#ITS A WORD. TO DESCRIBE. AUTISTIC HYPEREMPATHY

[sirompp]

every time i see people misusing/making fun of the word empath i lose a year off my life

[painted-crow]

Secondary Toast Revolving Door, Part 1

I guess I should start with a little about me, since that’s easier than making you pick through previous asks for information and some of you guys are new here. This one’s going to be heavily personal, so you can skip it if you want.

I’m a double Bird. My Bird primary system is heavily Badger influenced, and I also use Lion to support it by telling me when I should investigate something more closely. If we can dip into primary territory for a moment, I guess you can say I understand the world through systems that model things around me. But not all of those systems are things I’ve consciously examined, or fully investigated.

My understanding of how historical people dressed is pretty limited, for example, because I haven’t studied it in depth to get all the information—but I consciously understand what I do know about it. You could say this system piece is tiny but clear; I could expand it if I chose to find out more.

My understanding of how someone I’m not close to thinks might have more data to work with, but I haven’t consciously processed it; that’s the kind of thing where my Lion primary model will tell me to look closer if that person starts acting weird. This system piece might be described as huge but fuzzy; I could clarify it if I sat down and thought about it. I probably have more of these than I realize, but Lion basically takes care of monitoring those. I don’t have to investigate everything.

But some of my systems are both large and fairly clear, because I’ve taken the time both to gather data on them and to examine it. My understanding of myself is… well, I won’t say it’s terribly clear, because I’m in my early twenties and I’m still constantly getting new information, plus someone keeps changing the environment and mucking with my data (that would be me). But I have to examine it, because my brain is like a notoriously buggy piece of software and I’m the poor schmuck saddled with tech support duties.

Basically, the reason I’m good at playing therapist with other people is that I’m constantly doing exactly that thing with myself. (This probably makes me a very annoying patient for actual therapists.)

About that buggy brain, then.

I have major depression. That was professionally diagnosed when I was a teenager and it’s probably genetic. I take medication for it, when I remember to. It especially flares up in the winter or when I’m under stress. I probably have some kind of anxiety disorder too.

I’m almost certainly autistic, which I’ve never brought up with a professional—the first person to figure it out was the system I’m now best friends with, because they’re autistic and they knew I was within two weeks of talking to me. It took me two years to catch up with them and figure it out myself.

In my defense, I thought executive dysfunction, sensory overwhelm, dissociation, and hyperempathy were like… secret menu items for depression, because those only really bug me during depressive episodes. My current theory is that they’re related to autistic burnout instead.

I mask a lot, subconsciously—it’s actually really hard to turn that off normally—and I just can’t do that as much when depressed. If I do, my tolerance for everything else goes way down and I’ll go into overwhelm and start having shutdowns and dissociating. I recover pretty quickly (hours, not days), but if you’ve never spent 15 minutes standing in a Walmart aisle trying to decide whether you want a jar of peanut butter, but you can’t make decisions because you can’t access your emotions and you don’t really feel like you’re “here” but you kind of just want to go home… well, be glad I guess.

Of course, I have other autistic traits that show up when I’m not under stress, but they’re seldom associated with autism because most people don’t know what autis are like when we’re actually happy. Like, hyperlexia? That’s not even an “official” word, the auti community just uses it because “official” literature hasn’t caught up. I taught myself to read at age three (according to my mom; she says I was reading news headlines and stuff, not just books I’d memorized) and wrote a 35k word novella when I was ten, with no external prompting. My audio processing used to be terrible, but I routinely tested at college age reading levels as a kid.

I also might have ADHD? If so, it’s also mostly just noticeable if I’m under stress, and then it’s hard to tell if that’s the issue or if it’s just autism/depression again.

You might be getting a clearer picture of how my secondary and its model end up burnt so often!

(Resisting a very strong urge to cut stuff from this post.)

In short, I was a Gifted Kid. I spent a lot of my teen years biting off more than I could chew, honestly. I felt that I should be able to do more, and I wanted to be taken seriously, but I had basically no idea how to take care of myself because my needs are different from everyone else’s. I’m still figuring those out.

I’m kind of like an orchid plant: incredibly picky about conditions, wants a different “soil” and watering schedule, gets stressed if stuff changes too quickly, but when everything is just right and it does bloom, it goes all out.

I’m not kidding when I say that I have odd needs. One of them is the need for creative work, which seems to be hardwired into me. When I say that art or writing keeps me sane, I often hear back “oh yeah! I’ve heard that can be very therapeutic,” which is an innocuous reply, but it’s always bugged me, and I think I’ve figured out why.

First, because that’s not the reason I make things… I just… have to. Second, I can’t “make up” not doing creative work with some other kind of therapy. Third and most importantly, I’d much rather think of “artist” as my ground state, and depression as a condition that happens when my needs aren’t being met, rather than thinking of depression as the default that I’m just using art to escape from. That seems to me a healthier way of thinking, and probably a more accurate one, but I’m probably the only one who can see that distinction.

If life gets in the way and I can’t make space for creative work, it will actively make my depression worse. I know this because, multiple times, I’ve been unable to pinpoint why I’m feeling shitty, and then I go back to my easel or my writing or (ukulele, cooking, even just taking care of houseplants) and realize I haven’t done anything creative in like a month and thaaaat’s the problem.

I crack open a bottle of gesso to prep some canvases and it smells like… well, I don’t think you can get high off gesso? But it’s not like when you’re out of it on painkillers or cold medicine or whatever. It’s incredibly grounding, like the world snaps back into focus but it’s also oddly euphoric. Or I write ten thousand words in a couple days and it just… I don’t know what that does. I’ve never run across a word for it.

The writer of Smile at Strangers (a really good memoir centered around women, anxiety, and karate) describes a similar feeling in relation to her martial arts practice.

It’s also a bit like when all the snow melts after winter and you step outside and there’s the smell of wet soil under sunlight and I’m not sure if this fully translates for people who don’t have seasonal depression. Sorry.

Dammit, I want to paint… I haven’t had space to set up for like eight months. I’ve been nose-deep in writing projects since last summer for a reason, but right now my friggin Ravenclaw secondary is off angsting about something because of Life Stress Bullshit, and I don’t have the focus to work on any of my writing projects. Apart from this one. But it’s not really what I want in terms of creative work.

*velociraptor screech*

Oh, yeah. I guess I could mention this is why my nickname is Paint. Not sure if that was obvious before. The header image (which is more visible in the app for some reason) is one of my paintings. It’s a tiny one and it’s not one of my favorites, but I had the photo on my phone and the colors work well enough for what I needed.

(restrains self from negging my own painting ability)

This is starting to get into spoiler territory for what burned Ravenclaw secondary looks like, huh? It’s peaced out for a couple weeks at this point. I’m trying to write about what made it take off, but my ability to think of words and form a coherent sentence kinda flew out the window when I approached it directly.

Let’s just say that around the start of the month, someone I was talking to online (if you’re reading this, it’s definitely not you) kindaaaa hit a nasty depression trigger of mine. Not their fault—it’s very specific to me, and I struggle to explain why I can’t really talk about it. Basically, I spent years studying programming and web design, and due to several different but related issues during that experience, it’s now a trigger for me. I very much want it not to be, but trying to train that out of myself has induced more than one panic attack and I’m stuck between giving up on it or figuring out a way to go back to it that doesn’t totally shut my brain down.

That paragraph took forever to write, by the way.

I think I have to end this here. I… am going to go take out the trash, and water my plants, and make my bed, and file some paperwork, and maybe I’ll even mix up some bread dough or do some laundry. Spoiler alert for what it looks like when my Hufflepuff model takes over, I guess.

Oh. And I should maybe probably eat something. I almost forgot about that... again.

[aromantic-eight]

I wrote this as a reply to a post ages ago but I think it warrants being its own post so that convo doesn't get dragged back up just to reblog this. For people who are unsure about definitions when I talk about empathy and morality:

1) Empathy: an instinctive emotional response to another person* who is in pain. Basically “when a person is hurt, I feel bad.” Can also work positively (”when a person is happy, I feel good.”). Sometimes equated or associated with theory of mind**. Often used synonymously and as the basis for compassion and morality (i.e. “the morality of x action is determined entirely by whether or not I feel bad when I do it”), probably because many people use it as their primary motivation for caring about other people (most people don’t want to feel bad, so they take steps to avoid that feeling). 

* Note that the definition of ‘person’ here is based entirely on what your lizard-brain decides is a person. For many neurotypical people this means “human beings who look/act like me, or people I identify with,”. For people with hyperempathy, it can also include things like stuffed animals, food, insects, other items around the house they’re fond of. 

**  There’s a whole Discussion about ‘emotional empathy’ vs ‘cognitive empathy’ that’s often used to argue that autistic people aren’t like Those Other, Nasty Low-Empathy people, nevermind that a significant percentage of autistic people are bad at both.

2) Respect for human life / Compassion: the recognition that other people are human beings who deserve to be treated with respect and who do not deserve to be hurt. The conscious decision to avoid needlessly harming others/ to try and help others when you can.

The former is generally an inborn trait or otherwise developed in childhood. It is, importantly, an automatic response that is for the most part out of our control. The latter is a skill that can and should be learned, and (importantly) can be learned and applied regardless of what emotional reactions you do or do not have, and can be learned and applied regardless of whether or not you personally are capable of feeling guilt.

The tension comes up because, as mentioned earlier, many people consider these two things as synonymous and, even more, consider empathy a prerequisite to compassion. It’s very very common to see people extolling empathy as the cornerstone of compassion (all morality needs is for people to have Basic Human Empathy / those people did bad things because they’re lacking in empathy). Most people who are low-empathy (i.e. they don’t experience this emotional reaction either at all or very little) are told their whole life that this makes them inherently incapable of being good people. They were just Born Bad, and and are told they will inevitably live a life where they do nothing but hurt everyone around them because they just Aren’t Able To Care, Like Real People Do. Most redemption arcs involving villains who Don’t Care revolve around said person acquiring empathy or otherwise Finally Feeling Guilty About What They Did, which only reinforces the message that unless you were born with a brain capable of experiencing these specific emotional reactions you cannot ever be a good person or a hero.

Even if you're not making a statement like "that person is evil because they lack empathy" it's very important to take a step back and look at which words you’re using to describe morality and compassion. The centering of empathy is common, and it’s everywhere, and it’s very very easy for an empathetic person to just go along with the flow instead of keeping focused on the skills that help everyone better their relationships. Someone can recognize that other people don’t deserve to be hurt without personally feeling distressed by their pain. Someone can recognize an action was morally wrong without personally experiencing guilt. Those are the things that can be taught and learned.

tl;dr: empathy is an automatic emotional response that cannot be learned. Compassion is a decision and a skill and can be learned, and there is no useful reason to conflate the two. We should be focusing on encouraging people to develop skills to relate to the people around them in healthy ways that minimize harm, instead of focusing on trying to rewire people to feel emotions that are, by their nature as emotions, not something that can be controlled.

[housexoxohearts]

30 Days of Autism Acceptance: Day 1

Prompt taken from the 30 Days of Autism Acceptance.

[ Image Description: Me and my cousin’s four-year-old daughter, who we’ve suspected is also autistic, perhaps with ADHD. I took this photo on my cell phone camera in the “self-we” style as we sat at a park bench. I’m a woman with metal-rimmed glasses and long dark hair. My niece (as I call her) is a little girl with brown hair tied back into a ponytail with a pink hair tie. We’re both wearing black shirts. We’re both smiling, enjoying our family vacation, posing for a picture. End Description. ]

The name I go by is Michaela Hearts. You can call me Mickey, Mick, or anything, really. I'm currently 24 years old, but I'll be 25 in June. And, as many of you know, I'm autistic.

Be warned, content ahead is a long read, and contains mentions of Autism Speaks, the cure rhetoric, ableism (from the world and internalized), bullying, and abuse.

I was professionally diagnosed at the age of three and 3/4 years, in the year of 1997. Apparently, I had always displayed a lack of interest in social interactions, and was hardly verbal until the age of 5. I would often play by myself, and in repetitive fashion. My father recounted the days I would strip dolls down and wrap them in washcloths, unwrap them, and repeat this sequence for long stretches of time, all the while so engrossed with such activities that I wouldn’t interact with anything else. I was hardly affectionate with my brother or my cousins, in spite of their warm friendliness and interest in playing with me. I ignored my oldest cousin’s (the mother of the little girl in the photo, heh) outstretched arms for a hugs for a very long time. (At some point, though, I eventually gave in, but not without an irritated sigh, lol.)

The diagnosing doctor explained autism to my parents in a way that broke down all expectations that I could ever live independently, or make anything of myself. My parents tried to work around these expectations placed on me and my brother (who would later be diagnosed with Asperger’s), but it was difficult. I wouldn’t say it was because of us. No, not at all. This was the age, after all, during which detrimental misinformation about autism was spread. And, with hardly any other resources at hand, my parents unfortunately fell into the collective misconception that their children’s autism was the result of heavy-metal poisoning from a serum found in vaccines, the fixed capacity of autistic functioning (functioning labels), and---worst of all---that our autism was a sickness that could be treated (or cured) with organic changes to our lifestyle.

I say that, though I’m fortunate enough that nobody in my family has been subjected to Bleach Therapy. Though my parents were convinced that organic-restricted diets and special salt baths could “ease symptoms of autism,” they at least had common sense enough to not give us bleach. And they eventually stopped their “treatments” as we grew tired of these routines that didn’t at all make us feel good (not to mention, didn’t do anything with our autism).

Through all this, I never realized. I had no idea I was autistic. My parents never explained any of these concepts to me. Whenever I was troubled by bullies at school who targeted me for being “weird,” every adult simply reassured me that I was “unique.” Which, you know, that’s nice and all, but... It didn’t explain why I was like this.

It didn’t explain why certain smells---that almost no one else picked up on---hurt my head so bad and made my stomach churn. It didn’t explain why certain sounds pierced my ears and painfully traveled down my spine, which in turn made me want to scream and hurt someone to make the pain, and its source, stop. It didn’t explain my discomfort with physical acts of affection. It didn’t explain my lack of social energy, which kept me at home most of the time (and sometimes even looked like I didn’t care). It didn’t explain my scripts and echophenomena. It didn’t explain my hyperempathy that left me in tears whenever anything bad happened to anyone. It didn’t explain why I was so emotionally fragile and impressionable, not only remembering the horrible things that were said to me (even if someone else might have thought these things were benign), but internalized it all into adulthood.

“Unique” was a start, but it didn’t quite answer anything. Not in the way Autism did.

I found out when I was 12. People who know me know that this was the worst time of life, as I had struggles both at home and at school. All I will say, to keep from tangents, is that my hyperempathy made me hurt the way my cousin (younger sister of the photographed little girl’s mother) did, and terribly. And it didn’t help that I had absolutely no friends at school. The friends I had were all fed up with my odd---and I guess disgusting---habits, and so distanced themselves from me. Everyone else found reasons to belittle me. Some acted like accidentally touching me had infected them with some terrible disease.

I knew there was something “wrong” with me.

My parents took my brother and me to a group program called Progressive Resources (which I had suspected, and now confirmed, is affiliated with Autism $peaks). I just knew it as “Group,” the place where we went to play and “learn social skills” while our parents talked about how much they hated us. (That was the way I described it, anyway, at a time when I had become numb to the thought of my parents’ disappointment in me.)

Because of all the toys we could play with, I thought it was fun, so I brought my hurting cousin with me one day. She didn’t like the structure of it, and commented on how infantilizing and demanding it was. That’s when I started to put two and two together; me being treated like a kid here, surrounded by “R*tards” (nonverbal people, people with special interests that are associated with very young children’s entertainment, people with audibly disabled voices) had something to do with my bad treatment at school. They hated me because I had been lumped up with these people.

So I lashed out. At my parents, my aunts and uncles...

Eventually, it got to the point where I said terrible, horrendous things about one of the clients at Progressive Resources (things I can’t repeat). My mother had been struggling to figure out what to do about my sudden burst of rebellion, but that was when I guess everything stopped for her. She was just about to get into the car when she heard the ugly things I said about the other client. She gave me one of the most serious looks I had ever seen on her and said,

��You’re autistic, little girl.”

My thought process stopped dead in its tracks. Having internalized ableism over so many years with horrible media depictions, “Awareness Campaigns,” and hearing the ugly things said about neurodivergents, I took this as an insult. Autism for me was an insult. So I protested, to which she provided my story.

“You didn’t talk until you were 5. You wouldn’t interact with anyone. We took you to a doctor---”

My attention span cut off from there. As much as I had internalized the world’s ableism, as much as I hated the concept of autism, it began to explain so much. It answered all the questions that “Unique” couldn’t. And yet, even with this realization, I can’t say I was happy about it. It was just a word to describe why I was chastised.

I hid in the attic for the rest of the day and marinated in my thoughts. I had to process every event that had taken place in my life. To this day, I can struggle from time to time to accept myself as I am. But from that day forth, I made the conscious decision to work with people just like me, other autistics. The following day, I made amends with the people I had before been antisocial with at PR, and was surprised at their forgiveness and eagerness to interact with me.

Though I was slowly beginning to crack under the weight of depression (from a lifetime of peer abuse, burden rhetorics, and my hyperempathy making me aware of all the wrongs in the world---with my hurting cousin as the window), I was even beginning to make friends. The initial shock melted into a deeper understanding of myself, and some very basic needs. There would be future struggles I wouldn’t take into consideration or realize until the present time, but I was starting to feel just a little bit better about who I was.

At the end of the story, I don’t want the idea that my parents were horrible Autism Parents to be taken. Yes, my parents had made some mistakes, and they let their misconceptions lead them into nasty territories with me. They just didn’t know what they were doing, and they had no means to correct themselves. Yes, a lot of their decisions have some lifelong consequences on me, but after I’ve worked so hard to make myself heard to them, they’ve finally opened their hearts. And while there’s still a lot that they don’t understand, they do understand that I am neurodivergent and mentally ill, and I need their support. They may not get it, but they do everything they can to support me, even going against past beliefs they had about me and the world.

But I realize that not everyone has this kind of support. There are people out there who can’t afford to can’t afford to get an official diagnosis, whether it be money for insurance, or the security of employment or within a household. To everyone who believes they may be autistic, but do not have it on an official medical document, I believe you too. And I love you. You are good and valid, and I hope for nothing but the best for you, even if it turns out you’re not autistic.  ♡

Mickey 💕 You❣

[teachanarchy]

While I live a pretty normal life I have a lot of issues with sensory sensitivity. Like loud noises, bright lights, certain food tastes, smells and standing in crowds of people. These things make me feel a bit stressed out resulting in various issues like headaches and digestive problems.

While we're on the subject. Certain non-autistic people have the misconception that those of us on the spectrum would "lack empathy." That is simply not true. We often have a hard time to "read" people, but we certainly do not lack human empathy. That needed to be said.

2.

I am lonely. I want to be around people so much. I love talking, they taught me to talk and forgot to give me others to talk to. I want to work, but I need supervision.

I hit my head on things when I am upset. I hate that. My arms flap when I am excited and people stare. People stare for other reasons too...

And I love children and children love me, they love to talk to me and ask questions, or talk to me about cartoons. I would never harm anyone, but their parents act like their child is in danger it makes me feel like I am a terrible person.

Luckily now I am friends with an eight-year-old and she is awesome, loves LEGO, and we have a lot of talks about who is the best Disney princess, explorers (I told her about an explorer in LEGO, Johnny Thunder who explored tombs and she has suddenly decided to love the idea), and also about Doctor Who and time travel (the back seat of her car is a time machine when we go anywhere!)

So I guess, in short, autism is lonely, it can cause a lot of pain, it's like being trapped in a body that is only half loaded. Just cause people are aware of autism or accept autism, doesn't mean they will make time for those with autism.

Friends make it easier.

3.

I am an autistic person with hyperempathy, and my husband (also in the spectrum) has very low levels of empathy. He certainly still cares a great deal about others, but he finds it difficult-bordering-on-impossible to understand people's feelings or connect with them. He still has plenty of sympathy, though.

I, on the other hand, am kind of like an emotional chameleon. I can't help mirroring the emotions of those around me, and it's very tough. I want to be helpful and supportive when I see someone having a hard time, but when I start to adopt their negative feelings, it becomes very difficult to help because now I've got all this stress of my own to deal with.

4.

I have huge trouble telling someone they've made a mistake. I've let people go calling me by the wrong name, or I change the subject in conversation because the idea of making someone feel bad for making an error is intolerable. That one's a bugger to get around. It was worse as a teenager, I was once frozen to the spot for 3 minutes outside a teacher's door because knocking would interrupt them. Never mind that I had to see them and that they were expecting it, it might slightly inconvenience them and it would be my fault. I'm glad that stage is mostly over with.

5.

Emotions can be more extreme, especially the negative ones, unfortunately. There is a sudden trigger and a switch just flips. I usually take a step back and take a breather to get myself to baseline then.

This also ties in with control for me. I have a hard time with unfamiliar situations/places or if I have no way out. What's normal there, how should I behave, what if I do something wrong? What if I need a moment to myself where do I go? I would love to travel but everything about it can get me into a panic. But once I'm there and have assigned a spot as my place to collect myself I'm fine. Getting there is the hard part.

I also want to be really, really sure someone likes a present. I am horrible at giving a gift without them knowing what it is. I only not check if they would like it if there is no doubt in my mind that they would love it.

6.

My go-to analogy is to imagine being in a country where nobody speaks English and you don't speak their language. You don't have a phrasebook but you do have a translation dictionary. So you are speaking the words but the syntax is way off, not to mention accent and pronunciation. You might think you're making sense and communicating well but really people will be confused by you.

7.

For me, it's being different enough to be noticed and alienated from other people, but being similar enough to know it and hate yourself for it. I'm high functioning, but I was always a little bit less developed than others my age and was always ostracized for it. Got bullied out of high school by former friends when I finally told them I was high functioning and haven't ever finished.

Now after isolating myself for seven years, I have no idea how to make friends because social interaction is something that does not come naturally or easily to many of us. You can try and try to make friends but there is always the little voice reminding you that you are different and you are always paranoid that others notice. So you begin to hate yourself for it which then is noticed by others who then don't want to be around you, further convincing you of your differentness. It is the most lonely feeling in the world to know how you are supposed to act and not be able to do so, as hard as you try. I would not wish it on anyone.

8.

I have thoughts that no one else has, and when I articulate those thoughts, be it a joke, reference, even just a sentence, I will more often than not get a vacant stare in response. It's actually getting a little irritating if I'm honest, having to try and explain in terms they'll understand before dismissing the conversation entirely because I'm fighting an uphill battle.

9.

Imagine you just started a new job, but you didn't get any on-the-job training, the company has a very different work ethic to what you're used to, the environment is different, the people are unapproachable, everyone seems to know what they're doing but you, nobody seems to accept that you don't know what you're doing, they just get irritated with you, and it's assumed that you can just ask people for help if you're struggling... but everyone is scary to approach and makes you feel inadequate. That's what it's like for me anyway

An extension to this metaphor, also imagine that everyone else loves their job but you're only doing it because there are no other jobs going and you need the money. Ideally, you'd be doing something else but it's not an option, this is the job you have, like it or not

10.

I've grown to fear and hate contact with people because of the stares/bullying. But I'm not afraid of children or small animals. My dog is my only friend.

11.

I'm in high school and it seems that most people are on one page and I'm in a different book.

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12.

I have a good friend who is autistic. He rocks his body and bounces a little and can't help it, he can't filter his words very well. He wishes he could be the guy who lives with the flow but pretty much needs structured plans and has a hard time if anything changes. He describes it as lonely too, but also frustrating. He says social situations are just too alien to him. He can't understand others well. He says he knows what he wants his mind and body to do, but they just don't.

I had this piece of garbage car once, like it was REALLY bad, and sometimes it would die, and the radio buttons didn't always work, and it had steering and breaking problems, and the clutch had problems too. Before I got rid of it, I'd always get [mad] driving it because I knew what it should be capable of doing and I knew what I was capable of doing in a normal working car, but I just couldn't get it right in that car. My friend told me the way I acted driving that car is how he was in his head. He knew what his body and mind should be able to do, and he knew what he should be able to do with a working mind. But he couldn't. He was trapped in his body and mind like I was in that crappy car. Really broke my heart... I don't know how he does it, I certainly couldn't.

13.

I was diagnosed with Aspergers at the age of 11.

I feel like I'm part of a play where everyone has the script except me.

14.

"So if I'm speaking to someone with autism, what can I do to make you feel more comfortable while taking to you?"

For me, I just want to be treated with dignity, patience, and respect. Be aware that I'm probably agonizing over your social cues that I may or may not be interpreting correctly or even noticing.

15.

I think I'm reasonably socially competent but it just takes so much effort. I have to think through every social move and feel overwhelmed after. I have to prepare for interactions. I hate small talk. I feel incredibly uncomfortable if people touch me, or stand too close to me or behind me. I have a mole on my cheek that has changed recently so I went to get it checked out, the doctor I'd never met before touching my face and peering intently at me and the bright lights in the office pretty much wrote my morning off by killing my threshold for anything else. I'm terrified of people's reactions to me and actively dislike meeting new people because I can't predict them/haven't worked out the formula for what they like to talk about/their humor, etc.

True relaxation for me is sitting in my room, by myself indulging in whatever I've become obsessed with. It's currently hockey, and I just love getting immersed in it, reading statistics, team histories and player profiles etc.

16.

It's really, really lonely. To be desperate to go out and be with people but at the same time have no idea how to interact with them. Left out of every conversation. Completely ignored.

The benefits are basically being able to concentrate on anything and really excel at it. Also not falling apart in an emergency, because the emotions of the situation don't really come into play.

17.

Social interactions that come to others naturally require a lot of thought and planning in my situation. For lack of a better analogy, I have mental checklists for every social event under the sun.

Obsessions are amped up from non-autistic people, as are following rituals - every night when I get home, I have dinner and watch The Simpsons, no ifs, ands, or buts.

I work as a chef, and my supervisor and I have a certain codeword (traffic) that if I mention it out of the blue, it means "I need to cool off for a few, I'm getting overloaded here."

18.

The therapist who diagnosed me once told me this story about how one of her patients basically thought "Why is everyone so [...] weird?" for about 17 years before he got diagnosed because he genuinely didn't realize that he might be the odd one. That's me, as well.

19.

I'm coming up on 40 years old in a few months. I feel like I have learned enough of those things, that I can now pass for completely normal. I've got a wife, I got a place, I keep my bills paid, I haven't had to move in over 4 years which is a new record for me. At worst, people think of me as an under achiever. Nobody has any ideas. It can be done, but it does take time. A lot of time.

20.

Socially I've managed to cope with my autism, I was quiet in middle school and a little bit of high school. I figured out I'm best at making myself look ridiculous in front of people. I now just laugh at myself and I seem to fit in, however, most of the time I don't really catch on to my friend's jokes or opinions.

21.

I love people, but people have to make exceptions. Being my friend means having to look after me. Being my friend means understanding I can't meet you at the mall, you have to come to my house and take me. Being my friend means accepting I won't know when I have caused emotional harm through being too blunt or saying something honest when you wanted a lie.

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22.

Oh man, change could be so hard. When I was younger I hated it when my parents would redecorate the living room. Took me weeks to get used to and accept it as the new normal.

23.

Filtering useless info is exhausting, and I feel lucky I can even do that even though it costs me extra energy. A club is a nightmare, way too loud and too many people and lights. On the flip side when it's super quiet my mind focuses on the background hum, equally distracting.

24.

I never experienced an invitation to anything till I was older. Even if I don't want to go the feeling of being included is the best feeling ever. Like my friend, she had a party just for me. She invited 3 people to play board games and they chose board games that I was able to understand. It was the first party I had ever been to. I was 25.

My friend invited me to the board game night with an actual invitation it said "Time: Place: What to bring:" It made it structured and it was the best adventure I ever had because it was my first real social adventure.

25.

For me, its loud noises, especially bangs, screeches, high pitch noises from electronics no one else seems to hear. Constant repetitive sounds like beeping, there are other sounds too! I don't like a lot of music because of it. Sometimes, it's sounds others cannot really hear, or that their brains have tuned out. It can be strange explaining to someone you do not like their favorite song because there is a scratching noise from a guitar pick on a guitar that they have tuned out or is so minor they don't notice.

26.

I have high functioning autism as well as anxiety so some of this may be the anxiety but I find it really hard maintaining friendships at all. For example, I left 1.5 years ago and haven't spoken to one of them in over a year because I quite honestly didn't know how.

I also find communicating really hard. It takes a lot of effort and I would find meeting someone new really hard with me having no Idea where to go past hello and me getting a stutter is also quite likely.

I don't cope well with changes from a routine. For example, I will eat the same meals each day.

27.

It's hard, not only socially but also in school. I can't understand what the questions are asking me because I always interpret it in another way. Especially the questions like "Why did the author write this, how does the author feel?.. etc." I would always question if I was reading this answer correctly, and my teachers would get frustrated with me due to the excessive amount of questions I asked.

28.

If I said to you, I am done talking for now and wanted to stop talking, it doesn't mean I did not like you and it does not mean I did not enjoy the talking. Just sometimes it's a bit overwhelming and I need to stop for a while before going back to it. Some people take it as that I did not like them, or that I am rude. Then I get sad cause I can't go back to talking.

29.

My current girlfriend didn't realise that I have high functioning autism - partly because it's not severe, but also because basically all of the interactions with her have been ones that I've been through many, many times and I roughly know how I'm meant to react, even if sometimes I don't know why I need to react that way. it's a huge help but also a hindrance because some people just refuse to believe me until they spend more than a few minutes at a time with me

30.

The Internet has been one of the best things ever for autistic people. It is so much easier to communicate through text devoid of all the body language and vocal tones...

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