Lack Common Sense and always screwing up

Lack Common Sense

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I was born without common sense and to this day don't have much of it at all.

I've always been the type of person where I make small things into much larger things. I have a problem when doing things that are so simple, and making them a lot harder than they actually are. I'm not stupid or dumb, I'm actually quite intelligent. I have one skill that I know of and it's something I'm extremely good at; computer programming. I know everything about a computer and the internet upside down. I never went to school for scripting but instead taught my self off of free sources. To this day I've been working on my only mmorpg game and have professionally coded it in PHP. I had a few thousand members until a personal crisis happened and I didn't have enough money to pay for the game any longer. I am extremely expiriences with computers and it seems to be the only thing I'm good at, which doesn't bother me because it's all I like to do. I madee all A's and B's in school up until high school when having trouble focusing on things and acknowledging what the teacher is teaching. It would never stick in my brain.

I lack common sense drastically. Let me give you a few examples of some stupid things I've done in my life and why I believe I have 10% of the common sense I should have:

1. My friends one night asked me to cut the potatoes for dinner. No problem, sure. What do I do? I cut the potatoes without peeling them, now there is skin on each slice that must be cut off. Felt very stupid. Although it never occurred to me to peel them, never came through my mind.

2. I will be asked to grab something off a table, for example, it will be right in front of my face but I won't see it and will look very dumb.

3. Today, I asked my friend for a grocery bag at his house to put my clothes in. He told me where they were, so I went to get one. He told me they were in the cabinet to the right of the sink in the kitchen. OK no problem. I opened the door and didn't see any bags and told him there were none. I didn't even think to look in the big plaster bag full of grocery bags. Felt pretty stupid.

It's just simple things I can never do right. I always seem to * * * * something up, excuse my langauge, no matter where I'm at or where I go.

This is really a problem when looking for a job, because I feel I'll always screw something up there too. You can ask me to do the simplest thing, like grab your drink out of the fridge, but if it's behind something or not directly in my face, I'd say your drink isn't in there. This doesn't occur at all times because I'm not blind, but for some reason when asked to grab something for somebody 50% chance that I'll screw up doing it.

I was asked if I wanted to drink my friends moped, as you didn't need a license for this type, but had a fear I'd * * * * something up. Sure enough, I couldn't even figure out how to get the thing to start, take it off the kick stand, back it up or nothing. This is even AFTER being told how to do everything with it.

It's as if my brain cells are disintegrating or something. Before you tell my that I'm just stupid, and don't have the ability to learn, let me tell you about what goes through my mind. I don't think ahead and I don't think I have the ability to do so. I don't over-try a simple task and try and think too hard about what I'm going to do.

I live my own world in my mind. When I talk it's completely different than if I had been thinking. I can be very intelligent in my mind but when it comes to speaking aloud I ask the dumbest questions and at the most wrong times.

I have no idea what is wrong with me and I want to fix it.

I am a very very independent person. I go by my own expectations and do my own things. I live my own life. I have a serious anger problem when it comes to people who call me stupid or a * * * * * * * after something I've * * * * ed up without knowing. I've been to a therapist, but them talking to me doesn't help one bit as I try and help my own self. I love challenges. Today, I walked 14 miles just to get home, which took 4 hours of walking, when I could have waited 4 hours and I would have had a ride. I'm not at all a lazy person. I think I am lazy in my mind, but I know when I need to get up and handle a situation. I can be rather lazy at home but if I have to work, I'll bust my ass and do the best I can. I'm a quiet person, but not shy. If I want to say something, I'll say it. I have no problem conversating with someone, even though I suck at direct eye contact when speaking. I do more listening than talking. If I'm at a party, some people will talk 100x as much as I do. I don't feel I have anything to say or comment on a lot of the times.

I've never shared this information with anyone except for you right now. My whole family knows I don't have commmon sense, but they don't look down on me for it ofcourse. They all know my brain is nothing but book smarts so that kind of makes up for it.

I just want to know why I don't think and use common sense as much as other people, yet in my own mind I feel I'm a very intelligent person.

I'm the same way. I'm terrible at interacting with people and I would have trouble seeing things from other people's perspective. Like you, I wouldn't consider myself unintelligent, but I often find it hard to just be 'normal'.

Here's my theory, everyone's brain works differently so everyone interprets a problem/situation differently. I can't give a particularly vivid explanation, but here's some food for thought. A few years ago, my friend told me about this game that she saw her classmates play. It was one of those games where the rules cannot be announced, and the player must learn the rules by their mistakes. One classmate would say two words, like, "chalkboard, table" and then the other person would say "chair." The game would go on and on, and the second person would guess what the third word is. When my friend played it, however, she couldn't never get it right. My initial thought about the rule was that perhaps the objects were located at a specific angle and perhaps, there is some mathematical relationship--apparently, my friend thought that, too, and she could never get a single word correct. So, if you haven't already guess it, my friend and I lean more towards mathematics and science. It's what we are comfortable with, so that's how we understand the world. It can get frustrating sometimes if you can't seem to get the "common sense" thing down... but eh, all these little perks are what make us unique. It's nothing to feel bad about.

It's impossible to accurately diagnose someone over the internet so I'm not going to try, but I would say in this case that you should strongly consider getting a professional opinion from a clinical psychologist, as I think they may well have something useful to tell you.

5years later.. I'm 100% the same, have started my first part time job and I'm academically clever getting a majority of a's at GCSEs and yet I have no common sense, my family joke around calling me stupid and awkward as well as my co workers joking about it, it just dents my confidence and I do feel stupid but glad to see someone's in the same boat as me, the other day at work I put a muffin in the wrong microwave for a minute and a half instead of warming it up, and today I was told to grab some crisps and I was panicking because they were nowhere in the back room and yet I found them a few minutes later behind me, I hate being called stupid because I'm not but I just wish I had some common sense, I'm surprised they haven't fired me yet with the amount of mistakes I'm making.. I feel the exact same way as you, and yet I hate being this way and just wish I could use my initiative, which I seem to lack..

How do you drink a moped?

I too think some professional help is in order. Please know what we all do silly things from time to time, nobody is immune from that. Sometimes I can't see things for looking at them, like the bags stuffed in a bigger bag.

I have taken psychology classes in college. Intelligence is measured in various ways. Some people have great common sense but poor academic skills. Others are smart academically but not have practice intelligence. My common sense was very poor. To this day, I struggle with it. It would be best to practice it such as learning to cook, clean,drive a car, how to make a friend etc. Try getting out of your room and house. When it comes to social situations, try to observe how people talk and act in situations. Do you have any good friends or family members with great common sense? If so, try to ask them for help. I believe common sense gets better with experience. I hope this helps.

HI Alex22, I understand your plight. Growing up all we had were common sense. Education was but a dream, however I overcame that thinking. I now have a professional career but I am capable of building a wall or fixing a car. You have to realize you are not good at everything, so don't worry too much about it. I agree with Chocolate25 it's always good to be around people who have different skills. It's no so much psychological as it is just life experience. One thing that helps me is to slow my mind down and concentrate on the immediate task at hand not the end result.

I can relate to this post on very different levels.

I also lack commun sense, as most of you, I don't think I'm stupid, I'm actually quite good with mathematics, languages and sciences in general, so that I learned English and Spanish independently, speak French, Portuguese and I'm currently working on Italian and German. Also when I was in high school I won a medal on math Olympics, and I have always been among the three best students of the classes I've been until my last year of high school. I'm currently in college and I finished among the ten best of my class , in which I was during the two last years.

But when it comes to commun sense.... It's a struggle. I came to realize it some time ago during my first professional experience, it was a daily struggle. It was so embarrassing that sometimes I didn't want to go back to work ever again. My boss constantly told she didn't understand how I could be so smart and yet so dumb at the same time. This experience made me realize how much I lack commun since, and my boyfriend keeps reminding me about it in my day-to-day life. He even calls me stupid sometimes, which I hate, and then says he doesn't mean it but.... Whatever lol.

I could particularly relate to what the author of the main post said about him living too much in his head. I have the same problem. I'm not sure but I'd say that the way I've been raised is to blame. I think my parents protected me too much as kid.

Anyways, I think it's important for us to accept that we all have different talents and that's how the world is made

Closed......