I would like to discuss "evolving" authenticity as an autistic person with other members please.
I have come to decide post diagnosis that masking has hidden the "real" me for some time.
Now as I am apparently "discovering" who I am it would appear that I may be "evolving" as a person.
By which I give an examples that within this community I initially was drawn to make rapid response to others posts - mainly from a logical and often "blunt" fashion that has not fairly taken into account the other persons mental state.
This is a behaviour that i know myself to be biased towards and often have been a very harsh self-critic as i have no desire whatsoever to disregard other people's emotions or to harm them - especially people who I love and care about.
I now find myself returning to situations when this has happened and doing my best to redress the balance perhaps more promptly than I would have in the past.
I am accustomed to this process pre-diagnosis albeit often only after after a more prolonged period of reflection.
If there is the "bridge" to cross where one does not have to "correct" for this bias - where one naturally knows in advance what is the "best" approach for communication with any individual at any one time I find this much easiest to do with my very close family and loved ones.
I am drawn to want to express deep empathy for other people in order to stimulate this same depth of "best" communication however am really concerned about this being clumsy or socially misinterpreted.
Otherwise in broad terms I see a situation where one is able to discern in advance whether the individual is OK for and open to a logical and "blunt" approach - especially since there are layers of apparent confusion in my interpretation of how the person signals their openness and readiness for this.
Or one is able to identify that the best approach is to look for and explore further insights into their shifting emotional landscape and make ones behaviour most appropriate for this.
Both these latter options involve a "translation tax" of extra work that I have to make to bridge the empathy gap. I am realising that this also exists within my communication with other members on this forum - people who are often most willing to put up with bluntness but perhaps need the opposite a lot of the time. Because like me they spend a lot of the time in a mentally and emotionally exhausted state.
I find that there are many suggestions as to reduce the amount of "translation tax" of combining a firm logic based blunt processor with a more widely socially orientated perspective. I wonder whether doing so over a prolonged period mans that eventually the "cost" of doing so is reduced - partly because in practicing it it becomes a more easily selected means of behaviour.
Perhaps this is evolving authenticty?
