This reminded me of when I was hiking in Peru once and needed to pee badly. We stopped after a while, and I went to relieve myself behind some rocks. Five minutes later, much to my despair, the guide explained that the rock formation was sacred to the Incas.
Emotional intelligence has always been a sort of hidden magnet in my life that's pulled me towards people who had the emotional capacity to treat people like people instead of treating people based off any first impressions or preconceived labels.
The people who I remember and hold closest in my memories have been people who understood that I'm my own unique person, with my own experiences that shaped me, with my own way of solving problems, and my own way of learning from those experiences. They were able to assist and guide me in a more human and understandable way. It felt more positive and encouraging. I learned so much more from people with a stronger sense of emotional intelligence in comparison to people who lack emotional intelligence.
Unfortunately, with what I believe to be a global mental health crisis brought on by the arrival of a global pandemic, it's been obvious to me that there has been a critical lack of education in any form of emotional intelligence. Thinking back on my own education, there was more a focus on employable math and science skills, language with a heavy historical perspective, history with a heavily propagandized perspective and obedience within a narrow and confined learning structure. The only class that taught me any sort of life skills was the lowest level math class I had the option to take. The math class only "stupid" kids took.
After the initial uncertainty wore off and reality set in with the global pandemic, those who lacked the emotional intelligence to look within began to lash out at everyone around them. To them, the world turned against them as they were expected to be empathetic towards other people. It's been difficult to process and deal with such a critical lack of emotional intelligence on such a large scale.
Those who are filled with hate for themselves and the world around them have far more energy than those with a better sense of their own emotional intelligence. Those who are filled with hate are burning out everyone else around them.
I think now more than ever, there needs to be more emotional intelligence education for both young and old. It will be very difficult to help ourselves move forward if we aren't being empathic towards each other and the world around us.
I'm aware what I've said isn't very specific to autism but it's a topic that was made much more clearer to me after figuring out I have autism and understanding how it's affected my life.
Working in IT, I have learned that a lot of meetings are by people who gain "respect and notoriety" by having large meetings. It doesn't matter who shows up, it's the number, that makes them seem popular. "Get the engineers in here, this is serious business!" You begin to learn which PMs do this, and can respond (or not) accordingly. If they ping you "where are you?" you can say, "I am in an [client] audit call. I cannot leave this call while the audit is taking place." Or whatever your industry equivalent is. YMMV, some toxic environments I have been in, this was not possible.
I remember one PM was frozen in indecision. I had to tell him, "I can fix the problem, or having a meeting about it. Pick one."
"Well, both--"
"No. I can fix the problem, or having a meeting about it. Pick one or the other."
"I need you in this meeting!"
"When we explain to the customer that the fix was delayed by an hour, I can use YOUR name, as having a meeting about it instead of fixing it, correct?"
"The meeting is to be about fixing it!"
"No. I can fix the problem, or having a meeting about it. Pick one or the other."
"... we can have the meeting in your office, then."
This is why every project should have at least one of those rare engineers who can actually concisely explain a problem and solution in layman's terms to the PM. Asking the PM to just trust your solution on faith is a bigger ask than you realize.
This is also why you shouldn't have PMs who have zero technical knowledge of what the actual project they're managing is. PMs need to be smart enough to understand the basic idea of what the engineers are telling them. A really good PM will spend time learning at least the basics of the field their engineers work in.
Working in IT, I have learned that a lot of meetings are by people who gain “respect and notoriety” by having large meetings. It doesn’t matter who shows up, it’s the number, that makes them seem popular. “Get the engineers in here, this is serious business!”
Narcissists always climb to the top positions...by stepping on people to get there.
Actually the right side graph needs a correction from my point of view. The decline in productivity doesn't happen sharply when the meeting starts. For me the decline starts between 15 to 30 minutes before the meeting slowly, as I can hardly concentrate concerned that I might miss the start. If I'm ever in hyper concentration mode, most likely I'll miss the start of the meeting.
Ah indeed, you are right, somehow I missed the unexpected part. I guess because this applies to just about any meeting to me, not only the unexpected ones so I just applied it generally x)
Where does that headline phrasing come from? The study does not, and does not claim to, pinpoint anything for autism.
They use mice bred for hypersensitivity, and look at which parts of those mice's brains can be suppressed to reduce measured sensitivity to heated floors and electric shock.
They use "mice models of autism" to get an indication of where to maybe start looking on the slim chance it turns out to be similar in humans.
The mouse model may turn out to be a different kind of hypersensitivity altogether. Human brains may wire hypersensitivity very differently. The observed results may be that the mice's reactions are different instead of weaker. Etc...
It is valid science, but a long shot away from a long shot at being applicable for autism in humans.
C'mon now! Don't you get it? Instead of society making the effort to learn about and accommodate for the needs of autistic people, they're spending a ton of money on research, and the results of this study mean they might be able to FIX US!
This basically, as in my case, my sensory issues make it hard to do many fairly basic things, and causes lots of discomfort that otherwise wouldn't bother me if not for the sensitivity.
"Fixing" is very different from "reducing the issues for the person with the sensitivity, making life relatively easier to handle".
I don't know, I personally have trouble communicating with some fellow autistics sometimes. Autism is a spectrum after all, and I think individual autistic communication is also informed by cultural expectations (ethnicity, race, class, etc) albeit in a different way from how NT communication is shaped. Given that my cultural background is quite different from a typical person, I often run into problems when communicating with other autistics as well.
That would need a whole article if I were to explain my background, but to put it succintly, I'm a third culture kid who lived in the US and went back to Indonesia.
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