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I finally found a place that would do an assessment, and one thats paid by my insurance. Felt relieved I didn't have to drop the $600 that it would have otherwise taken. Assessor says that its more like extreme anxiety. Kinda feel like I just mask well since *points at all the online tests*. It was fun to learn that i'm like off the charts for language skill and data handling. Getting to the end of the tests was... fun. Hungry Squirrel posted:I'll obviously do this with her, because she knows what kinds of things upset her and what helps. But, starting from scratch will be overwhelming. Does something like these lists already exist, that we can use as a starting point? And, are there any other sections that would be good? Would flashcards be better? Theres a ton out there and maybe yiy can mix and match to get what you need?
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Jun 3, 2023 19:04
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Hungry Squirrel posted:My kid doesn't have a formal diagnosis for anything, but she gets overstimulated in the same situations as folks in the autism and ADD communities. When that happens, she isn't able to answer questions about what she wants to do or what would help, and she struggles to find the mental bandwidth to even decide.
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Jun 3, 2023 19:59
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Culex posted:One of my favorite ways to play as a child was organizing. Sorting. Like my Micro Machines cars... Order them all in length. Then by color. Then weight. Etc. Kept me super quiet and was easy on my mom. Ditto alphabetizing. lol that reminded me of when i was about 3 or 4 i had a set of plastic ducks and a lil nerf gun and would arrange them by height atop the little lake in my insanely cool Map Carpet and peeled off their eye stickers so they couldn't see me coming also lifeforms from different geological periods were utterly forbidden to be intermixed bc it would run my immersion, i kept them stored separately in cretaceous, jurassic etc & carnivore/herbivore bins; i remember thinking my cousin was on some psycho poo poo and refusing to play with her once because she wanted the toy triceratops to be friends with her toy pony being a kid ruled lol
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Jun 3, 2023 21:28
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I miss my Legos. I'd build whatever the set was then rip it apart and add the parts to my city. Basically every bit of my bedroom floor was covered in my created things. I had a lot of fun building cars to be powered by bottle rockets and boxes to light black cats in and try to contain the blasts. I was a weird kid stuck on a farm and it didn't bother me at all spending too much time by myself. But, the more odd thing was going through books and filling in the enclosed area on letters (opeabdqg096) and drawing a line to co
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Jun 3, 2023 21:46
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Hungry Squirrel posted:My kid doesn't have a formal diagnosis for anything, but she gets overstimulated in the same situations as folks in the autism and ADD communities. When that happens, she isn't able to answer questions about what she wants to do or what would help, and she struggles to find the mental bandwidth to even decide. that's a good idea imo to avoid things being overwhelming, break them into smaller chunks basically, flowchart function over form format when possible A ._____ B ._____ C ._____ D ._____ E ._____ F ._____ generates far more mental load than A->B->C->D->E->F, focus kinda gets split between all the different available fields and it creates the Chinese Restaurant Menu decision paralysis thing too many variables to compare between options and makes it easy to get stuck there trying to weigh the different options instead of being able to think about any given one of them in isolation e.g. instead of "what's bothering me?" all being together in one big list, split it into mild/severe sections, separated by senses, sounds, one for not sure, one for smells, one for being bored, one for visual stimuli + a way to describe how much a given thing is bothering her without her needing to have the right words for it (a 0-10 line graph or "fill-in-the-space for how much current distress is from what") splitting it into multiple pages or better, a semitransparent halfsheet cover that can be slid over the parts she's not focusing on at that moment will help keep in mind that it's very easy to not be able to tell what's bothering you when it's from overstimulation - even as an adult it can be but as a kid it can be tough recognizing something is affecting you at all and you're not just feeling some type of way AND that it's not something everybody else is experiencing too or that there's something that can be done to rectify it so even something recognized as being irritating by her might not be mentioned unless you bring it up and ask about it f.ex. it can just feel like shits Not right but it might be a combo of sounds and being hungry or needing to go to the bathroom and having too many people walking around. might have too much energy and need to move around it makes it easier to recognize what's going on by trying to describe it though and over time it gets easier, particularly with the most disruptive ones - encourage her describing what she's experiencing, both good and bad, whether or not she's having a problem right then, so it's better defined and not just in her head, and so it's less likely things get missed specificity with questions is suuuper important also - try to narrow it down step by step and then once you think you've got it, narrow it down another step open-ended "is there anything i can do?" "are you okay?" "what's wrong?" questions can be much harder than things like "is that noise/light bugging you?", "would it help if i [possible solution]?", "is too much going on?" "want to go walk around for a bit?" "want something to draw on?"
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Jun 3, 2023 22:54
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FirstnameLastname posted:that's a good idea imo this is incredibly good advice
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Jun 3, 2023 23:00
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HopperUK posted:I just had a full sense memory of how much I liked to bite sponges. 
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Jun 3, 2023 23:11
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Delicious delicious paper...
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Jun 4, 2023 00:11
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Culex posted:My most prominent memories of objects from my deep past is their mouth feel and taste. drat, the old My Little Pony feet with the dimple were great. Agree on the my little pony feet. I knew as a kid it wasn’t something to mention to others, though.
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Jun 4, 2023 02:16
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FilthyImp posted:I finally found a place that would do an assessment, and one thats paid by my insurance. Felt relieved I didn't have to drop the $600 that it would have otherwise taken. I do feel like I exist in a perpetual state of anxiety when it comes to social situations. But if you've been masking for your entire life, it's probably really difficult to let go of that far enough for even a professional to see through it. Your assessor probably doesn't believe in online tests, most professionals don't, but can they do their own tests with you? Or is it just talking? Thinking back on it, I'm reasonably certain my assessor hid a ticking clock at the window to see how I'd react. She definitely got some data out of it, because I noticed the sound, kept getting distracted by it and eventually found it. She also changed subjects a lot and very abruptly, which stressed me out a lot. When I brought it up the next session, she admitted that this had been a test.
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Jun 4, 2023 08:53
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Car Hater posted:Delicious delicious paper... The corners taste best. So happy I stopped that. Reminds me of staple collecting. Why the gently caress were there so many staples on the principal's floor? Did they use staple puller and just let them fly all over?
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Jun 4, 2023 09:13
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The sudden realization that it didn't have to make sense why we found SO MANY old keys stashed in my dad's possessions Dude just liked keys apparently Makes sense now
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Jun 4, 2023 13:25
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FilthyImp posted:I finally found a place that would do an assessment, and one thats paid by my insurance. Felt relieved I didn't have to drop the $600 that it would have otherwise taken. So, my therapist pushed me to get an evaluation done because she didn’t think I was bipolar. She also didn’t think I was on the spectrum, and made that known to me. My best friend was convinced I was on the spectrum, but she was really the only one. The psychologist who did my eval talked to my therapist about that beforehand and we focused a lot on ASD testing, including that test y’all have posted a few times recently. My results were clinically borderline and she didn’t feel confident saying one way or another, so she brought in an adult ASD specialist to review my testing and notes, and they said ‘hell yeah he’s on the spectrum! He just masks extremely well’ and now I have my diagnosis! My big point to the post though is that until you DO the testing, you might get vibes that you’re not being heard. Use the test to highlight your real struggles, be very honest about stuff, especially social stuff. Some of the ASD testing IDed that while I’m highly social, it’s because I dedicated a ton of time and effort to ‘learning it’, so to speak Side note: she was originally gonna do a full battery of ADHD tests but I aced the first one so well? Poorly? That she was like nah you got severe ADHD my friend, no need to test
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Jun 4, 2023 17:50
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And for the record, an evaluation is NOT necessary to like, identify as ASD. I honestly only recommend it in cases like mine where you aren’t sure yourself and others consistently downplay what you have to deal with
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Jun 4, 2023 18:01
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bagmonkey posted:And for the record, an evaluation is NOT necessary to like, identify as ASD. I honestly only recommend it in cases like mine where you aren’t sure yourself and others consistently downplay what you have to deal with big this, there’s far too many potential negatives career wise and far too few benefits as far as support, capitalism is hell
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Jun 4, 2023 21:25
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Yeah like I specifically asked my psychologist to not share with my PCP or anyone else and to keep that poo poo sealed TIGHT. I identify openly as AuDHD but I do NOT want that on my medical chart given that I live in Hell States Of America
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Jun 4, 2023 22:56
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Cloacamazing! posted:Your assessor probably doesn't believe in online tests, most professionals don't, but can they do their own tests with you? Or is it just talking? I had a pre-screening that was mostly talk (why do you want to get tested, personal history, etc). I did mention to that person that I had done general info tests online -- met with a bit of a scoff-- and then explained that my wife's score was basically "Lol No Autism here friend" and mine was on the high end of "You're Autistic as all gently caress, child!", which led me to try the RAADS-R and whatever. I thought that self-testing was kind of starting to be acknowledged as a valid line of questioning for adults that may have slipped through the cracks but I guess not everyone shares that when TikTok is like "have you ever cracked your knuckles during a test? Guess what you're ADHD!" The whole report was very long and informative and I enjoyed speaking with the assessor that did my testing.
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Jun 5, 2023 06:11
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Oh man, I havent had a quote=/= edit in a while...bagmonkey posted:And for the record, an evaluation is NOT necessary to like, identify as ASD.
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Jun 5, 2023 06:14
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The online tests (at least the ones talked about here) are acknowledged as valid among the community, same as a self-diagnosis, but medical professionals are an entirely different thing. I filled in a bunch of questionnaires that were clearly aimed at young boys. One test even opened with saying that since autism was predominantly diagnosed in boys, they'd use male pronouns here, which... yeah. Have you considered there's a reason women are typically diagnosed later, if at all? And in my opinion, way too much focus was on what my parents remembered from when I was a child. Their outside perspective from thirty years ago was considered at least as, if not more, relevant to the diagnosis than my own thoughts and behavior at the current point in time.
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Jun 5, 2023 09:57
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FilthyImp posted:they were pretty dismissive of the ASD possibility because I vary my tone/make eye-contact/have empathy. Do you mind describing how empathy works for you? I brought that one up with my assessor, since I knew I had empathy and that had been one of the reasons I thought I couldn't be autistic. She made me describe it, and apparently I have been empathying wrong (or at least, not very neurotypical). Didn't even know there was another way.
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Jun 5, 2023 10:03
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can anyone help me with resources for letting things go that work when you *can't*? I absolutely obsess over poo poo that's in the past and it seems like the only thing that works is a new thing to ruminate over, I want to get on with my life but I *can't* I had a meltdown and quit my job while giving every reason under the sun except a lifetime of trauma, and now I *can't* apply to anything new until I go back and fix things with them. I don't even know what I want from the situation, understanding and acknowledgement seems impossible, closure isn't real etc. Bills are piling up and I'm just paralyzed I want to get off Mr. Spectrum's Wild Ride Car Hater fucked around with this message at 14:15 on Jun 5, 2023 |
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Jun 5, 2023 14:12
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Cloacamazing! posted:Do you mind describing how empathy works for you? I brought that one up with my assessor, since I knew I had empathy and that had been one of the reasons I thought I couldn't be autistic. She made me describe it, and apparently I have been empathying wrong (or at least, not very neurotypical). Didn't even know there was another way. Man I'm really glad the first link I found was a hit. There's a huge misunderstanding that Autistic people aren't empathetic, the problem is that we're generally over-empathetic and express it in ways that are very different from the norm. I'm extremely bad at "soothing" people, it's something I've had to spend so loving much effort trying to do. I don't like doing it because when I'm upset or angry or whatever, I just wanna be left to myself to kinda work through the emotions and then talk about it after. In the moment, I'd rather like, someone take care of chores I don't want to do because I'm feeling depressed than someone comfort me directly in the moment. So that's how I always expressed my empathy and guess what? That's not normal lol But yeah, that article is a great "debunking" of the 'not empathetic' myth of ASD.
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Jun 5, 2023 14:41
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Yeah, that "solving problems" vs "expressing sympathy" thing from a few pages ago. I asked my husband about a recent example, and he said it was fine, he was grateful that I helped solve the problem, but it probably depended on the situation.
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Jun 5, 2023 16:01
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It's something I've had to work on a lot with my S/O. She needs someone to comfort her and listen and not offer solutions and well, that's not me at all. But it's something I've been trying to be better about because overall it has positive implications across my life.
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Jun 5, 2023 16:30
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bagmonkey posted:Man I'm really glad the first link I found was a hit. There's a huge misunderstanding that Autistic people aren't empathetic, the problem is that we're generally over-empathetic and express it in ways that are very different from the norm. Some people on the autism spectrum will try to avoid or block out intense feelings because it’s more emotionally intense than they can handle. haha yeah, and then some of us think that because you can block out the intense feeling that the feeling didn't exist or wasn't real in the first place 
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Jun 5, 2023 17:48
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And then people will tell you that it wasn't real. A couple years back I saw one quack of a therapist for anxiety stuff. The sessions would always be the same. I'd tell him stuff that had happened, he'd ask how I felt about it, I'd answer truthfully, he'd say "I don't believe that." and then we'd stare at one another for a while. Eventually I'd try to guess the correct answer and we'd proceed after a few more "I don't believe that"s. The accepted answer tended to be pretty far from the truth.
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Jun 5, 2023 19:51
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bagmonkey posted:There's a huge misunderstanding that Autistic people aren't empathetic, the problem is that we're generally over-empathetic and express it in ways that are very different from the norm. One example for me recently was loud, thoughtless extroverts talking in that extremely unnecessarily loud way in an office right next to some people working while we waited for a meeting room to be available. Their voices were like physical pain because I knew if I was in the situation of the people trying to work through that I would just be pumped full of adrenaline and wishing they would shut the gently caress up. Since I lack the ability to diplomatically tell people to shut up I just had to walk away (I could still hear them at the other side of the office a good 20m away) and come back when the room was available.
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Jun 5, 2023 21:32
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i just found out Today you're supposed to look at people when they're talking But not as much when you're talking and that's how eye contact is supposed to work??? is this true fuuuck is that what it is i never noticed ive never stared at people when i talk i just dont really know where to look and will glance at faces but usually don't really know where to look and try to gravitate my focus around the most visually interesting thing, sunsets w/e because then it doesn't look like I'm just staring at the ground as i try to listen but im trying to listen the ground & corners/edges of walls work best tho
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Jun 5, 2023 21:35
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Car Hater posted:can anyone help me with resources for letting things go that work when you *can't*? I absolutely obsess over poo poo that's in the past and it seems like the only thing that works is a new thing to ruminate over, I want to get on with my life but I *can't* I came across the “crappy childhood fairy” on YouTube while looking for stuff to help my partner deal with trauma, I don’t know if you might find her useful or not, her main starting technique is dumping poo poo out of your brain to paper and then physically destroying it to try and relieve that buzzing busy overloaded brain, combined with meditation to help relax after the hard work of getting it all out. I guess ignore all the stuff where she tries to sell you stuff, that’s more on her website than in her videos. I tried the technique and it did give me a sense of a lightened load and I was able to get more done.
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Jun 5, 2023 21:56
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Car Hater posted:can anyone help me with resources for letting things go that work when you *can't*? I absolutely obsess over poo poo that's in the past and it seems like the only thing that works is a new thing to ruminate over, I want to get on with my life but I *can't* Zoloft has done wonders for not having little interactions become a pit of "OH GOD WHY DID I SAY IT LIKE THAT WHYYYY" Also therapy. Just talking, and then having stuff sink in. Has helped quite a bit. Cloacamazing! posted:Do you mind describing how empathy works for you? I brought that one up with my assessor, since I knew I had empathy and that had been one of the reasons I thought I couldn't be autistic. She made me describe it, and apparently I have been empathying wrong (or at least, not very neurotypical). Didn't even know there was another way. I definitely have a hard stop to things emotionally if, like, theres something about someone that feels off? Like boo hoo Kim Kardashian was robbed (god that must have been terrifying, but she's kind of a poo poo person, but yeah that sucks, but also...). So maybe that part of me is broken. Thinking about it more I can kind of be inflexible with my opinions of people-- one of my coworkers basically told someone else "yeah, so I knew that they were going to pass you over because I had lunch with So-and-So and they voiced concerns but I didnt want to break their truuust" and I'm just sitting therr going like "why would you ever admit to that you slime-mold of a person?" I had a friend confide in me about their experience with SA and the entire time I kept listening and being hyper aware to modulate my expressions so that I wouldnt come off as insensitive. Because honestly all I could do was listen, and thank them for their trust, and check in if they needed like a blanket or the room for a second or whatever else to decompress. A coworker recently lost a family member and I ran into them getting on the elevator and just gave them a "hey I hope you're doing ok" with a little empathetic head nod because what the gently caress do you say or do for someone. All I can think about in that situation is "yeah that sucks, they must be really grieving and going through a lot of emotions. Theres nothing I can do to help that. Also it's just kind of a lovely part of life" FilthyImp fucked around with this message at 05:23 on Jun 6, 2023 |
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Jun 6, 2023 05:19
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That's exactly how I described it to her: I consciously try to imagine myself in that situation and react accordingly. Easier if I've already experienced it, but I can extrapolate. But it's a conscious thing, not something that works automatically. It's like how I can read facial expressions because I have a database of expressions and situations that I can work with, and that's the difference between autistic brains and non-autistic brains. Conscious effort for something that should be an automatic process. I had a chat about face blindness recently with someone who ended up explaining to me how people in security for example can recognize people from their passport pictures. (It turns out when everybody says "I can't even recognize you on those new biometric passport pictures!", they're actually exaggerating. Never knew that.) Same thing again, automatic process that's somewhat conscious for me. And of course the filtering out of random background noise a lot of us suck at.
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Jun 6, 2023 07:14
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Checked with neurotypical husband, not caring about the Kardashians is normal.
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Jun 6, 2023 07:33
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I was talking to a coworker who I really enjoy their company and we got to talking about ADHD and I was saying there can be some overlap with autism and that I'd been looking into it and took the RAADS-R test. He said lemme get that test and scored even higher than me. Some of the people I've instantly clicked with the most lately seem to be vibing to the beat of the same drum.
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Jun 6, 2023 12:52
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The old Simon Baron Cohen-style belief was that autistic folks have deficits in empathy, but it turns out both autistic folks and empathy are way more complicated than that! For one thing, empathy manifests in (at least) two broad systems: cognitive and affective. Cognitive empathy is roughly the ability to recognize someone else's emotions or take their perspective. Affective empathy is the ability to share or mirror those emotions. Sometimes you'll also see "empathetic concern" or "compassionate empathy" as a third type, the motivation to help others in distress. When you break it down like this, the one autistic people generally struggle with is cognitive empathy: that is, we have a harder time figuring out what's going on in someone else's head, but once we do find out, we're much better at sharing those emotions or taking action to help as needed. But even that isn't quite so clear, because of the double empathy problem. Basically, it's not just that we struggle to identify the emotions of allistic people, but also that allistic people struggle to identify our emotions. Among others whose thoughts and behaviors make more sense to us, we experience fewer obstacles to understanding-- which I personally think helps explain why we gravitate towards autistic and other neurodivergent folks, sometimes even without realizing it.
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Jun 6, 2023 13:21
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for fucks sake posted:Their voices were like physical pain because I knew if I was in the situation of the people trying to work through that I would just be pumped full of adrenaline and wishing they would shut the gently caress up. I'm pretty sure there's some jealousy packed in there as well, given that I expend so much effort trying to be considerate, put others first, think about others needs and not ne selfish; and yet these complete arseholes are somehow able to live their lives carefree and with none of that bullshit. I think somewhere deep down at its core the people pleasing is related to RSD and not wanting people to hate me or get mad at me, so I pre-emptively try to put other people's comfort first the only way I can, which is to think "what would I feel / want / think in their situation." It's interesting that I always assume that loud people are ruining everyone's time though, when the reality is that neurotypical people generally don't seem particularly bothered and it's just me who's distracted to the point of rage. And there's one of the big problems. Trying to put myself in their situation fundamentally doesn't work, because what I would feel / want / think is completely different to what an allistic person would. Double empathy strikes again! Cloacamazing! posted:A couple years back I saw one quack of a therapist for anxiety stuff. The sessions would always be the same. I'd tell him stuff that had happened, he'd ask how I felt about it, I'd answer truthfully, he'd say "I don't believe that." and then we'd stare at one another for a while. Eventually I'd try to guess the correct answer and we'd proceed after a few more "I don't believe that"s. The accepted answer tended to be pretty far from the truth. I've never been good at connecting to or naming my emotions except in terms of music which really strongly helps me connect. It made me realise that what counsellors are looking for is the feeling to be put into words, and that's what I'm bad at. FilthyImp posted:A coworker recently lost a family member and I ran into them getting on the elevator and just gave them a "hey I hope you're doing ok" with a little empathetic head nod because what the gently caress do you say or do for someone.
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Jun 6, 2023 14:33
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Quaint Quail Quilt posted:I was talking to a coworker who I really enjoy their company and we got to talking about ADHD and I was saying there can be some overlap with autism and that I'd been looking into it and took the RAADS-R test. I'm just gonna spend my days here linking studies that prove the things you think you feel lol So, I think this extends beyond just autistic people identifying and grouping together with other autistic people, but rather it's NEURODIVERSE people that group together. ADHD, ASD, OCD, Depression, Anxiety are WAY WAY WAY more common in my friend groups than is baseline for the average person. I think the reason comes down to the fact that we can read each other's body language better, we don't expect or need eye contact, we're okay with someone who isn't "presenting" as normal since we're not normal ourselves and the fact that many of us have a shared bond in the trauma that our neurodiversity has put us through, whether it's family struggles, social struggles, academic struggles, etc. We just know that we've all been through Some poo poo.
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Jun 6, 2023 15:15
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bagmonkey posted:I think the reason comes down to the fact that we can read each other's body language better, we don't expect or need eye contact, we're okay with someone who isn't "presenting" as normal since we're not normal ourselves and the fact that many of us have a shared bond in the trauma that our neurodiversity has put us through, whether it's family struggles, social struggles, academic struggles, etc. We just know that we've all been through Some poo poo.
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Jun 6, 2023 15:31
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Yeah, I feel like having been different my entire life has given me the advantage that it bothers me a lot less if other people are different from me. That's already business as usual.
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Jun 6, 2023 18:26
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Bobby Deluxe posted:
You totally nailed it, I didn't think about it in terms of the double empathy problem before but that's exactly why it's so frustrating.
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Jun 6, 2023 18:37
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FirstnameLastname posted:i just found out Today you're supposed to look at people when they're talking But not as much when you're talking and that's how eye contact is supposed to work??? is this true lol this was the wrong thread to ask but really can someone chime in on this hahaha How do Eyes Work thanks
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Jun 7, 2023 03:49
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