As I was running errands this afternoon, I had MPR on. There was a program about social awkwardness and how to deal with it. The snippet I heard seemed to be focused on how awkwardness has increased since the pandemic. The guests were varied with one of them being a philosophy professor. I think another was some kind of therapist, and I don’t remember the third. This is a rebroadcast, probably because it’s the day before Thanksgiving. I looked it up, obviously. The program is 1A, and the guests are Ty Tashiro (social psychologist/author), Alexandra Pakias (associate professor/author), and Alexandra Solomon (licensed clinical psychologist).
The part that I heard was from one of the women, Alexandra Solomon, and the question did reference the pandemic. It was how can we deal with people who are awkward? Especially in this day of constant technology and the tendency for some people (*waves hand*) who are more online that off. Also, in part because of the pandeemic, there seems to be less of a tolerance for being uncomfortable in interacting with others.
I want to be clear that personally, I think there are good reasons to ice people out. Given the state of my country now, I absolutely would not have any qualms about cutting off people with unsavory viewpoints. I don’t care if they are considered awkward in their delivery, if they are saying anything in the veins of people like me should not be allowed to exist, I don’t care how they say it–I have no interest in trying to find common grounds or giving them the benefit of the doubt. In general, though, I do think it’s good to go into situations with an open mind.
A listener wrote in with a question about those on the spectrum and awkwardness. Alexandra Solomon brought up that she had a child who was neurodivergent, and she thought in some ways his outlook and the way he interacted with people was something neurotypical people could learn from. She hastened to add that she was not trying to glorify autism, but that it brought something to the table when it came to interactions.
It’s interesting because my immediate reaction was that she was doing the ‘oh, noble people with disabilities’ thing, but then I thought about it a bit more. She’s not wrong. Ty Tashiro pointed out that we had to be very careful about conflating awkwardness and autism, which I agree with. Back to Alexandra Solomon’s point–the more I thought about it, the more I agreed.
It’s a drum I’ve banged for quite some time. I have known I’m weird for quite some time. when I was younger,, I assumed there was something wrong with me. I carefully watched other people so I could mimic them as best as possible in order not to stand out. I have talked about it with my friend, A, and said that I felt like I was alien when I was a kid. I also felt as if everyone else knew what to say and do, and I had no clue. She said that was common with people who were neurodivergent, and it was one of the pieces in the puzzle that made it all make sense to me.
I agree with Alexandra Solomon that there is something to be learned from people with neurodivergency. Once I truly grasped the idea that I was a weirdo in my way of thinking AND that this was just the way it would be–I felt much better over all about it. Granted, it helped that I died (twice!) because that took away many of my fucks to give. Not that I had many to begin with, but the last remaining ones disappeared.
Here are the things about myself that I appreciate–I am a very good listener. This was something I was forced to learn from my narcissistic mother, but I’m not going to begrudge it just because it comes from shaky and dark beginnings. In addition, I have my father’s charm, so I am a people magnet. For many decades, I tried to tamp it down because I saw how my father used it for evil. It became wedded in my mind that to be charismatic was to be a self-absorbed dickhead. Honestly, that’s not far from wrong as many people who are charismatic use it for nefarious reasons.
It wasn’t until I was in my thirties that I realized they weren’t necessarily entwined. I was still cautious, but I relaxed my rigidity around it. In addition, my self-esteem grew enough that I no longer thought that I was toxic to everyone around me.
Here’s one of the biggest assets of being a weirdo/freak like me. Nothing shocks me. Well, very little shocks me. I find it amusing when normies reveal something that they think is really weird, and I just mentally shrug. I’m not going to be rude to someone’s face, of course. It’s a strength because I’m often a safe place for the other weirdos and the freaks–and the normies who discovered that they’re not so normal after all.
I am also the one that younger people came to for facts about sex, mental health issues, queer issues, and other things ilke this. There are no questions I will not answer, though I might equivocate–depending on age. I do’nt want to shame anyone, and I am pretty dang accetping.
Note: Except of bigotry, cruelty, and harm against others. I have had people say the bullshit of being intolerant of the intolerant is somehow even more intolerant. Nope.
That’s all I wanted to say about that.
I like being the elder in the community and the young ones not being afraid to ask me questiosn they might not want to bring to their parents. My brother also comes to me when he needs to sort things out–usuually around emotions. When he first started dating again, he would call me up before a date and just run things by me. I foound it amusing because I haven’t dated in over a decade, but I was more than willing to give him my thoughts whenevr he wanted them.
He and I did not get along when we were kids. Or rather, we didn’t really have much to do with each other. It wasn’t that we didn’t like each other; we just didn’t know how to relate. Once I started working for him in my thirties, we got closer and closer, and now, I trust him implicitly. We have a symbiotic relationship in that has him fixing things for me and me being his emotional support. I am more than fine with that.