BackOnMyBS

Lemmy.Autism.Place

In the past year since this community was founded, we have seen impressive growth, engagement, and support within this community. Based on the content of what we have seen, we created an instance just for us founded on the principle of autism acceptance. The point is to have our place tailored to where we could freely be our autistic selves. While of course, we will federate with the other Fediverse instances that match our values, the purpose of the instance is to be able to create communities that are not solely limited to directly discussing autism, but to allow us to discuss all sorts of interesting topics in an way that is comfortable to us.

• Want to have a community solely for memes about autism without worrying if it will clog up the one autism community on lemmy.world? Come over and make that community.

• Have an obsession with the Battle of Stalingrad and want to drop some good info dumps from time to time? Make a community for that.

• Do you have trouble with social situations and want to run them by others without being ridiculed by bullies? We can make a community for that too.

• Don't want to only interact with autistic people? We're federated into the Lemmyverse, so you can subscribe to communities in other instances as well.

Come on over and feel free to sign up! Eventually, we hope to expand to other Fediverse services/software to provide a more comprehensive place.

Of note: we just started the instance, so it is possible that we will have some technical issues come up. If we do or you notice anything, please let us know in our chat. We would be happy to address it.

What will happen to !autism@lemmy.world?

We will continue to maintain this community. We will make a post if we foresee any major changes to this community to allow users to prepare beforehand, so there is no need to worry. Nothing is expected to change here anytime soon.

We hope you find the new instance welcoming and decide to be a part of it.

Edit: A link to our instance community for ease follows thanks to this comment's advice: !autismplace@lemmy.autism.place

I think that this video has helped me develop some insight on how to spot high-masking autism, not just among women. I found a lot of the material covered in the video relatable even though I am male. Maybe that has something to do with our elevated rejection of established gender roles as a whole. Regardless, I like how rather than listing concrete signs, he gave a list of patterns that would be common to masking autistic women (I believe all genders, really) in a manner that could still be easily noticed. This also helped me understand that the cause of some autistic traits are not fundamental, but rather a result of masking. 🤯

Aside from the signs of masking autism, the ending hit me emotionally. He validates something that no one has really validated for me. I've been told my entire life that I was too much, not enough, or purposely trying to violate rules and norms out of some moral or character failing. It's like I wanted to be careless/offensive or a loser. However, when he covered how much effort we put into masking and that it takes a lot of energy to do, I felt a validation I don't remember ever experiencing. It's like someone said, "I believe you're doing your best."

He also elaborates on the impact of when we tell someone that we're autistic or have difficulties in certain areas and they invalidate it by saying that we're not autistic or that we function normally. He then posits that when we unmask, we need others to validate that experience. I think that statement was not only directed at us, but others that have autistic people in their lives. I plan on using that to guide who I continue to allow in my life. If I need to mask or am invalidated by someone when I unmask, then they're not a good fit for me, so I will interact with them less.

I'm looking for online programs that help us navigate the world as autistic people. It could be anything, such as learning about autism, neurotypicals, social settings, identifying your emotions, self-care for autistic people, common terms related to autism, autistic love languages, etc...anything that helps autistic people live life.

If you have completed any programs related to being autistic, what were they and what did you think about them? Were they helpful?

I'm still on my journey of understanding the differences between autism and other. My focus today is eye contact, so let's have a discussion!

Guiding questions:

• What do you think is the underlying difference that causes autistic people to use less eye contact than others?

• What does it feel like for you?

• How do you interpret other people's eye contact?

• Do you avoid it, use short glances, or maintain NT-levels of eye contact?

• Does it vary by situation?

• Anything else you would like to discuss regarding eye contact?

Question is open to anyone. If not identified, then the assumption is the user is autistic. Otherwise, if you're NT or other ND, please state so 🙂

I think it would be interesting to share lessons we've learned about socializing that didn't come natural to us like they do for NTs.

• What social difficulties did you have, and what did you learn to compensate for them?

• Also, since there's a difference between autistic and NT cultures, what lessons did you learn about socializing with NTs and in NT environments?

Infodumps are welcomed! 😁

A video covering what they look like and what can trigger them.

Image: They Don't Know meme template.

• Corner guy is my bladder: They don't know I need to pee.
• Right side couple is my sensory system: Yes we do. It's really obvious.
• Left side couple is my executive system: But the Golden Age of Piracy is too interesting.

Image: Clown applying make up meme.

• Panel 1: I definitely stick out as different from others
• 2: because I'm hypersensitive to physical sensations and emotions.
• 3: I also have trouble difficulty reading social cues and other people's intentions.
• 4: I also have trouble difficulty reading social cues and other people's intentions.

I'm on a meme creation roll, baby!

Image: Who want's to be a millionaire meme.

Why is my brain not working rn?

• A: Childhood trauma
• B: Societal division & oppression
• C: Worried I upset someone
• D: My hands are wet

Image: Brain before sleep meme of 4 panels.

Panel 1 is brain saying: We spent a lot of energy not thinking about all the texts, emails, and missed calls you haven't responded to.

Panel 2 is girl in bed with eyes closed saying: Yeah, I'm super tired. Better get some rest so I can try to respond tomorrow.

Panel 3 is brain responding: But no one expects you to respond this late, so now's the perfect time to watch a documentary and go down Wikipedia rabbit holes.

Panel 4 is the girl with her eyes completely wide open.

Anyone else just absolutely love the night time when the world is asleep, it's dark and cool, you've showered, on the couch under the comfiest blanket, and you know no one is going to interrupt or expect anything from you?

Image: Skeletor holding up a relatively huge 80s/90s cell phone with an aquatic mutant character name Mer-Man behind him.

Caption: Start every phone call with "my phone is about to die" that way you can hang up on them whenever you want to.

We know that we behave and think differently. We generally have more difficulty with social situation and are hypersensitive to sensory input. But to me, these seem like impacts of a fundamental difference. For example, we have social difficulties in NT environments because something with our neurotype is different. What is that fundamental difference that manifests into the symptoms of autism?

So far, my best guess is that we don't have the filter that NTs have with sensory input. They can decide what sensory information to focus on, allowing them to process information they see as important in real time. Additionally, they seem to be better able to multitask. For us, since we don't have that filter and multi-core processor, it takes us longer to process sensory input.

The other thing is that since we are more sensitive to sensory stimuli, we can get overwhelmed much easier, which limits our ability to process the info.

These two together make it so that social situations are difficult to navigate. There's wayy to much information to process in real time for us, so we end up missing a lot of the communication that is going on. For example, a person will send a nonverbal cue of some sort, but since we're still focused on what they said and processing all the other surrounding stimuli, we miss it. Maybe much later, when alone and reviewing the interaction or discussing it with a friend, we might finally get to the nonverbal cue and realize we missed it.

What do you guys think? Am I on track? Are there other fundamental differences between neurotypes?