Can any other autistic people relate to this? When someone asks me an open-ended question about something I’m interested in and knowledgeable about, I don’t know how to infodump – it’s like all the information is there but I don’t know how to organize it or where to start, so I end up not being able to answer at all. Anyone else?
I ask for specifics. So if they ask something like “what do you know about 2A03?” I say “can you ask me specifically what you want me to tell you?” Cuz otherwise im sitting there with 1 million facts buzzing around and no way to know which one i should start with.
This is brilliant thank you for this post. This happened to me in a recent job interview and I was really stuck and it was awkward.
Yes, I just freeze and I can’t organise my thoughts into words. Thanks for the tip! 🙂
Honestly? The absolute worst part of autism would have to be that getting better looks like getting worse. Let me explain. There is no recovery with autism. It’s just part of you, that’s all. But neurotypicals and society at large force autistic people to try and fit in as much as possible. Don’t stim, don’t use echolalia, speak how we want you to, etc. etc. The way that you grow as an autistic person and avoid depression and anxiety and other negative side effects of autism is by giving those expectations the finger and being your true autistic self. But…this becomes a predicament. The people around you see you stimming more, speaking less, using echolalia more, whatever it may be, and they think you’re getting “worse.”
I’m gonna use myself as an example.
I’ve always appeared more neurotypical than many autistic people because that’s what I was forced to do growing up. I got really depressed and suicidal. I never let my autistic behaviors out and I got depressed. Holding in your autism, your true personality, will do that. Then, I started stimming more. Some stimming at school, a little stimming in public, lots of stimming by myself. I started to let myself avoid eye contact and be okay with that. I got less depressed. I got less suicidal. But, now I was visibly autistic, and therefore it looked to everyone else like my mental health must be getting worse. But it wasn’t. Those things that looked like me getting worse were actually me getting better and being myself.
The reason this is on my mind is that I’ve kind of reached a plateau in my recovery from the bad stuff in that now that I’ve had a taste of what being my true autistic self is like, I want it all. I’ve been stimming in front of people, but that’s starting to not be enough. I want to talk how I need to, I want to do my verbal stims, I want full body stims, not just my hands, but that’s another big step that’s gonna look like I’m getting worse and that, more than anything, is gonna get me a lot of judgement. Fidgety hands and mild bouncing aren’t tooooo weird or noticeable. Vocal stims, stomping, walking on the balls of my feet, being semi verbal, all that stuff…that’s what I need. That’s what I need to feel comfortable. But, the more autistic you appear, the “sicker” everybody thinks you are, when really, that’s what’s healthy for autistic people.
I guess what I’m getting at is that I just want to exist as my true autistic self without fear of judgement. More specifically, without causing people concern or even having people notice.
I may have just learned why I struggled in art class so much.
The teacher tried really hard to help me learn how to add a congruent shadow to what I was drawing in an attempt to teach me how to make the item more realistic and identifiable as an object. But every time I added the shadow, the item no longer looked like what I was trying to show, but the teacher would say “see doesn’t this look better now?” And was confused when I said no.
According to this study, autistic people (children in the case of the study, but these things don’t change as you age) found it harder to identify objects if they had a congruent or incongruent shadow, but easily identified the item when shown without cast shadow (“floating in space” as art teachers would describe it). In contrast, control children who were neurotypical and had no history of anything else which could affect this kind of thing struggled to identify the object without the cast shadow, and as expected the one with the incongruent shadow.
It’s absolutely fascinating that finding out that I’m autistic has actually answered soooooo many questions I had about why I experience the world so differently.
And I guess it means that it’s ok for me to draw things without cast shadows if that’s what I am able to then enjoy looking at when finished. It also explains why I prefer colouring books to more traditional artistic pursuits because there is a clearly defined edge to the pictures and no expectation that you should be adding shadows outside of the lines.
Any other autistic people noticed this with themselves?
Oh this is absolutely fascinating… and explains a lot about what I struggle about art and trying to comprehend 3d form. Particularly notable was the idea that cast shadows and second order contrasts added noise, and interfered with and prevailed over processing an object.
This is honestly one of the big reasons I struggle with drawing from life actually, since I have to compete with the shadows in order to comprehend the form I am attempting to draw. Outside of just cast shadows, if you look at my art, you will see that I am only concerned with first-order (luminance-defined) shadows. And tbh, the way I draw them they don’t exactly behave like shadows, and only serve to define the object for me in a way that makes sense to me and nothing else. Even then, I try to keep them as simple as possible because anything more would be too much for what my brain can process. I would never touch the complex second-order (texture-defined) shadows because they actually keep me from recognizing an object. It is interesting stuff. The way they called it “noise” really does help me understand why it becomes so hard for me.
Also interesting is this is probably why I am unable to sleep without bright light directly around my head at least, because everything becomes unrecognizable otherwise and I become unable to identify even my own room.
Fuck, my sleep schedule does naturally fall into the 4am-12 pattern, doesn’t it
What fucking else about ADD/ADHD don’t I know?
Do you sit weird in chairs? Apparently that’s one.
Does criticism really REALLY really upset you, to the point that you get upset and consider walking away from whatever the thing you were criticized for was?
Is your sense of time utterly fucked?
Oh fuck. I was recently diagnosed but all of these things have been true my whole life lol
Imagine my surprise when I had this plus all the standard symptoms and got diagnosed at 31! *Fingerguns*
More Adult ADHD symptoms that people don’t know:
“Hyperactivity” can include chattiness, or an obsessive focus on one topic that you’ll happily go on about for hours in a conversation with *anyone* at the slightest provocation (last week someone brought up pockets in women’s clothing near the end of a small-group workout session and I may have spent the rest of the session giving an impromptu lecture about pockets while doing hammer curls)
Zoning out and staring off into space because you’re thinking really hard about something and then not noticing that people are talking to you
Hyperfocus is a symptom of ADHD. There’s this pervasive myth that folks with ADHD can’t pay attention but sometimes the problem is you can’t leave something alone.
Random impulsive shopping sprees that leave you wracked with guilt can be part of ADHD
Interrupting or talking over other people
P R O C R A S T I N A T I O N (because you can’t feel bad about failing a project that never gets started)
Worrying that you’re going to get fired every time your boss wants to speak to you privately (this is a sign of rejection sensitive dysphoria and emotional hyperarousal)
Anyway, that’s all I’ve got the attention to look up for now so ttyl, if you think you may have ADHD check out some of the blogs dedicated to it, read up on symptoms, and talk to your doctor, bye.
Everybody raise your hand if you developed a mnemonic as a kid where you flexed your right arm to remember which was right and which was left and kept that into adulthood because I’ve now spoken to three people who have a half-second “right-flex-okay-it’s-this-one” “left-flex-okay-it’s-the-other-one” process for figuring out which is right and which is left.
Oh my god. When I was being taught right-left as a kid my dad bought me a ring to put on my left hand to help me remember. To this day when I think right-or-left I run my left thumb against my ring-finger to confirm that it’s left even though i haven’t worn that ring for over 35 years (!!!).
I have so few of the popularized symptoms of ADHD and so many of all the less-known ones associated with it that l have no idea if I qualify for a diagnosis, but I’ve got to say it’s a bit of a relief to know how many other people have these issues at all. Like…it’s not just me??
Oh thank ghu there is someone else out there who reads these symptom lists and goes “well, that all sounds familiar, but I don’t have the Important Signs, so I can’t diagnose.” B/c I don’t want to claim something I don’t have, but at the same time some of the pieces fit…
Same. I never know if these things are unique to a particular issue, or universal but people wont fess up, or just me.
And I reflexively have to put my hand on my heart to know right from left..but….your left hand makes an L when you look at your index finger and thumb. My son taught me that one.
This is part of why get a diagnosis was a relief. I had an explanation for all the odd behaviors, and i wasn’t just lazy or stupid.
ADHD tends to have a genetic component and while I don’t think my paternal side has it, I do know my maternal grandfather couldn’t tell left from right, so I wonder if it maybe it came from that side.
Yep, another person who has difficulty with left and right over here. I’m better at it, at age 32, but sometimes I still double-check by turning my left hand into an L.
Also weirdly, when I was in the Navy, Port and Starboard was easy. I think it’s because port and starboard are not arbitrary nor do they change based on which way you’re facing. On a plane or a ship, the nose is the front, port is on the left, and starboard is on the right. Always. Doesn’t matter if you’re looking at the tail of the plane, the port wing is still in the same place it was when you were looking at the nose of the jet.
Thats a good point about port and starboard and I found the same thing to be true.
Also I totally do the L thing too. If i have to give directions in a car from the passenger seat i tend to point left and tap the window for right because if i try to verbally tell you left or right I will probably get it wrong.
For my grandpa it was ‘papa’s side (driver’s side, so left) or B’s side (since grandma sat in the passenger seat)”
My graduate adviser gave me the best, least painful, constructive criticism I have ever received. Whenever she needed to tell me to do something differently, she would start by saying, “a lot of grad students have problems with this…”
That calmed me and helped me fully process what she was about to say. It normalized whatever mistake I was making. It helped me realize that it wasn’t going to jeopardize my acceptance in the lab, my university, or academia.
Most of all, I think it was her way of telling me, “I don’t want you to think of this as a disability thing that makes you different and less than everyone else. I don’t want you to spiral into feeling like you’re not good enough and you don’t belong here. I want you to learn from the mistake without feeling bad about yourself.” That was probably what helped most–knowing she cared enough, and understood me well enough, to say that.
This was the first time anyone had actually responded in a helpful way to my deep spirals of self-hatred and frustration in response to criticism. I still don’t understand how she knew. She’d known me for less than a year when she started communicating this way, and had never actually seen most of the symptoms. Yet she intuited a way to help me get past what people now call “rejection sensitive dysphoria” or “RSD.” And I will never forget it.
I hope someday to offer similarly sensitive constructive criticism to other people.
In the meantime, I try to say it to myself. When I drop a plate or glass and spill the contents all over the floor. When I say the wrong word in a sentence, or can’t remember the right one. When I show up late. Whenever I do some annoying disability-related thing.
Maybe saying it to yourself will help you, too: “Remember, you’re not the only one. A lot of people are working on this.”
Ik this may seem rude but the human race would be better off completely adhd or completelt bereft of it bc idrk about you ppl but my sister who has adhd is soo annoying she’s always interrupting everyone or screaming about something, she has no indoor voice, and she reads everything like twice as fast as we do and gets annoying that we’re “reading slow” so yeah nothing life changing I just wish adhd could be an all or nothing thing
yeah, you’re right. this absolutely is rude
“Idk if this is rude but the very real and frustrating symptoms of a very real and frustrating disorder my sister has to deal with FOREVER really inconvenience me 1% of the time so can all adhd people ever just not exist lol k thx”
What in the actual fuck????
Ew, I’m adopting your sister. She’s my sister now, you don’t deserve her.
ADHD is weird because rejection sensitive dysphoria is almost like having an ~unlockable bonus level~ of forbidden emotions that aren’t accessible during normal, day to day living. You can be relatively easygoing and stable and process your feelings reasonably and then – WHOOPS! – seemingly out of nowhere comes a complete meltdown in response to some minor failure and you have to drag yourself out of sight as your legs stop responding and you’re flooded with emotional pain that manifests as physical agony.
There’s normal distress in response to reasonable stresses, which sucks, and then there’s Tornado Sirens And Flashing Lights As Your Brain Declares An Emergency Evacuation because a bug walked across your small but unexpectedly hypersensitive vulnerability.
Tbh? Yeah.
Like I don’t even want to call it “sadness” or “depression” or “panic” or “disappointment” because I’ve felt those things and they suck, but they’re different. I can usually work through them and deal with them somewhat pragmatically. But RSD is like this sudden, incapacitating glitch where my brain accidentally releases every unpleasant chemical at once, and all attempts to fix it result in pop ups of Dennis Nedry from Jurassic Park:
oh my god this is a horrifyingly accurate description of RSD, which for me has the added fun of feeling like I am entirely covered in severe contact skin allergy rashes both on my actual skin (the amount of physical that this manifests as is BONKERS AS FUCK) and also IN MY EMOTIONS. because my GODDAMN EMOTIONS are PATHOLOGICALLY ALLERGIC to like, someone declining an offer to hang out, or my boss telling me “please only tag clearance items on the left side of the package”, or someone writing an angry rebuttal to a joke tweet that I had earlier clicked the like button on, or whatever.
so then it’s like forty times harder to do things that make me anxious, like Ask People To Do Things With Me, or See If I Have Made An Error In Any Interpersonal Relationship, because in ADDITION to having REGULAR GRADE ANXIETY, I also live with the constant terror of HAVING TO EXPERIENCE FULL-BODY HOT TINGLING BRAIN RASHES (or, Shame If Shame Were Also A Severe Burning Skin Allergy) if the thing goes badly! bonus: apologising for a small fuck-up RE-IGNITES THE SENSATION THAT I GOT FROM DOING THE SMALL FUCK-UP THE FIRST TIME which makes me seem like an asshole who doesn’t want to say “sorry” while I’m trying to get my brain to get on board with plans that aren’t “what if we never look this event in the face ever again and both agree to just hide” so my apology typically has to buffer for a minute. cool and fun, would recommend.
If a neurotypical asks you, “What game are you playing?” they’re not asking you to describe the game.
They’re asking you if they can play too.
If a neurotypical asks you, “What are you watching?” they’re not asking you to explain the plot of the movie/tv show to them.
They’re asking if they can watch it with you.
.
When neurotypicals ask you “What are you doing?”
What you think they’re asking: “Please explain to me what you are doing.”
What they’re actually asking: “Can I join you?”
Now here’s the really fucked up part. If you start explaining to them what you’re doing? They will interpret that as a rejection.
What you think you’re saying: [the answer to their question]
What they think you’re saying: This is an elite and exclusive activity for a level 5 friend and you are a level 1 acquaintance. You are not qualified to join me because you don’t know all this stuff. Go away.
.
This is why neurotypicals think you’re being cold and antisocial.
IT’S ALL A HORRIBLE MISCOMMUNICATION.
I didn’t realize, even thought it took me almost three decades to learn this, that this was such a paradigm changing realization until we had our conversation today.
But it really really is. One of the most bewildering realizations I’ve had is most people don’t talk to learn things unless its related to work or directly towards their own hobbies, all the words and questions are bonding questions if done socially. They are “lets make friends” questions.
So if I answer their question without an opportunity for the person asking the question to give a response or to join in somehow, the asker feels alienated and starts shutting down.
Example: what are you reading?
True answer but not what they’re looking for: Title of book
Best answer for social scenarios where I want to retain/create friendship: This book is about x and y but it has z that i know u have an interest in too.
Example: what are you doing?
True answer but not: drawing
Best answer for friends: I’m drawing but would u like company while I’m working?
And sometimes frankly I’m not in a headspace where I can process people so the answer is something like, “I would like to do something in a day or later, do you want to plan something?”
Tldr: communication is wierd
HOLY
SHIT
that explains so fucking much thank you
(why the fuck do neurotypicals never just day what they mean ie hey this show looks cool mind if I join you)
Further annoying?
They don’t realize that’s what they’re asking and they just feel rejected and go away. So you can’t even ask them what you did wrong because they can’t even put a finger on why they feel the way they do they just know you made them feel bad for some undefined reason.
DarkestElemental616 