Published on 12, July, 2020
As Melanie Sykes said, she was a "walking contradiction" and I feel the same. Here are my examples. I'd love to know if you are the same or have any more to add! 1. Feel less need to follow social conventions but then am a heavy people pleaser.2. Feel I have my own sense of identity but get easily swept along by others.3. Not sure how I feel a lot of the time but feel very strongly when I do know. Feel strongly other people's emotions or completely miss them.4. Feel like I can't read people in the moment but then pick up on micro expressions or feelings other people don't seem to notice.5. Love being on my own but have a strong need for people interaction which is often a bit difficult and tiring.6. Naturally introverted but love the energy when with the right people.7. Get mixed up with left or right but have a good sense of direction.8. A strong need to be on time but always running late.9, Approachable as an ear for problems but seldom have my own listened to.10. Communicate clearly in my job but can't explain problems to health professionals very well.11. Am a natural organiser but actually not very organised.12. A strong need for a tidy house but it's always a mess (to me).13. An effort to have less stuff but feel its always cluttered.14. A desire for a minimalist house but think they're boring.15. Often really want to get going a lot of the time but don't know how..16. Don't like loud noises but love loud music.17. Can get up early of my own accord but not when my alarm goes off.18. Hyper focus or inertia.19. Like to be spontaneuous but don't like a change to a plan and need to know ahead what's happening.20. Find sameness boring but don't like change.21. Need routine to function but have difficulty forming them unless it's imposed.
22. Good long term memory but poor short term memory. 23. Can see both sides of the discussion so have conflicting opinions.
I have a fair few, but not all, of those.I have the reverse of your sense of direction thing. Left and right I have no problem with, but I could get lost on my own doorstep. Driving even relatively familiar routes sometimes, I can still mess things up. And I wandered round the town for 40 minutes a couple of weeks ago trying to find a restaurant I must have passed several times.
It's funny you say that. I was away by myself a bit back in a busy city and spent ages trying to acclimatise myself in relation to parts of the place I was visiting. I was there staring at a map and a passer by asked me if i was OK. I'd say this is another example of wanting to know the detail to build up a bigger picture of my area before embarking upon visitng places. I'd say I'm good with directions in that I can sense where north is for example. I think a lot of processing goes into acclimitising our surroundings when they are new. But your examples are of familiar surroundings so it's a bit different.
'flying in the air'
I had that with my mom driving on a newly build road, satnav didn't have it yet, but it was telling us to go straight LOL
Meaning of 'next' and 'this' (and few other phrases e.g. 'on the other side') varies between languages and countries. Next is sometimes first turn you encounter, and sometimes one after first
Autonomistic said:couldn't stand the persistent voice nagging me to make a U turn!
Yes it nearly got thrown out of the window when that happened
out_of_step said:How do you get on with sat nav?
I don't get on well with sat nav at all.
I struggle to process verbal instructions, due to auditory processing difficulties, and rarely manage to follow a verbal instruction correctly. When I have tried in the past I found it incredibly stressful and I couldn't stand the persistent voice nagging me to make a U turn!
I agree it's definitely too much information all at once.
Tell him that. I'm often accused of being irrational when to me it makes perfect sense and anything otherwise is irrational. Double empathy no doubt.
My partners sat nav sometimes shows us travelling in a straight line to the middle of nowhere.
I'm the same as your last paragraph. I wouldn't holiday in the same place year after year. I don't think the direction or left right thing is much to do with autism but I could be wrong. I know other people who are not autistic who get mixed up too.
How do you get on with sat nav? My car doesn't have it but my partners does. It's too much information both visual, autiory and directional all at once. And that's when I'm being a passenger and not even driving. It's confusing when I'm told "next left" but it means "this left coming up". Or it givrs information in yards which i cannot judge. Or that its so accurate I miss the turning cos I'm waiting for it but it's exactly up to speed with where are.
What would be interesting at this point is to get a "neurotypical" perspective on the list. I would like to know how experiences compare. I think sometimes we can be guilty of attributing everything to autism when it might not always be the case. Who knows.
I do the same thing with maps, turning it to face the way I am facing. It is so much easier to process.
out_of_step said:7. Get mixed up with left or right but have a good sense of direction.
Same. I hopeless at following directions if there are left or right instructions. However I can follow maps well and have a good sense of direction.
I love maps and it's one of my special interests. I enjoy planning routes on Ordnance Survey maps, picking out every little detail and feature. If I am going somewhere I research it endlessly on Google maps, both on aerial and street view. Sometimes I can happily spend hours 'virtual travelling' places I want/plan to visit.
I agree that sometimes it's good to just randomly explore a new place without having a particular route of destination in mind. I guess that's one of my own contradictions. In my everyday life at home I am a creature of routine and sameness but away from home I love discovering and exploring new places.
out_of_step said:use Google directions
on your mobile phone
There is fundamental problem people are unaware of involving refreshing your position on a map using GPS. Even these days with so many towers for mobile communication. Refreshing isn't a continuous process, it happens every few minutes. so it's possible to confuse your phone to the point it will be showing you to go in opposite direction to correct one. I proved it my friend Philosopher by making few rounds in neighbourhood tracing a shape like snail's shell.
That strikes me as a great idea. Much better, and more enjoyable, than standard thinking.
I confuse my partner when I read a map because I turn it around to face the way I'm facing (it's easier than processing what is an opposite direction) but I think that's a male / female thing about how we read maps. If I am looking at a static one on a wall in a new place it's very confusing to get my bearings on it. Most people would just use Google directions these days if they are exploring a city but it's not something I do. I don't like just blindly following directions because then you miss stuff. When I moved to a new place I purposefully drove around and subsequently got lost so many times but that was nice because I got to see places I wouldn't have usually and then I knew instinctively where more stuff was in relation to other things. To my partner's amusement, I also knew exactly which buses went where even though I had no use to get them because I had a car.
I just cannot understand maps, even those of my local area.