u/Electronic-Waltz5763

I understand that memorizing something is just storing information well enough so you can regurgitate it on a test, before the brain forgets. Learning is when you understand how and why something works and you can use that knowledge to problem-solve.

My question is, how exactly do you learn something? I feel like all I've done is learn stuff enough to pass a test and then forget it. When it comes to a new topic, you don't know how it works yet, so you must read about it. For me, I make notes, but I'm worried I'm just memorizing the notes instead of actually getting it. Is this method counterintuitive for an INTJ? I mean, I don't like memorizing but I feel like it's a necessary part of learning. How do you understand the underlying system or concept without an element of memorization? You have to memorize how the system works first to learn it.

Just want to vent about how much looking younger sucks, like does this shit ever get better? This affects literally every area of my life. The disrespect is everywhere, all the time, even if people don't explicitly say anything, it's the way they look at me. Even though I'm 29, I'm short, weigh 90lbs and have a baby face so I'm basically fucked. Everywhere I go, people think I'm a teenager. I do get it, I can hardly blame people for assuming I'm 16 because I do look that age, but what I can't excuse is the outright disrespect, discrimination and infantilisation of a grown adult.

If I want to shop in a store, I need someone with me or else I'm ignored/get dirty looks. If I go to the doctor, I already know I'm not going to be taken seriously, which affects my health because I don't get treatment until it's way too late. If I want to rent an apartment, the agent will treat me like trash and try to give me a bad deal. Every time I need to go somewhere, I know I'm about to be treated like shit simply because of my 'assumed' age.

Making friends is impossible. I look younger than people who are younger than me...so they automatically don't want to be friends with me. Particularly as a woman, I experience this kind of paternalistic condescending treatment, even if they don't mean to do it, it's still a form of discrimination. It's like I'm a cute pet to them but no one wants to be friends with a pet or give them any respect, just "ohh look at you, so cute!". You're seen as sweet, fragile, non-threatening and in need of protection because you're just so precious. You get the whole "you're so innocent!" as if I'm not a grown ass human being. It comes across as caring, but it reinforces a power imbalance between you and the other person that results in less respect. (e.g people picking you up for fun...).

The worst thing is the workplace. You're viewed as 'friendly + kind' instead of 'capable + assertive' and maybe even assumed to have lower intelligence because of your perceived innocence = less experience. How can you expect to be taken seriously when everyone fawns over how cute you are...lord have mercy. It's hard to get to higher positions most of all because you can't command respect, so no one would listen to you or take you seriously. I've had people laugh and say I'm cute when I'm angry....This has me relegated to low-paying, minimum wage jobs or being stuck in junior roles for my whole life. Talked down to by coworkers a decade younger than me who want to boss me around because I look like a pushover.

This literally ruins so much of my life and I'm not being dramatic. People talk to me like shit. There is no respect ever. I even stopped posting selfies on Instagram because someone from my old school commented "you look like a prepubescent child". It ruins my confidence so bad. It makes me never want to go outside. I just want to be treated the same as everyone else. All in all, it's made me become a more bitter person and maybe even nastier. I feel like I can't be nice, so I have to put on a serious face to try and get respect.

I didn't realise I was autistic until I was 22. I kept forcing myself into a box that wasn't working until I found out about autism and it changed my life. I graduated at 21 with a degree in the Arts in a field I can't get a job in. I think I was very naive or clueless at that time. I was being pressured to just pick a degree by my family and I didn't know what to choose. I was 17, and I just picked it because I liked art, that's the only reason.

This is kind of embarrassing to admit but I was not in the right frame of mind or maturity level to be making those kinds of life-changing decisions. I had hyperlexia as a child, reading books at 2 years old and I was praised for being very mature and talking like an adult as a child. But I became more childlike as I got older. When I was 17, I was still watching That's So Raven on Disney Channel and Adventure Time. I regressed in my maturity level a bit. I was also in and out of an ED clinic and I just wasn't thinking straight. I didn't give much thought to my future career prospects at all. I struggled through uni, even though it was an 'easy' degree, I barely scraped by. After graduating, all I could get were jobs as a server or in retail to keep me afloat. I've had one office job, which I hated. Every job I've had, I've been bullied at.

I'm now 29 and just have so many regrets. Since learning I have autism and graduating, I've changed so much as a person. I still have no idea what I want to do but I feel like I messed up my life with that one decision, picking the 'wrong' degree and I hate that I'm still paying the debt off for it. It got me nowhere. I wish so bad that I had picked a bachelor of science or something but I was always terrible at math and wouldn't have got in anyway. I just feel so regretful and like I'm going to waste my life. I know that's dramatic but what's going to happen to me now? Be in retail forever? I could go back to university, but I really worry about the financial side of it, having mounting debt to pay off for the rest of my life and I also feel like it's too late now. I'd get hella judgment from my family. And what if I go through all this again and can't even get a job...

Me and my bf were in a group setting where someone was telling jokes and being sarcastic and I wasn't really catching the sarcasm. I was replying seriously because my first assumption is that people are being genuine, not kidding. Even when I catch on, I guess I wasn't laughing enough because the person would say, "I'm just kidding! Did you think I was being serious?" basically calling me out for not laughing or smiling enough. Anyway, this same person also told me "ohh don't cry!" when I wasn't even going to cry, I was fine. I asked my bf afterwards, "Why do people do that?" he told me that when people are joking, I tend to have a serious expression on my face and people might think I'm annoyed or offended by their jokes. I said "oh, well I'm not, that's just my face!" and he said "maybe you should practice your faces in the mirror so people don't get the wrong idea" I said "emm....that's called masking" that's exactly what I've been trying to learn how to STOP doing for the last few years because it made me miserable and led to burn out. I've already explained to him what masking is, so I was upset that he'd say that. Faking expressions or acting a certain way/saying the right thing for the benefit of others is not something I want to do anymore.

I'm confused on how to feel really. I feel better when I don't force myself to make facial expressions I don't want to make. I also don't want it to bother other people. I don't think I'm being rude or hurting anyone by not masking, so why can't I continue? Idk, I just want to feel accepted as I am, instead of always altering myself to make others comfortable.

I just find it insanely funny/ridiculous how ill-equipped we are as humans to survive on Earth. 'Intelligent design' my ass. At its core, nothing makes sense. Us and Earth do not mesh together, at all, one bit. We're actually constantly at odds with Mother Nature, fighting to survive. Almost like we were badly designed on purpose...eh?

Think about being stranded on a desert island somewhere. Within a day, our skin will get painful burns if we don't find shade. We're forced to kill another living thing, such as a fish to survive. Then a thunderstorm will come and tear down our fire and shelter we built as we sit freezing cold and wet. We could be attacked by any number of dangerous animals or we could eat a poisonous berry and die just like that. It makes absolutely no sense to me how difficult it is to just not die. And yes, now we have civilised societies that have evolved to make it so we can have these needs easily met. Food, shelter and water in exchange for what? Modern-day slavery.

I have always thought about how unnatural our world is. If we need SO many manmade interventions just to survive, doesn't that mean that we are not naturally compatible with this Earth...? If a God really designed us, then shouldn't we have everything we need already within and around us? Without sunscreen, we burn, without a coat, we could freeze to death. The list goes on. WHY are we as humans forced to invent so many 'solutions'? Let's ask ourselves why our design is so bad in the first place. A benevolent God would never make it so that every little basic thing is a struggle at every turn or make it so easy for us to die.

Shows like 'Survivor' are like some sort of sick joke to me, because they're putting it right in our faces and proving how hard survival (which simply means not dying) is as a human. And people still want to praise our 'intelligent design'. The fact that they made a TV show about surviving is some dystopian sit anyway. Shouldn't it be natural, not a struggle? Our manmade homes, clothes, AC, make our lives 'comfortable' and distract us from the truth of how brutal this place is without them. When the creator created us, why did he make it so that food, shelter and water always require us to hunt? Always hard to obtain? Always a fight? Always needing to kill another living thing? Always so close to death? Always programmed to just survive.

Surviving SHOULD be the most natural thing ever, IF we were intelligently designed in harmony with the Earth. But we're not. So much of our design makes no sense whatsoever. Hardly any climates around the world are actually livable. Food, shelter, and water are all extremely hard to obtain in the wild and it's the most basic things we need just do we don't die.

I don't find a lot of things funny, most of all comedy movies, comedians or skits etc. I don't know why, but for me when something is designed to make you laugh, it's automatically not funny to me because the humour is manufactured, not natural. Some people have said I'm too serious in real life and need to lighten up, or they assume something is wrong with me, but that's just my natural demeanour. I'm not really a jokey type of person at all. I actually realised the other day that I never make jokes and it's not because I'm sad all the time or whatever, it just doesn't occur to me, I don't feel the need to joke. I'm nice and polite to people, but being jokey just isn't who I am.

When talking to other people, I always assume they're being genuine like I am, so I take what they say at face value, meaning I may reply seriously to their sarcasm and miss their joke. But even when I do know someone is trying to joke around with me, I sometimes don't give them enough of a laugh because it's not funny to me, and they say, "I'm just joking! Did you think I was being serious?" and I'm like "Yeah, I know". I asked my partner why people do this, and he said because I have a serious look on my face and don't really laugh at people's jokes, they might think I'm offended, even though I'm not.

The worst thing ever is when I'm with someone who's known as a 'joker', and they do it every 5 seconds. I hate it because I'm constantly trying to figure out if they're being serious or not, not laughing at the right times and being called out for 'not getting the joke'. This has also led to people laughing at things I say when I'm being serious. Maybe my tone is funny or something? I actually rarely produce a genuine laugh. When I do, it has to be something not planned, like it wasn't meant to be funny, but it was. I think that's the only time I laugh.

I think the question of what comes after we die will haunt me for the rest of my life. I need to know and I always search for the truth, but I will never actually know until I die. The frustration is in how we've set up life here on earth. It's so fucked up. Like we could all be living happily if it wasn't set up this way. I get angry because we have such a finite amount of time on earth, yet we waste it with work/bills/stress/survival.

When you look at the life of certain celebrities, it shows you what's possible if we were all rich/famous in this matrix, and I don't just mean buying whatever you want but being able to use that money to actually help people. Using your platform to speak a message to the world, to influence people in the right way and using your fame to shift the collective consciousness (which a lot of celebs don't do because they're satanic). For example, Michael Jackson, his goal was to unite people of all races and religions from all over the world. His message was strong and it was working. At the time of his death, he had 4 billion fans (still growing now as his message lives on). His music was intended to make real change such as 'earth song', 'human nature' and many more. His music moved people and it reminded us that we're all human and we're all part of the same thing. It brought people together, stirred up strong emotions and promoted love. That's why they had to get rid of him. He also criticised the satanic music industry, so there's that too.

We need things that remind us of our humanity/togetherness and move us emotionally, such as art, film and music. They speak to the divine spark and soul within us that wants to create. A lot of us would be amazing at creating these things, but we never get a chance to because we're too busy surviving. I get so angry because we're being made to waste this time we have alive by doing things we don't want to do, distracted by working, fighting, arguing, surviving and then what? that's it? I cannot believe that's just IT. We all know what we feel when we come together with other people and experience love, that's what life is actually about. We feel it in our soul. I know there's so many evil people on earth, but it's not the majority. There are billions of normal people like us who want this world to be a happy place.

I also wonder what the hell 'life' looks like if we escape because this here is all we know. All the good emotions we have are tied to physical sensations of the body, such as taste, touch, sight and sound, even dopamine is produced by the body in the brain. I really struggle to understand what to expect if we escape? no sunlight on our skin ever again, no hugging another person, no laughter ever again. I'm not saying I want to come back here again, not at all, because the cruelty and suffering here is insane and everything points to it being designed that way. But part of why I'm scared of dying is because I don't know what comes after and I also want to save everyone, not just myself.

I adopted a rescue dog 7 days ago. Around the 4th day, I noticed I was experiencing symptoms such as sore eyes, tingly irritation in my nose and migraines. He has just spent 3 nights in the vets getting treated for some infections he has, and in that time, my symptoms cleared up. I feel awful but if i really am allergic, I don't think I can keep dog. I'd prefer him to go to a family who can actually be around him with no problems. Which is why I'm asking, how do I determine if I'm allergic to him specifically? Is there a blood test I can do? Do I need a piece of his fur? The lady at the shelter will not let me return him without a legit reason and proof.

Edit: I'm not allergic to dogs in general, I've had dogs before, so these symptoms are strange, which is why I need to do a test that checks if I'm allergic to this specific dog. Can that be done?

I have a direct way of communicating. It's not rude, it's meant to be effective and clear. The problem, for other people, is that I leave out niceties or fluffy language because I don't want it to misconstrue what I'm saying, so I just speak clearly so people understand, no funny business, no passive aggressiveness, no reading between the lines. If I have a problem I will just say it and if I like something I will also say it. I believe this is to be a good thing because you never have to guess where you stand with me or what I'm thinking. I also don't let people walk all over me which they've tried to do because I look 'innocent' and like I won't stand up for myself. But the minute I do, somehow I'm the bad guy. I have been called harsh and mean on more than one occasion by people because of this. I just think if I was a man people wouldn't be like this towards me. They'd probably appreciate it.

I adopted a rescue dog 5 days ago. On day 4, I started to get itchy eyes and experienced irritation in my nasal passages that hasn't gone away. I also noticed on day 1 that the dog licked my hand and it went red and itchy in that one spot. Yesterday he got sick and we took him to the vet and found out he has an infection called mycoplasma. I read online that while rare, it is possible for humans to contract mycoplasma from dogs, so now I'm worried that I might have contracted it? Or, that I'm allergic to the dog. The thing is, he's a shih tzu x maltese mix and I've 2 shih tzus before in my life so I thought I was fine with this breed but is it possible that I'm allergic to this specific dog?

I just adopted a dog 3 days ago, so it's still very new, but I thought I'd ask in here if his behavior is normal or not. He's a 9 month old shih tzu that was rescued off the streets. When we went to see him at the shelter, he was very playful, excited and had lots of energy! The first day we brought him home he was playing fetch, jumping up on the couch, running around the house, devouring all his food, loving snacks (fruits) and doing lots of barking at a toy car. On the second day, he was a little bit quieter. He slept most of the day, ate his food fine but was a bit less playful. Now it's the third day and he won't eat or drink anything, he's not interested in the fruits he loved on day 1. He won't play fetch, we throw the ball and he just ignores us. We try and get him active, but he just sleeps. He won't jump on the couch to be with us and when we showed him the toy car he just curled up, put his head down and went to sleep. On day 1, he was barking like crazy. This is the opposite change in behavior I would expect. I've had 2 shih tzus before this and I think his behavior is not normal. He seems depressed and lethargic. It's so bad I'm considering the vet. I have no idea what I did wrong. Has anyone else experienced this?

Last year, my boyf got a new job in a new country. I was unemployed at the time, so I agreed to go because I thought I had nothing to lose. I thought, I'll just see if I like it....but the trouble is, I have no idea how I feel about it due to alexithymia, even after a year of living here. It's so hard to know. It's not like I hate it, but I don't love it either? Or maybe I do and I don't even know. When I try and reach for emotions, they're just not there. We're wondering whether to stay or move elsewhere and I have no idea if I like it here. I know it sounds crazy but there's no feelings (if there is, I can't feel them). I have to look at things logistically, like making a pros and cons list instead of relying on how I feel. This has also really hindered my career. I have no idea which direction to go and I've spent the last year dabbling in lots of completely different courses and networking events, not really knowing if I even like any of these career paths or if I'm interested in them. I have no idea what I like, what my strengths/weakness are, which is exactly what's gotten me into some really unsuitable career paths. Not knowing where to live, what career to do or even what to wear most days is exhausting.