On the Random Thoughts thread I said that I often don't feel like I belong here and many of you were kind enough to tell me my contributions to discussion are valued, but I think one of the reasons I don't feel I belong is that autism manifests differently in me to how it does in most others.
Many people here seem to AUHD, whereas I'm a Liminal Austic Thinker, this means I like to inhabit the grey areas of life, rather than the black and white of Binary Thinkers, or the fact driven thought processes of Analytical Thinkers or the High Energy, rapid paced emotional short hand loving AUDH people.
This difference in cognitive style makes it hard for us all to communicate easily, it's why I don't get emojis and others love them and are quite happy to post long streams of them that mean loads to those of the same cognitive type, where as I just look at them and think Eh? Of course not being able to see them properly even with my glasses dosen't help either. I need a longer form of commuication, not short forms of text speak and emojis, especially when theres an emotional depth to what people are communicating, I don't understand memes either, probably because I don't inhabit the spaces that use them, but it's very difficult for those of us who aren't AUDH to always understand WTF people are on about.
I know I'm a deep thinker, who's uncomfortable with binary answers, choices and rules based thinking and black and white thinking in general, I guess some people read what I've posted and think 'WTF's she on about now, I can't be bothered to read all that, why can she just say it with a meme and a couple of emojis?' I see patterns in a lot of things, the story behind the story, where things that seem very different are expression of a similar thing and sometimes the same thing, it's very rare for me to think in a straight line, to me the world is like a jigsaw where I can see the whole picture and at the same time move pieces around, this happens in different dimensions and levels too, nothing is vertical or flat and without texture.
Having had training in both counselling and a history degree has really taught me to ask questions of questions, to look under the surface of whats presented to me and to say the unpleasant, the deviant, the socially unexceptable, to name the game being played and ask others if they see the game too and do they really want to play it? This is uncomfortble for many people, but once I've seen something like that I can't unsee it, I can't not say what I see, people of a more binary type of thinking or an analytical type might look and think something like ' the ladders falling down, all the bits are on the floor, must deny the collapse and put the ladder back together'.
I think basically what I'm trying to say is that AUDH is the dominant type here and that why I often feel that I don't fit in, we literally see the world differently, through different lenses. But is it just me that feels like this? Can we make a bit more effort to be accomodating of different types? I wonder if other people come here and are put off because they don't feel reflected in what they read here how responses are framed?
I think theres also a danger that AUDH is seen as the only type or even the most common type of autism and all services end up geared towards AUDH and those of us who express differently are excluded again, are doubly stigmatised by an NT world that dosen't understand and dosen't really want to and an ND world thats seems largely AUDH and is just relieved to have finally been recognised. Included in this exclusion is those of us who don't cope well with the digital world, the dominant narrative being that autistic people don't like talking to others so if we do everything digitally then thats ok. So whilst you lots are happily chatting away using memes and emojis, theres others of us sitting down with a piece of paper, a fountain pen and ink from a bottle, trying to set down our thoughts.
