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!
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.
yup, and that's my best mate of 30+ years ..... I suppose you don't really discuss thing along the lines of "what do you hear/see when ......" very often!!