NT Experience

“I have made a social slip; please don’t look at me.” or “I have lost status; I am at risk of social exclusion.”

NT social structures rely heavily on “unwritten rules.” Breaking these, even accidentally, can cause an immediate spike in embarrassment because it signals a momentary loss of social competence.

The list of triggers seems to be longer than the rest of these notes. Here are a few high level ones:

• Public Mistakes: Tripping in a crowded area, spilling a drink at a formal dinner, or having food stuck in one’s teeth.
• Inappropriate Dress: Arriving in casual wear to a “black-tie” event, or vice-versa.
• Bodily Noises: Unexpected coughing fits, stomach growling, or other involuntary sounds in a quiet, professional, or somber setting.

NT people can also feel second-hand embarrassment when they watch someone else violate a social norm.

When embarrassed NT people can also experience a blush response: an involuntary physiological reaction characterized by the reddening of the face, ears, neck, and sometimes the upper chest. This is driven by the sympathetic nervous system, the same system responsible for the “fight or flight” response.

My Experience

I am more or less impervious to breaking unwritten rules and social norms: I don’t know what they are and can’t perceive them.

I can be annoyed at tripped in public or having food in my teeth, but it is a minor thing. I am the definition of inappropriate dress – it doesn’t bother me at all (though it drives my wife nuts).

Bodily noises, on the other hand, can trigger the blush response. A loud fart in an elevator full of people. I will certainly blush and say “excuse me”. This is not embarrassment in the NT sense: the blush is a biological threat response (BTR). I suddenly have 5 people looking at me and whiffing odors that I wish they would not smell. I am not in fear of my life, but at a low level my brain recognizes a threat signal. I am not reacting to the social wrongness, I am experiencing momentary stress. Once I am clear, the feeling will quickly subside – I tend not to have a lot of lingering thoughts.

Note: my wife says that I will say excuse me even when I am half asleep. This is not a social gesture, this is a hard coded script in my Manual Frame Construction to provide Zero Lag response when needed.

I can also trigger the same blush response if I inadvertently say something that sounds off color or racist. I realize this after the fact – perhaps my brain is reviewing the speech for clarity and it trips a heuristic rule. I will apologize and probably blush. If it came out not as I intended, then I will move on though my face may take time to recover.

Note: if I were to say something that I did not know was off color or racist, I would not blush or even notice. If somebody pointed this out to me, I would thank them and apologize. I now know something new. I might blush, but probably not. I wouldn’t feel bad about myself – I didn’t know and had no intent. I might Regret the that I said the wrong thing, but again this involves no bad feelings.

Lacking Shame or any ability to see the social norms I am unable to experience embarrassment in the NT sense.

Comparison

Trigger-wise, my experience is a subset of the NT experience: we both feel “embarrassed” when we fart in public or say something that we realize is offensive. NT people have a much wider array of triggers from various social signals that I can’t perceive.

I don’t feel anything like Shame, I feel System Friction – things are not as they should be. I can’t feel embarrassed in the NT sense.

Semantic Divergence: yes.