Yes, I’m an empath, too. I think it’s what probably would have helped me navigate life well, had my poor judgment and self-doubt not gotten in the way. Not so much doubt about my own ability, but more allowing others to convince me my intuition was incorrect.
Oh, I was often horrible and manipulative at times, but my stepmom says that I balanced it sometimes with wisdom and maturity. My older brother was emotionally abusive to me at all times, so I think it was a by-product of being constantly gaslighted at a young age and not having the tools to cope.
The thing I find strangest about my visual memory is that though it feels photographic in a way, as an artist I’m at a loss to recreate it. I can remember faces, locations, and specific details, but I can’t recreate them unless they are set before me in present time. So, I would be the first to state that I don’t have a photographic memory (as a catalog of scenes), but just more sensitive to emotional triggers that set off visual recollections. That’s the best way I can explain it.
So apparently daydreams look different for autistic people – normally, the brain switches to the resting network, where it tends to focus on the self or the self’s interaction with others. If it needs to solve a problem, it switches power to the cognitive network, and this was visible in an MRI. In autistic people, the MRI showed no such deactivation of the resting network, apparently because it wasn’t activated in the first place. TIL the normals daydream about people. How about that.
(I’m pretty sure I also occasionally daydream of myself and interactions with others – I certainly have dreams with other people, although I don’t think I often interact with them much).
(ETA: no he isn’t ) despite the fact that I haven’t seen Home Improvements for almost 20 years? However, it takes me a few seconds before I can identify a person I meet in a different context, even if I’ve met them a few times in the past month? I think in my case it’s more of a processing speed thing where I have to focus on several things at the same time and respond appropriately to them in real life, but on screen I can switch off some of those functions. I have similarly good results when I try face blindness tests, and I don’t even seem to have any trouble remembering actors’ names, which is much more of an issue in real life.
I used to think that I had trouble remembering people’s names because my brain didn’t prioritise information about people, but I don’t think so any more. I think a lot has to do with a difficulty processing information during an interaction with others, whereas in a quieter environment I can work better.
A related question I’ve also been wondering about recently: Do people with prosopagnosia have difficulty using sign language? I asked this on Quora last week, and although I have received a few answers that it’s theoretically possible, I haven’t seen anything conclusive at all. One problem could be that facial expressions and body language can have a grammatical function and carry more meaning than it would in spoken language. Facial recognition involves distinguishing between same and different and incorporating a number of indicators in order to recognise an identifiable whole. In spoken language, vowel sounds can vary widely depending on the accent and context, but we are generally still able to identify them. In sign language, a particular sign could have a similar level of variation and in theory could be a problem for someone who has trouble identifying facial expressions.
Facial recognition is associated with the fusiform gyrus, particularly on the right hand side.
Though there have been several attempts at remediation, no therapies have demonstrated lasting real-world improvements across a group of prosopagnosics. Prosopagnosics often learn to use “piecemeal” or “feature-by-feature” recognition strategies. This may involve secondary clues such as clothing, gait, hair color, skin color, body shape, and voice. Because the face seems to function as an important identifying feature in memory, it can also be difficult for people with this condition to keep track of information about people, and socialize normally with others. Prosopagnosia has also been associated with other disorders that are associated with nearby brain areas: left hemianopsia (loss of vision from left side of space, associated with damage to the right occipital lobe), achromatopsia (a deficit in color perception often associated with unilateral or bilateral lesions in the temporo-occipital junction) and topographical disorientation (a loss of environmental familiarity and difficulties in using landmarks, associated with lesions in the posterior part of the parahippocampal gyrus and anterior part of the lingual gyrus of the right hemisphere).
I haven’t seen it yet, but in the latest 007 movie the villain tries to induce prosopagnosia by drilling into James Bond’s fusiform gyrus.
Whereas the drill should have been aimed just in front of 007’s ear, it was directed below the mastoid process under and behind his left ear. There it would have met the lateral part of the first or second cervical vertebra, perhaps hitting the ipsilateral vertebral artery and triggering a stroke or massive haemorrhage. Unless fatal, it certainly would not have deleted the bank of faces in Bond’s memory.
If it helps with your process, those aren’t the same actor (the first is Edward Hermann, the second is Earl Hindeman, IIRC. Same initials and they do look similar). I myself know this more because my head is a dumping ground for trivia than because I’m great at parsing faces (I’m not).
As with a lot of people my age, I started suspecting I was an Aspie when I had a “holy cow” moment after reading [this Wired article] (https://www.wired.com/2001/12/aspergers/) back in 2001. I also knew I had relatives on one side of the family who were diagnosed with lower-functioning autism. At that point I got a diagnosis from a general therapist (flag for @RatMan) who told me I was a borderline case – could be Aspergers, could be a garden-variety eccentric.
I attended an Aspie support/advocacy group for a couple of years afterwards and saw some very familiar behaviours there. I also saw the ravages visited on some of the older attendees by misdiagnoses and the applications of the wrong therapies and meds. The experience made me grateful for my good fortune, not the least of which is that these groups now exist.
What I’ve noticed for myself only is that, thanks to a cultured family that was highly tolerant of eccentricity but which also expected that adherence to certain social norms be observed to get along in the world, I must have developed compensation mechanisms that allowed me to pass as neurotypical, sometimes very neurotypical. As I’ve gotten older I suppose I started developing my own.
For example, like many on the spectrum I had trouble making eye contact with those I spoke with when I was a child. But one aunt made a point of insisting that I look people in the eye, and by the time I was a teenager I’d sometimes get comments from adults to the effect that I was one of the few teenagers who’d do that.
I accept that I have some sort of condition (I don’t call high-functioning autism/Asperger’s a disorder), but due to a number of factors I’ve been fortunate enough to be able to make it work for me more often than against me.
I haven’t taken the quizzes in years, but I took the opportunity of this thread to do a couple:
Your neurodiverse (Aspie) score: 141 of 200
Your neurotypical (non-autistic) score: 78 of 200
You are very likely neurodiverse (Aspie)
Hmm, you’re right. I guess other people have made the same mistake though, since searching for Edward Hermann and Home Improvements on Google gave me pictures of Wilson.
Do you feel comfortable doing it now? I can do it, but it feels almost like being underwater – it’s easy to lose my train of thought and it can get tiring. Occasionally it’s more natural, but most of the time it’s just one more thing to think about.
The context of my comment yesterday was looking at the issue of shutdowns, which I’ve always struggled to identify in myself. Not because I didn’t have them, but more because they don’t always look the same and I was looking for a particular state of mind. For me it varies between “screen saver mode” where I sort of zone out for a bit and can regain my attention within a couple of seconds if someone asks me a question and “blue screen of death” where I feel almost paralysed. Asking me questions during that time will get more of a fight or flight response, since I can’t understand what people are saying and I can’t respond to them properly. There’s a continuum between those states, but I didn’t see a good explanation for it in many of the descriptions. This seems to be a much clearer description, and it includes the different types of partial shutdowns. For example, yesterday my wife was asking me to run a few errands, but I couldn’t process her speech and the words were pretty much meaningless. I could type and read without trouble though. In the end I kind of looked at her and said something like that I didn’t understand, and she got the hint and wrote the information down. Last year I had a more complete shutdown though, and I was just frozen at my desk without really being able to move, change the webpage, scroll or anything else. When I came out of it, about three hours had passed but it felt much shorter. I wasn’t bored, just kind of blank for most of the time after initially intense emotions.
Yeah, it became second nature over time. Now I just do it, and I don’t think about it in terms of comfort or discomfort. It’s like any other non-intuitive skill learned in childhood, and for me it’s low-cost to begin with.
That’s not to say I’m not zoning out of the conversation even if eye contact and appropriate verbal cue responses and autopilot cherrypicking of their key points make it seem that way. That still happens, but the “screen saver” seems enough to satisfy the neurotypical’s understandable desire that I appear to be listening to them.
I know it wouldn’t work in the context of marriage or a committed relationship, which is why I avoid those. Despite that, I get a lot of comments from women about what a great and understanding listener I am, which I assume is those compensating methods kicking in. I don’t consider it to be fraudulent, because I genuinely like that I can please and help them, but I’m definitely not the natural they assume I am. Keeping it up in a full-time relationship would exhaust me.
My own shut-downs are the occasional weekend or even weeks when I’m just compelled to go dark. It’s not that I’m not lonely or depressed, just bummed out due to one trigger or another, and it’s something that can only be worked through with solitude.
Yeah, I kind of wish my family had been clearer with me that I was actually different. It’s not that I have any great regrets, but being around so many people all the time is tiring and it would have been nice to have known that this wasn’t something I would just grow out of. I’ve gotten better at a number of things and my family is OK about me escaping from time to time (I’m escaping from dinner conversation with guests right now!), but insisting that I was normal meant that I learned to actively ignore my intuition, since it didn’t match NT behaviour. Yesterday I was looking after the kids and a friend of my daughter’s all afternoon, then in the evening a family of couchsurfers came to visit. Today I’m just so tired that I’m having trouble getting anything done.
Hmm… this comment took me 40 minutes to write. I’d better have a lie down.
My family was great but there’s no doubt they were baffled by what we now know* are my Aspie escapist tendencies. My father was more troubled by it than my mother was, but his was the eccentric side of the family with the Kanner’s no-doubt autistic people in it so he accepted whatever was going on with me despite his own preference for “normal”. No-one was insisting I was normal, that’s for sure.
Hope you enjoyed your nap.
[* I was long out of the house when Asperger’s work was re-discovered in 1994]
Taggless is great, but I really do find myself putting t-shirts and henleys on backwards more often for lack of a tag (the screened labels come off with washing and wear).
Using the word “face” for the front of the head is definitely a loaded term. Face is literally whatever one uses to communicate with others. So if the front of your head isn’t what you use, people insisting that it is your face comes off as rather pretentious.
I can see differences between people’s bodies, but the difference is that I don’t find those differences significant. Just like how I can tell that two trees are distinct from each other - yes, but so what? It is a human-shaped human! My early childhood was hyperlexical, and so it followed that a person is not what they happen to look like, a person is what they say and do. That our interactions are conceptual and social, and that language - with an actual semantic layer of more-or-less shared meaning - is what makes this possible. It is fine that people twitch and fidget, but this lacks the intentionality and bandwidth for communicating anything of depth. For me, basing my relationship with somebody based upon twitches of their eyes and mouth is as superficial as basing it upon other arbitrary physical traits, such as their hair color or how tall they are. Just like how I would find it more respectful if a person liked me for my knowledge or achievements than the “talent” of what my body happens to be like.
Even though I can see differences, I need to try to think about those. Usually I recognize people by sound. The timbre and articulation of their voice, and its mapping with their cognition. I learned that this can be awkward because people don’t like it when I don’t recognize them visually, and it can be difficult to get people talking if I don’t know who they are, or what relationship we might have to each other. This has resulted in me usually trying to start conversations with declarations or questions, rather than risking introductions for the Nth time. I am also not convinced that organisms necessarily maintain persistent personal identities, but that is another matter!
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Interesting thread. Had a much harder time relating when young but could be very focused on what I chose. As an adult my strategies for learning and completing tasks haven’t kept up or changed as needed, used to excel at it when young, but now struggle with doing things at a high level or with consistency as an adult. I feel way more empathic and connected as an adult and far less able to concentrate or direct my focus. When I stress out I just bottle up and zombie off. I don’t hink I am on the aut specturm, but maybe have some ADD/ADHD issues. Never been medicated or diagnosed, been looking for something like therapy or CBT but haven’t found a practitioner with the convenience or price point to give it a try.
Have a friend whose child is diagnosed and displays many of the characteristic behavioral traits strongly, a lot of struggle to have a ‘normal’ day. Haven’t met the kid. I generally tend to get along fine with outsiders or those who I think may be on the spectrum, but never known or followed along in a kid’s development.
Thanks! I think it comes from my mother’s side in my case; I’m not sure whether she is on the spectrum herself or not, but she’s got a number of possible traits. I’d been saying that I thought there was something different about me for years, but apart from some hints*, they hadn’t discussed it with me. When my wife joined the family, she asked whether I had been tested, since I hadn’t mentioned it to her. My mum basically said that I was normal, just like my uncle Jim. My wife basically said, “well… yes, just like Uncle Jim” and dropped the subject. I guess partly because I lived in a tiny evangelical enclave, I was able to believe that everyone else was weird.
I think it’s important to see people’s similarities and differences, and not to get too carried away by either. We may not feel that we have a persistent personal identity (I certainly don’t feel like I have a consistent one), but I think it’s more like that there’s a range of behaviour and identity that changes over time and depending on the context. I often recognise people by sound and some external signs, such as gait, hairstyle etc. I also recognise their face, but I’m not always very good at it.
I think it’s fine to acknowledge that you have difficulties in these areas, but they do tend to communicate a lot more information to many people (whether consciously or unconsciously), and it’s possible for them to get better at recognising that information. I think it can be harder for autistic people to accept this both because they (we) can find it difficult to read people and because they are so often misread. The information isn’t really able to be translated into language, but it’s more a communication of empathy – how the other person is receiving your words or reacting to your presence, whether they are listening and understanding, whether they sympathise with you, whether you have a connection, what they’re going to do next etc. These could be spoken with words to some extent, but often people look for a match between your body language and your words as a sign that your words are genuine. Of course people can fake or misread this body language (and often misread autistic body language), but that doesn’t completely eliminate its usefulness.
Actually, this is one of the things I’ve had to work at: often I care about someone and I’m listening to them, but it may not seem like it. I’ve had to consciously insert the appropriate sounds and body language without making it seem like I’m being insincere (if I’m too obvious about the fact that it’s a conscious affect). It can also be difficult to have the appropriate amount of eye contact so you look like you’re listening without staring the other person down, and while actually being able to take in what they’re saying. I’ve also found it difficult to say the right words to express sympathy with someone; it’s much easier to stay silent, but sometimes people expect some kind of intelligent comment in reaction to it. The kind of intelligent reactions that I would find easier to give (advice on strategies to deal with the situation) are often not welcome though; you have to express some kind of empathy with the other person’s mental state. On the other hand, if I try to understand it and generalise their mental state into a rule of human behaviour, that isn’t particularly welcome either.
*Once I overheard my mother advising a pregnant woman never to call her child Jonathan, because “they’re always trouble”. It took me a few weeks before I was able to comment to her that this might not have been the most sensitive thing to say. I also remember “Earth to Jonathan” being the way I was often addressed, since I was spaced out so much of the time. I wonder what it must be like to be conscious all of your waking hours.
) despite the fact that I haven’t seen Home Improvements for almost 20 years? However, it takes me a few seconds before I can identify a person I meet in a different context, even if I’ve met them a few times in the past month? I think in my case it’s more of a processing speed thing where I have to focus on several things at the same time and respond appropriately to them in real life, but on screen I can switch off some of those functions. I have similarly good results when I try face blindness tests, and I don’t even seem to have any trouble remembering actors’ names, which is much more of an issue in real life.
