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andycowley | 1 year ago
Go and do some research on neurodivergence, and then go and have a think about how harmful this advice is.
The emotional toll that it must have taken on Aditya just to be there without some grinning goon come lolloping towards him telling him just because they can do a thing anyone can do a thing must have been incredible.
tecleandor|1 year ago
Feeling comfortable to talk to an stranger depends on so many factors.
You could do 'extrovert' things because you're masking another thing. Because you're forcing yourself (and that can be exhausting). Because you feel in a safe or comfortable place. Or because it feels part of a duty or something like that.
A weird thing in my case is that it's quite difficult for me (although it doesn't like like that from the outside, I look quite outgoing) to go and talk to somebody that looks interesting to me, even when I'm on a place that is meant for that: a congress, workshop, whatever. I've been three years in a row going to PyConES, being part of Python Spain, knowing people there, and only this last year I've began to talk to some people. I can ask technical or specific questions, but I can't open a cold conversation.
But in the other hand, I can easily do a talk to a big audience or appear on a nation-wide TV show, and I'd barely get nervous.
Some people force themselves to do 'extrovert stuff' because social norms, or work needs, to fit somewhere, or because they want to get or do something very specific and 'that's the way to do it', but it's very taxing.
Some people (overlapping with that previous group) have identified that 'going extrovert' is tiring and taxing for them, and they rather don't do it unless it's really necessary. And they say it. And I really respect that, because they take care of themselves, and also helps the others around them to not step on their limits.
(I'm sleepy, haven't had my coffee, English is not my first language, please forgive my convoluted phrasing)
0xEF|1 year ago
I grew up being treated as weird because I hated crowds and needed to rest after interacting with people. Externally, this got treated as me hating people and noisy places, which is not really true at all. I like people and when I have enough bandwidth available, I'll gladly interact with them even knowing that it will cost me some shut-down time later. There's a,"spoons" analogy for this that people seem to like, but I tend to think of it more in terms of how a computer allocates resources to process information.
The "noisy" bit is really more social noise, but some environments acoustically confound me. Coffee shops, for example, where the espresso machines make those god-awful noises at random intervals, only to bounce around in some idiotic open-ceiling aesthetic that has become fashionable for reasons I do not understand, since even extroverts like to hear who they are talking to. Thankfully, I have really nice earplugs.
Anyway, it was not until my 20's that I was diagnosed with Anxiety, which made things click. People that do not experience this have no clue, but I can't really blame them. The advertising and entertainment media I grew up on always displayed social interaction as healthy or some kind of key to happiness, which got pigeon-holed as "normal behavior", so who would want to be unhealthy or unhappy? You were supposed to just get out there and it would get easier with time, right? These people mean well, but again, they have no clue.
But the opposite is true. One of my best friends is a textbook extrovert, constantly needing social interaction and experiencing heavy mental and emotional distress when he's alone with just himself and his thoughts for too long. I have no clue what that's like, though I possess enough empathy to understand that's how he is wired, so his needs are different than mine (he also has enough empathy to return the same understanding toward my needs).
Empathy, as you imply, bridges that gap but also takes tremendous effort, hence why Othering is such a pervasive social issue.