The autism social rule book.

Post Reply New Topic

I don't think it's so much that people should "have to". It's more the case these observations of from those who don't have the instinct-level understanding of social codes/cues that neurotypical people take for granted and assume of everyone.

Nobody should be forced to learn french but if you live in France you'll find it useful.

Please tell me you followed it up with "would you like to be"

I've been asked if I'm pregnant before, by a few men. It didn't offend me though, because the way I can get very bloated due to R-CPD, it can make me look pregnant.

Interesting. How do you do it? I'm Aperegr level 2. So: I walk down the street and if I look at others my gaze is too intense. As if a sort of light were shining in my gaze, but the expression is cold and that's not good. Keep in mind that I'm a very sensitive person even if I can't show it unless I'm spoken to or communicated with. So: I hardly look at anyone. If I leave the house or in any case talk to someone unless I'm taking an anxiolytic it's difficult to maintain eye contact. I can't make that change from looking intensely to not looking by looking away, I would seem strange if I did it. I'm shy and reserved, very polite and looking at people is like invading their privacy for me. If the same thing happened to me (yesterday a boy was looking at my brother for several minutes, he was looking from outside into our courtyard, here almost no one ever does that, I had noticed this. Being protective I looked very intensely for Two seconds this person also had a large dog. Then I looked away because I didn't want to get into conflict with him. Maybe he was high on something or just a pain in the ass. I only look at the cars if I drive and how they move to understand how they drive. Here they don't know how to drive well. They go too fast and don't keep their distance and use indicators. It took me a month to study their driving behavior. A roundabout is a sort of Russian roulette. If I can I get ahead of them. Otherwise I let them pass, in fact it's a bit like a Formula One race, but you never win anything!

I agree with much of what you write.
You know, motivation is mental.
It's called self-protection from mental work.
Why change something they know how to do (badly) but always do the same thing, so they don't have to think?

Because thinking means mental work.
Energy consumption, work.

Why don't they do it?
Because they're used to never changing; it works just the way it is and it's fine with them.

You tried to change an absolute belief of theirs.
With a different one.

Imagine a crossroads.
And a person who knows for sure that path 1 is the one they always take and will take them to the point they need.
Will they ever take path 2?

They're like little mice, and path 1 has cheese.

They smell that aroma and they definitely find that, right?

Change: they don't care.

But here too.
A person wrote to me many months ago that he spoke "English" (American).
That English is a language that everyone needs to learn, but he had no need to learn any others: he knew the right one!

§

In Italy we don't have the right one.

Even though many nations study Italian.
§
But we know British English fairly well (I don't know well).

Before, it was French.

My mother knew several languages, including French.

I don't know how many my father knew.

Why did he learn them?

Because he needed them
§
For work.
Also the Italian dialects and the multilingual ones you find here, including those on nearby TV stations: French, English, German, Romanian, Albanian, Spanish, Portuguese.
§
A neurotypical thinks in a "off" mode if you explain things to him at length.

Why are we in "on" mode?

We have to relate to them, who outnumber us nine times and are socially in charge.

We're even a disease for them.

Affected by autism.
§

I also tend to explain again why they generally don't even listen to you even if it seems like they do.

Unless?

Unless they need to!

Then they listen, all right.
§
At school or at work.

Shut up and listen.

It depends.

§

Honestly, maybe we too need to learn to communicate like they do, and read the nonverbal signals of disinterest.
§
The time I dedicate to them is precious.
Only to get nothing?

But why talk to them?

If I really have to...

Don't pull too many sickies at work. We've probably all done it at least once, but if you keep on and on then people at work will begin to believe you less, or not feel much sympathy for you if you were to be genuinely ill, as they'll just see it as another let-down.

A guy at work has just fallen into this now. He often phones in sick at the drop of a hat, at least once nearly every week, even though he's never handed in a medical note from a doctor or anything and as far as we know has no disabilities. Now he's going to be off all week with a bad back. Ordinarily we'd just find cover and feel sympathy for him, but because he's always calling in sick, it's hard to believe him until he hands in a doctor's note, and even if he did we'd still feel annoyed because of the many times he'd called in sick before and let us down, so to us it's just another let-down.

So, the moral is, only phone in sick if you are genuinely sick or have some other valid reason, not just because you "can't be bothered". If your attendance is good but you happen to get sick then you're much more likely to be believed and sympathised with by your team.

^^
I was absent from work for a while.

Which was my passion.

Here, they send the medical examiner to check your home several times.

He can come several times a day.

If he doesn't certify that you're right and that you've told the truth, you risk sanctions and immediate dismissal.

I had a medical examination once.

The inspector increased the sick days, proving me right.

A person who's absent for no valid reason creates problems for others.

In any case, here, you must immediately contact your doctor, who will examine you and certify exactly what happened.

Once, I took a 10-minute break to think mentally about how to complete a complex job.

If I made a mistake, I would have caused financial damage to the company.

They told me to get back to work immediately.

I looked at the person and told them I was thinking about how to save time and money for the company I worked for.

He apologized.

I can do more, but never fail.

I remember sometimes I felt really sick and I still went.

Who worked in the laser department in my place?

I was the only one qualified.

And the only one who never made mistakes.

No one could even get close besides me.

It was all robotics.
And lasers.

stuff worth hundreds of thousands of euros.

When someone is worrying about an upcoming medical appointment, don't bombard them with detailed information about how you once had the same medical thing and had a near-death experience with it. It doesn't help with the nerves.

Interesting.

I should stay away from many posts.

I tell what I know.

I also don't know how other people interpret my messages and communications.

I remember my mother telling me once that when my brother was two and about to go into surgery to have his tonsils out, a woman in the hospital told her that she had a 2-year-old son who died during an operation having his tonsils out. My mum burst into tears in sheer panic, as she didn't want to hear that the minute her son went into theatre. The woman wasn't being unkind or trying to scare her, and she immediately apologised, but sometimes in situations like that it's best not to share too extreme of horror stories until maybe afterwards, as it can cause distress.

^^
@Tamaya
I'm sorry about your mother.
In person, I avoid commenting on these matters.
One of the basic rules was the one we wrote about together a few days ago: people's sensitivity must be given special attention.

Some time ago, an uncle of mine was very ill.
He asked my father how he perceived it; he answered well.
I said nothing. We left the hospital, and I didn't speak to my father.
He had lied.
I couldn't process the lie.

§
Un Bel tacer non fù mai scritto
Badoer
A beautiful silence was never written!
The expression is so beautiful and delicate that many think it's a verse by Dante Alighieri.

In reality, the reference is later and comes from a common saying that evolved from a phrase by the 17th-century poet Iacopo Badoer, who also worked as a librettist.


His answer reassured me.
He was right.
I was wrong.

Not referring to anyone here, but this one just popped into my head while I was scrolling through Facebook:-

If somebody who isn't known to have a paranoia-type mental illness has become rather paranoid believing that whatever you say is about them, then it might be because you have been a dick to them more than once recently and now whenever you open your mouth with an inside joke with your friends or something, that person you might have been a dick to will believe you're referring to them.

"I AM NOT IN A BAD MOOD, IT'S YOU!! !"

If this is said to you when someone is shouting at you and you know you haven't even done anything to make them like that and then you ask them what's wrong and they say nothing's wrong but continue to be ratty to you and then you ask why they're in such a bad mood and they reply with the above, then what that really means is "something quite worrying is on my mind but I'm not telling you what, so I'm just going to deny, deny, deny, no matter how blatantly obvious my bad mood is". I know they might not want to unburden you with a worry, but if you're soulmates and you live together then I think all problems should be shared, or at least kept more discreet by not stomping around yelling at you.

An Epic thread. Many good posts. My favorites were the ones which explained in as high-level way as possible, how to understand the viewpoint of an NT (which is totally unintuitive to me).

My most important rule: seriously study and understand the signs and characteristics of machiavellians and narcissists. You will meet them in your lifetime, and they are your worst predator of all. No offense, but you're in a situation similar to a chicken, who has every interest to study how to detect dire wolves dressed in sheep's clothing.

Understand that the polar opposite of an autistic person is a machiavellian person (and closely related to machiavellians, and slightly less evil, are the narcissists - I'll treat them synonymously here, although there are key differences). An autistic person tends to over-explain and divulge too much. The machiavellian does the exact opposite: under-explains everything, and withholds as many key details as possible. It's a strategy to get away with as much as possible. They speak in charismatic, emotionally evocative, suggestive ways as much as possible, avoiding details which might come back to bite them, should they not deliver as suggested. They love to carefully furnish themselves with plausible deniability (giving themselves an out, should they be challenged on something they were attempting to silently and secretly get away with). Just like any shady salesman would be a grand master of doing.

Here's a helpful vid on identifying their intensely clever patterns of speech:
"5 Reasons Covert Narcissists Won’t Communicate Directly":


Whereas an autistic person's strength lies in their talents of fact-finding, drilling deep into topics of interest, the machiavellian (and narcissist) take the opposite strategy: they always stay very general, eschewing details. Details are like the dirty turds they don't want to get their hands dirty touching; it's their underlings and servants who will get their hands dirty cleaning up such messes. The machiavellian is above everyone else (in their minds), all others exist to serve them, you see. Don't you, oh fellow Autist, become their "flying monkey". "Flying Monkey" is a psychological term for a machiavellian's (or narcissist's) psychologically abused victim, who is all but certain to have consequences develop over time, such as: rumination, low self-esteem, a lack of purpose in life, having no positive outlook of the future, and at an extreme, suicidal ideation. Does any of this sound familiar to you?

If you accomplish only one thing with your life, oh fellow Autistics, let it be to avoid and escape them at every turn. There are good people you can find and welcome into your life, but not until you first get rid of the machiavellians and narcissists. They will "triangulate" (effectively block) these good people away from being able to enter your life. "Triangulation" (another psychological term) is a dirty trick they use, whereby they cleverly isolate you away from everyone else, such that it's just you and them who communicate. They have certainly, cleverly siezed the dominant position above you, having powerful leverage over you somehow (as they gradually and insidiously convinced you - through tons of emotional manipulation - that you need to be dependent on them). They are grand masters of emotional manipulation and theory of mind (for highly selfish motives), which is again an opposite thing to Autistics (who are good with details and facts, but not so good with emotional intelligence).

It's a profoundly efficient step in improving one's life, to just get away from them - even if you have to move to a new place, and even if you have to leave a circle of people behind who can't see their way out of the charms and idealistic visions (see what a "Narcissistic Shared Fantasy" is, here), sold by the machiavellians/narcissists. You can't save them, only yourself.

If you think these patterns above might apply to you, and you've been suffering from these telltale signs of Narcissistic abuse, I suggest reading the excellent book "It's Not You", by Dr. Ramani, as a next step.

Normally I understand social rules, they're easier than written rules such as health and safety.

But one rule I don't get is milk in the workplace being for tea and coffee ONLY. Perhaps it's because I don't drink tea or coffee, but this social rule really throws me. It's milk, its purpose is to drink, doesn't matter what it's being drank with, whether it's in tea, coffee or just a small empty glass, it's still serving its purpose.

It's a bit like having a bottle of tomato ketchup in the fridge and wanting everyone to only use it on fries and nothing else. Don't use it on sausages, don't use it in a burger, just fries only, otherwise you're a thief and the consequences won't be good.

!

Cornflake wrote:

Some off topic commentary has been removed. It is not the purpose of this thread to analyze the supposed motives or meanings behind NT behavior and worse, it can be read as finger-pointing or "othering" which amounts to an attack. It's doubtful our neurodiverse members would appreciate being the subject of similar commentary - but then, neither would our NT members either. Please, let's have no more of it.