Someone recently told me that they sometimes feel gaslighted around me because I effortlessly make them question their beliefs and feelings. Hearing that didn’t sit well with me, especially since I’ve been pondering the question in the title for quite some time.
I’ve always been quite critical of myself and don’t consider myself a very nice person. When I discover that someone doesn’t enjoy being around me, I don’t blame them one bit. It’s not like I’m intentionally mean or abusive; quite the opposite, actually. I have very strong morals. However, this includes things like not lying, which means I always speak the truth, even if not everyone likes hearing it. I don’t conform to many social norms expected of me.
Despite all of this, I have deep relationships with several people and especially the elderly and for example the parents of my past girlfriends have all liked me a lot. But I can’t help but wonder why they don’t see me as I see myself. I worry that I’m hiding the true me so well that people don’t actually like me, but rather the facade I unknowingly maintain. Then again, a true psychopath probably wouldn’t be second-guessing themselves in this manner.
You sound like someone on the ASD spectrum - honest, principled, not confirming to social norms, overthinking. You had to mask to survive, yes, so obviously there is a facade, but that don’t make you a thief. You are thoughtful & intelligent, & capable of using logic to steer the conversation, but that don’t make you manipulative. You are honest man with morals, how can you not be kind? Why don’t you consider yourself a nice person?
For what it’s worth, ADHD folks tend not to fit social norms, either, and have blind spots about their behavior and how people perceive them.
I had ADHD but also read this as ASD.
There is a lot of overlap with ASD and ADHD symptoms/behaviors.
I’m a bit arrogant at times and have very little patience with people I don’t find interesting. If I like my own company better than being around someone else they’ll probably going to notice. I also find most topics that “normies” talk about to be extremely uninteresting which is why for the most of the time I just remain silent and then when I do open my mouth it’s often something that goes against the common narrative or just otherwise is easy to misunderstand. Then there’s often this one guy in that group who later comes to me in private and tells me that they totally agree with what I said earlier. Those are the people I then bond with.
Yep, ASD. We are intelligent. We are perfectionists. We take our sweet time to learn about the world around us. Once we’ve learnt about something, we are quite sure of it, & hence we’re strongly opinioniated on things we know. Stupidity, and not being able to see things correctly may even ‘trigger’ us, & hence we can come across as arrogant. We can see the forest for the trees, but we lose our minds because the rest of the world only sees the trees for the trees.
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