DoubleBlind on Nostr: This is how I attempted to describe being autistic to neurotypical coworkers: Imagine ...
This is how I attempted to describe being autistic to neurotypical coworkers:
Imagine that every conversation you had, you had to spend the entire time double checking that your facial expression, vocal tone, and eye contact fall within the range of a ruleset that you do not intuitively understand and which can be physically uncomfortable for you to enact. Oh, and if you slip up for a second, people think you're rude. Now don't forget to actually hear what the heck people are saying to you while doing that. And remember to filter your response through a complicated reverse-engineered lying machine in your head, so as not to offend.
And don't forget that you can't trust the words that people are saying to you, either. You need to also be manually observing and analyzing THEIR facial expression, tone, and eye contact and adding that information to what they say in order to determine what they actually mean.
And no one explained ANY of the rules to you.
And you had to literally work out the rules of this game WHILE PLAYING IT.
Now imagine you spend decades painstakingly improving your ability to juggle all of these things at once, and people still complain that you're being inconsiderate, when in reality, it's effectively impossible for you to put MORE consideration into every detail of your interaction with those people.
All of this while they appear to you to be absurdly condescending, rude, and WRONG about all kinds of shit.
#actuallyautistic #autism
Imagine that every conversation you had, you had to spend the entire time double checking that your facial expression, vocal tone, and eye contact fall within the range of a ruleset that you do not intuitively understand and which can be physically uncomfortable for you to enact. Oh, and if you slip up for a second, people think you're rude. Now don't forget to actually hear what the heck people are saying to you while doing that. And remember to filter your response through a complicated reverse-engineered lying machine in your head, so as not to offend.
And don't forget that you can't trust the words that people are saying to you, either. You need to also be manually observing and analyzing THEIR facial expression, tone, and eye contact and adding that information to what they say in order to determine what they actually mean.
And no one explained ANY of the rules to you.
And you had to literally work out the rules of this game WHILE PLAYING IT.
Now imagine you spend decades painstakingly improving your ability to juggle all of these things at once, and people still complain that you're being inconsiderate, when in reality, it's effectively impossible for you to put MORE consideration into every detail of your interaction with those people.
All of this while they appear to you to be absurdly condescending, rude, and WRONG about all kinds of shit.
#actuallyautistic #autism