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BonsaiForest Since: Jan, 2001
#3051: Dec 8th 2020 at 11:15:30 AM

Does she try to learn what autism is like, read blogs from parents of autistics or autistics themselves?

TheWhistleTropes janet likes her new icon. Since: Aug, 2015 Relationship Status: In Lesbians with you
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#3052: Dec 8th 2020 at 11:31:29 AM

She has done that all the while, but she doesn't really seem to care; she seems to make me do a lot of things like chores under the guise of helping me become a more stable human being in my life. She also thinks I'm very gullible and had tried to censor my bisexuality and make me think I never had crushes on boys; just imagine if I came out to her as trans.

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BonsaiForest Since: Jan, 2001
#3053: Dec 9th 2020 at 5:11:48 AM

:(

It is absolutely the duty of any parent of a kid with a brain difference to learn about that brain difference and really try to understand it. Damn.

TheWhistleTropes janet likes her new icon. Since: Aug, 2015 Relationship Status: In Lesbians with you
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#3054: Dec 10th 2020 at 8:23:25 PM

She makes an effort to understand how to talk to someone, but she just loses that ability when she gets angry and overcompensates before her blowups.

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BonsaiForest Since: Jan, 2001
#3055: Dec 10th 2020 at 9:06:28 PM

I wondered if there were any YouTube videos about mice with genes that are associated with autism in humans, to show visually what the difference might be in their behavior. And this is one of the first that showed up.

BonsaiForest Since: Jan, 2001
#3056: Dec 19th 2020 at 11:51:22 AM

A New York Times article about women and autism - paywalled, so I'll quote the most important parts.

About getting a diagnosis late due to good camouflage (pretending to be allistic):

Such a late diagnosis might seem unusual, but it isn’t actually that rare — especially for women. For a long time, it was dangerously assumed that we couldn’t even be autistic. Research now shows that autism in women is diagnosed both later than in men and much less often. That doesn’t mean fewer of us are autistic. It just means we’re overlooked.

In part that’s because the diagnostic criteria for autism spectrum disorder are biased toward how male children typically present. But primarily it’s because we learn to mimic others. By “masking” or “camouflaging,” we copy those around us, often losing who we are in the process. Rarely fully successful and psychologically taxing, it means autistic girls are read as neurotypical, if a little “off.” We occupy an awkward Catch-22: Our differences are alienating, so we hide them. But when we pursue diagnosis, we’re dismissed if we’ve been too successful at social camouflage.

About how her autism traits were mistaken for all sorts of other things, until she could no longer fake it:

Slowly but surely, I learned to hide who I was and make excuses for what I couldn’t conceal. As a teenager, my special interests — Lemony Snicket’s “A Series of Unfortunate Events,” emo bands, movies — were perceived as fandom; teachers saw my poor organization and social skills as rebellion and laziness. And as an adult, when I worked in bars the environment was so chaotic that nobody observed me too closely, and I was good enough at making cocktails that I got away with arguing with customers. The ability to hyper-fixate on my obsessions helped me get through school, university and postgraduate study.

Then I got a job in an office, and I quickly learned that my brain simply does not adhere to regular schedules or working patterns. Everything made it impossible to work: waking up early, the freezing temperature in the office, the noise, other people eating. I fell apart and stopped functioning. I went weeks without doing anything, feeling so overwhelmed that I wanted to crawl out of my skin.

The agony I felt sitting still for eight hours a day, pretending to feel comfortable engaging in small talk or putting forward ideas in meetings, was a physical pain.

An irony about how presentation is different from what allistics are used to:

My face doesn’t move much and my pitch rarely changes, sure, but I am deeply passionate. It is baffling and deeply hurtful when I am called cold, rejected for expressing myself differently.

TheWhistleTropes janet likes her new icon. Since: Aug, 2015 Relationship Status: In Lesbians with you
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#3057: Jan 20th 2021 at 8:28:48 AM

Does being autistic bring with it certain sensitivity issues to clothing or anything? For example, I recently realized I am not a very big fan of shoes and have thought about trying out a barefoot life because of it.

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HalfFaust Since: Jan, 2019
#3058: Jan 20th 2021 at 8:54:15 AM

Yeah, sensitivity issues are very common in autism. For some people, certain clothing fabrics are completely out of the question. Labels and tags can often be an issue too.

I much prefer being barefoot, but I find it to be impractical most of the time.

TheWhistleTropes janet likes her new icon. Since: Aug, 2015 Relationship Status: In Lesbians with you
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#3059: Jan 20th 2021 at 9:25:12 AM

Agreed, agreed, agreed. I remember I used to have a real-life "friend" who had somewhat of a sensitivity issue toward shirts. Meanwhile, I'm the opposite of him, basically being that I can't go without onenote  unless I'm sleeping.

Back when I was way younger, I actually had an odd ritual where I would try to take all of my clothes off if one piece got wet. It took a while to stop (around the time I was 7), and the reward of video games actually motivated me a lot.

Side-note: I have made a Troper Coven for people who hate shoes. I just hope it isn't a passing hyperfixation.

Edited by TheWhistleTropes on Jan 20th 2021 at 12:55:34 PM

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MagmaTeaMerry My Head Is On Fire from A forest somewhere Since: Sep, 2020
My Head Is On Fire
#3060: Jan 20th 2021 at 12:46:21 PM

I've never been diagnosed with anything, but my attention span has always been a short one. Led to some issues when I was growing up, because I could never remember to hand out PT-meeting slips to my classmates or keep track of when certain events, like markets, were going to happen. I was usually spacing out or distracted by something. I know my Mom always used to say that it was like I was in my own little world. Never affected my school performance, though.

I have a better grip of it now, if only because I've developed some habits and mechanisms to keep it in check, but I don't think my spaciness will ever go away. I can be out for a walk, talking to myself or thinking about something... And then I see an animal, focus on the animal for a while, and when I'm done, I've lost my train of thought. One time, I could actually feel the thought vanishing. It was a bit freaky.

It tends to happen when I talk or think to myself, too. I start ranting about something, and then that leads into a different topic, and before I know it, I've forgotten how I started or where I was going with it.

My AO3 profile. Let sleeping cats lie and be cute and calming.
MatthewLMayfield from wherever he damn well pleases (Captain) Relationship Status: I wanna know what love is
#3061: Jan 20th 2021 at 2:44:34 PM

I am an aspie myself, who's had several social struggles for years and years. I don't wish to go into too much detail right now, but I've had my ups and downs over the years. And the downs have really got to me for a long time. It's just now I'm starting to not let them get to me anymore. I can't say I'm exactly where I want to be right now, but I'm feeling confident I'm headed in the right direction.

Edited by MatthewLMayfield on Jan 20th 2021 at 4:44:54 AM

TheWhistleTropes janet likes her new icon. Since: Aug, 2015 Relationship Status: In Lesbians with you
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#3062: Jan 20th 2021 at 3:06:20 PM

Welcome to the club! I can admittedly relate to both of your struggles; I've been in some bad spots in the past, and I do definitely have some distractedness with me. At least here we'll be able to discuss everything in a safe space.

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BonsaiForest Since: Jan, 2001
#3063: Jan 20th 2021 at 3:16:25 PM

I actually read an article about how a specific subset of autistic people prefer going barefoot for sensory reasons.

Here it is.

The study also found that the response to touch in people with autism differed according to whether or not they had nerve fiber damage. People who had normal nerves were more likely to say they disliked being touched and were uncomfortable with some textures, while people with nerve fiber damage were more likely to say they preferred going barefoot and could be unaware that they had gotten scratched or bruised.

TheWhistleTropes janet likes her new icon. Since: Aug, 2015 Relationship Status: In Lesbians with you
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#3064: Jan 20th 2021 at 6:32:01 PM

Admittedly, I may be a bit more of a sensory person who actually likes touches... as long as they aren't from people in the wrong places and/or at the wrong times. So for me, barefooting is more of an experience of touching the ground beneath me to feel things. I talk more about it on the Shoe-Haters' Club, so I don't want to trample other topics of discussion.

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V-Alighieri Pompous Nitwit from Stowaway on the Per Aspera Since: Jan, 2021 Relationship Status: In Spades with myself
Pompous Nitwit
#3065: Jan 28th 2021 at 1:09:03 PM

Hi! I'm a recently-diagnosed ADHD girl.

Was anyone going to tell me Tiny Ms. Alighieri's habit of constantly humming in the car was actually vocal stimming, or was I supposed to read that on Tumblr over 10 years later myself?

Full moon is on the sky and he's not a man anymore
BonsaiForest Since: Jan, 2001
#3066: Jan 28th 2021 at 3:23:55 PM

A lot of autistic people seem to vocally stim. I did it a lot as a kid, and got punished for it sometimes.

TheWhistleTropes janet likes her new icon. Since: Aug, 2015 Relationship Status: In Lesbians with you
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#3067: Jan 28th 2021 at 3:33:07 PM

I used to stim a lot. Probably not vocally as much, not I still did it physically. I wasn't punished for it unless it was in public.

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MatthewLMayfield from wherever he damn well pleases (Captain) Relationship Status: I wanna know what love is
#3068: Jan 28th 2021 at 4:31:51 PM

I don't stem constantly, but I have periods of it, sometimes I make some.. I don't know how to describe it, some high-pitched hooting noise. Sometimes other people find out about it and I get embarrassed but more often than not I try to keep it where others don't hear me.

But I am curious, do any of you have conversations to yourself, as in you imagine you're talking to someone else? I do that a lot

V-Alighieri Pompous Nitwit from Stowaway on the Per Aspera Since: Jan, 2021 Relationship Status: In Spades with myself
Pompous Nitwit
#3069: Jan 28th 2021 at 4:40:02 PM

Yes!!! A lot of the time when I'm on a walk, I stim vocally by monologuing to myself the whole time, sometimes rehearsing things I wish I could rant about to other people. Since I'm out around 6 am, no one's around to notice. Pretty much everything I intend to say/have said to someone else, I'll say out loud to myself. Often repeatedly. That usually happens with the last words of a conversation I just had, too.

Full moon is on the sky and he's not a man anymore
MagmaTeaMerry My Head Is On Fire from A forest somewhere Since: Sep, 2020
My Head Is On Fire
#3070: Feb 1st 2021 at 11:21:08 AM

[up]

[up][up]

Wait... You mean that it's not something people usually do? I do stuff like that all the time. Though I tend to mutter my monologues to myself. Or repeat a phrase or a line to myself over and over again. Especially if I find it amusing.

I tend to smack my lips. It's a bit like the corners of my mouth are itching, you know, I can't really help it. When I was a kid, I did it louder without thinking about it, and my Mom believed that I was doing it on purpose to get attention.

Like I said before, I've never gotten diagnosed with anything, so you know, maybe they're just things that I do.

My best friend, on the other hand, has been diagnosed with Asperger's and ADD, and I can say that I get along better with her than with most people. At any rate, we tend to be on the same wavelength.

Edited by MagmaTeaMerry on Feb 1st 2021 at 8:23:06 PM

My AO3 profile. Let sleeping cats lie and be cute and calming.
TheWhistleTropes janet likes her new icon. Since: Aug, 2015 Relationship Status: In Lesbians with you
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#3071: Feb 1st 2021 at 3:10:51 PM

Sometimes I mutter to myself when I'm doing a math problem, just to visualize it in my head. I rarely ever simply self-monologue for the sake of self-monologue.

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BonsaiForest Since: Jan, 2001
#3072: Feb 21st 2021 at 7:08:33 PM

Multiple research papers indicate that there is a "double empathy problem" regarding autistic and allistic people. That is, each type of person understands their own type, but they don't instinctively understand each other.

A journal article on it. It cites numerous studies.

However, research has also indicated that so-called autism-specific social difficulties could instead be bidirectional in nature and that people of different neurotypes may be mutually misunderstanding one another. An increasing number of studies provide converging evidence of nonautistic people misreading social situations with autistic people. For example, nonautistic people interpret facial emotions less accurately than do autistic individuals, are less willing to interact with autistic people, overestimate how egocentric autistic people are, and overestimate how helpful they are to autistic people. Nonautistic people are less accurate than autistic people at interpreting the mental states of autistic people, and finding autistic people difficult to read is related to their being perceived unfavorably by nonautistic people.

We suggest that future assessments should aim to elucidate whether autistic theory of mind abilities are more successful among other autistic people and whether social difficulties for people are due, in part, to nonautistic difficulties in understanding autism-specific mental states.

When I was a kid, I went to a, um, "institute" for autistic kids for a few years, before being mainstreamed into a public school. I went back to said institute during one summer, and numerous times during the school year for the next few years. I remember that there were a few instances where I'd see a kid get misunderstood by the people in charge, and I felt I had a pretty good idea of what the kid was thinking and why, but they'd get in trouble and be misinterpreted in the same way that I was. It pissed me off, but I was afraid to challenge authority - I was like 8-10 years old; would they listen to me at all?

Anyway, there are people who suggest that autistic people instinctively "get it" when it comes to understanding each other (which the article also brings up; that we can understand each others' mental states more easily than allistics can), and if it's true that allistics instinctively understand allistics, autistics instinctively understand autistics, but each side doesn't understand the other, well, there's a growing body of research pointing to that.

TheWhistleTropes janet likes her new icon. Since: Aug, 2015 Relationship Status: In Lesbians with you
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#3073: Feb 21st 2021 at 7:24:12 PM

A lot of times we can definitely be misunderstood. I feel like I am on a much better wavelength understanding an autistic person than I am a neurotypical personnote ; I feel like being often stereotyped as emotionless causes us to express ourselves in more overt ways. But sometimes in my quest for expression, even subtlety, people basically refuse to try to understand our thought processes, even though they're mostly the same as an allistic.

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BonsaiForest Since: Jan, 2001
#3074: Feb 27th 2021 at 4:09:50 PM

A Conceptual Analysis of Autistic Masking. A very long research paper about autistic people and masking. Might be some interesting things in there. Haven't finished reading it yet.

With a pathologized status comes the experience of stigma, dehumanization, and marginalization. Stigma refers to the possession of an attribute that marks persons as disgraced or "discreditable," marking their identity as "spoiled." Stigmatized persons may attempt to conceal these spoiled aspects of their identity from others, attempting to "pass" as normal. Investigation of "passing" and "concealment" has been explored in depth in other stigmatized populations; however, the application of stigma in autism research is a relatively new endeavor. Stigma impacts both on how an individual is viewed and treated by others and how that treatment is internalized and interacts with one's identity.

As a marginalized group, autistic people are consistently presented with the message that their way of being in the world is abnormal, defunct, or impaired. The social norms of autistic people differ to those of the dominant social group, and "passing as normal" or attempting to pass as normal might relieve external consequences (such as bullying) while increasing internal consequences (such as exhaustion and burnout).

The concept of masking is incompatible with the idea of autistic mindblindness. To mask one must be aware of how others might potentially view them and suppress aspects of their identity accordingly. The idea that an autistic person might suppress aspects of themselves to "fit in" is also at odds with theories that suggest that autistic people are uninterested in social affiliation.

Already, this researcher gets it.

BonsaiForest Since: Jan, 2001
#3075: Feb 27th 2021 at 4:09:58 PM

They found that autistic adults reported masking across multiple contexts (i.e., at work, with romantic partners), for both conventional and relational reasons.

Masking with romantic partners?! That can't be healthy. A relationship based on one person pretending to be something they're not and hiding their "abnormal" traits is one that'll eventually end in disaster. Maybe autistics should focus on dating other autistics, when possible.

A potential relationship between masking and negative outcomes such as autistic burnout and suicidality means that it is important that we acknowledge masking as a self-protective mechanism rather than a necessarily conscious choice.

Double empathy theory explains communication differences between autistic and nonautistic people as a "mismatch of salience"; both groups draw upon different experiential knowledge, which may lead to bidirectional breakdowns in interpreting one another. Thus judging "how autistic" a person appears based on how well they are able to perform nonautistic behavior makes little sense.


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