Took me 48 years to figure out how to like myself and not rely on others for validation. You don't need the shield if you don't care what other people think. Easier said than done to get to that point!
Regarding the edited version specifically, if the person isn't willing to try to understand you, they were a shitty friend anyway. Still hurts to have to find that out, of course.
i only found out they had a smell a couple years ago, and i'm in my 30s. not because i can't smell them though, but just because i hadn't noticed it before.
Every time you're asked to repeat yourself, use different words which mean the same thing. Saying the same thing over and over and expecting to get a different response is useless and frustrating.
Yes, I did a full assessment (not just autism) and I kind of gave up by the end. I panicked a bit but I've also had really bad brain fog lately. The room I was in had very bright lights, the HVAC was buzzing and humming and I was in a chair without a headrest...it felt like literal torture. I had to skip an entire visual processing section and passed on several of the intellectual questions because my brain simply could not work.
It isn't too late. I was born in the early 70's and my parents had resources but refused to get me help due to the shame it would bring them. I didn't start to understand who I was until I was in my forties. In the last decade I've made huge leaps in understanding why I'm the way I am and what I can do to compensate for it. Will I every be as natural in social situations as I could have been? No. I can however keep trying.
I didn't have to do any tests when I was assessed for autism. For my ADHD assessment yes, there were lots of skill tests. But the whole point is that you flounder in a very specific way so they can tell if you have the thing they are testing for.
I'm actually still coping with the fact that I can use AI for work. I hate it. It feels like cheating and I learn little from using it vs. figuring the thing out myself, but this is a smart use.
I was telling an ex about smelling my coworker’s fear all day. He had a crush on me (it was a call center, so not an especially professional environment), and we had to share my cubicle for training, and he was just pouring out anxiety sweat. My ex had no idea what the fuck I was talking about and I’ve never met someone else who can identify the emotions that a person has by their sweat.
Saying someone “can smell fear” is a normal thing that comes up a lot in media, so I assumed it was also normal to notice. Apparently not. I’ll take all of the help my autistic ass can get in iding others’ emotions though
I always thought when people talked about "smelling fear" it was just a poetic way of saying it was obvious that someone was afraid. I've certainly never been aware of picking up on a person's emotions via scent or heard someone say that they've done that.
Can you smell it on yourself? Like, do you find that your sweaty clothes smell the same after a run and, say, a presentation (or something else that gives you anxiety/scares you)? I think it’s most noticeable with my own sweat, but fear/anxiety sweat smells bad to me in a way that normal body odor or exercise sweat don’t.
Sex sweat also smells very different, but that’s normally more pleasant to me than the others. I haven’t noticed a specific smell of aggression or any other kind of sweat though.
Edit: I think you’re right that “smelling fear” is metaphoric, but I did not realize that until I started talking about it.
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