Do non Autistics intuitively "know" how to act and communicate?

There are many condiitions and diseases, both mental and physical, which overlap symptoms with others.

I may have a lump on my back.  I am worried about this, so I google it.  Among the conditions I read is cancer.  So I am worried.  I go to my doctor and he says it is a sebacious cyst.  I am happier about that, but it doesn't prevent the discomfort, the numbness down my arm (as it is pressing on a nerve), the fact that it has got infected, and that it needs to be cut out to prevent further discomfort.

I may have bleeding from my bottom.  I look it up on Google and it says it may be cancer or a haemorrhoid.  I also have severe itching, and it is embarrassing to go to the doctor, so I self medicate.  After a time the bleeding gets worse and it has been very uncomfortable for months and months.  I go to the doctor who sends me to have a colonoscopy.  This I find very uncomfortable but they find it is indeed haemorrhoids which they band.  The fact it is not cancer does not mean that cancer does not exist or that I did not have a problem myself.

I am suffering from a rapid heartbeat and feeling faint.  I am diagnosed with Atrial Fibulation.  Someone else with rapid heartbeat does not have Atrial Fibulation but is suffering from anxiety.  This does not mean Atrial Fibulation does not exist, or that Anxiety is not a serious condition. 

And so it is with autism.  Someone suffering similar symptoms but is not autistic does not mean autism does not exist.  And neither does it mean that the other condition is not worthy of help.  But autism exists throughout life, it cannot be cured, and the main 'treatment' seems to be to try to make autistic people behave like NTs.

I suggest you read up a lot more on autism to try to gain some understanding of the problems autistic people face.  Some of these may be problems of other conditions, but that does not mean that autism is not a very real condition.  I also suggest you yourself take the fifty question AQ test, and also the Aspie Quiz

http://rdos.net/eng/Aspie-quiz.php

Whether you are autistic or not it should perhaps give you some insight.

"severe communication difficulties.  With these people I communicated very well."

So you recognise that there are people out there with severe mental and physical disabilities aswell as severe communication difficulties and in the very next breath you say you can communicate with them very well?

Obviously you do not have severe mental and physical difficulties as you are able to work, and talk, unlike them who cannot verbally communicate, yet you class yourself as suffering from the same problem as them? Is this not a bit disrespectful to them, considering you are nothing like them and despite what you think, you will not be able to properly understand them at-all.

Do you think they would be capable of working and holding even misguided conversations with management?

Why do you accept being told by a professional you have the same condition as those people? when you clearly do not!

Why do you claim to be able to have good communication with people who you yourself state cannot communicate?

What you really mean is that you are able to pull off limited communication with a non verbal autistic to as successful a degree as could be expected.

Also you feel you communicated well because you did not feel inferior to them.

They on the otherhand probably did not leave the meeting feeling as though they communicated well

Totally agree with you my love, think we used to be better communicators but discourse now seems to be basic imo, even brutal and ugly. Education is being dumbed down, the most important think of all which is critical/analytical thinking is deliberately discouraged now.

Maybe the answer to your question is too obvious for you to see?

 So far you are not finding it easy to comprehend us, or we you.

 I wonder why that might be.

 Attitude and lack of acceptance is something we cope with every minute of every day.

 I have no idea how you communicate with others but you aren’t doing a very good job here,

Again why do you feel a need to find an answer to this?

will it help you in some way or another.

 Will it benefit anyone NT or ND?

May I ask why you asked the question in the first place?

Have you any connection with autism?

Do you need to try and understand what autism is for any particular reason?

You come across as dismissive of how autistic individuals deal with social interaction. 

And you have no authority or understanding to tell someone they do not come across as autistic because you have had autistic people in your taxi. Does driving people who happen to be autistic in your taxi make you an expert on them?

Maybe the autistic people using your service cannot drive?

 I can and have since I was old enough to take my test. I do not present as you think I should.

 I appear to function ok, but beneath the calm looking exterior there are many issues which I do not feel the urge to discuss with you.

I have no idea why you came here? What do you hope to achieve from this.

 Are you or have you been effected in some way by someone who is autistic.

 By the way,,,,I don’t think football is a good game, 

Let me describe my recent experience at communicating.

In my last job there were three distinct groups of people.

1. The management.  Communicating with them was very difficult.  Everything I did seemed to rub them up the wrong way.  And miscommunication all the time.
2. Workmates.  I Communicated well with about half of them.  Some were just impossible to understand.
3. The clients.  Who were people the mental &  physical disabilities and severe communication difficulties.  With these people I communicated very well.  Once I got to know them I could intuitively understand their needs and non verbal communication.  

The fact that I am able to communicate with people who themselves have communication difficulties says something about me.  Is this positive, negative or ????   I don't know.

Ok well i have called you no names, yet you have called me strange, accused me of being dismissive and disrespectful because i insinuated you had more intelligence than my definition of an Autistic individual.

However you are not really helping me understand, so perhaps there is no point in replying to me as obviously i am not making myself understood and like Alice said, it is going absolutely nowhere.

All the best and good luck

Yes, but that does not make them autistic.

I have been diagnosed autistic by a specialist.  The people who you call 'normal' have not.  Autistic people have profound problems in these areas.  Some aspects of autism are also present in some mental health problem areas.  And I do not think that most autistic people would say to anyone who was in need of help for any problem would say that they don't need help because they are autistic.

I find your replies quite dismissive.  You appear to be saying that we cannot have a problem because others also may have similar problems.  Make no mistake, someone who is autistic does not have problems in just one area.  They would not be diagnosed for that alone.  We are all different, but some common areas are social misunderstanding, literal thinking, sensory difficulties, prone to anxiety and depression, not being able to process information, socially unacceptable habits, stimming, being very blunt, monotonous speaking, being thought of as 'negative', having meltdowns and shutdowns, as well as the attributes mentioned in other posts.

Yes, you can continue to be devils advocate, but continuing to deny our problems and inferring that the condition does not exist I find immensely disrespectful.

Like Alice I think this is going nowhere.

And you think that "normal" people do not also have needs? also suffer sensory overload? find crowded situations nerve racking? perhaps you just do not notice that they do, but deal with it differently.

Maybe they are just not shy

I am autistic.  You may have your ideas of what an autistic person is, and some of those ideas will be at odds with my idea of the reality of this situation.

NTs tend to think I am 'strange' and that some of my behaviour may be 'unacceptable' to the normal.  I can no more be an NT than I can fly like a bird. 

NTs behave in ways that I sometimes find unacceptable, and I find some of your statements 'strange' and some of your ideas not what I would class as 'acceptable'.

Some autistic people cannot speak.  This is not an indicator that they haven't any skills or intelligence- there have been non-verbal autistic people with skills that I an only wonder at.

Some autistic people have no problem with written language but become immensely tongue tied when trying to speak.  Some of us can speak fluently, but still may have needs, suffer sensory overload, be unable to cope in a crowded situation and find it well nigh impossible to cope with change imposed by others.

Dum vivimus, vivamus .... or words to that effect.

I do not want to beef.

I want to understand.

If you are unable to help me understand then there is no point in continuing, and it may be me, the non autistic individual that is the cause of the communication breakdown. 

I am happy to have receive ‘a label’ in my old age after a life of difficulty. If you really want to understand Autism, there are plenty of books out there you can read. If you want to beef... I’m out. 

So let me understand!

This non autistic person that understands everything and has a great amount of empathy and knows instinctively how to communicate and act has no problem in calling you "strange" and making you feel the size of an ant and completely misunderstanding you, and it is "you" that has the empathy, understanding and rudeness problem?

As far as i can see the only thing wrong with you is that "normal" people are not as great as you think.

They do not know the things you attribute to them and they attribute to themselves.

I know, intuitively, how to act and communicate in any given situation.

Unfortunately, probably due to being autistic, this is not how others expect me to act and communicate.  But to me it makes perfect sense and I do not realise I am acting in a 'strange' or 'unacceptable' way. 

Not until someone has told me anyway.

Are you sure you were not just extremely shy and inimidated?

Personally i do not think it is nice to label anyone Autistic and tell people that Autism is a life long condition.

I do not buy in to this luvvie duvvie lets try understand everyone before stabbing them in the back and patronising them with a name which is going to make it extremely hard to get anything other than benefits when they grow up.

"I do find many people in the world in general, though, just cannot think outside of their own box." Also, how do you know what others think? You claim to find people difficult to understand yet have no problem attributing thoughts to them.

Also i apologise if i am appearing insensitive, but i am not Autistic "never been diagnosed anyway", so is it any surprise that my powers of understanding is so great??

Other people appear to know, intuitively - means that the observer sees the situation that way. It is not a statement about what other people actually are, but a statement about the observer’s belief. As such it cannot be proven to be untrue by anyone else. 

You believe there are many ways to communicate. So do I. I am intuitive and read non verbal cues that others might miss. But not with everyone. I also misread a lot of people. But that’s just me. We are all different. The part I dislike most in the statement is ‘but Autistics don’t.’ In my view we are all unique, so we do all have different ways of communicating etc. I do find many people in the world in general, though, just cannot think outside of their own box. It’s their way or no way. As a child, though, I just could not interact with other children. That is something that does develop naturally when kids go to school. For me, it just did not. I was clueless. And they were unable to interact my way. Maybe many of us have learned different ways of interacting and communicating that mainstream people cannot comprehend? I dunno. It’s all a bit nit picky for me. If it’s confusing, i would rather think of something else!