Published on 12, July, 2020
Please feel free to list your experiences with literal thinking or related behaviours whenever you feel like it, and whether these are important or as typically ridiculous as my recent example:
* I ordered a 'personalised' t-shirt from Ebay, graced with the word 'AUTISTIC' in gigantic, glowing capital letters. Wearing this shirt, I thought, would save me the tedium of explaining my more unusual words or deeds to others whenever it might be necessary. Hooray! Alas, after receiving the shirt I realised that it's Winter & resultingly bloomin' freezing so it's likely that the shirt is now as useless as I habitually am. If I wear the neon monstrosity that is the shirt under an opened jacket, its essential message - which ludicrously dwarfs the famous HOLLYWOOD sign, such are my design-skills - will either be lost on the NT crowd, or else appear as some kind of short, ironic and post-sexist anagram. Doh.
One week, a CBT therapist suggested (as homework between that afternoon and the following week's appointment): "Why don't you make a list of things you would like to do?".
(We had been vaguely talking about interests / hobbies / pastimes).
I diligently applied myself to the homework and returned the following week with my laptop in my hand.
My therapist seemed to be very puzzled.
I explained that I had produced a 10 year plan (of a schedule of things I would like to do - sequenced by what I felt up to tackling short / medium / long term) ...presented via a fully resourced etc. project plan on a spreadsheet - and there were more pages than I wanted to print off to show them - therefore, I had brought my laptop with me to enable use of auto filter (depending on the types of topics / challenges / timeframes we might address).
We did not use my homework.
(They had forgotten I am a Project Manager and I did not yet realise I was Autistic).
Strangely, there was no homework set by the Therapist ready for the subsequent week!