Published on 12, July, 2020
...of being autistic.
Just finished a short online meeting, where I didn't have to do much except say one thing for AOB at the end. Thankfully meetings are rare in my job, just every couple of months. But by the end of this thing, I was so tense in my core that I had to lie on my bed for five minutes to relieve the intense pain. Never sure if the online ones are better or worse than in person. Maybe better. I don't have to repress a stim, it's out of frame!
Is there a truly fundamental level of misunderstanding/misinterpretation? *Patented tedious example follows*
* An advice appointment was arranged for me.
* I understood beforehand that I would be able to ask for advice, and also discuss my issues at length even if this proved difficult and emotional for me & also time-consuming for the advisers.
* I spent the whole two-and-half-hours of the scheduled one-hour session talking almost non-stop, while constantly apologising for my behaviour.
Everyone, including me, knows the format of seeking and offering advice. It roughly goes like this: 1. I provide evidence of my issue(s); 2. in response, others provide opinions or take actions. This format isn't exactly difficult to understand, and we're all familiar with it.
The most important element of all this: I didn't realise, until hours and hours later, that my 'bad behaviour' provided clues to the people who'd learn from it in order to best help me. Considering I knew in advance the all-round purpose and probable nature of the session...how on earth did I *still* misunderstand or misinterpret its purpose and nature? How was it even possible for me to be so 'disconnected'?
And are these extreme misunderstandings due to autism? To my (admittedly uneducated) eye, it all looks worryingly extreme - after all, the words 'advice session' aren't nuanced or confusing...
Wow, that’s so well written - a baffling kind of self-defeating disruption of the straightforward that I also routinely fall into in between the bookends of ‘ok, just stick to the obvious protocol’ and ‘well, you’ve done it again’. So perplexing yet seemingly so inevitable. I often end up making service providers on the phone laugh with my falling over myself to apologise for umpteen things I’m stumbling through, and saying ‘but you don’t need my whole life story’ (while thinking ‘so why did I give it then?’), and they’re kind about it and maybe it made a boring day a little different gif them but it’s still exhausting and cringey for me. Strange. But I do know exactly what you mean. Being in that weird zone where you watch yourself from the sidelines be mildly eccentric, seemingly authentically so, powerless to interject with something like uour calmed self, when you know that after you’ll feel kind of disconnected from whoever that weirdo was.
Shardovan said:Being in that weird zone where you watch yourself from the sidelines be mildly eccentric, seemingly authentically so, powerless to interject with something like uour calmed self,
I'm not eccentric but I get moments like this where I can see things I'm doing that I shouldn't be in communication and it sort of registers but it's in the background. Like someone looks at the clock while I'm talking and part of me knows they want me to shut up and the other part thinks well they're just checking the time. I think it's all to do with processing.
Myself I don't know how to give signals to tell someone to stop. After i learned i was autisticm i tried to give what i thought were clear signals but it didmt work. So I end up being overly polite and exhausted.
Effed if I know! I’m so eloquent today
Hello, mate. Hope you're okay today.
I wondered if you'd drawn a conclusion as to why you act like this? Yesterday, I wondered, in a post, if many of us men didn't talk to others about our issues & difficulties until the bottling-up really took its toll; and consequently we're then prone to 'over-talking'.