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I have an autism diagnosis and it turns out a whole bunch of us do. This OP is a bit outdated and I am not an expert on autism, and it's not nearly as "rare" or "strange" as I thought it was when I first posted this; if you're new to this thread feel free to ask and/or tell and/or contribute!
credburn fucked around with this message at 02:33 on Dec 8, 2022 |
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Sep 30, 2019 12:12
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lllllllllllllllllll posted:How did and do you feel about SA's and the internet's general use of the word autistic as narrow-minded and obviously ignoring the human/emotional aspect of something? I think the use of the word as a pejorative or at best an ignorant generalization is about as problematic as any other word or phrase, but I don't personally take much offense to it. Autistic people have not endured the social stigmas and struggles homosexuals, trans people, people of color, etc. have had to, so I feel like there's also a lot less consequences of this kind of continued ignorance. If someone calls me a "sperg" or something like that, I'm more likely to laugh than take offense. Last year I had been put on Adderall to help get my ADHD under control. It didn't work, and in fact caused me to become a horrible anxious monster -- I'm not violent, and the idea of me being violent is something so absurd that it can be funny, but at the worst of that time on Adderall I felt like I was just one snide comment away from punching my boss in the throat and throwing a table through a window. Anyway -- that's only relevant to tell you this part: last year I was under extreme stress and anxiety for almost a full twelve months, and so my girlfriend had made lots of observations about how I handle my own stress. A lot of autistic people "stim," which is a kind of repeated motion or action that helps one focus and regain control of themselves and their surroundings. Neurotypical people do this as well, but it's not nearly as pronounced -- for autistic people, it is sometimes the only thing that they can grab hold of to keep grounded. It's like a singular light in a dark tunnel, something that they can aim for and move toward even if nothing else around them makes sense. My own form of stimming is finding patterns, which is usually in the form of ratios between trees, say, or odd-numbered distribution of cans on an aisle, so I can locate the middle and divide it into different symmetrical sizes in my head. Mostly it's busywork so that everything around me doesn't sound like a blown-out speaker turned up to 15, and so the lights don't bleed out so much that I can't see anything. My girlfriend says when I'm under a lot of stress, I just disappear. I become very isolated and I stop talking and I only answer in single-word responses, or maybe two if it absolutely requires it. I start shaking, and then I go into a weird autopilot where I (badly) mimic the gestures and expressions I see other people do, because all I can think about when I'm anxious like that is that I don't want to look weird, and I don't want to embarrass my partner, and I don't want to ruin anything, so just look normal look normal look normal, all the while I can't speak and am frantically looking around for patterns. My cousin is very autistic, and as with many autistic people he often doesn't go anywhere or do much unless he's wearing his headphones. I don't know about his stimming, but he deals with stress by playing video game music so loudly that he can't hear anything else, and then he just closes out the world. I guess we're similar in that way, but in my case my hearing becomes very sensitive when I'm stressed. I mentioned that stereo-turned-up-to-15 thing; it really is accurate in conveying what it is like to comparing it to a blown out speaker. Sounds around me literally just become scratchy, tearing chaos. Autism Speaks is, I think, the largest autism advocate group, but they're also very controversial because they have been accused of removing the human aspect from the condition. There is a large division in the autism community as to how we identify ourselves, whether we are "people with autism" or "autistic people." The former is my preference, because I regard autism as I might diabetes. It's just something I have. But others feel much more strongly connected to the autism as being part of their identify. Autism Speaks only recently started using the latter phrasing. cinnamon rollout posted:Do you have an opinion on early intervention therapy, do you wish you had it, are you glad you didn't? Overall, I think it's hard to really have an opinion on the therapy as a general idea. Both autism and the therapy have such broad ranges that weighing the pros and cons would be difficult. But I guess for me, in regards to "high functioning" autistic people, therapy would probably have really helped me have an early understanding of social interaction. I was not diagnosed until really really recently and have otherwise spent my life just feeling like I don't "get it." It's rather like trying to read a book your whole life and not understanding it, only to find out it's not even in a language you speak. Well, I mean, kind of like that, in a way. I'm not intellectually deficient or even delayed; I have not passed a school year since 6th grade, and generally stopped going around the 8th grade and officially dropped out in my sophomore year in high school. Almost everything I know I've either taught myself or learned by reading about it, or observing others, or looking it up. I'm not more or less intelligent than I think is expected of one my age, but I learn in a way that makes the standard school curriculum frustrating. They put me in a lot of advanced classes thinking I was especially smart, but then I would fail those classes. They would also put me in remedial classes, wherein I also failed. So when I think of early intervention therapy, or at least the parts I've read about, it seems like it could have benefited me, because it would have at least calibrated me in some way for how the world works. It could have given me a head start, instead of spending so many years stumbling through it, being told I'm just not applying myself. But then most of this also I think would be more dependent on an early diagnosis. credburn fucked around with this message at 11:22 on Oct 6, 2019 |
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Oct 6, 2019 11:19
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AngryRobotsInc posted:Autism Speaks is controversial for many more reasons than "removing the human aspect". Things like their "I Am Autism" video. Putting a lot of support into anti-vaccine research (to their credit, they have reversed from this position). One of their staff members, on recording, and in the presence of her child, saying she had contemplated driving off a cliff with said child. Questions about their spending of funds. For the longest time not having any adults with autism in leadership roles. On and on. I never really delved into the details of Autism Speaks. I had no idea they were for a while anti-vaccine? That's so bananas. My impression, from hanging around autistic people (my cousins, attending a few local autism gatherings, and lurking on subreddits) the opinion of Autism Speaks is generally pretty poor, which is especially frustrating since they are the largest and most well known and recognized organization associated with autism. Personally, as a kind of general ambition of getting rid of autism, I support, which itself is a kind of controversial view. I know there's never going to be a "cure," at least in that nobody's going to give me a shot and make it go away. But ending the problem of kids being born as low-functioning autistic people is, I think, worth looking into, right? It's not going to lead to mass forced sterilization or whatever. codswallop posted:I've got a brother close in age who was diagnosed at the same stage as you. High functioning autism wasn't on anyone's radar when he was growing up so all his quirks just got sublimated into "that's just Gary's personality." When I was growing up, my cousin was pretty obviously autistic. As I said, he is somewhere probably just above the high-functioning/low-functioning threshold. But I grew up in a redneck, ignorant kind of place, and in the early to mid 90s, autism was not well understood. So I went undiagnosed largely, I think, because my cousin is so much more obvious and so people probably identified what he had as the example of autism, whereas I would just be considered, you know, quirky. Eye contact sucks and I hate it. I practice really hard at maintaining it during conversation, but sometimes my focus is so centered on that that I lose track of what the other person is saying. The more anxious I am, the harder it is. When I make eye contact, I feel like I'm suddenly on a perfectly even.... what is the word? It's like the person I'm speaking with and myself are exactly equal in terms of social position, mutual respect, all that. And it's like a secret battle of attrition. Each second I feel weaker and weaker, and smaller, like I'm being judged, and I feel like my ability to think creatively or maintain an awareness of my surroundings diminishes. I have to give up eye contact briefly to reset myself, and try to pretend like I'm not being overwhelmed by judgment and criticism.
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Oct 7, 2019 04:25
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AngryRobotsInc posted:That's another thing though. I often see people who say that all stimming should just be left alone, it's fine, just leave them be. And I think they only think that stimming is hand flapping, rocking in place, that sort of thing. And it is for me. But stimming can be bad too. My son's, when he was younger? Self-harming. He bit his hands and arms hard enough to almost break skin. And slammed his face into walls. So occasionally those sort of behaviors absolutely do have to be controlled, and redirected or otherwise minimized, because of the danger they can present to the person and the people around them. Now that I think about it -- I'm 35 -- all my life I've bit my nails. I've bit them so much that an infection caused one finger to swell up to the size of like almost a golf ball and since then the nail grows in three directions and I have to keep it short or it digs into my skin. Anyway, I usually never noticed I was biting them, but I sure bit them when I was nervous. I couldn't stop; it was a stress reliever. So, recently, a doctor put my on Vyvanse, which is like an ADD medication. I made a conscious decision to stop biting my nails around the same time, and unlike the thousands of times I've tried before, this time I stopped. So maybe it was my way of stimming (which now that I write this, it sure seems like it) and ADD meds helped me not need it so much? How did you help your son transition from that kind of behavior? Or is it still something he struggles with? Cephas posted:What do you think about those behaviorist programs for kids with autism? The ones that will do something like have a kid do a page of homework without behaving in a way deemed inappropriate in exchange for a reward of some kind (candy, 10 minutes of tablet video game or something). Gosh, that really does seem like something I would need to be more educated and involved in that field to really establish an opinion. But if I put myself in that position, say, I can imagine there being some problems. Like, for instance, the promise of a reward establishes a pattern that, probably because of the reward, would become aggressively conditioned into my uhh... my psyche? That kind of behavior, especially if it's kept up over time, would bleed into many like-activities, say, like maybe just stressful or arduous tasks, and then when those did not net some kind of reward, it would cause some kind of rift, like this feeling of -- like that "glitch in the Matrix" feel. But then when it happens again, and again, and again as things do, it would become a disgusting feeling like I've been misled or hypnotized my entire life. Patterns are extremely easy to establish for me, and I believe it's a common traits with autistic people. So just by that alone, I would lean toward helping one learn more adaptive behavior. However, not all autistic people can achieve a level of proficiency in it that would help them adjust their behavior or thought processes in the way they want, and the stress of trying to adapt and unable to do so seems awful in itself. So I guess the obvious answer would be that such methods would best be decided on a very specialized, individual way. But I don't necessarily feel one practice or the other is problematic. Sorry I didn't answer your questions sooner; I forgot about a video game convention I was heading out of town for. Speaking of autism, holy smokes that place had to have had at least a third of its visitors on the spectrum.
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Oct 21, 2019 12:29
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I was on Adderall for almost a year and I feel it's just by luck and timing that I never punched anyone or destroyed anything expensive. That stuff turned me into a raging, starving monster.
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Oct 22, 2019 01:10
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I want to share an anecdote. A friend of mine was recently diagnosed, but it took like two months of regular visits to a neuropsychologist in order to get that diagnosis, whereas I was diagnosed after only two three-hour visits. She is -- maybe obviously, given the pronoun -- female, and as I understand it's harder to diagnose women because they tend to present in a much more subtle way. In any case, she finds that emojis (because I'm reluctant to change, I still call them "emoticons" and have to erase it every time) are extremely useful for helping others understand what she is trying to say. However, emojis are almost universally useless for me. My diagnosis focused a lot on facial expressions. Now, anyone who looks at, say,  knows it is an angry little yellow guy. A frown, angry eyebrows, I get it. However, she recently sent me this emoji:  This thing makes absolutely no sense to me. Since I am so bad at broad expression interpretation, I have to break down individual features, but this little guy is all kinds of chaotic. First, the mouth. It's a semi-circle, flat on top, arch at the bottom, generally a symbol of happiness. It's a soft smile, though, so not like, ecstatic, but happy. It's kind of lazy, though, really relaxed, so maybe it's a breath, like a sigh. Move up to the eyes, which are closed. They're angled downward, a soft droop, suggesting contentedness, peacefulness, sleeping, relaxing. Combined with the soft mouth, I perceive this as sleeping. The eyebrows, raised up, but not in a furrow, so it's not angry and it's not confused. Those eyebrows appear on a surprised face, but this face is not surprised. It looks relaxed. So given all the evidence and what I know about individual expression, this emoji depicts someone asleep.No, she says. She just meant she was really happy to hear about something. I've often heard that one of the biggest tells of an autistic person is that they have trouble understanding and translating body language and facial expressions. This is very true for me, and I hope that maybe my breakdown of the thought process that I have to go through helps convey this seemingly simple (I mean, it seems really really simple to me, even though I can't grasp it) thing that babies don't even have trouble with. Of course, this is my personal experience, and I can't say if it's like that for everyone, but maybe it is for many?
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Oct 24, 2019 07:46
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There are a lot of other emojis -- and other symbols, gestures, expressions -- that I struggle with, not necessarily because I can't interpret them, but rather than there are multiple interpretations possible. Like, oh, for instance... okay, so, memes are useless to me; a decade and more ago, when the Internet felt a lot smaller, we used "image macros" on these forums, which are basically what would later be called memes (and honestly I never really knew why we called them image macros) and I was on board with all that because I was embedded in the SA culture and it was our thing. But I understood them because I was in on the jokes. But now I see memes on Facebook and I don't really understand them, and I think it's because I'm just not in on the joke. I don't watch television, I can't watch most YouTube channels because the rapid no-dead-air choppy editing causes me incredible discomfort, I don't really do reddit or uh... you know, tumblr or whatever. Basically I'm a little out of the loop, unless it pertains to early 2000s somethingawful or 90s cartoons. So when I see a meme pop up, and I don't get it, I think that it's just referencing something I know nothing about. But -- okay, I'm getting off track. The example I want to bring up is one of Michael Jackson eating popcorn. I think you've seen it; it's not uncommon. And when I see it, I just have no idea what is supposed to be conveyed. When I think of Michael Jackson, these are the things I know of him, kind of in order of significance: 1) Extremely prolific pop star 2) Pedophile 3) Weird face and behavior and controversy So, okay, given that, I read the meme as: 1) I see Michael Jackson eating popcorn. I'm thinking the gif is from the Thriller music video but I'm not positive. Alright, so to break it down, I see Michael Jackson eating popcorn. He's excited. This has little to do with him being a popstar, unless the gif is in direct response to something referencing either Thriller or a monster movie or something scary, and it's like, hey, remember when Michael Jackson did Thriller? 2) Michael Jackson was a pedophile who molested lots of kids on his creepy ranch. Pedophiles watch child pornography, or at least spend a lot of time watching children. There are movies that feature children. Michael Jackson is depicted here watching a movie -- is it child porn? Is he being a creep in a threater? 3) Not much to really go on with the third example. But here's a fourth interpretation: It has nothing to do with Michael Jackson at all. It's just a guy eating popcorn. It's probably a way of saying, "you said something dumb and now lots of people are going to jump on you about it and it's kind of like an excited guy in a theater eating popcorn really excited to see something bananas happen." This is actually what my girlfriend told me, and turns out actually that was the case in this particular example. But why Michael Jackson? The FIRST thing I see is Michael Jackson, not some random guy eating popcorn at a theater. Anything that can be interpreted in many ways, wherein I observe these things outside of a relatively small, self-contained group like somethingawful just baffle me and bring me to a state of indecision that overloads me and often leaves me kind of just standing there, like a robot who has conflicting orders. I can often tell when someone is being sarcastic, but only if they really lean heavily on that kind of sarcasm-inflection. If they say it deadpan, even if it's absurd, I can't convince myself that they MIGHT be telling the truth. Also: rhetorical questions. Not only are they really dumb rhetorical devices, but they also leave me in a sort of stupor, because it's essentially sarcasm. "Do you WANT to catch a cold?" my mother would say as I try to leave the house without a coat. Obviously, I guess, the answer is no, but she must know that, so why is she asking me? Why doesn't she just tell me to put on my coat? Is she actually waiting for an answer? "ANSWER ME!" she shouts. Well, gently caress, I guess she is. Argh. credburn fucked around with this message at 12:07 on Oct 24, 2019 |
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Oct 24, 2019 09:49
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dirby posted:Thanks for sharing. I think to some extent the interpretation struggles you have are felt by a lot of people, but you have greater than average difficulty deciphering things, plus more...emotional difficulty(?) when you can't decipher something. Like, if I have trouble guessing the intent of something like that Michael Jackson image, I hope later context will clarify and won't lose sleep if it doesnt. I also deal with at-time crippling ADHD. My girlfriend often will forward me some inspirational kind of things that others suffering from ADHD have said, and a lot of it is a kind of reaffirmation that I'm not just a broken normal person but someone with a kind of neurological hiccup. However, most of the things I read about ADHD kind of have that astrology effect; yeah, it's like, all these things are describing me so well, it's like this person and I share all these traits and I feel understood and not alone... but then I think about it, and almost all ADHD traits can be relatable by anyone. The Michael Jackson thing is pretty frustrating, though, because it's used a lot, and -- furthermore, the problem with memes is that since they are generally reliant on a shared experience, that experience could be different from one person to the next. I mean, look, if I post a picture of Michael Jackson on your Facebook thing, it's never going to be because Thriller was a cool music video. It's going to be for the same reason I put a picture of Epstein on your timeline. Well, I mean, I probably wouldn't do either. dirby posted:As an aside, image macros were so called because by invoking them with small snippets of text like [img-timeline], you were running (something like) a computer macro to auto replace that text with an image. Whoa whoa whoa wait, wait wait. Hold on. I've been on somethingawful since 2000. I've been here since before we moved to these forums. I grew up here. I never knew these images were literally tied to actual macros. What. What. I've heard of img-timeline. I think you used to get put on probation for it? Oh goodness it was so long ago. underage at the vape shop posted:With memes though, it's definitely a case of needing to know the injoke like you did with old-school macros. Stuff like deep-fried memes or that Lord farquad E meme make absolutely 0 sense to me, and I'm a 24 year old extremely online neurotypical. I have no idea what deep-fried memes are, but I've heard of Lord Farquad. I mean, those syllables sound familiar to me somehow, but I don't know what you're talking about. That's another thing I don't really understand; I'm hardly intertwined with the culture of the Internet or popular media, but I know others who are the same way, but they are able to pick up on all kinds of stuff going on. I don't really make any extreme effort to avoid trends and popular memes (and this is kind of frustrating, because I'm meaning 'meme' by its traditional sense, which isn't really that different than its modern sense, but I think when people here 'meme' they just immediately think of an image, but I'm uh... I'm talking about like, a shared... uh underage at the vape shop posted:My question is how have you found dealing with the health system? I am trans and I've seen people compare the trans experience to the autism experience a lot. Most doctors have absolutely no idea and I need to educate myself to make sure I'm getting the best hormone treatment. I've had to educate even good doctors on language. There's almost absolutely 0 research as well and it's to the point that the anecdotal body of evidence of trans people is worth more than the scientific one especially because it's not coloured by prejudice. The comparisons Ive seen have always been pretty surface level, if you're okay to talk about that stuff I'd be interested in hearing what your experience has been like At first I would have thought there was little crossover with autism and the transgender experience regarding medical, but that's probably based on my personal variety of autism. I can see how in both cases doctors are kind of clueless; understanding of autism has been evolving over the years and also over the years people are starting to think of trans people as actual people. In a way, I guess both are part of a kind of cultural emergence, but as a high-functioning person with autism I have not had to rely on the medical system very much. I do take ADHD meds, and anti-depressants and a mood stabilizer, and I am sure these are prescribed based on an evaluation of a neurotypical person and not an autistic person, but I have many trans friends who seem to have endless battles with their doctors. But actually, a lot of that pertains to insurance, and as is sadly not uncommon, many of my trans friends are in a constant state of struggling to achieve both cultural and economic normality. Many of them were runaways, have been homeless, drug addicts. In a broad aspect, I wouldn't compare the two but for the "newness" of it; autism is a spectrum wherein I do okay, and my cousin who has autism is kind of half-way, living on his own but relying 100% on disability support, and then there are those who fall somewhere else. Autistic people also aren't really judged; we might be made fun of, but nobody hates us. But that's maybe veering away from the medical aspect of it all; I just hesitate to compare my experience to a trans experience in any capacity because I know so many trans people and despite my struggles, I can't think of a single one who have had an easier life than I. AngryRobotsInc posted:I missed this, but I'll answer it too. How do you feel about the autistic person/person with autism identity conflict? I personally prefer to identify as a person with autism, because I don't consider it so much a part of my identity as much as it is a burden that I find to be just a big rear end hindrance. I know it's kind of regressive to say, but I didn't get any of the "perks" of autism. My cousin, for instance, while being technically disabled, is a genius, with a stupidly high IQ and an incredible knack for electronics, programming, numbers, etc. His social skills are almost nonexistent, though; I know I've had it better than him, but there's no real advantage in any way to what I have. credburn fucked around with this message at 00:16 on Oct 25, 2019 |
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Oct 25, 2019 00:10
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underage at the vape shop posted:Very different but it's for a similar reason that you say trans person and not tranny ( outside of tranny specifically being a slur). It's an adjective, not a noun, and it's not an affliction to be done away with. I hadn't really thought about that, and I'm a bit confused. Are you saying it's inappropriate to refer to someone as being trans? Or that they are a transgender person? I'm not sure what the noun/adjective distinction is, besides tranny obviously being a pejorative. AngryRobotsInc posted:I feel the same way. I had a mom in a bowling league my son was in get like...personally offended when I said that I, and a lot of other autistic adults I'd spoken to, wouldn't want a cure even if one did exist. Because...well, at the time I was late 20s, now I'm early 30s. Who would I even be if I didn't have autism? It's been part of me my entire life. A cure can't suddenly take away the time it took me faking it until I made it with social rules, and the like. It can't give me back my childhood years wanting friends but not understanding why I struggled to keep them. So on, so forth. I think a very large part of the "cure" conversation is that the interpretation seems to be that autistic people are going to be suddenly "made normal." When I think of a cure, I think of something that will stop autism from appearing in our offspring. I wouldn't be who I am if it wasn't because of my autism, but I've also lived a life of constant anxiety, fear, confusion, and misery. I am at a point in my life where I have everything I could ever want, so like, things turned out okay, but it's after 35 years of bullshit. Probably a full quarter of my life has been spent in a constant state of considering suicide and assuming that that would be how I would go. Even if things are better now, I would sacrifice everything I have to start over and just be able to experience life like a normal person. I would want a cure, and I support the pursuit of a cure, but very few people would ever realistically support curing a person -- it's just the genes that should be kept from being passed down. Even if they were to "cure" me right now, I would turn it down; autism is a part of who I am. I just wish it hadn't been. credburn fucked around with this message at 02:18 on Oct 27, 2019 |
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Oct 27, 2019 02:16
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Though it's mostly filled with "does anyone else do this...," the /r/autism and /r/aspergers subreddits are actually pretty... affirming? I've rarely actually posted there, but I've read a lot of the posts and many, many of them are high-functioning late-diagnosis adults struggling with coming to terms with this kind of identity duality. It's worth checking out. I want to clarify what I said, actually: what I should have said is, I would not change anything, because I am who I am and this isn't as disabling as say, loss of sight would be. I am living a great life. I guess what I mean is... it was luck that got me to this part in my life, and had nothing to do with autism. If there hadn't been some very fortuitous coincidences in my life, I'd probably just be a homeless autistic drug addict who wouldn't ever know why he's different, and while kind of this subjunctive hypothetical hyperbole, there can be a thread that leads from autism to there.
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Oct 28, 2019 02:38
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It's meaning is also dependent on who sent it, which makes it doubly hard, I think. Consider: when Ray Liotta laughs he is happy but he looks like he's going to bite someone's throat open. This is kind of an extreme example, but most facial expressions are dubious enough on their own, but then consider that expressions look different on different people. The name of the emoji might be "relieved" but I don't think "relieved" was really the adjective my friend was trying to convey, even if it does share a lot of the same characteristics.
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Oct 29, 2019 09:08
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alexandriao posted:Unfortunately I have Medical Problems so getting tested means a higher risk of disbelief with said medical problems. I'm also trans so then I get Trans-Broken-Leg Syndrome on top of that, which sounds like a literal nightmare to deal with. It also means that the medical professionals will be more likely to disbelieve the fact that I am trans, which means a longer wait for treatment, so that's another point against getting tested. I don't really see any specific benefit to getting tested (aside from validation and stuff, but I have that already from my friends) that going to a therapist won't deal with anyway. I'm baffled by this post. I was unfamiliar with "Trans-Broken-Leg Syndrome." I thought you were making up a euphemism that just went over my head, but I looked it up. I'm so sorry that this is one of the ridiculous obstacles you have to get through just to approach the equivalent measure of care the rest of us get. Can you elaborate on your concerns with getting tested and "risk of disbelief" with medical problems? Do you mean that if you are diagnosed with ASD, that diagnosis will be used to imply you're just confused about your gender? I live in liberal Oregon and know a lot of people who are trans, but admittedly I can't think of any that I am close to who have yet undergone any hormonal treatment. underage at the vape shop posted:How do you all handle things like sarcasm or irony? Particularly on forums like Something Awful where text obfuscates a lot of context Actually, Something Awful for a long time was the only place I could comprehend sarcasm and irony. I hope this doesn't turn into a long story: I joined Something Awful so long ago, it was even before we switched to these forums. By which I mean, it was in... 1999? 2000? We were on a UBB thing and then went to VBB or I don't quite remember. I was fifteen or sixteen, then, doing really bad in school, and in 2001 I just dropped out because the teachers sure didn't know what to do with me and the students just wanted to make me miserable. One day a huge kid beat the hell out of me with a big metal yard stick and the teacher just kind of did nothing, and I realized that, well, this education thing sure isn't going to end in any sort of success, so I dropped out, and then went to stay in my father's basement for years in isolation. During that time, the only connection I had to anybody was the Internet, and so that's where I went, and that led me to Something Awful and its forums. The thing about sarcasm and irony and such is that it's rather dependent on the person delivering it, right? But anyone can be sarcastic and ironic. Most neuro-typicals can interpret that reasonably well, some better than others, but unless I know the person, I can't. Perhaps in the same way a 70 year-old man's generation and experiences are so far removed from a snarky 20 year-old that he can't translate hyperbole very well -- it's like that, because my experiences, even if superficially are not so different from another's, are like recorded in my brain so differently, that I also can't translate that. Ugh, this will sound like such a... an overly profound and strange sounding sentence, but: the forums of Something Awful saved my life. I retreated to the Internet because I could not take any more of the people and their indecipherable, cruel attitudes and intentions. I couldn't understand their nuance, phrasing, vocal vacillations, all these things that make up language. But on Something Awful, it was all just text. One may consider that text is even more ambiguous because it lacks body language or tone, but for me it is so much clearer, especially in those days. The people I found here then were mostly made up of what I now think are angry hipsters who must have been insufferable to be around in real life. But so was I, and it was the first time that I connected with a group of people. Also, considering how expensive computers were back then and the newness of consumer Internet, and also these forums' rather harsh vetting of its members, the instituting of a paid membership, and how amusingly fast and easy it is to find oneself banned, it resulted in what I saw as a kind of specialized group of very smart, intellectual, creative nerds. But it also resulted in a very narrow-focused... poo poo, what is the word I'm looking for? We had our own culture, our own language, like we were a small island just off the coast of a nation. I felt lost in the real world because I didn't speak the language others did. But I got in on the ground floor here, and I was very privileged to be part of this culture as it grew to become what it would later be notorious for. I could understand nuance and sarcasm and irony and all that because we were a small group and the voicing was so similar. In the real world, if I walk a block away and encounter new people, I might as well be in another country, since everyone's voicing is dependent on their past. But Something Awful didn't have a past; we were making it ourselves. And in particular, in the years of, oh, 2003-2006, that voicing was very specific. It was the voice of a lot of young adults who abhorred mainstream culture and wanted to make fun of it, the people who rejected the mainstream because they didn't fit in it, and often were ostracized because of that. I could understand sarcasm and irony because Something Awful had a unique voicing of it, and I was there to watch that voice evolve. What's most interesting I think about those years is that when I visited these forums, it was the only time I didn't feel autistic. And I can't help but find a great deal of amusement in the irony that a neuro-typical person wandering into these forums must have felt as alien in this world as I did in theirs. Edit to add: times have changed, of course. The accessibility of the Internet has exploded in the last decade, and everything evolves, and everything is so much broader now. I remember kind of being annoyed when I saw for the first time someone not from these forums make a "Chuck Norris" joke. I remember thinking, ah, better watch it, that joke has run its course and you're going to be put on probation for that. I remember wanting to show an ex-girlfriend this hilarious "Ultimate Battle of Ultimate Destiny" song, only to have her cut me off and say, yeah, everyone has seen that. People post memes and they all look like the old image macros from these forums, but they're not... it's like they've copied the aesthetic but don't understand the joke. I hate to say this, I know this is problematic, and I am sure this is based on ignorance and a narrow view of the entire thing, but... ugh, this feels dirty, but I must say: I feel like the Internet has appropriated my Something Awful culture. And now I am back to not really speaking the same language. It's gotten broader, and that makes it more open to varying interpretations. A neuro-typuical person can usually dynamically adapt and translate it, but I cannot. credburn fucked around with this message at 23:46 on Dec 5, 2019 |
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Dec 5, 2019 23:36
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And to add more chaos into the mix, I understand that men generally "present" autistic traits much more visibly than women? But then I wonder if that has more to do with societal expectations of different genders.
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Dec 6, 2019 23:01
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After this thread fell over to the other page, I didn't know anyone had posted anything more.JetBlack posted:Do you constantly find yourself arranging poo poo according to shape and size? I (and I should think many autistic people) am constantly seeking to make sense of the world around me. It's not built for me, and is chaotic and in a constant state of moving and shifting in a way that is hard to contend with. I often feel like the new guy on a ship in a storm. The neurotypicals know how to shift their weight and can feel the pattern of the waves, but I'm just stumbling around looking for poo poo to hold on to so I don't topple over the side. I do often arrange things, sometimes without realizing it, but not necessarily to those specific metrics. I need to make order, and arranging things creates that order. My father has a very large record collection, and growing up I would frequently alphabetize them. My baseball card collection used to be grouped according to teams. I had all my blue-dominant pogs in one container and all my red-dominant pogs in another. I'm not obsessive about it, but it does reduce the anxiety if I see things placed according to some kind of system.
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Jun 21, 2020 12:07
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Anecdotally, when I first moved to this town I met this annoying girl at a poetry reading. She was sitting in front of me and she kept turning around and talking to me, and I kept thinking, geez this autistic girl is really awkward. A month later I went to another reading, met the same girl, and then established a friendship. A month later we began dating, and I told her that when I first met her I thought she was annoying and autistic, and to this she responded, "I'm not autistic. If anyone is autistic, you're autistic." This led to us, sort of jokingly taking an online autism quiz. We didn't take it seriously, however she did score very low on it while I scored very high. And three years later I was actually diagnosed with autism, and... honestly, I suspect she may be autistic, too, but it's not for me to really say. In any case, the online test was kind of accurate, at least regarding me. So, I say all this to say that online quizzes are not going to give you any real substantial readings, but the quirks it might reveal can lead you toward the things that can actually help. My insurance covered my neuropsychological evaluations, whether I had been diagnosed or not. Edit to say: I mention the insurance thing because while I don't remember what kind of insurance I had, it was pretty minimal at the time. Not to brag that I had insurance. credburn fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Jul 15, 2020 |
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Jul 14, 2020 22:47
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Beard Dandruff posted:If you don't mind me asking what led you to seek out a diagnoses? For the same reason someone might get tested to see if they have a virus or something; so that I can figure out what to do with myself. I'd spent my entire life struggling to fit in, to get by, to understand people but it was all under the assumption that I there was nothing wrong with me except that I was "odd" or "weird" or, at times, exceptionally naive. Once I had my diagnosis, I was able to recontextualize my entire life. It turned thirty years of shame and guilt and regret into something almost the opposite... as a neurotypical person, I was just a really weird kid. As a person with autism, I was a kid who managed a never ending struggle. I've been in one form of therapy or another for almost ten years, and nothing really worked, but it's because all of this was under the framing of being neurotypical. Now I know I'm different, and that I need a kind of different tool set if I am going to get better. So, not that you asked, but I would tell anyone who is considering pursuing the venture toward a diagnosis that it is super beneficial. Did that answer your question? I feel like what I said is confusing, but I'm not sure how to better word it.
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Jul 18, 2020 08:19
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This might just be coincidental, but I have a family member who is also autistic and as a kid he constantly struggled with differentiating a soft "a" sound with a long "o" sound. Like, instead of "park" he would say "pork" and not hear the difference. "Paul" and "pole," "ball" and "bowl," these were the same words to him, and he seemed unable to really vocalize the "a" sound at all until he was older. I'm not sure how common that is, or even if it is directly related to autism, though.
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Jul 25, 2020 22:16
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alcyon posted:Interesting thread. I wondered if any of could share some of your experiences on the process of being diagnosed (as an adult). What did it entail and how did it make you feel (not the diagnosis but the process itself). I was a little nervous throughout my diagnosis process because I was really conflicted about autism. On one hand, it's autism, and it's a hindrance, and it's weird and all the other negative baggage that comes with it. But on the other hand, if I were diagnosed with autism, it would reframe my entire life in a way that finally made sense. So I went in half really hoping for a diagnosis and half hoping against it. I was sure my conflicted feelings would muck the test up, and I found I tried to overcompensate in either direction, so as to not be too autistic, not too neurotypical. Anyway, after all that happened, I told the doctor about my conflict and he said it was very obvious what I was doing and not at all uncommon. So I guess I would say... like Turd says, if your psych knows what he's doing, he'll figure it out.
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Sep 16, 2020 22:31
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Long before I was diagnosed, I was kind of a little obsessed with Punch Drunk Love because I'd never felt a character more relatable to me than uh... Adam Sandler's character, whose name I can't recall. He probably wasn't written to be autistic, but for years when people saw it for the first time they would tell me it was like he was just playing me.
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Sep 22, 2020 22:56
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Turpitude II posted:to officially diagnosed people: what should one expect from an assessment? and what type of professional did yours? i'm on a waitlist to have an asd+adhd assessment, but i have no idea what the actual process is and what they're actually going to do. and it's going to be at a clinic that trains and supervises provisional psychologists, because it was cheaper (and the only thing i could reasonably afford). i'm hoping that means there'll be both people with experience, and people being taught with more recent information and studies. i feel like i have pretty typical presentation, but i don't know. any situation where i have to interact with other people is difficult enough, even when i'm able to "prepare" for it beforehand and know what's supposed to happen. and i'm semi-verbal when under stress, i guess i'm worried that i'm going to have a shutdown if i don't think things are going well. which i guess would help my case, but... i don't know. what if they think i'm being too difficult. I should imagine that if it's a place where they diagnose autistic people, they regularly deal with more 'difficult' people than you will be on a daily basis. To answer your question, I have observed that the diagnosis experience seems to be very different from one person to the other. I went to see a neuropsychologist for both my ASD and ADD diagnoses. The autism one only took a few visits, but I have a friend who had to go maybe six times. She's female, and as I understand it women tend not to present as strongly as men in these autistic tells. For me, I mostly answered questions, did a bunch of IQ tests or tests that felt very similar to IQ tests. I had to spend a half hour looking at like 500 pictures of eyes, and using nothing but that I was to guess what emotion they were feeling. But really, I get why you are nervous, and I sure don't know for sure what your experience will be like, but I am reasonably confident that they'll understand how to work with you.
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Oct 20, 2020 07:53
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Powered Descent posted:Regarding diagnosischat, what does an official diagnosis actually do for you? To sort of reiterate what others have said, but my autism diagnosis was the best things that ever happened to me, because it recontextualized thirty years of being "weird." I'm no longer weird, or stupid, or strange, or hosed up, or retarded, or any other kind of label others have put on me; instead I'm just autistic.
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Feb 4, 2021 09:09
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I rarely ever hear Autism Speaks mentioned without it being followed up by declarations that they're no good. I've never heard of Level-2 autism. There are levels?
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Jun 11, 2021 03:46
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I see. That's probably less problematic than the binary high/low functioning qualification.
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Jun 12, 2021 03:28
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pandy fackler posted:Have you ever taken psychedelics and if so, how did it go? Frustratingly, any ingestible drug doesn't do a thing for me. Oxycontin, mushrooms, weed edibles. Nothing, not a single thing. I ate an entire bag of mushrooms hoping for something but instead I just had to sit around while everyone else had a fuckin time of their life. Never tried acid or dmt or anything like that, yet, though. Also, cannabis barely affects me, but at least it does something. Oh, well, weirdly, alcohol does intoxicate me, though. I seem to have like twice the tolerance of anyone I know, though, but it does work. credburn fucked around with this message at 22:51 on Jul 6, 2021 |
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Jul 6, 2021 22:49
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I don't mean to be anal in my uhh... political correctness? But while I do believe it's true that autistic people are particularly good at retaining a greater-than-average volume of information about a particular topic, that itself is just an average, a statistic. I don't think it's wrong, but I feel it's really important to distinguish between the kind of generalized all-encompassing characteristics and the fact that neuroatypicals are not the same as one another. In other news, I'm doing a stand-up comedy set tonight and want to make some jokes about being autistic. Anyone got any zingers I can use? The only real joke I have is that since I'm autistic I'm the only one allowed to use the R word. zing
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Aug 11, 2021 08:50
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Falconier111 posted:“If you know one autistic person, you know one autistic person.” Is that the guy from Big Bang Theory? Before I was diagnosed people would call me Sheldon.
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Aug 13, 2021 21:56
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Violet_Sky posted:Has anyone here been in any "gifted" programs as kids? My elementary school never had a gifted program as such but me and the other kids that were good at reading got to do a literature circle. Just wondering how many gifted kids were actually neurodivergent. Throughout school I was either in accelerated, gifted courses or remedial courses. Just depended on who decided what was best for me!
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Aug 15, 2021 10:20
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ProperGanderPusher posted:"Dude, everyone thinks you're literally retarded." In 4th grade, my mother sat me down and very seriously and sincerely explained to me that I was "a little retarded." She attributed this to my delayed motor skill development when I was only a few years younger. Apparently (I have no memory of this) she had a specialist who had to train me how to do simple things like screw a nut on a bolt. So yeah basically until I was uhhhh 34 I just thought I was "a little retarded." I mean, I'm joking a bit... I wouldn't have used that term, and I know there are so many others who have far more struggles than I, in motor skills or academia or whatever. I never thought I was "retarded" but the decades prior to my diagnosis did leave me to believe I was something like retarded?
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Oct 18, 2021 18:29
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Hey gang! An autistic pal of mine has started a meetup group for autistic people in my town, and I'm going to help co-facilitate it pretty soon. We've met up twice now, and it was really great! Autistic friend George set up coloring books, tons of fidget stuff. Their adherence to making the environment as accessible and comfortable as possible is admirable, and something I'm going to struggle with as I try to help out. I'm so used to minimizing myself to make things as normal for neuro-typicals around me, I don't think of things that would actually make someone like me comfortable, instead. Last two times we met we hung out at a spacious bar where they did trivia, but it's not a great environment for people who might be sensitive to so much noise or a guy on a bad mic trying to shout trivia questions. I was hoping to poll you folks, to ask, if you were to go to a place where a bunch of autistic adults were meeting up, what sort of thing would help you feel most comfortable there, and what kind of location do you think would be best for you, and might help encourage interaction between the members of the group? For what it's worth, this is happening in Eugene Oregon. Suppose it's a big enough town that it's not unlikely there could be a couple goons here. If any of you could and would like to come to the meetups, I suppose let me know?
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May 5, 2022 19:38
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Does anyone else struggle with compliments? Giving them, specifically. I don't know if this is just me being weird or if it's a quirk shared with other autistic people. I don't like giving compliments ("you are pretty", or "you're very talented" or whatever) because they don't just feel artificial, they feel blatantly artificial to the point where... when I say a compliment out loud, it's so manufactured that it just feels like it's secretly ironic or I'm actually making fun of a person. A lady I was failing to be intimate with told me I don't compliment her enough. I asked what she meant, and she said I don't say she's pretty. So I argued, no, I don't say "you're pretty" but I did loving go on for a very long time about the very specific and personal qualities of your cornea, how it reflects the light in a fascinating way that I don't normally notice in others, and your ability to move in dance is like watching mist flow, and how you have a smile that can capture a person's attention, and I feel like these are sort of like compliments but, in my opinion, better because I'm actually talking about something instead of nothing. I also hate receiving compliments. Partly that is just my own struggle, but a lot of it is just because they're all so empty and hollow and there are things being said in a compliment that I can't fully parse. For instance, I paint. I would definitely not say I'm a good painter, but I'm a pretty okay artist. My technical skills are what they are, but I can do some good stuff within my limitations. And when someone who is not a painter and not an artist looks at my painting and they tell me "You're a really good painter" I just don't know what they mean. Based on what? Compared to what? I thank them for their compliment, but I'm left wondering if that person actually thinks one way or the other about my art because it's such a broad compliment that it just sounds like they're being polite. Which makes me think they actually don't think I'm a good painter. Which I'm not, but Compliments are frustrating. You're pretty. There, I said it. Ignore all that sincere poo poo I said earlier; you're just pretty.
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May 24, 2022 03:36
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A friend of mine ("Jane") recently was employed at a place that helps autistic college folk succeed academically. It's kind of like a dorm, and Jane's experience with autistic people -- in particular those whose traits manifest a bit more strongly and those who need a bit more help -- is really limited. So is mine, ha. She's been learning a lot about autism and she shares her newfound knowledge with me, and thus I'm also learning more about it. Recently she read something that she didn't fully understand and asked for my input on it. What she read was this: For autistic people, an unexpected event is akin to 9/11. Now, I think comparing an unexpected event to 9/11 is quite hyperbolic, but there is an element in that that I relate to really intensely, and is actually such an issue that it really governs so much of my day, my life, my interactions with others. (I hope I haven't already brought this up in this thread; this is an ongoing problem but I'm learning more about myself) In real life I'm probably one of the most pessimistic and cynical persons you would meet. I just *cannot* take another disappointment. Like, if a bus is set to arrive at a specific time, I need to make absolutely sure that I expect it to be late. If it's on time, then I end up pleasantly surprised, and if it's late, then it just meets my expectations. But if I expect or depend on it being on time, and it isn't, it really hits me in an incredible intense way. I feel stupid for setting my expectations so high. I feel like a real loving idiot for being so loving naive. This example with a bus is a simple one; the effects and consequences are so much more intense when it comes to people. I have almost no capacity to trust people at all. Part of this has to do with lovely childhood stuff, but largely my distrust of people comes down to the inherent unreliability of people. I have no ability to gauge a person's sincerity or trustworthiness; not because everybody is automatically a bad person, but we're humans and we're driven by selfish human instincts. I have a few close friends who have never, not a single time let me down, or caused me harm, or wished me harm, or tried to manipulate me or abuse me or anything, and yet, I trust them no more than I would anyone else. In fact, I find the least trustworthy people the easiest to be around because I'm never tricked into giving them any expectations higher than they will meet. I wish I didn't exist as this constantly miserable Oscar the Grouch character, but I don't know what else I can do. I honestly feel that if you ("you" being "anyone") are ever disappointed, this is a flaw in your thinking. The only reason disappointment occurs is because your expectations are not met, and so logically that tells me your expectations are the problem. This has been a little bit of a meandering thinking-aloud kind of thing, but when Jane asked me about that, my first thought was "that's silly," to "well, that's hyperbolic but there's some truth to it" to "gently caress, every unexpected event is like a 9/11 happening." I am happy to learn I am not alone in that -- I must not be, if this trait appears in a book -- but I also don't know where to go from here. Can I learn to endure disappointment? Because raising my expectations will result in disappointment, that's just logical, there's no avoiding it. Life happens, people are people. But to even for a moment consider working toward becoming someone less pessimistic is like... it feels like taking off a hazmat suit before walking into a radioactive building. Like, I'll be more comfortable, but I absolutely will get radiation poisoning, so why would I ever even bother?
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Dec 13, 2022 20:15
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Bank posted:I'm surprised they don't have one like "Magnifying Mike" or something like that, as I've constantly pointed out mistakes or asked about very minute things that make zero difference. I'm sitting here looking at s presentation someone shared, and I'm looking for spelling/grammatical errors rather than trying to understand their point. Because I know that misspellings and grammatical errors can be used for rhetorical purposes or as a joke, whenever I see a word used in an unfamiliar way (or outright incorrect way) or a word misspelled, or punctuation errors, my brain goes into a split where half of it is like, it's just an error, move along while the other half is screaming gently caress what are they trying to say by intentionally omitting that apostrophe? What do they mean when they spell that word that way? WHAT AM I MISSING
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Dec 17, 2022 14:39
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A year ago a friend of mine set up a local neuro-divergent autism meetup group for a trivia night at a bar. It consistently has like 10+ people show up every time. Pretty cool!
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Jan 28, 2023 15:02
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I'm really tired to making such a strong effort to mask and appear normal (or just neuro-typical). I wish I could be comfortable with being weird and different and just being alright that it's going to make people uncomfortable. Instead every day feels like a final rehearsal for a play and I'm constantly going over my lines and making sure everything is perfect.
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Feb 28, 2023 17:21
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bagmonkey posted:So I had a friend recommend the book Unmasking Autism: Discovering the New Faces of Neurodiversity because she already knew my psych eval was going to end up with an autism diagnosis. I gotta say, that book was excellent and it was extremely nice to get to read a book written in a voice that reflects myself, my experiences and my struggles. I highly recommend it, especially if you're newly diagnosed or suspect you might be on the spectrum. I linked to Thriftbooks because its not Amazon and also Thriftbooks rules I'm starting to suspect -- and maybe realize -- that the reason I avoid going to so many social occasions or meeting with so many people is that I'm not confident I will be able to mask. It's exhausting. I feel very torn, like, I worry so much that my masking is not effective enough when I want it to be, but other times I worry I mask too much and look like I'm claiming to have autism for ~reasons
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Mar 10, 2023 01:36
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Hey gang, what kind of person is described when using the term "allistic"? I've never heard the term used in meatspace but I'm seeing it more and more online. Definitions seem to range from "it just means not-autistic" to "having very autistic traits but without a diagnosis" to "having bi-polar disorder, AD&D, some neurological disorder, but not autism"
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May 30, 2023 16:21
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My genes are garbage. Not only the autism which is a struggle, but all up my family tree is nonstop alcoholism, cancer, neurological disorders, dimentia. It all culminates into me, and I got snipped as soon as I could. No way I want to pass on this mess of mutant chemistry.
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Jun 19, 2023 14:18
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Any time I'm not in therapy I feel like I really wish I was talking to my therapist so I could work out all these issues But when I'm in therapy I'm like man I don't want to talk about all these issues they make me feel bad
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Jul 15, 2023 18:19
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Before my diagnosis a lot of people were telling me I should check out Big Bang Theory because "man you're SO MUCH like Sheldon" I only really ever gave the show one shot, but I'm loving nothing like that unfunny creep
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Oct 21, 2023 05:56
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