The social skills of those with ADHD depend on a number of factors; whether they have another condition like autism or how well they are at controlling impulses. It may also depend on how aware they are of themselves and those around them, to even notice how others react to them.
Generally, people with ADHD have good social skills and high levels of empathy, but sometimes these don’t come through in the moment.
Determine What’s Appropriate & Inappropriate to Say
Some issues that can arise can be innocently saying something without realising whether it may be offensive, or knowing people would take it that way but blurting it out because of a lack of impulsive control. There’s also the issue of the more hyperactive ones to take control of a conversation and talk over people. People can be put off by loud, excited talkers who talk too fast and don’t give them a chance to speak, so always take time to stop for a breath.
People with ADHD are fast thinkers and due to a lack of impulse control can’t slow down long enough to consider what they are saying and how it would be interpreted. This could lead to embarrassing themselves, unintentionally offending people which then leads to arguments. It’s important to learn to hold back to not risk damaging interpersonal relationships.
All that takes is learning how to reflect on the situation, note what was said, how you said it and plan to do better next time. If someone thinks what you said was inappropriate it’s probably better not to repeat the same thing to them. Learn your audience. There are some people who would probably agree with you, and there are some who will absolutely not.
Such subjects as mature jokes, politics, religion, and anything where people take sides. You really need to make sure you know a lot about the person you’re talking to before you bring any of those subjects up. It’s ok to disagree but some people can hold very strong opposing opinions which can turn a simple disagreement into a screaming match.
Try to learn what is inappropriate to say and try to catch yourself before you say these things. It takes a lot of practice, and you’ll slip up from time to time, but that’s just part of being ADHD.
We may not be able to change how people react to what we say, but we can change how we say it.
If you don’t care about upsetting people then you can continue doing what you like but if you’re frustrated about always saying the wrong things and want to change, then this advice may help.
Try Not to Jump to Conclusions
Lately, I’ve noticed in the ADHD community people make a lot of assumptions and jump to conclusions a lot. I picked this up because long ago people making assumptions became my pet peeve. In high school I was the subject of much gossiping and even my boyfriend joined in on these untruths because they made him sound better. Basically, people were saying we were sexually active. We were 13 at a Baptist Christian School. I lived by that old quote from a Steven Segal film, ‘assumptions are the mother of all fuck ups.’
So, I really hate assumptions. Like Marty McFly can’t stand being called ‘chicken’ a fuse blows when someone makes an assumption about me. It’s also intellectually lazy.
I’m also annoyed by people jumping to conclusions on social media. The only positive thing is it gives me a chance to educate them or get them to try and widen their views, but I really wish I didn’t have to. We should not just assume we know how something really is without having the full facts. It’s arrogant, anti-intellectual and lazy. It makes us sound like conspiracy theorists, and also really really ignorant.
Anyway, if there’s one thing people with ADHD all collectively have is an interest in everything, and when looking up more sources to form a clearer picture, you can then, temporarily, hyperfocus while learning something new. Isn’t that a much better use of your time than spouting stubborn willful ignorance you’re too proud to admit could possibly be wrong?
Build More Empathic Skills
If during face to face interaction or even online you find you’re not always empathising right away, then you can try to strengthen this by reflecting on the conversation in your own quiet time. Sometimes it can take us time to realise when we should have empathised and because our brains are thinking so fast, and usually get stuck on a few details of what’s said rather than seeing someone’s overall reason for saying something.
So, spend some time going over the conversation later, seeing where you went wrong. Note how you could do better and next time put this into practice. If you need to learn some empathic skills you could try psychology sites that may have articles on such a subject.
Remember To Practice Self-Care
It can be a very long and frustrating process to improve ourselves, so try to go easy on yourself. When you fail to do what you’ve set out to do just try to do it next time. There’s no need to feel that it’s impossible to change or waste precious emotional energy on beating yourself up, becoming depressed and even anxious for the next social encounter to go wrong.
Always remember to celebrate each victory you make, no matter how minor. It’s important to have plenty of downtime too.
The more new skills you build and the longer you keep putting them into practice, the stronger they become so you hardly have to consciously think about it, it just comes to you naturally.
Christmas can be a stressful time for most people. It is especially stressful for autistic people who have higher sensory sensitivities than the average population, aka. neurotypicals, and react to things differently than they do. So, it’s important to learn to recognise their stress and help them through it. The following is a list of dos and don’ts that give you a general idea of what autistic people like/don’t like and how they react to how people treat them. It’s not true of all autistic people, but covers a general range.
Do: Check with them that are comfortable about the venue Christmas lunch/dinner will take place.
Don’t: Assume they won’t feel any stress about the day because you don’t experience it. Obviously there’s the usual stress about hosting, cooking, and organising everything but it’s the little things you don’t think about that autistic people can become stressed by. If unsure, you can always ask them.
Do: Make them feel part of the festivities by asking if they would like to be part of any games or other such events taking place.
Don’t: Pressure them to join in on said events if they say ‘no.’
Do: Ask them if they are ok with being hugged.
Don’t: Make them feel bad about not wanting to be hugged.
Do: Be ok with them not making eye contact or using much body language.
Don’t: Make them feel uncomfortable for trying to make them make eye contact or pointing out their lack of eye contact.
Do: Tell them when things will change, especially if each year Christmas is celebrated in much the same way.
Don’t: Call them selfish or rude if any change leads them to feel anxious and start resisting the change.
Do: Encourage them join in conversation.
Don’t: Make fun of them if they say something that seems odd and definitely don’t show a lack of interest, ignore or shut down the conversation if they talk about topics you don’t want to. They may not get many opportunities to talk face to face and some may have spent most of their childhood saying little to nothing, and you don’t want to upset them so much they go back to not talking.
Do: Ask them more about their symptoms to gain a better understanding of them, if it makes them feel comfortable.
Don’t: Make fun of them for their symptoms.
Do: Let them eat early or first if they require it.
Don’t: Make a big deal about them eating early. Low blood sugar is found to contribute to meltdowns, and you want to do your best to avoid these from happening. An autistic person will feel anything from embarrassment to shame after they meltdown on Christmas over what will eventually be everyone’s reaction to it. They don’t want to be responsible for ruining Christmas and no matter what you tell them, they may blame themselves.
Do: Let them use any sensory toys or aides that help calm them down.
Don’t: Call such devices childish. Or let anyone point out that those things are for ‘little kids.’
Do: Give them a quiet space when they are overwhelmed. Let them choose their own.
Don’t: Try to get them to leave their quiet space if they’re not ready.
Do: Make sure to keep the noise volume down or have quiet areas they can go to to escape it.
Don’t: Encourage others to make more noise than there already is.
Do: Make them aware when other unannounced guests they may not know will arrive.
Don’t: Expect them to greet, hug or even talk to them. Let them make the decision to do that.
Do: Make them do the bare minimum to reduce their stress.
Don’t: Ask them to help out in the kitchen, which we know, is the most stressful place on Christmas Day. If they want to help out then you let them.
Do: Let them decide if they want to bring a dish for lunch/dinner.
Don’t: Insist they bring a dish for lunch/dinner.
Do: Understand they have different neurological wiring and process the world differently to you, which leads to not being able to cope with things that may seem easy to you.
Don’t: Assume everything that makes sense to you will make sense to them, or everything that seems common knowledge to you won’t seem a mystery to them. Try to exercise some theory of mind; that each person has their own thoughts and feelings of their own.
Do: Empathise
Don’t: Be unempathetic.
Do: Ask them if they are tired and would like to go home.
Don’t: Insist it’s time to go if they’re still having fun.
For Children: Don’t pressure them to hang around children their age if they don’t want to. Do encourage other children to play with them if they feel comfortable playing with other children. Do teach children about their autism and what they like and don’t like doing, and to not pick on them for being different.
Before I continue I’d just like to state the advice here is take it or leave. It’s completely up to you if you want to follow this advice. It’s just here as a basic guide for those to use who want learn a few coping skills. It may not work for everyone as different methods work for different people. But if you never try how would you know what does and doesn’t work for you? Some people have a defeatist attitude of thinking they will have the same struggles forever. I once believed this to be true but that’s not always the case. Our brains may be different but they’re just as plastic as those without ADHD.
Tip 4: Learning to Regulate Emotions
ADHD in the most simplest terms is a brain that’s completely unregulated, this involves the regulation of emotions, and I’m not going to lie, this is probably one of the most difficult ADHD symptoms to manage. Poor regulation of emotions comes with sudden mood shifts, easy to anger, too little or too much empathy, making rash decisions based on emotions rather than using logic to carefully think them through, and the inevitable explosive meltdown. My development of empathic skills is largely thanks to the ADHD community and being able to focus long enough on Ritalin to take time to listen and apply what I learned in my life. I’m autistic also so my ability to empathise has been poorly developed and not used for all situations, particularly when it was needed. I got called selfish a lot as a kid, and even in my 20s. So, people who tell you autistic people can empathise and even become overwhelmed by their empathy…they’re not lying but this isn’t the experience of every autistic.
People with ADHD can have their empathy all over the place too. In the forum we would get into some very heated disagreements, usually when people weren’t able to see how one side was experiencing an issue; basic theory of mind. It was the people 40 and over, the ones with experience, who were the ones to yet again empathise with both points of view. We kept having the same arguments like this and again it was the mature ones telling us to see both sides. I felt both embarrassed and ashamed I kept forgetting this fact so I did my best to remember it. I’m not exactly sure when it stuck but when it did I stopped getting into the usual disagreements and instead adopted a neutral position, and still do to this day.
So how does someone who’s either lacking in empathy or not using it work on it? You can learn this like I did. Focus closely on the people who argue both points of view, listen to what someone says when they empathise and try to mirror that. As always, practice makes perfect.
We with ADHD tend to overlook and not see when we should empathise. I think it’s smart to not react to someone who angers you straight away but take some time to cool down from your emotions and also take the time to try to understand where they are coming from. You won’t always achieve that and that’s ok. What matters is you keep recognising when your emotions are this high and back away from a discussion until you’re able to think more clearly.
The emotions we feel when we’re arguing, especially if we think we’re about to prove someone wrong, feels like a drug. Every sentence we utter or type is like taking a higher and higher hit. You have to learn to pull away before this happens or the first time you become aware it’s happening. Because that can really get us into trouble. We’re not thinking clearly, just riding the high. We’re not even listening to the other person, just patting ourselves on the back as we become convinced that we sure showed them.
I used to replace this high with playing a video game. Advancing to a new level or unlocking an achievement is guaranteed to give you a similar or higher hit, as your brain is responding the same way to your playing as it does when you take drugs. These days though I try to just avoid situations that will put me into that mind, often online, as I tend to not say much offline. It seems pointless to argue face to face with people as it should online. It’s all pointless. We will stop caring about an issue we felt passionate about an hour ago. You can argue with someone until you’re blue in the face or have bleeding fingers from typing so much but rarely is someone convinced of something after an argument. They’re more likely just agreeing because they’re tired of arguing. The only way they can be convinced is when you keep calm and and restructure your words to sound less accusing and belittling. It’s always a good idea to support their opinion before you counter it too. Unless it’s completely ridiculous. In that case just say ‘I disagree’ and push forward with your argument.
That’s one way we can handle our emotions when talking to people but sometimes it doesn’t even take another person to make us angry. So, for those times you can kind of do the same thing: stop and spend some time to calm down. Talk to yourself gently. It helps to have some experience in cognitive behavioural therapy, i.e restructuring negative thoughts to more positive and rational ones. For example at times I think I hate people but then my mind will tell me I’m just angry at them. Or how about for depression? When your mind tells you people hate you or find you annoying? You can tell yourself you don’t know this as a fact and you can also look back at how they treated you in the past to know for sure.
Always take some time to cool down from your anger and then analyze it by exploring why you are angry. From here you can then respond in a more rational and calm manner.
Some people with ADHD may not even know what emotion they are feeling or why it’s happening. This is a condition psychologists call Alexithymia. I had this around 8 or 9 years ago. I would be near to meltdown and not understand why. Eventually I’d work out why I was that angry to begin with. Often it was when people visited my house unannounced. There’s those autism symptoms bleeding into my ADHD again. After this I realised finding out the source of such emotions like anxiety helped me overcome them.
I’ve had severe anxiety of various types all of my life. As I have Pathological Demand Avoidance syndrome, a type of autism characterised by extreme resistance when given orders caused by the anxiety of having your environment controlled, I’ve had to work out many coping mechanisms for my anxiety.
Cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) really helps me out here. Say you say something to me and to me it feels like you are trying to control me by basically telling me what to do or disagreeing or suggesting I do something different; a voice in my head might come in and say that’s probably not the case. You’re triggered, it tells me, be very careful in how you reply. It’s best to not engage. But this doesn’t kick in until I’ve already got myself in a flame war with someone and it can be very hard to realise this before I respond at all or to stop myself from being triggered. And we’re talking triggered in the mental health sense. A PDA trigger mixed with PTSD and whatever else is going on in my head is a very volatile thing. I still need to work out ways to control these outbursts.
Does ADHD make it harder? Sure. ADHD barely comes up given the many things causing my unregulated emotions. But ADHD contributes in some way and also helps me overcome it faster as I stop caring about whatever issue got me worked up within an hour.
A way for me to avoid getting in a red hot argument and making things worse for my mental state is to recognise that what was said made me angry, listen to the reaction in my head, and consider whether it’s really for the best to say them to someone. Most times I have to consider whether my words will have any impact on the other person. Most times I just want to educate someone but if they don’t listen it feels like a waste of time. Now is a good time to not answer right away if I even answer at all, but to just dwell on my thoughts and feelings. Eventually the anger will subside and I’ll be able to answer a lot more calmly.
A way to manage general anxiety is much the same as managing my anger: stop and think before acting. If I find myself ruminating about something and getting worried or feel I’m about to fly into a rage I’ll tell myself this isn’t helping and to do something else. Distractions are good but don’t fix the anxiety.
So what does help? Finding the source and then working out ways to fix the problem. More self-talk and problem solving and soothing CBT. If you’re beginning to panic then you can employ some deep breathing exercises. Take a full breath in, count to four and exhale over four seconds. Or cover one nostril, inhale, and breathe out of that nostril but before you do cover the other one. I learned this from Queer Eye’s Jonathan Van Ness and it’s helped me so many times. You can also try and spin a fidget spinner in front of your face. This time using it is supposed to distract you from your thoughts. Don’t mock fidget spinners, they have been life saving for me.
Once you’ve calmed down you can better think about a way to solve your anxiety by dealing with the source of it. It can’t always be solved, but it doesn’t have to feel like the end of the world.
That’s general anxiety, as for social anxiety…you need to realise that hard to swallow pill: it’s completely delusional. People are too busy thinking of their own worries to be thinking things about you. And even if they are they’re just people, often strangers you’ll never see again. I developed the somewhat arrogant notion that I don’t envy them and I don’t respect enough about them to take anything that they seriously at all. Do I still have social anxiety? Sure. Although these days it’s not the freezing up kind. I can talk to people, join in on a conversation if it’s interesting enough, but my anxiety is more in the form of irritation than any fear. I’ve had the freezing type, the completely blank mind when it comes to having something to say to a group of people. I prefer not to be in group conversations and focus more on one on one. Sometimes we need to work out what’s best for us and not be too depressed over the fact that we can’t do something a certain way, like talking to a group of three or more.
I’m transgender so experiecne gender dysphoria in the form of anxiety and I’ve been trying a new strategy for dealing with it: saying it’s temporary. It is. The worst of my dysphoria is experienced around other people, on the street and not around the people I know. You could use this to handle anxiety too. Anxious thoughts are temporary, especially social anxiety, as they exist only when you are in a social environment. So remove yourself and it will be over. Now I’ve not tried that one for myself but it’s worth a try.
Remember, celebrate the little victories. You can’t overcome this overnight or even over weeks. It takes years to get to a point where you feel you have developed better self-control. So, work on it a bit at a time. Note any progress you make and be proud of yourself for coming this far. Given the fact we have a neurological difference we may never completely overcome our issues with emotional regulation, but we can manage it better once we notice the signs we’re about to lose control of our emotions and then we can decide if we want to keep talking or not.
If you slip up and fall back into the same pattern of overreaction again don’t panic. That’s bound to happen when you have ADHD. Don’t beat yourself up. Instead, just try again. You will have to consciously try to control your emotions, which can be mentally draining. So, remember to take some time to rest to rejuvenate yourself.
That concludes part 2. Part 3 will discuss how to develop a social filter.
Hey peeps! Look who’s back writing another blog post. I told you I would. So, I’ve been following the ABC’s coverage of mental health awareness on TV and on social media and I’ve been impressed with the many forms of awareness they are using. After all, we all experience it differently. They’ve taken a ‘mental illness is an everybody thing’ approach to it, which I do understand – we all like to relate to each other – but for some of us mental illness can be genetic and our type of mental illness does not affect everyone. Some of us – ok me – believe that this type of mental illness is non-recoverable and it’s there for life and we’ve just got to deal with it the best we can. Of course, recovering from any mental illness is a difficult road to go down. I’ve had various forms and severities of social anxiety for most of my life. It took my voice away in childhood. And I still have some non-inherited forms of mental illness to overcome like PTSD and generalized anxiety disorder.
So, what is this inherited form of mental illness, I hear you say? Well, it’s a mood disorder, most likely bipolar 2. It triggered in my early 20s after I took any type of prescription med. I’m not here to criticize the Pharmaceutical industry. The medication worked for what it was designed for, it’s just that it did something else, which doesn’t happen to all people, just people with a family history of mood disorders. So kids: always look at your family medical history before taking drugs, especially the ones your teacher says you should be on.
Bipolar is my newest constant companion, together with autism and ADHD I really don’t know what each day will be like. I can wake up one morning and have little energy and at some part of the day or night be unable to contain my energy. I randomly go on spending sprees, say things to people I forget and commit to things without giving it much thought. Then at some point in an extreme exhausted state I may crash into a deep dark depression. Even writing about it changes my mood state so I’ve got to be careful.
First, negative thoughts seep in after days of over confidence. I go from thinking everything is possible and everyone loves me to doubts about my abilities to questioning who my friends really are. Then comes the pessimism and a cynical view of the world and the cruelest sarcasm towards people you could ever think I was capable of. And then I just keep sliding down, down, down. To the point I become incapable of making myself meals or can even get out of bed. My mind turns on a loop of very vivid thoughts of suicide; the moment before, the act and me gazing down at the world following my suicide. Then after a couple of hours I cycle out of it. I become hypomanic again. It’s an all-round positive mood, energetic and ready to give the world a big giant bear hug.
I know a few people who have actually had their friends commit suicide and it made me feel very uncomfortable and guilty to be around them and hear them going through that mourning process. I never used to empathise with people when thinking suicidal thoughts and people’s poor choice of words to comfort or encourage a deeply depressed person to rethink their decision didn’t help either. I couldn’t see things from the point of view of a suicide survivor and copped a lot of abuse for that. But I’m used to it. My old blog was trolled so much I had to delete it but I’m back and expecting it now so whatevs.
Then, when I became deeply depressed again, despite being on anti-depressants, I started to think about one friend in particular who had lost a friend who I didn’t want to upset again if I did kill myself. And I certainly didn’t want my friends and family to develop a mental illness because of the shock of my own suicide. Before I didn’t think they’d be a shock because I talked about it so much – I even think I wrote a status update that was an equivalent to a suicide note. Luckily, a few friends got behind me and started to encourage me and I felt better.
Now when deeply depressed, if I can’t avoid falling into it through constant gigging, playing video games, watching comedy and sci-fi, I will just experience it and focus more on the physical pain than emotional. Once I get control over my mind I can push my emotions in any direction. So, I will deny my depressed thoughts and just try to focus on the next mood cycle. I wouldn’t do this if I had unipolar depression but because I’m also a rapid cycler telling myself the feelings are just temporary works for me. So far.
I think in order for people to really grasp what bipolar is about I need to talk about my manic symptoms. First, I’ll explain the differences between hypomania and mania. Hypomania is the milder state but it’s a higher than usual ‘happy’ state to be in. You’re very motivated to do things, you might get a few creative ideas you’d like to try out and you want to be around people more. Together with the motivation and creative ideas you’ve got the energy to get everything done and you don’t even require that much rest or sleep.
Mania is the more serious state. I can only tell I’m manic by the wired-like stimulated state of my brain. I have non-stop racing thoughts, overflowing with 10 to 200 creative ideas I must accomplish NOW! I’m restless and anxious and my skin tingles in discomfort. Sounds are louder, lights are brighter- every sense is turned up way loud. This is the state you become delusional and psychotic in. You have higher ideas. You feel like you are enlightened and that everyone else is intellectually inferior to you. They can’t see what you can see. They’re stuck in this stiff collared world of facts and reason, and not into the Jungian dream-like utopia that you slipped in through the smallest crack in the universe. You have more energy than you’ve ever dreamed of and your legs don’t stop moving for days. You’ll pay for it later. You know depression will come but you tell yourself you’ll be like this forever, although, to be honest, you just want to go back to hypomania.
It’s not always so positive though. Mania and hypomania have an opposite evil twin. It’s sometimes called dysphoria or dark mania – it’s the ugly pessimistic and paranoid face of bipolar. Much of it is mixed with symptoms of anxiety and depression, though I’m still unsure if this is what constitutes a ‘mixed episode.’ You snap and yell and rant at people. At worst you have paranoid delusions about them. You’re impatient, anxious, losing confidence in yourself but still have a flair of arrogance about you. You still have all the energy of mania but all positivity is gone. This is actually the most dangerous state to be in because if feeling suicidal you’re impulsive enough to do it. You’re definitely ‘not in your own mind.’ People can become violent when like this.
Above I said mania was like a drug and indeed it is but no one goes on a constant high for days or months without making some mistakes. Those can be overspending, sharing your delusional ‘enlightened’ ideas with people, just ranting and raving and ending up in places you can’t remember how you got to. There’s a trail of destruction you’ve either got to clear up or run away from. You interact with a lot of people during this time, people who you may have to see again when you return to normal, unless you’re rapid cycling – if that’s the case then you’re probably going to repeat the same mistakes again.
In my first year of taking Ritalin for ADHD every dose made me manic, from at least day two of taking the drug. So I spent a whole year basically manic. Depression never came because I’d just take another dose. Eventually it did hit at the end of the year where I was also experiencing clusters of seizures. I was just waiting to die basically. I’d come up with some wild themes for my science fiction stories and books on Jung or Synchronicity took my mind into a new and exciting realm. It was incredible but it wasn’t real. Some of my delusions were very damaging to my mental health. I became obsessed with people, people I acted like I knew well and was destined to be with. That is one place I do not want to go to again. I thought I would never recover but my medication for anxiety has helped make that world disappear. I finally feel sane again.
The title of this post is kind of confusing but what I mean by that is before I was even aware there was such a stigma around mental illness, well, I sort of always talked about it as though I was talking about a hobby. I find psychology and neuroscience to be fascinating subjects and my underdeveloped social skills could not pick up that I may have been making people feel uncomfortable. I actually had to be told by someone that people might not want to be around me if I kept talking about it. Then after I was trolled severely after writing many manic fueled blog posts before I even realised that I could even be bipolar, I decided maybe I’ll just cut back on posting about mental illness and ADHD and autism. But lately I’ve been thinking censoring myself and giving in to the stigma just makes the stigma of mental illness even stronger and I felt better being open and honest about all my mental health issues and atypical neurological wirings. So, while I still may be aware that I’m making people uncomfortable I can just ignore it and keep on talking, or writing. It’s not like anyone will tell me when I make them feel uncomfortable.
October is even ADHD Awareness Month and because I’ve been unable to write my blog about inattentive ADHD, I’ve just been posting a few things on social media. I will eventually write that post though.
I also find educating myself about my illnesses, neurological disorders and other ailments makes me develop the best coping skills for dealing with them. I’m untreated bipolar only on anti-depressants for my severe anxiety, so the only treatment I can do is problem solving skills. Okay so I may have spent $300 or more in the last week and I’ve been mouthing off/ranting a lot and my upcoming gig list keeps growing because I’ve finally got the opportunity to photograph what bands I want, even the ones I need media access to, and not just photographing bands keeps me sane, but the preparation keeps me looking forward to something. Then there’s my recently reignited video game addiction which I really think helps keep my depression from triggering. I just get exhausted now which is ok. I’d rather have the tiredness and lack of motivation that comes with depression without any of the emotions.
So, this is me. A life of mental illness and unique brain structure. There’s no stigma here. It’s just my life. It’s wild, it’s messy, sometimes boring, other times exciting, scary, frustrating and then something unexpected happens.
Ah yes, I finally get to talk about my current no.1 obsession: the TV show MARVEL’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I’m just going to go ahead and mention that this post may contain spoilers for the most current S.H.I.E.L.D episodes because I like to keep pretty up-to date on them and I would hate to ruin the excitement and nervous anticipation of fans waiting for another installment like I have been over these many weeks.
For about 5 or 6 months now I have been developing into a very huge MARVEL comic book fan and enthusiast, but I’ve not been able to share my love with other comic book fans. It’s not just being a failure to connect to the comic book world but I first realised I struggled to get along with other fans when I joined a Stargate online fan message board. Before I was into the MCU I was and still am a very huge fan of the Stargate franchise.
I’ve acquired a lot of knowledge about Stargate so it’s never hard for me to talk about the facts from the Stargate Universe (not to be confused with Stargate: Universe) but when it came to discussing the episodes in depth is when I started to realise I focused on different parts of the show than those around me. Basically other fans were talking about the show as if it was real and getting quite worked up about it too. To them the characters were free to make decisions and their actions were not solely at the hands of some very creative writers, and as someone who wants to become a writer I saw it the other way. At times I would praise the writers for creating such a thrilling episode with mystery and intrigue and drop hints throughout the series so we the audience could try to work out what was going to happen on our own – take note, Alphas.
But I just did not connect with the fans. I found them emotional and almost delusional for not getting that it’s just a show.
One of my favourite characters (Agent Fitz) and one of my favourite moments on Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D
After seeing Captain America: The Winter Soldier and the S.H.I.E.L.D episodes that linked with it I became so passionate about the show that I wanted to connect to other fans. There were the odd trolls who would nit-pick certain parts of the episode they didn’t like or whatever news that came out about future episodes or they would basically just say the show should be cancelled because commenting on the official Facebook page of the show you hate is just such a good way to spend your precious time, right? Those people are easy to ignore, though some people just can’t help but give them a piece of their mind.
Then people yet again started to talk about the characters as if they were real and the story was real and I just felt uncomfortable again. These people were just empathising so much more with the characters than me, which isn’t exactly a bad thing. When I watch the show I can be moved in the same way as they are. I know that after Agent Phil Coulson was brought back to life by regenerative DNA of a blue alien that he is kind of a broken man and that he didn’t want the cellist to know he was alive because it took so long for her to get over him, though a few other fans did reveal some of the finer details for me. Fitz big speech in ‘Turn, Turn, Turn’ when standing up to Garrett while crying was touching but again it was very hard for me to understand why. I needed other people to explain to me what it meant to them. It even took some time for me to empathise with Skye who was looking for her parents but then it turned out they were dead and she was being protected by S.H.I.E.L.D because she was an 0-8-4 (meaning an object of unknown origin – she could have special powers) and some bad people were out there looking for her. Most likely Hydra, because unless you’ve been living under a rock or are kind of you know popular, you know they had been infiltrating S.H.I.E.L.D for 70 years and since Captain America helped take them down S.H.I.E.L.D is now seen as a terrorist organization, so they are still kind of in power.
You can see why I filed this under ‘autism’ now can’t you? I even feel my above descriptions of some of the series’ plot is coming out a bit stale. Could it be anxiety? Perhaps. I have lots of that. Is it a bad time to mention that I’m writing this while hearing Agent Phil Coulson’s voice in my head, kind of reading out the post to me? It’s something else I do to help me write. It’s common on the autistic spectrum. I’ll stop talking about it now.
It may take me some time to feel emotions toward the characters but I do feel them and when I watch the show I am taken into the fantasy of it all, but for some reason when I talk about it to other people I can only regurgitate the facts of the show, you know, recite the story in a very technical way (my psychologist said I explained everything in a technical way too) and then when I tried to explain the emotions of a character I would start to sound less intelligent than I am. When I talk about the neuronal processes in the brain or recite any law of physics or even share a theory I have about black holes I can just articulate it so much better that I sound like I’m smarter than I am. But when it comes to explaining how something can move me emotionally, well I just I, well I, I just feel dumb.
There would have been a time where I thought it was better to think more logically and not worry so much about emotions. After all, emotions are distracting, confusing and exhausting things. They get it the way of our reasoning skills and all my achievements have been a cause of my logical problem solving skills. They create unnecessary social drama and keep us stuck in our rumination, so we remain longer in distress whereas if we ignored them we would reach a solution faster and not be as emotionally affected by our reactions as we usually are. I have a bit of a mood disorder too so my emotions are usually explosive. I am like a real life Vulcan when I suppress them and focus mainly on logical solutions.
But I’m starting to think that maybe it is better to get stuck in the fantasy of a show. It’s strange, in any social situation, usually offline, I will just want to talk about anything related to MARVEL comics and my most recent successful conversation (yeah, I count them) was when I rather drunkenly gave a very long and spoilerish run down of the events of Captain America: The Winter Soldier and how they linked up with S.H.I.E.L.D episodes from episode 14 and up, to someone who probably had no idea what I was talking about. And when I get really into show or story, especially if it’s related to science fiction, the line between the real world and fantasy becomes a bit blurred. I just don’t understand why I can’t go into that mindset when I talk to other fans.
So, now I’m trying to feel deeper emotions from the characters in S.H.I.E.L.D so I can get a better understanding of how other fans of the show empathise with them and maybe I could have longer and more in depth discussions with them without thinking ‘this person realises that’s just a TV show right? Whatever happened in it was how the writers wanted it to happen.’ No, I must silence those thoughts. There are times for logical thought and times to be more emotional. It’s not really that fun being a robot. I’ve met others who take things more literally than me. They have told me that they literally have no visual imagination and I can make movies up in my head and I would hate to live without that. Likewise, the more empathetic among us would hate to live without feeling such deep emotions for their fellow man, or woman.
I’m planning to go to Free Comic Book Day and experience the comic book fandom that I’ve been missing out on because I hardly know anyone well enough to go to these events. And yes crowds are a problem but we must fight through uncomfortable or even scary situations so we don’t miss out on opportunities to make new friends or have new and enjoyable experiences.
I’m really excited about this next episode of S.H.I.E.L.D by the way. I think Skye is going to be taken to Hydra and we get a see Maria Hill again. And I’m just so excited I can’t even speculate properly.
PDA Rebellion 