punishmenthurts

punishmenthurts , 1 month ago to ActuallyAutistic group

#ActuallyAutistc
@actuallyautistic
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I don’t know about you, but my self diagnosis was anything but fast or easy. It was sixty year goddam treasure hunt where anyone who knew or could have known anything made a point of keeping it a secret.
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No matter the troubles I was having, the messaging from family (who absolutely all knew) and doctors and psychologists was all NT conformism:You are Normal. We are All the Same.
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Self diagnosis is about as easy as a salmon finding its breeding spot after a thousand miles of white water. It’s an against all odds kind of deal, at least for us olds.
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Neurotypes are the biggest secret in the world, because We are All the Same, they say. They don’t like self diagnosis because it’s when we win the game of Hide and Seek, we are Kicking the Can when we self discover, winning the game.
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😈❤️

pathfinder , 1 month ago to ActuallyAutistic group

@actuallyautistic

Autistic brains be stupid. Well, obviously not stupid, they just seem to work, or not work, in mysterious ways.

The main one that has always got me, about mine, is that I have no memory for sound, absolutely none. I can't remember a song, or a sound. I can't remember what my parents sounded like and none of my memories carry, for want of a better word, a soundtrack. I can remember what I was thinking and what others were saying, but not hearing them say it, nor any other sound. I also don't dream in sound, at least as far as I know. All my dreams are silent.

And yet, and it's a big yet. I have an excellent memory for voices and sounds. Like many autistics I have near perfect pitch, at least when I'm hearing others sing, or music playing. Just don't ask me to reproduce it, because I can't. If I meet someone I haven't met for a while, then I will almost certainly not recognise their face, or remember their name, but there is a very good chance that I will recognise them from their voice. I am also very good at detecting accents. Even the slightest hint of one in, say, an actor pretending to be an american, will get me searching Wikipedian to see if I am right about their actual nationality.

So, if I can tell the sound of a Honda CBR engine two blocks away, or a voice, or an accent buried deep, I must have the memories to compare against. And yet... nope.

So, as I said, autistic brains be stupid.

#Autism
#ActuallyAutistic

everyday_human , 1 month ago to ActuallyAutistic group

Mental Health #actuallyautistic
@actuallyautistic

Reflective moment.
POV
Im going to try to explain something I never have said entirely.

I am a self learner, autodidact.

I try extremely hard not to assume things about people.

Why they do the things they do?
I personally know I’m not all that special.

Unique maybe.

I do have a desire for accuracy.

My version of extreme sports is learning the basics of difficult sciences that explains how the world works.

I’m not good at standard formulas.
I Frankensteined my own that get me by to survive.
Probabilistic math.

I don’t have a love for proving people wrong.

However I do enjoy getting constructive criticism that’s meaninful and helpful.

I’m an observer and a listener at a whole different level.

I don’t enjoy being right or about things.

It’s actually painful!
Why?

Well because in most situations I drill into my head not to assume things not to infer things.

So when I am right, it means I could have maybe helped someone when I didn’t but I wasn’t confident about my ability.

It also maybe means I wasted precious moments of my life figuring something out only to doubt myself. Humility

Alas I was born like this.

I have a very vivid lucid memory. Apparently it’s immersive eidetic. Which is even more of a burden. Nearly completely lucid recall even if I don’t want it.

I hear this often:

“Wow I wish I could remember verbatim like you do”

For me it’s like never being able to forget things, never to be free of pain, never be simply oblivious, sure I can act that way.

Guess what my brain still remembers!!!😭

I have had to struggle, to know the whys of everything, to every thought I’ve ever had. I’ve had alot of thoughts.

I fight with myself, to find and break l my walls and keep my mind open , all my sensory, all my icks, all my ews I’ve had to learn how to deal with them

I’ve conditioned myself over a lifetime
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How to accept it and normalize it.

Laughing can be a coping mechanism I think in most humans.

Pretty sad when you have to learn microbiology to learn how we are basically mostly living in clean dirt and dirty dirt.

Life within life.

Symbiosis.

Every fear I’ve had to face alone, like we all do, all fears in mind

I can sit it a cemetery on Halloween and have no fear of ghosts or demons, I can fall 😴
I have my own ghosts that are far scarier. 👻
My memories of my own life.

The longer I live the longer I battle it doesn’t get any easier for me. Although
I am still Alive! 🫣

I’ve delved(not A bot or written by ai) into every facet of science to learn how to normalize everything.

I did this even before I realized I was autistic, I knew I was different.

Quite honestly for awhile my imposter syndrome I semi I questioned my own sanity. Was I delusional?

I guess in some ways that protected me as well.

It causes me to triple rethink every thought I think.

I stayed grounded. Conserve energy know when to use it. Timing
Action or lack of action will change the outcome.

Oh and that memory that everyone wants that recall, makes you feel like you’re crazy btw.

When everyone else remembers through thier world view.

I remember through every lens I can see it at the time and every lens I acquire as I expand my world view constantly adding to my updated schema.

Often time people use me as translator to what people mean.
More then once I’ve been asked to read people for people.

I don’t like it.

I reply I’m confident with x amount of accuracy but I could be wrong.

Do most people think in Confidence Intervals?

I am likely biased. I know
I tell people this even though i can pretty accurate about other people in my life I see.
I remain situationally aware.

I’m choose mostly to say silent and mind my own business.

I’ve grown to know myself fairly well, a work in progress I guess.

I dislike being me.

I do love life though with every ounce of my being despite the pain.

I try with what time I have left to advocate for education and acceptance of those who are marginalized and suffer because of ignorance and stigma.

I wish I could wish away my ability, I dislike the highly functional part. I dislike being viewed as better off when I’m truly not. I feel fucking cursed.

The stress and pressure and anxiety is killing me.

When people fight, grow learn and change you notice. You wonder why they didn’t get the version update.

“I didn’t change they will say”.

Debating whether they did or not is usually not worth the effort.

That isn’t the only curse, this savantish type of ability makes me feel alone in a world of billions of people.
I know I am not.
You can talk and explain until your dead yet others may fully get you.

I thought when I was younger. I wonder if I could train my brain like a computer!

I would challenge myself on accuracy of rough off the cuff calculations.

I thought if I remained situationally adaptive and objective and humble and just learned a little more, listened a little more, worked a lot more I could actually manage my own mind.
That was wishful magical thinking 🤔

Turns out I think I did become more accurate.

Again this is impossible right?

To what scale exactly?
I don’t know
To have a basic mechanistic understanding of everything I learn and how it maybe connected to every other cog through different frames.

A liquid pretending to be a solid

Then there’s the devils advocate.

There’s people who have it worse. Some people don’t have these gifts yet have the same deficits or worse than me.

Unless you live in my head you don’t know how much I suffer 😭Do you?
I know that as well and that is even more painful as I know many have it worse.

Does it make my pain less?

No, it doesn’t bring me comfort or feel better, for they seems is too many.

It brings to me compassion and humility.

I swear some people find people find comfort in knowing some have it worse.

News is classed as entertainment blown out of context for engagement.

Social media polarization? Engagement.

Did you get the update we became the product for AI training?
We are the product in a capitalistic merit based economy.
Did you get that update?

Framing is important. Don’t understand change your lens.

How does it make you feel better that there are people out there starving or being violent or mean to one another?

Does it distract you from your own life?
Not me, it compounds mine, ediditic memory.

Everytime I hear someone say , eww this isn’t good enough or too this or too that, it saddens me. I picture people dying of starvation.

Water is yucky?
I have images in my video memory of people in countries not so lucky without clean water and getting diseases and lead or shit in their drinks.

Do you still want my memory or awareness. I’m biased and flawed.
It’s far from perfect, I am human like everyone else. I don’t know much. With every fiber of my being I try to remain objective.

I realize autism adhd ptsd rsd pda hits everyone differently.

I know we have all our preferences and routines and they bring us comfort.

Nature= You and me.
a part of everything even if minuscule.

I see you out in the wild, not intentionally. I swear most of the time I don’t want to know but my brain seems to save it. Unless it’s occupied with something.

However I try to enjoy the simple things like acorns birds,cats,plants, clouds, stars art, and most importantly MUSIC.

I’ve never felt more connected to everything yet so alone. It’s so incredibly lonely.

I just want anyone to know who read this. I am not what I appear. I’m just like you.

Perhaps it will bring some soul comfort and understanding.

It’s pretty much my only hope in writing this.
Perhaps it makes it more real for me.

The funny part is I can’t force myself to memorize.

Even with this recall, I cannot seem to remember my own shit, I guess my mind is trained on the world most of the time while also trying to be present in the moment.

I will admit a knat has more of l attention span than me.

I have far too many faults to judge others.
I’ve made far far far too many mistakes.
When I was younger I thought I was invincible and had shit figured out.
I understood survival, people were a mystery.

I’m a childhood trauma survivor

I am sorry if I seemed a like an asshole.

I didn’t healthily express my displeasure at times when I was overwhelmed.

I didn’t know how and I didn’t know if anyone actually could understand. I still don’t.
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I’m sorry for seeming like I don’t care about your problems. I do!

I’m sorry.
I truly am.

As bad as my luck may seem to me. For some reason I’m alive at the moment.
I also have tachycardia most likely from hypervigelence and my anxiety which is tough.

#Exercise

I don’t know how to solve all my own problems. I try always

#Therapy helps. Medicine helps. Less stress is the best.

#Kindness,self care. #Writing
Community.

I’m not being critical, judgemental of anyone else I’m genuinely asking, is this easy/difficult to read?

I’m explaining how my mind works.

Often people use me to remember accurately and fight their battles for them.
Why?
I can see through most masks.
I can see something even if I don’t know what it is then my mind uses some inference to give me possibilities.
Too many far too many!
Sort function sure.

Then with all this, can I even be truly loved if I can never be understood?

In the right frame.

I could be wrong. There’s too much to know. That I know for sure.
Are other people like me?

Do they not understand how it affects them?

Do they feel like they didn’t have a voice which diminished their emotional capacity or was a voice for others? Or is it Alexithima? Likely

I spent a lifetime trying to interpret human behavior. My own included.

Most of my life I was so confused litterally. I somehow emerged from the other end of the tunnel since childhood wondering why

I was audhd dx 2022.

Mostly I found out why.

Perhaps they can’t remember. . They are battling for thier life the best they can.😔 I wrote this to maybe see if anyone else knows what this is like.Maybe someone else will find this helpful. You aren’t alone!
♾️🧬❤️

pathfinder , 1 month ago to ActuallyAutistic group

@actuallyautistic

No matter how well I learnt to mask, no matter how well I learnt to get on with people, if not in any deep and meaningful way, at least superficially. There has always been one skill that I have never mastered and that is simply the ability to not upset people and especially without having the slightest idea how.

Or that I didn't for a long time, anyway. It was only when I realised that I was autistic and that the way I looked at the world was in some ways substantively different from the way many allistics looked at the world, that I began to understand something. Allistics tend to find validation externally, through feedback from the group or the part of society that they identify with, whereas autistics tend to find it within themselves, in their own reason and sense of worth and value.

Now I must stress that in many respects this is a generalisation and obviously there will be a lot of variation and degree in how true this is. But in its more extreme forms, it could very well explain many of the experiences and difficulties that I've had.

Because if someone's self-worth, the value they see in their life and actions, is almost entirely based on their interactions with the dynamics of the group they identify with, or the society they live within and not from their own judgement, then this could lead to certain choices and reactions that are quite frankly alien to someone like me and that I could easily end up in conflict with and all without really trying to.

For example, if the value of a child reflects back on its parents. Then in the extreme case the values and behaviour expected from that child, are not those of the child, but of the parents in terms of the group the child is meant to be representing them in and how well it is doing that. So any sense of divergence from that or criticism of that child, no matter how slight that might be, could easily be seen as an attack on the parents and reacted to accordingly, irrespective of how reasonable or just it was.

Equally, of course, worth, praise, or rewards, can also become divorced from any sense of reality. All that matters is that you, whether that's through your children or not, are being valued, not whether there is any justice to it. Because the truth or validity of it, is not based on how you see yourself, but only on how others see you. And in the extreme case, it doesn't even matter how they came to this view, as long as they have it. So worth can become something to be manipulated and played for and how you really are and how you actually feel about yourself becomes almost irrelevant to this process.

That people could even be this way, that everything could become how you're being perceived and anything that effects that negatively can be something to be attacked, is still something that I struggle to understand. It is so foreign to my nature. But, it certainly explains so many of the times that I've upset people, because I wasn't playing this game, or seeing the world the way I should and didn't even realise it.

#Autism
#ActuallyAutistic

joshsusser , 5 months ago to ActuallyAutistic group

My own #ActuallyAutistic ideas on #neurodiversity and human society. Just trying to get this down as concisely as I can, so definitely skimping on the explanations and justifications. Honestly, this is largely speculation, but I'd love to see some good research done on these kinds of ideas. It would be more useful than all the eugenics crap they are wasting money on to identify #autistic genetics so they can remove us from the gene pool.

1. #Neurodiversity in humans isn't a problem or genetic mistake. It's a natural and important part of what makes us human.

2. The #neurotypical (NT) neurotype shouldn't be assumed to be the healthy or correct one, but only the most common one. To be specific, it is not the baseline from which all other neurotypes diverge. (It also needs a different name, but let's not fight that battle today.)

3. Early humans must have had a diversity of neurotypes, just as we do today, but the NT type didn't dominate in pre-agrarian tribal life. Different neurotypes had different strengths and contributed to the success of the tribe in different ways.

4. The NT neurotype can be characterized, as we do with #neurodivergent types. The most prominent attribute is their ability to acquire useful information socially (as opposed to other types which prefer to get information through study, observation and analysis, or other ways). NTs have cognitive shortcuts that help them validate a social information source as trustworthy based on non-verbal signals or social hierarchy. This also lets them align on goals and coordinate activity across large groups more easily.

5. As agriculture allowed prehistoric human communities to scale up to larger sizes, the NT neurotype became more prominent. NTs thrive in large communities where social connections and hierarchy are the dominant factor in success, while other neurotypes are less well suited for navigating large social structures with complex dynamics.

6. As NTs prospered, their influence on society increased, and social norms adapted to the way they naturally did things. Society became better suited to NTs and more difficult for other neurotypes, so NTs had an even larger advantage, had more success, bigger families, and grew to dominate the population both socially and genetically.

7. Over time, the NT ability to function effectively in a population of millions has changed human society from being balanced and inclusive of a diversity of neurotypes, to being entirely dominated by one neurotype. NTs only have to learn how to coexist with each other, but all other neurotypes must learn how to exist under NT dominance. Welcome to neurosupremacy. (see #SocialModelOfDisability)

8. The NT cognitive ability to validate trustworthiness is not infallible, especially when talking to other neurotypes. They can easily mistake honest autistic communication as deception or insincerity, or ADHD sporadic attention as disinterest or rejection. (see #DoubleEmpathyProblem)

9. Those NT cognitive shortcuts have failure modes, and can be taken advantage of. For example: charismatic cult leaders, conspiracy theories, mass marketing.

10. A Humanity of only NTs would probably fall apart in a generation or two. Being neurotypical is great for sharing known information, but take a good look at history and you'll see how much of civilization was discovered and invented by neurodivergent folk. Some of us like to speculate about historical inventors and scientists who might have been Autistic, for good reason. There's most likely also other important people throughout history of other neurotypes that are harder to recognize. Today, we need more a more balanced population and more inclusive norms, as we still rely on the cognitive strengths of non-typical neurotypes. NDs are now a scarce resource and need to be respected and protected, for the good of the species.

(edit: sharing with @actuallyautistic because I forgot before oops)