[polls] Alienness

[wispfox]

Ok, fine, I finally get around to posting a poll. :)

[Poll #577769]

[edit: incidentally, not only did I feel like an alien most of my life, and still sometimes now, I apparently have at least one person who categorizes me in my very own space alien category]

Comments

[datagoddess.livejournal.com]

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

[randysmith]

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).

[beaq.livejournal.com]

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"?

[harlequinaide.livejournal.com]

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.

[dancingwolfgrrl.livejournal.com]

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! :)

[kyrene.livejournal.com]

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. :)

[corivax.livejournal.com]

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".

[wolfkitn.livejournal.com]

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.

[majes.livejournal.com]

"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.

[deyo.livejournal.com]

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.

[kar0na.livejournal.com]

"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.

[aquaeri.livejournal.com]

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.