Any time I give someone local directions, my mind is speeding along each road at 300 mph, taking a pause only to visualize intersections and turns. It’s impossible for me to not do this. I have to look up at the sky or close my eyes while I’m doing this, otherwise the person will likely wonder why I’m staring at them as if I were trying to telekinetically bore a hole into their forehead.
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So there’s a common saying with people on the spectrum: “If you’ve seen one autistic person, you’ve seen one autistic person”. Just surprised it hasn’t shown up in this thread yet. Carry on.
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Typical. Your brain is ill equipped for the next stage of human evolution.
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That’s a highly teleological view of evolution…
You’d also think we’d learn to keep our discussions of world domination to private forums.
Fortunately there are people who have learned self acceptance and appreciation of neurodiversity between this and the people wondering whether autism will die out because they can’t find a girlfriend.
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Given that it seems to be the primary cause of loneliness and unhappiness in my life, I’m not a huge fan of the “ASD’s are awesome!” sentiment.
If it works for other people, that’s fine; yay for them. But it doesn’t work for me.
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I find it very frustrating in many ways and it can be an obstacle to functioning in a number of environments, but:
- being diagnosed (even self-diagnosed) is a lot better than not knowing
- recognising the balance of strengths and weaknesses and finding ways to compensate for the difficulties makes it easier to accept
- it’s a spectrum that includes good, bad and mixed elements, or elements that can be good or bad depending on the context
I find living in other countries and working from home makes it a lot easier for me - especially when you’re in a culture that doesn’t expect you to conform to all its rules and where people are clear about the things they do expect from you.
This seems to be a more balanced view:
It’s not all bad - I like the way I think, at least when it doesn’t get too depressing. I like being able to enjoy myself alone. Increased sensitivity can be helpful at times. A lot of the negatives can be made less annoying by being in the right environment and with the right people, although that can limit you quite a bit. Sometimes being in the wrong environment can be the cause of a lot of the negatives, rather than the ASD itself.
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I don’t disagreee with anything you posted there.
Counterpoint, though: although it’s rather obvious in hindsight, and apparently wasn’t a surprise to anybody else, the Aspie stuff wasn’t something that I was aware of until I was 40. The widespread cultural meme of “don’t worry, just be yourself, everybody feels like that” is actively destructive to Aspies. It’s the worst possible advice when your social ability depends upon making an active effort to mimic and fake normal human behaviour.
The overseas thing might’ve helped. Even though I hadn’t hit the Aspie awareness yes, I remember being surprised at my first overseas neuroscience conference by how comfortable I was when outside of my country. There was a very conscious realisation that one of the potential benefits of international academia was that I could hide my strangeness under a smokescreen of foreignness. “Don’t worry, he’s not that freaky, he’s just Australian…”.
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Living in China was great therapy - not that they ignored your mistakes; quite the opposite, They would laugh in your face an mimic you, call a friend over, discuss it with a busload of people in Chinese when you can understand every word… The thing is, the worst thing for me about social anxiety was the uncertainty. What do people think of me? What mistakes am I making? Who notices that I’m acting weird? There it’s all out in the open and you can deal with it. I learned to laugh along with other people if I made a language mistake, and saw my mistakes as a learning process and the laughter as a way to connect with people. People often found it endearing and I got better. On the bus, my Chinese friends would cringe as they knew that I could understand the conversation. But it didn’t matter - I knew what everyone thought I was doing wrong, and I could choose to follow their cultural standards or keep my own in the knowledge of the impression it would give. It’s oddly relaxing when people have no filter around you.
On the other hand, in England people would do stuff that you didn’t understand, and they often didn’t explain what you were doing wrong. If they did, they often treated you like a child rather than a foreign adult. The criticism was often aimed at you as an individual, not at your actions. If people mimic you or laugh at your traits, there’s no good way to laugh it off and it seems more malicious. The expectations are more numerous, and more subtle. It makes you want to close up and hide, while in China there was a way to be openly different and accepted for that. I thought it was because I was Irish - a lot of the insults were directed at my nationality rather than just my behaviour, although there was another Irish guy who didn’t seem to get teased. I find Germany similar to China in some ways - people are very polite, but they have clear standards and will be open about them.
That’s very true.
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Just as a datapoint, the place where I felt my weirdness was hidden by my foreignness was Colorado…
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To be fair… they do that to everyone… all of English culture is silent unspoken class markers that you either get or you don’t. 
My friend originally from Texas, educated in Toronto, and now married and living in Oxford is having one hell of a culture shock with her friends and peers. And she is super outgoing and confident and social, and even she finds it frustrating!
@Wanderfound - I met a guy in a creative writing seminar from Australia. He was a rather stereotypical “IT Nerd” - think Moss from the IT Crowd. He’d come for work but was staying in Canada. When I asked him why he laughed and yelled “CHICKS!” - accents man, accents are sexy.
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A notable memory of that Colorado conference was the observation that it was majorly unfair for a Rhodes Scholar to look that good in a bikini.
A rooftop hot tub in a snowstorm is a seriously nifty thing.
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Is it because you don’t incessantly tell other people the things you imagine?
Yeah, the “just be yourself” thing is terrible. People who say it genuinely think it’s good advice, they don’t get that being yourself is only acceptable if yourself is within a certain range of behaviours.
I know three different men who have traveled to Australia and ended up marrying an Australian. I swear Canadians and Australians just love each other - though beyond the accent, I think that Australia actually has a culture around dating ans sex that is just a bit more open than Canadian culture; open enough to be intriguing and refreshing but not so open as to be off-putting.
I have a question for the thread, if a stranger were to start talking to you on a bus, would you be more comfortable if they were talking about something superficial like the weather or something very personal, like if they spontaneously started talking about having cancer?
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Canada is just Australia with the thermometer upside down. 
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this one is easy: smalltalk is strenuous and I don’t get all the small rules around it - it does not help that typical smalltalk topics bore me. but I’m a good listener and generally interested in human beings (not that I understand them…).
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Yeah, honestly I’d prefer cancer.
With weather, what can you even say? “Yep, you’re right, that sure enough is some weather out there!” blarg
I am the worst at small talk. I have a very practiced open but slightly confused smile that tries to convey, “I know you are talking to me, and I am friendly and non-threatening, but also I have no idea what I say here”. It gets deployed for almost every situation where I don’t know the protocol, or I can’t make out what the other person is saying (that is to say, almost always)
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Either would be great, as long as they’re talking about it in a general sense and know the topic well.
If it’s their personal experience of those two things, cancer. I’d imagine that anyone raising this topic with a stranger really needs someone to listen to them, so I’d be happy to oblige.
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Cancer.
Deep conversations with people about things that are important to them are interesting and often fun. Small talk is difficult and dangerous.
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I don’t think anyone’s actually told me I don’t have an imagination. 
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Cancer riddles my family and most of us are just ticking time bombs… so small talk please, unless you want a puddle of stranger tears in your lap.
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It stinks!
I think this is happening in my family! Fuck cancer. Neurodiversity is awesome, though.
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