Figuring Out What's Normal?

I have some Aspie tendencies, no formal diagnosis. I came to the realization that there was something 'wrong' in my late 20s while reading about semiotics. I suddenly realized that other people knew the 'language' of dress and I didn't. I would run around with sneakers and a skirt and had no idea how strange it looked to other people.

I find that people are less tolerant of my quirks as I get older. I wish there was a book or a class that told me what was normal. I find myself spending more time wondering how I should react in certain social situations than I do actually socializing. I also feel like I can't trust my instincts and need to ask people or google about how to respond to, say, someone inviting me to do something I am not interested in doing.

I find it very frustrating. I used to take pride in the fact that I was not normal, but now I just feel ... not quite like an outcast, but different in a bad way. I have friends and can get along with people, but it takes a lot of work sometimes. I just don't see things the same way as other people. Part of me wishes I had never learned that other people didn't think the same way I did!

How do other people respond to this situation of not knowing what is appropriate? My tendency is to withdraw and be quiet. I am trying to insert myself into more social situations to get more practice overcoming this.

Well I tend to be somewhat withdrawn and quiet in new situations or around new people, until I sort of observe the situation, observe what people are doing and then might open up a bit more depending. I don't expect to come of as 'normal' but sometimes situations arise where its unlikely I will be judged negatively for being abnormal so I express myself more.

The first step is to stop thinking of your self as abnormal. If you are on the spectrum, then you're probably perfectly normal for somebody with an ASD.

I got diagnosed a year ago (at 27) and I'm glad I got diagnosed. I'd spent my entire life wondering why I never fitted in, why I seemed to react differently to most situations than my peers, why I felt I constantly had to explain that I preferred to be on my own than in a group, etc. A life time of thinking you're abnormal or weird does terrible things to your self esteem. I developed other mental health disorders including OCD and DID, along with continuous bouts of deep depression.

Sure, getting the diagnosis didn't fix the issues of my past, but it has given me hope that the future can be better now that I know I'm not abnormal or broken in some way, I'm just different and different isn't always a bad thing. If we were all the same then the world would be an incredibly boring place.

I'm not saying it's going to be easy, but at least I've got something to build on now.

With me it wasn't that I thought I was abnormal or weird that did terrible things to my self esteem, but rather how people treated me for being abnormal or weird....I don't think being 'normal' is a superior state of being.

I wouldn't say that I aspire to being normal, but I'd like to know what normal is, you know (even if no one is really normal)? To at least understand it so I could choose whether I wanted to do my own thing or the normal thing.

I think I have developed bad relationships/friendships in the past because I am not good at identifying what is appropriate behavior. And now that I am starting to think I have a problem with this stuff, I ruminate on it.

I've always thought of normal in terms of the things that "other people" did. Other people:
- Have groups of people they hang out with at school
- Have people at their birthday parties
- Go to dances
- Go to parties
- Have girlfriends
- Go to their prom
- Go to bars

Until last summer when I really started looking into Asperger's I thought my differences were because I missed something important growing up.

Oh yeah, don't get me wrong, a large part of what contributed to my other mental health problems was how other people treated me. I was bullied literally from the first day of primary school (age 5) and it didn't stop until after I'd left school (age 17), which I only did because I couldn't handle the bullying any more.

All that I meant by that was that 'normal' is a subjective term. For heterosexuals it is 'normal' to like people of the opposite sex, for homosexuals it is 'normal' to like people of the same sex, for asexuals it is 'normal' to not be sexually attracted to any member of any sex.

There is no one normal, we can only ever be 'normal' in that we are Human beings and we are happy with ourselves as we are. Does that make sense, or am I speaking crap? It is 3AM haha.

Yeah that's kind of what I was getting at. When you're the one who is different to the majority of people around you, it's very easy to assume that they are 'normal' and you are by definition 'abnormal', when in fact you're both 'normal' but just different to each other.

Yeah, I think phaset's 'other people' is what I meant by 'normal,' and I get what you mean, rosska. It's a loaded word and I should have chosen a better one