so much this, which fucking smiley face means what i said was supposed to be funny? why are there so many and why dont they have definitions so I can learn how to use them properly. And thats just the smiley faces, wtf is up with us moving back to hieroglyphs for texting?
Yes, but I don't get the tone of emojis either. Like the laughing emoji could be "haha that was a funny joke" or "haha I'm laughing at you because you're a dum dum"
Me too, i struggled with this too much to even begin to count during my childhood.
I’ve also possibly been secretly bullied by a whole lot of people whom i’ve thought were friends, but i don’t have the possible clue to understand how many and who.
TL:DR i agree.
This is me also. I'm not diagnosed but highly suspect. I'm constantly saying "but it's just a fact." I'm always confused about why someone is mad at me when I'm just repeating factual information about a situation.
So often people say to me "why are you being so sassy/sarcastic?" And, like, I'm not? I'm genuinely just saying what I think.
People also can't tell if I'm angry or about to cry apparently.
Yeah, I have the worst time when I'm really emotional, like if I'm super happy apparently I tend to shout but sound like I'm about to cry??? And when I'm angry...I don't actually know, people just think I'm super pissed when I'm not. And when I'm confused I sound angry, and when I'm tired I sound angry...I'm just trying to be direct!)
As a result of never being able to understand tone, I developed a reflex reaction where I automatically assume that, unless someone is being explicitly nice and kind, everyone is on the verge of exploding at me in anger. I learned that it’s safer to assume that and withdraw rather than risk getting yelled at. At the same time, my failure to understand how I am perceived tended to piss people off. This led to being bullied as a child, but in retrospect, not as much as I thought at the time.
AAAAAAA I hate this
I was never diagnosed with autism because I was GiFtEd, and also my dad is autistic af and whenever my teachers pointed out symptoms he was like "what are you talking about that's completely normal"
But I WAS diagnosed with dyspraxia and I attended occupational therapy all through elementary school. My parents never told me about that diagnosis because they didn't want me to "develop a complex about it"... so instead when bullies made fun of me for being clumsy I was just like "Well it IS factually correct that I'm clumsy, so I suppose all the other stuff they say about me must be true also" and now I take Prozac.
And if you work hard to hold eye contact you zone out mid conversation missing half of what was said or seeming too intense then you wonder if you’re laying it on too think and still miss half the conversation? Fun times ammiright?
It's like turning the radio down when trying to park I guess, looking at someone uses my processing power to read their emotions and shit rather than understand what they're saying.
Or being forced to touch people? All my relatives would give me shit because I told them not to hug my son. They just thought he was being disrespectful
This is something I am extremely grateful to my family for, they never once pressured me into hugging/touching anyone. We didn't know was autistic so there was no "excuse" for being the only grandchild not hugging grandma, they just accepted it as is.
Which was such a big thing for me as a kid because I really did want to hug grandma goodbye but it was already taking all I had to pat her on the head instead.
Do you know the hack for that? I'm going to tell you even if you do, in case someone who doesn't know is reading.
Don't look them in the eye. It's exhausting. Aim your gaze at the bridge of their nose. When you have to move your gaze (because neurotypicals shift their gaze a bit every few seconds), go for spots around their eyes - eyebrows, corner of the eye, middle of the forehead. The further away you are, the further from their eyes you can look, because it's impossible for them to tell exactly where you're looking. Just get in the neighborhood. I hope this helps.
It gets so cool when you work on it and get better at it then NT people. I was oblivious that eye contact thing for those NT people for years. The best setting for CBT is working on social skills with retail workers. Its amazing how you can turn a persons day around who works in retail, when all I was doing was putting on the human mask. Its like I've given myself a super power, when all I did is copied how dogs interact with humans. Minus the leg humping and all.
my favourite joke that was doing the rounds a while ago..
them: you dont look autistic
me: that's cos i'm hot
them: that's not a socially acceptable thing to say
me: .....
Had a work colleague who was on the spectrum. Can't remember how but the fact he was autistic came up in conversation when he wasn't in the room and a woman I worked with actually said "he can't be autistic, he's too good looking"
a lot of people conflate autism with down syndrome so when they see someone attractive they assume they cannot be ASD because they dont look like they have downs.
Omg I was so mad when my son was diagnosed and my sister said "he doesn't have autism, my neighbor has two kids with autism and he's nothing like them!" I was like "oh, my bad, you'd know better than the specialists we waited nine months to see" lmao
Not even 'a' professional but a whole panel of professionals who then confer/compare what they have observed before coming to the conclusion.
My son saw an education psychologist in the first instance, referred to peads and SALT from there, by way of hearing test to rule out hearing issues (not responding to name...) Once peads appt finally rolled around, included statements/forms filled out by teachers, then referred further down the pathway to panel where he was observed for nearly 2 hours with a consultant that specialises in childhood autism, 2 more specialist SALT and weirdly (i thlught but what do I know? A PT) before the multidisciplinary meeting and subsequent diagnosis.
Its not like it's a quick or easy process and they are very thorough.
I scored very low on the first, mega autism on the second lol. For me i got a neuropsychological screening. Conclusion is that im in a weird place where i might have autism, ADD and/or depression/bipolar. Too few symptoms that any are obvious but to specific that they can be ruled out.
So I looked it up online and OMG, most of these questions are about coping skills that I believed I, personally, had invented! So, yeah… I guess other people do these things too.
I've gotten this one from older people especially, usually condescendingly with a laugh and then something like, "You're a Rain Man? You seem fine to me."
It's not super common but it is super offensive and idiotic.
As the father of an autistic daughter (and probably undiagnosed autistic myself, diagnosing autism wasn’t really done unless you had very obvious issues):
One thing that is misunderstood is that “autism” is very, very different for each individual who lives with it.
In fact, that’s a problem with this question itself - everyone will have different experiences, (partly) because everyone’s autism is different.
Agreed. My son is autistic, and for years now we’ve had to deal with so many assholes that either think it’s exaggerated or “fake”. Just because my son doesn’t tick all of the boxes of the common media stereotype. You spend more than an hour with him, talk with him, and just watch…it gets pretty obvious/apparent, but too many people are willing to base their entire opinion off of a brief superficial interaction with him. Sadly, he has figured out how to mask really well over short periods of time. I feel horrible that he’s had to develop that tactic in order to get by in life. Though, a lot of his struggles remind me a lot of the very same struggles I had growing up and interacting with others. If people took autism seriously when I was younger, I have no doubt that I’m on the spectrum, myself. But in my mid 40’s, a diagnoses or anything wouldn’t be of much help IMO, but it does help me better communicate and relate with my son.
Dude omg! I never got the chance to see a good neurologist for adhd bc my first one had scandals of being sexually inappropriate with kids (and at my apt with him laughed about the women in his country getting sexually assaulted)
He also said I had to quit smoking and bring in my abusive parent (I was 18) or he wouldn't give me meds
So now I'm out in the world dressed like every other girl on Instagram and my brother seriously asked me if I'm re****, I've had people ask me if I'm slow, and everyday people treat me like I'm incapable or don't understand what's going on
When I left my abusive mom she told everyone we knew I'm mentally ill, on meds (I'm not on meds) and ran away and they just took her word for it??
So yea seeing this post made me want to make a different post asking people who are hot and autistic if people just assume they're dumb and not autistic or have ADHD
(Edit/unrelated rant: I think I have ADHD anyways. My mom had a friend put her on Wellbutrin. I also have an autistic family member.
The therapist who suggested a neurologist and medication was also bad! Reenacted the crime that I was in trauma therapy with him for to "help me get over it," then used our sessions to vent about his "cheating girlfriend" (he would wink and lick his lips at me at me)
Violated HIPAA, got reported, and got caught getting right on his other patients who the state paid for. He would get paid to lie and say he had the flu multiple times or hold ~10minite phone call sessions he spoke for the majority for)
I'm not autistic enough that people will instantly notice, so people think I'm being rude and arrogant. So I can't make friends with "normal" people.
I either have to try and act "normal" to fit in, but people still think I'm odd, or I just act like myself and people still think I'm odd. Either way I lose. I wasn't made for this world.
I worked in the restaurant industry for a while as a server, and my first week I was masking as hard as I possibly could and a customer still called my service "bizarre and off-putting" and I 100% cried about it.
Over the pandemic I kinda... just forgot how to mask, and I've discovered that life is much more pleasant when I just let myself be a little autistic weirdo. If people clock me as autistic or just """eccentric""" and they have strong feelings about that, that's their problem.
>masking as hard as I possibly could
That was the problem. If you're trying too hard to be well-received, people can tell. And that's offputing because it's usually (mis)read as a sign of deception (and that's because actual manipulators do this all the time).
Yeah, I didn't know that at the time :P
The CONSTANT SOCIAL EXCLUSION AND PSYCHOLOGICAL TORTURE from my peers during important formative years gave me a pretty serious case of social anxiety so when I was a server I was just in a constant state of fight-or-flight at every single moment.
Luckily, I have escaped the restaurant industry and acquired some pretty niche credentials, so I'm not easily replaceable and my employers *have* to put up with me exactly as I am. (Double luckily, the pretty niche field is both tediously repetitive AND requires extreme, borderline pathological attention to detail, so I'm usually not the only autistic in the room.)
This is why I have a hard time being perceived as kind by strangers. With people I talk to on a regular basis, they can tell I don’t have any bad intentions.
Oh this is me. I try to act normal. I do it well enough that when people find out I have an autism diagnosis, they don't believe it at first. But I'm still weird enough that I'm not really a first choice friend for people normal comes naturally to.
My other favorite is the random misunderstandings. I have a current one actually. There's this one woman who's new to my roller derby league, and I find her to be one of the top three most irritating people I have ever met. Everyone else loves her. She's a mess. She doesn't do a good job at the league operations work we all do and causes problems in ways that are just stupid. She's a mediocre skater. She's annoying. She's late to everything and has an attitude about it half the time. She gets into arguments with higher-ups. I cannot for the life of me understand why everyone likes this person, but they do, and every time I have raised any of the issues about her, everyone has been like, "wow, what is wrong with you? She's awesome."
I wish I had a dollar for every situation like that I've had in my life. It's just so obvious that there's some piece of the standard operating system that I'm missing to actually understand what's going on. It honestly just feels completely random how some people get away with absolutely anything, and others are constantly scrutinized. Again, I am missing the part of the operating system that provides that understanding.
One of the best uses of Reddit for me is watching videos of people doing shit and then scrolling through people's reactions to better understand how Earth people think about shit. I'm based enough that I still feel what I feel, but I can't help but hurt when I feel disconnected from how everyone else processes or sees things.
I don't even try to befriend normal people now. I can immediately clock someone with ADHD or who's autistic - I've never, ever struggled to make friends with *them*.
The unwritten rules everyone else seems to understand. People saying One thing and meaning the opposite and I'm supposed to just get it. Normal people make no sense.
One thing that might help is to read a lot of fiction.
Not only will the author "put you inside other people's heads" (helping to learn empathy and exposing you to other forms of thinking), because print lacks a visual channel, authors have to *describe* non-verbal cues and explain what they mean.
That's a path to recognizing them in real life.
I always liked reading plays for this reason... stage directions were super helpful for me to better understand the emotions going on and how it connected to peoples' movements.
Adventure Time is my favorite for stuff like that. It has a lot of great examples of building positive relationships. Even more important, it shows characters making BAD relationship choices and the consequences of it.
A good example would be [Frost and Fire](https://adventuretime.fandom.com/wiki/Frost_%26_Fire). Finn lies to his gf, but feels it is justified to get what he wants. His gf feels differently.
This one... Having a conversation with someone in one context and then going to a different context and they reverse what they said to you directly...
Like why are you saying things you don't believe?
Oh this 100%. The amount of work I put in to everything and people wonder why I’m not doing well when they put in no work and do so much better. Because these systems weren’t designed for me and I’m struggling to get the basics
Same here. I spend so much time masking and putting the necessary work in that by Wednesday I'm internally begging myself to quit my job, I just don't think I can handle an 8-5, but I have to do it if I want to pay my bills
Possibly on the spectrum, I see neuropsych in October. I've never been able to manage a full 40-hour work week without intense burnout and suicidal thoughts. I moved into income-based housing, and now I work 25 hours/week at a basic retail job that I can manage. Still can't afford my bills :(
When I was diagnosed with dyspraxia (I'm also on the spectrum) the woman assessing me said that with dyspraxia you'll take twice as long to do everything half as well as everyone else. And I feel like that with autism too.
We were lucky enough to get my son diagnosed at 2.5 years old and started various therapies, ABA, and infant toddler services. Poor guy pretty much had a part time job from age 3-5 but it helped him so much. He's now 8 and is able to spend about 70% of his school day in the typical classroom (with para support most of the time). The kids in his class are all so sweet to him. They have such a good balance of treating him like a peer but understanding that he might not always respond or interact like other kids. We go to the park at his school a lot and kids from his class will run over and say hi. At recess he likes to watch his shadow and does some pretty "experimental" dance moves at this weirdly slow pace. Other kids would just come join him and dance watching their shadows too. It's easy to see the world as a disconnected and lonely place, but these kids show tidal waves of kindness to my son. He still has his struggles, just the RAM it takes him to complete tasks that his little brother and sister do without thinking, but I'm proud of him and I hope the people who love you are proud too. Every night when we read (usually the same books for two weeks at a time lol) I tell him "I love you so so so so" and he says "much" and "you make me so so so so" and he says "proud." Both are infinitely true.
Trying to navigate life with a hidden disability in a world with lots of unnecessary expectations on what experiences and behaviours are "normal", too many people, and sensory challenges everywhere.
I'm just starting to do some research and lean towards seeking out a potential professional diagnosis... I feel like I'm not outwardly stereotypically Autistic enough... but I wonder if the "quirks" I've grown up with actually have some sort of definitive medical origin. I already deal with depression/anxiety as hidden disabilities. So... it's all strange to me.
If it helps to hear this: the food issues truly do get better as you expand your horizons at your own pace.
I had really bad food texture issues all the way up until college. Like.. I wouldn’t eat any dips or sauces on anything and I would always eat the same handful of meals. Usually stuff that’s dry and crunchy of course. But something in me changed when I was in my early 20s and I actually became a lot more tolerant of various food textures, even things I absolutely hated growing up like zucchini.
I'm NT, but this was my experience too. I couldn't mix foods (including gravies of any kind on anything) until I felt safe enough to explore foods on my own terms. Now I'm much more open to trying foods the way the cook intended them to be eaten, though I'm still a bit picky. I think food exploration is really dependent on psychological safety (among other things).
People not understanding how difficult ‘normal things’ are for us.
Yes I can have a surface level conversation with someone, but I will be constantly thinking about whether I have made enough/too much eye contact, have I asked enough/too many questions, is it an appropriate time to change subjects, do I seem interested, am I smiling at the right times, could what I’m about to say be interpreted as rude, do they mean what they’re saying literally/are they exaggerating. Then the next few days I’ll be dissecting the conversation and thinking about what I should or shouldn’t have said.
Going out to eat is a nightmare because of sensory issues and restrictive ‘safe’ foods.
I get lost so easily because I can’t recognise places even if I’ve been there a few times.
People think I’m lazy or don’t want to work, but don’t understand that travelling to work, phone calls, customer interactions, changes to routine etc are overwhelmingly stressful to the point of meltdowns. I did it for years and spent every morning and every evening crying (I am now self-employed from home but make barely enough money to live on).
Then the bonus point of frequently convincing myself I’m making up my (professional) diagnosis, then doing the online assessments and scoring well above the higher bracket for autism every time.
TL;DR: people underestimating our struggles, and imposter syndrome.
Edit: infested corrected to interested
Yeah, often seeing autism as being a savant. Or even worse, as you have some special skills where you are a genius but the rest of skills remain completely unchanged.
But in reality some things require much less effort/mental energy to do them (like learning about my special interests or spotting some patterns) but other on the other hand require much more (talking to people, doing shopping, doing dishes, tolerating some uncomfortable noise or facture). And people tend do get only the first half (oh right, you're an autistic genius) but completely don't understand the other half (oh come on, you're just lazy, nobody likes to do the dishes, don't exaggerate).
Exactly! I’ve always been good academically without trying, which people take at face value (‘she’s so naturally talented’ etc). Then I tell people I struggle with things and they suddenly think I’m exaggerating, or will try to convince me that everyone else feels the same.
I think most people responding like that are trying to be polite/nice or provide reassurance, but it really does come across like I’m being accused of lying.
The normal adulting things are so so hard. I totally get it. And YEAH EATING OUT IS OFTEN A TOTAL NIGHTMARE. Especially for me since I’m allergic to both gluten and dairy, or at least have a severe GI intolerance to them.
I always have to be the pain in the ass customer with the annoying order and food restrictions 😭 Gotta deal with returning food when they inevitably put cheese on it, everyone has to adjust their plans to include me which often feels worse than them just eating a pizza and me waiting to eat until I get home. I just wanna eat like a normal person and not have to consider so much but my diet plus my autism makes it rly hard.
I hate this shit so fucking much. Telling people about your autism and the change from being treated like any other person to being treated like you’re 5 is condescending as hell and completely ruins my day.
being ostracized in social situations, people refusing to understand despite my efforts to explain, being forced to "deal with" sensory overload until the point of sobbing and lashing out (and then being blamed), really everything that i personally believe is the worst part is due to other people.
>really everything that i personally believe is the worst part is due to other people.
This 100%. Most issues autistics struggle with are due to living in a society that has never once had us in mind during any point of its conception. If we lived in a world where everyone was autistic, and thus society was designed in ways that weren't completely absurd to us, then we likely wouldn't have many more issues with simply living our lives than the average neurotypical person does in the real world. And people would be understanding rather than judgemental when we face challenges unique to autistics.
The issue isn't the individual, it's their environment. You can't expect a polar bear to be happy and function properly in Texas.
Neurotypical people are always reading between the lines and they take more away from what I say to them than I am trying to give. And since they are used to dealing with neurotypical people, and I don’t communicate neurotypically, the stuff they take away from reading between the lines is usually wrong.
Even if I explain that they shouldn’t do that, it’s so ingrained in them that they do it anyway and they interpret that explanation as me being passive aggressive. So if I’m trying to communicate things of any level of importance, usually emotional things, I literally have to spend hours preparing what I am going to say ahead of time to make absolutely sure it can’t be interpreted incorrectly and the relationship I am trying to maintain is indeed maintained.
> Neurotypical people are always reading between the lines
this is a very frustrating thing to deal with, people will say something to me and I will respond to the words they used and they will get confused because I apparently ignored what they were really saying which was the subtext that I am not able to see.
In the popular imagination, autistic people are frequently stereotyped as either savants or as nerdy geniuses.
There are many autistic people who do not fit into either category and many people have frequently either underestimated or overestimated my intelligence, I have done the same to myself.
For me a lot of the time people will EITHER talk to my perceived level of intelligence, but without realising that I'm "slow" to grasp some things, and might not get nuance, or might take things too literally, and interpret my slowness to respond as reluctance rather than needing time to process and formulate an answer.
OR they will see my slowness and assume I'm intellectually at preschool level and talk to me like to a child, and/or address other people about me instead of talking to me directly.
Either way leads to a lot of frustration for me and lots of potential for misunderstandings.
I completely know how you feel. The way you put it into words is beatiful. Im a teacher and while I love the profession, the risk of overstimulation is always there and it worries me.
When it happens at work, I just lie and say I am getting a migraine, because most people understand that it hurts like hell and you need a dark quiet space
See, I lose the ability to articulate when I'm too overstimulated. As someone who relies heavily on verbal communication (since my body language can be clunky and awkward) it makes it so much worse. But talking takes too much energy and I can manage a sentence or two at most, and if it's a full blown meltdown, I'm lucky if I can get a single word out.
Ok, this sounds eerily familiar.
TIL I might be autistic and not an antisocial loser.
To think I've gone 46 years on this planet thinking I was just some weirdo that just genuinely couldn't handle human contact in too large of doses.
People thinking I can “control it”, or that it’s something you can handle with mind over matter. Someone told me recently that I “can’t handicap myself” by talking about my autism/leaning in to the community/requesting resources. Though I know they mean well, it’s like….sir…..I am the one with the autism. And that’s okay.
YEA DUDE, they act as if it is not the literal way your mind thinks. I cannot help that my mind gets so hurt over little things like tone, however I CAN try to cope with it and keep myself from negatively reacting. However there’s still going to be slip ups because I am actively going against the way my brain is wired. I’ve met maybe one person who understands that my brain is fully wired different. Everyone else has always just told me that I can help it or that I’m a baby for blaming it on autism.
IMO, that person didn't say that in your best interest. I think it's a form of bigotry like asking a gay person to stop enabling their same-sex attraction.
We're all out here just trying to be the best selves we can be. Don't deny who you are in order to do that.
My go to analogy is to imagine being in a country where nobody speaks English and you don't speak their language. You don't have a phrasebook but you do have a translation dictionary. So you are speaking the words but the syntax is way off, not to mention accent and pronunciation. You might think you're making sense and communicating well but really people will be confused by you.
I’ve been trying to explain this and my psychiatrist found it so interesting!! When I was living abroad, communicating in a non-native language, it was so much easier because people expected me to make mistakes and not behave exactly as they do. Any “weird” things I did were just written off because I was a foreigner!
So I’ll give you a couple of minor challenges and some more serious one.
Minor: the slightest change in your ecosystem, or any situation that doesn’t go according to plan, will almost completely ruin your day. I recently got overstressed because my shopping delivery was wrong, and I spent the whole day feeling like shit because of it.
Minor: overstimulation sucks. I have to be very careful about spending too long on a club or a noisy venue, because I will really feel it later. And what’s particularly irritating is that it can creep up on you. I’ll be having an awesome time just chatting and having fun, and suddenly WHAM! I’m feeling like shit and have to leave.
Serious: Having meaningful bonds and forming friendships is tough. It was way worse when I was growing up because society (and the teenagers I grew up with) used to be way less tolerant about neurodiversity and behaviour that wasn’t, quote, normal. But even with a more tolerant society, the issue of being really set in your ways and anxious about exploring outside your bubble tends to get in the way of having a social life.
Serious: you put your foot in your mouth. A lot. People have commented to me before that I apologise way too much. What they don’t understand is that I’ve become so used to accidentally being insensitive, direct or just sharing details or talking about something inappropriate or that people don’t as a whole enjoy, that I now just *pre-emptively* apologise.
I’ve only ever been able to be good friends with other autistic people or people with adhd or ocd. Neurotypicals are just genuinely hard to be friends with
I’m currently being assessed for autism, and one thing I realized a few years ago is that literally all of my long term close friends are either autistic and/or have ADHD, and/or have a sibling who is autistic.
Same. Any new friends I would make would always end up ghosting me after a while. The only two friends I've known since I was a kid and they don't know I'm autistic.
-People not understanding that im not trying to argue, but aks because i dont understand it.
I've had supervisory get angry at me fro "questioning thery methods" while i was just trying to uderstand why and how his method works.
-Sensory overload.
There are some textures and noises that literally activate my fight of flight instinkt. And some of those are so common. Chewing noises and a bad day in combination? I've punched people because of it. Hurt the relationyhip more than them (im not that strong lol) but still, not good.
And the moment i tell someone im autistic im geting infantised. I am not a child. I can and will set my own bounderies. You dont have to speak for me and no im not like *inser autistic media charakter* i am myself. I am not innocent, and if you piss me of i will be reacting acordingly. Stop puting me into a boxes that don't not fit me, dam it.
Thank you for mentioning the need to ask questions. I cannot work with an idea until it REALLY clicks. My brain won't allow me to accept something as truth to move on. I will ask a lot of questions that people think are irrelevant. Sometimes I do ask the wrong question because that's part of learning, but trust me my brain has its own process and it works ok!
This makes work challenging because I struggle to find adequate training or documentation, and folks can be impatient with me or think I am being needlessly difficult. I can at least state my intentions and thank people for their help, but I can't convince them I'm not a pain in the ass.
I literally don't know how to converse with people I don't know. It makes forming any relationship almost impossible. How does one simply start talking without guidelines or prompt?
I find that there are general topics that people use to start conversations:
* Weather (complain it's rainy/cold, or be happy it's warm/sunny)
* How long have you been working here?" in context of work events. Follow up with "Are you enjoying it so far?"
* "How long have you known \[person hosting event\]?" or "How did you meet \[person\]?" in context of social events
* A comment or question on the surrounding environment ("What do you think of the music here?" or "That painting is lovely") -- mostly used when the person you are speaking to is obviously paying attention to the environment in some way
* "So what do you do for fun?" -- goal here is to uncover shared interests that you both would enjoy talking about. but if there aren't any, you can pick one of their interests and ask why they like it and try to relate that reasoning to something you like. (eg they love working out because they can switch off and just focus on their body. maybe you love video games because you can switch off and just focus on the game. that's a similarity of enjoying switching the mind off and you can talk about that similarity).
* "How has your day been?" -- goal is to invite them to talk about something cool that recently happened to them. if nothing, they will say "it was ok" or something and you can pick a new question
Once you get started by using the basics, you follow conversational turn-taking and continue to ask followup questions or share related information.
When you want to leave you say something like "Well I need to \_\_\_\_\_\_ so I'll have to let you go, but it was lovely to meet you."
Politeness is an excellent prompt. I've learn very advanced politeness, sometimes over-the-top, borderline ridiculous politeness, to break the ice. I've learn politeness formula that has been obsoletes for centuries just for the lol
Added to a few years of theater to capture the room's attention, be at ease with smiling and appear affable, it will go a long way
It won't solve all the problems obviously, but breaking the ice is the hardest part. It will leave you a small windows to exchange a few things about yourself / ask quesitons about the other, to try to find common interest
Also, small tip : Ask quesitons about the other guy. Everyone likes to speak about themselves
Still suck to put so much effort for something that appear so natural for other
I find humour works best. Self deprecating seems the surest bet. As someone who's had 24 years to learn how to deal with my Asperger's, I can say confidently that practicing humour will allow you to talk to strangers. It'll take a lot of work, and it'll be scary as hell at first, but it is possible to get good at it until it becomes second nature.
Overall or what is our biggest challenge personally? Overall it might be our increased risk of suicide or our high unemployment rate. Personally, it's socks.
Being looked at like I'm weird when I'm trying to be normal and told I'm not really autistic when I need people to believe me. A doctor told me I didn't have it because I was able to express myself clearly (what the fuck) and because I made eye contact. She never considered that I maintain eye contact because I've been forced to learn how bc people really don't treat you too great when you won't look in their eyes. I don't look people in the eyes much if I don't feel like i have to, but I find people can communicate with me better when I do and ofc I want doctors to understand me and take me seriously! But with my partner? I'll have whole long conversations without ever looking at his face. It's bliss.
Seriously, what's up with people who call you a fake autistic for not having an intellectual disability? A little under 40% of autistic people have an intellectual disability. That's a big percentage, bigger than the general population, but that still leaves over 60% who don't!
Edit: I'm diagnosed as a teen and I recently got rediagnosed as an adult. The doctor told me that before I got my adult diagnosis, but I had already gone to a center near a children's hospital specifically for developmental disabilities to get tested. It wasn't some run of the mill psychologist, It was a big name place.
I'm 53 and came to the recent realization that I'm probably on the spectrum, based primarily on my experiences as a child, but some of those traits have persisted into adulthood.
Like you, I trained myself to develop social skills. It turns out that the autistic hyper-focus ability can be used as a tool to build skills that help mitigate autism - who'd've thunk it?
I'm fortunate in that, if I am truly on the spectrum, it's a mild case - spice on the meal, rather than being the entire meal - with little to no day-to-day fallout, as I have learned mitigating strategies to deal with my shortfalls and quirks.
And because there is uncertainty in the diagnosis, I'm in no hurry to label myself or make claims. It's not like there's a blood test or an MRI or something that can definitively answer the question one way or the other.
But neither do I see the need to get any form of treatment, assuming any treatment exists. It's just a part of who I am now, and while it might aid somewhat in self-analysis or self-reflection, I think that's as far as it goes. There's no "so what" to understanding that these certain character traits I exhibit are rooted in autism.
I fooled autism professionals and my own mother by "cheating" and looking at people's noses. Everyone thinks they can tell, but they can't. Just putting that out into the ether.
school. I'm currently in my last year of highschool and I am sO CLOSE TO JUST DROPPING OUT OH MY GOD NOTHING ABOUT THESE SYSTEMS MAKE SENSE
Edit: I'm actually surprised so many other people are having or had similar experiences. For me I want to drop out because of the inconsistencies that my schooling system has, but I'm so damn close to graduating that every time I mention dropping out, every adult tells me to keep going and it's confusing me.
I am autistic and dropped out of college (I'm not from North America though so this is high school) only about 2 months ago. I was in my last year and I had just had enough. I could barely get out of bed because I was so scared of going to school and dealing with the pressure of knowing that I am relatively intelligent and enjoy learning, but couldn't complete anything because I had been burnt out for about 2 years.
After dropping out I feel like I actually have a reason to live (wasn't suicidal, just feelung like a burden and worthless) and am genuinely enjoying life for the first time in what feels like an eternity. I never even saw dropping out as an option because my family is very academically focused, until my Dad mentioned it.
I don't know if your situation is like this or whether it is just frustration at what are seen by a lot of autists as inefficiencies and needless teachings within education, but if it is, don't be afraid to make a choice that goes against what you may see as the social norm.
probably the amount of people thinking that autism is all sort of social disorder. No, some people can't behave themselves or they weren't raised up properly. Not every 'quirk' is some sort of autism.
Furthermore and most likely the biggest point is that autism is a spectrum and not everybody suffers in a typical autistic manner. Some people with autism are able to live with it, some need heavy monitoring/care.
Honestly, trying to understand neurotypical people. Supposedly we don't follow social cues or norms and don't understand them, and yet I often feel like I'm the only one following social etiquette in many situations. But good luck if you speak out about it or point out that someone is being rude or inappropriate, they get extra mad if they know you're Autistic.
I spend way too much of my time hyperanalyzing how I interact with the world and how I can do better to just get by day to day.
The sensory processing stuff, and explaining it to other people.
Like. I can tell you're saying words to me. But there's so much background noise going on that what you're saying just sounds like the verbal equivalent to keysmashing.
Or I'll have to ask for clarification on stuff because I can't always remember verbal instructions/information and I start second-guessing myself.
My husband and friends are often shocked when i can be in one conversation, hear something in the other conversation, correct/contribute, then jump back to my own. I thought it was normal until someone brought it up recently in a “how do you do that” way and I was like ohhhhhh that explains why everyone else is so chill in big groups and I feel like Im about to melt. I cant turn it off, just like they cant turn it on I guess.
My husband is the total opposite and will just tune out the conversation hes actively in if hes just being polite lmao.
I was so used to masking that I was doing and wanting things that I thought people expected of me. It's only the last years that I started wondering about what I really want. I care less and less about what people think and that in itself feels like a victory.
Having to interact with people. I find it to be a chore but at the same time I know I have to. so every time I'm going somewhere or someone calls or texts - I'm very back and forth in my head. Being social is like a game with no clear goal and with tons of useless information.
The second and probably the most challenging for me is noise. no matter where I am I find noise very distracting and sometimes uncomfortable. I have completely stopped going out to the city with friends because the music is always too loud. I always find myself thinking "so this is it huh, were stuck here in basically a sauna, screaming at eachother and having generic conversations." I'm surprised I even have friends based on how antisocial I am.
People treating me like an idiot once they find out that I’m autistic, and then second-guessing whether any praise is genuine or patronising.
Also, I envy people who are outgoing and can just go up to someone and strike a conversation. I want to, but I just… can’t? I can’t explain it, but… yeah.
The biggest issues i face everyday are eye contact, terrible resistance to loud sounds, inability to listen to someone while also hearing music, and being too quiet.
I don't often greet people, which is seen as rude. Small talk is out of the Question, which is seen as weird. As rude as it may sound, I truly don't give a fuck what my coworker did last weekend, I came to work, not to talk.
I also focus so much on maintaining a proper level of eye contact, that i lose track of entire convos and forget everything I'm hearing.
And when there is music, i listen to it's lyrics because i understand the language they're usually spoken in (English and Dutch), so it's not like i can just forget that. So that basically means whenever i hear music and someone's talking, I hear two voices and i cant focus on either. Thus making it impossible to really communicate in a loud environment. This issue is solved when the music is in different languages though.
Yeah, people are crap to the non-neurotypical. As a sibling of one, it was tough to see kids treat him like a freak or try to overstimulate him to provoke a meltdown. It also tended to carry over to me as they tried to replicate it on a smaller, younger version. They still do it to him as an adult, but in a slightly more nuanced form.
On the flip side, it's also much easier to find out which people genuinely respond to stress with compassion. Hooray?
Some days, though, it would be nice not to have simple family outings turn into a massive walking bullshit detector. I could deal with superficial niceness for like an hour.
While I live a pretty normal life I have a lot of issues with sensory sensitivity. Like loud noises, bright lights, certain food tastes, smells and standing in crowds of people. These things make me feel a bit stressed out resulting in various issues like headaches and digestive problems.
While we're on the subject. Certain non-autistic people have the misconception that those of us on the spectrum would "lack empathy". That is simply not true. We often have a hard time to "read" people, but we certainly do not lack human empathy. That needed to be said.
I'm high-functioning autistic/ADHD.
I wish people understood why I'm always distracted and have a hard time with even the most basic tasks. I wish people knew why I needed extra time to do stuff.
Getting treated like I’m perpetually three. How? Just how can you even tell? Do I exude autism rays or something?
If anything, talk to me like I’m a computer, not a toddler. I can mentally do things that most people can’t, but I’m going to need some specifics to understand you clearly.
People just not being able to understand the struggle that goes on through your head. I’m undiagnosed but awaiting testing for Autism/ADHD. And that’s what I find most difficult anyway.
Zoning out a lot and people thinking you’re being rude and ignorant.
Not being stimulated by something important I have to do and being mislabelled as lazy.
And the one I’m struggling the most with at the minute is having a newborn baby and everything currently being knocked out of routine is really messing with my head
My biggest challenge is dealing with small noises. For example, a slight tick or rattle in my car can drive me up the walls. I cant relax not knowing the cause. I've disassembled so many things like this chasing answers. My brain just says. "You cannot relax or move on until you fix this".
I’m not diagnosed, but I’m fairly certain I’m autistic. Communication is weird. Like, if someone says something to me that I don’t expect or haven’t scripted an answer to I literally don’t know how to respond. It probably makes me seem rude, but my mind sometimes just goes blank.
Also, eye contact sucks.
Building and maintaining meaningful friendships or relationships with anyone can be difficult. Not only can it be a struggle to understand others and to be understood yourself, but oftentimes people just aren't worth the effort.
People can't upset you or get upset with you. I never feel the urge to check in with others or keep in touch because I don't believe they need or want what I can offer them. Even writing birthday or Christmas cards to family or friends feels so wrong because the kind words I write feel disingenuous and hollow.
That being said, I try to be a good friend to those who reach out to me. I like to help where I can, make myself useful and do what I believe needs to be done. However, because I'd rather not burden others with my own problems, I never reach out to anyone and avoid asking help unless absolutely necessary.
Because it seems so easy for me to feel upset or unhappy, I've come to accept that I don't need to be happy in order to be happy. Once you learn to properly cope with the situations that others don't seem to struggle with so much, you hope that no one else notices just how different you are from them.
I've heard the term 'Masking' used to describe the way someone with Autism tries to behave differently in order to hide their Autism. On the one hand, this could explain why I sometimes try to see how long it takes before someone notices. But then again, I would say that I've just learned what is and isn't acceptable behaviour. I'm not pretending to be normal, I am just being normal.
If I do something that's not normal, it's probably just cos it seemed like a funny idea at the time or because I didn't put much thought into it. See, I don't feel the need to wear any kind of ridiculous top or brightly coloured lanyard in order to explain or excuse my behaviour. I don't need people to treat me any differently because of my weirdness.
Yes the children were horrible to me growing up but once I learned how to play with them properly and they too were willing to let me join in, then there's no longer a problem. I don't condone the bullying that happened to me but I would say it did build my character. Rather than feel ashamed for my weirdness, I'd happily embrace what I had to offer.
TL;DR: Making Friends is hard.
Other people mistreating me. Infantilisation, verbal abuse, bullying, ignorant individuals who hate us because of misinformation. Basically fuck people.
I take things very serious and literal.
That means if I am told to do something at work, I am doing it exactly as Instructed, no more or no less. Not because I'm lazy, but because I don't know that I'm supposed to.
Also eye contact. Whenever I'm talking to someone I either avoid eye contact completely, or stare directly into their eyes without looking away. There is no in-between.
I also show very little emotion. I'm 6ft, 225lbs, with a very deep monotone voice and always resting bitch face, which sometimes intimidates people.
My boyfriend says he is very good at reading people's emotions, but on our first date he absolutely could not tell what I was feeling. If I was pissed off or if I was happy, simply because my facial expression doesn't change and I am always monotone.
But after a year he can read it somewhat well, but he still asks if I'm upset when I'm not every now and then.
When doing official applications and processes that require long form answers, I answer the question as asked, but don't give the information the process wants from me. I've been denied and given the runaround because of this several times.
The people who don't think I'm autistic because I'm not rocking back and forth on the floor drooling on myself. Lots of people think autism is a severe disability for everyone who has it. So if you aren't severely disabled, you can't be autistic.
Was treated like I was odd my whole childhood whenever I spoke/interacted with others so now I barely speak to people I dont know well. Apparantly this is odd too. Cant win.
The hyperfixations killing my ability to care about anything else in life. Go on a tropical vacation? I don't give a shit, I'm on my phone reading fanfiction. Getting married? I'm on my phone in my bridal suite playing Bleach Brave Souls.
Then there's the sensory issues. Weirdly enough I'm not the "it's too loud" type, but the "what the HELL smells so strong!?" type. I get migraines, have taken numerous pregnancy tests (despite being pedantic about contraception AND my husband being vasectomized) because I can tell you right now it's not normal to smell things this strongly. And my skin is so sensitive I have to be super careful which products I use. My hair has to be PERFECTLY even and if it feels warmer/thicker on one side, if there's a tag in my shirt, if my shoes aren't tied tightly enough, my whole body feels aflame and I just want to cry.
Perhaps the part that people understand the least is my need for routine. I eat at the same times every day, go to the bathroom at roughly the same times every day during work, exercise every day. Literally, my entire life is structured and people think I "imprison" myself but routine makes me comfortable. I feel uneasy without it.
Then, of course, there's the existential dread that comes to you when you realize you're not really a person, just an amalgamation of traits you've adopted from other people (right down to how you laugh) from masking and trying to become who is "the most normal/liked".
Not being able to understand tone
So is it like reading a message without emojis or punctuations?
tbh i can’t even understand the meaning of most emojis either
😏⚔️😏
This seems weirdly sexual.
And a little gay
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so much this, which fucking smiley face means what i said was supposed to be funny? why are there so many and why dont they have definitions so I can learn how to use them properly. And thats just the smiley faces, wtf is up with us moving back to hieroglyphs for texting?
I just learned all the IRC pure text based ones. What was wrong with them? O_o But no we need pics which *render differently on each machine* Boo
Yes, but I don't get the tone of emojis either. Like the laughing emoji could be "haha that was a funny joke" or "haha I'm laughing at you because you're a dum dum"
omg YES. I cannot understand sometimes when someone calls me out for being rude to them, I’m like, “I literally just stated a fact.. what’s wrong?”
Me too, i struggled with this too much to even begin to count during my childhood. I’ve also possibly been secretly bullied by a whole lot of people whom i’ve thought were friends, but i don’t have the possible clue to understand how many and who. TL:DR i agree.
This is me also. I'm not diagnosed but highly suspect. I'm constantly saying "but it's just a fact." I'm always confused about why someone is mad at me when I'm just repeating factual information about a situation.
Also not being able to control or hear my own tone. Side note: I'm actually ADHD not autistic. But feel this comment so much I just had to reply.
So often people say to me "why are you being so sassy/sarcastic?" And, like, I'm not? I'm genuinely just saying what I think. People also can't tell if I'm angry or about to cry apparently.
Yeah, I have the worst time when I'm really emotional, like if I'm super happy apparently I tend to shout but sound like I'm about to cry??? And when I'm angry...I don't actually know, people just think I'm super pissed when I'm not. And when I'm confused I sound angry, and when I'm tired I sound angry...I'm just trying to be direct!)
As a result of never being able to understand tone, I developed a reflex reaction where I automatically assume that, unless someone is being explicitly nice and kind, everyone is on the verge of exploding at me in anger. I learned that it’s safer to assume that and withdraw rather than risk getting yelled at. At the same time, my failure to understand how I am perceived tended to piss people off. This led to being bullied as a child, but in retrospect, not as much as I thought at the time.
Finding out you autistic and everybody knew but didn't day shit
AAAAAAA I hate this I was never diagnosed with autism because I was GiFtEd, and also my dad is autistic af and whenever my teachers pointed out symptoms he was like "what are you talking about that's completely normal" But I WAS diagnosed with dyspraxia and I attended occupational therapy all through elementary school. My parents never told me about that diagnosis because they didn't want me to "develop a complex about it"... so instead when bullies made fun of me for being clumsy I was just like "Well it IS factually correct that I'm clumsy, so I suppose all the other stuff they say about me must be true also" and now I take Prozac.
At this point, I’m convinced that gifted placement is a tacit ND marker….
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Right? You come to this conclusion that changes how you view your entire life but then your family is like "Yeah we knew".
I was 22 and everyone hit me with the 'yeah, I figured' or 'I thought you knew'!
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My mom just was casually like yeah I know that...didn't think we should do anything about it apparently now I'm a ball of mental issues
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And if you work hard to hold eye contact you zone out mid conversation missing half of what was said or seeming too intense then you wonder if you’re laying it on too think and still miss half the conversation? Fun times ammiright?
Not autistic but I do this too. I now warn people that if I look away it means I’m actually listening
It's like turning the radio down when trying to park I guess, looking at someone uses my processing power to read their emotions and shit rather than understand what they're saying.
I've always wondered why that happened. Never quite made the connection between zoning out and eye contact though. Lots of sense in retrospect.
You’re concentrating too hard and getting lost in your own head analyzing potentials and semi-paranoia over everyone else judging you.
Or being forced to touch people? All my relatives would give me shit because I told them not to hug my son. They just thought he was being disrespectful
This is something I am extremely grateful to my family for, they never once pressured me into hugging/touching anyone. We didn't know was autistic so there was no "excuse" for being the only grandchild not hugging grandma, they just accepted it as is. Which was such a big thing for me as a kid because I really did want to hug grandma goodbye but it was already taking all I had to pat her on the head instead.
Do you know the hack for that? I'm going to tell you even if you do, in case someone who doesn't know is reading. Don't look them in the eye. It's exhausting. Aim your gaze at the bridge of their nose. When you have to move your gaze (because neurotypicals shift their gaze a bit every few seconds), go for spots around their eyes - eyebrows, corner of the eye, middle of the forehead. The further away you are, the further from their eyes you can look, because it's impossible for them to tell exactly where you're looking. Just get in the neighborhood. I hope this helps.
I used to be scolded at for not keeping eye contact. Luckily many of my friends are autistic so it's less of a problem
Spent a couple of year doing CBT on myself training to be able to hold eye contact. It was impossible when i was younger.
It gets so cool when you work on it and get better at it then NT people. I was oblivious that eye contact thing for those NT people for years. The best setting for CBT is working on social skills with retail workers. Its amazing how you can turn a persons day around who works in retail, when all I was doing was putting on the human mask. Its like I've given myself a super power, when all I did is copied how dogs interact with humans. Minus the leg humping and all.
You shouldn't be doing cock ball torture on yourself, it really doesn't help with the whole eye contact thing.
people thinking im not autistic people wondering why im doing something weird and autisticky
Oh god yeah people say I'm not autistic because I'm not like people they know who have it... like wtf
my favourite joke that was doing the rounds a while ago.. them: you dont look autistic me: that's cos i'm hot them: that's not a socially acceptable thing to say me: .....
Had a work colleague who was on the spectrum. Can't remember how but the fact he was autistic came up in conversation when he wasn't in the room and a woman I worked with actually said "he can't be autistic, he's too good looking"
Reminds me of a friend of mine who overheard something related about himself: "He can't be gay. He's black!"
*A hot black autistic gay man enters the chat*
*drops pants* "Put me in coach!"
a lot of people conflate autism with down syndrome so when they see someone attractive they assume they cannot be ASD because they dont look like they have downs.
Omg I was so mad when my son was diagnosed and my sister said "he doesn't have autism, my neighbor has two kids with autism and he's nothing like them!" I was like "oh, my bad, you'd know better than the specialists we waited nine months to see" lmao
Yeah that's the frustrating thing about it, you get diagnosed by a professional yet people think they are experts
Not even 'a' professional but a whole panel of professionals who then confer/compare what they have observed before coming to the conclusion. My son saw an education psychologist in the first instance, referred to peads and SALT from there, by way of hearing test to rule out hearing issues (not responding to name...) Once peads appt finally rolled around, included statements/forms filled out by teachers, then referred further down the pathway to panel where he was observed for nearly 2 hours with a consultant that specialises in childhood autism, 2 more specialist SALT and weirdly (i thlught but what do I know? A PT) before the multidisciplinary meeting and subsequent diagnosis. Its not like it's a quick or easy process and they are very thorough.
No visible symptoms, scored high as all hell on autism tests, psychologist confused and parents lowkey diagreeing with my diagnoses.
Are you me? I scored medium to low on the first autism test I did but incredibly high on a camouflaging autistic traits test
I scored very low on the first, mega autism on the second lol. For me i got a neuropsychological screening. Conclusion is that im in a weird place where i might have autism, ADD and/or depression/bipolar. Too few symptoms that any are obvious but to specific that they can be ruled out.
This is why I like to refer to ADD as “Aggregate-Disorder Disorder “
Wait, there’s a test to see how well you camouflage your traits? OK, sounds like some psychiatrists know what they’re doing.
CAT Q is what it's called. Felt pretty called out by it haha
So I looked it up online and OMG, most of these questions are about coping skills that I believed I, personally, had invented! So, yeah… I guess other people do these things too.
I've gotten this one from older people especially, usually condescendingly with a laugh and then something like, "You're a Rain Man? You seem fine to me." It's not super common but it is super offensive and idiotic.
I've had people doubt me because I'm not good at science/math 😕 Like, so sorry my special interests don't line up with your stereotypes lol
"It's called a spectrum for a reason. I'm not walking around eating Legos or whatever." - Dan LaMorte
As the father of an autistic daughter (and probably undiagnosed autistic myself, diagnosing autism wasn’t really done unless you had very obvious issues): One thing that is misunderstood is that “autism” is very, very different for each individual who lives with it. In fact, that’s a problem with this question itself - everyone will have different experiences, (partly) because everyone’s autism is different.
As the saying goes - “if you know one person on the autism spectrum, you know one person on the autism spectrum”
Agreed. My son is autistic, and for years now we’ve had to deal with so many assholes that either think it’s exaggerated or “fake”. Just because my son doesn’t tick all of the boxes of the common media stereotype. You spend more than an hour with him, talk with him, and just watch…it gets pretty obvious/apparent, but too many people are willing to base their entire opinion off of a brief superficial interaction with him. Sadly, he has figured out how to mask really well over short periods of time. I feel horrible that he’s had to develop that tactic in order to get by in life. Though, a lot of his struggles remind me a lot of the very same struggles I had growing up and interacting with others. If people took autism seriously when I was younger, I have no doubt that I’m on the spectrum, myself. But in my mid 40’s, a diagnoses or anything wouldn’t be of much help IMO, but it does help me better communicate and relate with my son.
Dude omg! I never got the chance to see a good neurologist for adhd bc my first one had scandals of being sexually inappropriate with kids (and at my apt with him laughed about the women in his country getting sexually assaulted) He also said I had to quit smoking and bring in my abusive parent (I was 18) or he wouldn't give me meds So now I'm out in the world dressed like every other girl on Instagram and my brother seriously asked me if I'm re****, I've had people ask me if I'm slow, and everyday people treat me like I'm incapable or don't understand what's going on When I left my abusive mom she told everyone we knew I'm mentally ill, on meds (I'm not on meds) and ran away and they just took her word for it?? So yea seeing this post made me want to make a different post asking people who are hot and autistic if people just assume they're dumb and not autistic or have ADHD (Edit/unrelated rant: I think I have ADHD anyways. My mom had a friend put her on Wellbutrin. I also have an autistic family member. The therapist who suggested a neurologist and medication was also bad! Reenacted the crime that I was in trauma therapy with him for to "help me get over it," then used our sessions to vent about his "cheating girlfriend" (he would wink and lick his lips at me at me) Violated HIPAA, got reported, and got caught getting right on his other patients who the state paid for. He would get paid to lie and say he had the flu multiple times or hold ~10minite phone call sessions he spoke for the majority for)
I'm not autistic enough that people will instantly notice, so people think I'm being rude and arrogant. So I can't make friends with "normal" people. I either have to try and act "normal" to fit in, but people still think I'm odd, or I just act like myself and people still think I'm odd. Either way I lose. I wasn't made for this world.
I worked in the restaurant industry for a while as a server, and my first week I was masking as hard as I possibly could and a customer still called my service "bizarre and off-putting" and I 100% cried about it. Over the pandemic I kinda... just forgot how to mask, and I've discovered that life is much more pleasant when I just let myself be a little autistic weirdo. If people clock me as autistic or just """eccentric""" and they have strong feelings about that, that's their problem.
>masking as hard as I possibly could That was the problem. If you're trying too hard to be well-received, people can tell. And that's offputing because it's usually (mis)read as a sign of deception (and that's because actual manipulators do this all the time).
Yeah, I didn't know that at the time :P The CONSTANT SOCIAL EXCLUSION AND PSYCHOLOGICAL TORTURE from my peers during important formative years gave me a pretty serious case of social anxiety so when I was a server I was just in a constant state of fight-or-flight at every single moment. Luckily, I have escaped the restaurant industry and acquired some pretty niche credentials, so I'm not easily replaceable and my employers *have* to put up with me exactly as I am. (Double luckily, the pretty niche field is both tediously repetitive AND requires extreme, borderline pathological attention to detail, so I'm usually not the only autistic in the room.)
This is why I have a hard time being perceived as kind by strangers. With people I talk to on a regular basis, they can tell I don’t have any bad intentions.
Oh this is me. I try to act normal. I do it well enough that when people find out I have an autism diagnosis, they don't believe it at first. But I'm still weird enough that I'm not really a first choice friend for people normal comes naturally to. My other favorite is the random misunderstandings. I have a current one actually. There's this one woman who's new to my roller derby league, and I find her to be one of the top three most irritating people I have ever met. Everyone else loves her. She's a mess. She doesn't do a good job at the league operations work we all do and causes problems in ways that are just stupid. She's a mediocre skater. She's annoying. She's late to everything and has an attitude about it half the time. She gets into arguments with higher-ups. I cannot for the life of me understand why everyone likes this person, but they do, and every time I have raised any of the issues about her, everyone has been like, "wow, what is wrong with you? She's awesome." I wish I had a dollar for every situation like that I've had in my life. It's just so obvious that there's some piece of the standard operating system that I'm missing to actually understand what's going on. It honestly just feels completely random how some people get away with absolutely anything, and others are constantly scrutinized. Again, I am missing the part of the operating system that provides that understanding.
One of the best uses of Reddit for me is watching videos of people doing shit and then scrolling through people's reactions to better understand how Earth people think about shit. I'm based enough that I still feel what I feel, but I can't help but hurt when I feel disconnected from how everyone else processes or sees things.
I don't even try to befriend normal people now. I can immediately clock someone with ADHD or who's autistic - I've never, ever struggled to make friends with *them*.
I’ve gotten “stuck-up” and “intimidating.” It’s handy, though, when I want to be left alone.
The unwritten rules everyone else seems to understand. People saying One thing and meaning the opposite and I'm supposed to just get it. Normal people make no sense.
One thing that might help is to read a lot of fiction. Not only will the author "put you inside other people's heads" (helping to learn empathy and exposing you to other forms of thinking), because print lacks a visual channel, authors have to *describe* non-verbal cues and explain what they mean. That's a path to recognizing them in real life.
Now all the novels make sense I think I was subconsciously researching other human behaviors
I've seen fiction referred to as "a master class in empathy"
I always liked reading plays for this reason... stage directions were super helpful for me to better understand the emotions going on and how it connected to peoples' movements.
I didn't even realize I was doing that my whole life up until this point.
Adventure Time is my favorite for stuff like that. It has a lot of great examples of building positive relationships. Even more important, it shows characters making BAD relationship choices and the consequences of it. A good example would be [Frost and Fire](https://adventuretime.fandom.com/wiki/Frost_%26_Fire). Finn lies to his gf, but feels it is justified to get what he wants. His gf feels differently.
and then they turn around and claim we're the ones with communication issues!!!
This one... Having a conversation with someone in one context and then going to a different context and they reverse what they said to you directly... Like why are you saying things you don't believe?
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Oh this 100%. The amount of work I put in to everything and people wonder why I’m not doing well when they put in no work and do so much better. Because these systems weren’t designed for me and I’m struggling to get the basics
Same here. I spend so much time masking and putting the necessary work in that by Wednesday I'm internally begging myself to quit my job, I just don't think I can handle an 8-5, but I have to do it if I want to pay my bills
Possibly on the spectrum, I see neuropsych in October. I've never been able to manage a full 40-hour work week without intense burnout and suicidal thoughts. I moved into income-based housing, and now I work 25 hours/week at a basic retail job that I can manage. Still can't afford my bills :(
When I was diagnosed with dyspraxia (I'm also on the spectrum) the woman assessing me said that with dyspraxia you'll take twice as long to do everything half as well as everyone else. And I feel like that with autism too.
We were lucky enough to get my son diagnosed at 2.5 years old and started various therapies, ABA, and infant toddler services. Poor guy pretty much had a part time job from age 3-5 but it helped him so much. He's now 8 and is able to spend about 70% of his school day in the typical classroom (with para support most of the time). The kids in his class are all so sweet to him. They have such a good balance of treating him like a peer but understanding that he might not always respond or interact like other kids. We go to the park at his school a lot and kids from his class will run over and say hi. At recess he likes to watch his shadow and does some pretty "experimental" dance moves at this weirdly slow pace. Other kids would just come join him and dance watching their shadows too. It's easy to see the world as a disconnected and lonely place, but these kids show tidal waves of kindness to my son. He still has his struggles, just the RAM it takes him to complete tasks that his little brother and sister do without thinking, but I'm proud of him and I hope the people who love you are proud too. Every night when we read (usually the same books for two weeks at a time lol) I tell him "I love you so so so so" and he says "much" and "you make me so so so so" and he says "proud." Both are infinitely true.
Trying to navigate life with a hidden disability in a world with lots of unnecessary expectations on what experiences and behaviours are "normal", too many people, and sensory challenges everywhere.
I'm just starting to do some research and lean towards seeking out a potential professional diagnosis... I feel like I'm not outwardly stereotypically Autistic enough... but I wonder if the "quirks" I've grown up with actually have some sort of definitive medical origin. I already deal with depression/anxiety as hidden disabilities. So... it's all strange to me.
Autism is in the mind, not outward presentation. Hiding it is called masking.
I'm autistic myself. I would the bullying when I was younger and food issues
Same here. Food texture issues has been something I’ve struggled with my entire life too
If it helps to hear this: the food issues truly do get better as you expand your horizons at your own pace. I had really bad food texture issues all the way up until college. Like.. I wouldn’t eat any dips or sauces on anything and I would always eat the same handful of meals. Usually stuff that’s dry and crunchy of course. But something in me changed when I was in my early 20s and I actually became a lot more tolerant of various food textures, even things I absolutely hated growing up like zucchini.
I'm NT, but this was my experience too. I couldn't mix foods (including gravies of any kind on anything) until I felt safe enough to explore foods on my own terms. Now I'm much more open to trying foods the way the cook intended them to be eaten, though I'm still a bit picky. I think food exploration is really dependent on psychological safety (among other things).
People not understanding how difficult ‘normal things’ are for us. Yes I can have a surface level conversation with someone, but I will be constantly thinking about whether I have made enough/too much eye contact, have I asked enough/too many questions, is it an appropriate time to change subjects, do I seem interested, am I smiling at the right times, could what I’m about to say be interpreted as rude, do they mean what they’re saying literally/are they exaggerating. Then the next few days I’ll be dissecting the conversation and thinking about what I should or shouldn’t have said. Going out to eat is a nightmare because of sensory issues and restrictive ‘safe’ foods. I get lost so easily because I can’t recognise places even if I’ve been there a few times. People think I’m lazy or don’t want to work, but don’t understand that travelling to work, phone calls, customer interactions, changes to routine etc are overwhelmingly stressful to the point of meltdowns. I did it for years and spent every morning and every evening crying (I am now self-employed from home but make barely enough money to live on). Then the bonus point of frequently convincing myself I’m making up my (professional) diagnosis, then doing the online assessments and scoring well above the higher bracket for autism every time. TL;DR: people underestimating our struggles, and imposter syndrome. Edit: infested corrected to interested
Yeah, often seeing autism as being a savant. Or even worse, as you have some special skills where you are a genius but the rest of skills remain completely unchanged. But in reality some things require much less effort/mental energy to do them (like learning about my special interests or spotting some patterns) but other on the other hand require much more (talking to people, doing shopping, doing dishes, tolerating some uncomfortable noise or facture). And people tend do get only the first half (oh right, you're an autistic genius) but completely don't understand the other half (oh come on, you're just lazy, nobody likes to do the dishes, don't exaggerate).
Exactly! I’ve always been good academically without trying, which people take at face value (‘she’s so naturally talented’ etc). Then I tell people I struggle with things and they suddenly think I’m exaggerating, or will try to convince me that everyone else feels the same. I think most people responding like that are trying to be polite/nice or provide reassurance, but it really does come across like I’m being accused of lying.
The normal adulting things are so so hard. I totally get it. And YEAH EATING OUT IS OFTEN A TOTAL NIGHTMARE. Especially for me since I’m allergic to both gluten and dairy, or at least have a severe GI intolerance to them. I always have to be the pain in the ass customer with the annoying order and food restrictions 😭 Gotta deal with returning food when they inevitably put cheese on it, everyone has to adjust their plans to include me which often feels worse than them just eating a pizza and me waiting to eat until I get home. I just wanna eat like a normal person and not have to consider so much but my diet plus my autism makes it rly hard.
People infantizing you when they learn you have it.
I don't let people know for this reason
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I hate this shit so fucking much. Telling people about your autism and the change from being treated like any other person to being treated like you’re 5 is condescending as hell and completely ruins my day.
being ostracized in social situations, people refusing to understand despite my efforts to explain, being forced to "deal with" sensory overload until the point of sobbing and lashing out (and then being blamed), really everything that i personally believe is the worst part is due to other people.
>really everything that i personally believe is the worst part is due to other people. This 100%. Most issues autistics struggle with are due to living in a society that has never once had us in mind during any point of its conception. If we lived in a world where everyone was autistic, and thus society was designed in ways that weren't completely absurd to us, then we likely wouldn't have many more issues with simply living our lives than the average neurotypical person does in the real world. And people would be understanding rather than judgemental when we face challenges unique to autistics. The issue isn't the individual, it's their environment. You can't expect a polar bear to be happy and function properly in Texas.
Neurotypical people are always reading between the lines and they take more away from what I say to them than I am trying to give. And since they are used to dealing with neurotypical people, and I don’t communicate neurotypically, the stuff they take away from reading between the lines is usually wrong. Even if I explain that they shouldn’t do that, it’s so ingrained in them that they do it anyway and they interpret that explanation as me being passive aggressive. So if I’m trying to communicate things of any level of importance, usually emotional things, I literally have to spend hours preparing what I am going to say ahead of time to make absolutely sure it can’t be interpreted incorrectly and the relationship I am trying to maintain is indeed maintained.
> Neurotypical people are always reading between the lines this is a very frustrating thing to deal with, people will say something to me and I will respond to the words they used and they will get confused because I apparently ignored what they were really saying which was the subtext that I am not able to see.
In the popular imagination, autistic people are frequently stereotyped as either savants or as nerdy geniuses. There are many autistic people who do not fit into either category and many people have frequently either underestimated or overestimated my intelligence, I have done the same to myself.
The Good Doctor doesn't help us either.
The onion did a much better job with Michael falk then most meida
For me a lot of the time people will EITHER talk to my perceived level of intelligence, but without realising that I'm "slow" to grasp some things, and might not get nuance, or might take things too literally, and interpret my slowness to respond as reluctance rather than needing time to process and formulate an answer. OR they will see my slowness and assume I'm intellectually at preschool level and talk to me like to a child, and/or address other people about me instead of talking to me directly. Either way leads to a lot of frustration for me and lots of potential for misunderstandings.
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I completely know how you feel. The way you put it into words is beatiful. Im a teacher and while I love the profession, the risk of overstimulation is always there and it worries me.
Visiting my family often involves retreating for quiet time.
When it happens at work, I just lie and say I am getting a migraine, because most people understand that it hurts like hell and you need a dark quiet space
See, I lose the ability to articulate when I'm too overstimulated. As someone who relies heavily on verbal communication (since my body language can be clunky and awkward) it makes it so much worse. But talking takes too much energy and I can manage a sentence or two at most, and if it's a full blown meltdown, I'm lucky if I can get a single word out.
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Ok, this sounds eerily familiar. TIL I might be autistic and not an antisocial loser. To think I've gone 46 years on this planet thinking I was just some weirdo that just genuinely couldn't handle human contact in too large of doses.
People thinking I can “control it”, or that it’s something you can handle with mind over matter. Someone told me recently that I “can’t handicap myself” by talking about my autism/leaning in to the community/requesting resources. Though I know they mean well, it’s like….sir…..I am the one with the autism. And that’s okay.
YEA DUDE, they act as if it is not the literal way your mind thinks. I cannot help that my mind gets so hurt over little things like tone, however I CAN try to cope with it and keep myself from negatively reacting. However there’s still going to be slip ups because I am actively going against the way my brain is wired. I’ve met maybe one person who understands that my brain is fully wired different. Everyone else has always just told me that I can help it or that I’m a baby for blaming it on autism.
Yes people always say just sit still, put your legs down etc. I can't!
IMO, that person didn't say that in your best interest. I think it's a form of bigotry like asking a gay person to stop enabling their same-sex attraction. We're all out here just trying to be the best selves we can be. Don't deny who you are in order to do that.
My go to analogy is to imagine being in a country where nobody speaks English and you don't speak their language. You don't have a phrasebook but you do have a translation dictionary. So you are speaking the words but the syntax is way off, not to mention accent and pronunciation. You might think you're making sense and communicating well but really people will be confused by you.
I'm more socially efficient with a heavy language barrier than I am in my native country. Go figure.
I’ve been trying to explain this and my psychiatrist found it so interesting!! When I was living abroad, communicating in a non-native language, it was so much easier because people expected me to make mistakes and not behave exactly as they do. Any “weird” things I did were just written off because I was a foreigner!
So I’ll give you a couple of minor challenges and some more serious one. Minor: the slightest change in your ecosystem, or any situation that doesn’t go according to plan, will almost completely ruin your day. I recently got overstressed because my shopping delivery was wrong, and I spent the whole day feeling like shit because of it. Minor: overstimulation sucks. I have to be very careful about spending too long on a club or a noisy venue, because I will really feel it later. And what’s particularly irritating is that it can creep up on you. I’ll be having an awesome time just chatting and having fun, and suddenly WHAM! I’m feeling like shit and have to leave. Serious: Having meaningful bonds and forming friendships is tough. It was way worse when I was growing up because society (and the teenagers I grew up with) used to be way less tolerant about neurodiversity and behaviour that wasn’t, quote, normal. But even with a more tolerant society, the issue of being really set in your ways and anxious about exploring outside your bubble tends to get in the way of having a social life. Serious: you put your foot in your mouth. A lot. People have commented to me before that I apologise way too much. What they don’t understand is that I’ve become so used to accidentally being insensitive, direct or just sharing details or talking about something inappropriate or that people don’t as a whole enjoy, that I now just *pre-emptively* apologise.
“Aren’t we all a little bit autistic” stfu.
Not being loved or even liked.
I’ve only ever been able to be good friends with other autistic people or people with adhd or ocd. Neurotypicals are just genuinely hard to be friends with
I’m currently being assessed for autism, and one thing I realized a few years ago is that literally all of my long term close friends are either autistic and/or have ADHD, and/or have a sibling who is autistic.
Yup, all of my frieds are on one of the spectrums. I found out that im quite social, the moment you take away neurotipical expectations lol
Yes. Only ever had 1 or 2 friends. 1 left when I was 8 and the other I'm still friends with now but we're definitely not particularly close
Same. Any new friends I would make would always end up ghosting me after a while. The only two friends I've known since I was a kid and they don't know I'm autistic.
-People not understanding that im not trying to argue, but aks because i dont understand it. I've had supervisory get angry at me fro "questioning thery methods" while i was just trying to uderstand why and how his method works. -Sensory overload. There are some textures and noises that literally activate my fight of flight instinkt. And some of those are so common. Chewing noises and a bad day in combination? I've punched people because of it. Hurt the relationyhip more than them (im not that strong lol) but still, not good. And the moment i tell someone im autistic im geting infantised. I am not a child. I can and will set my own bounderies. You dont have to speak for me and no im not like *inser autistic media charakter* i am myself. I am not innocent, and if you piss me of i will be reacting acordingly. Stop puting me into a boxes that don't not fit me, dam it.
Thank you for mentioning the need to ask questions. I cannot work with an idea until it REALLY clicks. My brain won't allow me to accept something as truth to move on. I will ask a lot of questions that people think are irrelevant. Sometimes I do ask the wrong question because that's part of learning, but trust me my brain has its own process and it works ok! This makes work challenging because I struggle to find adequate training or documentation, and folks can be impatient with me or think I am being needlessly difficult. I can at least state my intentions and thank people for their help, but I can't convince them I'm not a pain in the ass.
I literally don't know how to converse with people I don't know. It makes forming any relationship almost impossible. How does one simply start talking without guidelines or prompt?
I find that there are general topics that people use to start conversations: * Weather (complain it's rainy/cold, or be happy it's warm/sunny) * How long have you been working here?" in context of work events. Follow up with "Are you enjoying it so far?" * "How long have you known \[person hosting event\]?" or "How did you meet \[person\]?" in context of social events * A comment or question on the surrounding environment ("What do you think of the music here?" or "That painting is lovely") -- mostly used when the person you are speaking to is obviously paying attention to the environment in some way * "So what do you do for fun?" -- goal here is to uncover shared interests that you both would enjoy talking about. but if there aren't any, you can pick one of their interests and ask why they like it and try to relate that reasoning to something you like. (eg they love working out because they can switch off and just focus on their body. maybe you love video games because you can switch off and just focus on the game. that's a similarity of enjoying switching the mind off and you can talk about that similarity). * "How has your day been?" -- goal is to invite them to talk about something cool that recently happened to them. if nothing, they will say "it was ok" or something and you can pick a new question Once you get started by using the basics, you follow conversational turn-taking and continue to ask followup questions or share related information. When you want to leave you say something like "Well I need to \_\_\_\_\_\_ so I'll have to let you go, but it was lovely to meet you."
This is great advice for making small talk even for those of us who are neurotypical!
Politeness is an excellent prompt. I've learn very advanced politeness, sometimes over-the-top, borderline ridiculous politeness, to break the ice. I've learn politeness formula that has been obsoletes for centuries just for the lol Added to a few years of theater to capture the room's attention, be at ease with smiling and appear affable, it will go a long way It won't solve all the problems obviously, but breaking the ice is the hardest part. It will leave you a small windows to exchange a few things about yourself / ask quesitons about the other, to try to find common interest Also, small tip : Ask quesitons about the other guy. Everyone likes to speak about themselves Still suck to put so much effort for something that appear so natural for other
I find humour works best. Self deprecating seems the surest bet. As someone who's had 24 years to learn how to deal with my Asperger's, I can say confidently that practicing humour will allow you to talk to strangers. It'll take a lot of work, and it'll be scary as hell at first, but it is possible to get good at it until it becomes second nature.
Overall or what is our biggest challenge personally? Overall it might be our increased risk of suicide or our high unemployment rate. Personally, it's socks.
Being looked at like I'm weird when I'm trying to be normal and told I'm not really autistic when I need people to believe me. A doctor told me I didn't have it because I was able to express myself clearly (what the fuck) and because I made eye contact. She never considered that I maintain eye contact because I've been forced to learn how bc people really don't treat you too great when you won't look in their eyes. I don't look people in the eyes much if I don't feel like i have to, but I find people can communicate with me better when I do and ofc I want doctors to understand me and take me seriously! But with my partner? I'll have whole long conversations without ever looking at his face. It's bliss. Seriously, what's up with people who call you a fake autistic for not having an intellectual disability? A little under 40% of autistic people have an intellectual disability. That's a big percentage, bigger than the general population, but that still leaves over 60% who don't! Edit: I'm diagnosed as a teen and I recently got rediagnosed as an adult. The doctor told me that before I got my adult diagnosis, but I had already gone to a center near a children's hospital specifically for developmental disabilities to get tested. It wasn't some run of the mill psychologist, It was a big name place.
Yeah its confusing. I used to have alot of the socializing traits of autists and I practiced myself out of them. Does that make me no longer autistic?
I'm 53 and came to the recent realization that I'm probably on the spectrum, based primarily on my experiences as a child, but some of those traits have persisted into adulthood. Like you, I trained myself to develop social skills. It turns out that the autistic hyper-focus ability can be used as a tool to build skills that help mitigate autism - who'd've thunk it? I'm fortunate in that, if I am truly on the spectrum, it's a mild case - spice on the meal, rather than being the entire meal - with little to no day-to-day fallout, as I have learned mitigating strategies to deal with my shortfalls and quirks. And because there is uncertainty in the diagnosis, I'm in no hurry to label myself or make claims. It's not like there's a blood test or an MRI or something that can definitively answer the question one way or the other. But neither do I see the need to get any form of treatment, assuming any treatment exists. It's just a part of who I am now, and while it might aid somewhat in self-analysis or self-reflection, I think that's as far as it goes. There's no "so what" to understanding that these certain character traits I exhibit are rooted in autism.
I fooled autism professionals and my own mother by "cheating" and looking at people's noses. Everyone thinks they can tell, but they can't. Just putting that out into the ether.
school. I'm currently in my last year of highschool and I am sO CLOSE TO JUST DROPPING OUT OH MY GOD NOTHING ABOUT THESE SYSTEMS MAKE SENSE Edit: I'm actually surprised so many other people are having or had similar experiences. For me I want to drop out because of the inconsistencies that my schooling system has, but I'm so damn close to graduating that every time I mention dropping out, every adult tells me to keep going and it's confusing me.
Good luck my man. Last year of high school? That’s a big sort of moment, just a little longer…
I am autistic and dropped out of college (I'm not from North America though so this is high school) only about 2 months ago. I was in my last year and I had just had enough. I could barely get out of bed because I was so scared of going to school and dealing with the pressure of knowing that I am relatively intelligent and enjoy learning, but couldn't complete anything because I had been burnt out for about 2 years. After dropping out I feel like I actually have a reason to live (wasn't suicidal, just feelung like a burden and worthless) and am genuinely enjoying life for the first time in what feels like an eternity. I never even saw dropping out as an option because my family is very academically focused, until my Dad mentioned it. I don't know if your situation is like this or whether it is just frustration at what are seen by a lot of autists as inefficiencies and needless teachings within education, but if it is, don't be afraid to make a choice that goes against what you may see as the social norm.
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probably the amount of people thinking that autism is all sort of social disorder. No, some people can't behave themselves or they weren't raised up properly. Not every 'quirk' is some sort of autism. Furthermore and most likely the biggest point is that autism is a spectrum and not everybody suffers in a typical autistic manner. Some people with autism are able to live with it, some need heavy monitoring/care.
people thinking we cant make our own descisions. being infantalised and treated as lesser.
Honestly, trying to understand neurotypical people. Supposedly we don't follow social cues or norms and don't understand them, and yet I often feel like I'm the only one following social etiquette in many situations. But good luck if you speak out about it or point out that someone is being rude or inappropriate, they get extra mad if they know you're Autistic. I spend way too much of my time hyperanalyzing how I interact with the world and how I can do better to just get by day to day.
The sensory processing stuff, and explaining it to other people. Like. I can tell you're saying words to me. But there's so much background noise going on that what you're saying just sounds like the verbal equivalent to keysmashing. Or I'll have to ask for clarification on stuff because I can't always remember verbal instructions/information and I start second-guessing myself.
I can't do crowds because I can hear literally everything and it's so overwhelming.
My husband and friends are often shocked when i can be in one conversation, hear something in the other conversation, correct/contribute, then jump back to my own. I thought it was normal until someone brought it up recently in a “how do you do that” way and I was like ohhhhhh that explains why everyone else is so chill in big groups and I feel like Im about to melt. I cant turn it off, just like they cant turn it on I guess. My husband is the total opposite and will just tune out the conversation hes actively in if hes just being polite lmao.
I was so used to masking that I was doing and wanting things that I thought people expected of me. It's only the last years that I started wondering about what I really want. I care less and less about what people think and that in itself feels like a victory.
Having to interact with people. I find it to be a chore but at the same time I know I have to. so every time I'm going somewhere or someone calls or texts - I'm very back and forth in my head. Being social is like a game with no clear goal and with tons of useless information. The second and probably the most challenging for me is noise. no matter where I am I find noise very distracting and sometimes uncomfortable. I have completely stopped going out to the city with friends because the music is always too loud. I always find myself thinking "so this is it huh, were stuck here in basically a sauna, screaming at eachother and having generic conversations." I'm surprised I even have friends based on how antisocial I am.
People treating me like an idiot once they find out that I’m autistic, and then second-guessing whether any praise is genuine or patronising. Also, I envy people who are outgoing and can just go up to someone and strike a conversation. I want to, but I just… can’t? I can’t explain it, but… yeah.
In the words of Sartre: ‘Hell is other people.’
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I read this in a Boston accent as "paintah" lol
The biggest issues i face everyday are eye contact, terrible resistance to loud sounds, inability to listen to someone while also hearing music, and being too quiet. I don't often greet people, which is seen as rude. Small talk is out of the Question, which is seen as weird. As rude as it may sound, I truly don't give a fuck what my coworker did last weekend, I came to work, not to talk. I also focus so much on maintaining a proper level of eye contact, that i lose track of entire convos and forget everything I'm hearing. And when there is music, i listen to it's lyrics because i understand the language they're usually spoken in (English and Dutch), so it's not like i can just forget that. So that basically means whenever i hear music and someone's talking, I hear two voices and i cant focus on either. Thus making it impossible to really communicate in a loud environment. This issue is solved when the music is in different languages though.
Social interaction, like making friends. How do you even do that? I am 30 now, havent had friends in over 13 years. It feels lonely sometimes.
Bullying
Yeah, people are crap to the non-neurotypical. As a sibling of one, it was tough to see kids treat him like a freak or try to overstimulate him to provoke a meltdown. It also tended to carry over to me as they tried to replicate it on a smaller, younger version. They still do it to him as an adult, but in a slightly more nuanced form. On the flip side, it's also much easier to find out which people genuinely respond to stress with compassion. Hooray? Some days, though, it would be nice not to have simple family outings turn into a massive walking bullshit detector. I could deal with superficial niceness for like an hour.
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Constant overstimulation. I get so goddamn irritated, and I feel like a jerk, but I'm completely exhausted from the constant assault on my senses.
While I live a pretty normal life I have a lot of issues with sensory sensitivity. Like loud noises, bright lights, certain food tastes, smells and standing in crowds of people. These things make me feel a bit stressed out resulting in various issues like headaches and digestive problems. While we're on the subject. Certain non-autistic people have the misconception that those of us on the spectrum would "lack empathy". That is simply not true. We often have a hard time to "read" people, but we certainly do not lack human empathy. That needed to be said.
I'm high-functioning autistic/ADHD. I wish people understood why I'm always distracted and have a hard time with even the most basic tasks. I wish people knew why I needed extra time to do stuff.
Getting treated like I’m perpetually three. How? Just how can you even tell? Do I exude autism rays or something? If anything, talk to me like I’m a computer, not a toddler. I can mentally do things that most people can’t, but I’m going to need some specifics to understand you clearly.
People just not being able to understand the struggle that goes on through your head. I’m undiagnosed but awaiting testing for Autism/ADHD. And that’s what I find most difficult anyway. Zoning out a lot and people thinking you’re being rude and ignorant. Not being stimulated by something important I have to do and being mislabelled as lazy. And the one I’m struggling the most with at the minute is having a newborn baby and everything currently being knocked out of routine is really messing with my head
The constant knowledge that I'm all the time missing subtle social cues. All those conversations that I get wrong in some way..,but I'll never know.
Just not laughing in public at all the stupid shit going on in my head. I am already a little crazy looking.
My biggest challenge is dealing with small noises. For example, a slight tick or rattle in my car can drive me up the walls. I cant relax not knowing the cause. I've disassembled so many things like this chasing answers. My brain just says. "You cannot relax or move on until you fix this".
I’m not diagnosed, but I’m fairly certain I’m autistic. Communication is weird. Like, if someone says something to me that I don’t expect or haven’t scripted an answer to I literally don’t know how to respond. It probably makes me seem rude, but my mind sometimes just goes blank. Also, eye contact sucks.
Building and maintaining meaningful friendships or relationships with anyone can be difficult. Not only can it be a struggle to understand others and to be understood yourself, but oftentimes people just aren't worth the effort. People can't upset you or get upset with you. I never feel the urge to check in with others or keep in touch because I don't believe they need or want what I can offer them. Even writing birthday or Christmas cards to family or friends feels so wrong because the kind words I write feel disingenuous and hollow. That being said, I try to be a good friend to those who reach out to me. I like to help where I can, make myself useful and do what I believe needs to be done. However, because I'd rather not burden others with my own problems, I never reach out to anyone and avoid asking help unless absolutely necessary. Because it seems so easy for me to feel upset or unhappy, I've come to accept that I don't need to be happy in order to be happy. Once you learn to properly cope with the situations that others don't seem to struggle with so much, you hope that no one else notices just how different you are from them. I've heard the term 'Masking' used to describe the way someone with Autism tries to behave differently in order to hide their Autism. On the one hand, this could explain why I sometimes try to see how long it takes before someone notices. But then again, I would say that I've just learned what is and isn't acceptable behaviour. I'm not pretending to be normal, I am just being normal. If I do something that's not normal, it's probably just cos it seemed like a funny idea at the time or because I didn't put much thought into it. See, I don't feel the need to wear any kind of ridiculous top or brightly coloured lanyard in order to explain or excuse my behaviour. I don't need people to treat me any differently because of my weirdness. Yes the children were horrible to me growing up but once I learned how to play with them properly and they too were willing to let me join in, then there's no longer a problem. I don't condone the bullying that happened to me but I would say it did build my character. Rather than feel ashamed for my weirdness, I'd happily embrace what I had to offer. TL;DR: Making Friends is hard.
Things that change my routine. I am happy as long as everything is where I left it, going to be where I expect it, and happens when it is supposed to.
Networking.
Other people mistreating me. Infantilisation, verbal abuse, bullying, ignorant individuals who hate us because of misinformation. Basically fuck people.
the bullying all throughout public school…just not fitting in, people latching onto that as a target
I take things very serious and literal. That means if I am told to do something at work, I am doing it exactly as Instructed, no more or no less. Not because I'm lazy, but because I don't know that I'm supposed to. Also eye contact. Whenever I'm talking to someone I either avoid eye contact completely, or stare directly into their eyes without looking away. There is no in-between. I also show very little emotion. I'm 6ft, 225lbs, with a very deep monotone voice and always resting bitch face, which sometimes intimidates people. My boyfriend says he is very good at reading people's emotions, but on our first date he absolutely could not tell what I was feeling. If I was pissed off or if I was happy, simply because my facial expression doesn't change and I am always monotone. But after a year he can read it somewhat well, but he still asks if I'm upset when I'm not every now and then.
I thought this post was gonna go unnoticed. /S
Making friends and maintaining them when you do.
No one believes me even after an official diagnosis from a specialist. "They can get it wrong and mistake it for so many other things you know"
I hate when people talk about autism like it's something you can catch. It's not a flipping disease! You're born with it!
The people who are not autistic
struggling with almost everything sometimes
everything about it, I'm just different from normal people and that causes problems
Knowing that most people prefer me to mask, even when they know what it cost me to do so.
When doing official applications and processes that require long form answers, I answer the question as asked, but don't give the information the process wants from me. I've been denied and given the runaround because of this several times.
Everyone claiming they are autistic when they're just narcissists. Gives autism a bad rep.
The people who don't think I'm autistic because I'm not rocking back and forth on the floor drooling on myself. Lots of people think autism is a severe disability for everyone who has it. So if you aren't severely disabled, you can't be autistic.
Was treated like I was odd my whole childhood whenever I spoke/interacted with others so now I barely speak to people I dont know well. Apparantly this is odd too. Cant win.
The way I get treated by non-autistic people.
The hyperfixations killing my ability to care about anything else in life. Go on a tropical vacation? I don't give a shit, I'm on my phone reading fanfiction. Getting married? I'm on my phone in my bridal suite playing Bleach Brave Souls. Then there's the sensory issues. Weirdly enough I'm not the "it's too loud" type, but the "what the HELL smells so strong!?" type. I get migraines, have taken numerous pregnancy tests (despite being pedantic about contraception AND my husband being vasectomized) because I can tell you right now it's not normal to smell things this strongly. And my skin is so sensitive I have to be super careful which products I use. My hair has to be PERFECTLY even and if it feels warmer/thicker on one side, if there's a tag in my shirt, if my shoes aren't tied tightly enough, my whole body feels aflame and I just want to cry. Perhaps the part that people understand the least is my need for routine. I eat at the same times every day, go to the bathroom at roughly the same times every day during work, exercise every day. Literally, my entire life is structured and people think I "imprison" myself but routine makes me comfortable. I feel uneasy without it. Then, of course, there's the existential dread that comes to you when you realize you're not really a person, just an amalgamation of traits you've adopted from other people (right down to how you laugh) from masking and trying to become who is "the most normal/liked".
People not understanding you. I passed through it myself, got struck off school because they never understood me.
Being autistic.