Nerdy, Shy, and Socially Inappropriate: A User Guide to an Asperger Life
Cynthia KimSözler ve Alıntılar
aynen gardaşım
I’m more comfortable making eye contact with people I know very well or hardly at all. People who I know somewhat (professors, fellow students, business acquaintances) are the ones who are the most difficult to look in the eyes.
When I experience discomfort with eye contact, it’s more than simply feeling awkward or socially uncomfortable. I literally start to feel that if I look into the person’s eyes for even one second longer I’ll have to flee the room. The classic “fight or flight” symptoms suggest that my brain is perceiving the sustained eye contact as a threat. Why is this? And why does it happen most strongly with people who I consider acquaintances but not strangers or intimates?
Facial expressions are the same—I can read the basics. I can decipher the basic emotions like happiness, sadness, surprise, anger, and confusion. More subtle expressions—those that rely heavily on the use of the eyes and the area around the eyes to understand—are much harder.
The people around me are smiling and I have either a blank look or an uncomfortable, when-is-this-going-to-be-over expression. Occasionally, it’s obvious I’m faking a smile, which only makes me look like I’m in pain.
Where other adults seem to rely on gut reactions and intuitive responses, I rely on a catalog of past experiences for navigating social interactions. I look for patterns and test out communication strategies like a scientist conducting an experiment.
People are supposed to master self-care as a child or, at the latest, as a teenager. Not being able to accomplish basic self-care tasks consistently on a daily basis—and worse not noticing or seeming to care—suggests a certain lack of maturity. A lack of common sense, of intellectual development, or even of self-awareness. If you can’t manage to brush and floss every day, how on earth will you manage complex tasks like paying bills, driving, or getting to work on time—let alone caring for another person, particularly a helpless little person?
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My lack of expression is flat or blunted affect, which means that a person displays reduced verbal or nonverbal emotional expressiveness. Some signs of blunted affect are a monotonous tone of voice, a lack of facial expressions or a lack of gestures. Often people with blunted affect respond to emotional situations in unexpected ways or have facial expressions that don’t match their feelings. This can cause others to incorrectly assume they are bored, hostile, mad, sad, depressed, or “spaced out” at inappropriate times.