What do you guys think of this?

[umbrellabeach]

I had an interesting experience at work today.
I was doing my job and minding my own business putting tags on the shelves, and I turned into one aisle where there was a guy stocking, and he randomly started talking to me and asked me why I'm so quiet. Here's the gist of it:

Guy: Why are you so quiet?
Me: I don't know, why are other people so loud?
Guy: I see you walking around and you don't talk to anyone. And you look so mean.
Me: Haha, you must mean the makeup. That's actually my goal. It helps keep me from being harassed by customers.
Guy: Really, so you're a loner?
Me: Well, I like being alone. I could be alone for days and be happy.
Guy: Well yeah, but, don't you talk to people? Don't you have friends?
Me: Not really, unless my coworkers and brother's girlfriend count.
Guy: Really, why is that?
Me: I don't know, I just tend to drift away from people over time.
Guy: That might be partially your fault. You're not reaching out and keeping in touch with them. You know, if they're reaching out to you and you keep turning them down, they'll eventually stop because you don't seem interested enough.
Me: I think it's more that people get busy with school and jobs and stuff. It's not like I don't make any effort.
( I can't remember quite how, but the convo eventually turned to this: )
Guy: I've been through a lot of sh!t.
Me: So have I. (thinking of all the people who pretended to be friends but turned out to be horrible people)
Guy: But you know, you can't let that change you. If you start being all withdrawn and stop talking to people, you're letting those people have power over you. You're giving them the satisfaction of seeing you like this and thinking, 'I made her that way.' You can't be paranoid.
Me: I don't think that's true at all. This is who I am. I'm not paranoid about people. Just content alone.
Guy: And if you're a loudmouth, people won't want to mess with you. See, people who are quiet and loners attract people who are sick in the head, to mess with.
Me: That's why I have this personal alarm. And I haven't been harassed in over a month thanks to the makeup.
Guy: No, the makeup might intimidate average people, but not people who are sick in the head. Why don't you try being more outgoing - go down the aisles and talk to every customer.
Me: I get what you're saying, but I don't think I'm going to do that.
Guy: Just try it and let me know how it goes next time I see you.
Me: (looking at my watch) I'm supposed to be off now. I should go. (starts walking away)
Guy: Okay, see you later.

I'd never seen this guy before in my life and here he was making snap judgments about what I've been through and what I was like when I was younger (more about that below).

This conversation went on for like 15-20 minutes so this is just a summary.

I can't remember when, but at one point he asked me about school, and I said I was homeschooled. Then he was like, "Ah, so that's why you're like this."
But it's not. I have seven siblings and all of us were homeschooled. But I'm the only one who's like this (and the only one who's autistic, but I didn't tell this guy that part).

I also mentioned that I used to be more outgoing - but I meant for a few years when I was a younger teen and felt accepted in youth group, before it all fell apart. But even before then I was still an introvert and I've always been known for being "the quiet one." (He didn't give me a chance to explain this and I was too "on the spot" anyway.) Basically the only change that's taken place since the crap I've been through has been needing proof that people are trustworthy before I open up to them (and enjoying my alone time that much more). And I consider that to be a positive thing; a valuable lesson to have learned. I don't think people should have to lay their souls bare for the world to see and pick at if they're not comfortable with it.

I also mentioned that I'm an introvert, and explained what it means (along with extrovert). Upon mention of the word "introvert," he said,

"Oh yeah, I've heard that word before."

Snort.

 

[Gritches]

What do I think of it? I think you have an impressive amount of patience. If the rest of the conversation went the same way as the transcript you wrote out, with this guy being socially aggressive and making overt efforts to keep you on the backfoot, then the ironic thing is that he's actually one of those "sick people" he defined so well. Indeed, if the rest of it followed the same general tune, then he spent 15-20 minutes licking you like a "Psychological-Gratification-and-Validation-of-my-Fragile-Sense-of-Self"-flavored lollipop (it's the treat that has psychologists and dentists alike jumping for joy). Though he was right about one thing: the makeup didn't scare him away.

That's the broadstrokes of what I think of it, but since it's 1:30 AM, I'm wired like a Christmas tree, and because I see an opportunity to make an analysis/over-analysis I can be reasonably certain of thanks to you posting ample amounts of good data, I'm going to do...that. Colon:

It's requisite to understand the "why" of what generally motivates people to do what they do. Many would say "survival" and they're not wrong, but in a civilization where physical survival is a minimal concern at best what is much more prominent is psychological survival; specifically, the need to preserve both one's conceptions of the world as well as their conceptions of themselves (aka a sense of self, and as a colloquial bastardization of the concept, "self-esteem").

To every need there is a motivational mechanism which ensures that the need is met, and for the aforementioned two needs the mechanism of motivation is called Cognitive Dissonance. Cognitive Dissonance is to the psyche what pain is to the body, in essence. This pain is experienced under a few different conditions, but in this context it happens when we perceive with our senses a piece of information that clashes with what we believe to be true about the world or ourselves.

The key there is "believe to be true". Understand that we don't actually know one single damn thing, rather we believe things to be true, for reasons. Beliefs like "2+2=4" are pretty safe because we can do the math on our fingers and the result will be the same every time; they're readily verifiable by empirical means. Beliefs that are much more fragile, however, live in the world of the abstract, such as "I am a good person" or "I am attractive". It's those more fragile types of beliefs that make up one's conceptions of the world and self.

It's the fragility and significance of those two systems of belief that makes them particularly vulnerable to experiencing Cognitive Dissonance, by virtue of such beliefs being more like opinions in nature. For example, if someone believes that "you can't let others change you, if you do you're letting them have power over you, and then they'll look at you and certainly be smug in their triumph over you," etc but starts to have self-doubts about the unshakable, perfect truth of that philosophy, they will have caused themselves a bit of Cognitive Dissonance.

Just as you pull your hand back very quickly upon the touching of a hot stove, your psyche cannot tolerate extended periods of Cognitive Dissonance and will do absolutely anything to reduce or eliminate it, by any means necessary. A few options exist to do so: change your belief (rare), justify your belief, or ignore/deny the conflicting information that's causing the CD.

With the "you can't let others change you" example, he justified his belief in two different ways. First, he attempted to justify it via adding a new cognition by posing it to you, expecting you to dumbly agree with him as social convention dictates and thus add a new cognition to shore up the belief ("another person agreed with my belief, that's one more to the evidence pile that it's true").

To his surprise, you broke the almighty social rules and disagreed with him, causing his CD to intensify. He's confused and a bit desperate at this point so he starts scrambling and while ignoring what you say he tries a few more times (the next few things he says), hoping something will stick and that his strategy will work like it's supposed to and does every other time - the whole thing being sort of like when you push a button on a remote and nothing happens, so you push it a few more times hoping it'll work because you know you're out of AA batteries.

It seems he realized that wasn't going to work, so he moved the goalposts and justified his belief by changing the conflicting cognition (that you do not agree with his belief). He did so by commanding you to go down the aisles and talk to the customers. Not asking, not suggesting, but commanding. When you refused, he repeated the command ("just try it") and attempted to compel you to comply by soft-threatening to get an evaluation of how you did at a later date.

The point of this bizarre twist of behaviors and the way in which it changed the conflicting cognition is that if you practiced his beliefs, by that virtue you will have accepted them and thus his belief is affirmed. It's good you didn't say anything resembling "no" after the "try it" line. He left that conversation absolutely certain you were going to do the homework he just assigned you. Had you refused again, he probably would've followed you and talked at you for as far as he could go, best case scenario. Worst case scenario, his only [viable] option left was to ignore/deny, and I'm sorry but this just doesn't seem like someone who would say "eh, whatever" and walk away, and he was already trending towards more aggressive behavior at the end there.

Oh, and just to make sure it doesn't seem like I'm implying this guy was extremely calculating and knew exactly what he was doing - he was aware of none of it, neither what he was doing nor why. I don't fully understand how similar or different the thinking of other Aspies is compared to my own, but when it comes to neurotypicals, the above is just something I've picked up in my fervent search for the answer to the dual-question of: "What the hell is wrong with these people? Are they all on crack?" Hope it helped, or at the very least entertained without offending. Best of luck!

 

[garnetflower13]

I've had countless interactions like this. And what I have learned to do differently is to walk away. There is no point in engaging in dialogue with people who have so many opinions about how others should be! He sounded like a self centered jerk!

 

[Judge]

Sounded like a classic interaction with an NT who doesn't have a clue about neurodiversity. Where they simply default to an assumption that something is "wrong" with us only because our behavior doesn't conform with theirs.

Yeah, I wish I could collect a "toll" for every time I've had such an unsolicited exchange of words. Seems there's always someone out there who seems to want to break us out of "the shell" they perceive. <sigh>

 

[umbrellabeach]

What do I think of it? I think you have an impressive amount of patience. If the rest of the conversation went the same way as the transcript you wrote out, with this guy being socially aggressive and making overt efforts to keep you on the backfoot, then the ironic thing is that he's actually one of those "sick people" he defined so well. Indeed, if the rest of it followed the same general tune, then he spent 15-20 minutes licking you like a "Psychological-Gratification-and-Validation-of-my-Fragile-Sense-of-Self"-flavored lollipop (it's the treat that has psychologists and dentists alike jumping for joy). Though he was right about one thing: the makeup didn't scare him away.

That's the broadstrokes of what I think of it, but since it's 1:30 AM, I'm wired like a Christmas tree, and because I see an opportunity to make an analysis/over-analysis I can be reasonably certain of thanks to you posting ample amounts of good data, I'm going to do...that. Colon:

It's requisite to understand the "why" of what generally motivates people to do what they do. Many would say "survival" and they're not wrong, but in a civilization where physical survival is a minimal concern at best what is much more prominent is psychological survival; specifically, the need to preserve both one's conceptions of the world as well as their conceptions of themselves (aka a sense of self, and as a colloquial bastardization of the concept, "self-esteem").

To every need there is a motivational mechanism which ensures that the need is met, and for the aforementioned two needs the mechanism of motivation is called Cognitive Dissonance. Cognitive Dissonance is to the psyche what pain is to the body, in essence. This pain is experienced under a few different conditions, but in this context it happens when we perceive with our senses a piece of information that clashes with what we believe to be true about the world or ourselves.

The key there is "believe to be true". Understand that we don't actually know one single damn thing, rather we believe things to be true, for reasons. Beliefs like "2+2=4" are pretty safe because we can do the math on our fingers and the result will be the same every time; they're readily verifiable by empirical means. Beliefs that are much more fragile, however, live in the world of the abstract, such as "I am a good person" or "I am attractive". It's those more fragile types of beliefs that make up one's conceptions of the world and self.

It's the fragility and significance of those two systems of belief that makes them particularly vulnerable to experiencing Cognitive Dissonance, by virtue of such beliefs being more like opinions in nature. For example, if someone believes that "you can't let others change you, if you do you're letting them have power over you, and then they'll look at you and certainly be smug in their triumph over you," etc but starts to have self-doubts about the unshakable, perfect truth of that philosophy, they will have caused themselves a bit of Cognitive Dissonance.

Just as you pull your hand back very quickly upon the touching of a hot stove, your psyche cannot tolerate extended periods of Cognitive Dissonance and will do absolutely anything to reduce or eliminate it, by any means necessary. A few options exist to do so: change your belief (rare), justify your belief, or ignore/deny the conflicting information that's causing the CD.

With the "you can't let others change you" example, he justified his belief in two different ways. First, he attempted to justify it via adding a new cognition by posing it to you, expecting you to dumbly agree with him as social convention dictates and thus add a new cognition to shore up the belief ("another person agreed with my belief, that's one more to the evidence pile that it's true").

To his surprise, you broke the almighty social rules and disagreed with him, causing his CD to intensify. He's confused and a bit desperate at this point so he starts scrambling and while ignoring what you say he tries a few more times (the next few things he says), hoping something will stick and that his strategy will work like it's supposed to and does every other time - the whole thing being sort of like when you push a button on a remote and nothing happens, so you push it a few more times hoping it'll work because you know you're out of AA batteries.

It seems he realized that wasn't going to work, so he moved the goalposts and justified his belief by changing the conflicting cognition (that you do not agree with his belief). He did so by commanding you to go down the aisles and talk to the customers. Not asking, not suggesting, but commanding. When you refused, he repeated the command ("just try it") and attempted to compel you to comply by soft-threatening to get an evaluation of how you did at a later date.

The point of this bizarre twist of behaviors and the way in which it changed the conflicting cognition is that if you practiced his beliefs, by that virtue you will have accepted them and thus his belief is affirmed. It's good you didn't say anything resembling "no" after the "try it" line. He left that conversation absolutely certain you were going to do the homework he just assigned you. Had you refused again, he probably would've followed you and talked at you for as far as he could go, best case scenario. Worst case scenario, his only [viable] option left was to ignore/deny, and I'm sorry but this just doesn't seem like someone who would say "eh, whatever" and walk away, and he was already trending towards more aggressive behavior at the end there.

Oh, and just to make sure it doesn't seem like I'm implying this guy was extremely calculating and knew exactly what he was doing - he was aware of none of it, neither what he was doing nor why. I don't fully understand how similar or different the thinking of other Aspies is compared to my own, but when it comes to neurotypicals, the above is just something I've picked up in my fervent search for the answer to the dual-question of: "What the hell is wrong with these people? Are they all on crack?" Hope it helped, or at the very least entertained without offending. Best of luck!

Wow, you analyzed that very thoroughly, and it makes sense. I don't know what to say besides that. XD But it's good brain food.

I originally posted this convo summary (which did go as I wrote; I only included his basic "points" and left out details so it seems shorter) in a private group on Facebook and everyone agreed that this guy's a creep and has no business telling me, a woman he knows next to nothing about, how to live my life.

I have also decided that from now on, whenever someone asks me why I'm so quiet, the best response is four simple words: None of your business. I do not owe anyone an explanation for my personality, especially a complete stranger I'm talking to for the first time.

Oh yeah, and if he keeps doing this to me, I'll report him to management. And maybe print out the summary I wrote to show them. (Wish I had the audio recorded!!!)