reedbend

in my past crusing thru autism posts on the bad site, once in a while somebody would post something talking about this and it was like reading my own experience in somebody else's words.

for those of you who read the subject line and know exactly what I'm talking about: can you also never shut off masking except when alone and in fact can't even relate to the concept of being able to "not mask" around others? or maybe around 99.99999% of the human race apart from a few people you know well and have known for years?

I've found (thru being homeless and couchsurfing starting well into adulthood haha do not recommend) that I can't live with most people, even introverts, because their activity pattern is not like my parents that I grew up with, and so my brain fixates on what they're doing and then I hear every. human. sound. in the house. at full attentional processing. every waking moment of my life. forever.

this decimates my ability to work because I touch computers for a living and I can only touch them correctly in 1 of 2 ways, either collab with others using tools like kanban and a ticket system, or solo hyperfocus for days on end, which has 0% chance of happening without the above going on...

but I got off topic. the question I am curious about is: if you relate to the subject line of the post, do you think the mental energy drain comes from being unable to shut off your awareness of (potentially) being perceived by others in the house; by your having to keep your mask on standby, warmed up and ready to go at all times when others are in the house; or, both? and do you have other thoughts on this particular topic which I suspect is related to a subtle but extremely impactful neurotrait some few tortured souls among us have???

I can actually vibe quite bigly and be very animated/engaged, but at the end of the day, I am an introvert, and a certain amount of mental recharge time is absolutely 100% required or my mind will stop working right.

What I mean by that is, if I am continuously exposed to the presence of "incompatible" human beings (the "compatible" ones seem to be a subset of people with ADHD / ASD / mood disorders), I will literally start showing symptoms similar to dementia, I will progressively lose my ability to speak and understand language, I will eventually start having (boring) hallucinations, etc. All of this is reversible if I am subsequently left the fuck alone, though the cognitive effects can persist for weeks or months after a bad episode.

In part because I do tech work which requires keeping a lot of information in mind at once, the above issue renders me unable to work during acute burnout, and unable to predict when or how much I'll be able to work during chronic (but not acute) burnout.

Because of this, I am (by some definitions) homeless, don't control my living environment, don't even fully control my diet for various reasons, etc. I'm actually writing this post as a tangent from looking up diabetes warning signs and discovering I have a number, all consistent with each other, all of which slowly got worse at the same rate over the last 5 years of chronic burnout. This is a result of not being able to control my diet or my exercise level (wayyy too fatigued from overstim most of the time).

But it's all, 100% of it, a carryover effect of not being able to get enough solitude that my mind can self-regulate sufficiently to be able to do paying work on a regular basis.

I lost my home a few years into the burnout and wound up bouncing thru a series of friends. Every single household had human factors that drove me into burnout. It's people who don't know how be still, who are always Doing Something even if they are sitting still - I can never stop perceiving them or being "on guard" in a house with them. It grinds me right down to the bone and then some. Anyway it was just dumb luck of the draw - some percentage of the population I can live with just fine. 3 years into this phase I ended up in an area that's very sprawly, did get a car for a while but not one I'd trust to take more than 10 or 15 miles, you should have seen this deathtrap, it was like a sitcom car, and anyway it died last year. So, I can't just walk to town and work at McDonald's or whatever. Camping options (uninhabited woods) exist but camping in them is illegal (which I've done on a couple desperate occasions).

I'm not entirely sure why I'm even posting this, other than to say I made a friend diagnosed with ASD a few years back who has a very similar symptom profile to me, but who is even more sensitive than me, and trapped like this with her own family. I know y'all are out there. You're valid. I know you're trying even if you've been so goddamn tired your eyeballs could melt for a month, 6 months, a year, 3 years.

I don't know about you, but I literally just need to be left the fuck alone and I will be fine, and able to pull myself out of the hole in 6-12 months. But that's the problem, this is America, nobody gets that kind of runway unless they're rich (or young and middle class with nice and/or indulgent family).

I don't need to be alone, but with 4 alcoholics having a rager in the rest of the house.

I don't need to be alone, but with occasional random people in and out of the house.

I don't need to be alone, but for only 24 total hours each week in irregular intervals.

I need to be able to access solitude / the company only of people who don't fixate my attention with their human presence, whenever I need, for as long as I need. Period.

Anyway, I'm legit thankful to live in a society where this is even fucking possible. I'm in North America and I know how to tickle computers. I've been on my ass for a literal decade, but if anybody can finagle a way back from it, it's me.

There are a lot of people who started off like I did - lower middle class with bright parents - and who ended up like I did, who beat themselves up relentlessly over it. I went to support groups and I saw how bad they hurt. Fortunately I don't have that problem, but I like to keep myself from developing it by doing shit like meditating, and watching videos of South Asian metalworking factories where dudes pour molten steel into molds while barefoot, and don't wait for the dust to settle in the lead oxide ball mill tumbler before opening the door and taking in a nice big lungful.

Eh, that's probably enough for now. I see you and love you, obligate introverts.

cross-posted from: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/5546920

As someone facing homelessness myself due to issues beyond my control, I just wanted people to know they're not alone.

These conditions are real, and people's misunderstanding - and willful refusal to understand - wrecks lives.

I hope you can get to a safe place where you can exist in your own skin in peace.

cross-posted from: https://discuss.tchncs.de/post/5236945

I'm curious if anyone out there reading who lives with ADHD and/or ASD w/executive dysfunction ... when it comes to tasks that aren't just your own but that involve (or are needed by) others, for example household tasks when living with others ... do you find that you actually need consensus and/or discussion on the topic of tasks in order to get them done?

What I'm realizing is that for me, part of executive dysfunction means I don't have the internal watchdog that keeps track of stuff I need to do in relation to others, and just personally speaking I cannot rely on (or be tormented by) guilt as a way to work around the lack of a watchdog.

The one thing that does work for me is talking about it with the people involved, especially if they are people I respect or care about. Either coming to consensus, or at least maintaining shared understanding of the shared space / task list / etc. For some reason, the process of coming to a shared-state perspective on shared effort, and understanding how my responsibilities impact others and at what time others need me to have completed them, is like sprinkling magic pixie dust on the task-item in my brain that allows me to remember it exists at all once it's 5 days later in the week or whatever. I still suck at scheduling and prioritizing and whatnot, but at least I remember the damn task exists and am trying to get it done!

The reason I've figured all this out is kinda grim, long story short I ended up on my ass about 10 years ago, and lost my home about 7 years ago, and then people took me in... and those people don't do the above. They don't discuss things and they don't build consensus or shared state, they just do stuff. And it's utterly and completely paralyzing because I spent the first 3 decades of my life living with people who did discuss things that affect others around them, and now my entire repertoire of human behavior is based on the premise that people attempt to keep each other informed like this, and that's just not the case for a great number of people.

And that process of communication or shared-state rehashing, which I thought all humans engaged in because both my parents did and almost everybody I lived with early in life did, is absolutely critical to wallpapering over my lack of ability to keep track of / remember that tasks exist, especially as my level of overwhelm gets high or my energy gets low.

What really made this sink in was remembering that my dad had endless conflicts with a kid of his from another marriage when he would go to visit, because she also doesn't communicate like this, and just like me, my dad was also absolutely critically dependent on it in order to be able to do anything at all really. In fact that's how I realized that he had a very similar neurological profile to me. In some ways our behavior is starkly alike and now I understand why.

BTW, that dad who almost certainly would be diagnosed with the same dreamy 'primarily inattentive' adult ADHD that I have today, got a Ph.D., retired as a Lt. Colonel in the Air Force, and went on to lead a small college language department and then have a long retirement doing occasional work in advanced linguistics. He later decided to learn Italian, and succeeded, in his 70s. Every time in his life when he had either autonomy and resources to do his own thing, or external structure + social glue that agreed with him, he was able to excel. Without those conditions, he would drift badly and become depressed. Understanding this has helped me understanding myself. My dad was a poor parent in a lot of other ways, but his ability to succeed when he had enough pieces of the puzzle does give me hope.

a tumblr classic!