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.
she/her/they | wall | sandboxA 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):
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:
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:
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
she/her/they | wall | sandboxI'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.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
I actually read an article about how a specific subset of autistic people prefer going barefoot for sensory reasons.
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.
she/her/they | wall | sandboxHi! 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 anymoreI 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
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
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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.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.
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.
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.
she/her/they | wall | sandboxA 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.
Already, this researcher gets it.
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.

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