Do you guys also combine almost pathological conflict avoidance - and the brilliant talent to create a conflict out of nothing just trying to explain your point of view or to point out some factual error another person made while talking about your special interest?
I don’t defend myself, I don’t tell I don’t like something or that I see that I am being taken advantage of or being lied to, or that someone hurts me - I never raise a voice and tell that, or question them, or demand my rights and all - because I am terribly afraid on conflicts. Not even that I won’t be liked, or that there’s going to be some consequence or anything. Just a conflict itself. I’m scared even when there’s a conflict that doesn’t include me nearby, but even the shadow of an idea that something I may say may create a conflict makes me go silent, and just dodge and tolerate more, doesn’t matter how bad I feel.
But when just discussing something - I mean not something important, may be a birds name, a train route from 80-s, the way some thing works etc - any abstract staff that doesn’t correspond to my life in any way - especially when I clearly see the opponent is making the factual error or denying my actual experience with the topic - it does create a conflict, and people would say I am a conflicting person, I am the one who likes to just disagree and all.
Is that desire to avoid conflict at all costs - and the inability to actually spot when another person starts to see your discussion as a conflict - some #neurodivergent thing? #autism #AuDHD #ADHD @actuallyautistic
The desire to avoid conflict at all cost is, I think, a consequence of being traumatised in particular ways because of being neurodivergent. And not all neurodivergent people experience the same type of trauma, or respond to that trauma by becoming conflict avoidant, hypervigilant and people pleasers.
But I certainly have!
At the moment I'm dealing with it by opting out of any discussions that become too heated, and the consequence of that is that I'm being told I'm "Too passive" 😑🙄
@olena@actuallyautistic absolutely rings a bell. 1.avoiding conflict at almost all cost: check -this I am getting better at because it could cause problems where I didn't fend for myself enough and suffered the consequences, and 2.defending what I think is right even though it's not the time or place or person to do this with, and unwittingly creating a conflict? check! I seldom realize these things are true unless someone else -like you- phrases them first.
We got free lunches at work: on the weekend, they send the menu, people choose between three options for each of two meals for each workday, and the food is delivered every day fresh from a restaurant nearby(not a fancy one, typical “homemade” food). If you need, they provide options for vegans or food restricting diets.
I am the only person in the office not doing that. I cannot explain to my coworkers why.
No, I don’t think the food is bad. No, I am not dieting, I am not looking for ‘something healthy’, I am not counting calories.
I am eating at work my fruit and yogurt every day, not being restricted to the time when their food arrives, and I am happy.
I can’t explain to them that I can’t carry such a commitment as decide on a weekend what to eat each day, and have to follow that. What if I don’t feel like that food? What if it’s not what I pictured in my head when ordering? What if I am not hungry? What if I get hungry earlier? And I just can’t do a full meal in the middle of a day and work after that. The meal should be at home, with some rest after it, or in the restaurant, with a good walk before and after, and good conversation during it. And I don’t want to eat a salad if it wasn’t done this very second right here because of frivolous microbiology thoughts. And anyway I prefer to cook myself, when I know perfectly well what it is, how it is done, and I balance the tastes and flavors to my own liking(I like to go to gourmet places somewhere, but it’s not an everyday experience, I doubt I’d be able to eat out every day anyway)
So, I’ve been asked again and again why wouldn’t I order something for myself, and every time I have to say ‘no, thanks’ and can’t tell why.
@sapphireangel@cordova5029@actuallyautistic didn’t hear about intuitive eating before. If it’s eating what feels right and when it feels right - it’s how I mostly tend to eat
@olena@cordova5029@actuallyautistic Yes. It is about listening to your body and eating what it tells you. It takes time for some to understand their body signals, but for me it's easy. I know when I need salty foods. I know when I don't etc.
I don’t operate the world putting everything into defined folders and boxes of clear tree-like structure (like I do on my laptop).
I operate the world by slapping infinite amount of tags on everything (which do not exist independently like in some tag cloud, but are rather interconnected in their own ways), and then tag-filtering or pulling the chain of tags when I need.
Sure, from outside that looks like a totally random chaotic pile, but it has its own structure, just the structure is different to what is usually pictured as a structure.
I used to have 5000 VHS cassettes (imagine the space that took up!) but I got rid of those and ended up with around 4000 DVD's. I now have about 3000 assorted BluRays and DVD's (after i moved in with my now wife) and I need a database to track what I already own as I'm prone to purchasing dupes!
But they're alphabetical sorted in clip folders (sans cases) in punched pockets with 4 dvd's to a page.
@DoctorDisco@pathfinder@olena@actuallyautistic I was in the Oxfam bookshop last week, and found a book about the Great Game (i.e. 19th-century geopolitics) in the games section. I moved it to history.
“Don’t assume, ask” - is the approach I share. However, there are many people to whom asking seems like something rude and inappropriate. And those people would assume.
The thing is, I am one of those people that usually can’t be accurately assumed: if you’d think a person that does this and this would also do that, the one who likes this and this would hate that and so on - most probably, I’d not follow that pattern. For that very reason I’ve been called ‘eclectic’, or less politely - ‘messy’, ‘illogical’, and all sorts of weird - most of my life, and for that very reason some people are kinda afraid of me: they can’t predict because their assumptions aren’t correct.
In turn, for me it’s very frustrating/confusing to see that someone is offended by me asking directly instead of assuming because all I want is to avoid any misunderstanding and clarify things.
I feel like #AuDHD is quite an eclectic thing per se(due to some #autism aspects looking from a certain point of view as opposite to those of #ADHD), so maybe that is the key to me being so, well, contradictory in eyes of other people.
I wonder, if that asking is just #autistic desire to have things clear and precise, or assuming/asking divide does not correspond to the NT/ND one #neurodivergent @actuallyautistic
Just realized that spending time with people I know, including - no, especially! - family, drains me out so much not because of all the activities, noise, planning and plans being neglected and all those things, but because of masking. Like, 95% of my energy goes to masking, to staying within acceptable range. Internalizing the meltdown that happened because of being overwhelmed takes more energy than actually dealing with being overwhelmed. Having plans established when I offered going without a plan, than changed, than cancelled, than uncancelled, than changed again and the day ruined is hard, but being smily and kind and attentive, and fun and creative after that is much more draining.
I know why most of us hate being observed: because if observed, we have to mask harder - so instead of doing the task itself and dedicating all of us to it, we have to use a lot of energy to constantly control the way we’re perceived to make sure the mask didn’t slip.
@Susan60@pathfinder@olena@actuallyautistic I guess there's a moment where I have to trust that people will hear what I've got to say, in good faith. If they can't, there's nothing I can do about it, but never sharing my needs, I'll never give them the chance to accept me.
Often, I relate to ND vids but this one has me doubting. I do have autopilot for bedtime routine or shower routine etc, only if it gets interrupted I might forget a step 🤔 So is this universal? So many in the comments relate to the wife on this one, I know it's a spectrum, but can this be used to rule stuff out? Yeah, I'm still out here swinging back and forth pendulum style 🫠 #neurodivergent#autism@actuallyautistic@autisticadvocacy
@Ilovechai@actuallyautistic@autisticadvocacy I think first there is a big difference between ADHD and autism, or AUDHD. I'm autistic and I crave having a clear schedule, so every night I do the same things, preparing my coffee for the morning etc., while for an ADHD person I would say it is harder to get habits. The wife in the video seems to be AUDHD (I just checked the # so maybe I'm wrong) so this is a more complicated matter. But anyway I think it is normal to not relate to the video while beeing ND!
🙏🏻 thank you. I've never been able to tease apart if what could be seen as inattentive tendencies that some suspect is inattentive adhd or if it's just my generalized anxiety that can make me float or dissociate so I've thought I'm likely audhd too so this is partly why I had si much doubt. But it's helpful to hear it's not an exclusive asd experience. Ty.
Literally said this thing to my partner today when explaining how I never enjoyed the non-conseual sexual banter out of the blue from 'dude friends'..I still wonder, are autistics also more likely to be #demisexual ? As this feels definitely connected for me. I was welcomed and included socially, #highmasking but it did often feel like others were having more fun than me. This vid satisfied my wondering why. #neurodivergent @actuallyautistic@autisticadvocacy
I don’t have nostalgia. I don’t miss places. I may remember them vividly, and love something about them, and hold it dear in my heart, but when I leave - I don’t want to come back.
Actually, I feel rather bad if for some reason I have to. Because the place has already changed. Because I have already changed. Because we’re out of sync now(if we ever were). Because I don’t belong. And seeing that hurts actually way more than just not returning.
Maybe it has something to do with the lack of object permanence. Maybe it is more about that autistic refusal to accept the reality which differs from expectations. Inside, I feel like a kid having a meltdown in the middle of the shopping mall because the toy they got was not 100% what they imagined it was going to be. No place is what you remember when you return after leaving. Maybe that’s the reason.
Is it something other #neurodivergent people also experience often? Do you feel nostalgic often or refuse to get back?
@olena@actuallyautistic Nostalgia isn't a thing for me, either. I may remember good things about a time or place, but those memories don't exist in a vacuum. There were bad things about the time/place, too, and most of the time those bad things are sufficiently connected to the good as to not be separable. The good and the bad made me who I am today, but I can't imagine wanting to actually revisit them.
@dweebish@olena@actuallyautistic Exactly. I do feel nostalgia, but it is always accompanied by the memories of bad things that happened alongside the good. I had a pretty good childhood that I am grateful for, but I do not ever want to teleport back to my childhood to live that way again. Too many things happened in my childhood that I DON’T want to relive either…
Speaking of joking.
When I was young, pretty often when I wanted to make a joke, I was too embarrassed to do that personally, so instead of joking directly, I’d add “as one of my friends says…”, or “as I’ve read recently…”(obviously, there were no friend and no book, it was just some snarky comment I came up with and desperately wanted to drop). I didn’t do that with serious things, it was just a way to slip in a joke - because doing it openly felt too daring for some reason.
When I got older, I used to do it less and less often, and now (almost?) don’t do that (probably?), but I still don’t quite understand why I was: what it was actually for, why did I need, what it was supposed to solve.
Is this also some #neurodivergent thing? Something related to RSD? Part of autistic masking? Or just my own weird thing? @actuallyautistic
@olena@actuallyautistic I've done this. I also say things like "you might already know..." or "perhaps someone told you..." ahead of information or news, which I think is a way of lowering expectations or making it seem okay to raise a particular subject.
@Autisticaurochs
I used to say "do you know this old joke about the..." before telling jokes too. Phrased as a question it felt much less intrusive. @olena@actuallyautistic
Of all the avatars I’ve ever used, my favourite was made of a bit of MRI of my own brain.
Part of the satisfaction was to have long discussions with moderators saying the avatar is supposed to show the person - and arguing that the brain is actually what I am as a person, not my face.
I pretty often enjoy finding different ‘well, technically…’ loopholes, though mostly not for exploiting them, but for the sheer joy of pointing them to someone and chucking together over such a joke.
This, together with puns, together with all “imagine this and this, wouldn’t it technically be that?” type of jokes is basically my favourite genre of humor.
And my relationship with humor is kinda complicated: I love funny things, but I often don’t find pure comedies funny(while can have a good chuckle in some straight-face side jokes in some procedurals or adventures), and the main reason is I don’t find it funny when someone struggles, someone is getting hurt, someone is ridiculed or put in an awkward/cringy situation. Someone falling isn’t funny, someone failing isn’t funny, someone put in a situation when they are clearly experiencing fear, shame or disgust isn’t funny for me.
Maybe I just empathize too much: imagining myself in their place makes me want to run away, hide, stop existing, so I just can’t feel any fun there.
But give me a good chuckle with an unexpected pun, give me those “technically..” jokes, give me clever side remarks - that may be soo funny!
Basically, for me, in all the movies, books, shows:
Chuckle > laugh
Maybe it has something to so with RSD and fear to be laughed at(based on previous experiences)
Is it something common among #neurodivergent folks? I imagine it may have something to do with #autism and affective empathy?
What is your relationships with different kinds of humor?
@Uair@olena@actuallyautistic I saw it in the cinema when I was at Uni and the three people I went with are the only people I know who ever saw it. Same production team as Chun King Express which I think was more popular but not as funny!
I'm not surprised by the result they discuss in the following article. I think self-awareness of our conditions is critical for neurodivergent folks to have a chance at flourishing.
Here's the Scientific American article making this argument:
I think self-awareness is important, but I sure hope that people don't get from this that once a neurodivergent kid knows about their own condition, everything is solved.
I'm autistic, yes. I know my limitations, yes. I still need to nap a few times a day, I suffer from insomnia, and I don't aim to return to an office. This does not change from the fact that I know about my conditions.
@yourautisticlife@actuallyautistic n
There is no magic wand to fix all of ones autistic challenges in a neurotypical world, but self understanding and awareness of ones neurodivergence is a good place to start 😊
@yourautisticlife@actuallyautistic
Hey, thanks for this. Been debating with kiddo's dad whether to get a diagnosis (we're both almost certainly undiagnosed neurodivergent adults) for 4 year old or not, concluding that we'd no faith in the "help" available from the school/social system and probably best not to ostracise her.
But yeah. Getting the diagnosis for her rather than them, so to speak. Makes a lot of sense.
In it I talk about the healing powers of creativity and provide practical tips, based on my own experience, for using the creative process for the upkeep of mental wellness and therapy for mental illness.
I had detached from believing the sensations my body was telling me foe a long time as I was told that I was too sensitive, so I shut it down and then lost trust in myself.
By leaning into my feelings, by noticing and focusing on my bodily sensations, I am learning to trust myself again from the inside out.
Doing so has helped me across many areas of life. #AuDHD
@actuallyautistic@actuallyadhd this video on avoidant attachment explains in a few steps what I've been doing without realizing it was what I was doing