I’m going to call 911, then I’m going to do it again and again! Muhahaha!
Dash thought Maeve was a snake and bushed his tail.
This post is for casual conversation if you don’t feel like making a post of your own.
I’m going to call 911, then I’m going to do it again and again! Muhahaha!
Dash thought Maeve was a snake and bushed his tail.
This post is for casual conversation if you don’t feel like making a post of your own.
I relate deeply to what you said about people misunderstanding your intent. Have you heard of the “Double Empathy Problem?” A friend introduced me to the concept after I tried to explain the exhaustion that comes from spending an entire lifetime studying other people like a foreign culture just to appear “normal” enough to move through the world without friction. I spent enormous amounts of mental and emotional energy trying to understand other people well enough to coexist peacefully with them. What finally hit me, after learning about the Double Empathy Problem, was realizing how rarely that effort had ever been reciprocated.
So many neurodivergent people grow up believing they are deficient at empathy or communication. Neurotypical people frequently expect us to translate ourselves endlessly into something they find comfortable, while they remain largely unwilling to invest the effort in us. For me, decades spent working with that asymmetry has worn me down to the point where I now carry the mental and physical effects of that burnout nearly every day.
And honestly, I think it reflects a much broader problem in humanity itself. NTs are very good at dividing the world into “normal” and “other,” into “us” and “them.” Once someone is placed outside the boundaries of the familiar, many NTs stop trying to understand them at all. Being ND becomes moralized instead of explored, and the “others” are mistreated for it.
I get what you say. There is this communication barrier. And when only one side has to constantly lean over that fence - figuratively speaking - it is unfair.
I was diagnosed with ASD late in my life. So many traits in my personality were previously attributed to other reasons. Yes I was and I’m still shy and had a low self esteem, but as a result not as the root cause. Which was/ is that the communication with my peers simply didn’t work. And that I did not get any confirmation but rejection, because we simply didn’t get what the other one had to said and was feeling. That and me being constantly overwhelmed and retreating to solo hobbies. Still do it. Has its pros and cons.
Over time I learnt that there is a communication barrier. Often times I didn’t get that I wasn’t understood. People don’t tell you that, they just feel awkward and walk away. What I wanted to say, is that nowadays I’ve gotten better. But it still happens.
About what you said about communication effort spent by just one party: I don’t have that. If it feels too exhausting I just give up. I don’t have the urge to make it work whatever the cost - it’s not my loss if the other one doesn’t get it. After what you said it feels like this approach - which I didn’t chose, it is just me being me - has its perks.
Empathy… If I’m overwhelmed I don’t have the capacity to empathize. I just don’t see it sometimes. If the conversation partner doesn’t know that, it comes across as being emotionally numb. Which isn’t wrong at the time.