Nobody has really answered my question.
I tried to address your original question, which was:
why are aspie forums so focused around reassuring other aspies?
And my response was that there's a difference between blind reassurance (which I
don't think we do here so much) and validation (which I think is much more helpful and
is a big part of AC).
In my personal experience, this aspie forum (the only one I currently participate in) focuses more on validation in general, although there are some posters who throw out the blind reassurances without really knowing the person they're talking about. I think those comments are kind of useless, but so long as it's not harmful, seems like it's better just to let it be and not make a fuss over it. Those things certainly aren't against any rules, and are meant to be helpful, not hurtful.
I am against aspies making snide comments about "clingy" or "emotional" NTs as they do so.
However,
this was one of your comments, not a question, and so I didn't respond to it. Although I do think other posters responded to it pretty well (like King_Oni).
So, may I make a comment about your posts in general? What I hear from you, over the past few weeks of your posting here, is someone who genuinely wants to connect and is looking for similarly-minded people. And yet it sounds like you've been hurt and ostracized so many times in the past, that you tend to jump to the conclusion that you're being ignored, attacked, or deeply misinterpreted on a pretty regular basis.
To offer a little validation (
)...it makes sense to me that you would interpret people's posts that way when that's the bulk of your past experience. However, other than an occasional exception from a volatile member or two (most of these types don't stick around long anyway), I haven't noticed any of the regular members here truly attacking you at all. Honestly, I've been a little baffled at some of the things you said were hurtful/confusing/offensive to you. I understand how it's easy to be hurt again when you haven't yet healed from previous experiences. But I'd like to suggest that perhaps you'll experience this board and the regular members here much differently if you can try to interpret things that are said in the
best possible light rather than the worst.
This isn't to say that your perceptions don't matter, because they do. The way you react to people says a lot about what's going on with you and the ways in which you're struggling and hurting. But especially in online forums, where you can't see body language or facial expressions or hear tones of voices (which I realize is difficult for most of us anyway, but even more so when we get
none of that information to work with), most of the time our interpretations of people's posts say a lot more about
us than they do about the people writing the posts. It's very, very easy to project our own issues onto others in these situations (and that is true about
all of us here, not just you).
This board has been a sanctuary for many aspies, and I've seen many NTs welcomed into discussions here as well, over the past year+ that I've been here. That doesn't mean I haven't gotten my feelings hurt a few times--I have. But that's the nature of relationships. We're real people, with real flaws, and real needs that very often aren't getting met in our real lives. Nearly everyone here comes to the board with deep wounds, longing to find others who "get" what life is like for us. That doesn't mean NTs don't also have problems and needs and wounds--they most certainly do. But their experience of life tends to be very different than ours, and it's a breath of fresh air to have found a group of people where I can say, "Loneliness sucks...big time," and they immediately get what I'm talking about on a very familiar level in a way that non-aspies just can't understand.
At the same time, NTs struggling with cancer, for example, have very real needs that I don't get at all. NTs struggling as single parents, NTs living in deep poverty, NTs recovering from strokes, NTs trying to quit smoking...I don't belong to any of those groups so I don't "get" their struggles, but those problems are very real, and the people facing them are worthy of my respect and compassion. I hope they each have boards similar to this one where they can go and make a simple comment, and be surrounded by others who immediately understand their experiences.
This board happens to be focused on aspie issues. I'm a member of another board that is focused on PTSD-related issues, and there are many of those issues that most of you here wouldn't have a clue what I'm talking about (although, sadly, I realize there are many here who
would). I spent several years on a pregnancy/parenting board for parents of young kids. Members there had a lot of the same issues as I did at that time (like how to get enough sleep at night), but I've since left the board because I just don't need that kind of support right now. That doesn't make me "less-than" because I'm no longer a member of the board. Although...there are posters on nearly every group-support type of board that have an "us vs. them" mentality. I just choose to ignore those types of people. It's a problem with them, not with the people they're reacting to.
So anyway, all of that to say, I hope you can find your niche here. I understand what you're saying about wanting to get stuff off your chest. And some of that process means finding a way to express those thoughts that aren't easily interpretable as being divisive. I get that dilemma, really, I do. I hope this post doesn't come across in a way that is hurtful to you at all. I greatly respect the fact that, as you've said, reassurance and constant over-comforting is not particularly helpful. So I hope you can hear my heart in this...that I'm trying to reach out to you in a way that perhaps can be helpful to you, not to put you down, but to encourage you to maybe try and see this from a different perspective. I think you bring a lot of great insights. But those insights might be more helpful if you can find ways to manage your own reactivity a bit more.
I really hope this comes across in the way I mean for it to...in a friendly, supportive way. You seem like an intelligent, insightful person, and I truly hope you stick around.
