Auties, Aspies, and other CloudCuckooLanders!

Erm... hey there peeps. Possibly-autistic Aussie girl here. My mum said to me a couple days ago while we were trying to work out a disability pension for me due to my single eye that she believes I may have autism, and that she has never really gotten around to getting me assessed for it. So I will be assessed for it sometime in the near future. It would be a pretty late diagnosis for me since I’m 18 as of now, but... yeah.

Welcome to the late-diagnosed autistic girls club! You are nowhere near being alone in that. I was diagnosed at 19 only after a shit ton of self-advocacy. (You may have heard all the statistics about autism being soooo much more common in boys than girls. This leads to heaps of girls and women being denied diagnoses until adulthood) I'll go get your membership pin!

edited 6th Aug '17 4:50:23 PM by Cailleach

Haha, thanks. Yeah, I have heard about all that stuff about boys being diagnosed way more than girls.

I have been thinking about whether or not I’m autistic even before my mum shared her own thoughts with me, and to be honest I’m surprised I didn’t realise or think about it earlier. There are a lot of things about me that just... add up. I do a lot of stimming (rocking back and forth, pulling my hair, fiddling), I’m highly averse to socialising, I have a high IQ, among other things. I even shift between intense enjoyments of different interests - for example, I’m currently a huge fan of Dangan Ronpa and a particular noncanon ship from that franchise, to the point where it’d occupy my mind more often than not and I’d get endless fanfiction ideas for it.

But, yeah. Here’s hoping I get diagnosed soon.

Welcome aboard! We have a Discord server for Aspie Tropers, if you're interested in joining. We have 16 members so far! We talk about whatever in there, and it would be great to have more people! It's at https://discord.gg/2bR6AAy and you don't need to download Discord itself to use it (though it helps).

edited 28th Aug '17 7:14:04 PM by BonsaiForest

I’ll join it when I can! Thank you!

Yup. The more, the merrier! Anyone else who wants to join, please feel free!

So yeah... hi, aspie here

Just joined the discord group too

Hello! I'm autistic. Says so in my profile.

Mind if I join?

Sure! Come on in!

If anyone would like to join the Aspie Troper Discord channel, it's here. Got 18 members already, and more are always welcome to come!

Recently, we just had an interesting chat about how much tone and presentation matters, and how allistics can ironically be totally misled by tone and presentation and do things like hire awful people while skipping past skilled ones.

Chats can be about anything, and can be personal, not necessarily autism/Aspergers related. It's a general chat group for anyone who'd like to talk about whatever, with Aspie Tropers. So, come check it out if you're up for it!

edited 8th Sep '17 9:48:48 PM by BonsaiForest

Hi guys, I'm Nintendork 64, and I was diagnosed with Aspergers when I was six. I've been lurking in this thread and the Discord for quite a while, though never felt like saying much. I'm a big fan of rock music and video games, and occasionally post in the Music, Video Games, and Yack Fest subforums on this site.

Hey, I think you fit! Why don't you come in?

I reviewed the Netflix series Series/Atypical, the comedy/drama about a teen with autism who tries to get a girlfriend. My thoughts are very positive.

I'll paste it here:

edited 5th Nov '17 6:12:19 PM by BonsaiForest

I've been wondering whether to watch that or not and to be honest kind of avoiding it because I was worried it was gonna be...well, Sheldon. I cringe at the thought of a show like that, so I'm glad to hear that's apparently not what it's like.

Though that comment about things about autism entering the mainstream reminded me of something. I'm surprised at how (sort of?) mainstream it is. As in, you'd be surprised at how many times people have asked my mum "Is your daughter..." (they always trail off there) and she's gone "Oh, yes." and then been told that the person's son/cousin/friend is "like that" too. And not in the annoying way some people can say that either.

"Is your daughter...?"

So people could tell by looking at you somehow?

If they spend enough time around me they seem to. I guess they see behaviour they recognise? For example I'm crap at faces, don't make eye contact, etc. I find, at least with me, once I know what I'm looking for it's pretty damn easy to spot other aspies. So I guess it's the same with them?

edited 9th Nov '17 7:01:42 PM by Murataku

At least they know what Aspergers looks like, and thank goodness for that. Soooo many people don't. They don't recognize autism/Aspergers when they see it, and just either get creeped out or annoyed with the person.

Gah, I can't believe I keep forgetting to pay attention to the Discord channel, considering I've been chatting with another Discord group a lot lately...

So, re: "bullying" actually being bonding. Sometimes the challenge is knowing whether it's that or genuine meanness - usually the way I tell is their tone of voice and, if they are an existing friend or acquaintance, whether they do so suddenly as a total change in demeanor. However, what is more difficult, at least for me, is knowing whether I'm coming across as a bully. One thing I used to do as a kid - and still do sometimes now - is when playing a game with someone, getting real caught up in it and being mean in-game just to "keep things interesting" (while not outright cheating) and laugh when I'm winning. I think that may have come across as genuine meanness to many people, even though I had rationalized it as it being just a game.

As a more recent example... so right now I'm in a D&D campaign. (My very first one in fact.) As my intense interest du jour at that time was The Dark Arts with particular focus on necromancy (I'm still there now), my character ended up as a necromancer, and I had specifically based her off of an old forum RPG character who was quite evil in nature. I toned down her evil-ness because it was not an evil campaign, but kept her Combat Sadomasochist characteristics, love of the dark arts, and disregard of morals. She was essentially the Token Evil Teammate. I did kind of expect this to cause some party conflicts, but figured as long as she was useful there wouldn't be too many real-life problems with it. Turned out I was wrong; someone later called me out on apparently leveraging her usefulness to have the party be a little more tolerant of her antics, calling it a dick move. I apologized of course, but still feel as if I kind of alienated that group and seemed to outright disregard them, even though I actually really care about the group and consider them potential friends. Even stranger because many of them are Aspies like me, and they don't act that way. Eh, it's different for everyone I suppose.

A supermarket chain in Australia has started doing a "quiet hour" on Tuesday mornings. For an hour the radio is turned off, the lights are dimmed, the trolleys aren't collected and the registers make much less noise. Announcements are also much less frequent. This is specifically to accommodate Autistic people. This is a great idea!

Hi there. Autistic male, in his thirties, here who actually works as a Direct Support Professional, so kinda turning the circle here.

I'm glad someone else watched Atypical, but the review was rather positive compared to how I felt it was somewhat inaccurate; I felt like the Parents were incredibly judgmental and stifling to the point that none of them had ever really been supportive, and that he didn't entirely feel right. Perhaps I'm looking at it the wrong way/need to see it again, but at least it wasn't Touch. UGHHH.

For what it's worth, I recently came off of watching The Good Doctor tonight. Anyone watch that?would love to talk about this recent episode, but I wanted to check with people first. Also, I think it shows quite a nice picture, while also not making the autistic adult seem either too capable or too stifled.

I think I'll go check that show out. I'm interested in seeing what it's like. I've seen all of Atypical (which I gave a positive review on here), so I'll check out The Good Doctor and see what that's like.

A question for the people here. If you had to pick one or the other, which type of friend would you rather have - an emotional connection but very little shared interests, or major shared interests but very little or not emotional connection?

For me in the past it used to be the second, but in the last few years it's shifted to the first.

EDIT: Reworded the question slightly to clear up confusion. Sorry about that.

edited 21st Nov '17 8:18:41 PM by BonsaiForest

Why not both? A friend with shared interests and an emotional connection? Wouldn't that be the best of both worlds?

Yup. But I was asking if you had to pick one of those two choices and couldn't get both worlds, which would you rather pick?

From experience, I would choose the former (emotional but little shared interest). I have had friends (and a boyfriend) of the second type, and they do not tend to last very long. There was even one such friend who I was very emotionally invested in, but she was not the same to me, and I felt a disconnect between us.

For me, since it's generally hard for me to encounter someone who shares a whole bunch of my interests, it is quite disappointing when I actually make the effort to reach out to the person and they do not seem interested. One of them, for instance, was a fellow writer who shared a few of my interests, and when I messaged her with some enthusiastic remarks about her writing and a few questions about it, she responded with just a short "thanks for the praise" and nothing else. And that just kind of left me without anything else to go on conversation-wise.

I also agree that an emotional connection is a lot more important, but like, I usually have a decent amount in common who I'm able to make emotional connections with in the first place. With people I have nothing in common with I think it's difficult to really create a bond, because like what are we supposed to talk about?