wispfox | [polls] Alienness

I used to hate feeling like an alien. These days, eh, it's just me.

*amused*

I never... hated it, really. It took me a _long_ time to realize that feeling that way pretty much my whole life wasn't actually normal for people. Puberty appears to be the normal time for that.

(not that this poll is going to be much use for that, as I suspect most/all of the people reading me will have felt like an alien for more than just puberty)

for determining that, I mean.

Randomly dropping words is fun!

The major reason I don't feel like an alien now is that I have a reasonably well developed sense of how people, including me, works, and I feel like I fit in that spectrum reasonably well with the right knobs tweaked. That doesn't mean that I feel like I'm like other people, or "belong" in a group (which is what I imagine not feeling like an alien might mean to people).

I feel like I fit in that spectrum reasonably well with the right knobs tweaked

Huh.

Huh.

By that definition, I should have said 'yes, of course' not 'sometimes'.

I am me. I don't tend to fit into categories or spectra of categories well, even though I have some self-defined categories. I... would be very confused to need to be able to say that I make sense according to what other people do, in order to not feel like an alien.

I often don't feel like an alien, to myself, because I have people whose behavior I can understand in my life. And I have people who seem to understand me, most of the time, in my life. These categories overlap, and that overlap makes me _VERY HAPPY_.

So by the definition of 'not an alien' meaning that I trust that people won't confuse me on a regular basis? I'm still an alien, except with _VERY_ small groups of people, and even they sometimes confuse me. But by the definition of 'I am understood and have people I basically understand', I am not. Sometimes, I still get overwhelmed by inability to understand most humans, which is why my answer was sometimes. But there are enough apparent humans that I _don't_ have this problem with that I no longer think 'alien', usually. I think 'subcategory of human'.

Also, I point to my edit. ;)

I have felt like an outsider, marginal, misunderstood; I have, for years, not comprehended things it seemed like everyone else knew somehow by magic; I have lived in my own world and reacted to things in an exaggerated or oddly unresponsive manner. I would never have described any of that as feeling like an alien. I've always felt like a human, tied to Earth, if not always a very successful human.

How would you describe "feeling like an alien"?

How would you describe "feeling like an alien"?

The behaviors of the people who surrounded me generally made no sense, for most of my life. I was missing the nonverbal portion of communication, and most of the apparently 'obvious' things that most people pick up on.

So, being surrounded by beings whose behavior made no sense, and who mostly had _NO_ idea why I was so very confused, when my confusion made perfect sense to me, made me decide at a very young age that I wasn't actually human, and ended up on the wrong planet (this was probably after I started reading science fiction). Especially since them not understanding why I was confused tended to mean that most people didn't try to explain anything to me.

Most of my life, I spent people-watching, in an attempt to understand what the _hell_ was going on. Anthropological studies, if I had only known it at the time. That helped, some, but people with good skills in such taking the time to try to explain body language and tone and such - so I had a basis from which to try to start to understand such things - made the biggest difference.

In other words, I had to be taught how to speak the most prevalent language of human beings, because I did _not_ pick it up on my own. Ok, I got more than nothing; really dramatic stuff got through. But I never understood why people were so upset with me for not understanding what was going on before then.

Did the explanation help any? I can try again, if you like, although without some words around why the explanation didn't help (if it didn't) would be necessary.

I used to feel like an alien, but then I realized that everyone feels this way sometimes. And I know that I live my life outside of societal norms, but I've decided that's because everyone else is an alien, and I'm perfectly normal. I escape a lot of cognative dissonance this way.

Oddly, feeling like an alien causes me no cognative dissonance...

And, except puberty, I'm not actually convinced that everyone (although I suspect most/all people in subcultures do, which will make this poll not useful to determine if I'm accurate) _does_ feel like an alien.

Most people I know feel like aliens sometimes. As an adult, I think I feel it for different reasons than when I was younger: now, it seems to have to do mostly with the fact that I have made a lot of non-mainstream choices and interact mostly with equally non-mainstream people, so when I encounter what I'm sure are "normal" people, my major reaction is "are you for real?"

As a kid, I think it had to do with lacking some social clues, which led to being boggled by the social weirdness of adolescence: at the end of 5th grade, I got on with everyone in my class, and suddenly and inexplicably, in 6th grade, I was unpopular! :)

Oddly...

It's not my various subculturalness which makes me feel alien. Different? Sure. Most of my alienness was from when people's behavior made _NO_ sense to me.

Now, of course, I'm curious as to everyone's definition of 'alien'. :)

The bit about you as a kid sounds like a mild version of why I was convinced I was an alien. :)

I think the parts of my subculturalness that I identify with are the ones that make me feel "alien" -- at least in the sense of "while I intellectually understand why you do that, it still *makes no sense,* m'kay?" I actually don't really feel non-human, but did feel like I was a different *kind* of person in lots of ways -- perhaps because I read fantasy and not scifi :)

I don't mind feeling like an alien, cause since college, I've been surrounded by small social circles of people who are in my species, or related to. :)

Same here, except that also makes me feel less like one.

I find it difficult to remember - but important to remind myself - that there isn't a "common x" for any X, at all, really. :) So while I may be an alien, so is everyone else, damnit, even the people who think they're normal.

Like being generally asexual. I tend to think "Oh, well, I have no libido, nothing sexual I've ever tried feels pleasant, everyone else has this secret dimension to their lives that I'll just never be able to comprehend," and I have to remind myself that if I took two people at random off the street, they'd be just as baffled about each other's sexuality/orientation/kinks/people-attracted-to/morality as I am about theirs. :)

It is a very small alchemy, turning "frustrated" into "funny".

i have tended to use the word "bug" to describe how i feel at times, and those times are pretty specific. basically, when i find myself in the company of "normal" (tr: mundane? typical?) people, i feel like they look at me as if i have three heads. i've learned to cope with it by nodding, smiling, and continuing on with my life and facade until i can get back into the company of those who -i- consider normal, and who appear to consider me to be, er... normal. ;)

i remember this happening the most in my first job out of college. i'd be at work, at the law firm, and i'd say things that were normal, to me, and get these really strange looks... and then i'd go home and hang out with friends, and not get any strange looks.

fortuntely, i concluded that it was -they- who were strange, and not me or mine. ;) that conviction has helped keep me a relatively happy person as i've dealt with the normal folk on a daily basis.

*chuckle*

I manage to both think that I am strange _and_ that people who do things that confuse me are strange. :)

But then, I'm not local normal (I don't have a local normal definition). I'm just me. :)

I do, however, have a lifelong habit (from being an alien for so long) of avoiding doing things which will cause most people - sometimes even those who are also strange, but in different ways - to be confused or uncomfortable or back away slowly. :)

I will do them if I am pretty sure that those I'm with will understand or appreciate, but that's a hell of an ingrained habit. From early childhood, I think.

"Alien" probably isn't the word I would have chosen, but it probably captures the notion as good as anything else. I certainly feel disassociated with this reality a lot - like it's something I'm watching on stage rather than being a part of. This feeling wanes and waxes, depending on my drama-level; when I'm feeling drama, I feel more involved, when there is less drama, I drift. To take this back to the "watching on stage" statement - sometimes I feel like I'm on stage, and I am supposed to be there, and everything is somehow related to the scene or me. Other times, it's like I'm walking out on stage, acting is going on, but I'm not supposed to be there because this scene doesn't relate to me... if that makes any sense at all.

I have been known to do that, too, but that's not actually what I meant. :)

'Dissociated' is what I would call what you are describing.

I sometimes feel as though I'm playing my life from a third-person perspective. Usually when I have some kind of puzzle to solve. I'll be looking at something like the front left hub on my car, surrounded by tools that didn't work, and I'll wonder what I haven't clicked on yet.

"2. The fearful child focuses on body language more than verbal language in understanding communication." (http://www.childtraumaacademy.com/surviving_childhood/lesson02/answers01.html)

I felt like an alien all through high school. I reacted in the way defined above. My husband also has similar body language acuity from his own particular childhood trauma.

Aaaaah. Yes, I can see this.

I'm someone who didn't start feeling like an alien until I began to understand how different other people's experiences were, hence I checked "puberty". I also checked "other" because I feel like an alien at certain times, surrounded by certain people, but it doesn't match any of the options you give. Mind you, I've gone to a fair bit of effort to surround myself by people who think more like me, or who simply take that kind of variety for granted.

The hardest situations to cope with is when other people have not yet come to understand how different things can be for other people than them, and have a sort of collective delusion that they at least are all looking at stuff the same way. Because usually they aren't.

didn't start feeling like an alien until I began to understand how different other people's experiences were, hence I checked "puberty".

*nod* This is, from what I understand, the most common time for that feeling to happen.

I also checked "other" because I feel like an alien at certain times, surrounded by certain people, but it doesn't match any of the options you give.

That's because I started running out of easily worded options. :)

I've gone to a fair bit of effort to surround myself by people who think more like me, or who simply take that kind of variety for granted.

Yep, me, too. Makes my life richer and better, all around. Does mean it'll be interesting when I finally get around to changing coasts, however!

The hardest situations to cope with is when other people have not yet come to understand how different things can be for other people than them, and have a sort of collective delusion that they at least are all looking at stuff the same way. Because usually they aren't.

Yep.

I find that this is a very common mainstream society mindset. Bugs me greatly.

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