General Autism Discussion

What, you mean you don't think that the struggles of an autistic person trying to function in society make for instant comedy gold? Do you not have a sense of humor or something? (cause obviously I don't either, then)

EDIT: Well there's an awkward pagetopper

Edited by Reflextion on Oct 13th 2018 at 3:10:11 PM

I think it could be done right, if presented from the view of the girl, trying to interact with a world which to her makes little to no sense.

Even if it were being approached from that angle, though, I don't trust the fucking Disney Channel of all networks to handle such a concept.

I'm not entirely sure what to feel. I think writing stories about people with autism is good, especially if the lead actor is autistic. Having said that, when I think of a standard Disney Channel TV show like That's So Raven or The Suite Life...it's hard to see that being a great place for a discussion about autism. I want them to succeed, I really do, but I doubt they will.

And for what it's worth I do think autism actually can be funny, if approached from the right angle. What I'd suggest is using an autistic perspective protagonist as a lens to highlight the absurdity of a lot of things most people consider "normal". A sort of straight man if you will.

Also, I don't think struggling with one's disability is necessarily depressing, and can even be funny (especially with things like being literal-minded or sarcasm blind). An example: I used to be a pretty weak kid who wouldn't be able to shut the car door fully. A few summer days passed where I had to go on errands with my Dad. He noticed I was shutting the door too hard and he said, sarcastically "I don't think you quite closed the door". I didn't catch the sarcasm and began slamming the door harder and harder over the course of a few days, frustrated that I wasn't strong enough to close it. He eventually realized I wasn't catching his sarcasm and told me he was being sarcastic. Then, there was laughing.

Edited by Protagonist506 on Oct 13th 2018 at 12:31:07 PM

Aye, that plot premise sounds like it can go badly really easily unless you know what you are doing.

So, I live with my older brother (we're both adults, he's my landlord essentially) and he has a very offensive habit of criticizing my idiosyncrasies whenever he can (IE "That's so weird"). He hates it when I point out autism as a defense. What would you advise?

Get him into group therapy as terms and conditions to staying with him (you might need to get a lawyer specialised in family rental situations to help with that)? Once he sees more people struggling with fighting society with the condition, and that it isn't just you he's busy trying to be an unhelpful prick to, he might turn a leaf or two over.

Unless he's scared of catching the autism, of course, and is over-compensating. Finding out that autism 1) isn't the end of the world and 2) isn't something you can catch might help with that.

It really depends on both what you’re doing and how good your relationship with him is. If you’re just being odd and you have a good relationship with him turn it into a bit of fun, “I’ve being doing this our entire lives, you only realised it’s odd now?”, or “You know I don’t think you’d mentioned that in the last [number of years] you’ve lived with me”.

Or you can be serious, “yes I know it’s odd, but it’s how I am, is that an actual problem for you?”

You need to self analyse first to work out if you’re doing anything wrong before pushing back, but if you’re sure (though I’d personly always advise getting an outside perspective on behaviour) then it comes down if you want to be serious, be snarky or just ignore it.

I vote snark, but I’m British, passive aggressiveness is 50% of how I communicate, with the other 50% being passive aggressiveness with a silent passive.

In the end you doing things because your autistic dosnt matter, either the thing you’re doing is bad and you need to improve, or it’s not and he can bugger off, the autistic root cause of your action doesn’t change if it’s right or wrong for you to be doing it.

Edited by Silasw on Oct 13th 2018 at 9:29:08 AM

Question: is quoting media one has seen at random an autistic thing, or an everybody thing? In my lifetime, I've only ever seen people with autism (or who I suspect have autism) do this unprompted.

Maybe is just if you're obsessed. Which is something pretty common with autists.

Define "at random". Because quoting media if it somehow fits the situation is a pretty common thing. And "somehow" is very, very relative.

Edited by Millership on Oct 14th 2018 at 4:33:25 PM

"At random" meaning apropos of nothing. i.e., not fitting the situation.

For example, if I'm in class and there's a bit of downtime and I mutter to myself "And you call them steamed hams despite the fact that they are obviously grilled" even though no one was talking about anything related to "steamed hams".

Edited by PhysicalStamina on Oct 14th 2018 at 7:05:20 AM

So it's involuntary? Are you aware of your surroundings when you say that? Because there are people (myself included) who tend to mumble to themselves when they are deep in thought. They usually are not aware of that, though. And usually I can't go that deep "inside" when there are people present who I'm not comfortable around.

Edited by Millership on Oct 14th 2018 at 5:44:13 PM

Not involuntary in most of the examples I can think of, more like you thought about it and just decided to say it out loud.

I really have no idea if I'm getting this across well.

I do sometimes mutter my thought processes out when I am mentally distracted.

If it helps, I sometimes mutter things to myself and pretend someone else said them to me. For instance, I could say something completely non-sensical like "He lies on his side is he trying to hide" and pretend Robert Fripp said it to me.

This is mostly an unconscious thing, however.

Edited by KeironCioran on Oct 14th 2018 at 6:40:27 AM

Why does one in the autism spectrum have to walk on eggshells just to maintain friends?

A question I've seen many autistics ask variations of, as many have said that friends tend to drift away from them faster than they do for anyone else.

Do therapists do that? Tell autistics they can/should only make friends with allistics (non-autistics)? I mean, I'd never heard of that before, though I can kind of imagine it happening. I think many therapists may think that autistics are best off making friends with "normal" people so that they can "become" more like everyone else. Despite the fact that "being like everyone else" actually means merely pretending to be.

My mother wonder why I have few friends and is because, even thought I get along well with people, I'm not motivated to keep a relationship where I don't feel fully comfortable.

Also. Walking in Eggshells...not the first time that I hear the phrase.

Therapists encourage autistic people to make friends with neurotypicals because they are trying to prepare them for functioning in the real world as much as possible.

Whether this is right or misguided is something i'm not sure about.

Which is why I don't even bother.

I've seen a handful of articles about the differences between autistic people's brains and most people's brains. In terms of how they operate, and physical differences as well.

I'll sum up here what I remember.

• The average male brain has more synapses connecting neurons within the same hemisphere, but fewer synapses connecting the neurons between the hemispheres. Autistic people's brains have an equal number of synapses both within an individual hemisphere, and connecting the two.
• It's normal for the brain to remove unneeded synpases as it ages. Babies are born with tons of synapses, and the brain "trims" them over the coming years. However, in autistics, the brain doesn't trim the synapses, but leaves them there, for better or worse. In schizophrenics, the brain continues to trim synapses over the years long after most people's brains have stopped doing that. (I personally speculate that this may be why the visible symptoms of schizophrenia tend to not show up until around the teenage or young adult years. That might be - and again, I'm just guessing - the time when the brain very clearly has so much fewer synapses that it's no longer able to function normally, and the signs of schizophrenia become obvious.)
• When most people engage in socialization (I'm not talking giving a presentation or something, but one-on-one or group conversations), the part of the brain responsible for socialization is active, and that's it. When autistics engage in socialization, the part of the brain responsible for logic and reason becomes active, as if autistics are literally using logic to navigate the many rules of social behavior. That part of the brain uses more energy, as well, which may explain why autistics literally become exhausted from socialization with non-autistics where they have to pretend to be normal, and they use logic to do so.
• I forget the details of this one, but supposedly, the part of the brain associated with balance and coordination (which is unusually large in people who are naturally gifted athletes), has problems. Either it's too small (Temple Grandin claimed that was the case for her), or it has problems delivering information, which is why so many autistics suck at sports.
• The part of the brain responsible for the senses (touch, taste, sight, hearing, etc.) is unusually large in autistics. In fact, the larger this part of the brain is, the "lower functioning" or more severely disabled the autistic person is. Bigger is not always better.
• The "reward center" in the brain activates to different things for autistics and non-autistics. When non-autistics engage in their hobbies or in social interaction, they get roughly an equal amount of activity in that part of the brain. When autistics engage in social interaction, they get a lot less activity there, but they get a metric ton of activity in that part of the brain when engaging in their special interests/hobbies.

Differences in the brain result in differences in the person, plain and simple. And these are some of the known, discovered differences in autistic people's brains.

Edited by BonsaiForest on Oct 18th 2018 at 10:16:14 AM

I saw this awesome analogy to describe how autistic body language can be so vastly different from allistic body language.

I'm thinking if there some link between autism and Codependency, especially Codependency with people with other personality disorders (especially Cluster B disorders).

I have a somewhat...traumatic experience with a person that I befriended online in the past and I shudder to think if it could be worse (or...better?) if I have met said person offline.

At this point. I am aware that I have Codependency issues that tend to to manifest in two seemingly opossite ways (seeing myself as the one that needs to "save" my SO and seeing myself as the one "saved") that are Not So Different when you think about it.

I've hear lots of autists talking about suffering abuse at hands of their partners. So I wonder if is just me or a depressingly common pattern with autists.

I don't think I ever see myself in a romantic relationship.

I have to pick a major this year, and it's so hard.

Does anyone else have the problem of the things you like, not really matching up with the things you are really good at? Like I love history, and reading, but hate writing, making those classes really hard for me. I'm pretty good at math, but don't actually like it that much.

Edited by megaeliz on Oct 23rd 2018 at 1:53:08 PM

Same here. Used to have some serious angst about it. It's not so bad these days, really. God knows I'll never be able to do housekeeping beyond "bachelor pad" level,

As they say, you can't pick you loves. Best thing you can do is try and find a way to apply your talents to your interests. Or just do what pretty much everyone does and pick a job that pays the bills and leave some time for hobbies.

Edited by Kayeka on Oct 23rd 2018 at 8:22:14 PM