Published on 12, July, 2020
I know this is pretty futile musing, although maybe some of the more neurologically typical people on here can help! (I shy away from using the term "NT's" because it feels a bit "them and us" to me).
I've found myself wondering, as I'm accepting, exploring and deepening my understanding of my own atypicalness & ASD diagnosis, about what it's like for others.
For every "aha!" moment I have about e.g. noisy restaurants, eye contact, lack of capability / impetus to maintain friendships, exhaustion in social situations, there is a corresponding "What's it like for others?" moment.
So for example, for typical people:
I think one of the things that made me realise just how different I was was when I was describing total sensory overload from the effort of trying (involuntarily) to process the 1000s of simultaneous noises on the train to my best friend. He said "ugh, that's when I just have to turn the audio input off". I asked wow can you actually do that and he was equally baffled that I can't.
So yes, apparently NT people can control the sound filter, and even decide to block it out if they want to!
Yeah I've been told that when I talk that people just switch off.
Wish I could do that when they talk.
whaat? that's what headphones are for yes? how do you just not hear things? There is a noise in my car at the moment that no one else is bothered by and the mechanic can't find or fix - my response? time to get a different car/ walk more so as not to be driven demented by a sound I cannot unhear.
Wow. Amazing that we all grow up thinking everyone is like us except for personality & likes, dislikes etc, and in reality, people can be so different.