I often feel cut off from others, including other ASC people, I share so few interests with others and when I do find a common interest people want to engage me with things like youtube and AI, things that make me want to punch the screen, whats wrong with just talking? Why dose everything have to be seasoned with with video's and stuff?
I feel cut off from NT's and ND's.
Why dose everything have to be seasoned with with video's and stuff?
I think that this is because social media is the zeiteist and pervades almost everyones lives now.
As a society we seem to be developing a very short attention span and use videos as our dopamine hits to give constant stimulation and as a result don't find things like reading or talking stimulating enough to be worth the time required.
Availability of other people to talk with is also a challenge as we can't just assume the other person is available when we want to talk - they are proably busy making a TikTok video and don't want to be interrupted. Social media on the other hand is always available and ready for our pleasure.
You can continue with your refusal to engage in things like smart phones and social media but you will find yourself in an ever diminishing group of people.
It's not just that I don't want to use social media, but I don't know how to use, I don't know how to keep myself safe, I can't even use the phone properly as a phone! I did have a smart phone and I stuck with it for about 6 weeks trying daily to do something different with it. I learnt how to store contacts and how to bring them up and phone them, but I found text messaging totally confusing and I didn't know how to turn the predictive text off so I ended up with sentences that made no sense. I never worked out how to answer a call because the screen was just black. The screen would go black a lot and so quickly I ever found the icon that would allow me to even look at how to change it.
It also dosen't help that I have memory problems in certain areas, some sorts of information seems to bypass short term memory and go straight to long term memory without having any synaptic links, so whilst I know that I have done something like C&P before, I don't know how I did it and it never gets better, everytime I do it its like the first time.
To be honest Iain people like yourself don't really help, your obvious frustrantion and annoyance with me make me less willing to engage with tech, because it makes me more afraid of getting wrong and having people being cross and shouting at me for being stupid or ending up causing something weird to happen creates a viscious circle where I am the perpetual villain through not understanding what someone is trying to teach me. What's worse is that I understand why the person is so frustrated, because I'd be frustrated too, I'm frustrated by my inability to cope with it too. You don't seem to accept that I have the diagnosed memory problems either which is really frustrating, probably for both of us as I really can't help it.
It's not just that I don't want to use social media, but I don't know how to use,
Let me phrase this a different way. You have managed to learn how to use the computer enough to login and get online, connect to this forum and be able to respond to posts in a nested format.
This demonstrates that you are capable of understanding how to use the computer. the site and reply to the messages in the correct way. You are clearly intelegent, competent and capable.
You can access social media on the computer too so it would just be a learning curve similar to connecting to NAS and participating.
To be honest Iain people like yourself don't really help
This hurts. I have spent a very long career helping people be able to use technical tools to be able to do their jobs, whether it is an electric typewiter, security system, computer, martphone/tablet or whatever.
In that time I have helped tens of thousands of people on a one-to-one basis and I've never met one who couldn't learn when they were willing to try and be patient while I found ways to explain it to them, give analogies they understood to build on that understanding and build the confidence to do what they needed.
There have been plenty of real challenges but all were able to overcome the challenges with patience and openmindedness.
I appreciate your memory problems complicate things so an approach I would use would be to build those neural connections through repetition. This needs you to be patient as much as me.
There have been no lost causes and I don't believe for a minute that you are either.
it makes me more afraid of getting wrong and having people being cross and shouting at me for being stupid
From you counselling training, does this sound to you like your fear of failure and the shouting is making you avoid even trying? How would you approach this in a patient if you were the counseller.
I really believe you are capable of these things if you are willing to find the right teacher and work at it. If you don't want to learn then this is also fine but it is more authentic to say "I won't rather than "I can't".
It's not just that I don't want to use social media, but I don't know how to use,
Let me phrase this a different way. You have managed to learn how to use the computer enough to login and get online, connect to this forum and be able to respond to posts in a nested format.
This demonstrates that you are capable of understanding how to use the computer. the site and reply to the messages in the correct way. You are clearly intelegent, competent and capable.
You can access social media on the computer too so it would just be a learning curve similar to connecting to NAS and participating.
To be honest Iain people like yourself don't really help
This hurts. I have spent a very long career helping people be able to use technical tools to be able to do their jobs, whether it is an electric typewiter, security system, computer, martphone/tablet or whatever.
In that time I have helped tens of thousands of people on a one-to-one basis and I've never met one who couldn't learn when they were willing to try and be patient while I found ways to explain it to them, give analogies they understood to build on that understanding and build the confidence to do what they needed.
There have been plenty of real challenges but all were able to overcome the challenges with patience and openmindedness.
I appreciate your memory problems complicate things so an approach I would use would be to build those neural connections through repetition. This needs you to be patient as much as me.
There have been no lost causes and I don't believe for a minute that you are either.
it makes me more afraid of getting wrong and having people being cross and shouting at me for being stupid
From you counselling training, does this sound to you like your fear of failure and the shouting is making you avoid even trying? How would you approach this in a patient if you were the counseller.
I really believe you are capable of these things if you are willing to find the right teacher and work at it. If you don't want to learn then this is also fine but it is more authentic to say "I won't rather than "I can't".
On further reflection I think a lot of the stuff about tech has got entwined with cPTSD and I'm unconciously expecting a beating for not being able to do it properly. Maybe this is a button I can disconnect, but it will take time.
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Lotus one of the ptoblems with things like smartphones is that theres an increasing societal expectation that you have one and know how to use it.
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You know one of the things that makes me feel disconnected is lack of real shops, I used to enjoy window shopping, just looking at possibilities, internet browsing just isn't the same, there's to many suggestions, cookie consents, stuff coming up thats nothing like my search criteria. When I do look for something I find I have no idea how big something is, because its just a picture of that thing, with no context, with old fashioned paper catalogues you'd have a picture with everything on that page put together in a mocked up room, I get fed up of having to keep getting a tape measure out only to find the thing I liked would be good in a dolls house, but not in my living room.
I'd advice someone to find the right teacher, which is easier said than done, or to see a psychologist, again easier said than done. Maybe if I had someone with the patience, who didn't confuse me by telling 6 different ways to do the same thing, I'd get on better. If I had teachers who could cope with me having panic attacks and melt downs I'd get on better. Would you not fear failure and stop trying if you were shouted at or laughed at and made fun of? Is that not a reasonable repsonse to adverse stimuli, after all if I was being encouraged to repeatedly stick my fingers in an electric socket people would tell me to get new friends!
I'm sorry if my comments hurt, but your comments have hurt me, I've had loads of people tell me the same things as you and they're all miles away and the likelihood that we'll ever meet are minute, let alone meet for long enough for them to be able to teach me anything technologically useful
I spent about 4 months last year, it could have been longer, trying to find help for my technoklutzness, nobody really understood let alone helped, I was passed from pillar to post, by various organisations, the ones that actually bothered to answer that is and many didn't. It all ended with two women sat in my kitchen with a lap top to show me which smart phone I could buy at either the loca tesco or argos. I wrote to our MP, our Sennedd member not repsonse I had a response form the MP's staff, asking me to clariy what I wanted as they didn't understand.
We have a woman who comes to the local library once a week who teaches people tech, I saw her and she has no understanding of ASC, memory problems or anything like that and ended up telling me I was better off without a smart phone as I wasn't getting it for me, I was getting it for other people, often companies who only use apps and fb.
I honestly don't know what I'd use social media for, I have seen fb and really can't see the attraction of it
I think another part of the problem is that some people around me like me being a technoklutz and will subtley sabotage me when I ask for help, it bolsters people ego's when someone is bad at something others find easy, they like it because they can say to themselves and eachother 'at least I'm not as bad as TheCatWoman'.
