I'm thinking about this because I'm sitting in the next room listening to my parents visit with my aunt and uncle, but I get so overstimulated when there is a group of people and more than one conversation is happening within the group, and I do not know which conversation to track and participate in so I'm trying to track both.
I often feel like this is one of the things that makes me feel most isolated in groups.
Y'know, growing up, I observed a weird phenomenon in my life. After about a year of knowing a new circle of friends, I would get kicked out or excluded from that space. I had always understood it as, that's about as long as I can pretend to be a normal person before I accidentally show one of my more unusual or annoying traits.
Now, #actuallyautistic has given me the tools to understand that these are the moments I would let my masking guard down. When people sense I'm ND, they split.
I have half formed thoughts about autism and externality. Not sure if "externality" is the right word?
I seem to be much more entangled with objects and my environment than most people, and I think that's a autistic (and ADHD?) thing.
Having to use notes and lists to remember things and organise my thinking, as if my memory resides as much on paper and digitally, as it does in my brain.
Having strong empathy for non-living things, as if harming them is harming myself.
My relationship with my home: I don't really feel safe and relaxed anywhere else, and I strongly dislike other people (except for my husband) being in my space. As if my space is an extension of myself.
All of these things feel like different manifestations of the boundaries between myself and everything else being blurred.
A few times this week I found myself escalating to the point of meltdown due to me completely misreading social situations happening and reacting to them like they were traumatic events of the past.
It's always incredibly embarrassing when this happens, and anytime there's a meltdown there's a risk of dysregulating the people around me... which happened last night. My outburst triggered my partner into a meltdown, which triggered his roommate to emerge from his room screaming at us for our dysregulation being "unacceptable" which escalated my partner further.
It's not the first time we've had trouble with this particular roommate dysregulating due to our inability to keep it cool 24/7, and it had me realizing that I've been walking on eggshells and holding so much anxiety around him for years because every time my partner starts to get a little meltdown-y, I'm terrified he's going to emerge from his room and lash out and make things worse.
I'm back home and recovering now, but I just feel really sad about the whole thing and angry at myself for just jumping to conclusions and yelling my head off.
On the thankful side, the other roommate who was the person who had done the triggering thing both times I lost it this week seemed to get where I was coming from was able to help set me straight and help me regulate.
Home now, trying to process and recover. Being a person is hard.
I'm so used to mainstream media reporting about #autistic people being terrible inspiration porn that I almost didn't watch this one, but I was pleasantly surprised that it was actually pretty good. The best thing is it mostly centered the autistic person and her experience. It's also kind of amazing to see a non-speaking person given an opportunity to speak for herself with AAC. There's still some ableism and centering the allistic perspective, like when the interviewer talks about how he's a parent of an autistic child, but it's still so much better than anything else I've seen on a mainstream show. More of this, please.
I'm so used to mainstream media reporting about #autistic people being terrible inspiration porn that I almost didn't watch this one, but I was pleasantly surprised that it was actually pretty good. The best thing is it mostly centered the autistic person and her experience. It's also kind of amazing to see a non-speaking person given an opportunity to speak for herself with AAC. There's still some ableism and centering the allistic perspective, like when the interviewer talks about how he's a parent of an autistic child, but it's still so much better than anything else I've seen on a mainstream show. More of this, please.
My oldest sent me this. My head just exploded. The first draft of my first 3000 word essay in uni was 8000 words long.
My history essays at uni were labours of love. I could never understand the concept of “pulling an all-nighter” the night before the essay was due. How was such a thing even possible? You had to do hours & hours of reading, note-taking, reflection…
And then write & write & write all that stuff that begged to be said, and then cull & cull & cull & then rewrite to knit the remaining pieces together fluently… And somehow end up with a piece that sent shivers down your spine & got you an HD.
Didn’t you? Or was that just me?
When teaching narrative writing to teens, I could only teach it in a formulaic way. I could only write formulaic model texts. They were quite good, with some character development, voice, interesting vocab etc, but the structure was formulaic.
I could never imagine myself as a writing a novel. Quirky short pieces maybe, but not a novel. And yet my oldest wrote their first novella as a teen.
I need to lie down. Oh, I am. It’s 5am and my cat adoption excitement has woken me. I’m discombobulated. Again.
Diary of an ASD Squirrel. Day 195 , Friday 10/05/2024
I woke when herself decided that 05:45 was a good time to get up - must get in the hours reading time before we go to work!
Managed to get out for another walk , a bit earlier today & those I came across were a lot friendlier than yesterday , everybody responded & smiled 😊 .
Did the daily chores but was in a funny mood, I really felt the need for isolation today , I had a quick spin on Masto but then hid away for the day.
I was strangely chuffed by being visited by 3 bees today , one was a seriously tubby bumble bee !
In contrast I noticed this evening that the 3 spiders who had taken up residence in the top outside corners of our kitchen window have vanished, they left egg balls but either they haven’t hatched or the youngsters have hatched & left. Point being , that for the first time in several years no spiders - & barely any midges from the pond . So I wonder if the spiders left due to lack of prey ?
Finished the day with a pizza, a couple of pints of cider & a ‘Silent Witness’ or 2 .
Final Thoughts.
I had a thought yesterday following a conversation with a neighbour:
I find it ridiculously hard to start conversations , but once started I find it more difficult to end them, I don’t seem to recognise the body language that says ‘bugger off , we’re done here’ & continue to witter on, until it gets awkward or the other party (as happened yesterday ) gets interrupted by a 3rd party.
I wonder if this is related to my autistic self. I wonder if other autistic folks have a similar experience ?
Thank you to all those who are helping me on this journey, in a myriad different ways. I am thankful to each & every one of you! 🫂 🫶🐿️🖖
I have issues with the "top-down ( purported to be most NTs)" and "bottom-up (purported to be most autistics)" thinking binary.
I don't think these labels identify the differences as I believe this is an issue of motivation and value judgement.
Let's take the common example of essay writing for school. The story goes "when they asked us to write an outline, the NT students got right on it while the ND kids were bewildered because how could they write a bullet point version of an essay that didn't exist yet."
This makes intuitive sense to everyone who experienced the frustration of being asked to write that outline so we connect over this and give this as an example of our "thinking style" difference from the NT population.
If we actually think about this a little, though, the example, while a common experience, doesn't actually demonstrate how our thinking differs.
First, NTs and NDs both need to acknowledge the concept of an essay. If we then say "the NTs get right on writing the outline when asked to do so, which means their brain started from the concept of an essay, then automagically filled it out with a list of section titles, then guided their person through the acts necessary to fill out those sections," does this sufficiently explain what is happening? After all, the ND people can write research essays, and without coming up with an outline first too!
I think there's something deeper going on here. I think, the main difference is priorities, not the method of thinking.
In my opinion, when asked to write an essay, most NT people respond by asking "why" or even "what's in it for me" first, and since the school structure pre-answers that question for them, move onto "how," which is also formalized for their convenience: "start by thinking of possible questions and reword them as titles, put them in a list. This way, you won't have to experience the inconvenience of being curious for once." The entire process is optimized for form over substance.
In the same situation, putting the curiosity first, most ND people respond by "<insert every question possible>", and concluding "I'm going to start looking into it." No instruction necessary because the ND brain here optimized the question asking part of the endeavor. The information will be gathered and new questions will form and then more information will be gathered until there's too much of it and..." Yeah... "why are we doing this again?" Notice the "how" isn't very important here, even though it's included in the "every question possible" because after all, what can be more natural than making observations and learning other people's observations and then putting them into a report of facts? Substance rules, and form will emerge as a necessity.
So, I like thinking about "substantial (substance first)" and "formal (form first)" modes of thinking rather than "bottom-up" vs "top-down".
If you're still reading, thanks!
I'm curious as to what everyone else thinks about this issue :)
My current world order, where my morning and overnight schedule has largely shifted to accommodate a crazy early start to get kiddo ready for alternate school pickup, has resulted in my not being up as late at night as I used to be.
What I’ve realized is this seriously impacts my productivity. I’m way more productive at quiet times in mg day, and now my working time is constrained to when others are around. This sucks.
Regarding childish things. I just changed my phone theme and fell in love with this cute theme. For some context, I'm approaching 50, have long hair and beard, often wear band shirts.
“…severity is described in 3 levels:
Level 3 – requires very substantial support,
Level 2 – Requires substantial support, and
Level 1 – requires support.”