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I'm 35 and will have my first appointment for a diagnosis next week. I've had my suspicions for a while now, and recently decided that I wanted closure on this subject. When I told my husband, he admitted that he had wondered if I was on the spectrum on some occasions, but hadn't known how to bring it up. I think getting a diagnosis will help me understand myself better, and I'm hoping to get some advice on how to deal with stressful situations. One thing I'm not sure about is telling my family. I'm worried especially that my mom and sister won't believe me, they have a past history of downplaying things I say and telling me I misremember something or that it couldn't have been that bad. I worry that they might just decide I'm being melodramatic and tell me everybody is a bit like that. Wouldn't be the first time. The bad thing is, I told my husband about those worries to see if maybe I'd misunderstood things, but he's worried about that as well.
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Apr 27, 2022 07:45
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I'm still on the fence about tellign them at some point, but only after getting an official diagnosis to support my claim. The therapist mentioned on the phone that she would like to have my parents fill out some questionnaire for the assessment, that's what got me thinking about it. I don't think they're going to be lovely about it on purpose if that makes sense?
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Apr 27, 2022 14:42
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I know I have problems focussing on talk if there's two much going on around me. When there's too many conversations happening, it kind of all blends together. Music is very distracting, because I enjoy listening to it and actually use it as a distraction in crowded places. I'm pretty much resigned to only catching half the dialogue in the series we're watching right now, because the music is pretty distracting. It shouldn't be hearing issues in my case, because I normally have very good hearing. Status of my assessment if anybody is curious: The doctor said she needed those questionnaires from my parents, but we agreed that I would only send them after she was relatively certain it wouldn't be a negative diagnosis. That happened two weeks ago. My mother said she'd seen some autistic traits when I was a child, but in other ways I didn't fit, so they ignored it. My father is completely convinced that it's nothing. Both of them have buried me under a mountain of "This is completely normal" and "Here's a situation where you acted normal" proofs. They filled out the questionnaires about my childhood, but I feel like they went about this with the idea of proving that I wasn't autistic in their mind. For example, there was a question about if I was more uncomfortable in social situations than alone as a child, and I know I have always been more comfortable alone, but they still answered no, because they didn't have to drag me kicking and screaming to my grandmother's house. I tried to adress this. There were more "This is completely normal"s and "I know this guy who also doesn't like looking people in the eye and he's normal"s. So, not very happy with this. Then I caught Covid and the whole thing had to be put on hold for two weeks. Really not happy with this.
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May 26, 2022 07:50
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My results are in and I have... half an autism? "Autistic traits with current exclusion of autistic spectrum disorder and high likelyhood of autism spectrum disorder" is what it says. The way my therapist explained it to me, some of my traits (social stuff, mimic, apparently my voice is kind of monotone sometimes and generally a bit strange) fit, while others, mostly related to specific interests, don't or don't fully fit. I don't have any interests that are completely out there, I don't talk incessantly about the interests that I do have, I follow along with conversation even if it bores me, stuff like that. She suggested that some of this might be because I've learned early on not to do these things. Stuff like social cues doesn't come naturally to me, but I've learned the rules for years now and can handle any familiar situations like that. Same for reading faces and apparently empathy too? I was honestly kind of shocked to find out that for other people, empathy doesn't work in the "consciously think about how you would feel if this happened to you, it's probably similar for the other person" way. Makes me feel kind of creeped out by myself if I'm being honest. A lot of typically autistic things like sensory overloads, stimming, etc, only seem to happen for me when I'm tired. Normally, going to the supermarket is not a problem, but I once went after a therapy session and I must have been really exhausted from that because all the sounds just came crashing down on me. Is that a thing for anybody else? My voice apparently gets more monotone the more tired I am too.
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Jun 14, 2022 11:41
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Quorum posted:Yes, you sound a lot like me to be honest! What you're describing is "masking," the learned practice of hiding or compensating for neurodivergent traits or behaviors in order to get through life. Often, kids start picking up the basics of masking so early that it becomes subconscious and second nature, and it becomes hard to realize they're doing it at all. The only sign might be a deep exhaustion after social events, because masking is cognitively very taxing; you're using active brain resources to do things other folks do nearly automatically. Thanks, that makes a lot of sense! I kind of thought masking had to be something you actively do all the time. I do crash after every social event.
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Jun 14, 2022 18:59
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I'm not entirely sure if I have trouble articulating my feelings or just articulating them in a way that makes sense to others. My usual experience there is something along the lines of "I feel angry" "You don't seem angry". It doesn't help that I have this delay between the situation that makes me feel anger and the point where I actually get angry.broken pixel posted:The fact that I process the world differently from other people is uh… haunting!
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Jul 13, 2022 06:09
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I think falling in love is something that my brain does different from others. It seems to take a conscious effort, or maybe I block it until I want it to happen? A social worker at school once told me and a couple of other gifted children that we thought too much with our brains instead of our hearts, which probably sums me up better than she thought. So far, when I have learned someone was interested in me, I have always carefully thought things through in my head before developing feelings. Movies and books tell me this is not how it's supposed to work, but that's how it's always been. Seeing how this was a key part in preventing me from even starting two relationships that I am certain would have been terrible ideas, I don't see anything wrong with it. For example, I was in my early twenties and there was this guy in his mid-thirties. I felt flattered that someone that much further ahead in life would actually be interested in me, but thinking it through got me to realizing that I wasn't comfortable with the power dynamic, and that by the time I was in my mid-thirties, I wanted to be far enough ahead in life that I wouldn't be interested in twenty-somethings, so maybe he wasn't actually as mature as he seemed. Currently being 35, I can confirm that. Feelings never entered the discussion at any point during this. With my husband, when I was told he was interested in me, I thought things through and decided it seemed like a good idea. Saying it like that sounds terribly cold, but it's the truth. I developed feelings for him after deciding to do so, and we eventually got together. I still think that his feelings for me are different from mine, but I think it's more of a question of intensity? As in, I love him in a calmer way? Like, this: Organza Quiz posted:the feeling that can be described as "love" is so big it's like a physical sensation in my chest. I was worried I'd have trouble identifying it but no it was pretty easy in the end to be like ah yes this must be it. is not something I have ever experienced, but I would still say that I love my husband. In the end, that seems to be how I work, and we're both fine with it, so that's all that matters. Fun thing is, he was worried in the beginning that I was missing out on something because I hadn't dated anybody before. This made absolutely no sense to me, because if finding a long-term partner was my main goal, why would I complain about finding someone I clicked with on the first try? Was I supposed to test out more people just to make absolutely sure there wasn't any better option? I didn't plan on marrying the first person I dated, but I see no problem with it either.
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Jul 17, 2022 08:21
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This whole being thought of as emotionless really confuses me. I've had people say that I seemed that way my entire life, and unfortunately I tend to believe things people say about me, so I wondered for quite a while if that was what was wrong with me. I eventually came to the conclusion that I did have emotions, through a very complicated thought process that involved creating a story with an emotionless protagonist and deciding, after thinking up his personality and thought process, that this wasn't how I felt. Yes, I know that's weird. It makes complete sense to me though. What I don't get is where this autism = emontionless thing even comes from. I guess it's the whole "genius too busy for emotions" thing from pop culture? But that's shown to be a lie in every single case.
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Jul 30, 2022 20:29
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Don't forget typing a post out, then deciding to not post after all. The post I made before that was my third attempt.
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Jul 31, 2022 07:11
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Stoca Zola posted:I’m likely to leave my favourite until last so that it is the last thing I taste. Same! My dad taught that trick to me and I've analysed all of my meals since then to figure out the best part to leave for last. HopperUK posted:I had a lot of weird food rules (still do tbh but fewer) but not pizza upside down, haha. If I had some candy that was different colours like skittles, I would split them by colour, then carefully eat them in order so the numbers evened out. Do you have a set order for them too? Red always tastes best, so that's last, and I tend to start with the less tasty ones, like blue M&Ms or white gummy bears. Speaking of those, anybody else like it when the gummy bear package has been open for a bit and they become chewier? I've met only one other person who did this on purpose.
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Aug 1, 2022 05:27
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Remote lunch meeting? Wow. That's one way to make lunch breaks worse. Please just let me bury myself in my ebook from 12:00 to 12:30 while I eat my bread. Why do work lunches have to be this giant social event where you spent an hour or so coordinating when everybody can take the break together and then we sit around and make small talk for over an hour?
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Aug 1, 2022 17:02
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Violet_Sky posted:I posted this in a different thread, but I feel I ought to ask it here: Wow, that's a real lovely thing to say to a kid. quote:I feel like I have no passion about anything anymore. Part of me thinks its depression while part of me thinks its because of being told not to "sperg out" when I was younger because that was cringe. All those years I desperately tried to be neurotypical and now I'm nothing. I think I can partially relate to that at least. I always thought that if I just kept trying harder, I could understand others and be understood in turn, and now I have a clear (well, mostly clear) confirmation that this is never going to happen. And I feel like whoever I actually am is buried under layers and layers of fake normalcy to the point where even I can't tell what's my actual self. For example: I'm shy. Everybody who meets me says I'm shy. People have been saying that about me since forever. It's the first thing people notice about me. And I'm starting to think it's not actually true, everybody just thinks I'm shy because I rarely speak. Because I have no idea what to say. And because I'm always double-checking what I'm about to say, and once I'm done with that, the conversation has already moved on, so I can't say it, so ninety percent of a group conversation for me is just "Hmm-hmm. Yes. Aha." and all those "I'm listening to you" sounds. Or because there's way too much distracting background noise and I can't even follow half of the conversation, even though everybody else does that effortlessly. So that's a huge chunk of something that I thought was a core part of my personality, and it's probably not, and I'm not sure what to do with that. My current idea is to take this sort of thing slowly. I can't immediately unlearn everything I've taught myself over the past thirty years. I want to identify the things that are fake, peel them back (it's like peeling an onion!) and see what's behind them. And decide which parts I want to keep. Because I definitely should keep some parts, the ones that make it easier for me to navigate life and all. And maybe others I don't need, or I can relax about them to some extent, and that'll make things easier. Should just, you know, take another thirty years or so. Not sure if that's what you meant by it, but the "no passion about anything" makes me think about how I'm always holding back about things I'm interested in. One of the things my doctor wrote down on the not autistic side of things for me was that I don't have any weird interests, and I don't constantly talk about the things that I am interested in. I told her I don't talk about those things because I know nobody cares, but I'm not sure if that made sense to her. I've always felt that as soon as my interest about something passed a certain point, I was not allowed to show it, because nobody wanted to hear it. So I've spent most of my life not having much interest in things I'm interested in. I kind of block the interest? Being slightly interested in something, but not taking it serious at all is what seems safe to me. I would like to get rid of that at least. People do tell me that I'm a different person when I (forget that I'm not allowed to) talk about things I'm interested in, and at least on a casual basis they seem to like that. Probably not if I did it all the time. For the most part, I feel relieved and more at peace with myself now though. It's sad to think about how much time and energy I've spent on trying to be like everyone else, and that I'll never be able to do that, but I can finally understand that this isn't a personal failure on my part.
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Aug 4, 2022 06:14
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for fucks sake posted:I just heard someone, presumably NT, explain what autistic people are allowed to use their condition as an "excuse" for. That is a very lovely thing to say, but also I really need that list. "I have a doctor's note that says I can't socialize." "My doctor says I have to talk about model trains for at least an hour every day." "I have spoken to my doctor and he says if you leave an uneven number of eggs in the fridge one more time, he refuses to answer for the consequences."
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Aug 6, 2022 17:01
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I was kind of shocked how high I scored too. Of course there will always be some bias in self-reporting, and I think all of us went at that test with the expectation of getting a high score, but that's high numbers. Did anybody else think that some of the questions were a bit too specific? 65. It calms me to spin around or to rock in a chair when I'm feeling stressed. 66. The phrase, 'He wears his heart on his sleeve,' does not make sense to me. 70. I keep my thoughts stacked in my memory like they are on filing cards, and I pick out the ones I need by looking through the stack and finding the right one (or another unique way). I feel like a lot of the questions could have been phrased better.
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Aug 12, 2022 08:02
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Can anybody recommend a good book (fiction or non-fiction) written from an autistic perspective? My mother asked me if I knew any, because she would like to better understand the way I see the world. I haven't found anything like that so far, aside from the one recommended earlier in the thread, and I draw the line at recommending romance novels to my mother.
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Aug 13, 2022 08:34
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Thanks for the book recommendations, everybody! I got most of them and will read through them to see if there is anything my mother could use.RPATDO_LAMD posted:Here's a question: Do y'all ever have trouble picking out human voices in areas with a ton of background noise, especially background chatter from other people speaking like a cafeteria or something? I got hearing aids briefly in high school but never really used them cus they just made everything louder, and the inability to pick out voices from a big cloud of background voices isn't really a relative frequency thing. I feel like I read online at some point that this could be an autism thing, like the language/hearing center of the brain is worse at prioritizing speech from background noise or something, but IDK how many other people have this experience Yes. So much. They'll be standing right next to me and I can't make out what they're saying because so many other people are talking. Watching the speaker's face helps, as in I can make out some things and fill in the rest, but it's really difficult. Or when I'm in the backseat of a driving car and the people in front are talking. If the radio is also playing, I might as well give up, I won't hear a thing. People talking will just mix into a giant blob of sound, along with the background noises. One of the reasons I love music so much is probably because it's the only thing that doesn't blob for me. I'm able to follow the music and focus on it in a way that I can't do with other sounds. Of course that does lead to the obvious issue with any social situation where music is playing, but it's not like that's make a difference at a party. organburner posted:And quite often someone says something to me, I go "what?" then my brain interprets the words they said and now my what is redundant and it makes me feel like an rear end. It's so loving embarassing whenever that happens!
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Aug 16, 2022 05:35
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It'd be pretty cool if there was medication to support your ways of coping with things. If I could take a pill before a get-together that would help me filter all those noises, actually follow the conversation and not get tired after a short while from the effort, that would be a huge help and significantly improve my social life and overall stress levels. Thinking about it, this is actually a really bad example. It should be acceptable for me to just take a bit of time off during a social event if I need it, without people questioning or complaining. Or the encounter I had this week, when I called a senior colleague and asked him two questions related to a task he had previously handled. Both of my questions were pretty much "I think I should do X here, but would like to confirm with you that this is how you've handled it before.". Instead of giving me a clear answer, he kept talking around the subject and asking me a ton of questions back, and I had no idea where he was even going with this, except for a vague impression that he was waiting for a specific answer and I had no idea what it was. Better social awareness would probably have helped me here, but in the same vein, it should have been very obvious to him that I was nervous and confused and his way of handling this wasn't working. I don't think this is entirely on me here. As it is, the only thing I've learned is that I will ask someone else in the future.
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Aug 18, 2022 06:32
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Nolgthorn posted:I'm 39 now and all my life I've picked up hints that I put off a bit of a weird vibe. To the degree that I've had a girl ask me 'Are you autistic I work with autistic people'. It's also the only explanation I can come up with as to why I get passed over by girls I like for guys that are much less attractive, wealthy, etc. I must just communicate extra caution or extra work. Yeah, as others have said, dating and attraction are anything but logical and I'm going to assume most of us here have been exposed in one way or another to people who felt that they could logic their way into a relationship (and I really regret being too polite to say "Well, originally I just generally wasn't looking for a relationship, but after you've demanded explanations for why I wasn't for an hour, I now hate you personally."), not to mention their terminal stages of MRAs and incels, which is why we're getting hung up on this part. I'll give you the benefit of the doubt here that you just, well, didn't come across the way you intended. I will point out that it's more likely that you communicate something like a lack of interest, not extra caution or extra work. That seems to be the most common interpretation of autistic people's body language. Mine is usually read as me being uncomfortable or upset. There's an entire additional conversation going on in body language, and if you send out and receive different signals than most people, misunderstandings are bound to happen.
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Aug 25, 2022 05:45
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I don't even want to know what kind of signals I'm sending when I realize in the middle of a conversation that I've forgotten to make facial expressions again and suddenly start smiling...
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Aug 25, 2022 16:44
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organburner posted:I wish my brain would shut the gently caress up. How do I stop thinking? That's what I'd like to know too. Blasting music with earphones and singing along in my head seems to be the closest thing I can get to not thinking.
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Aug 30, 2022 11:44
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cinnamon rollout posted:Grapes and oranges touching on a plate: yea or nay? They don't really mix, but maybe they should be on separate plates regardless.
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Aug 31, 2022 14:08
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"Bye" on the phone is confusing, especially at work. It's like, you wrap the talk up, it's clear to both of you that you have exhausted the topic. You say ending phrases like "Thank you for your help", "Have a nice day", "Enjoy the weekend" and you still need to finish it with "Bye" and my brain just refuses to wrap itself around this. The call is over and has been for a minute, just hang up already!
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Sep 1, 2022 06:08
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I try to think of it that way that even if I had been diagnosed as a child, the "therapy" attempts and stigma would have probably harmed me the same that ignorance did, just in a different way. A childhood where my limitations where known and accepted just wouldn't have been on the table thirty years ago, we're barely reaching something like it today.
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Sep 4, 2022 11:12
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Jefepato posted:Socializing is weird. Most of the time I feel like I'm just going through the motions (and honestly it's kind of tiresome), until I'm talking to someone that I actually "click" with, and then I suddenly become a lot more talkative. I guess I talked a lot in general when I was a kid, but eventually I was like "wait, my parents don't really care about whatever video game I've been playing lately, do they?" and I started trying to only talk to people about things they would actually care about or things that won't sound overly "weird" to them. This can be tough, because I don't really have enough "normal"-sounding interests to fill the air when I'm dealing with people who aren't also nerds, but asking people about themselves more than I talk about myself seems to help (even though it's not exactly interesting). Hey, that sounds awfully familiar. Figuring out that people were not interested in listening to me talk about my interests is probably the main reason why I stayed under the radar for so long. I pretty much went the other extreme and convinced myself that I had absolutely no special interests at all. Anybody asking about my hobbies gets some non-commital "I like reading" answer, then I go back to listening to people talk, because that's easier. It's only recently that I started to look at some of my hobbies in that light and admitted that, okay, maybe a collection of 1000 .mid files that I kept optimizing for whatever soundcard I currently had would fit the definition of absorbing interest, and maybe I do know a little bit too much trivia about my favorite TV shows and games. I'm still not comfortable talking about them to anyone, because I have it fixed in my mind that nobody is going to be interested in anything I care about.
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Oct 30, 2022 09:09
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Have you tried to figure out how you retain information best? I have a way better auditory memory, so I studied by reading things out loud or saying them in my head, which helped a lot. We're usually only taught visual learning at school, so if that's not your thing, this might help. Being interested in my subject was obviously the biggest help though. I can talk your ear off about food law, which is very helpful if that's what you're tested on. Since you mentioned developing test anxiety, what helped me with mine was analyzing the effect it had on me. It doesn't start during the exam, the fear prevents you from studying as well. I learned the effects this had on me, and once I recognized the symptoms, I was able to distance myself from it by saying "I know what's going on, this is the anxiety again. This is my brain being an rear end in a top hat again.". Got enough studying done to scrape by at least.
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Dec 7, 2022 10:14
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Quorum posted:Aw Christ that's loving dire. Here, I'll pull the relevant image out (although the video is good): I'm taking Un-Wonder, because what the hell does "I don't like people to socially wonder about others" even mean? "I don't like it when people gossip"? Yes, I do in fact hate that. It's really rude.
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Dec 10, 2022 08:35
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Does anybody else feel like you got worse after getting diagnosed? I think it's just that I'm more aware of what stresses me out and notice it instead of powering through, but at the same time I can't shake this feeling that I was able to handle this just fine last year, so what's the problem now?
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Dec 11, 2022 21:50
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That's good to know. If it's just me actually learning my limits instead of pushing past them all the time, that should be a good thing and help in the long run. Still frustrating that it feels like I've handled going to the supermarket just fine before, but now it's suddenly becoming A Problem.
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Dec 12, 2022 06:51
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I don't remember seeing anything you'd need to apologize for, but I hope you'll feel better soon.
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Dec 12, 2022 09:14
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credburn posted:In real life I'm probably one of the most pessimistic and cynical persons you would meet. I just *cannot* take another disappointment. Like, if a bus is set to arrive at a specific time, I need to make absolutely sure that I expect it to be late. If it's on time, then I end up pleasantly surprised, and if it's late, then it just meets my expectations. But if I expect or depend on it being on time, and it isn't, it really hits me in an incredible intense way. I feel stupid for setting my expectations so high. I feel like a real loving idiot for being so loving naive. This example with a bus is a simple one; the effects and consequences are so much more intense when it comes to people. I don't do this with small stuff like the bus - I mean, assuming public transit won't be on time is just general knowledge, but I plan around that, and as long as I'm familiar with my route it won't make me anxious. I do panic if I'm late for an appointment and not familiar enough with the route to have some backup plans. I'm not making the case I think I'm making. I definitely know this feeling for bigger, more important things. It's just easier to mentally prepare yourself for it not working as you want it to. I've had some pretty serious disappointments in the past years, and it hurts, especially when it feels like things just go effortlessly right for the people around you, and when I'm not prepared for it, it's easy to spiral into this thought process that of course it wasn't going to work, what did I expect, nothing ever works for me, nothing good ever happens to me. Not sure if this stuff works for other people's brains, but like most people here I've always worked very well with rules, and I've learned to make up rules for myself to deal with situations like this. For example, when I moved to another city for college, I knew I would have to throw myself into social situations if I wanted any kind of social contact, so I made a rule to accept people's invitations (with a group of sub-rules for when I didn't have to). Some good came out of it, some bad. All in all, I think it was a good choice. I've also made it a rule that while I'm allowed to dampen my expectations, I'm not allowed to completely set them up for disappointment. My husband and I are in the process of buying a house, and while I made plans for us not getting the house we both fell in love with, they were more along the lines of "This other house we looked at was really nice too, and with a bit of work I could see us be happy there as well, so it won't be a complete catastrophe if we don't get this house, even though we really want it." and not "We will never get the bank's approval, and even if we do someone else will already have bought the house anyway.". (We did get the house, and we even got to keep the really cool old-fashioned desk I spotted when we looked at it, so the strategy paid off.) quote:I have almost no capacity to trust people at all. Part of this has to do with lovely childhood stuff, but largely my distrust of people comes down to the inherent unreliability of people. I have no ability to gauge a person's sincerity or trustworthiness; not because everybody is automatically a bad person, but we're humans and we're driven by selfish human instincts. I have a few close friends who have never, not a single time let me down, or caused me harm, or wished me harm, or tried to manipulate me or abuse me or anything, and yet, I trust them no more than I would anyone else. In fact, I find the least trustworthy people the easiest to be around because I'm never tricked into giving them any expectations higher than they will meet. Yeah, that. At some point, every single person I am on friendly terms with will realize that I am Wrong and Bad and abandon me. This belief is completely ingrained into me. I try to ignore it, but with an entire childhood full of counter examples, that's not an easy feat. My family is there because they are my family, which means they can't abandon me even if I'm Wrong. My husband seems trustworthy enough, but eventually he'll notice too. So will everybody else. Again, on a good day I know that this is objectively speaking not true, but actions speak louder than words, and years of friends abandoning me for being weird and wrong screams way too loud for me to even hear the lame "Well, it's probably not going to happen with these people", which is all I can produce. Perestroika posted:9/11 may be overstating it, but I do resonate with the aspect that anything unexpected or out of the ordinary, even minor, tends to be a whole thing that dominates my attention entirely until it's done with. Take something as simple as a family member announcing they'll be dropping by for some coffee in a few days' time. On the face of it, it should be a simple thing: They show up sometime, we sit down, have coffee, talk for an hour or so, they leave. Rationally, that's just a small thing taking up like 1/16th of one day, so it really shouldn't take up much more mental space than that. And another hell yes. This Friday is The Day Where My Brother In Law And His New Girlfriend Come Over So We Can Play Board Games In The Evening. This sounds entirely harmless and not something that should require one and a half weeks of mental preparation, but here we are. What should we cook? Does she like chili? Are we sure she likes chili? Did my husband ask his brother if she likes chili? Do we have the right boardgames? I still need to bake for Christmas that weekend, can I fit that into the schedule?
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Dec 14, 2022 07:21
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I've found that in general, taking breaks from the noise is a must. You can usually head outside for "a bit of fresh air" during social events without it seeming weird. If you smoke, or know people who smoke and don't mind hanging out with them, that's a good option too. For work social events I have actually started just saying "This is getting a bit much, I'm going back to my desk.", because, really, who's going to stop me from doing my job? I stay as long as I can handle it, then leave. I haven't told anybody about my diagnosis, but have brought up that I'm a bit sensitive to loud noises and lots of background noise in general. Something else that seems to help, obviously not during social events, is shutting off some sensory input. I suppose it's like wearing earplugs. One of my major problems right now is that to get to the office, I need to walk along several main streets after dark. There's the noise from the cars of course, and then there's the hundreds of bright and flashing lights. It's only getting worse as Christmas draws nearer. That part gets easier when I block out the sound with headphones and music. The noise in the train gets bearable when I close my eyes. Being behind a mask and foggy glasses is also good here.
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Dec 16, 2022 07:06
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Violet_Sky posted:Does anyone else know how to rebuild your overstimulation tolerance? I find that I can barely get through a social event without Noise becoming overwhelming. I think part of it has to do with Covid setting me back socially. It isn't the loudness more like background noise if that makes sense. This definitely makes sense by the way. Apparently other brains are capable of filtering out all the background noise and focussing on what they want to hear, which certainly explains to me how people can have conversations in loud restaurants or moving cars. If I'm in the backseat of a car and the radio is playing, I am not participating in the conversation at all, because I can't even hear it.
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Dec 16, 2022 07:08
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As far as I know those are unrelated. Aphantasia is about being unable to visualize things in your mind, autism is about being unable to understand social cues. I can easily do the first, the second takes lots of effort. It's also about sensory overload. Anybody else start the new year melting down because there had been nonstop fireworks since the 30th and it really needed to stop? They're still firing some leftovers now, but it looks like my neighbors are finally running out of explosives.
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Jan 1, 2023 21:34
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Stoca Zola posted:Personally, I can read social cues sometimes, I'm just not always sure what I'm supposed to do with the information. Not sure if this is how it works for you too, but when I get like that, it's usually because I'm having Unidentified Feelings about something and haven't properly processed them. Slumps go away once I figure out what is going on and how I feel about it.
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Jan 4, 2023 09:50
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FirstnameLastname posted:lol Definitely. Now that my mother has read some books on the subject, she actually remembers a lot of stuff she didn't really notice when I was a child. We've always told the funny story of how I was asked after a birthday party if I'd liked it, and I said something along the lines of "It's nice, but the people should go", which, yes, probably summed up how I felt about my home getting invaded by half a dozen screaming toddlers. I actually have good memories of later birthday parties, because my mother, being a very organized elementary school teacher, always planned those birthdays in detail together with us, so they had this structure of "The guests are going to arrive at that point, we will unpack presents, then we will eat cake and then play those four games.", and that made them easy to handle. And we actually talk about the many misunderstandings we've had (which I didn't even know about). She now knows that I didn't ignore the signs that she wanted my help with something when I was a teen, and that outright telling me "Help me with the dishes" works better. I know that instead of sneaking off to my room, I can just say "I'm taking a break" and they'll understand what it means and won't stop me. Made this Christmas a lot easier on all of us I think. Well, except for my father who leaves the room whenever the subject comes up. Can't win them all.
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Jan 22, 2023 09:01
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FirstnameLastname posted:the more i think about it the more convinced i am that there's a lot of stuff i will not think about until i write or read it. ill feel it, but i won't think it - or I'll think it, but not feel it, until i can visually or maybe through the actual writing it part; is that an autism thing? it will be stuff that I'll know already but until i write it, it's fuckin difficult to label and navigate mentally. That's really interesting. I actually tried that once when my husband suggested I write my thoughts down to get them in order, but ended up shooting out six pages of increasingly disordered and angry text that left me even worse off than before until I deleted it, so that didn't work at all. I need downtime to process things at my own pace, within my own brain. The thing that has always worked for me is thinking up stories - I've always taken long to fall asleep, and I almost never remember my dreams, so I started "dreaming" up stories while waiting to fall asleep as a child. This kept going and now I have this giant pool of stories that I can revisit, rewrite and expand on as needed. I have created a character who doesn't have emotions because people told me I seemed emotionless, a character who doesn't talk because sometimes I just don't want to talk, empath characters because reading other people's emotions sounds like a very good superpower, yes, characters with traits that I don't have but would like to know what they were like. Sometimes I think about writing them down, but it's not as if they're good stories. The characters are decent, but there aren't really any villains, because that would not be relaxing.
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Jan 26, 2023 07:53
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SSJ_naruto_2003 posted:the diagnosis doesn't change who you are, and who you have been. it just gives you a starting point for looking to change, if you even want to This. It puts things in context, for you and the people around you, and that lets you make things easier. I used to hide in my room when my family had parties when it got too much for me, and I'd be exhausted after and had to be forced to help with cleaning. My mother thought this was really rude behavior, I was tired and shutting down, bad times were had by all. If we'd known back then, we could have done it like we did this Christmas, where I told my family I needed a short break and went to my room for a while, they continued to chat and when I felt ready I rejoined them. It's that easy, but I never knew I could ask for this and they didn't know I needed it. You said you come across as rude when you're overloaded, imagine if people knew that. Instead of "Urg, angry emu is being so rude again, what is wrong with them?", it could be "Hey, angry emu is being really quiet again, that's a bad sign." Not saying you should tell everybody, but having a few people know has made things more comfortable for me. I'm having a pretty stressful time right now since we're moving. I ended up hiding in the attic for a bit while the movers were setting things up, and it was really good to know that my husband understood that this was something I had to do, and not me being lazy. Now we just need to handle the mountain of boxes.
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Feb 21, 2023 10:31
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endlessmonotony posted:The idea that you can learn to deal with things so well that assholes stop being assholes is nothing but torturing yourself for no good reason. Yeah, that. If you think they're coming from a point of ignorance rather than being assholes, you can consider saying something, but assholes are going to be assholes. Request help from the mods if you think they'll be helpful, if not the best thing you can do there is either block the assholes or jump ship if the place is too overrun.
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Feb 21, 2023 10:36
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Don't forget that your brain is really good at selective memories. So when you focus on That Time I hosed Up Socially, it will present you with a wonderful list in the style of Amazon ads: "You might also be interested in these awkward memories!" And this does happen to everyone. One time I took a phonecall from my mom's friend who didn't feel well and wanted me to pass on that she was not coming that evening. Wanting to make polite smalltalk I said something about a cold wave going around and was rewarded with a detailed description of menopause symptoms. The next day she told my mom "I think I traumatized your daughter a bit."
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Feb 26, 2023 08:47
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Yeah, it feels like people either see me as "Eww, what's wrong with her?" weird or as "Lol, Clo's so funny!" weird. The second is preferable, but it leads to situations where I'm completely serious and people assume I'm joking.
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Feb 26, 2023 11:49
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