Processing Speed, Decision Making, Friendships

So, if you look back at my first post, you will see that I scored rather high on something called processing speed. This seems like a very self-explanitory thing, but its also very complicated. I am still in the process of understanding what this is, and all of the places in my life that it applies.

When I went to my results meeting, the example that she used was in football, the players have to be able to think fast to make the play. I responded that its like when I'm reading music, I will be reading the notes several notes ahead of where I'm actually playing. Yup, thats processing speed. Also, letter/word recognition is faster, making reading easier. It is likely, then, that I learned to read early on because of this high processing speed; learning quickly what a word looked like, not through phonics or sounding it out, but through just remembering what the word looked like, and recognizing it helped me know what the word is. This all would explain both early reading, and the speed reading I did in my childhood. I could read an entire book in a few hours. I remember I read a lot of "Babysitters Club", and the Sweet Valley books, among others. I could polish them off in as little as an hour.
I also beat a math teacher on times tables. He used to time us doing 100 times tables from X1 to X12. I was always rather fast at this, but I did eventually beat HIS best time, which was totally awesome.

However, there are other ways that I'm told are affected by processing speed. My ability to take in information and make a decision based on that information is also a part of processing speed. If I acquire some knowledge on a subject, I quickly make a decision on the topic. These decisions are hard to be changed. I am almost always SURE of the decision I have made, no matter what. It takes a very long time to adjust or change my thinking. This isn't because I'm stubborn or bullheaded. This is because I processed previous information, made a concrete decision, and that decision feels like a "final" decision for me. Over time, I can adjust and change my position, but it usually takes a lot of additional information and study, as well as patient and understanding people who are willing to understand that I just don't see it any other way. Again, this is not a stubbornness. This is just the way my brain works. I don't know WHY it works this way, it just does. 

This can work about subjects like parenting or religion, both of which get me into hot water with people. But I can see pretty well how this works for people as well. 

Friendships are hard for me. They always have been. I don't remember "real" friendships as a young child, I pretty much kept to myself because I didn't know what to do and I was way more interested in reading a book or something than what the other kids were doing. I remember always liking the teachers, and trying to help them out was something I preferred to do. (Though, there were a few teachers whom I did NOT like.)

I did have friends, but usually they didn't have anything in common except that we were all outcasts. We didn't really fit in anywhere else, so naturally, it was together. Even with them, I was not sharing a lot of common interests, and certainly not a lot of social time outside of school!

As an adult, I still don't understand how friendships work. When I meet someone, I might think that they seem great, but I don't ever know how to make the first move. I don't ever know what to say. My son has been a better icebreaker than anything else in life, but even then I'm hesitant because he is SO forward that sometimes the kid he's talking to has no idea what to do with him either!

But once I feel I'm friends with someone, I have quickly (remember processing speed) decided that this is a person I can trust. This is a person who is my friend! They must like me if I feel like they are friendly with me, right? Yay! A friend! 

This often leads to me feeling very open with them. I'm a "you've been here once, you're family" type person, so once you're in, you're in. Then I have no problems sharing, talking to, being with this new friend. (Clarifying, still, not all the time or anything, and the talking to is more complicated than just talking to them - I stilll suffer for what to talk about....)

The problem with this is that apparently other people aren't like that. First of all, other people usually cannot and sometimes even should not be trusted that quickly. I have learned the hard way more than once that feeling like I'm friends with someone does NOT mean we are friends. Just because someone is nice to me does not mean that they even like me. (Why do we pretend to like someone? Please don't do that to me.) And I can tell you that I have ended up being used, gossipped about and "burned" from feeling like I'm friends with someone who had no interest whatsoever in being my friend.

 Second, people apparently don't trust me back right away. I have this crazy belief that I can trust people. Whether they are a new friend or an old friend, once a person feels like a friend, I trust them. Again, I get burned because there are people out there who are apparently willing and able to take advantage of my naive trust and openness. I tell them things that they probably don't want to know, or that they aren't "close enough" to be told yet. There is only one line in the sand with me. In. Out.

See, in my mind this is heartbreaking because I trust people, and they don't trust me back. It hurts because I feel like we're friends, only to find out we aren't. I show such interest in a person, I shower them with compliments, thoughtfulness, gifts, and I get nothing back in return. 

Then I feel guilty. I feel guilty that I shouldn't be the kind of friend that always expects something in return. I shouldn't be the kind of person who does something just to see what I get back. And I don't think that is the problem. I just misunderstand how friendships work. To me, you are either a friend, or you are not. There is no "almost friend" or "acquaintenance". I don't work into a friendships through these steps like everyone else apparently does.

In my life, more than once, and throughout my whole life, I have trusted in people who seemed to be so nice to me. I latched onto them and expressed my appreciation for them in my life through crushes and loving behavior and feelings. Looking back, even I feel like I was crazy.

 It was always refreshing to feel like I was special to someone, and I wanted to make them feel special too. I felt as if I made a difference in their life, as if my feelings of friendship weren't mistaken. It was always nice to be considered a person that they valued. 

The problem was that there were more of these "friendships" that were with, perhaps to be described as "inappropriate" people. Typically, they were never people my age (kids my age were not safe), and they were people that I technically were "safe" from. They couldn't really hurt me, because they weren't really allowed IN my life. They were in my life, don't get me wrong, but it isn't like we hung out or went places together. They were "safe" people to put my interest and friendship and even love toward, because they really couldn't reject my feelings because they couldn't accept my feelings either. 

Does that make any sense? I don't know if I'm making any sense. Basically, I focused a ton of obsession, energy, time and money into people who were so nice to me, but who were "safe" enough that they COULDN'T be mean to me. (Also, they wouldn't, I don't think, because they were not an immature stage of life, like many of the people my age were. I just didn't/don't have time to play games in friendships. I'm not a dramatic person really.) 

This was very confusing for me because my feelings of love for them weren't "really" love, yet I felt completely enamored with them. People who know me rather well know specific people this applies to, but it was more than just one person, because it happened from as early as I can remember, all through school, and even into college. I can honestly say, however, that since my husband and I married, I have not really had those feelings about another person in a long time, though I still struggle more with those people I was enamored with than anyone else because what do I do now? How do I reconstruct any form of relationship with them? Again, I feel like either we are friends or we aren't friends, the middle ground isn't someplace I like to be with people.

My feelings of friendship are intense. When I meet someone that I feel I can trust, I have a hard time holding back. I almost want to know everything about them in one sitting, and to share everything about me with them as well. I want to KNOW a person almost inside out, and to have them want to know me back. I used to write down everything I knew about people, like a teen magazine would write a celebrity's favorites list. Apparently, this doesn't work for the vast majority of the people in the world, and I have watched people "run" because, it seems, I have scared them off with my intensity about it. 

What I really want is just to be understood here. I want people to know that I'm not insane or nuts for wanting to be close friends right away. It should be a sign that I trust a person, not a sign that I'm coming on too strong. Luckily, I can count at least 2 people in my life who responded positively to my forwardness of friendship, and those friendships seem to be completely fine. 

The worst part is probably that I'm not aware until its already over or past that I'm coming off so strongly. Or if I do realize it, all I know is that it feels so good to feel accepted that I'm not willing to back down and be the cause of a faded friendship. I'd rather come on too strong than be accused of not coming on at all. It probably hurts more when I'm eventually rejected, but I put myself out there for someone I thought I could trust, and for some reason, this is ok. 

I hope some of this made sense. I was kinda just writing as my thoughts came out, so I'm sorry for length and probably a poor interpretation of processing speed, but it is an insight into my head maybe?