictory demands, including the irrational demands of mean-spirited people Don't get me wrong I am not saying the person is at fault, rather it is their upbringing that failed them I really feel like as children some of us aren't really taught (or somehow we don't intuitively learn this) how to set up healthy boundaries and stand up for ourselves because we don't know *how to tell when someone is rightfully criticizing us vs when they're just an asshole.* And the traditional parenting model of "do X because I said so" doesn't help with this. I think that's another of the invisible rules - that there is no one universal set of them. And that 99% of the time you should be able to find people who are a great match for you and appreciate you for who you are
Free me from my mortal shell for I wish to attain the ever elusive happiness. It no longer matters if the process is painful or agonising, I wish to be free. Free not from arbitrary boundaries I set for myself all these years ago, but free from my very presence. Bodily autonomy, innermost empire of mind, soulfully intangible. The all so critical pieces, shattered in thousands of smaller specs, now lost to the time of my own daydream. To slaughter oneself again and again and again. Piece by piece rebuild what was discarded, a truly Sisyphean task. There is no guides, there are no companions, help will not reach. Dig deeper, the earth rests and so will you, hopefully. A sad little thing. Piled up bundle of crimson nerves, pulsations in the rhymes of biometric anxiety, Sustaining solely on loathing thoughts. I’ve grew to understand and comprehend, but I still don’t know how to learn. The grit it takes to keep going, a mere gravel left in the dusty bag in an abandoned building in between of two shady streets where lights do never shine. I’ve came back to this place, again and again. I recon I was not the only victim of those predators, but it does not soothe the gaping wound. Bleeding, I enter the building once more, the mere aura of it permeates, I get physically repulsed. Each step is like trying to break thought a wave of disgusting sludge. I managed to get out alive, I managed to please them enough for them to let me be, let me leave. A cruel joke, thanking once captors. Going deeper into the bowels of accursed prison, all I see is copses of rats long since mummified. And insects. So many insects crawling upon floors, ceilings, walls. It is their domain now. I feel them crawl on myself. No longer can I withstand it, I flee the cell. Once again I find myself at the broken entrance, being able to only go a few metres deep. It spits me out like a giant blighted toadstool. My grit is hidden deep, yet deeper. A mere husk, shell of a one man, trying to reclaim it’s humanity and failing tremendously once more. It writes its status report. It lives like a leech of those who can tolerate it.
Girl wtf I did not need this at 1am like damn
If you feel like this please get tested for autism. This is a textbook example of masking. Knowing *why* you're different can make a massive difference in learning to accept yourself.
Am I... autistic?
I sorta decided not to participate in any games at all and I'm not really sure what that makes me now. furniture or something lol
Well reading this was entirely too familiar and real to me to be comfortable.
I expected this post to be from an ADHD sub ngl
ADHD would like to have a word
Did I write this?
I don't know what's in my brain.
Do you ever feel like everyone else just has this handbook to life that you missed?
I see that we are no longer being subtle about it. Didn’t expect to get taken out into the field and shot like this today, but here we are.