Set Your Goals High

If they become defensive, notice what you may have said wrong, and apologize if necessary, even if it's just to get them back on track. This is important because it's too easy to go off track and lose focus, especially in an uncomfortable situation, where the other party might be looking to pick a fight. If you go off on tangents, whether they be to sing and dance because someone said a song lyric, or to fight, or because one of you saw a squirrel, you have less of a chance of getting what you want. So, are you ready for some enlightenment, empowerment and a good dose of fun? Handle Neurotypicals? Why not simply avoid them? Let's face it, neurotypicals are a f*ing pain in the butt. If you don't feel this way at least sometimes, you probably wouldn't have picked up this article in the first place. To make things considerably worse, they're also omnipresent. This leaves us neurodivergents with two options only: constantly avoid them, or learn to deal with them. This article is all about the second option: dealing with them. But before we get into that, let's explore the first option: avoidance. If that would work, why not? Especially if you're the one singing and dancing or chasing squirrels. Your teen may interrupt you to tell you they've been cutting church every week with their friends from Sunday School anyway, so there's no point in going. You may have to repeat yourself a few times, especially if you're letting them stay home as long as they're productive, as they may not believe their ears. Again, repeat yourself as often as necessary, and if you have a real kid, you've done that a few times already this morning. And bring the conversation back to the topic. If we're using the example of asking an adult friend for something, you don't have the clout you do as a parent. You still may have to repeat yourself, but the interruptions might just be singing and dancing.

You might say something like, I understand you don't like church, and you cut Sunday School anyway. But you will get something out of it every week if you continue going, and I would like that. Or, If you're going to stay home, you'll need to cook for us, and I'll take the added precaution of changing the Wi-Fi password every Saturday to make sure you'll be productive. If I don't have to handle them, I won't. I'm not a masochist after all. I'll be honest: I think avoiding strategies make life miserable, independently of whether they actually work or not (which I think they don't). Avoiding these omnipresent neurotypicals boils down to marking most of the physical, psychological and social space in this world off limits to yourself. This is in itself a good enough reason to avoid avoiding them. But let's be thorough and go over the avoidance options anyway. Let's see if they actually hold some promise as practical solutions at all. Off the grid and on the run! Nature hermit The most obvious form of avoidance is, of course, physical avoidance. If you can prove that you are, that you don't have friends over, that you cook and clean as you go, I'll stop doing that. A - Appear Confident Appear confident no matter how you actually feel. If you have this look about you all the time, little old ladies will ask you for a napkin at a restaurant when you're on a date, and it might not even occur to you to tell them you don't work there, so you walk into the kitchen and get the napkins. Your nonverbal cues indicate confidence more than your verbal cues. Sit with your back straight, and your head held high. Make eye contact.

Orient your feet towards the other person. Where your feet are oriented is where your mind subconsciously goes. Appear confident and stand your ground. This can theoretically be realized in various ways. You can scout for a piece of uninhabited land far away from neurotypical 'civilization' (some prefer the word `infestation'), and settle there for instance. Let's call this the `nature hermit' approach. Alas, this isn't as easy as it may seem. To start with, pieces of land that are both habitable and uninhabited, are extremely rare - no thanks to mindless population growth, rampant pollution and global warming, which coincidentally also seem to be the favorite pastimes of our neurotypical friends. There remains the active volcano crater here and there of course, if you fancy a nice warm climate all year round, or the quiet depths of the Mariana Trench (although even there the neurotypical's best friend, the plastic bag, has invaded the terrain). But all in all, we can safely say that there's not an abundance of human-friendly free space left on this planet, or elsewhere in the known Universe for that matter. To make things worse, a piece of land that's habitable, uninhabited and that hasn't been claimed as someone's property already is probably non-existent. Even the seas and the Earth's poles have been carved into proprietary spaces. And if you were to find an unclaimed, uninhabited space and settle there, within very short notice you'd have to defend your existential right to be there, legally and/or physically, against quite a few others. This is important because confidence signifies that your request isn't too difficult to grant and that you're harder to turn down. There's no need to be overbearing. If they do refuse you, in an adult-to-adult conversation, you might just ask if they're sure, then thank them for their time and let it go. If your teenager refuses you, this might be a good time to tell them what the other option is. Okay, you don't have to learn to cook. And if you can read, you can cook, by the way. You can keep coming to church with us, and thank you for letting me know about cutting Sunday School.

I'll be sure to tell your friends' parents you all do that because they'll want to know too. I'll let them know you told me. Thank you for caring about the salvation of your friends, who also should go back to church. Neurotypicals don't have a history of peacefully minding their own business and leaving everyone be - ask any indigenous population on Earth. Which brings us back to dealing with neurotypicals instead of avoiding them, and defeats our original purpose of avoidance altogether. Bottom line: free pieces of land on Earth are very hard to find, and even harder to keep. Start building your rocket to the closest exoplanet (and make sure you're not being followed on the way there), or read on for other options. Urban hermit You might try living at night in a big city, anonymously, in the street (otherwise you would have to pay rent or a loan and again deal with neurotypicals), scavenging half-toxic trash for food, clothes, and makeshift shelter. This is the `urban hermit' approach. But apart from the fact that your health and general wellbeing would probably be in a deplorable state in no time, you would still have to deal with neurotypicals regularly, and from a very disadvantageous position. Vagabonds regularly get attacked and raped, and are harassed by police officers and upright citizens alike, whose hearts bleed compassionately for every ostentatious good cause you can imagine, except if it happens to reside on the sidewalk in front of their house in a smelly sleeping bag. Not a great solution either. This will most likely ensure you an excellent meal every Sunday. N - Negotiate Remember, give to get, as selfish as that sounds. Everyone wonders, What's in it for me? You aren't demanding something. You're asking for something or setting down a rule. Even in setting down rules, you aren't demanding.

If you think you can demand something of someone, even a child, expect defensiveness and confrontation. Give options. You may need to alter your request to make it more pleasing. A small village is another option, but. Neurotypicals are really heavy on social control and in a small village everyone knows and checks everyone. In Mexico there's a saying: Small village, big inferno, and it definitely applies not only to Mexican villages, nor to especially small ones. In a big city you can go unnoticed as a vagabond, disappearing in the anonymous crowds (who will occasionally treat you with a nice beating, robbery and even rape, I should add). But a village doesn't provide that kind of anonymity so you would attract quite some negative attention with your avoidant behavior. Being `asocial' (and I'm not even talking about antisocial) is definitely one of the capital sins in the neurotypical article, so some kind of contemporary version of being burnt at the stake or chained to the pillory and serially spit at might just become the grand apotheosis of your village disappearing act. Stuck in the middle with them Well, the bad news is that however tiring, unpleasant, and even impossible it may seem to constantly deal with neurotypicals, it might very well be that constantly avoiding them is actually even worse. For starters, and apart from the practical problems, it's giving in to them completely. That simply doesn't feel right. In the borrowing the car example, you offered to get the car diagnosed (AutoZone does it for free) and fix it if you could - and if you couldn't, you'd find another solution to your problem. This is important because building relationships may or may not be the most important reason we spend a few decades on this planet, but it certainly takes up most of our time. Whether we spend that time in actual relationships with other human beings or wondering why we drive other human beings away, we spend an inordinate amount of time either with other people or thinking about them, whether we know them personally or not. So, if we spend our energy browbeating others and expecting them to kowtow to us, that only works if you have money, and even then, not everyone likes you, even if you somehow win elections. Mere mortals, without insane amounts of money, can't behave like that. We have to negotiate and play nice. Going back to the example of the teenager, this is pretty much already a negotiation.