site banner

Wellness Wednesday for May 10, 2023

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

  • Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.

  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

3
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Things are going slightly better. I still believe that I am fundamentally unlovable due to autism and subpar physical appearance, but I've realized - just like my dad taught me with respect to work performance - that if I'm going to avoid terrible outcomes, I need to be in the top ten percent. That just gets you a seat at the table...just like top-10-percent performance at work is table stakes for an Aspie to get a job, keep food on the table, and not be living in the ghetto or trailerpark dodging bullets and assholes chasing you with knives. I've got to look like I could compete in physique bodybuilding competitions, be impeccably dressed, and be extremely kind AND make...hmm...maybe a million a year? just to have a chance at a relationship with someone that isn't going to wind up with someone in some kind of institution or other. There is nothing wrong with this...that's just how it is.

So I've been practicing speaking better, learning facial expressions, and being graceful. I believe that the average person - the average Joe - is every bit as good socially as an English longbowman was at archery seven hundred years ago, or as good as his Mongolian counterpart was on horseback. That they can go years without making a blunder large enough to be put into words (at least, while sober), that every smile, every gesture, every laugh is as graceful, as effortless, and as beautiful as a concert pianist's music or a professional ballerina's grace. To be better than this takes immense determination and talent, but I hope to be tolerable at some point...to not subtly repulse people because I laughed for a fraction of a second too long at a joke.

I don't know if anyone on the spectrum has ever become above-average socially. Maybe Aella, but she's a special case...I'm a dude, and short of independently advancing medical science I'll never be pretty or beautiful. But I hope that I can be charismatic enough to not only have a large social circle but convince someone to willingly and freely endure something they find disgusting. That's a hard thing to do...but there have been average people that have pulled it off.

A question, for all of you: If you have ever seen anyone who was charismatic enough to inspire people to willingly endure disgust, or misery, or chronic pain simply to make THEM happy, how did they do it?

If you have ever seen anyone who was charismatic enough to inspire people to willingly endure disgust, or misery, or chronic pain simply to make THEM happy, how did they do it?

Slavoj Zizek travels the world speaking to paying audiences of intellectuals, has been married four times and he has two children. According to wikipedia his third wife was an Argentinian model. His current wife is thirty years younger than him. The precondition for how he did it was in not dismissing it as impossible or insurmountable. He achieved those outcomes despite being a flabby book-nerd who can't get six words into a sentence without twitching, stimming and flecking his t-shirt with spittle.

Stephen Hawking had three children and his wife married him despite his being diagnosed with a condition that would condemn him to life in a motorised wheelchair. Later he divorced his wife in order to marry one of his full-time carers. He spoke through a computer and his most graceful gesture would look like a mild spasm if anyone else did it.

I'm not saying you'll get married to a model if you ""just be yourself"". All I'm saying is that there are normal average women out there who don't need you to be an impeccably dressed millionaire bodybuilder before they'll give you a chance.

Things are going slightly better

That's all you need. Achieve the same outcome enough times and eventually things begin to go well.

Muggsy Bogues played in the NBA at 5'3". I'm taller than him. Does that mean I too can play NBA ball... maybe ditch medicine for the Golden State Warriors?