Questions for the female autists here - Sneed

[Georgio Cocklord]

People's faces creeped me out when I was young because all I saw were these blurry shadows and fuzzy shapes, so I looked down at the ground instead, I understood all the emotional expressions when I was right up close to someone (like really up close or sat close to the television) I don't blame my parents for not noticing, I hid it well because, well, I wasn't trying to hide it, I didn't even know it wasn't everyone's experience. There were so many kids I knew that had glasses, so I figured that was something that parents just figured out before you went to school. Maybe my declining eyesight was slow at first and than rapidly got worse, I don't know.

That sucks, I liked to look at things but I was the silent kid cause I hadnt developed speech properly till 4, I always used to draw and watch cartoons. My eyesight got fucked cause of genetics, everybody wore glasses and so I had to do it too. Im not autistic but people can consider me so from first impressions cause Im very anti social, I dont have really good ideas about how to interact casually with people outside family and Im very fixated/obsessed with fiction, partially cause its a reprieve from the real world. My parents know that Im just simply different cause I can function really well at home but still try to encourage me to fuck around and find out with external interactions. Its not a god complex or anxiety or anything like that i guess, i just simply dont have the emotional connection with other people and also dont want to put effort in getting along with people cause I find them boring, they probably find me boring, they find me creepy, they dont care or something similar, all of which are not something preferable personally.

Sorry this was so long but people here listen. People say Kiwifarms is this awful hellsite but I've felt more at ease here than I ever have on reddit, twitter or facebook. Plus, I love the layout of old forums. I'm gen z but I've been using the net since before social media and social justice completely took it over, so I've always liked forums. I like talking to people who aren't afraid to be honest.

Which is why I retreat to online forums, the farms and couple of discords are a lot more free to talk in and have generally interesting/interested people even if they dont necessarily care about me. The saying naughty words bit and sperging out about shit bit is just an additional bonus but it is nice to talk to people who are generally knowledgeable and similar minded instead of trying to talk to a random girl at the bar or guy on the street about edrama or media shit and the whole thing being a boring waste of time. The farms especially has a lot of diversity of thought in general, from the outsider view of the farms I thought this is some edrama sperg forum for internet weirdos but I never expected there to be movie threads, art threads, women and gay people, music, software whatever. It was like stumbling on to 4chan for the first time again but this time the people were a lot more intelligent and honest, one second I can have a long convo about Batman TAS with someone next second can get called a retard faggot for having a stupid take on edrama. Its real fun.

 

[Caesare]

So many autistics here.

It's hard? I got diagnosed as a literal toddler!

Is this how your parents knew:

https://www.sierrapeds.com/astepbystepguidetohelpingstopanautisticchildfromeatingpoop/

https://www.autismparentingmagazine.com/autism-fecal-smearing/

 

[Super Guido]

I was a kid and that was just how it was for me.

That seems to be a tremendous cause of grief for a lot of people - when you're a kid, not only do you not have the option to do things a certain way, but you also have barely any perspective, so you have to trust people to not mess up. Then when you get older, you realized what happened to you was incompetence or at worst, active maliciousness.

Someone doesn't need to have any disability for this to happen, either. Kids aren't necessarily dumb, but they lack experience and thus, have no reference points for what's "normal" and what isn't.

I'm sorry you had to go through all of that. Lord knows how many terrible authorities I've dealt with over the years.

 

[mold]

Despite not being myself autistic, I am close with an unusual number of autistic women due to shared autistic interests. (How do I know I'm not autistic and they are, you may ask? cause it's genetic and their kids have tism and mine don't.)

I have some insight on why it used to be underdiagnosed in girls but now people are like "oh girls also."

People say "oh nobody notices if a girl is just sitting there counting bugs" or whatever but there's a further piece to the (lol) puzzle - until very recently, if you were female, not deformed, and just showed up for life, you'd end up with a job and married, just by doing what people wanted you to do. This is not just about females being more compliant, it's also about people being totally accustomed to telling girls and women what to do and not really noticing how the other person felt about it if she was complying (this is related to date rape accusations of course).

Girls and women are getting diagnosed more imo because society is falling apart. Nobody is going to wife you up if you're doing online school. Getting married, having kids puts you in a social position that means almost nobody is going to question your internal state. You're functioning in the social role as a woman, the end.

Another thing: a lot of the social discomfort people are describing on this thread is actually due to high IQ as much as or more than your autism. Other women aren't rejecting you because they sniff out your weird tism; it's because your autism is making it extremely difficult to realize how much less intelligent they are than you are. They literally cannot understand what you are saying, you are going off script, and it's so jarring to them they violate their own social rules trying to get away from you. Then they feel guilty about this, but that's uncomfortable, so they blame you for their bad feelings. There are a couple of ways to solve this problem, it's going to be different primarily depending on how old your kids are/whether you have them and what country you live in, but *it is solveable.*

 

[AnOminous]

They literally cannot understand what you are saying, you are going off script, and it's so jarring to them they violate their own social rules trying to get away from you. Then they feel guilty about this, but that's uncomfortable, so they blame you for their bad feelings.

I'm pretty much a textbook case of ADHD (diagnosed), another condition that while it isn't autism, it shares a number of features. When I was on Ritalin a couple years as a child it had a marked and immediate effect. My handwriting even turned neat from the crazy spider-on-LSD cobweb shit which is how I usually do cursive. I found the effects extremely unpleasant though and quit almost as soon as I'd learned a few things about behaving normally and decided just to train myself to function somewhat instead of relying on a pill.

If you actually have ADHD amphetamines give you nothing like a pleasant rush, which is part of why it's probably a bad idea to prescribe them so broadly. The people who they're prescribed for don't like them, but everyone else does so they often get resold.

Anyway there's a similar thing with ADD females where they tend to get the attention deficit part without the hyperactivity, so while males act out in really obvious ways and disrupt social settings, deliberately to get attention or inadvertently by just being kind of a live wire, females will just come across as kind of spacy and this isn't going to be considered something in need of intervention.

This is more a statistical thing than a hard and fast rule because there are males who just come across as withdrawn and introspective and females who are just full bore apeshit all the time from ADHD but the gender correlation is pretty strong.

Anyway there's a certain conversational style ADHD people with high IQs have that people (much as with autists) find disconcerting. Particularly, talking a mile a minute about stuff that other people just don't understand, while missing social cues that they need to knock that shit off. It doesn't particularly help that we now Live in a Society that especially with online people actively encourages ADHD behavior even in people who don't have it, while setting up a feedback loop so that people who do get even worse about it because there are no social cues to stop or even social cues that reward such behavior.

I've seen this when you get a bunch of terminally online people together for a meetup at something like a restaurant, and they don't talk like any normal group of people, but instead you have everyone talking simultaneously sometimes about completely different things, like an irl chat room. It's always funny when everyone suddenly stops and then someone responds to something someone else said a couple minutes ago and it's back to this insane chatter.

Another ADHD/autism but not tarded shared thing is just taking logical steps in your thought but skipping over it in conversation, assuming the other person will follow whatever idiosyncratic logical rules you're applying, but not noticing that they're backing away warily wondering whether you're nuts.

This is another thing that usually differs by sex, so males are more likely actively to be doing and saying things that come across as a little "off," whereas females are more likely to be withdrawn and quiet, something socially encouraged.

 

[gampboonerisms]

I'm not an autist, but i do have a couple of friends that are "on the spectrum" (like legit from a doctor). It's interesting to hear them talk about people who self diagnose. It's always more in the vein of 'why would you WANT to be like that' or something similar. They both say it's not easy to be on the spectrum and were not surprised when I tell told them "being on the [whatever] scale makes the other people feel like they are special."

Another ADHD/autism but not tarded shared thing is just taking logical steps in your thought but skipping over it in conversation, assuming the other person will follow whatever idiosyncratic logical rules you're applying, but not noticing that they're backing away warily wondering whether you're nuts.

One of the aforementioned friends has to talk outloud every thought to think through a "logical" conclusion. love her, but it was exhausting being around her nonstop for a few days.

 

[Bunny Tracks]

Another thing: a lot of the social discomfort people are describing on this thread is actually due to high IQ as much as or more than your autism. Other women aren't rejecting you because they sniff out your weird tism; it's because your autism is making it extremely difficult to realize how much less intelligent they are than you are. They literally cannot understand what you are saying, you are going off script, and it's so jarring to them they violate their own social rules trying to get away from you. Then they feel guilty about this, but that's uncomfortable, so they blame you for their bad feelings. There are a couple of ways to solve this problem, it's going to be different primarily depending on how old your kids are/whether you have them and what country you live in, but *it is solveable.*

Ngl, saying normie women are made uncomfortable by autistic women because autistic women's IQs are too high is one of the dumbest, and most cope-filled things I've ever heard.

Women, and really people in general find autistic people uncomfortable to be around not because they make them feel dumb. It's because they don't act like normal human beings so interacting with them is a pain in the ass because you don't know if you'll accidentally set them off, if they'll start doing something really embarrassing, or if they'll even understand what you're talking about, or even care.

Saying it's because of their high IQs making them realize how stupid they really are is just fucking retarded.

 

[mold]

Ngl, saying normie women are made uncomfortable by autistic women because autistic women's IQs are too high is one of the dumbest, and most cope-filled things I've ever heard.

Women, and really people in general find autistic people uncomfortable to be around not because they make them feel dumb. It's because they don't act like normal human beings so interacting with them is a pain in the ass because you don't know if you'll accidentally set them off, if they'll start doing something really embarrassing, or if they'll even understand what you're talking about, or even care.

Saying it's because of their high IQs making them realize how stupid they really are is just fucking retarded.

that's not what I said numbnuts but I understand your own autism makes nuance very difficult for you

 

[Inafune Fanfiction]

Ngl, saying normie women are made uncomfortable by autistic women because autistic women's IQs are too high is one of the dumbest, and most cope-filled things I've ever heard.

Women, and really people in general find autistic people uncomfortable to be around not because they make them feel dumb. It's because they don't act like normal human beings so interacting with them is a pain in the ass because you don't know if you'll accidentally set them off, if they'll start doing something really embarrassing, or if they'll even understand what you're talking about, or even care.

Saying it's because of their high IQs making them realize how stupid they really are is just fucking retarded.

Dated a mildly autistic woman, Never knew what was going to set her off a few months in until I dumped her ass shortly after.

Really was like pulling teeth just to ask simple questions like what anime she liked in the current season as if that was classified info at that point.

 

[Negrate]

autist women who struggle with dating DMs are open

 

[Doppelmonger]

I should go and get myself checked. How can I spot a good test an a bogus one?

 

[The Skeksis Emperor]

That seems to be a tremendous cause of grief for a lot of people - when you're a kid, not only do you not have the option to do things a certain way, but you also have barely any perspective, so you have to trust people to not mess up. Then when you get older, you realized what happened to you was incompetence or at worst, active maliciousness.

Someone doesn't need to have any disability for this to happen, either. Kids aren't necessarily dumb, but they lack experience and thus, have no reference points for what's "normal" and what isn't.

I recently got to find out that this shit is directly linked to developing misophonia (and there is a life-ruining version, not just the haha-Jersh-can't-listen-to-Chantal-eat-version): feelings of helplessness in early childhood are erroneously linked to a sound in your brain and create a pattern there that is very hard to unfuck when you are an adult. Am currently paying over 100 Eurocuck dollars a session to retrain my brain to stop that. Unfortunately misophonia symptoms were in the past usually linked with autism, so I had several people try to push that diagnosis on me, while if anything I have the opposite issues to autism.

I can't blame people for not knowing what they don't know and I know most medical/psychology types have good intentions starting out, but man I feel bad for the kid I was sometimes and all the other kids who went through something like this. Hell, it even inspired me to PL here. But seriously, kiwis with misophonia, you are not necessarily autistic and there is a fix to it.

 

[NoReturn]

I recently got to find out that this shit is directly linked to developing misophonia (and there is a life-ruining version, not just the haha-Jersh-can't-listen-to-Chantal-eat-version): feelings of helplessness in early childhood are erroneously linked to a sound in your brain and create a pattern there that is very hard to unfuck when you are an adult. Am currently paying over 100 Eurocuck dollars a session to retrain my brain to stop that. Unfortunately misophonia symptoms were in the past usually linked with autism, so I had several people try to push that diagnosis on me, while if anything I have the opposite issues to autism.

I can't blame people for not knowing what they don't know and I know most medical/psychology types have good intentions starting out, but man I feel bad for the kid I was sometimes and all the other kids who went through something like this. Hell, it even inspired me to PL here. But seriously, kiwis with misophonia, you are not necessarily autistic and there is a fix to it.

Misophonia can be a sign of - or directly caused by - a wonky amygdala. Wonky amygdala also is related to OCD, ADHD, and a couple other things I don't remember off the top of my head.
Like I mentioned before, I'm like you in the category of "They wanted to diagnose me with autism" but honestly I think I just have a brain defect that's the root cause of the things the medical establishment wants to diagnose and get paid to treat.
(Also pink and brown noise is a lifesaver)

 

[Spunt]

The worst thing the self-diagnosers did was stop me from self-diagnosing, when it turned out I actually did have autism. It was about 2005 and I was struggling with some aspects of work (first proper job since graduating), I performed well but my managers would keep mentioning that I needed better "negotiation and diplomacy skills" in almost every performance review and I had no idea what I was doing wrong. I wondered at the time if I had the 'tism, but that was a time when Tumblr's "mental illness as a personality quirk" obsession was in the ascendancy, and I was so repulsed by those people, as well as their counterparts on places like Something Awful and Reddit that I thought "well I'm definitely not one of those fucking people" and concluded that I just needed to try harder to get along with people, maybe take some courses, grow up a bit. Cue another 15 years of struggle, until my wife convinced me to get an assessment - I was so convinced I didn't have it that I went through with it basically to stop her nagging me about it, but it turned out I have what would have been an Aspergers diagnosis back in the day. I was in my late 30s by that point, and everything clicked - everything from my weird childhood, problems at school, problems with talking to women, problems at work and a lot of things that I just thought were immaturity, bad habits or personality flaws (my parents certainly thought they were those things and weren't exactly nice about saying so either), were all down the the 'tism. I could have got a diagnosis 15 years earlier than I actually did, and my life would have been very different and a lot easier. I wouldn't have tried to force myself into careers that I thought I "ought" to do if I had known my brain literally wasn't suited to them. I could have told HR that I had a good (and legally protected) reason for not being diplomatic with idiots and told them to get bent. I would have approached my love life completely differently. I wouldn't have felt bad about my "quirks" or expended an exhausting amount of effort trying to fight them.

tl ; dr : fuck Tumblr

 

[rrtyui]

Kind of off topic but do you guys feel you've benefitted from your Autism diagnosis? I've been diagnosed with a couple things and I don't think it's changed my life at all.

 

[Android raptor]

I've been diagnosed most of my life at this point, so I can't really imagine what my life would be like without the diagnosis. I'd probably have a harder time getting some services and accommodations I guess, though I'd probably have fewer issues from getting treated like shit in sped.

I'm thankful I got diagnosed as a kid though since I hear getting diagnosed as an adult can be time-consuming and expensive.

 

[space walrus]

Kind of off topic but do you guys feel you've benefitted from your Autism diagnosis? I've been diagnosed with a couple things and I don't think it's changed my life at all.

I have personally benefitted from my autism diagnosis. Being diagnosed made me feel like less of a failure at life and gave me other people to talk to with similar experiences. It also really helped when I needed to get accommodations for my job after I had a bit of a spergout earlier in the year. YMMV, however.

 

[Android raptor]

It also helps you get vocrehab services if you struggle with finding work, which helps you figure out what jobs you can do and find them.

 

[anliteralidiot]

People say Kiwifarms is this awful hellsite but I've felt more at ease here than I ever have on reddit, twitter or facebook. Plus, I love the layout of old forums. I'm gen z but I've been using the net since before social media and social justice completely took it over, so I've always liked forums. I like talking to people who aren't afraid to be honest.

Honestly, this is so true. I have thoughts an opinions I know other farmers would hate, and I'm okay with that because I would rather just be told I'm an idiot up-front! I always get so weird about other spaces with more like-minded people, because I'm paranoid about saying the right things.

I know most of my friends would hate me, but...it's easier to talk to people I'm not worried about offending.

 

[NoReturn]

Kind of off topic but do you guys feel you've benefitted from your Autism diagnosis? I've been diagnosed with a couple things and I don't think it's changed my life at all.

Not diagnosed with the 'tism, but I did get a diagnosis for something else and I have to admit it did get me better medical care. Whee.
(DM me if you care, I'm not trying to be vague. I just mean getting an official diagnosis for shit can actually be helpful.)