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!
I hate that too, particularly people who listen/watch stuff on their phones in public without headphones. Then I get paranoid that my headphones leak too.
On public transport, feeling the internal rage of someone's tinny speakers (in the "olden days" it used to be leaking headphones, now people seem to think normal phone speakers are acceptable). Muttering to myself "that's f****** annoying" hoping they will hear me say it as I put my ear plugs in. Can still hear it somewhat. Get off the tram with internal rage still boiling. Question my partner about all this whowas sitting next to me who says "I didn't notice anything".
Not to make less of your point, but I'm sure they wrote the letter like that deliberately because of studies which show that more people will find the info presented in that manner more acceptable. In fact it might be that your autism shows more in that you didn't just take at face value your initial reaction of that being OK and worked out that it was actually quite a hike.
I do agree with your general point though. It's like when people say, oh, it's only the equivalent of a coffee a week or something and I'm thinking a) I don't have fancy coffee since lockdown and when I did it wasn't every week and b) wow coffee is expensive in some places! and c) what a saving I make not having fancy coffee every week.
I have moments like that where I think, if I ever doubted this I dont now! One of them was when I read about the 62 autistic traits on here, it was like reading a list of things about me. Quite mindblowing
That sounds scary, glad you're OK. I had my wipers malfuction in torrential rain one night too, and I was sure my number was up. It was on a very twisty turny road with no hard shoulder, just grass verge, and ruthless drivers 'pushing' me at speed from behind. If it hadn't been for the bright lights of a hotel I recognised through the blur, and a very sharp, fast turn off into their thankfully wide drive, I feel sure that catastrophe was otherwise imminent.
I had that this morning when my electrickery supplier emailed me to say that there'd be a 14% increase to 33 p extra per day. Sounded cheap put like that. Then I thought, 'wait, a normal person would be spitting their tea out at that. That can't be an insignificant realisation'. So I did the maths and when I realised it's £100 per year more I suddenly found myself thinking 'oooh, that's pricey'.
Adjacent to that kind of 'how it's put' not hitting my neural wiring right....
Sometimes there'll be posters up in work or other public spaces. Intended to promote environmentally responsible behaviour (of course a good thing), a fact will be stated like...
'Did you know that if you leave a tap dripping, in just one year it will fill an entire bath' And I know I'm supposed to go 'Wow!' but unstead I just visualise that bath and 365 days if extremely incremental filling and think 'Well, that doesn't sound like much'. I still take the point on board - don't waste water. But the 'this will blow your mind' fact usually has the opposite effect on me. 'If you took the stairs instead of the lift you'd have burned five calories - think on that!' - that kind of thing.
Last week I thought I was being super functional and grown up by replacing the windscreen wipers on my car. I then drove into town on Friday, in the middle of a massive downpour, and the driver's side wiper blade fell off, at 40mph on a dual carriageway. I immediately started to meltdown and had to find somewhere to park, which I couldn't see because of the rain, took the wrong turning and had to stop in middle of the road because (as I found out at the time) I mainly stim by squishing my left hand fingers together with my right hand. That was quite affirmative of my diagnosis.
For reasons of anxiety, I need soothing music at this time so I paid £12 a month for Youtube Premium, which allows me to play music even when I'm not on Youtube. Paying £12 solely for this feature seems expensive to me - but what I can't comprehend is my thinking that £3 per week is cheap. I can't bridge the gap between these two confusing thoughts, and just uselessly frown when I think about this.
Then again, news summaries often are- the ‘ticket tape’ on rolling news especially. Have lost count of how many times someone’s been ‘found guilty of murder in court’
To be fair that headline construction was atrocious!
I once saw a headline in the local newspaper: "COMPETITION TO NAME GUIDE DOG FOR THE BLIND PUPPY". I was impressed that there was a guide dog to help a blind puppy. It took me a minute to realise that the competition was to name a puppy for the charity Guide Dogs for the Blind.
Saw this headline today, and wondered... how will they move so many people to these places? Won't it cause overcrowding? Yeah, not at all what they had in mind. Which should have been obvious really.
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.
you forgot about intrusive and disrespectful of other's feelings. e.g. imagine having bad chain of days and being asked how are you and expected to answer i'm great. I can't make second word if I try to follow that in similar situation
Effed if I know! I’m so eloquent today
They were great with me, extremely patient. I missed the very polite cue to wind the meeting up - subtlety can be far too subtle for me - and only realised my fault some hours afterwards.
Having thought about this I am now wondering how come they let you talk for so long without trying to guide the discussion where it needed to go, or drawing it to a close. I can only conclude that they did not have a problem with either the length or the content of what you said. Hopefully it will have been useful.
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'.
I feel intelligent enough to figure out a way to reply better to "small talk", but I realise that I don`t feel a need to waste energy in doing so!! I know when I speak on the phone I am SO much worse. I can hear myself and hear that I am completely incompetent/incapable/inadequate in doing this!!