Zumbador

Zumbador , 17 days ago to ActuallyAutistic group

@actuallyautistic

I'm trying to figure out something about dealing with /avoiding conflict.

When I'm in conflict with someone, I'll often avoid confronting them, because I don't trust them. I might like them, but I don't trust their ability to respond appropriately.

I find that honest conversations mean making myself vulnerable to some extent, and if someone has hurt me, or is annoyed with me, it doesn't feel safe to be that vulnerable.

I reserve conversations like that for people who are very close to me, that I trust, like my husband and my father.

I usually hide my anger and annoyance, because it feels like they don't deserve to see my honest emotions.

But I don't think this is a healthy strategy.

#ActuallyAutistic

Zumbador , 18 days ago to ActuallyAutistic group

@actuallyautistic
I'm visiting family, and wow am I deep in autistic denial territory.

Some of my younger relatives have approached me, asking about neurodivergence because I've been so open about my experience as a late realised autistic person. They're wondering about themselves and their parents.

The older people though, are unable to have that conversation. There are jokey, sidelong half acknowledgements that "there might be something going on" with them, but otherwise it's High Masking At All Times.

What I find difficult to deal with is the rather toxic judgemental attitudes.

So-and-so relative is "so picky about his food, he thinks it makes him important" or "how ridiculous, he doesn't like the too bright light in the bathroom" and all the while I can see them struggling to deal with the exact same difficulties they're judging in others.

It's so ingrained, I don't know if there's a way for them to find self acceptance.

#ActuallyAutistic

Zumbador , 24 days ago to ActuallyAutistic group

@actuallyautistic

Here's something that causes friction between me and my family.

Someone asks me to make a decision about something I don't have a strong preference, but they want me to have a preference.

"do you want x or y? "

Saying "I don't care" comes across as rude, and even softening it as "I don't really have a preference" or turning it back to them by saying "what do you think?" isn't appreciated. They want me to care.

I understand that they want me to choose so they don't have to do that emotional labour. That's fair. But often when I do choose (at random), they try to change my mind, and then I'm back to square one because I don't really care, and I don't want to lie!

A honest answer would be "I'm depressed, I don't want to exist. Putting on a polite face is taking up all my effort, expecting me to actually care is beyond my capacity"

But that's too heavy for most interactions.

I'm not sure what I'm asking for here, just writing it out.

#ActuallyAutistic

Zumbador , 1 month ago to bookstodon group

@bookstodon

Am reading "Emily Wilde's Encyclopedia of Faeries" by Heather Fawcett. Absolutely loving it.

I'm not sure if the writer did this on purpose, but the main character is heavily autistic coded. Emily Wilde finds it easier to deal with the capricious Fae, than with mystifying human social conventions.

The book reminds me quite a lot of Naomi Novik, especially "Spinning Silver".

#AmReading #ActuallyAutistic #FantasyReads

Zumbador , 1 month ago to ActuallyAutistic group

@actuallyautistic

I have half formed thoughts about autism and externality. Not sure if "externality" is the right word?

I seem to be much more entangled with objects and my environment than most people, and I think that's a autistic (and ADHD?) thing.

Having to use notes and lists to remember things and organise my thinking, as if my memory resides as much on paper and digitally, as it does in my brain.

Having strong empathy for non-living things, as if harming them is harming myself.

My relationship with my home: I don't really feel safe and relaxed anywhere else, and I strongly dislike other people (except for my husband) being in my space. As if my space is an extension of myself.

All of these things feel like different manifestations of the boundaries between myself and everything else being blurred.

#ActuallyAutistic

Zumbador , 1 month ago to ActuallyAutistic group

@actuallyautistic

Dreams are one of those things no one cares about, but in the interest of sharing internal experience to highlight how different we are from one another:

I have hypervisual lucid dreams when I'm half asleep but still conscious.

I had one just now (I'm in bed, trying to sleep) . I "saw" a person walking in front of me. She had dark hair in a glossy bob and dangling pearl ear rings, a mottled grey knitted top, felted, and luggage tags dangling from her waist. Leather tags holding slips of paper, something written in them in ink that blurred as if the paper was wet.

She was annoyed by the way these tags dangled and fussed with them. I couldn't see her face or her legs because my mind's eye saw her from behind, and was wide angle and distorting everything except that which was in the centre of my vision.

She was walking over asphalt with cars and buildings on the periphery of my vision.

I was awake during this, aware it's a dream-vision.

Brains are awesome.