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me: maybe I'm not autistic
also me: scores higher than 100% of neurotypical people and 90% of autistic people on the monotropism questionnaire
I score high on all tests I just accept I'm autistic as fuck lol
magi starting tests trying to make it on the leaderboards now.
Most of the tests I score pretty high. 43 on AQ, 203 on RAADS-R and 130 on CAT-Q, Monotropism 226 lol
let's call this ...angst? a bit of a traumadump too, don't read
Yeah, it makes me feel something (that i can't quite describe) to know i'm (almost) as high on all of these, and yet I made it through so many years with not one person suggesting it. I got forced to do some IQ test when i was young because i wasn't fitting in (I REALLY wasn't fitting in). After, all the authority figures around me insisted that i was different from other people because i was smart, and put me into a gifted program "for smart people" (I hate IQ tests, "smart" doesn't mean putting coloured blocks together fast). i then proceeded to do horribly in school and flunk out of college to transition (also i couldn't do assigned readings or write essays like at all, executive dysfunction suxxxx, at least i aced comp sci courses) and be struggling from job to job for a decade.
not one person. i saw multiple therapists throughout my life. i discovered adhd myself, and got brushed off when i asked the adhd psyc about autism ... and forgot about it for ten years.
i took the AQ-10 for fun because my new therapist said something that I can't even remember about some tests she was going to send me (I am not even sure if she mentioned autism at this point). I like taking tests and was shocked at the outcome. "lol these tests are dumb" i said to myself, as i proceeded to take all of them and score quite comfortably high in every one. then i started reading ...
sorry, i don't really know where i'm going with this, and that upper paragraph is a mess ... i think when i'm being honest all my words get tangled up
same
I was treated like I was smarter than most people in my age group, I got moved up classes several times which fucked up some subjects while I was ahead in others. Nobody ever caught on I was autistic either, I was great at English (despite Dyslexia ((which I didn't find out until doing research on my autism)), terrible at maths (Dyscalculia) Art and Science were my best subjects. I would get shit on from my parents for showing autistic traits, like not being able to eat things because of sensory issues, I'd be punished for that.. I dropped out of college (I did performing arts) around the same time I was thrown out by my parents before I turned 18 and made homeless.I also had a therapist at one stage who I found useless and when I did the research into autism I then realised they knew I was autistic and never said.. lol.
But yeah, you're better off looking into stuff yourself and it should help you understand yourself better, I was also frustrated and angry when I figured out all this shit I went years without knowing and also the amount of shit I took growing up angered me a lot too, not so much now but I'm past that.
Don't be sorry, thank you for reaching out. But yes I also enjoy taking tests but at this point I don't doubt anything, I'm clearly autistic, it ran in my family and I hadn't really any idea other than both my nephews were autistic, but looking once I did research and such I can spot the traits in other family members too. So like that helped me figure out a lot. Your processing when trying to type everything out is like what I have in my head, I have to formulate sentences to get it all out as it all comes at once so to speak.. so I can talk back to front too lol but it's okay, you don't need to apologise so much, I understand.
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that is so horrible
yeah, i think the lesson for myself here has been what Cool Therapist said to me - "self-reporting is the gold standard" was the phrase she used, because "no one else can tell what's going on inside your head." i've internalized a lot of "don't trust my own opinions" which is unsurprising! for me, masking is like 50% apologies and 50% pretending i don't feel bad things. working on it.
oh! talking back to front is a good way of describing it, i think. it's weird, like sometimes all of the words are simultaneous, and i have to figure out how they're ordered, or the end comes out first, but then i have to work backwards and edit and re-edit and add context. also i sometimes fill in blanks with things very confidently that turn out later to be not quite right, lol (i assume this is a masking thing since it's just personal facts that I do this with). for work stuff i'm very logical and systematic IMO (maybe others would disagree...) it's just personal things that feel like a dam bursting whenever someone takes an interest.
i edit things i write a lot, for some reason i can't see the "flaws" until after i post it. maybe it's to prevent me from spending 3 hours writing one thing. maybe i gotta get out of the post-writing tunnel to see it from a different perspective, so i have to see it as "done". hmm............ (every time I read this i add more dots)
i really appreciate your responses, you and @ashinadash@hexbear.net both. i had a long discussion this week with a friend about labels (in context to gender) (also sent her the gender accelerationist manifesto which she was pretty excited about but she's really busy with school so i doubt she'll have time to read it for a bit), and she's not autistic, and i realized through this discussion how important that label is to me for making sense of the world. i see you both as "my species" (as well as other people who i will probably mention at some point but tbh I don't want to @ everyone into a thread that mentions sad things) and it's very nice to talk to people who I think think like I do.
But the labels question is interesting - there is like a radical non-label thought that I'm not sure I subscribe to. if gender is a class structure, then neurocompetency (i have no idea how to spell this) would be too - maybe in the future, labels like "autism" would not be necessary anymore, just like "woman" and "man", because the class structure would disappear, but I personally think that, currently, the label of "autism" and calling myself autistic is the best way to find people who think like me. And, I honestly can't imagine a world where we don't have shorthands that we use to try to express to people how we'd like to be treated, how our minds work, etc. Maybe I am not imaginative enough - the Gender Accelerationist Manifesto is still very new.
(btw, It's very funny to see myself in the mirror now, looking more fem than ever and happy with it, and thinking in my head "abolish gender" lmao)
Labels have baggage for sure (and I really want to find a Marxist analysis of the term "euphemism treadmill"), but I use "autistic" as a shield to protect me from all the horrible things I've been told throughout my life - a way to tell myself that I'm not , I have a different way of relating to the world, one that they didn't/don't understand.
(trying very hard not to apologize for writing such a long note here)
fuckin stupid
I wish I felt the "same species" way about other autistic people like you do... I guess it should provide some bridge of understanding but there are autistic people who I've chafed worse against than neurotypicals, sometimes. I dunno, I'm probably a little too doomer about the whole thing. Might be my fault for being Fucking Annoying too_
That's interesting about neurotypes being a class structure and the eventual falling away of labels - I guess to me the difference is that while Gender Is Fuckin Fake Shit, people of different neurotypes have very distinct material needs that may always need to have a distinction. Idk, maybe we can have a society where everyone's needs are met on that level, but some neurotypes and individual people's needs can clash, so I'm not entirely sure they'll ever go purely as utility labels.
I think Gender Outlaw by Kate Bornstein talks just a bit about the importance of labels and identifiers to marginalised groups, and probably Feinberg does too. The contrast and difference is the point, I'm p sure. "Autism" is an extremely good label ngl.
Very based more like
obligatory daily reminder that hormones are not inherently gendered though, Idk. These views are compatible. I like that you're happy with your reflection tho ✨
not stupid at all
you know, if i really think about it, i think that i worry about the same thing. i like you both, so that's 2/2 other autistic people i've met that i like, but while browsing around the internet sometimes i get this chafing feeling too from other autistic people (in spaces like Reddit, YouTube etc.). it's possible maybe i'm relating to a subtype, or maybe the characterization of autistic/non-autistc isn't actually that helpful, and it'd be better to find people i like to talk to by other qualities? for instance, i like people who think deeply about things, who get super into the things they enjoy, who don't try to "fit in" to general society, and who are confident in what they believe. those are the people i look up to.
YES!!! this is exactly what I was thinking but couldn't put into words. thank you!
alright, time for a new book!
true, should have put "fem" in quotes as i meant more into the cishet-normative gender "female," as in, i'm presenting more in line with the "female" side of the gender binary than ever, and yet i'm less binary on the inside than ever.
oh ok thank u
But yeah it's just people stuff I guess.... I also dig the whole, 'thinks deeply about things & super into things they enjoy & doesn't try to fit in & confident in their own beliefs' person, which is common to but not universal for autistic people. There are people who infodump in huge paragraphs, and people who infodump by typing 97 single-line messages... Subtype, perhaps. Sadly autistic people often get their im-not-gonna-fit in or firm-beliefs crushed by ableism in their childhoods, which sucks. For what it's worth I think I do have a better hit rate with autistic people than allistics, usually. If I had a formula for finding people I liked that'd be rad.
Oh np!! I would hope they'd become less important as the world becomes less neurotypical centric, at least. I dunno how far that can go but I have optimism about it.
Gender Outlaw kinda slaps, skip the theatre kid shit and the play script but it's classic gender theory, I dig it. I think it mixes well with the Accelerationist Manifesto ✨
Ohhhhh, that is a pretty good contrast honestly and I kinda feel it too. Good vibe!
yeah, i had a bit of that tbh, but what was actually crushed was the entirety of me, not just those beliefs. i'm still working through it all.
it is!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! i'm actually posting
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aye well, that was the least of my problems with them tbf
I always trust my gut, but I'll also debate things and mull on things for days, but most of the time my gut instinct was correct lol but I don't have as much anxiety around my own decisions, I've had to think on my feet for a long time, not everyone has had to and anxieties and other factors can come in so I do understand it can be hard to "trust yourself" so to speak too
Yes yoda speak I also coin the term, very funny from a goblin lol But yeah I get sometimes the end of a sentence right at the start and then have to correct myself as I type and copy paste, this is very hard in person where I don't have the luxury of being able to do that so I can take a bit to process things clearly, I do have to slow down and parse my processing quite a lot. So if someone tries to press me when this happens it can make me quite anxious so I'd start stuttering, get frustrated with it and shut down, can be quite stressful if I'm pushed into that space but thankfully not always.
Autism being different from gender society as a whole would need to be rebuilt away from the Neurotypical standard which it is currently. The autistic label would probably be used but without the negativity as it is currently along with the baggage.
Gender related, It's basically the baker analogy from the manifesto, you can still use a label but have none of the baggage associated with using it. It doesn't take away anything it means to you on a personal level, it also lets other people see your label, it just won't have any of the negative connotations associated with said label or be used against people who use said label.
Personally for me, labels are that, I use some for myself but that's so people get the gist of who I am, but I don't put a lot of weight behind it either. I'm fairly relaxed on a lot of things but I know society isn't and I do see flaws in the system as it currently stands, abolishing gender would be a start lol
It's nice to see comrades happy c:
I use "autistic" so people know that my brain works a little different and yes some wires may get crossed but it's just my funny wiring and sometimes they may not quite get how I work.
the neighbour has decided now is a good time to start drumming (random times, random days, generally when i'm trying to get work done, frick, at least he's nice), so if my responses make less sense that is why, sorry
huh, that's interesting. Cool Therapist has been gently criticizing me for only listening to the rational parts of myself, and trying to mercilessly crush the emotional parts (okay this is my wording, not hers) into submission ("you shouldn't feel this way!!" etc). i had a bit of pride in being "completely rational" (not listening to the emotional parts is not rational), and in my line of work I definitely don't want to be caught making decisions based on "gut feelings" so I have a ton of practice rationalizing.
Sometimes I wonder what's going on down there for me, I think about the phrase "background processing" a lot.
It's been a while since someone's done this to me, luckily. I tend to dig my heels in when people pressure me instead of giving me time to adapt or think things through, has caused serious problems in the past. but i'll have to think on this more ... i did have like a 24-hour verbal shutdown like a month or so ago, and it was super scary for a bit (i thought my brain exploded), but i read that it's quite common for autism and so my partner and i played minecraft and text chatted for the day. it was actually kinda heavenly to not have to talk, once the i-cant-move-for-an-hour shutdown was past.
i like this, yeah the analogy was good.
yeah i think that's a good place to be tbh, i like it
You have any noise cancelling headphones or earplugs or?
When I get a gut feeling, (I call this my spidey sense), I'll mull on this for a bit and logic it out. I'll break everything down surrounding the feeling and then logic out why I felt the way I do,I tend to go with my gut more because I've been through a ton of shit and sometimes it can sense things before my brain has time to process everything, so I give my brain time to do the processing and analysis but it does turn out to be correct.
I have literally spent months talking to nobody before lol but mostly I tend to be more frequent with shorter moments of verbal shut down. It can be misread at times too and some people freak out somewhat because they aren't used to it but I do it when I don't feel the need to talk, get overwhelmed or don't feel like I can talk.
Same, I like it too ^^
oh, yeah, but i didn't want to get distracted from writing, lol, i put them on after i sent it. the pathway of "oh it's happening" -> "how annoying" -> "i'm stressed" -> "i could do something about this" -> "where are those headphones" -> "oh they're right in front of me" -> "i should put them on" -> "noise cancelling sounds weird but at least i don't hear the Bad Sound anymore" -> "what was i doing again?" is very long
oh, this makes sense to me - not that the gut doesn't have logic, but that it takes longer to figure out the reasoning... i think i can relate to that.
.
I am actually a bit envious of this bit, i talk so much, way more than i'd like, as my friend this week put it, "because of NT expectations." i wish that i could be less verbal but it's such a compulsion, and it's exhausting!
Good! now hopefully it'll not be bothering you too much c:
Most of my talking is in my head, I spent literally years alone so i only had my self, so my infodumps and processing is all internal. But I can go quiet even inside, really depends on whats going on but I'm always analysing all the time. I only talk when I feel the need or want to. So I can sit quietly for hours, it does unnerve some people who aren't used to it. But I can talk the leg off a donkey if I want to talk lol I just don't get that much opportunity to talk in day to day life. And if I don't want to talk people will find it hard to get much from me.
sorry, got pulled away by work and then needed to recharge, headphones do and did help :)
thank you for sharing!
No worries and you're welcome! ^^
Same. I only get like half on the normal tests tho, so I felt reasonable in my doubting. Til I looked back at the diagnostic criteria and realized I fit in to all of it.
I want to meet the monotropist that can’t be topped (more than 100% of autistic people).