Published on 12, July, 2020
I wish I were automatically able to multi-task without having to struggle at it - even though multi-tasking is something that is not possible for those on the autism spectrum. I also wish people would stop with the lack of empathy! I just wish my parents would stop accusing me of making excuses for myself when I clearly find myself becoming overwhelmed as a result of sensory overload. It's not that I don't use my brain OR that my head isn't screwed on properly. Having an autistic brain means that I struggle to get my fragile brain to work the same way as that of a neurotypical. I try to think before carrying out any type of task - I only end up going into sensory overload followed by meltdowns/shutdowns. I don’t get why life is so meaningless and unpleasant for someone with my mental condition.
I don't expect to be able to cope when I start living on my own - I see myself being unable to cope with life. I'm not even keen on living in any house or apartment, I am considering looking at residential mental health care facilities for autistic adults until I get referred for mental health support and provided with a special needs mental health team.
It's not true that autistic people can't multi-task, I'm a very good multi-tasker and I'm definately autistic. Multi-tasking is about time management, fitting things in between the spaces of other things. For example, if you make a cake, there's about 45 mins or so whilst its in the oven baking, that is not lost time, its time enough to wash up and clean down the kitchen and start a shopping list to replace anything you're running low on, so as next time you bake a cake all the ingredients are there to do so and you'll have enought cleaning stuff too. So cake made, kitchen cleaned up, shopping list created, all in just over an hour, not so difficult is it?
This isn't multi-tasking. First, there's personal agency and personal control. This is navigating a process by completing one task at a time. ;)
The secret to sorting ones schedule and life is often about curating a flow through prioritising. x
I don't call navigating multi-tasking or Rapid Task Switching.
Navigating involves a goal (setting course) - short term (a few hours) or long term (doing bits of a long-term process every day over time).
Rapid Task Switching and multi-tasking can involve doing things without intention and attempting to navigate amidst too many interruptions. Most Autists will thrive best finishing one thing at a time. That doesn't mean one cannot learn to bake a cake and also clean the kitchen while it's baking, and also set an alarm. But I've bought a small electric oven with a timer which shuts itself off for two reasons: it uses less electricity. I won't burn things. And a very common experience among autistic individuals is being accident prone when not allowed to focus on one thing at a time or when distracted.
The problem here is with heavy Right Brain thinking which, as Iain McGilchrist points out, is connected to a more 'infinite' sense of time rather than the left lobe which is better wired for chronology. ADHD'rs are usually much better at multi-tasking due to the hyper-signalling between the spheres. I have a feeling many females will be misdiagnosed still as Autistic when they're actually ADHD and ADHD when they're actually Autistic. Therapists have still not caught on to the wealth on historic content with some simpler explanations.
Hopefully this will change over the next 10 years but with long covid mimicking Monotropism, new questions will be asked involving legitimacy of diagnoses.
I'm not entirely sure what you're talking about ? For myself I'm autistic but not ADHD.
I think we're debating the difference between ADHD and Autism here. While we both have degrees of difficulty with executive function and a more right-brain experience of all-expansive time, it does seem ADHD'rs will have a capacity to structure and 'multi-task' in ways Autistics cannot. AuDHD is still a mystery to me as it seems the Monotropic overlap explains the link. Being autistic and not ADHD, I don't lose things. It's good to know what the differences are and I don't think most NT diagnosticians actually do.
So do I. It's two different kinds of input isn't it. And the attention of both is more sustained. The craft element offers a degree of repetition. I listen to podcasts while cooking for instance. I dont class this as multi tasking.
For the sake of clarity, I'm not arguing, just exploring.
Also with your cake baking analogy (god I hope Debbie isnt reading this), I have had some severish mishaps in the kitchen due to inattention and cooking. Thsnk goodness for high quality cookware. Sometimes the safest thing is to sit on ones backside! This is different to not having the time. It's about attention.
The cake baking thing to me seems that you have good organisation skills. Driving is multi tasking....to me. Which is easy. But put another person in the car and the mere presence of another can overload the brain due to too much spread of attention.
I have had huge stress in the past ar work due to people demanding attention when I'm trying to task. Even the process of having to say "not right now" is an interruption. I also find it difficult at home.
Sorry I digressed!
I used to watch telly and knit or sew, the hands are occupied whilst the brain is elsewhere.
I have witnessed people having conversations while typing on a keyboard. THAT is multi tasking! I don't think humans in general are good at multi tasking, regardless of brain. From my experience, where autists struggle is in the switching of attention. I think it takes longer to adjust to the change.
You call it navigating, I call it multi-tasking, the baking a cake was an easy to understand example of how to organise time and tasks. I could explain how to organise a hairdressing appointment book if you like but it would further confuse things rather than clarify them. I've also met many people who will literally sit on their backsides whilst a cake bakes and say they don't have time to do anything else because they're baking a cake. My response was 'I thought cakes were baked in the oven not by you sitting on them and incubating them'.