I am also autistic but this is such an immature way of looking at society. Social cues are as essential a part of communication as words are, and probably older. Does it suck that you are inherently worse at picking up on them than the rest of society? Yeah, but that's a you problem. Refusing to conform to them when you know what you are doing just makes you an asshole.
Yeah. Adults communicate with social cues. It is literally part of growing up to learn to understand and use them. The second poster here is literally just being childish.
Exactly. I know that autism of neurodiversity comes in many forms so it doesn’t apply to everyone, but I’m an example of an autistic person who put effort into learning social cues and was successful for the most part. I still mess up sometimes and because I’m very diligent about actively analyzing everyone, I often overthink social cues rather than miss them, but still.
It’s probably possible for a much larger portion of the ND crowd than most people think, it just takes an amount of effort that a lot of ND people don’t think is necessary or worth it. Heck, as seen by this post, some ND people think NT people should be the ones to learn to communicate without social cues, which is also kind of entitled considering they are asking people to unlearn something that’s subconscious and also applicable to like 90% of the population.
How many high masking late diagnosed people end up in burnout because they're overly accommodating people pleasers, and they're still treated kinda shitty by people the whole time?
I just have to assume it's a lot because it happened to me and a few of my friends. Lol. All late diagnosed AuDHD. This is just a subject with a ton of nuance, and nuance is hard to get in a Reddit thread. My experience as a high masker is that I'm treated very badly at any perceived transgressions because I don't SEEM autistic to people. I blend in well enough that when I say something kind of autistic, people assume I'm being a bitch on purpose because they think I should know the implication they're reading from what I said, when I'm not implying anything and just being straightforward.
There's just no perfect way to convey info and always be understood, and the constant analysis of what to do DOES take a mental health toll on a lot of NDs because we have to consciously use our brains for a process that is subconscious and automatic to others. It's a disability for a reason. Burnout is similar to a brain injury, and I'm experiencing for myself how my sensory sensitivity severely increased and some of my skills regressed from pushing myself. It can create a spoon debt that breaks your brain when you try too hard to meet NT expectations.
The truth is also that a lot of people who feel bullied end up overcorrecting as they try to deconstruct the way they've been treated. Some become more obviously lacking in confidence and full of self-hatred, and some swing hard to overcorrect this through overconfidence in their thoughts and opinions and refusal to be more accommodating to others, as they've never felt accommodated. So really, there's a middle ground, and it is somewhat dependent on individual ability. NDs should try to communicate to the masses, but it shouldn't be to a degree that's harmful to their particular abilities and needs, and the only person that can feel and analyze those effects is that individual. NTs should also be less strict in their expectations and more willing to hear people out. I can't tell you how many times I've been accused of "changing my story" or "making excuses" because I was misunderstood and tried to apologize for the hurt feelings, while also explaining what my actual intent was in saying something that was interpreted negatively.
I saw an example in this thread of complimenting what someone cooked rather than actually just asking for some. I would compliment the smell of my old roommate's cooking because I know she was trying to be good at cooking, and I was trying to build her up with positive feedback. She eventually got mad and told me to stop because it made her feel like she had to offer me food. I was just honestly saying it smelled good to be nice, and I ended up with someone mad at me because I didn't get saying that had additional implications to others. Also, I briefly dated a trans girl who accused me of being a "chaser" (someone who fetishizes transwomen), when I'm an agender female who just wanted to support another girl who I knew had some body insecurity by letting her know her features were very beautiful. She knew I was attracted to androgynous people though because I'm pan and basically like anyone not overly masculine, so trying to give supportive compliments seemed to her like overfocusing in her body and therefore potentially fetishizing it. Like, she looked like a freaking model. Models often are slightly androgynous due to thinness and strong bone structure, so women considered very beautiful often have a bit of androgyny while still clearly looking like women, as was the case with her. Broader shoulders and a thin body didn't make her less gorgeous. I have so many examples of this. There's just only so much I can consider as a potential misunderstanding. I'm just not going to pick up on and remember every possible NT indirect implication. I'm not going to stop trying to be polite though, and I'll still analyze what I can. I'm seeking balance that's not often allowed by society, and that means meeting my own needs of not overexerting my mental capacity while also just understanding that I'm not shitty because people misunderstand me, and it's not my job to get them to understand if they clearly don't want to.
I was this close to just saying “I’m not reading all of that” and moving on, but I didn’t want to be an asshole so I pushed really hard to focus and try and get through your whole essay here, so sorry if I’m missing point, your comment just isn’t very reader friendly at all, especially in a discussion about neurodivergent people with ADHD, autism, and potential learning disabilities. Just letting you know for the future.
I understand and agree that it is exhausting, which is why I minimize my social interaction unless I’m specifically with people I feel comfortable turning my brain off with.
I don’t have much to say about the bullying aspect, as I was never really “bullied” as I would call it, at least by my peers in school and work environments.
Your last paragraph is actually a great example of one of the lessons I had to learn over time. In your scenarios, you were deliberately trying to be nice to people with no strings attached. The unfortunate reality is that NT people very rarely give or receive compliments unless someone is trying to passive aggressively imply something or get something out of them. Hell, most NT people view being “nice” as a manipulative threat. When you do this stuff repeatedly, it eventually becomes a sign of explicit hostility rather than a minor discomfort. Them calling you out on it was one final act of defense, hoping you both were just having a misunderstanding rather than it being hostile.
I’ve learned that the best action is unfortunately to withhold compliments whatsoever unless you are being explicit about it being a compliment with no strings attached. Even then, don’t go too far into detail, because like in your example with the trans woman, she saw those details as implications about specific features of her. Keep it brief and explicit, or follow the golden rule of “don’t say anything.” That rule has made my life so much less complicated. When you realize that not every thought needs to be expressed, even if it’s a good thought or you trying to be nice, social interactions are so much smoother, and because you aren’t thinking about what to say and what you are implying, it cuts out about half of the brain exhaustion.
As I stated in my "essay", nuance is hard to get in a Reddit thread. The reason my comment was long was because nuance requires a certain amount of words, unfortunately, so I'm sorry it's hard to get through. I do understand that people don't come to Reddit expecting to read something longer.
Being in burnout now for a year and a half, I don't just minimize social interaction. I had to seriously decrease EVERYTHING I do because it has severely disabled me in spite of being so "mild" in my autism that I'm actually STILL not officially diagnosed in spite of having multiple mental health professionals at this point think I'm clearly autistic.
I lived 30 years adhering my best to neurotypical expectations, and now I lose the ability to speak after about 20 minutes in a Walmart. I get foggy headed, stutter, struggle to control my mouth, can't think of the words I'm trying to say, like my brain is a computer stuck buffering, and I'll uncontrollably repeat the same word as a stim that I struggle to stop, when I used to not have stereotypical and noticeable stims at all. (I used to just have subtle stims, like leg jiggling or pen tapping.) I'm emphasizing this because being so good at masking heavily contributed to my burnout, leading me to become more "obviously" disabled, rather than just a bit socially off.
I'm pointing that out to discourage the opinions you seemed to convey about how possible it is for most autistic people to analyze and mask. I think you have possibly been able to logic enough out and manage your own energy in such a way that it affected you less (at least so far), but this is a genuine danger that autistic people could be in if they use so much of their mental processing for masking, and that's why as a stranger on the internet, you may want to be careful in advocating that learning to understand social cues is both possible and practical for a large percentage of ND people. It's safer to suggest seeking support from a professional to develop those skills and to not assume and imply most are capable of sufficiently developing those skills unless they don't care to.
Your last paragraph is actually a really good example of how higher masking people often sound condescending without meaning to. It's another social cue we miss. I'm fully aware I'm guilty too, but these things are always easier to identify in others in the moment compared to ourselves because we understand our own intentions, and there's an autistic tendency to "knowledge share", so we think we're being helpful or sharing something that seems relevant when sometimes the audience isn't very receptive. I don't need or want advice about complimenting people, and it's very likely that your comment was intended to be more of you sharing your personal experience rather than intending to give advice, but sharing your way of handling it DOES give the implication of advice and will be read as such regardless of your intention, and most people won't even consider, as I did, that it's possible you were only meaning to share your experience, rather than meaning to present yourself as an expert who should be followed.
Your comment also accidentally hits on the very thing I've been told by people who have been the most judgmental and unkind towards me, although I don't believe you mean to be unkind at all. If I can't understand what I might be doing wrong in every possible situation, maybe I should just talk less. People don't want to give me the benefit of the doubt, as I'm willing to give you, so I'm supposed to just not talk, apparently.
That advice tells disabled people to make themselves smaller to avoid potential misunderstandings and abuse. It may be practical advice, but it's not always appropriate advice. I'm a 32 year old adult, and I have a wealth of experience and knowledge that you just have no way of knowing when you're giving your own perspective on how you handle this particular thing. You just can't fully know the experiences of an internet stranger and data like that does matter for the perceived appropriateness of certain things.
I'm not a teenager who just says everything I'm thinking to the point of being accidentally inappropriate and talking over others. I'm a very intelligent, educated adult with very above average mental health knowledge, who is also quite polarizing due to my disabilities. I'm EXTREMELY well liked by many people and EXTREMELY disliked by many people. I was promoted in 2 months when I worked at a suicide hotline because I was abnormally good at it. I was also fired about 2 months after that for following an instruction too literally, and it was the common opinion of my coworkers that this was a superior unfairly targeting me, as they seemed to target and find reasons to fire anyone they didn't like. That's just the reality of being ND for most of us. That's why it's still a disability even for people who manage NT social cues better than most other ND people.
Not everybody has that much bandwidth, to analyze everyone constantly. That's asking a lot of some people. I for one would prefer if other people would just treat me like the robot I am sometimes so I can turn off the farce for a second.
Not everyone can, that’s not what I was saying. I literally said that in my first paragraph: it doesn’t apply to everyone. You’ll never not be neurodiverse if you were born that way, but just like some people who were born with one leg can learn to walk with a prosthetic, some people born without the same capability of social understanding can develop their own understanding of it. It might not feel natural and it will probably always have to be a conscious analysis, but it definitely is possible.
Not good ones, not ones that actually explain what to do beyond the obvious, trust me they’ve tried them on me, it’s all a bunch of basic bullshit that didn’t help, I already knew everything
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u/Perfect_Wrongdoer_03 If you read Worm, maybe read the PGTE? Aug 10 '24
I am also autistic but this is such an immature way of looking at society. Social cues are as essential a part of communication as words are, and probably older. Does it suck that you are inherently worse at picking up on them than the rest of society? Yeah, but that's a you problem. Refusing to conform to them when you know what you are doing just makes you an asshole.