I’ve been thinking lately about all the ways in which I’ve learned to navigate the world as an honest person. While being straightforward has cost me social points at various times in my life, it’s also engendered trust in friends and colleagues, and I value my honesty very highly. My biggest challenges have revolved around the mistaken assumption that other people are as honest as I am. In the world in which we live, too much trust can have negative consequences and, over the course of my life, I’ve figured out many ways to protect myself. Some strategies came to me very early on, and others became clear only after life had dealt me some harsh experiences. I’ll share my lessons learned.
1. A person who wants to separate me from my money is interested in my money first and in my welfare second (or third, or fourth, or fifth, or tenth, all the way down to not at all). Now, I realize that I’m overstating here, since a therapist, for instance, may care equally about me and about getting paid. Proven exceptions aside, I don’t think it does any harm to take the rule as axiomatic. I began living out this approach fairly early on, care of my father, who was quite suspicious of people’s motives when it came to money. As a result, I’ve never been scammed, not even as a very innocent and overwhelmed young woman. Getting older only makes me more cautious about money and, while I may be overly cautious at times, too much caution does no harm and is infinitely preferable to an overabundance of trust.
2. Reducing my attachment to material goods protects me against buying things that someone tells me I absolutely must have in order to be happy, strong, safe, attractive, or loved. I figured out this one pretty early on as well. I’m very fortunate that I am just as happy looking at beautiful things in a shop window as in my own home. Moreover, I must have been a scavenger in a past life, because most of what I own comes from thrift stores and free boxes. At my age, I have what I need, and frankly, I’m more concerned with a) keeping my living space free of clutter and b) saving as much money as possible for my daughter, stepchildren, and godson to inherit. As a result, I have an absolute aversion to anyone peddling objects of desire mislabeled as necessities. People who try are wasting their breath with me.
3. Trusting my intuition will never steer me wrong. I may not be able to use non-verbal cues to modulate a conversation, but my intuition about people is excellent. When an unsafe person walks into a room, I feel it viscerally. It’s an aspect of my acute sensitivity that I value highly. I have been in situations in which I knew a person was unsafe, but everyone else was oblivious. Months or years later, the person showed his true colors, and everyone ran around feeling betrayed, yelling, “How could we have known?” My only response was “How could you not have known?”
4. When something doesn’t add up, I move on. Along with my baseline intuition, I’ve learned to trust my perceptions when I’m faced with a person whose sales pitch or sad personal story just doesn’t seem to hold together. My logical mind comes in very handy here, because many folks rely on their charming personalities to put one over on people and aren’t paying much attention to the logical consistency of what they’re saying and doing. It always surprises me when someone tries to charm me, because my attention is nearly always focused on understanding the logic of what the person is saying, even when the logic is absent or faulty. As a result, I can usually pick out the hidden flaw, and I don’t just pass it off and try to forget about it. I pay attention to it.
5. I depend on what people do rather than on what they say. It’s taken me many, many years to learn this lesson. Words are cheap. Actions are telling. Although my first inclination is to believe what someone tells me (after all, doesn’t it just complicate things to lie?), I’ve realized that my impulse toward honesty is not an impulse that most people share, and I step back. Way, way back. So, when someone says, “Hey, let’s get together,” I don’t get all happy and excited about it until we actually get together. If someone says, “I really care about you,” I don’t get all warm and fuzzy about it until the person actually does something to show his or her care for me.
Until I figured out that words are only as good as the actions that back them up, I let my emotions get pulled all over the place by the things that other people wrote or said. As you can imagine, my life is much more serene these days.
© 2010 by Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg
“I may not be able to use non-verbal cues to modulate a conversation, but my intuition about people is excellent. When an unsafe person walks into a room, I feel it viscerally.”
-You are so lucky! In addition to being hopeless with non-verbal clues, I’m also really bad intuition-wise. One would think that according to the law of probabilities, I’m doomed at least to guess every once in a while. But no such luck. So now I have started addressing what my intuition tells me as if the exact opposite was true.
Clarissa, I wonder whether the violence in my childhood home, combined with my acute sensitivity, forced me to develop and trust my intuition. To stay safe, I had to learn to scope people out constantly and stay very aware of the energy in my environment. It’s possible that necessity, combined with innate sensitivity, produced a very good intuitive sense.
I’m with you on #4… That happened just recently, a “sad story” that everyone around me was pitying and boo hooing, and I’m thinking, “That doesn’t sound right to me.” I don’t like it when things don’t add up.
Also, I value my authenticity. I think that goes hand in hand with the honesty thing. I am always me (regardless of the coat). Some people don’t like that, others think it’s great. Anyway, I like it about myself and YOU!
Thanks for sharing your wisdom.
I love people who value authenticity, and I’ve learned to seek those people out. Maybe that’s why I started a blog.
Those are some good lessons to learn (and share). I usually have pretty good intuition about people, and have learned to trust it.
Yup. Learning to trust your intuition is key.
I can remember a time in my early twenties that I didn’t trust my intuition. I was walking down a crowded street, and I kept having the feeling that something wrong was going on behind me. I didn’t hear or see anything that came to consciousness; it was more an overall sense of being in danger. I dismissed it as the product of an overactive imagination. After all, I was thousands of miles away from my parents’ house and on a crowded public street in the middle of the day. What could happen?
All of a sudden, someone ran up behind me, straight into me, shoved his hand into my jacket pocket, grabbed my wallet, and fled.
After that, I learned that paying attention to my intuition was a full-time deal.
These are definitely great lessons for anyone to learn. I can relate to #5. I have learned not to be hopeful for something when it might not happen. Most people say things to be polite. If you ask me, I’d rather have honesty over politeness. I’ve caught myself many times blurting out what I think or feel. It easy to tell people what I think of them when they ask. A lot of people are taken aback by how blunt I am. I understand that I should apologize for being so blunt. But, it feels like I’m apologizing for being honest.
I’m with you, Erica: I’ll take honesty anytime, as long as it’s delivered with kindness and respect.
Thanks for sharing these valuable lessons.
It is amazing how many little lies, overlooking, and pretending something is other than it is, are actually required to foster that NT social cohesion, which is often valued above honesty.
If someone values honesty, and doesn’t want to play the game — well — they can always turn to Aspie/autie blogs!
Yes, you definitely get honesty from our blogs. Isn’t it refreshing?
“It is amazing how many little lies, overlooking, and pretending something is other than it is, are actually required to foster that NT social cohesion, which is often valued above honesty. ”
I totally agree. I havent got any firends that I go out with so I have started tagging along with my younger sister and when she goes to University get togethers etc. This has made me realise I am different and probably autistic.
I often find it confusing when a conversation goes along the lines of:
My sister : have you seen the advert about the ….event.
Other: oh no when is it what time do you have to be there
My sister: I will probably be going for 3 Oclock
Other: Oh great that will be such a good… event. See you there.
On discussing this with my sister I find that she doesnt intend to go, but she also believes that the other person doesnt intend to go. She usually works on the principle that if they did happen to go they would not remember she said she would go and if they didnt she could say she went. So confusing!
The other one is that my sister will have a 30minute conversation with someone and afterwards say I didnt like him, he was talking rubbish or lying but I just couldnt get away. I myself could not stand to have a conversation with someone if I knew they were telling lies. And I dont find it difficult to end a conversation, but apparently that makes me appear unfriendly.Id rather be unfriendly that pretend to believe lies.
Smith, I’ve had similar experiences. It really bothers me that the chronic use of words that mean nothing fails to register on most people’s radar as a problem, while the honesty of autistics is seen as some sort of failure to understand social norms.
Personally, I understand social norms quite well. I just don’t agree with some of them.
These all closely mirror my own hard-won and most valuable skills.
And what absolutely amazes me is how many non-autistic people seem not to know these things, or not to pay any attention to them. I was stunned to realize that my intuition about dangerous or untrustworthy people was far better than most other people’s. I can’t count the number of times I’ve wound up explaining these very things to NT’s. Do they not learn them because they never have to? Because they’re able to take their place in society and safety so much for granted, whereas I have to be acutely and constantly mindful of my own vulnerabilities?
Just tonight, I was hearing a story secondhand from my roommate, and something felt extremely fishy about it. When I pressed her on the details, it turned out that the very reason she believed it was the reason I knew it was BS.
chavisory, I think you’re absolutely right that many NTs don’t have to think about these things because they take their position in society for granted. Many years ago, I heard someone say that people in vulnerable minorities tend to do a lot more thinking about human interaction than people in the majority. It’s a necessary survival skill. If you can figure out what’s going on with people, you can protect yourself.
This is a really good set of lessons.
I was wondering though. Have you ever considered someone to be an “unsafe person” only to discover years later that they were really quite decent?
I was thinking that I have… but when I think about it…. they were all “decent for a number of years” until I accepted them. Then they became unsafe.
This has happened to me just once, when I had a seriously strong immediate dislike for someone but was proven wrong with time. It wasn’t exactly that he wasn’t “safe,” but he came off as a terrible chauvanist, in the way that controlling men often try to pass themselves off as just chivalrous.
Turned out that he was trying to pass himself off for straight. He’d grown up in a culture in which it was seriously unsafe to be gay, and that’s what the false machismo was about. Then he became one of my favorite coworkers. We were both sort of “undercover” together, in different ways.
Gavin, I can’t think of anyone I’ve misjudged as unsafe who turned out to be safe, though I’m always open to that possibility. I’d proceed with extreme caution, though, knowing that I’d have to be convinced by deeds rather than just words.
Being cautious and twitchy can make you seem cowardly in NT eyes. When I am accused of this, I always joke that evolution will favour the nervous over the foolishly brave. My ancestors are the ones who ran away before the sabretooth could catch them.
Jeremy, interesting that you mention running away. One of the lessons I learned from self-defense training is that the first thing one should do in any unsafe situation is to trust your intuition and run away. Sometimes, that’s not possible, but it’s always preferable to either staying rooted to the floor or physically fighting.
I’m also reminded of the scene from “Monty Python and the Holy Grail” where the knights are being attacked by the killer bunny (“It’s just a rabbit!”) and Arthur yells, “Run away! Run away!”
“words are only as good as the actions that back them up”
That’s so wise, and so hard for some of us NTs to learn.
I’ve referred to you in my latest post, hope hope you don’t mind.
bbsmum, your post is wonderful. I’m so glad that the presentation went well and that you’ll be giving it again for the benefit of those who missed it.
And it’s perfectly fine to refer to me! I’m honored.
gosh, it’s like reading about myself sometimes.
possibly related: i’ve realized lately that i’m intensely interested in ‘content’, and my patience
wanes once conversations and social interactions stray from anything with content, and into
fluffy social lubricant…
I am the same way. Bring on the content and I’m happy!
I’ve gotten much better with non-verbal cues. They don’t come naturally, but I can learn them by rote. My intuition is not that good, though.
I’m an NT lawyer and my intuition is not as good as most of you. I do know numbers 1, 4 and 5 but I do still struggle with number 2 – I love material things. Number 3 took me years to figure out. Thanks for steering me here, Rachel. Again, you give me such valuable information that I simply could get nowhere else. And you eased my mind about my own son’s vulnerability when he is older. I do know he will change as he grows but it is hard to see right now.
So glad you found the post helpful!
I was thinking today, as I watch my kid get ready for college, that you really haven’t known worry until you’ve become a parent. I used to worry about things like what college I’d go to, or what job to take, or whether I’d have friends, or whether I’d get married, or whether I’d have kids. And then I had a kid, and all those worries seemed absolutely inconsequential. Oh, the worry about the hurt and the vulnerability of a child! And, given the lack of support in our society for people with disabilities, having a disabled child only adds to the worry.
That’s my long-winded Aspie way of saying that you’re doing totally fine! Keep on going…