A prehaps less talked about aspect of autistic life is that, not only are we expected to be able to overcome all of the challenges we face and do everything that a neurotypical person can do, but we are expected to do so whilst feeling unwell most of the time.
An autistic person who is unsure about their understanding and knowledge of something usually has more understanding and knowledge of that topic than non-autistic people who claim to be experts on it. We often under-sell and over-deliver. More often than not non-autistic people do the opposite.
@ZephyrSquall@AutisticAdam@actuallyautistic I was a lot like you when I first started The Autistic Innovator. My store is for autistic people and even though I was filling a need very few were doing, I felt uncomfortable charging autistic people a fair price and undercut myself a lot. Was making $0.50 to $1.50 per order because my prices were too low. Eventually I realized I could still make a profit, keep my prices low, and get paid for the thousands of hours I’ve put into my store.
Many autistic people have so much anxiety because, from a young age, we’re taught that our natural differences, as well as innocent things we do for ourselves (and things we can’t do), can anger other people and result in them punishing us, even when they’re not affected by them.
The anxiety I was thinking of is a feeling, while physiological responses are stress that, in adverse circumstances, easily turns into anxiety.
Past struggles don't make people "stronger" or tougher, but even more sensitive and traumatized. So if one has, for any reason, experienced eg. a lot of anxiety in childhood (like just about all autists have), we are likely be more sensitive.
The big question to me is, is it unavoidable for an autistic person to experience excessive amount of stress from early on? Today, in practice it probably is. But I can quite easily imagine a different world. So how much can this broken world of ours be fixed?
Well, IMO, we should not predict it but instead try find out by doing our best to promote change.
As an autistic child, I would get in trouble for not doing tasks other kids instinctively did. I’d respond with “I didn’t know I needed to do XYZ - I hadn’t been told to”. This would cause uproar, as seeing others do things should’ve “influenced” me. It did not and yet all these years later.. It still doesn’t.
Autistic people often have an interesting relationship with spare items. It's just how it goes with alot of us. Some of us gain a strong sense of security and inner peace from knowing we won’t run out of things we love any time soon, but
of course some of us also find spares pressurising and like to have only one of everything.
@AutisticAdam@actuallyautistic difficult to differentiate in my personal experience because i grew up in poverty when we rationed till social money and then could afford only one thing at a time and i'm pretty sure it ingrained deeply. first time i witnessed people buying in bulks was when i saw how rich families buy groceries. once i had a decent income, hating supermarkets, i tried ordering bulks but generally i eat very little and groceries end up rotting.
Being autistic for me is that eye contact usually makes me feel like someone’s eyes are burning my retinas, but occasionally it makes me feel like gentle waves are beautifully and intimately caressing my soul. It seems to mostly depend on who I’m making eye contact with.
@AutisticAdam@actuallyautistic I can't do much eye contact even with friends or loved ones. This makes me feel inadequate, and I try to look in people's eyes a few times during a conversation. But it's always hard.
My best friend is one of those people who can just stare into your eyes for a loooong time, and we had a conversation about this. She said she gets so much information from the eyes that it's a bit addictive. She tries not to stare at me and I try to look at her even a little 😸 .
@AutisticAdam@actuallyautistic I'm with @melivia , eyegazing expresses intimacy or aggression to me.
I also have a strange, and possibly unjustified, idea that this act is unbecoming of an Autistic person.
Never try to rewrite history when speaking to an autistic person. There’s a high chance that they will remember exactly what you said five years ago or more, and - if you wrote or recorded it - they will probably locate proof that you’re lying forthwith, and calmly send you a copy.
i'm so bad at mental math i think i might have legit dyscalculia. i'm so bad at recall i think i might have Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory (SDAM)... alas i can't find any diagnostic tests for the latter.
It took my years to stop treating myself like I was a complete failure in those areas, and accept that that's just how my brain works.
@masukomi@AutisticAdam@actuallyautistic
My memory is like a series of boxes. When in one box I often forget what is in a different box. I can remember events as if re-experiencing them often. I can't create that level of detail from being told about an event. Not even close.
To be clear: I feel emotions of happiness, joy, fear, sadness, & grief. I experience empathy, but it may take me a minute or so to understand why non-autistics find certain things difficult.
Autistic people are often criticised for “reading too much into things” and “assuming” the worst, but usually what we deduce is highly accurate, thanks to our pattern-spotting and dot-connecting abilities. I think the real issue is we typically unearth truths others want to remain hidden.
We are at a disadvantage in interviews. Interview success typically requires you to intuit what a (usually) NT interviewer wants and say it to them in a way they want to hear it (hard when you’re not NT), and any typical behaviours are seen as red flags.
Giving us time to process a suggested change is important. If we have to respond instantly, there is a chance we’ll say “no” to something positive, because we haven’t had a chance to fully assess it.
Yes of course. Love is a feeling/emotion that, as human beings, we are more than capable of experiencing. Alot of us may show our love in "our unique way" (perhaps by giving you our time and knowledge instead of heartfelt declarations) but that doesn’t mean that we don’t feel it just like others.
I'd like to have a word to the monsters who think we cannot love. I've loved my ex-wife for almost 26 years... and I still love her...though she's not in my life anymore.
Then I've had a series of partners that I loved, including the one that I call my greatest success and my bitterest failure. I adored her.
Or are they saying that we don't love the "Hollywood way?" I do not love in the way Hollywood depicts love. I'm quite capable to say I love you to someone without any notion that:
I want babies.
I want marriage.
I want to move in.
... and probably other stuff that I don't remember.
In Hollywood, however, I love you means that you want to have all of the above, and more. This is asinine.
I went for romantic love above, but we're also capable of the other kinds of love, for sure.
@actuallyautistic@AutisticAdam
There are so many different ways to question whether we are human, aren’t there? Can we speak? Do we feel? Can we experience empathy? Can we love?
All of those questions are ways of policing who will be treated as human.
The autistic urge to reveal everything you know about a topic you like the second someone brings it up, feeling as though you may burst if you don’t, even though the person you’re speaking to probably has only a mild interest in the subject and will be shocked by your passion.