The movie Brooklyn, Aspergers Syndrome and the Oddness of Normal People

[JimBowie1958]

Aspergers Syndrome is a weird thing, literally. It is an affliction that puts a spin on the Aspies perception of the world enough to make us odd, but not enough to make us evolutionally disposed toward extinction. We are not disabled, we Aspies just see the world through a different mental lens, especially people.

What are these afflictions? Well the biggest one, from my experience, is that we obsess on things and we tend to not realize that most of the rest of the world only dabbles in a topic when in conversation, and do not exchange long expositions. (Those must be tears of joy from realizing all the insights I have been sharing for the last 45 minutes; lucky man!)

The second is possibly the cause of the first; Mind Blindness. We do not read peoples facial expressions well, particularly the eyes. I tend to look at peoples mouths when I talk to them, as it helps me to understand what they are saying and it gives me more information than looking at their eyes. The opposite is also true; we tend to give off facial expressions that are out of sync with what people normally associate with an emotion. For example, when I get tense, I tend to smile and laugh and people read that as confidence, and it has served me well, but they totally misread me.

There is more about Aspies, but the movie Brooklyn is useful to illustrate it more, if you have seen it. It is a great drama, IMO, about an Irish young woman who journeys to America to find a new life and she does, through hard work and falling in love and marriage. But she goes back home to Ireland a polished new woman, full of confidence and optimism, and she attracts the attention of many of the people in her home town, including a rich young bachelor who wants to marry her. The dramatic tension is thick and it is a very interesting story to me.

But for me, I was screaming inside 'Dont do it! Dont ditch your husband; you made vows!' Honesty is a genetic predisposition for Aspies and liars are just outrageous to most of us. Anyone that would break a vow is just a low, low person I do not want to associate with, especially people we like. My 'normal' friends that have seen the movie were the opposite, saying that when she returned to Ireland she was her true confident self, unhindered by her shyness and ignorance and she should have left her false life in America to stay in her home and be the person she truly was.

Bullshit, was all could think as I tactfully withheld my full feelings. This is why normal people astonish me. Why is it OK to break oaths? Why is it not normal to discuss issues in depth for hours at a time? Why is it so important to guess what people are thinking by trying to read the expression in their eyes? Why dont they just state what they think?

Some scientists think that Autism and Aspergers may be a vestigial behavior from our Neanderthal past. They say that an Aspergers person is not reading normal expressions well because they do not have the genetic linkage that modern humans normal have, and they think like an archaic human, a Neanderthal, basically. It kind of makes sense, but it gives me a new take on some stereotypes of Neanderthals. lol.

All I know is that I no longer assume that other people are thinking like I do, and so I dont trust the way I react in my mind to what I consider doing; my reactions are not a reliable guide for me as I dont think like a normal person.. I have watched people for the past ten years, and emulated them, without really understanding why they do what they do.

My poor wife and children have had some hard times from me, not intentionally on my part, but I have often wondered why she was so irrational and yet all my friends were amazed at how intelligent she is, but then I would point out that she married me, so she couldnt be that smart, and that puts them in silent agreement. My children dont like being around me, but they put up with me because they like their Mom. IT sucks but it is true.

I dont wish I had known this earlier so much, as I dont know how different my life would be now, and I dont see my Aspergers as something to be cured. I am truly 'differently abled', like a color blind person who can see shades of color that normal sighted people dont, and they thus can spot people and animals in the woods under camouflage more easily.

So I wouldnt change my Aspergers if I could, but I do appreciate now the differences between me and Normal People. And you are OK, for the most part, most of the time.

 

[aaronleland]

I heard a great saying one day. If you've met one Aspie you've met one Aspie.

 

[Pogo]

Aspergers Syndrome is a weird thing, literally. It is an affliction that puts a spin on the Aspies perception of the world enough to make us odd, but not enough to make us evolutionally disposed toward extinction. We are not disabled, we Aspies just see the world through a different mental lens, especially people.

What are these afflictions? Well the biggest one, from my experience, is that we obsess on things and we tend to not realize that most of the rest of the world only dabbles in a topic when in conversation, and do not exchange long expositions. (Those must be tears of joy from realizing all the insights I have been sharing for the last 45 minutes; lucky man!)

The second is possibly the cause of the first; Mind Blindness. We do not read peoples facial expressions well, particularly the eyes. I tend to look at peoples mouths when I talk to them, as it helps me to understand what they are saying and it gives me more information than looking at their eyes. The opposite is also true; we tend to give off facial expressions that are out of sync with what people normally associate with an emotion. For example, when I get tense, I tend to smile and laugh and people read that as confidence, and it has served me well, but they totally misread me.

There is more about Aspies, but the movie Brooklyn is useful to illustrate it more, if you have seen it. It is a great drama, IMO, about an Irish young woman who journeys to America to find a new life and she does, through hard work and falling in love and marriage. But she goes back home to Ireland a polished new woman, full of confidence and optimism, and she attracts the attention of many of the people in her home town, including a rich young bachelor who wants to marry her. The dramatic tension is thick and it is a very interesting story to me.

But for me, I was screaming inside 'Dont do it! Dont ditch your husband; you made vows!' Honesty is a genetic predisposition for Aspies and liars are just outrageous to most of us. Anyone that would break a vow is just a low, low person I do not want to associate with, especially people we like. My 'normal' friends that have seen the movie were the opposite, saying that when she returned to Ireland she was her true confident self, unhindered by her shyness and ignorance and she should have left her false life in America to stay in her home and be the person she truly was.

Bullshit, was all could think as I tactfully withheld my full feelings. This is why normal people astonish me. Why is it OK to break oaths? Why is it not normal to discuss issues in depth for hours at a time? Why is it so important to guess what people are thinking by trying to read the expression in their eyes? Why dont they just state what they think?

Some scientists think that Autism and Aspergers may be a vestigial behavior from our Neanderthal past. They say that an Aspergers person is not reading normal expressions well because they do not have the genetic linkage that modern humans normal have, and they think like an archaic human, a Neanderthal, basically. It kind of makes sense, but it gives me a new take on some stereotypes of Neanderthals. lol.

All I know is that I no longer assume that other people are thinking like I do, and so I dont trust the way I react in my mind to what I consider doing; my reactions are not a reliable guide for me as I dont think like a normal person.. I have watched people for the past ten years, and emulated them, without really understanding why they do what they do.

My poor wife and children have had some hard times from me, not intentionally on my part, but I have often wondered why she was so irrational and yet all my friends were amazed at how intelligent she is, but then I would point out that she married me, so she couldnt be that smart, and that puts them in silent agreement. My children dont like being around me, but they put up with me because they like their Mom. IT sucks but it is true.

I dont wish I had known this earlier so much, as I dont know how different my life would be now, and I dont see my Aspergers as something to be cured. I am truly 'differently abled', like a color blind person who can see shades of color that normal sighted people dont, and they thus can spot people and animals in the woods under camouflage more easily.

So I wouldnt change my Aspergers if I could, but I do appreciate now the differences between me and Normal People. And you are OK, for the most part, most of the time.

I've never put much thought into an association between Asperger's and honesty, but they're both traits I have, so it's food for thought I guess. Thanks for these candid thoughts.

I never really get that involved in movies to the point of trying to influence the character, so I wouldn't have had that particular train of thought, so perhaps the illustration is lost on me, but I get the general point.

 

[Pogo]

I heard a great saying one day. If you've met one Aspie you've met one Aspie.

I don't get it.

 

[JimBowie1958]

I heard a great saying one day. If you've met one Aspie you've met one Aspie.

I don't get it.

Aspies are different from each other as much as they are from normal people.

I have met several other Aspies, and none of them got along with other Aspies any better than they got along with normal people.

 

[aaronleland]

I heard a great saying one day. If you've met one Aspie you've met one Aspie.

I don't get it.

You can't pigeon hole us. We are all different. That's why they refer to autism as being on a spectrum.

 

[Pogo]

Uh... Okay.

 

[aaronleland]

The DSM won't even use the word Aspergers anymore. They will only use ASD. Autism Spectrum Disorder,

 

[JimBowie1958]

The DSM won't even use the word Aspergers anymore. They will only use ASD. Autism Spectrum Disorder,

I still dont think that Aspergers is just another autism disorder, as we dont have many of the classic autism symptoms like throwing hysterical fits, present company excepted of course.

 

[JimBowie1958]

Another few observations....

I find that I love movies because the actors make their emotions observable, because it is theater and that is their job. Normally, people are more hidden with their emotions, and that is what misleads me. Mind Blindness is not 100% blind, but it is on a gray scale. For me, I can pick up on obvious expressions, but still miss the subtle ones fairly consistently. Subtle sarcasm is my worst pitfall as I tend to take people literally and when they suppress the normal flags used for sarcasm, change in tone, facial expressions, etc, I take the sarcasm literally. This is a further affect of Mind Blindness, and one symptom of it, I think, is to crave movies where an Aspie like me can feel more comfortable in reading peoples faces.

I have a preference for 'order just in case' behavior, is what I call it anyway. I keep my bills in ascending order in my wallet so that I am less like to confuse bills. An aside, here for a moment, I left a tip once to a waitress, while talking to her, and accidentally pulled out a $20 instead of the $5 I intended. She really seemed appreciative, so I let it go. I noticed I got much better service at that little diner after that, and the experience there was so pleasant, I have decided that a 50% tip is something that achieves two purposes; it discourages me from eating out too much, and it spreads good karma. Seriously. When I treat people generously, it comes back to me, and people put up with this lame ass Aspire much more readily.

Some things I prefer to keep orderly and some things I do not. It tends to be that the things I most love and care for I keep in good order, but it is not an involuntary response entirely. It is just a good feeling vrs a worrisome feeling that something is not right, not ordered as it should be. Since it bothers me, I just keep these important things ordered.

I can empathize with basic emotions like love, hate, humor, anger, affection, jealousy, pride, and so forth, but I am not so good at other more developed emotions like the subtle sarcasm mentioned above or nuanced preferences that normal people often have for absolutely no reason. I have given up ever understanding these things and there are probably others that exist but I dont know the word for because it just does not matter to me at all. If I cant observe it, why word it?

 

[Pogo]

The DSM won't even use the word Aspergers anymore. They will only use ASD. Autism Spectrum Disorder,

I still dont think that Aspergers is just another autism disorder, as we dont have many of the classic autism symptoms like throwing hysterical fits, present company excepted of course.

I agree. I may be good with words and have auralgraphic memory but I don't see those as autistic traits.

 

[Pogo]

Another few observations....

I find that I love movies because the actors make their emotions observable, because it is theater and that is their job. Normally, people are more hidden with their emotions, and that is what misleads me. Mind Blindness is not 100% blind, but it is on a gray scale. For me, I can pick up on obvious expressions, but still miss the subtle ones fairly consistently. Subtle sarcasm is my worst pitfall as I tend to take people literally and when they suppress the normal flags used for sarcasm, change in tone, facial expressions, etc, I take the sarcasm literally. This is a further affect of Mind Blindness, and one symptom of it, I think, is to crave movies where an Aspie like me can feel more comfortable in reading peoples faces.

I have a preference for 'order just in case' behavior, is what I call it anyway. I keep my bills in ascending order in my wallet so that I am less like to confuse bills. An aside, here for a moment, I left a tip once to a waitress, while talking to her, and accidentally pulled out a $20 instead of the $5 I intended. She really seemed appreciative, so I let it go. I noticed I got much better service at that little diner after that, and the experience there was so pleasant, I have decided that a 50% tip is something that achieves two purposes; it discourages me from eating out too much, and it spreads good karma. Seriously. When I treat people generously, it comes back to me, and people put up with this lame ass Aspire much more readily.

Some things I prefer to keep orderly and some things I do not. It tends to be that the things I most love and care for I keep in good order, but it is not an involuntary response entirely. It is just a good feeling vrs a worrisome feeling that something is not right, not ordered as it should be. Since it bothers me, I just keep these important things ordered.

I can empathize with basic emotions like love, hate, humor, anger, affection, jealousy, pride, and so forth, but I am not so good at other more developed emotions like the subtle sarcasm mentioned above or nuanced preferences that normal people often have for absolutely no reason. I have given up ever understanding these things and there are probably others that exist but I dont know the word for because it just does not matter to me at all. If I cant observe it, why word it?

I've never cared for movies much at all but I get much more out of what you describe above in a play, most likely because it's real people as opposed to film. I have a thing for authenticity that way. Besides which, the standard Hollywood fare is so grossly overdone to the point of absurdity, I'd much sooner see a foreign film that at least has thought behind it rather than simple appeal to base emotions.

As far as order my physical world is relative chaos, but I attribute that to (a) family upbringing patterns and (b) a notorious lack of patience, and/or a will to spontaneity -- harvesting the energy of the moment is paramount. I think that's a personal trait though, not related to Asperger's. On the other hand I keep meticulous order in the digital world -- any file on a computer is painstakingly in its place, and if I forget where an old file is I can easily find it by recreating the same filing process. The conversion of paper to digital for stuff like bank statements was a godsend.

One thing I think Asperger's does impart is affinity for music and language. I have auralgraphic memory, meaning when I hear a sound I record it to memory in every tiny exact detail; it took years to realize not everybody hears that way. So I could say I have indirect perfect pitch, meaning I can remember what a properly tuned violin sounds like and that memory gives me G, D A and E, from which any other notes may be extrapolated.

When I tune say, a 12-string guitar I can not only hear the beat frequency between two near-notes, I can see it. When I mentioned that to my Aspergian niece she already knew, and let me know they come in colors too. So she out-Aspied me on that.