Comments on: Why I never expect to be right

By: Ballastexistenz » Post Topic » Why I almost didn’t paint.

Ballastexistenz » Post Topic » Why I almost didn’t paint. — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 19:44:49 +0000

[…] that not only shouldn’t I (paint/write music/etc) but that I shouldn’t even try. (See Why I never expect to be right.) But I am. I’m also intimidated in situations where I’m in a group of people and only […]

By: Culture, how we view human difference, and abuse « Urocyon's Meanderings

Culture, how we view human difference, and abuse « Urocyon's Meanderings — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 07:37:33 +0000

[…] Searching for something else entirely, I was interested to run across some material on cultural competence in health care. What I found, looking into that further, varied rather a lot in levels of understanding (less than surprising)–not to mention trying to cover a whole continent’s worth of cultures in one piece, as opposed to, say, treating the Hmong separately–but some of the stuff really helped illuminate my own experiences, and those of people close to me. It was good to find some of the things I’d observed explicitly written down by “experts”. Especially in the face of a history of invalidation and gaslighting which led me to identify very strongly indeed with Amanda’s Why I never expect to be right. […]

By: j

Fri, 01 Jan 2010 09:41:10 +0000

It’s definitely possible for people labeled as gifted during childhood to get that kind of feeling. It’s a label that most people associate with “You’re exceptionally smart and talented, and likely to know better than the average person”, but that’s not always the message in the environment, and not everyone picks it up even when the people around are trying to convey that. Being labeled as gifted or a prodigy can lead to a number of different things, not all of them good.

By: ballastexistenz

ballastexistenz — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 02:12:36 +0000

That’s interesting, I didn’t know that. I personally didn’t need to intentionally sabotage anything — my brain just started melting at a certain point and I ended up crashing pretty hard both cognitively and emotionally and being in no shape for school for several years. When the same thing happened after my next attempt at formal education (a few years later), I realized more quickly what was going on and pulled out before I could repeat history again, although that again wasn’t deliberate sabotage as much as basic safety. (But by that point I was realizing I couldn’t even keep up with a typical school career for someone of that age, let alone an advanced one. School and I just don’t mix, at all.)

By: Autism Nostrum

Autism Nostrum — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 22:46:05 +0000

People put a lot of subconscious (or overt) pressure on you to maintain this level of smartness that you didn’t choose and can’t control. Lots of gifted kids feel like the got accolades they don’t deserve. Some of them intentionally sabotage their school careers to take the pressure off.

By: Ettina

Ettina — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 16:34:26 +0000

Even fairly ‘standard’ gifted kids can end up thinking that way. I remember hearing about a girl with a profoundly gifted IQ who thought she was stupid because when given assignments, she’d have lots of questions about how to do the assignments while the other kids just started working right away. She thought the other kids had figured out the answers to those questions on their own, when in fact they hadn’t even thought of the questions.

By: Athena

Athena — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 21:03:21 +0000

You are able to…….um………….articulate things that others cannot. I feel that way quite often when reading your posts…….of course I can’t tell you which ones…..don’t remember……but it doesn’t even matter. I hate the phrase “speak for others”……..hence the “um” and ellipsis points above…..but……you can do that, without intending to or specifically trying to (not that you would try that, anyway.)

What I’m trying and probably failing to explain is a one-way secret…..

The secret is something like……hey, you articulated something I feel very often but can’t write about.

The person reading your posts knows the secret……but you don’t. That’s the best analogy I can come up with……..I have no idea what intersectionality is……but it kinda sounds like a secret to outsiders or whatever. A one way secret.

Athena

By: Urocyon

Urocyon — Tue, 08 Dec 2009 04:18:58 +0000

A lot of this sounds way too familiar.

I only became more convinced that I was uniquely defective and destined for some sort of hellish life of the sort that I knew ‘had to happen’ to people who didn’t measure up.

*nods* Even once you realize these patterns of thinking aren’t helping you in any way, it’s hard to let go of them completely. They’ll jump up unexpectedly and bite you, when you think you’ve developed a much better sense of worth.

I’ve been trying just to let this kind of thought pattern go away on its own; it may keep cropping up, but I don’t have to keep engaging with it and helping it hurt me. (This works a lot better than trying to directly counter thoughts, for me.)

Feeling like (a) I don’t have anything to say that other people would be interested in, and/or (b) they certainly wouldn’t be interested in the way I say it, helped keep me from writing much for a long time. Knowing that this is BS–even if the conclusions seem logical in a way, based on some other people’s reactions–helps, but doesn’t do away with all the nagging doubts.

I have also really appreciated your writing. You come up with analogies and ways of describing patterns which are refreshingly different, and help me to look at things from a different angle.

By: Rachel

Rachel — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 17:25:01 +0000

I know that feeling of “everyone knows better than I do,” as though they’ve got the secret that I keep missing. As you say, it’s a deeply ingrained and unconscious response. I can analyze the response and feel passionate anger that anyone should have to deal with it, but the feeling remains. For me, the response derives from the fact that living an autistic life is a process of living in paradox: I have certain abilities that the larger culture values, but they’re often not abilities that I value; and the abilities that I value are often completely off the radar of the larger culture. So I wonder what’s wrong with me that a) I don’t value what everyone else is cheering about and b) the stuff I do value is nearly invisible to your average observer.

If it helps any, whenever I read your posts, I think, “I wish I could think and write as incisively as Amanda does,” and I feel like my writing is just pablum by comparison. Then, I realize that I’ve just bought into the idea of a hierarchy amongst autistic people (blech), which leads to me believe that I’m hardly at square one in my thinking, which leads to me to realize that I’ve again bought into the idea of a hierarchy amongst autistic people (blech). And on it goes.

By: Alexander Cheezem

Alexander Cheezem — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 05:02:41 +0000

For what it’s worth, I find your writings to be tremendously insightful. I view this as a firm testiment to the general idea that all of our various perspectives are valuable — no matter how different they are.

Or, in other words, you see things that I don’t, I see things that you don’t, and we all benefit from learnig about the other’s viewpoint.