this post was submitted on 05 Aug 2026
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Autism
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I think part of it is an effect of mental maturity, a process that continues into our 20s, and which we can't control. I'm now in my 30s and have found self-control a lot easier now compared to when I was younger.
I can't fault young people for struggling with the same things I struggled with at their age. I do my part to help teach autistic children skills (it's my job, after all), and a big part of that is simply communicating when they need something, including a break from an overstimulating activity or environment. It'll be quite a few years before they can override their impulses, and that's the hard part. There's no speeding up mental maturity, but we can learn to recognize our limits and advocate for ourselves when we realize we're getting close to them.
Honest question:
How much of that mental maturing is caused by the act of being exposed to (sometimes over) stimulating activities and environments?
Like, a tree getting stronger because the wind blows it around?
I have my own issues, and while I'm still figuring things out, my personal impression is that by being more or less forced to fit in, I've developed skills to control myself/improve myself. Within reason.
No shade to anyone, and this is still a question to you since you seem to be knowledgeable on the subject. But the impression I get, which could be wrong, is that people who cope with overstimulating environments by removing themselves from them, tend to stop growing or improving themselves.
Like a tree planted in a pot indoors, yeah, sure, it's nice and calm in there all the time, and there's no wind. But if you ever had to move it back outside it might just break, you know?
Examples of people I know include the extreme: those who stay home all the time and never see their friends anymore for any reason.
To the just beginning to struggle, my friends teenage adult son who wears earplugs all day every day.
Everyone has their issues, and I know I sound judgemental but I'm not trying to be. I honestly want the best for them. But my feeling is that if you don't push yourself, you'll never grow.
I'm not saying never remove the stimuli, always power through. No.
I myself am well known with my friends for just randomly disappearing, only to be found later in a dark quiet room just chilling for 5,10,15 minutes. So I understand it. But then I come back.
I just personally would never choose to permanently remove stimuli, even if sometimes it's too much. Because I feel like I will regress.
Sorry for the wall, but does this make sense?
Oh I'm faulting no one, like I said, this used to be me. I disagree that there's no way to learn emotional regulation skills earlier though, there are effective ways to teach this, but as a society we don't teach emotional regulation skills at all. I was certainly never exposed to the concept and only stumbled across it as an adult
Fair. Emotional regulation is hard to teach, too, since you have to practice it when calm. Trying to teach mid-meltdown is a lot more challenging.
Yeah, I wasn’t taught to regulate myself either. I had to learn the hard way. Sadly, as a kid, I learned to act like my mom, and she never learned it either. Now I can do it but she can’t, and she’s in her 60s. It hurts my heart, because she’s only very slowly learning how therapy can help her (for the first 50+ years of her life, she resisted it - both for herself, and for her children.)
Definite a generational trend here. Almost everyone I know who has parents who are baby boomers with personality issues, those parents are staunchly "everyone else is the problem" kind of people and refuse to do any sort of self-reflection
Yeah, because that would make it more difficult to manipulate people into believing nonsense.