9 Signs You're Actually NOT Autistic

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/ imautisticnowwhat
📸 Instagram 📸 : / imautisticnowwhat
💛WATCH NEXT💛:
My video about Monotropism: • The Best Theory of Aut...
Taking the MQ: • How Autistic is Your M...
The 4 Types of Autistic Masking: • The 4 Types of Autisti...
9 Signs You are Probably NOT Autistic...: • 9 Signs You are Probab...
6 Obscure Signs you're Actually Autistic: • 6 Obscure Signs you're...
For more information on Monotropism:
monotropism.org/
Me and Monotropism: A unified theory of autism: www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/m...
Fergus Murray on KZbin: / @0olong
Attention, Monotropism, and the Diagnostic Criteria for Autism: monotropism.org/docs/dinah/At...
I’m not a medical professional and please do seek help if you are concerned about your mental health for any reason. Autism is not a mental illness, but autistic people can have comorbid mental health struggles.
📒 Sources 📒:
AQ Questionnaire: psychology-tools.com/test/aut...
Cat Q: embrace-autism.com/cat-q/#The...
MQ: dlcincluded.github.io/MQ/
Monotropism: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monotro...
Validation of MQ: osf.io/preprints/osf/ft73y
The Horror of Task Interruption: neuroclastic.com/the-horror-o...
Me and Monotropism - Fergus Murray: www.bps.org.uk/psychologist/m...
DSMV: www.tricare-west.com/content/...
Deceptive Behaviour in Autism: journals.sagepub.com/doi/full...
What is Bottom up Thinking: autisticphd.com/theblog/what-...
differentbrains.org/bottoms-u...
Attention, Monotropism, and the Diagnostic Criteria for Autism: monotropism.org/docs/dinah/At...
📖 *Books I'd Recommend about Autism 📖 :
Aspergirls by Rudy Simone:
amzn.to/3xSZ6Mg
Different not Less by Chloe Hayden (read if you want to cry):
amzn.to/40fKx2m
Unmasking Autism by Devon Price:
amzn.to/3LhMV3j
*These are affiliate links. The channel will receive a small commission if you buy anything on Amazon after clicking through with this link. There's no extra cost to you; any money will go towards putting out more content. I'd love to post twice a week and put more time into research for these videos. Thank you so much - I really appreciate every like and comment!
DISCLAIMER: I am a second-year psychology student and a late-diagnosed #actuallyautistic individual. I am not a qualified healthcare professional.

[@imautisticnowwhat]

Remember monotropism is a theory of autism and not all autistic people are monotropic, so you may not relate and still be autistic. This video is not made to invalidate anyone - I’m hoping it’ll do the opposite! Thank you so much for the birthday wishes and the compliments for my son’s Taylor Swift cake on the community post 😂💛💛💛 I hope this video is interesting! I know not everyone has people in their lives that they can do these quizzes with (and you might be surrounded by autistic people - all of my autistic relatives are living abroad, so I’m massively outnumbered by neurotypicals!) If you’d like to learn more about monotropism, you might like this video: kzbin.info/www/bejne/aZ6lk4KFr82ifbM And you can do the MQ with me here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/epCbqXqKe7GZmtE Remember that autistic people can mask and take steps to appear more ‘normal’. This video on different types of masking might be useful for you if you think you’re ‘too social to be autistic’: kzbin.info/www/bejne/aWeQfGB-jJimr8U I have an old video doing the CAT-Q (masking test) here: kzbin.info/www/bejne/Y4PKiqyfa7iajck Even though this is largely anecdotal, I think these conversations about the ways we are similar and the ways we are different can be useful! I’m not a medical professional and please do seek help if you are concerned about your mental health for any reason. Autism is not a mental illness, but autistic people can have comorbid mental health struggles. Lots of love 💛

[@XXAnimeLover-AceXX]

how do i rmeove my diagnoses for autism to get out if the special school im in so theres not too much noises and os i wont be mocked online or outside?

[@lindseywhite3371]

Happy birthday xx

[@Catlily5]

​@@XXAnimeLover-AceXX If you are different from other people you will probably be mocked whether you have a diagnosis or not. Sorry but I can't help you with your school.

[@XXAnimeLover-AceXX]

@@Catlily5 oh

[@Catlily5]

@@XXAnimeLover-AceXX For me things got better when I left school. But I hope things get better for you sooner!

[@livnatkafka9017]

Claim your "I'm already diagnosed (self or professionally)but I have imposter syndrome so I must watch" certificate here

[@ellad43]

i scored high on the test and I am professionally diagnosed but i don't struggle with interruptions too much so I feel like I'm not really autistic and I'm faking it :(

[@dancerchronicles]

professionally diagnosed since I was a child and yep this is me 😔

[@ryanisverycool]

@@ellad43 autism is a spectrum!! even though you may not experience that symptom very much that doesn’t mean youre not autistic. every autistic person is different so dont worry about it too much. the fact youre worrying about it at all means youre probably autistic :)

[@Montgomerythegreat]

Hahahahaha....

[@liam8041]

Hi!

[@noval1t]

Me, already professionally diagnosed with autism and adhd.. twice: Ooo yea, what if im not autistic? Gotta make sure!

[@emilybolen128]

so real

[@monikamoon14]

🤣 Love how you need to doublecheck. Paranoia , respect.

[@dav.e4410]

and very well. Being uncritical of any diagnosis is wrong. Throughout my long diagnostic journey, I suspected that I had many different disorders, and in the end, probably one of them remained almost 100% present in me My experience shows that specialists are often wrong, and when we feel the need to have a certain disorder, we artificially start behaving in a way typical of it Imposter syndrome is a very useful thing

[@marisa5359]

Yes...yes indeed. Paranoid about admitting it, too. Because even if no one here knows who I am or has probably ever seen a comment from me, I await the pointing fingers and the call outs of " Faker!"...😏

[@ChozoSR388]

I feel this. I was diagnosed with ODD (now PDA), PDD, ADHD, and Dyspraxia as a child and with Asperger's in my early teens, and there are some of these that really make me question, despite knowing that not everyone's symptoms are the same.

[@blahajenthusiast101]

The bottom up thinking is so real, I so often get assignments saying “write the title first” and I’m just screaming inside figuring out how on earth I’m going to make a title for something that doesn’t exist

[@CealdorGaming]

That in particular could just be shit assignments. My language teacher instructed the class to write the title last.

[@blahajenthusiast101]

@@CealdorGaming it could be, I have other examples of this experience but in general my teachers make us do it like that and I’m seemingly one of the only ones to struggle

[@ArianeTomlinson0311]

I ended up coping with this by making every single title a placeholder, cuz I knew I'd end up changing it anyway (still felt useless, but at least I could do that part of the assignment 😂)

[@kaminaminami]

SAME !!! or having to write a summary of what the essay will contain before writing the essay ??? I don't know what i will remember or find relevant enough before i start writing the essay !! Literally had teachers interrupt me during exams because i started with the essay and not the summary,, safe to say any focus was replaced by panic after that

[@ArianeTomlinson0311]

​@kaminaminami oh no! oh no no! I never take exams in order, that would be such a struggle to recover from 🙈 Bless, I feel for ya!

[@Nachiebree]

"You don't monologue" What about the opposite where you don't talk in conversations because the other people are already talking and there's nowhere for you to talk

[@deiwildcat1884]

I feel like I’m like this as well. Growing up I remember never getting a chance to add to conversations if I’m in a group with more than three other people. I would usually sit there waiting for a chance to talk, but most the time I would get spoken over and never get a chance to say what I wanted. And if I would hold on to that thought and say when I finally did get a break in the conversation, the topic would already be changed to something else and would get weird looks. Because of that I never really talked much during school. Was mostly seen as the awkward smart quiet kid. I only really talk people’s ears off if I can trust them or it’s a more one on one conversation.

[@maiddorleans]

Exactly, if I'm ever so bold as to say something, my head constructs a monologue bcs there's so many things to say - but neurotypycals expect to make it a converstaion with taking turns, so they interrupt me, I rather shut up and don't get to say almost anything I wanted lol

[@beesmcgee4223]

Yeah, this. Or you're just not interested enough to know what to say, your mind wanders, and you just want them to bring up 😢

[@madametaylor625]

I feel like I go between both extremes. Either I'm sitting there talking too much and watching myself talk too much, or I just check out of the conversation because interjecting feels too hard to be worth it.

[@Stfguac]

I think I've been bullied enough times as a child so I now feel panic every time I speak for longer than 5 seconds

[@andrayellowpenguin]

Hmmm... That going back to stuff we hadn't finished talking... One of the things that usually drive me nuts: people start a topic, and you start saying something and before you get to the point they move on to something else and you keep trying to get back to the point so you can say what you actually meant to say but people are like "why are you talking about that, we're no longer on that subject"! Gaaaaahhhh!!! Why are we even talking if nobody actually cares to listen or has any real interest in anything we're talking about?!???🤦

[@amberr3662]

I find with conversations I have with neurodivergent people we either stay on a certain topic for ages before moving on or we jump topics every 5 seconds, no in between

[@AnEmu404]

Literally! Sometimes i wonder if really showed autism traits in my childhood (before my professional diagnosis) but i have some key memories of this exact thing happening. The fact it has distressed me enough to remember it says it all, really!

[@Jaguarkralle1]

This happens to me and my friend a lot cause we're just jumpy and forgettable like that. But for us it's totally fine to be like "oh yeah what I wanted to say when we were talking about XY three days ago, ..." And then the convo continues haha

[@RunninUpThatHillh]

My daughter has aspergers, I have OCD and maybe a touch of autism..we have two conversations at once. She'll be banging on about her special interest (hers are people.). I respond with what we're having to eat, or chores we're doing today. We both keep responding with our own subject. It's wild sometimes😂😂😂 We're really close maybe that's why? No idea.

[@RunninUpThatHillh]

My daughter also goes back to subjects we've moved on from..(when her siblings or others have all moved on). We've learned to go back to a subject if she wants to. It's like 2 steps forward, 1 steps back..like a spiral of discussion😂

[@NutsNBolts-fv9kx]

I'm an Autistic Extrovert; intimate, small gatherings really allow me to externalize and charge up, but I find larger gatherings with less purpose to be more exhausting because they feel less substantive? Thought that made me an introvert but nah, I'm just choosey

[@frustraceann]

exactly the same here! sometimes i like larger gatherings, but they definitely take a lot out of me too.

[@Eosinophyllis]

Same here, depends on who I’m with too.

[@eldritchtourist]

Saaame. Just because I don't inherently grasp social cues doesn't mean I don't adore people and observing them and soaking in their energy. I've been seen as weird for being awkwardly over-enthusiastic and sincere and goofy. I didn't understand what small talk meant because I actually do like talking about the weather and how someone is doing and want real answers to those questions. I'm only deeply uncomfortable with socializing when I know people want fake interactions and know they'll be uncomfortable if I act like my natural golden retriever self. I think it's an underrated truth that neurotypicals don't just want shy people to be more outgoing-- they also want TOO outgoing people to be more neutral. They want the medium midpoint, anything more or less is "too much".

[@eldritchtourist]

I'll add that another problem with being an autistic extrovert is that sensory issues can make you look "difficult" in a group setting and seriously ruin your experience if other people percieve it as you making a scene or being snooty or not a team player. In those scenarios where I know I'll just be judged as uncooperative or mean or childish, I just get deeply withdrawn and don't even bother, making me suddenly look like an introvert. But really, I'm just deeply uncomfortable and know I'm not going to be respected or understood. It's not that I don't want to be around people. It's that the lights are too bright, it's too noisy, there's nothing I can eat without real nausea, or people are bonding over an activity I just do not find fun and would rather watch (and if you don't participate you're just cut out of the conversation/once again seen as "distant" and sending a social message).

[@elaine_of_shalott6587]

I was telling my therapist that before Covid I used to have big parties, paused and said, that means a dozen people counting my family.

[@SuperHappyNotMerry]

the main way I realized I'm not just an introvert and am actually autistic is that as I became more comfortable with my autistic traits and stopped repressing them to fit in I realized I'm actually not that much of an introvert. I used to say that after a while being around people tired me out and I needed time to myself to recharge but I noticed that was not entirely true with some people. in fact, certain people who I was really comfortable with actually left me feeling quite invigorated after socializing. I think the truth is that I can be pretty extroverted but thought I was introverted because most socializing required me to mask and that's exhausting.

[@LuisAldamiz]

I'd say you're introvert but you still enjoy those special people. Extrovert is about generally wanting to be with others and suffering when you can't (for extended times). Extroverts need very little "me time" and generally like to meet new people and even crowds: it charges them positively, while for introverts it is the opposite. There should also be intermediate types anyhow, i.e. less polar about socializing or not.

[@jimwilliams3816]

@LuisAlmadiz I don’t know, I think both things can be true. I tend to get energized by interactions, and for many years I unconsciously leaned into my ADHD to do so, which made me socially fearless but also clueless. After crashing and burning a lot, my social phobia eventually grew to where I now avoid people...and that lack of contact does contribute to depression and dysregulation. So in terms of that need, I would be an extrovert. But on the other hand, I’ve spent a huge amount of my life withdrawn and recharging my batteries, because the social contact, even in a fairly oblivious state, wore me out. I suspect that’s a pretty good example of an extroverted autistic person, and also an AuDHDer. Given my lack of social contact, I’ve listened somewhat wistfully to autistic people who seem not to mind being around people very, very little. I have started wishing I was like that, but I’m not. But wanting contact doesn’t change the fact that interaction is just exhausting and stressful for me, especially now. It would help if I felt like I could unmask when interacting, but the attempts I’ve made have not gone well.

[@LuisAldamiz]

@@jimwilliams3816 - Sure, I can see what you say happening too and even I personally relate to that to some extent. Some tendencies do not only depend on personality but also on age, i.e. teenagers and young adults are more into socializing than older adults in general terms, regardless of personality variants. You also learn some lessons as you experience life... In my case I think I'm generally introvert: I always needed that "me time" but there was an age, a quite lenghty one (teens and 20s especially), when I also wanted and even "needed" to be socializing often (and sure: also "clueless" at times, heh!) I did not find it exhausting but often just boring and unsatisfying, it was only at around the age of 30 when I began understanding that I wanted to focus more on what I was more interested in, even if socially irrelevant, that social interactions did not generally gave me what I wanted (be that in terms of type of conversation or also began realizing that I needed something more economically fulfilling and not just chit-chat, often on matters I was not even much interested in). And when I say "economic" is that I began understanding that, in a capitalist context, alienation is very real and that our original social interactions in the hunter-gatherer or otherwise "primitive communist" era were much more not just about chit-chat or throwing a wild party but often enough about getting and keeping the collective resources, something that in our society is rarely the case if at all. Then social meant also material, now it's almost totally on its own and thus a bit meaningless unless strong personal affinity is at play. I mean that I understood that, not that I know how to solve it within our context, of course. One key moment was when I was trying to fully learn Basque, what implied a whole year (would have been two but never finished) of daily socializing in Basque language with random people I didn't know beforehand and that in some cases were not very friendly (or in one case we had a good relation at first but then went sour, or in another case we had a good relation all the time but he was an extreme case of the quiet guy, etc.) I got extreme social stress from that course, which I could not abandon because it was subsidized by my city council, and that plunged me into somewhat of a depression, really. In short and more generally: we are not just something (some label or box, to one extent or another) but we also evolve inside that somethingness and sometimes also outside it, even if we usually return to it eventually, because it's what we are, but maybe not in the same way as before.

[@Catlily5]

​@@LuisAldamiz I test as an extrovert. Not an extreme extrovert but an extrovert. From what I have read autistic extroverts need more time to themselves than non-autistic extroverts. That fits with my experience.I like being around people but I need time to myself. Also I get energy from some people but not others. I am not a high masker. Some people just aren't interesting to me.

[@LuisAldamiz]

@@Catlily5 - I can relate to that to some extent anyhow. I hate to mask, I even have a hard time understanding the very idea of masking, why not be moderately blunt? I mean "moderately" as in being empathetic enough as to prevent most offenses but "blunt" as in just being straightforward and let the others do the digesting they may need. Definitely some people are much more nice to be around than others, and especially than "souless" crowds. But as I age (I'm 55 now) I feel much easier to be on my own most of the time. Even nice people are for short times, unless it is for a collaborative effort on something "real" (practical, common interest, work, etc.) Idle (usually comercialized, consumerist) socializing is not for me anymore.

[@andrayellowpenguin]

Wait... Isn't free time FOR special interests?!??? 😮😅 I have to actively prevent myself from starting anything after work because i know I won't be able to stop before 3AM. So I've always associated free time, like weekends or vacation, with "finally i can do the things i love without being forced to stop right when my brain is in flow or risking being a veggie at work the next day".😅

[@AnEmu404]

That’s what i thought! That’s my time to play whatever video games i’m hyperfixating on

[@coppertones7093]

this exactly. and i can’t even use short bits of free time because there isn’t enough time to get into/out of a flow

[@bottomofastairwell]

that's my problem too! I have 2 modes, vegetative state, because i just don't have energy to do anything except lay there and rot. Or balls deep into some crap until 5 am and then, whelp, guess i'm not sleeping tonight, crap.

[@JamesDavis-ps6yy]

Yes! Fun reading self time

[@turtleanton6539]

Indeed. Same😂🎉🎉🎉😂

[@kitsummers4945]

With the Dolphin Paper, I 100% get that! I always thought I was weird in class for not being able to answer "where do you see yourself in 5 years?". It was such a struggle, how am I meant to know? I wanted to be happy in 5/10/whatever years, but I can't see into the future! Everyone around me seemed to answer it okay, and they said it was "what would you like to be doing?" but my point was that that isn't the question! "Where do you see yourself?" and "What would you like to be doing?" are two very different questions and everyone looked at me like I had two heads.

[@lunaneila]

Wait. Is it what that question is implying? I'm genuinely confused 😅

[@lh2435]

It means What is your long term goal. I find that question distressing. Like I should have a plan but making one scares me because.... I would probably have to do scary things in order to achieve that. I find setting the timeline hard as well.

[@robinchesterfield42]

Yeah, I also never implicitly knew "What do you want to be when you grow up?" as a kid, and as I got older and older and STILL didn't know, I kinda started wondering what was wrong with me...? And after a while, in school, when asked the "What do you hope to be in 5 years?" I just took the snarky route and went "(My current age +5 years)". Like, you ask a 15 year old that, I'm like, "20?" Becoming a cynical smartass made some answers SO much easier. :P

[@kitsummers4945]

@@robinchesterfield42 I thought I was just a spiteful and angry person, turns out I might be autistic and treated like a freak ;u;

[@belewy3053]

I have trouble answering ANY kind of "future" question. Like when we're getting ready to go out somewhere, being asked "how long until you're ready to leave?" I don't know?!!? I can't predict the future at all!

[@bestlaidplans2024]

Like you said, masking can make a lot of these symptoms so much less obvious that people might question if they're wrong about being autistic. Like myself, when it comes to monologuing, I was taught from an early age that nobody has the time to listen to me speak, so when I do talk it's a brief message spoken very quickly because I expect people to get bored or annoyed with me if I take too long.

[@ushere5791]

amen!! i was taught growing up that ain't nobody got time or interest to listen to me. that turned out to be a great life lesson, actually.

[@bottomofastairwell]

same. i'm trying to look at this through a lens of people i'm comfortable with though and how i interact with them, when i don't feel the need to be as "produced"

[@Ninillii]

Agreed. I find many of these questions hard to answer because I believe I have developed a kind of hypervigilance as a coping mechanism? For example, I can’t remember if I’ve ever been told verbally to stop talking. But I am so hyperaware that it might come off as rude that I will cut myself off and internally berate myself for not just keeping quiet. All that masking might make those „typical“ autism hard to notice, but it leaves me incredibly anxious and dialed in in return.

[@PsychoGoldVideos]

​@Ninillii you arent alone in that. Been seeing a therapist since last June and the more he's met the unfiltered me the more I've realised how automatic my self corrections or "masking" is. He even used the phrase masking from our 2nd session in regards to just how I am. It's only in the last few weeks he's suggested that I should look into Autism and suggested getting a diagnosis. So weird to see so many people going through the same inner conflicts as myself.

[@erikarussell1142]

My mom used to punish me for stemming, and would tell me I’m exhausting. So when I talk I also do this. And I was diagnosed in my 30s. So as a 40 year old I am finally feeling seen.

[@stephenieolson8535]

Writing an outline first sounds like either more work (because you’ll have to adjust your outline as you realize it doesn’t actually work) or confirmation bias (only searching for facts that back up your pre1researched assumptions).

[@LangkeeLongkee]

For real. I always write my introductions and conclusions last for that reason. (in my university's writing classes we were told to go that first, even as a guide to our research?) How will I know the strongest points for my thesis before I do a bunch of research? I'd have to pick out what the resesrch says. And sometimes when you're writing you won't know until you are witting that you can't really build up a point as much as you thought you could.

[@lucyj8204]

Surely the outline would be something like: Introduction: what I thought I knew about dolphins Body: what I learned reading about dolphins, arranged either by resource or topic depending on what feels better Conclusion: how my ideas about dolphins have changed as a result of my reading I'm a late dx autistic who is a horror for doing a deep dive into every single detail of a thing before I can engage with the thing fully...

[@LangkeeLongkee]

@@lucyj8204 the outline in your head sure, but what teachers usually ask for is specific points. Things you reasonably wouldn't know unless you're already read on the topic. That's why when I've gotten assignments like this for writing classes I always pick things I've researched before even if the resesrch was in my free time. Edit: being more specific since someone replied after and still doesn't get it. So when I had to do an outline for a paper I chose to write on ADHD misdiagnosis and underdiagnosis in women and girls, I had to do an outline for each paragraph. The main focus was why this occurs, I couldn't just say in the outline that I wanted to say why that would occur. In the outline I submitted I had to list the reasons as masking, pracrioners focusing on their comorbidity disorders over their ADHD and the different presentations associated more with women and girls. I only knew that because I have already done research.

[@MissWascallyWabbit]

It's hard to know without knowing the exact details of the assignment, but I think I would assume the outline for researching dolphins, as in the example, would kind of be a way to narrow the focus to just a few things - like for example maybe it's where you decide you'll narrow it down to talking about what they eat, their environment, and their lifecycle; vs a paper that goes in depth on their evolutionary history and their social structure and intelligence? Something like that?

[@CESmith]

I always thought an outline happened after initial research and before writing the paper to help organize thoughts. Heck, science classes had us do the outline after collecting the data. All that was needed before the experiment was the hypothesis.

[@fjalarhenriksson]

i get absolutely furious if someone interupts me while i talk and i stop right in my tracks, and sometimes i even get interupted by non related unexpected external sounds or random things like a bump in the road while in the car. or a train/trainstation speaker.

[@Proud_to_have_ADHD_1248]

THIS. When I’m in the car I like sucking on one of my fingers and while closing my eyes and listening to the music. But if someone dares to talk to cough it is absolutely infuriating.

[@LangkeeLongkee]

If I'm in public and someone asks me something right when a car passes and didn't hear me, it makes me just not want to speak.

[@camouldsn]

I don't like when people interrupt me either. I often just forget what I was saying before. It's even worse when someone says, "oh sorry please continue" or something similar. Like cool thanks for interrupting me and at least you realized it, but it's too late I already lost where I was going with it.

[@justmeherethereandeverywhere]

This reminds me of how I get so angry when I go to a fast food restaurant to order something at drive-thru, and the cashier taking the order interrupts me to adk me what sauce I want or something to that effect. I just want to yell at them to let me finish first because both of us now have to deal with me stalling because I am trying to recall what I just told them and what to tell them next.

[@Proud_to_have_ADHD_1248]

@@justmeherethereandeverywhere WHEN SOMEONE INTERRUPTS ME AND THEN IGNORES ME WHEN I TRY TO GET THEOR ATTENTION AGAIN AND THEN THEY GET MAD AT ME FOR INTERRUPTING

[@elaine_of_shalott6587]

One of my "how did I not knowI was autistic, sooner" things is that I tend to describe having 10 friends over as "a really big party" The handful of actual large parties I attended I would either hide out next to the food table or sit with the adults keeping an eye on everything and chat with them.

[@darkstarr984]

Oh. I consider a large party at least 30 people, because my parents’ family gatherings would have 50+ people unless they hosted just the ones they got along with, then we’d have about 8 people. In either case it was crammed and I was avoiding the main group to just run around with any other kids, which would be about 3 of my first cousins and 3-4 of my first cousins once removed due to a generation split where some of us were born in the late-70s through mid-80s and the rest of us in the mid-90s through early-00s, when the first group also had their first kids. I was constantly overwhelmed by every gathering.

[@birnapetursdottir2616]

10 people is a lot of people!

[@petercoo9177]

You have parties? Wow. I can't do that ... way, way too much to handle.

[@WhiteScorpio2]

I'm not autistic, but I've never had more than 3 friends. And I've never been at a party (though that seems to be more of an American thing, no one here does big parties).

[@animeholiczka]

I can deal with my family at about 15-20 people. I can deal with friends up to 15 people... but that is already big for me. I dislike any crowded events, concerts etc for these trasons - even if i like music or "vibe", i enjoy it for about 40min and rest fo the time im miserable. But even tho i can somewhat handle being with 10 people or so that i know and feel comfortable with, i cannot organisr this party myself. Like i constantly wonder what should i do, i stress out about food, mysic, what do people talk about on parties... even if we invite one or two friends over woth my partner. Way too much stress, decision making and being "put together"....

[@humancat2434]

One thing I've really noticed about conversation at work is how easy it is to talk about work stuff at work with coworkers but as soon as they insert some non work related small talk or joke my mind goes totally blank and I'm not able to speak

[@khplaylistyt9729]

o god yes

[@kylben]

The noisy environment issue for me is completely dependent on whether the noise is coming from people in my presence, even if they're across the room. External noise, nearby construction, jets flying over, a concert down the block, or a blaring radio, those I can shut out. But somebody in the same room sniffles or scratches their butt, the sound gets through. And it makes me self-conscious of those little noises I might make. The dolphin thing, that outline before learning, is literally unfathomable to me. I do some writing, and everybody says to outline your story before you write it. WTF? How am I going to outline it before I know what happens and who the characters are?

[@JustAbormal]

Very relatable lol. Also what does outline before learning mean? I have never heard of that phrase before.

[@MartysRandomStuff]

I'm similar but only with people talking, more than 2 conversations going on around me and my brain goes into meltdown, other noises don't bother me.

[@ruthhorowitz7625]

I can't shut out anything unless I dissociate.

[@bosstowndynamics5488]

Yeah, I think that's a pretty clear case where "bottom up" is a superior approach to "top down" (although as far as I'm aware monotropic people tend more towards a depth first strategy where a bottom up breath first strategy would be optimal)

[@Lari-lc3zq]

I’m also good with ambient noise but constant repeating sounds like a dog barking or a dripping tap will send me over the edge 😬

[@ChibiMoyashis]

"I don't know how to do nothing." THIS. If I'm just sitting around and not keeping mentally occupied, I'll end up either frustrated at having nothing to occupy my mind and/or hands with, or will fall asleep

[@ChibiMoyashis]

Also those spoon earrings are adorable, omg

[@christinelamb1167]

This is me, too! I always have to be doing SOMETHING, whether it's reading, cleaning, writing, etc. If I stay motionless for too long, I become so drowsy I can't keep my eyes open and I'll fall asleep!

[@godzdead]

i can't fall asleep without stimulation. literally. (i have adhd) i need some kind of background noise or my brain will just make things up to keep itself entertained. i can fall asleep w/o it only when insanely exhausted

[@moss4940]

But like when people say "do nothing", what do they actually mean do nothing??? Is it like literally doing nothing (.i.e. standing still or sitting down and just not thinking about anything or just even having a lie in?) or is it like scrolling through KZbin/TikTik/Instagram and watching reels/shorts when they're not researching, working, reading etc???

[@rhoward295]

The dolphin paper!!!!!!! Wow, that is EXACTLY my experience! All the way through grad school, too! Wow, just WOW!!!!!! I would write the entire paper in my head and then do the outline, and it always seemed odd that everybody knew exactly how to create the outline! I felt so stupid, and always felt it was a failing on my part.

[@hydrogen3266]

In the US we have standardized “Advanced Placement” (AP) tests that you can take in high school to potentially get college credit. For some of the ones I took, I’d have a limited amount of time (like 4 hours or so) to write multiple essays all in a row. I excelled at these, and I figured “I’m just a good test taker,” but I feel like this might be the reason. I never really needed to structure the essay, I could just write as I was thinking it all and do well. And then I was taking a test for my teaching license where I wrote down all the facts I could remember about the topic on my notepad before I started the essay. I thought it was just a test taking strategy, but maybe I was doing “bottom up” thinking here

[@rosepuppy1984]

THANK YOU!!! My parents are always saying I need to do the outline if I did it I wouldn’t be stuck! Yet every time I try I just end up writing the whole essay!

[@AkariTheImmortal]

I just don't understand how else to do it. Like how would that work, before having all the facts and details? it's just... impossible.

[@pemanilnoob587]

I don’t even understand what an outline is What do you all mean?? Like write … write what??

[@Kimshu6]

I was required to do an outline before writing any paper in highschool/ some of college and that just DIDN'T WORK FOR ME. I could never figure out how detailed I was supposed to make them or how vague or how many topics it should cover. It was SO MUCH EASIER to just write the paper then make the outline for me and use the outline to edit the paper, making sure I stayed on topic in that section.

[@rikoryuki]

It's interesting how autistic people can be so different from one another. Me and my kids are all autistic, but while me and my youngest stim allll the time, I don't think my eldest has ever really stimmed. I've looked into monotropism and it doesn't really fit for me, but it does describe my youngest. My middle child is very sociable, but struggles with noisy environments, whilst I'm fine in busy and noisy environments as long as I'm not trying to read or write. I enjoy socialising and being around people, but struggle to communicate a lot. So many differences for people who all have the same brain type.

[@SonoftheWest316]

It is interesting yes, also makes the entire category seem irrelevant or functionally useless at best, and positively counter-productive at worst. I see more and more evidence for the latter each year.

[@rebeccaburnell9319]

WHOA, the dolphin outline story exactly encapsulates all of my struggles with in-school structured creative writing assignments & early "you have to learn the structure of an essay this way" assignments. It was so *pointless* and such a waste of time. Anything you can put together for an "outline" like that is... absolutely useless. Maybe the teacher wants you to acknowledge "in order to put together a paper on dolphins, I'll need to know where they live and what they eat and what eats them and maybe what different kinds of dolphins exist, and I can also talk about how intelligent they are and how sea level rise, pollution, and climate change are affecting them..." ... and maybe the teacher wants you to list those ideas in a logical & coherent way to present them in the paper? BUT THAT'S NOT AN OUTLINE, that's... idk, a hypothosis of a paper, lol? When I start researching, the info I find will likely mean I need to rearrange my "outline" to better-present the full picture! I 100% faked essay outlines/creative writing outlines by throwing myself into at least a little research and/or writing of the thing before submitting the stupid outline.

[@SK-qy9rq]

Isn't that an outline? That's always how I approached outlines. I want to discuss (subject) (dolphin), and my goal .... oh. Jeeze. It falls apart without a goal, I just realized. Like if I want to explain why dolphins are great and you should listen to me I might structure it: 1. Basic physiological description A. Cool detail 1 b. The... physiology or taxonomy behind the detail. Like maybe the cool detail is that they often sleep with only half their brain, and the reason is because they're conscious breathers. Paragraph 2. Discuss dolphin behavior A. Cool culture stuff? B. Methods of play among dolphins? Like, you already have to know ABOUT the subject to make an outline but I always thought outlining was more about structuring so an essay flows right. It's basically an essay's bones that you then layer facts, better "writing", and source information on top of. The example in the video of structuring an outline without learning about the subject is really weirding me out.

[@beesmcgee4223]

All this is why I hated English! It was so much harder for me than the STEM subjects

[@bottomofastairwell]

mostly, i just did all the research, wrote the whole damn paper in my head, and then "summarized" it with a bullet point list of what i had already written. like, for all intents and purposes, i already wrote this whole paper. and a lot of the time, i WOULD just write the whole damn thing, and my outline was more of a summary than anything else. cuz that's what they want right? a summary type list? but how the hell are you supposed to do that BEFORE you write the paper. I never understood that shit

[@bottomofastairwell]

@@SK-qy9rq i like the "bones" analogy actually. because the problem for me is that like, if i'm looking at a whole person, i can't SEE their bones without dissecting them first and seeing the different parts of their body. and then when i get to the "bones" it makes sense that this is an arm bone, cuz yeah, that's what the fingers were sticking off of. but if that paper is on a brand new subject i don't really know anything about, then it's like you're asking me to give you the "bones" when i don't even know what animal i'm looking at yet. fairly labored metaphor, hopefully that makes sense

[@melissashley__]

I just typed out the same thing and I am in AWE bc I have never heard anyone else who does this. I feel so seen 😭😭😭

[@JonBrase]

12:35 For me there's an unpleasant, almost physical feeling when I lie deliberately, so the inhibition is quite strong. Of course, then there's all the things that I say I'll get done that I don't because of ADHD, but there "I'll get it done" is as much of an (unsuccessful) self-pep-talk as a lie/ broken promise. And then off course, even being lucky enough not to have anyone gaslighting me externally, my brain is always trying to tell me "something about what you need to tell people in this situation is so unusual that everybody is going to think you're lying." Kinda like how "I work here" never makes my brain shut up about how I'm going to get in trouble for walking into an "authorized personnel only" area.

[@Tormekia]

If I try lying it's like my head is open and someone can see into it and see all the bits going wonky.

[@acarcarazza]

I really relate to the second thing you mentioned, I think I tend to keep a lot of thoughts to myself due to that exact thought process, but that can be quite unhealthy at times. I’m trying to work on it, but it’s extremely difficult, especially if I do try it and I actually get a negative response, which reinforces that belief.

[@RunninUpThatHillh]

When my daughter has a new special interest she doesn't wanna say who her interest is, but she HAS to tell me because she thinks I'll get suspicious and find out if she doesn't tell me first. She knows that isn't ..a thing that happens, but she can't help it. She acts like she has a huge secret..like she smoked crack or killed a puppy. But no. Its just a new interest😂 She sits me down to tell me. Each time I smile and ask her all about it (she likes discussing her interest) but when it's new she goes crazy with anxiety over my possible reaction. We have always been positive and accepting since she was born though lol

[@AlchemistCH]

Even heard Kafka's toxin paradox? Like you will get the reward if you're fully intent at a certain moment to drink the offered mild poison - but after the reward is yours you don't really have to do it and you know this fact in advance. Except, if you don't do it in the end, then was the intent really there? We'll I'm the kind of person who can honestly be intent on doing something... while perfectly knowing I'll most likely bail out when actually faced with this level of mess. Ha-ha! Would it count?

[@AdonisGaming93]

took the MQ test last year and it basically said I was more monotropic than 80% of autistics and 99% of allistics. Omg the getting called for dinner but then still going right back to being absorbed in what you were doing is so real. This still happened to me up until this spring when I was still living with parents.

[@wahngott4711]

Got the same percentages as well, I seldom had a test where the questions where so accurate to me

[@Astro-Markus]

Oh man, bottom-up. Yes! That's how I work best. I prepare talks, presentations, and texts for the public. And I always have to know all the details, even if they're not immediately critical for the product I work on. I just feel, the collection helps me to draw a bigger picture and find and remember connections and correlations. It simply improves my work. Otherwise, I would simply be afraid I might be missing a crucial detail. - Nice example, the dolphin paper. Only the many details paint the picture. And then I take a snapshot. Mental loops: they tend to occur when unexpected things happen - especially when I already had a plan laid out. And then I have to come up with a solution. Even worse if I have to engage in activities I'm bad in. I really get anxiety surges with belly pain and elevated heart rates, sometimes panic. And my mind can't shut off for a long time.

[@LangkeeLongkee]

As a uni student this sucks. Because I had deadlines but here I am making 10 pages of hand written notes for a 3 page paper I haven't even begun to type yet that's due in an hour. Because my process that works for me just takes a long time and seems repetive to others.

[@AlchemistCH]

The only real downside is how miserably this approach fails when you are required to write a huge thesis with references for every phrase. After it's finally compiled into a coherent picture, arranging references becomes doing the work three times over again, searching where exactly did this information come from in the first place. And it may end up way too short for expected format, because you've already everything unnecessary - and now stuffing it back in feels too counterproductive.(don't ask how I wrote the master's thesis - it was a total mess I would prefer to forget. Results were too inconclusive anyway - just messing with whatever available results in insufficient quality of experimental data)

[@Crouteceleste]

This Sunday, I went to a big park (like landscaping park etc) and it was a very sunny/hot day so I had the opportunity to notice how differently I process sensory inputs than the general population when I saw so many people clustering so near each other while lounging on the grass, apparently oblivious to the other groups' noise and proximity. I even saw a woman under a tree reading peacefully on her own, with a family and a couple of small children shouting less than 3 meters away. Like HOW ??? I went there with my (autistic) friend who wanted to do photos of her specific interests. With the heat, light, noises, people's proximity, by the end of our visit we were so sensory-overloaded and on my part I was on the verge of a meltdown, that we fled the park.

[@L4w1]

omg real i cant understand how people are so focused on a thing like reading when the environment is so loud and sensory overstimulating

[@EnigmaticGentleman]

I used to be more extroverted when I was younger, I think a big part of it was because it made my parents happy (like oh he's socializing maybe he can have a normal life), but it ended up making my teachers assume my autism was less affecting than it actually was because of all the stereotypes.

[@rosepuppy1984]

I was a little more extroverted too (I was an ambivert). But then I had to deal with a lot of childhood issues and stuff due to my undiagnosed autism and the rigidity that came with it and just being “weird” causing people not to like me. I didn’t pick up on it so much when I was younger but as I started to get older I began noticing the disgusted looks my friend’s friends would give me. I’m still an ambivert but now my social anxiety, rejection sensitive dysphoria, and just overwhelming terror that I accidentally break some unspoken social norm and everyone else will think I’m weird and not like me causes me to act more like an introvert. I like interacting with people but I’m just so afraid of how said people will react. Start a convo with me and I will be super friendly and chatty but otherwise I will be paralyzed with the fear of breaking a social rule and not interact.

[@moss4940]

Same. I used to be really extroverted as a kid. I'd either be making my own stories and making up games by myself or I'd be out playing with the other games, usually either tag, hide and seek or roleplaying. But it's only in recent years that I've actually realised that conversations aren't meant to be just infodumping and telling each other cool facts or having debates (Yeah, having friends who probably have undiagnosed autism doesn't help) but that you have to be polite, people have different senses of humour and that you actually HAVE to make some sort of joke or make small talk made me a lot more introverted.

[@rosepuppy1984]

@@moss4940 I feel this. Being told you interact with people wrong and that you do things wrong a lot in stuff like that is bound to make someone more “introverted” it’s mostly social anxiety and fear of rejection now at least for me

[@RelativelySaneStudio]

"We can lie, but we're not as good at it and it doesn't come as naturally to us" - I see this as an absolute win.

[@christopherjohnston6343]

Until we've got to mask in a professional environment lol

[@sarkaztik3228]

I don't even think this is accurate, to be honest. Masking is literally deception and something we do all the time every single day. It's exhausting, but I think most of us are pretty good at it.

[@BadNessie]

All this is so relatable! Especially the distracting noises. I always feel like most people have some sort of a filter between their ears and their consciousness, while my brain doesn't have that filter and every single sound goes right through and I experience it consciously, no matter whether I want to or not. I just can't 'unhear' aka ignore anything, mostly. And yes, the only time when I can ist when I'm hyperfocused on some task that is usually something creative.

[@ZoruaLightning]

I legit had no idea that people could filter out noises until last year, I thought I was just weak-minded for not being able to ignore people talking to me

[@Flopsi80]

​​@@ZoruaLightning AuDHD here, absolutly no filter. I can only work when there is no sound besides the cute ones my dog does. In school I never understood how the other kids were able to focus on anything. I could only concentrate on my favorite school subject, that was german (I am german). Wrote nearly only very good grades in this. Of course because of the hyperfocus. It's my best friend. If I weren't able to hyperfocus I wouldn't have my very good Master of Arts and I wouldn't be a freelancer now.

[@samuelthecamel]

I have a pretty strong filter, but I think it is because I am constantly hyperfocused on what I'm doing. If I try to do something I consider boring, like reading, I need a completely silent environment to focus. As a kid, I called my hyperfocus abilities "cancelling," because it's like the rest of the world gets canceled out. Unfortunately, it means that if you try to talk to me during that, I probably won't hear you.

[@katb504]

This can be an anxiety thing. I have cptsd and have come to learn that noises trigger me, like my body views them as threats. I am distracted and sometimes irritated by them.

[@BadNessie]

@@katb504 that's certainly true, but I consider myself very lucky that anxiety plays (nearly) no role in my life. Hope you're doing good! 🩵

[@fancydeer]

With the sound thing, the quieter the environment the worse it is, hearing all those little sounds people make enrage me. If I'm in public if the environment is fairly loud like a cafeteria or a busy restaurant kitchen I find that much more comforting. In college I couldn't study if I was in the library, I had to go to someplace really crowded on campus and usually our food court was the most relaxing b/c of the kitchen sounds (timers, clanging of pans, people talking, printers, etc). I was also a cook for like 13 years too though so that could have something to do with it lol

[@JemimaDoesASMR]

I’m very similar! I have ADHD but not autism and there’s definitely a goldilocks zone for the amount of stimulation that helps me to focus vs too little and too much that makes it impossible.

[@bottomofastairwell]

yeah! because like, a TON of sound, all over the place, everywhere, then it becomes this kind of blanket of sound, where it's hard to pick one specific sound out of the din unless you're trying. And if it's like that, i can focus just fine, because it just becomes a ton of noise, and i can tune the noise out. but a quieter setting? where ANY sound feels amplified because of the quiet, that will drive me nuts. the library is so quiet right, but that one dude that won't stop coughing is making me crazy, and oh hey, now someone is making copies at the printer, and wow, that's a lot of copies. and beep beep, beep beep, someone's checking out books, i wonder what books, have i read those books, i wish i was reading right now, not working... and every little sound is so distracting because there's not enough of them to ignore. that doesn't even make sense, but somehow i think you'll get it

[@sarkaztik3228]

I agree, I must have a fan running near me at all times when I'm even doing things like gaming because I need the extra background sound to concentrate, and that's as quiet as I like it. That said, I can't concentrate while music is playing, so it must be ambient sounds and not something melodic. I'm, a light sleeper, and if the power goes out during the night and my fan and videos I play for white noise go off, I immediately wake up and can't get back to sleep.

[@SannaiSan]

I definitely agree with the not lying thing. I can do it, but it makes me super uncomfortable. I'm more likely to overshare and later think "oh I probably shouldn't have said that" than flat out lie to someone who asks a direct question.

[@andrayellowpenguin]

OMG, people can outline a paper BEFORE they did the research?!? How??? You don't know anything about it, you can only summarize AFTER you've read the stuff! Wtf?!?

[@tea_time_t]

You think about what kinds of things you might find in your research, or the kinds of things you're interested in researching. Even if you don't know much about a subject, you can come up with things that you do know about it that you'd like to know more about. In this case the kid definitely needed examples before writing an outline, and they should have been told that it is okay for the outline to change when they do get information. So for example, say that I'm asked to write a paper about lipstick. I know basically nothing about lipstick, so what am I gonna want to know? What is it? What is it made of? What's its history? How is it used now? So I might arrange my outline to be like: 1) Definitions 2) Ingredients 3) History 4) Current use.

[@eloisepharmacist]

I totally get the not being able to do the summary outline first - It is the reason I gave up on some assignments as I just didn't get what they wanted from me.

[@MrDaydreamer1584]

Meg, "Bottom-up" works like this: As autistics, we have tunnel vision. To understand something, it has to "fit" into a single tunnel. If we are given 100 facts--- but not enough information to interconnect the 100 facts--- we have 100 different tunnels. But if we are given 100 facts and information on how to fully interconnect the 100 facts---- then the 100 tunnels transform into a single tunnel. (My theory.)

[@biggestdracula]

YOOOOOOOO this makes so much sense

[@soyaliovee]

Now, this is me with my Statistics, I find it hard to learn when I started senior high school and it’s weird cause basic Math had always been easy to me (it became and was always my hyperfixation from school) now this makes me realize that the way it was explained to us is kinda just memorize this formula and that it did make me confused about how it works and I’m still figuring things out, wow

[@Grey_Warden_Invasion]

Interruptions feel like as if I'm sitting in a dark room and then someone suddenly shines a floodlight right into my face. It's startling, painful, disorienting, eventually also infuriating, and also afterwards I won't be able to regain focus on what I did previously for a long time anymore, as there is still the afterimage of the light in my eyes and it takes a good while to become used to the darkness again.

[@Catlily5]

I like this description!

[@dustcircle]

I hate it when people call me shy. I'm not shy. I'm introverted and I'm taking in everything and analyzing the scenario. When I wanna have social interaction, I will. :D

[@Respectable_Username]

The dolphin paper one is interesting because I've never really had anyone at school insist I outline a paper before writing it like that. However, it made me think back to the writing course I took last year (a short Writing for TV series course which of course I've not actually followed up to use the skills on 😅) In the course, pretty much every week's assignment was building up to one big project at the end, and pretty much all of them had word counts. I found it _so_ difficult to cut down my ideas to match the word count and the outline format they wanted. When I think of stories, I think of characters first, then key scenes that grab my interest, and then I keep moving outwards to fill in the gaps and have to eventually force myself to go "ok what comes first? And then what comes next? And then how do we get to that next bit I need to happen?" However, at least I grew my understanding from talking to the teacher that these shorter documents are there as a communication tool and as a way to make it easier to restructure things as needed (eg a beat sheet outlines the purpose for each scene to make sure all scenes have a purpose and all important beats are kept, even if the way and order in which they're hit has to be changed). What was interesting though was seeing how my approach to my story differed from a lot of my classmates (one of the rare situations where I was in a room with more NTs than NDs, given my day job as a software engineer)! A lot of them were starting with an idea and then exploring how to build a story from that idea: the top-down method you were describing. Whereas I was starting with quite a well built out world in my head and was there more to learn how to structure it into specifically a TV series, both from a technical perspective (ie how do you write for this medium specifically) and from an industry perspective (ie how do you convince somebody to turn your words into pictures): more like the bottom-up approach you described. It was actually extremely disheartening when I took a follow up course at the start of this year which focused more on the "here's how the TV writing industry in Australia works" side of things, and my main take away from it is that the industry, at least in Australia, seems extremely... hollow. There's very little time put into planning out what happens in each episode, so very little time to think about the overall story and world and even just what happens in each episode, and then each episode is written in almost complete isolation by a different writer who _must_ stick to the outline made in only a couple of days. You think of a better idea while writing? Tough luck. You want to build a better model of the world to guide your writing? You just gotta hope the head writer produced a series bible beyond the barebones pitch bible. You have a great idea for a TV series which you want to write multiple episodes of? Sorry, once it hits a producer you lose all control and they can change it, twist it, warp it in whatever way they like, but you've also given them the IP so you can't then take your original idea to somebody else to try make the story you actually want to tell (the person running the course told of a series she worked on many years earlier which was supposed to be based in an ethnic minority community, but the producers decided to make it less and less about that so it'd have broader appeal and therefore that community lost their representation, which had been a core part of the original premise). Not to mention one of my classmates worked on the production side (writing is pre-production, actual filming etc is production) and apparently there's practically complete siloing between pre-prod and prod teams. Meaning your one episode script is going to the one episode director who can do whatever the heck they want with it without actually understanding _why_ certain things are the way they are, and therefore change them and break the story. This woman in particular had worked on her production since the first season and said she often had to fight with some director's decisions because they didn't make sense for the story, something she only knew because she'd been there for so long (unlike the director). It also doesn't help that the gender ratios are skewed female in the writer's room and skewed male in the director's chair, with all the power balance issues that result! In particular, going back to that top-down approach, one of the example episodes we wrote together as a whole class writers room (this course was in person over a week which was nice!) it seemed like people just didn't care that the story world made sense? And it was a detective show too! I even got out the second whiteboard and a bunch of sticky notes to track the "data" about the mystery (ie the information about the world and what "really" happened as we planned out the mystery, to reference when then deciding how to plot the episode to reveal said information in the story structure) and some people were getting really annoyed that I kept trying to make sure the story made sense with the latest ideas that were brainstormed about the world, even going so far to say that it doesn't matter if it doesn't make sense. And just to be clear, I was purposefully keeping track of the "world" data in a fluid way specifically so that if we'd decided to add or remove and idea, everyone had a reference to the "current state" so we didn't have people referencing stuff we'd already thrown out or forgetting stuff somebody else had suggested, just in case anyone thought it was just me being inflexible. Because the whole point of a mystery story is that the audience is supposed to be able to try piece together what happened based on the clues, and go "ah of _course_ that's the answer!" when the final reveal happens at the end. Like, that's the whole appeal of the genre! But it seemed I was the only one who cared about or at least thought in terms of the story must conform to a world with logic and internal consistency (though a world which can be reworked to make a better story) as opposed to writing the story first and eh it doesn't matter if the world doesn't make sense. That lack of care really irked me, especially remembering that I've not really had a TV show as a special interest for a _long_ time now, partly because I _do_ like shows that have a level of care and internal consistency. There's a reason I ran the Doctor Who Answers Wiki (now decommissioned) when I was in high school! Having a world that makes sense is how you build a world that people love, as opposed to a world which people put on in the background to kill time. Do you want people to theorise about what comes next? To build community? To write fanfic set in your world, with your characters? Do you want people to care? Because that course from earlier this year really killed a lot of my desire to even try to enter that industry, despite loving storytelling and loving TV as a medium for storytelling in particular, because it genuinely feels like the system is set up with a primarily top-down approach that's so heavily siloed that it couldn't care about the detail even if it wanted to, which it didn't seem to want to. It gave so much context to why so much TV is so... meh these days, with such poor writing (it seems the writers aren't given the opportunity to _not_ write thin garbage because of the siloed and stratified system they're trapped in with no power). It was especially interesting comparing to my own background in software at a modern tech company, how so many of the processes are surprisingly similar yet how the overall organisational structure feels so behind-the-times in ways that clearly hurt the end product. Uhhh, I've been writing this comment for so long I've almost completely forgotten my original point. I guess TL;DR: If you want better TV shows, put autistic folks in positions of power in _all_ the storytelling teams and our bottom-up approach, combined with our ~~pedantry~~ attention to detail, will make sure we get some better shows on TV again!

[@katrinadaly1755]

This explains so much why all our Aussie TV is complete trash and I can’t watch a single Aussie TV series and enjoy or get into it because I always feel like there’s no mystery, no continuity, no overall plot or even a storyline with details that make sense. It’s why I can like one episode of a show but then the next one is so trash and mismatched that I can’t get involved in the whole series and the characters and enjoy it!

[@zephyrias]

I was watching animated ver of H20 released in 2015, buts its french animated made? I was trying to pay attention to the end credits that zipped past at 100mph 😅 the characters looked mildly anime style. This looks interesting… Then i saw the og h20 show was in 2009. Watched 5mins i to it and the main trio characters are the same. Past that i dunno if the animated series is a reboot retelling of the live action? Side tangent away: Episodic tv shows are good, it works if the world building was structured well. dang! I love world building~ 😂 i do create characters first but I have the initial world building to go hand in hand. Solo ttrpgs have been my new interest, to explore worlds and enjoy an episodic adventure in a tiny corner of the world. 😂 which is why I like video games some of them can have such a wonderful world but the story is wack and characters are meh… 😂 dang… what a waste…

[@isismeow111]

My ex is fixated about pokemon, and i encouraged her to talk about it with me, but i never picked up the game myself. I dont always pick up something someone is fixated on. She is autistic and i think i am too, would make a lot of my life make sense

[@dont-worry-about-it-]

Not even 10 minutes in, but the interruptions being disorienting is SO real! It's even a problem when I'm watching videos here and there are unskippable ads and most videos i watch are 20+ minutes long (often an hour or more) and it really throws me off! Especially when i treat the videos like podcasts and do other things so i have to like run to my phone and skip the ad before i forget something. I am glad that youtube started going back a couple seconds in the video after an ad so i don't miss too much though!

[@birnapetursdottir2616]

i agree. the solution is watching youtube in a browser and getting an ad-blocker. i don’t do it but i should (procrastination).

[@lori10155]

I relate so much to the writing an outline before writing the paper. I even remember lamenting to my mom about it saying "how am I supposed to know what I'm going to write before I write it?" I also used to research and write a rough draft just so I could write the outline. I never understood how other people were able to not do that?

[@nessknows.]

When you said finding social situations chaotic, I started mentally playing episode of friends where Monica is trying to throw Rachel a birthday party and was telling everyone they could have organized fun and was nagging them about not putting her marker caps back on… that is exactly how I feel in any social gatherings where there are more than two people outside of my immediate family. Nobody understands to wait their turn to talk and I wonder why I spent so many years trying to learn the social rules that nobody else seems to follow as adults.

[@heuzame6198]

I did notice that allistic people kinda know when it's their turn while I have no glue whatsoever, those making me essentially go: "Let's just try to join by constantly interrupting until the time is right by coincidence" The alternative is just lurking I don't have the problem with monologue but I still struggle heavily with back-and-forth conversation of at least 3 people.

[@nikitatavernitilitvynova]

​@@heuzame6198yes I always feel like I'm interrupting people. I remember asking my brother to change the cd in the car as it was playing over and over again and it was overstimulating me. I kept interrupting him it seems because he snapped at me and kind of yelled at me that the cd was fine. And went back to talking to dad. While I was on the verge of tears from the way he responded to me. Needless to say last year with dad felt weird but almost better as it was the two of us only and the extended family.

[@heuzame6198]

@@nikitatavernitilitvynova When I'm in a car and I'm overstimulated from too much talking, self control goes straight out of the window once it's in the "so uncomfortable it's unbearable" for a little while. At that point I basically become aggressive as my brain automatically goes "let's hurt them so they shut up" mode. I don't feel the anger is purely bodily, this only happen if running off doesn't work. That's the extreme case but honestly people don't give a fuck so they push and push until they get in the red zone. Covering ears and tell them to be quiter is way more frequent. There they will just tell I'm "childish" how I should "act like an adult" or how I am "acting like an infant"

[@Kagomai15]

​@@heuzame6198 my tween life circa 2007 was forever changed for the better once I got an mp3 player and some headphones, improved every aspect of my life honestly, definitely including car rides!

[@heuzame6198]

@@Kagomai15 Unfortunately enough my parents are really determined in saving money in every corner and they always think the best time to argue out family problems is inside a car, morning or evening.

[@Spadaforza]

These monotropic resources are great. I was recently diagnosed prior to this, so I hope this can help others more easily understand and convey their experience, because that's particularly what I struggled with when speaking with the evaluator. Thanks for helping get this out for others, as always, Meg!

[@Skallanni]

I’m an autistic professional artist, specifically a fine artist (ie painting and drawing, etc.). There’s a big thing in formal art settings like studios, classes/ateliers, and critiques where you put the big stuff down first then add the details. While I can do this, my process starts very detail oriented. I write journals and collect images (reference, inspiration, and photos I take of myself or settings, I’ll even make miniature shitty sculptures of things to help with the exact poses and perspective I want lol) and plan out the entire piece and what literally EVERYTHING symbolizes… THEN I do sketches, thumbnails, plan color schemes which also usually have symbolic or referential meanings, THEN I do drafts. AND THEN FINALLY, I block in large sections of color on my final piece… but even then I do this very carefully and add detail as I go to places, not work exclusively big to small. This means I work slower and instructors and peers will often try to push me towards the “traditional” methods lol. I never really do and yet people are always astounded by the quality of my final works. I find it so funny how much neurotypical people want you to stick to the status quo, even in a field so loose (and, tbh, overflowing with neurodivergent people lol) like art.

[@Catlily5]

I have trouble working from big to small as well. And I have trouble making things big. I am not a professional artist though.

[@temporalcatcher9950]

Every time you mention about trying to get work done in a library, I always remember the very first episode of the podcast 99% Invisible. Of course autism plays a huge role, but I wonder if the quiet areas also have bad acoustics. They mention in the podcast that the problem with super quiet areas is that the sound of flipping papers can get distracting, so a solution is to add pleasant background noise. When I was in college there was a quiet study area, and when went in, the first thing I noticed was that it was not dead silent, but there was a fan running. The fan was not distracting, and having already listened to the episode I thought “oh so they’re using the fan to make small noises such as flipping paper more bearable”.

[@emia0908]

First thing, I love 99% Invisible! Awesome podcast! Second thing, doesn't repetitive 'white noise' get annoying as well? I can't handle that kind of whirring sound. Music is alright, if it's low, but fans are terrible!

[@eldritchtourist]

​@@emia0908I think it depends on the background noise. If it's not too grating, listening to a single repetitive sound can act as an "anchor" for your focus and block out all the other noises. Like an auditory stim. Doesn't work for everybody though, I'm sure, and again it really comes down to how much you like the noise even when it does work on you. (And even as someone who likes that sort of thing, I still like control over it. Sometimes I like having the air conditioning in my room mute other noise, sometimes I hate it because I can't hear myself think.)

[@temporalcatcher9950]

@@emia0908 well, there are other ways to implement sound than just a fan. One thing they talked about, though not for a library, but parks. They mentioned that parks in cities usually have fountain to add that background sound. There are probably many things that are considered, but I don’t know them as I’m not an acoustic designer. A side note about heavily textured ceilings some people call popcorn ceiling. They are intended to hide imperfections in the ceiling, but doubles as a ceiling that absorbs more sound than a flat one; which is why they’re also called acoustic ceilings. Though popcorn ceilings aren’t what is done in a study area, I wanted to mention some things that change the acoustics of a room in which an acoustic designer may consider. The quiet study room that I went to also had wooden dividers that blocks off the people sitting next to and across from you.

[@Kr4ndom]

That dolphin paper story is so relatable. In my job in software development the first step of a project is always to estimate the work and give numbers on how long things will take and what sub-tasks may arise. I'm always floored when having to do that and just started guessing at some point. Or if i have the time i'll start the work, sometimes even finishing it before giving my estimate if time allows it. But i am always wondering on how other people can make this estimates without doing the work first, i'm always wondering if they are just guessing too, and just gotten good at it with time.

[@lh2435]

I would guess that they either guess and gather experience over time which makes them better or ask others who have experience. But guessing can go so wrong and often the same task takes different amounts of time every day. I think the NTs are just vague about everything and that’s why they don’t care so much if it’s wrong or they just stop when the time is up bc they don’t care so much if something is complete?

[@Kr4ndom]

@@lh2435 yeah meanwhile i have years of experience myself and most of the time my guessing is good enough, but yeah like you said everytime is different, that's why i usually estimate with a fineprint of "if everything goes smoothly". Sadly that has provoked project leaders to ask for a "realistic" or "pesimistic" estimate. So now i have to plan for failure, i mean how should i now what will probably go wrong in the project, i'm not hired as a fortune teller. Yeah i think other people just don't overthink it as much and just go with a gut feeling born from experience, and add a certain percantage as a buffer for potential problems. I understand the procedure, but my body rejects working that way.

[@sanny8716]

I'm pretty sure the point is to guess

[@marcellkovacs5452]

I have ranted about this to everyone I worked with, but yeah, basically you try to remember similar tickets in the past and use that for estimating.

[@SaerBear5]

I have (had?) the same issue and I base mine off of secret criteria: number of bullet points / amount of info in the story, and how long the discussion takes during pointing. Very few bullet points and no discussion? 3. Very few bullets but a decent discussion? 5. A handful of bullet points and minimal discussion? 5. A handful of bullets and lots of discussion? 8. And so on. If more than one person talks about how complicated something is and it has a lot of bullets, 13.

[@TheRealSpeechProf]

After two of my children were officially diagnosed, I started going down a research rabbit hole and every book was basically describing my entire childhood. Now I keep taking all these tests and every one says that I have a very high likelihood of being autistic (and now 209/235 on the monotropism quiz) and it is explaining so much about why my ADHD has always presented so dramatically differently than my wife's ADHD...

[@alexish4042]

Oh my gosh the brief clip of the roundabout during the "stuck in a loop" part is in Nashville TN, someone i know called it "pick-up-sticks" and I drove by it every work day for a year. I was just listening and happen to glance up at that part, cool!!

[@AmusedAtMusing]

Does anyone else feel like they can mostly manage conversations… until they are really tired? Like, the “appropriate/socially acceptable” filter/mask slips and the majority of the anxiety inducing self perceived flubs/mess ups happen 90%more when tired?

[@KopyErr]

YES, affected me today actually was rlly damaging/shook a lot of my ground, is this like a much more autistic thing or is it rlly common generally? Idk

[@ss5gogetunks]

I'm an AuDHD extrovert who still gets exhausted in social situations

[@ElanieBellanie]

Im an audhd introvert

[@kim15742]

I am diagnosed ADHD and personality tests have always said I was introverted. I do think, however, extraverted AuDHD fits my experience better. Could you elaborate on your experiences?

[@mounaxs3472]

What is Audhd?

[@Kagomai15]

​@@mounaxs3472portmanteau of autism and adhd

[@Thebatcavepetfriendlybakery]

Autism and adhd perfectly blended into a concoction of chaos. I find routines boring but i need routine or i will disintegrate into oblivion. Its great when the autism and the adhd conflict and you have to find a balance in order to function. I feel like im always on a hairpin trigger, i can snap so easy into a meltdown bc i find the perfect balance and one outside stimuli throws it off, ruining it all. Im still figuring it out. Hope this helps! (Also thats not every experience, but its common in audhd comrades) ​@mounaxs3472

[@aVeganMaya]

Wow, I actually never fully understood the detail oriented thing until just now. But it 100% applies to me that I need to know all the details and do all the research before structuring something. That's how I've always worked throughout school and uni... So much makes sense now 😂

[@Indi_Waffle_Girl]

THE BOTTOM-UP THINKING OH MY GOSH!!! This is definitely me! With writing, with video editing. I remember when my high school AP literature teacher taught us the method called "spill your guts", or SYG for short, as she would put it. You just put all your thoughts out on a page that you want, unfiltered and unedited (good for me to practice bc I get hung up on individual sentences), and then cut it down and shape it from there. That type of thing helps me get started with multiple creative mediums now, it can kinda help with the "blank page/canvas" problem that artists can experience. Bless her 🙏 Also, the description of social situations as CHAOTIC, that's beautiful!! I never thought I was autistic bc I was so damn good at social situations. Generally enjoy them, too, for the most part. But "chaotic" - that fits me so well, in my experience! Thank you for this enlightening video ^^ ❤

[@Mad.E]

I love videos that are like de-influencing but for self-diagnosing

[@kimmyhart850]

Side note but once i realized your earrings were spoons i couldn't stop admiring them. Love tiny housewares❤

[@bradiedean7466]

I feel you on the honesty thing. My two modes are 1) keeping my mouth shut about my opinions, or 2) if they ask for my opinion i WILL give my honest opinion. I try to be as kind as i can in the delivery while still being honest but I won't lie to protect your feelings unless i feel unsafe being honest (like with creepy guys)

[@djbt2718]

definitely utilize this inductive approach when creating music compositions/DJing; collecting/creating all the parts & then tracing the connections and assembling them. mixtapes have been a special interest of mine since actual cassettes were the norm lol

[@SidneyHurcombe]

Can't wait! Have been looking for something to watch for the past hour and look now more!! You're sunday videos always make my least favourite slightly more bareable.

[@lornatw]

So grateful for this as it's so important when educating about things to also give the other possibilities and normalize the realisation that you don't have to have the big label that's being talked about in society to still fit into something and get support if needed! 💗

[@Shantari]

Oh God, the monologue bit! My brother has hassled me over being "self centered" in how much I talk, but I stress out so bad when there's silence, since I can't tell if it's the comfortable or the awkward type.

[@naomiparsons462]

So you know when you just randomly shiver, kind of like a mini spasm or something? Not because it's cold, maybe because you're disgusted by something or maybe you're overstimulated... What is that? Surely it's an autistic thing because other people don't really seem to do it.

[@jacepawplayz]

Sometimes I have to “shake/rub thoughts/memories off” for example: one time a spider landed on my hand and I shook it off, whenever I remember it again, I have to “shake the memory off” but sometimes I get scared like “what if this bad thing happened” so I just rub/scratch the area I imagined something bad happening to I have diagnosed autism and this might not be what you were talking about

[@hydrogen3266]

I used to do this all the time and people around me would always get concerned about it

[@emisformaker]

One of the times I do this is when someone's been walking behind me a bit too close, then they pass by. I get really worried that they've seen me do it and misunderstood it as disgust when it seems more to do with an excess of feeling. It is nice to know it's not just me.

[@Monokitsune]

Huh…I get this from time to time.

[@ScifiMushroom]

im autistic(it seems like people being autistic is the unspoken default in alot of other comments so i cant tell if i need to specify this here sorry if it seems redundant,) and i do that when i hear a sound i dont like and am starting to get overwhelmed and it feels like the sound stays in my ears unless i shake my head, also when ive been forcing myself to sit still for too long. I have seen some of my family members shudder at sounds or ideas also but that ones that do seem to have alot of autistic traits in general so they may be autistic aswell, I have never seen my family members who seem to not have any autistic traits do this so i also think it is an autistic thing but idk. i think its cool that this is being discussed here as i havnt seen it talked about before

[@MartinMCade]

Your description of the "chaos" of social situations is EXACTLY how I feel at most parties.

[@honest_psycho7237]

Omg, I currently have my hobby checklist 'done' and I have trouble choosing what to do next. The line at 10:45 about 'leisure' applies so much! Thank you for making these videos!

[@Lady_Eleven]

OK I don't have an autism diagnosis and I'm not sure I actually am... but I've never felt so seen until you explained the thing about "bottom up" thinking! I've recently had performance reviews at work and I've been trying to figure out why I'm good at certain tasks and seem to have "good memory" when I don't think I actually have good memory... but I think it's because when I'm learning about something, I don't filter out all those little facts that maybe seem irrelevant at first but then once you build them up together, you get a big-picture understanding that is more complete. Like I tend to get "lost in the details" but once I have enough details I tend to get a good, accurate picture, and I can't even understand how you get to a big picture without the little pieces first. It feels like you have to make a lot of assumptions that may end up being wrong anyway and then you've got a whole different picture. It reminds me of when I was in high school and I wanted to be a physicist (didn't work out sadly) because "it seemed like a good place to start." Because it's the science that sort of builds the blocks the other sciences sit on top of. Also your "eek!" thing reminds me of something I used to do in, I think, middle and high school a lot where I would just write the word "reject" over and over and over. And even at the time I didn't really know why I was doing it. It just felt soothing. Looking back it seems like it was probably an anxiety thing. I definitely have lots of anxiety. I would say overall on this video I'm like 60/40 for things that lean more toward autistic but I am also definitely an introvert.

[@nozhki-busha]

My introvert wife did the AQ10 and got 4 and I got 10, we then did the AQ 50 test, she scored like 15 and I was 35. I also scored 104 on the Aspie Quiz v.5. I think my wife was disapointed she scored so low 🤣 I am pretty sure I was (mis)diagnosed in the early 80s as a hyperactive child. I used to stim by jumping up and down, flapping hands, and hugging myself when excited, I still do the hugging thing when no ones around :) I got bullied, labelled as weird or a freak at school, and struggled to fit in there and later at many jobs. I also have a number of traits such as finding it hard to understand non verbal communicaiton, special interests (oh good grief I get hyper focused) I am quite literal, react very badly to change and many more. I did think I was an introvert for years, but these signs and regular burnouts from social interactions makes me think otherwise now.

[@ICLHStudio]

I'm definitely introverted and probably autistic (nothing officially confirmed); but many lists and questionnaires feel incomplete on the subject to me, often offering binary/single-scale choices about things that I seem to differ not only from the majority of autistic people, but from most allistic people as well. The strongest examples for me are that I am highly Chaos-aligned (I cannot stand routine, rigid structure, and regular intervals; and having a set schedule throws me wildly off balance psychologically and is incredibly stressful), and I don't really mask my autism-coded behaviors (I definitely have them, but my whole life I have rejected the idea that I should try and do things the way others expect me to; I dislike eye-contact for example, but I don't spend time in social situations worrying about whether I'm 'doing eye-contact right' because I don't intend to 'fix' it anyway). These, and others, certainly don't seem like allistic traits to me, but are uncommon enough that most things like the monotropism questionnaire essentially leave them out of the phrasing of their questions (my reactions to the disruptions of my time are the same, but the questionnaire explicitly frames the questions around Chaos intruding into Order, which seems like it should be not as relevant as the sense of, and reaction to, the disruption in the first place), the result being that it often feels like autistic traits are being incorrectly grouped in with allistic ones simply because they don't perfectly match the expected experience. Although part of this might be related to my life-long feud with tests and questionnaires anyway, I seem to always find fault with the framing and phrasing of non-open-ended questions and found them frustrating and difficult to figure out what they're actually asking, and therefore how to answer truthfully (the amount of poorly written tests I had to take throughout college was infuriating; although now that I'm not obligated anymore, I love to rant about them, so it all worked out in the end I suppose).

[@Respectable_Username]

I'm also extremely frustrated with the wording on so many of these types of tests! So often the answer is - "it depends" - "actually that's two questions, and my answer to each is different" - "why is this asking about frequency and not degree?" - "why is this asking about degree but not frequency?" - "I've used an external tool/am in another situation such that that's not really applicable/a problem" - "I definitely don't have the typical response but the word you chose here _also_ doesn't match my response" - "I have the exact opposite reaction actually" - "this question is so vague I don't know what it's asking" - "this isn't true, but only because I spend most of my social time amongst fellow nerds who are probably also ND, rather than NTs" - "If I knew how others perceived me/if they considered my behaviours odd/rude, do you think I'd be taking an autism questionnaire? Or are you assuming that I don't live in polite society where commenting on what other people do to their face is considered rude and therefore the majority of people hold their tongue, regardless of opinion?" Etc, etc. It's especially frustrating as I used to run an answers wiki back in high school and one of my main jobs was deleting poorly defined questions. Which means I've got a very keen sense for when a question is poorly defined! Very unfortunate these questionnaires basically never come with an option to just describe your experience with said situation in words and allow the person who designed the bad question to interpret said response in the context in which they asked said question, rather than forcing me to guess their intent and answering based on that instead (and maybe answering "wrong"). One of the pre-assessment questionnaires I filled out recently (am in the process of getting diagnosed!) is clearly intended to judge your level of support needs, going progressively from "needs higher support" to "needs lower support", but some of the questions are just so clearly oblivious to context. Like one which asked how often you need help finding the bathroom when you're out. Yes I often ask to be pointed towards the bathrooms, but that's because so often they're extremely poorly signposted, and/or I feel more awkward wandering aimlessly around a restaurant/pub looking for a door marked "toilets" rather than just asking the person behind the bar to point me in the right direction. But that was one of the top questions in that segment, suggesting that if you needed help finding the loo then that means you're higher support needs, not that many locations have rubbish sign posting. So do I answer truthfully that I often seek help locating the bathrooms, or do I answer based on the intent that I rarely/never have _difficulty_ locating the bathrooms when out because I have no issues finding a "human signpost" if the actual sign posts are insufficient? ...To be honest, I feel that spending too much time thinking about the nuances of these questions should count as an indication in itself of neurodivergence. I just wish they had somebody who was actually autistic and who cared about precision in questions review these surveys before they're released so they don't do stupid things like lumping questions about interactions with family and interactions with friends into the one question, or lumping dating in with friendship in another question, when in both instances those are two _wildly_ different social environments! Not to mention asking people who are investigating wether or not they have "can't read other people very easily" condition questions about how others perceive their actions 🫠

[@Respectable_Username]

BTW, on your particular responses, have you looked into the PDA presentation of autism yet? Hating rules being imposed upon you, even by yourself or by a machine (eg a calendar), is pretty typical of PDA. I also hate schedules and am lucky enough to have the self-confidence to just ignore a lot of the social rules that make no sense such as "hierarchy", eg telling the CEO he's wrong and why 😅

[@ICLHStudio]

@@Respectable_Username Yeah, there's a lot of stuff in PDA that fits me for sure; it's probably the 'version' of autism that is the closest match for me (although monotropism is pretty strong in general as well), even with whatever caveats apply.

[@ICLHStudio]

@@Respectable_Username I suppose the imprecision of questionnaires is one of the reasons why actual human assessment is so important to the whole process of an actual diagnosis. Probably the question type that most gets on my nerves is the bundling of 2 variables together without making it clear what you're actually asking about; the "do you do/experience X for Y reason?" question. What if I do/experience X for Z reason? Do I answer no? Will you interpret that as me saying that I don't do/experience X when I do? Or have you taken that into account? And it's not like it's that hard to clarify what variable you're actually after (in multiple ways); you could follow up immediately with a "do you do/experience X for reasons other than Y?" or rephrase the original to be like "do you do/experience X for Y (or other) reasons?", even "do you do/experience X, and if so, is it for Y reason?" makes it clearer what the actual question is. I remember once, on a family road trip, we were all taking personality quizzes on the drive; and collectively spent several hours on like 25 questions; because we were all debating what they meant and the nuances of our answers. I think one of my siblings suggested we start a family podcast where we just eviscerate questionnaires like that. We never did, but it would have been pretty great (I might have to revive that idea).

[@lynetremblay7680]

I was totally obsessed with your spoon earrings. Had to relisten and relisten and relisten. Love the purples on the side of your videos!

[@losingfayth]

"oh no! am i not autistic??" *watches video* "oh... yeah... i'm pretty autistic"

[@joannarigby1989]

Highly relate to every single one. I’m 37 and self diagnosed as autistic a year ago. I’m now trying to educate my husband as to what autism actually is and convince him that I am autistic (not just anxious and socially awkward!). I’m going to sit him down and watch this video with him, I think it’ll help. Thanks so much ❤

[@NoName-hv7xn]

It's nice that you found out that you are and also it's very nice that you are trying to educate other people, still if I was you I'd look to get a diagnose from a professional, in my case I already have it (I also self diagnosed some time ago) and it helps a lot.

[@bottomofastairwell]

also self diagnosed. thankfully though, my boyfriend's roommate is diagnosed autistic, so when i told him i thought i was, he was like, oh yeah, no doubt. to be fair, he took me to a Christmas party with like a dozen of his friends (none of whom i'd ever met) last year and i literally said the phrase "i don't know enough about the social dynamics to make an informed decision about where to sit" when everyone was sitting down to eat dinner. so like, i feel like it's pretty damn obvious, lol. but yeah, the biggest thing hat scares me now is telling other people, because i don't have an official diagnosis, so what if they don't believe me? am i really gonna have to sit there and go bullet point by bullet point, justifying my autism? so i wish you all the luck or whatever in the world on your journey to educate your husband.

[@joannarigby1989]

@@bottomofastairwell thank you 🙏🏼 I feel the same about telling other people. I’ve worked at my job for nearly 10 years, and feel they won’t believe me if I say now that I am autistic. I don’t want to have to tell them all this personal stuff to try and convince them. I don’t have the energy to have to try and educate people as to what autism actually is either. It’s pretty hard to educate other people and advocate for yourself. Realising I am autistic has been such a relief for me, and has helped me finally feel I fit in somewhere, and understand myself. But having to figure out how to tell others, how to get support, how to meet other people…that feels like a challenge.

[@joannarigby1989]

@@NoName-hv7xn eventually I will get a diagnosis. Right now it’s just too expensive. Costs around $2000 where I live.

[@NoName-hv7xn]

@@joannarigby1989 Wow, that's so expensive, now I get it why you don't have it haha, luckily here is free.

[@ashleyredsheep]

Ohhh my god, the bottom-up detail bit is insanely relatable, I'm so happy you were able to explain that. I always have to gather a bunch of interesting things and ideas, sort it into a wacky, stream-of-consciousness combination of paragraphs and bullet points. It's like brainstorming but more detailed and more selective, and I'm sooo hesitant to share my progress with people when it's in that messy state. Like when I write fiction, it's some combination of hyper-specific scenes, random dialogue or wordplay ideas, and absolutely incoherent rambling about my vision until I can figure out how to organize things. And it's absolutely like knitting it together into something coherent in the end. Of course, I'm ALWAYS editing while I write, making sure a sentence or thought is perfectly rendered before I feel like I can go on. Super super time-consuming, but the product can be especially spectacular.

[@zephyrias]

Ahhh yes! Thats what I do too with my creative works. 😂 Making a comic rn, i have the intro done since it was written in a novel format years ago. Now im turning it into a one shot webcomic for a contest. Now im taking all the random scenes and alternate endings and writing em down… when i get to doing it, to sort out which version to take to lead into the ending.

[@Jojoba8]

I very much relate! I didn’t know this, but I do bottom-up thinking for my job. I develop strategic plans for my company by taking all the information and details I can find, and only when I put it all together can I write up the big picture. I always start having no idea where I’ll end, but I’ve learned to trust my brain to find the way. Now I know WHY it works for me! Thank you for your encouragement. Love your videos and insights!

[@jacksparrowismydaddy]

I know one thing... I wasn't an introvert until I became a teenager. I spent years trying to fit in and do things with other kids. mostly ending in punishment for social breeches I was unaware of...

[@Catlily5]

Same here. And as I found more neurodivergent friends as an adult I became more extroverted again.

[@jamiepattison]

I LOVE your spoon earrings!!!

[@adampryor1289]

I took a sign language class in high school and for years after that I would spell words with my hands when I was anxious or couldn't say something I was thinking out loud. I don't do it often anymore but on random occasion. I thought of that when you mentioned scribbling words out in the air.

[@samaro1791]

The outline thing!!! I definitely start with details. I remember making outlines for teachers after writing the papers.

[@stevenhuynh7788]

The 'bottom-up' thinking makes so much sense to me. Whenever I do research on my interests it's me collecting so much data and information on something and spending so much time creating systems and frameworks on whatever I'm doing. I feel like I try to compensate for all this information by finding ways to create a big picture from these details. Kind of similar to getting overwhelmed with sensory stimulation from one specific context and trying to make sense of it by locking into 'just how my breath feels' or 'how my feet feel on the floor'. Easier said than done, though.

[@AstridSouthSea]

The dolphin story!! Oh my gosh i used to annoy my teachers because i couldn't "show my progress" the way they wanted, but I'd turn out the work at the end.

[@nickhoward5203]

I've always had issues with the outline step. The responses I usually got were along the lines of, "this is more of a final draft than an outline"

[@ds.laetitia]

OMG 7 !!! THAT MAKES SO MUCH SENSE. That is exactly how I work, I need to gather the full content first, before starting to organise it in a way that makes sense, and maybe removing some things that are finally not that important. I definitely work by filtering out rather than picking what I need. That explains so much why I struggled so much with heavy works at post-secondary school. And I have an appointment with them on Friday, to talk about the way I was treated and kicked off my internship 11 years ago. This insight is so helpful with what I am going to explain to them in order to avoid such experience to other students! THANK YOU

[@marcellkovacs5452]

This is how I wrote all my assignments ever, luckily I never had to do it in any particular way (nothing like that dolphin thing). Read all the relevant information, then come up with a story that connects the dots. I had no idea this wasn’t the norm.

[@tiffy_nolan]

Thank you for the clarity!! Its interesting to see the differences between the 2 based on yours and the people around you's experience.

[@AlexisautisticxD]

Im so happy you posted!! i love your content so much youre my favorite youtuber ever im gonna buy a teir on your patreon🎉❤

[@imautisticnowwhat]

Aw, thank you so much! 💛

[@rainravenscraftingcorner2907]

You just made sense of how I write papers! 😅

[@MovieNerd223]

OH MY GOSH!!! Your example of the Dolphin Outline makes so much sense! I have never understood why I have always struggled so much and been bad at writing papers starting with an outline like I have ALWAYS been told to do!

[@acarcarazza]

I relate to the bottom-up vs. top-down thinking thing SO MUCH. I started finding it difficult to follow in class as I grew up and the concepts that were taught became more complex, which meant that they’d give us an ‘overview’ and not really fill in any of the details. Other people didn’t seem to have an issue with this, but especially when I was in university, I basically just ended up going off and doing my own in-depth research on the topic in order to understand, remember and apply the information. Sometimes it helped me perform really well, because I just knew so much about the subject matter. However, sometimes I upset professors by questioning too many things, bringing up my own research too much (as opposed to the assigned reading) and it was perceived as me being disrespectful and/or going off-topic on purpose, especially because I ‘typically’ performed really well and was considered quite intelligent, so nobody believed or imagined that I might genuinely be struggling/asking questions because I didn’t understand. I had no clue that I might have been autistic at the time, and didn’t really know how to explain myself when these grievances were brought up. I also didn’t fully understand what the issue was, and ended up asking more questions about why my behaviour was wrong/inappropriate. It typically just resulted in the professor feeling even more disrespected because they thought I was ‘playing dumb’/making excuses. Someone told me so in so many words. I, on the other hand, was acutely aware of the fact that I wasn’t pretending not to understand or going off-topic on purpose, on top of the fact that I’d put in a lot more work than everyone else, so I started feeling like some kind of imposter who’d somehow initially deceived everyone into thinking I was super smart when really I was one of the stupidest people alive. I now understand that I simply take in information differently (on top of some issues with social cues and taking things too literally/not knowing how to interpret even slightly ambiguous instructions, which were also at play) and it’s not a matter of intelligence. I really wish I’d known sooner, though, it didn’t exactly do wonders for my social anxiety and self-esteem.

[@M.Bessie]

I really agree with putting in the details first, and then creating a big picure out of that. With art class one day I was just putting detail in the eye of a face I was making, even though the eye was the only thing i made yet.

[@lanternsown3525]

I hope you had a Happy Birthday Megan!

[@upalmer4005]

Oooooh the bottom-up thinking description is so perfect! I have struggled so many times with teachers who ask questions to try and get us to "discover" the lessons. I always make too many (or "wrong") "discoveries" and give "distracting" answers. (Quotes bc the higher the education level, the less of a problem it's been)

[@tori6056]

The outline story is so relatable. I remember many times in college writing my full paper/essay, then using that to make an outline I could send to the professor for a grade

[@crazymteers]

i love this video! heads up there’s a little funky visual thing at around 5:50

[@streitrat]

It pixelated!

[@42percenthealth]

Regarding bottom-up vs. top-down thinking: I seem to use bottom-up thinking when gathering information or learning. New topics feel like a vast sea of facts that I have to gather and organize into a big picture. However, when I'm working on a new kind of project, I tend to think top-down: I'll learn how to get started with basics and save most of the details for later. FWIW: I believe I have autism, but I'm undiagnosed.

[@ScifiMushroom]

the outline thing explains so much,, i was always so confused by the order of steps teachers recommended on writing assignments and i would feel so bad bc id always fall behind

[@gerardochavez1528]

Your channel is so validating for me. As with many I don’t have an official medical diagnosis but have known who I am and fit all the criteria. I still get the occasional thoughts like ‘am I just making it up?’ But then I see something like this that alleviate that fear

[@McBenny_MealPrimos]

1).When I'm interrupted, I try to continue what I was saying, even if we start talking about something else completely. Also, I find myself not knowing how to talk to somebody after being interrupted unless I talk about what was interrupted in the first place. 2) in social situations, i tend to struggle tremendously and only like hanging around people that i feel i can share how i truely feel with. Also, i tend to just not involve myself in social situations in general and will just exit myself from the situation if it is too crowded or if i am generally just struggling. 3) i don't talk much, unless it is about something i am interested in (like genshin. Genshin is basically what my life revolves around). 4) I am constantly asking my friends and the people around me for guidance with anything, even if I think I am correct about something. Also, I really am not flexible with anything. Time is a huge problem for me. 5) I am incredibly direct and honest. If somebody asks me if I like their hair, I will be honest, even if they are my friend and I don't like it. 6) noise is a huge problem for me. I can notice very quiet sounds and it makes it hard to concentrate on anything most of the time, and I also struggle with the fact that noise cancelling headphones can be very uncomfortable or do not cancel out noise. 7) I notice many small details. For example: smiley faces, unusual dots, or just fun patterns to look at. 8) I would consider myself to have quite severe anxiety which completely dominates my life. It causes frequent stomach aches, headaches and dizziness. 9) FINALLY.. I fidget so much. Fidgets I do: I pick out my hair, bite/pick my nails, bite/pick my skin, banging head against something (anxiety response), playing with slime, playing with something that loops, playing with controlled sounds

[@BlertaPupu]

I don't find socialising chaotic. It's rather like an unresolvable puzzle. It's diffuse.

[@retrogradevector]

Great video! I just got around to doing the Monotropism Questionnaire and yup, I scored very high. No surprises there 😅

[@rakastellar8955]

Aw damn, you describe it so well with the different channels. It is a bit like changing the radio station and then immediately having to react to new information

[@jmvanzalinge5023]

Yes! The outline! It was so much easier to come up with an outline before research when the teacher was clear about what she wanted in it. I could decide where things would likely go together. Ex: I'd want to talk about where dolphins live before I talk about what they eat. But if it was about a topic I had no experience with and the teacher just said, "teach me" then I would need to research before having any clue as to what the outline would need to have. I do find it useful to do the outline at that point just to make sure I hit the important information and don't babble about random facts. They say, approach it with questions, put your questions in the outline and work from there. My question: what is it??? And the loop. I do that in conversation if I feel like I need to make sure a certain point gets across. Sometimes I feel like the first time I didn't say it with the right tone or fluctuations, sometimes I'm looking at the other person's face and it seems like they didn't quite get the importance of it, sometimes I just feel like I didn't word it right at first so I make a second attempt and find myself using the exact same words.

[@masterchiefblank4885]

I got told what I eat is bland as I just have steak, rice, mixed vegetables without seasoning, is that weird? Im perfectly fine without seasoning as I especially love the texture of pot out of bag cooked rice

[@tatiana4050]

I could never, texture of rice has to be one specific way or it will feel like wearing socks knitted from jute.

[@Astro-Markus]

For me, it depends. I really like spicy food - perhaps my taste buds aren't as sensitive as me smell detectors (12 out of 10). However, salt is quite an issue.

[@masterchiefblank4885]

@@Astro-Markus I jus dont really care to have condiments such as salt, pepper, coriander etc on my food I dont know why

[@Catlily5]

Eat it how you like it. Many autistic people like bland food. Some of us like spicy food. But it is ok either way.

[@shoyuramenoff]

Yeah, it is...as an AuDHD person who likes strong flavours. Not every autistic person has the same palette.

[@Shego5000]

3/4 through the video and I just noticed your spoon earrings! They are so lovely :)

[@threshasketch2655]

I love your spoon earrings, and had to tell you so! Every time I hear somebody talking about stims, I find more that I do that I didn't realize are stims. Thank you for your informational and well-presented videos. I've just figured out I'm on the spectrum fairly recently, and feel like an imposter sometimes still, but I relate so much to this list and how I am the opposite of each point (e.g. I do fidget, find socializing chaotic, etc etc.)

[@ashleyien1222]

Interruptions: If I'm expecting something, the interruption isn't so bad (the waiting is an issue though)... but just random interruption kind of makes me panic or something. I don't know how to explain it. Chaotic? I'm not sure that's the word I'd use, but yes, I never know where to stand, or what to do with myself, or what to do in general and kind of stand in corner observing mostly.. 😅I definitely monologue... I seem to have 2 settings... say nothing or don't stop.... Flexible? I am not. My family likes to plan things last minute, I need warning! I tend to kind plan out my day... yesterday I was "I NEED TO MAKE PROGRESS ON MY D&D stuff"... totally didn't... I stared at it all day and struggled to do it and people on the server said to take a break and come back to it, but my brain was like "I MUST DO THIS FIRST! THEN OTHER THINGS!" ... I did stop to get food around 7 pm (usually try to eat around 6...) After eating I was able to put it aside and do something else. It's going better today. I try to say what I mean. I don't like lying... I try to not say anything if I don't want to be mean and don't want to lie. Noise? Depends what noise... Random noise, people moving, typing, water dripping, conversations... those drive me insane. At work or trying to do stuff in public, I need earphones and instrumental music on. I can focus better with music, but not stuff I can sign along to... I don't know if I'm detailed oriented. I do agree I wouldn't know how to outline something before I learn stuff. I do the research first, then possibly outline, then write... Mental loop... What? Lewis only thinks about Football? Nothing else? I definitely do mental loops... I've been told to let things go... doesn't work well. Fidget... I've wondered for years if I might be ADHD because of the amount of fidgeting I do. I have trouble sitting still. 100% fidget/stim... very often. In school I swung my feet, tapped my foot, doodled on the margins of the paper... now it's still those things, but also play with fabric, wiggle my fingers, play with my hair (twirl a piece or tug my braid)... 😅 I joined the server in October, but didn't talk much until recently. Everyone is very nice. And I can relate to a lot of things people have said and I've gotten a lot of {SAME} on stuff I've said. It's validating. Thanks for having such an amazing server.

[@autumntaylor-buffington1875]

I did the monotropic questionnaire and got 174 out of 235, which means I am more monotropic than 15% of autistic and 85% of allistic people.

[@beed2587]

a few months ago, I was working on this puzzle I got for Christmas, and my mom moved my puzzle to a different table. Which made my blood boil because I don't want people to touch my puzzle. After she moved my puzzle I totally lost it, everything felt completely different. It wasn't placed how I wanted it anymore and I had no idea if she added pieces or removed pieces. When she moved my puzzle she asked my grandpa to help her, they used a piece of cardboard to transfer my puzzle onto the card table. When I saw it, it seriously felt like one moment it was peaceful and the next someone was making me touch those books with the 3d covers. (y'know? the really horrible ones for kids that everyone rubs their fingernails on and it just makes me want to shrivel up and fall over.) I had simply started crying and I took apart my puzzle putting it back into the box before I resorted to ripping up the cardboard that they had used to commit the act of insanity that was interrupting me doing my puzzle, a process that took days because whenever I had to eat or sleep I just fell out of it and it took effort to start working on it again but puzzles make me happy I adore puzzles. And now, watching so many educational videos, I think back on my reactions to things and its really had me wondering.

[@ravenjohnson6871]

Oh my gawwwwwwd. The accuracy! This has been the most relatable one yet for me 😩