I have just watched the 1st episode of A Kind of Spark thanks to @PetitPas
It’s a Irish British American Canadian series. In Canada I’m watching it on CBC Gem, in the UK it seems to be on the CBBC channel, for the others countries I don’t know.
I like it because the 3 autistic sisters are played by autistic actors, use of the words autistic, masking, meltdown. etc. Shows sensory overload, etc., ignorance and bias.
The way the autistic "narrow interests" part of my #AuDHD manifest itself is not in the learning department. It's in the motivational department. I have broad lexical knowledge but a narrow ability to perform, especially if sustained effort is needed.
I sound like an encyclopaedia but I need help in everyday life, which I have only started receiving a little bit of in the past year or so. It's just really hard for me to take care of myself, even if the consequences are very bad.
It's a challenge to find a viable career when you're so picky. I worked as a software developer for over a decade, but with repeated burnouts. They kept giving me projects that were too boring to stay motivated. I tried out ADHD drugs to compensate, but they made me unstable, so I had to quit those, and the industry itself.
I can pretend to function like a normal human for a few months while I'm still excited by the novelty of the situation (such as starting school or landing a new job), but once everyday life settles in, things start to get difficult due to the motivational issues.
It has taken me two years to change my bio from "Neurodivergent, apparently" to just "Neurodivergent". Despite being open about my #ASD and #ADHD, the 'apparently' must have been a subconscious way of distancing myself from the diagnosis somehow.
Autistic brains be stupid. Well, obviously not stupid, they just seem to work, or not work, in mysterious ways.
The main one that has always got me, about mine, is that I have no memory for sound, absolutely none. I can't remember a song, or a sound. I can't remember what my parents sounded like and none of my memories carry, for want of a better word, a soundtrack. I can remember what I was thinking and what others were saying, but not hearing them say it, nor any other sound. I also don't dream in sound, at least as far as I know. All my dreams are silent.
And yet, and it's a big yet. I have an excellent memory for voices and sounds. Like many autistics I have near perfect pitch, at least when I'm hearing others sing, or music playing. Just don't ask me to reproduce it, because I can't. If I meet someone I haven't met for a while, then I will almost certainly not recognise their face, or remember their name, but there is a very good chance that I will recognise them from their voice. I am also very good at detecting accents. Even the slightest hint of one in, say, an actor pretending to be an american, will get me searching Wikipedian to see if I am right about their actual nationality.
So, if I can tell the sound of a Honda CBR engine two blocks away, or a voice, or an accent buried deep, I must have the memories to compare against. And yet... nope.
We've been sent a huge questionnaire from our daughter's psychologist about her childhood and we are meeting with them in a few weeks time for an in depth interview.
There's some suggestion that she may be #autistic and this has played a major role in her troubles over recent years.
I'm suspending judgement because I don't know enough about the subject and Internet research on #autism in adult females isn't particularly helpful. I'm leaving this one to the professionals
No matter how well I learnt to mask, no matter how well I learnt to get on with people, if not in any deep and meaningful way, at least superficially. There has always been one skill that I have never mastered and that is simply the ability to not upset people and especially without having the slightest idea how.
Or that I didn't for a long time, anyway. It was only when I realised that I was autistic and that the way I looked at the world was in some ways substantively different from the way many allistics looked at the world, that I began to understand something. Allistics tend to find validation externally, through feedback from the group or the part of society that they identify with, whereas autistics tend to find it within themselves, in their own reason and sense of worth and value.
Now I must stress that in many respects this is a generalisation and obviously there will be a lot of variation and degree in how true this is. But in its more extreme forms, it could very well explain many of the experiences and difficulties that I've had.
Because if someone's self-worth, the value they see in their life and actions, is almost entirely based on their interactions with the dynamics of the group they identify with, or the society they live within and not from their own judgement, then this could lead to certain choices and reactions that are quite frankly alien to someone like me and that I could easily end up in conflict with and all without really trying to.
For example, if the value of a child reflects back on its parents. Then in the extreme case the values and behaviour expected from that child, are not those of the child, but of the parents in terms of the group the child is meant to be representing them in and how well it is doing that. So any sense of divergence from that or criticism of that child, no matter how slight that might be, could easily be seen as an attack on the parents and reacted to accordingly, irrespective of how reasonable or just it was.
Equally, of course, worth, praise, or rewards, can also become divorced from any sense of reality. All that matters is that you, whether that's through your children or not, are being valued, not whether there is any justice to it. Because the truth or validity of it, is not based on how you see yourself, but only on how others see you. And in the extreme case, it doesn't even matter how they came to this view, as long as they have it. So worth can become something to be manipulated and played for and how you really are and how you actually feel about yourself becomes almost irrelevant to this process.
That people could even be this way, that everything could become how you're being perceived and anything that effects that negatively can be something to be attacked, is still something that I struggle to understand. It is so foreign to my nature. But, it certainly explains so many of the times that I've upset people, because I wasn't playing this game, or seeing the world the way I should and didn't even realise it.
I tried being kind to myself and allowing myself to be half an hour late to work, as I was tired and still overwhelmed from yesterday. It didn't work out though as just as I arrived at work I had a big migraine and had to come home. Migraines are so strongly linked to overwhelm. It's like they're just another release valve for not coping with sensory input.
As we approach the end of Autism Acceptance Month, here is a reminder that countries like New Zealand will prohibit you from immigrating there if you are autistic.
Psychiatry and other forms of bigotry go hand in hand.
#Autism#ADHD#AuDHD#ActuallyAutistic
How does everyone know how, when and how much they're masking?
As a late-diagnosed #AuDHD, I struggle to differentiate between "me but masking" and "me but in a diff situation".
Now that I know I'm autistic, I even miss the person I used to be in some situations before I knew.
I used to call myself a "social chameleon" - I just changed automatically to suit the circumstances.
But who actually am I and what is just a mask? @actuallyautistic @actuallyadhd
I'm struggling so badly to get any traction on my gofundme or paypal donations. I'd appreciate anyone willing to take the time read my gfm, and even more so if you can donate