@theautisticcoach@actuallyautistic
Maybe I'm misunderstanding but life tends not to be worth it without some comfort & joy. Without them you are either fulfilling the capitalists dream of not earning enough to live on whilst working yourself to the bone or are suffering in some other way that leaves you totally drained & feeling worthless.
Diary of an ASD Squirrel. Day 242 , Wednesday 26/06/2024
TL:DR Occupational Therapy, socks & being geographically challenged !
Up around 5:45 , for those of you wondering about Geoff he has slunk off for now, satisfied that there are not enough puritans in my diet to trigger him!
Spent some time tidying up for the incoming visitor - shifted all the junk to my bedroom, which it turns out he needed to see 🙄🤦♂️
So had the Occupational Therapist round this morning a young chap, who was friendly & patient with my rabbiting on.
There is not a lot that he can do to help, mostly because as far as OT goes I don’t need a lot. He is going to discuss my case with the community MH team to see if they can help ( I hope Beth - who I was supposed to see today , see below, isn’t in that meeting ! ) .
He did say that he could try & help get past the agoraphobia & then help me with some of the more crippling social issues.
He also got me to order a sock aid - because I don’t have full mobility in my right leg & putting my sock on is frankly flipping annoying! So we will see how the sock aid helps. The one I ordered looks like an out sized sling shot 😆
I was due to see the Mental Health Practitioner at 15:00 today , sat at my local surgery for an hour before realising that she was sitting waiting for me 3 miles down the road at another surgery ! 🙄🤦♂️
Classic lesson in ‘read what it says in the text’ as opposed to letting autopilot run the show!
So now I have to wait to see if she will call me to book another appointment.
In my defence no-one in my local GPs surgery had the faintest clue if she was in the building or not!
If nothing else one wonders what they would have done in a fire or emergency situation 🙄🤦♂️
So now I’m stressed to buggery about missing the appointment & wasting her valuable time & her being, rightly, pissed off at me!
I’ve had time to calm down now so I’m just berating myself constantly for being a plonker!
Final Thoughts.
One of the possible co-morbidities of being Autistic is anxiety - & boy was mine triggered today.
Another on is ones mind shutting down under stress - & leading one to make really silly mistakes.
Ah well tomorrow is another day!
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! 🫂 🫶🐿️🖖
@Tim_McTuffty
Best just jump around on the other foot then 😉 Hihi...
Hopefully there's something that could help you with it sweets!
Yay!!! That's good! 😁
🤗 😘 @actuallyautistic
I've never paid much attention to song lyrics. With repeated listening I might learn bits of it but for many songs I've got no clue what they say even after decades of listening. For me, vocals are just another instrument. Still, I've been the vocalist in several bands!
There's a big difference between Finnish and English lyrics for me. As Finnish is my native language, I find it way easier to decipher lyrics, unlike in English, even though my English is pretty good.
Now that I know about my auditory processing difficulties, I wonder if it's related to that. How about my fellow autistics? Do you pay attention to lyrics?
@LehtoriTuomo@actuallyautistic I love lyrics, and have a collection of songs I know by heart.
I get vaguely troubled when a song doesn't really make sense - so for instance Toto's Africa has lyrics that seem like they mean something, but on examination you realise you have no idea what the song is about.
It varies, depending on the genre. The lyrics & their meaning are more important in some genres than others. I love to sing & have been in a few choirs. I don’t enjoy singing in other languages purely for the sound, because when I sing, lyrics are important to me. It’s not enough for me to know the overall gist of the song. It’s less important when I’m listening, or merely singing along.
@actuallyautistic#actuallyautistic Wish more YouTubers and content creators added a toggle to their videos that could switch off background music. Idk about y'all, but so many videos have added music that is unnecessary, distracting, and overstimulating.
I have seen videos on YouTube where the closed captions settings have been programmed with a separate audio track with no commentary, so I know it can be done! Would probably be so helpful for so many people!
@chevalier26@actuallyautistic Hear, hear! I bitch about this a fair bit myself, too. I even emailed a complaint to YT two weeks ago, asking for an easy way to make background music optional. I sometimes complain directly to creators, but there's only been one that removed the music after that, and she's autistic. ND creators just ignore me completely, or say they appreciate the feedback but then do nothing about it. Sometimes I wonder if a campaign to leave a lot of feedback on videos would help, but it doesn't seem likely.
Diary of an ASD Squirrel. Day 241 , Tuesday 25/06/2024
Up around 6am as per , house elf duties have to be done.
Once again I get to around 10am & very last drop of motivation has been driven from me.
Today is bathroom cleaning day.
I put out new towels, which herself put thru the washing machine , I really don’t know what she does with them but they end up in the airing cupboard so stiff you could use them as offensive weapons!
You would think I would be used to this after 25 years, but no, it still triggers me.
Along with all the other triggers of stuff not cleaned , stuff not put away properly & overfeeding the cats .. poof all the plans for today have been eroded away.
Still I guess I should be grateful ,we have a roof over our heads, a car to take us places & food to eat.
Many have so much less.
Just had a call from an Occupational Therapist, they wanna come round in the morning & assess me … eeek!!!
Then I have to go see Beth , the MH Practitioner who first suspected that I was ND & set me on this path.
I left frustrated last time because she failed to understand how triggering Mrs S. is.
Final Thoughts.
I don’t know what it is like for other couples , but I REALLY wish Mrs S. would treat this as OUR house not HER house.
I am really stressed about tomorrow, a stranger in the house judging me, judging the fact that I have not been able to do so many things around the house that should have been done!
Roast Squirrel anyone ?
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! 🫂 🫶🐿️🖖
@actuallyautistic#actuallyautistic How did y'all discover which parts of yourself were masking and which parts are genuine? Or, figuring out when you are masking in the moment it happens? Sometimes I feel off in certain scenarios but I can never pinpoint what is masking and what isn't. Any advice or resources would be appreciated!
@Zumbador@chevalier26@actuallyautistic
.
I really have no idea what my personality is, it may al be masking. I know what I THINK, but I don't have any awareness of some way to "be," that would be my own.
.
I'm taking my first little try at figuring it out right now listening to Autism Chrysalis' list here on a loop right now: https://youtu.be/V432ZWNpM0E?si=rumGgiC3d1RmK2v9
Diary of an ASD Squirrel. Day 240 , Monday 24/06/2024
TL:DR
Up around 6am having slept fairly well.
Sorted out the bins & various other chores & then settled down to catch up on Fediverse frolics!
So two things drifted across my mind today:
Firstly I was preparing salad yesterday & as is my occasional wont I mistook the tip of the ring finger on my left hand for a radish & merrily sliced into it with a very sharp knife!
Understand that this was not a deep or in any way heath threatening cut, it was a tiny cut that , after about 12 hours with a plaster round it is more or less healed.
My point is this , it hurt like buggery & bled like I’d hit an artery! What is it about ones fingers that this should be? I mean I know that I’m on blood thinners for the old Ectasia but really you see folks on ER with their limbs hanging off who don’t bleed as much as a when you cut the tip of your finger! Also I know that that ones finger tips are full of nerves but come on - a little sense of proportion wouldn’t go amiss !
Secondly Brits , like my good self, are renowned the world over for our favourite topic of conversation , namely the weather! Hey we live (currently) in a temperate climate & have a lot of weather!!
I say we converse, lets be honest here what we do generally is complain about it , we have mastered the art of chronic bitching in fact ! It’s either too cold , too wet , too foggy & rarely too hot!
For the last 2 days the country was nearly silent (apart from the footy fans , but let’s not go there!) why - because for 2 days we passed thru the eye of the storm (pun intended) & hit 20ºc , with sunny weather !
This is pretty much the ideal temperature for your average Brit, so we were, temporarily stumped! How could one complain?
Today the temperature continued up so normal service was resumed & we explored the unusual concept of hot , dry (if muggy) weather!
Struggling to concentrate on pastimes today again, I need to get back in there on the gaming front, the ‘Adrift’ NMS expedition needs completing before I run out of time !
Final Thoughts.
Summer is finally here, warm weather, salads & the sounds of the local brass band practicing in the background. Still there’s bound to be something to complain about 😆.
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! 🫂 🫶🐿️🖖
Has anyone ever used the term "diminished perceptive filtering?
I just thought of it (or subconsciously picked it up somewhere, I dunno) and I think it makes sense to my experience. I don't believe I necessarily have heightened sensory sensitivity, it's more about not being able to adjust my levels of perception that well. Thoughts?
That's usually what is talked about I think, but I'm trying to figure out if it makes sense to separe the sensory overwhelm part from the processing of "noise"/overlapping signals.
"Central Auditory Processing Disorder" seems relevant to my experience tho.
@neversosimple I think it's less of a "this is a distinctly different condition" and more "sound is so central to our daily lives this is more notable"
As an #ActuallyAutistic man, I wondered whether an employer could make me take a personality test here in the UK. It could (accidentally otter deliberately) detect #neurodivergence, which is a protected characteristic here: I'm not obliged to disclose my #autism to my employer, and my employer is not allowed to discriminate against me on the basis of it.
That was exactly my thought when my previous employer started rolling those out to new candidates. As a candidate I would never accept to disclose any medical information to a company, even if it's "just a psychometric test". I tried warning management about that but they didn't understand my concern 😕
Diary of an ASD Squirrel. Day 239 , Sunday 23/06/2024
Got a decent nights sleep last night Geoff behaved himself which was nice.
Up initially around 4am , had a chat with a dear friend & then managed another hour or so snoozing , finally getting up around 8.
On the whole not a bad day.
So I get loads of notifications on Mastodon because I like to interact with as many folk as I can, it can take hours to catch up sometimes. I have the time most days so this is not a problem. Sometimes though it is hard for me to do more than just answer with a hug or a smile because it is hard for me to formulate answers that will not offend or seem glib or cutting.
My autistic mind makes me blunt, it makes me say things that lack social subtleties , it makes me see over familiar or too distant. So when I cannot come up with response that I feel will be acceptable I fall back onto smiles & hugs to show I care hopefully.
Also there are only so many hours in a day , when one has 200 toots to respond to then sometimes brevity is required.
I was criticised for being too brief today, all I can say is I’m sorry ,I’m only a small squirrel of Pooh bear like intelligence & I try my best.
Final Thoughts.
I was playing around with Mona (the Mastodon app I use ) today & have managed to lose all my user notes that I used to keep track of time offsets & nicknames , birthdays etc. Very frustrating because they were crucial;l aids for one such as I with the memory of a concussed goldfish!
Hey ho.
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! 🫂 🫶🐿️🖖
@actuallyautistic#actuallyautistic Another vent incoming about this faculty training course:
The instructions for everything are SO VAGUE! And on top of that, the tutorials for using the programs in Canvas, like SpeedGrader for grading assignments, don't even match how the programs look on my own laptop. I am, quite literally, floundering. Aye, aye, aye... :blobugh:
@actuallyautistic I am literally forced to delay my completion of this course because someone in admin didn't think about possible Canvas updates or software changes between when the tutorials were published and when the rest of the applicants would watch them. FWIW, the training videos are all from 2020. Sigh.
@actuallyautistic#actuallyautistic Do y'all know if it's an autistic trait to be super skeptical of stuff? Like, for example, my parents watch some questionable "health" people on YouTube, and when they show me a video from said people, I can tell IMMEDIATELY that they are grifters in it for money. Idk what gives it away but it's like a flashing warning sign in my brain.
I wonder if it has to do with social influence and the effects of charisma/agreeableness that NDs might not fall for.
@pathfinder@chevalier26 i agree with you, and i think both tendencies connect to how we are drawn to the factual content of what people say and may not pick up on nonverbal content, including people's perspectives and intentions. i have trusted people who gave plenty of nonverbal indications that they were untrustworthy, but i didn't understand those signals, so i could only process the words they said, which didn't give me the full picture. it's a similar process when i'm not intimidated by someone signaling that they are an authority, but in that case, it works in my favor.
I really hate it when it takes a few text messages to articulate a thought, but my friend responds to the first message without context of the next two messages which would completely change the response, but they clearly have put their phone down somewhere because they must be doing something because now that the thought does need a timely reply because it's in regard to a change of plans which would be better started earlier than later..... they're now not reading their messages and you've trapped yourself in waiting mode hell.