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How do neurologically typical people feel & experience life?

I'm done with Christmas Cards
over 4 years ago

I know this is pretty futile musing, although maybe some of the more neurologically typical people on here can help! (I shy away from using the term "NT's" because it feels a bit "them and us" to me).

I've found myself wondering, as I'm accepting, exploring and deepening my understanding of my own atypicalness & ASD diagnosis, about what it's like for others.

For every "aha!" moment I have about e.g. noisy restaurants, eye contact, lack of capability / impetus to maintain friendships, exhaustion in social situations, there is a corresponding "What's it like for others?" moment.

So for example, for typical people:

  • How does the world *sound*? Is it muted, filtered by attention etc?
  • How does eye contact *feel* when experienced as something that you *want* to do? Even with strangers?
  • What's it like to be drawn to want to be with a group of other people?
  • What's it like to enjoy a day out with friends, and not be exhausted (except in a tired & content kind of way)?
  • What's it like to be thrilled at the prospect of going out every single evening for days in a row?
  • What's it like to want to ask other people where they went on holiday, and be interested in what they tell you about where they went and what they saw?
  • What's it like to say the opposite of what you mean, because for e.g. you're being polite, and yet know that everyone knows what you actually mean?
  • What's it like to wish that you had more time for travel, seeing family members, more face to face meetings etc?
Parents
  • over 4 years ago

    From my experience with ‘NT’s’ they seem much more able to ignore cognitive dissonance. Or maybe they don’t even feel it as much as I do, I don’t know. 

    For me, it’s a really painful stimuli for me. Trying to balance out ideas and facts, beliefs etc. I hate it. I really find it very painful. Yet I talk to people who seem to be able to hold two absolutely apposing views yet they don’t appear to get any cognitive dissonance from it. They seem able to chalk it up to, “well it’s my own personal belief” and be at peace with that despite their contradictory ideas and views. 

    I find it very painful for reasons I can’t fully describe when there is a fact that people still refuse to take as fact and continue to believe whatever they wish. Or when people misrepresent facts and people seem happy to use such flimsy language to explain these facts. 

    For example someone on a documentary will say, “since dinosaurs when extinct,” and then later on in the same documentary say, “birds are dinosaurs” don’t say “since dinosaurs went extinct” earlier on then! I know, always bring dinosaur facts up in posts like this but that’s because that’s stuff I know about and can use as an example. 

    But NT’s don’t seem as bothered about how facts get misrepresented, or at least they don’t seem to find it as painful as I do. 

  • over 4 years ago in reply to Deleted user

    Flint. Thought of you today :) Was listened to a Radio 4 podcast called Crowd Source. This one was about an alt. reality if Dinosaurs never went extinct. Right near the start they wanted to make clear the distinction between Dinosaurs from millions of years ago and today's Dinosaurs- which they termed 'Avian Dinosaurs' through the programme Slight smile

  • over 4 years ago in reply to Breadpud

    Not enough programmes radio or otherwise specify that clarification! 

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