What is The Accidental Creep?
Let’s start with the obvious question you have — what is The Accidental Creep!
Do you remember the guy from school who always seemed to be a creep? Or the girl from high school you didn’t want to be friends with since she was different? Or the guy in your peer group who seemed to have an interest in you but he was not nearly as cool as you or your peers, and it creeped you out when he sent you a friend request or tried to talk to with broken words? Did him not maintaining eye contact while trying to talk to you creep you out? Yes, this is about them — the accidental creeps we all have come across some time in our life.
I was one of them.
So, why does this happen?
People with Asperger’s syndrome show their emotions at a shallow level outside while feeling the same at a very high level inside. Studies have shown aspies feel emotions with more depth! (https://tinyurl.com/y3cm9dfq). This makes their facial expression flat. He might be smiling, but his expression wouldn’t give that away.
Aspies have difficulty managing eye contact. Some people do not make eye contact at all, and some keep constant eye contact — giving out the feeling that he is staring at you.
Aspies are scared of making the wrong statement. It is difficult for them to measure even their own emotions. For an aspie, it is difficult to judge whether he himself is just upset or angry. For this reason, he finds it difficult to find the right words to use in a sentence. To him, both look the same. As a result, an aspie's statements may be perceived with a different meaning or intensity — often coming off as rude or impolite. Thus, neurotypical (NT) people think they are rude or impolite, and they keep away from aspies (https://tinyurl.com/ntypical). This makes aspies feel quite lonely. As such, life teaches them to repeat sentences in their mind to make sure that they don’t accidentally use the wrong words and thereby make sure they don’t offend anyone. But however much an aspie tries to do this, words may still come out wrong — as I said he wouldn’t see the difference between upset and anger (just an example). The time he takes to repeat the sentences in his mind is usually perceived by the neurotypical people as the time taken for the subject to make “stories”. I.e., the NTs feel that the subject is “planning” his statements (while in fact, the aspie is just trying to make sure he doesn’t offend you by accident).
All these bring up a “psychopath” image to the NTs (thanks to Hollywood). These traits of not managing normal eye contact, planning statements before talking, showing fewer emotions based on body language, etc. make aspies look like a creep.
Next time you are crept by someone, remember that he might have a disability (Asperger’s Syndrome) due to which he isn’t able to express himself. Just give him the benefit of the doubt, but be cautious at the same time. This is because it may be tough to differentiate an aspie from a psychopath as the traits are similar.
This blog is about Aspies and how they feel and how they see the world. We will tell how NTs can help in making this world safe for aspies.
Many online resources help and train Aspies to blend in this world and accept what he is. This helps Aspies to a great extent — but it doesn’t make it the perfect solution. Aspies do not understand how the normal world works. Majority of the existing online resources are designed to help aspies understand the world — and that is where the drawback is. You are trying to make people with a neural issue that stops them from understanding certain things, understand the world. It doesn’t work. You can “train” aspies to handle certain situations — and he can act accordingly. But each time he does that, he does it because he makes a rule in his mind like “if this happens do this”. Each time he comes into a particular scenario, his mind applies this rule. But neurotypical people do not need to rely on rules — it just happens to them. Which means training can only help provide instructions. However much you train an aspie, he will never get it to happen naturally.
This is exactly why we need an equal amount of resources for the neurotypical people to understand what an aspie goes through and provide them with the space they need.
The Accidental Creep will be a set of writeups by various aspies based on how they feel in the way they are treated. And how NTs can help.
