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del677 Offline
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Join Date: December 28th 2016

Re: Anxiety with people - September 9th 2017, 05:06 AM

How did your first week go?

Fascinating you identify as a geek (I do too, same problem), and there tend to be more male than female geeks, and you're in a class of 30 with only 5 males!

So the odds would appear to be against you if you want to meet a man, but that's just an appearance. I was in that situation once and I ended up becoming friends half of the other gender anyway. (Unfortunately, just friends...)

I do identify with the only feeling comfortable around my own kind phenomena. I ended up discovering I was comfortable around autistic students. They weren't very bright at all, but half of them were very happy and made good friends.

I later discovered I was autistic too, just on the other end of the spectrum where the super bright nerdy intelligent people are.

I'm not sure what "autistic" means. It seems to be a catch-all category for anyone who isn't "normal", whatever that is.

Then it seems weird to have an autistic "spectrum", with super bright intelligent college students on one end, and super not-bright retarded students on the other. So they came up with levels 1,2, & 3. Super bright college students are "high functioning", or level 1, and the other end is level 3.

But we both speak the same language, which apparently isn't the language "normal" people speak. I thought since we all speak English we spoke the same language. Apparently that's not quite right. Actually, it's a different "culture" we come from, and we use the language differently. I have no problem communicating with other autistic people because we speak the same language. "Normal" people have no problem talking with other "normal" people because they speak the same language. Subtle problems ensue when autistic people talk with "normal" people. The "normal" people get upset, and think we're being rude, when we have no such intention and think we're being nice. They just don't understand our language, and I don't understand theirs.

A few quick test questions though to screen for problems: 1. Do you see "information" in other people's eyes? 2. Does the term "nonverbal communication" sound like an oxymoron? 3. Does the term "unwritten rules" sound like an oxymoron?

Anyway that's why I learned I needed to study "Body Language", because apparently normal people use that a lot, whereas I'm oblivious to it. Someone could give me an "icy cold stare" and I wouldn't notice. (Still sounds like an impossible thing for someone to do. It's some sort of metaphorical thing where ice is cold. It's like asking if I can hear the color red.)

The good news is there's probably several people out there who like you already. They may even be trying to communicate that to you using that "nonverbal communication" stuff. I had to learn what to look for.

Us geeks have it hard. Sure we do great academically, but the flip side of that is we suffer socially. We do with ease what other people find difficult, and we find difficult what other people do with ease. Because it's easy and intuitive for them, they don't realize it's not intuitive for us.

Best wishes! Thank you for writing!