My special interests are very special to me (ugh, what a terrible pun. Defo not intended!) and I reserve sharing them for people I trust. That alone is a reason for me to mask.

It’s actually harder for me not to mask than it is to mask a lot of the time, even though my mask is far from perfect. But I’m “out” at work and it’s fine if people realize I’m masking.

I think for me donning the mask is like donning armor to protect things I care about from a majorly uncaring world, and if I unmask around you it’s a sign of trust.

Still relatively new to Lemmy and can’t figure out RN how to dm you, but I am not in the US, so most likely we are not in the same country.

I can tell you broad strokes though - I got super lucky with my therapist at that time. Sadly he’s retired now :( I was super exhausted, had gotten out of hospital and then diagnosis and at the same time (since in paper I looked like an easy candidate to find work for) the unemployment agency was hounding me. I told my therapist as an off-comment “I wish I didn’t have to do shit for the rest of the year.”

He said that can be arranged and I thought he was joking - it was October or something. Nope, he stalled and his practice became unreachable. All I could tell the unemployment agency was that I didn’t hear back and I don’t know what’s going on until they got frustrated and backed off. Come new year, everything went back to normal and it went fast-ish. Took maybe a year in total? I think less, maybe roughly 9 months?

I didn’t realize what happened until after the fact, but he bought me the time I needed to process things at that time.

Better - but not through age.

Since I got diagnosed late, my before-diagnosis time was a mess and I had no idea why. Since my diagnosis and me subsequently understanding what’s happening I have become less likely to compromise on things that will cause meltdowns.

I also have disabled status so I can request accommodations at work, and lucky enough my team and workplace are lovely about that.

I can’t tell if time made a difference for me, but I feel like I’ve lost patience for people telling me “don’t be like that”, but that’s probably also due to knowing what’s going on now. I keep asking them if they’d tell a quadriplegic to not be like that and just real quick get them something from the high shelf. Surprisingly efficient, although there’s always people claiming you’re just being dramatic. Thankfully they are a minority around me.

That smug face.

“Hey, it’s me, Amazon. I noticed you recently bought a fridge! Here’s five more fridges for you to look at, on case you need to complete your fridge selection!”

Like. Why?!

Maybe start with what you like, as I found it easier to determine. A lot of time, it just meant following my impulses.

The more stressed I felt, the more I wanted to be in bed. And when I was in bed, I realized I preferred the softest blanket on my skin. So I looked for soft textures to touch when I’m stressed and found it helped me regulate a lot.

Maybe this will help you a) be less stressed and b) if soft textures soothe you, rough ones probably stress you. So it can also be a way to discover your stressors in a roundabout way.

I’m an outsider “looking in”, so to say, as in I met quite a few people attending a local Waldorf-School near where I went to school. I always felt a lot of them were a little out of touch with the real world, not quite prepared for how things are outside. Very sheltered and… For lack of a better word, dreamy? It felt like they hadn’t learned some of the fundamentals of science but focused a lot on soft stuff instead.

It’s hard to put into words since those are impressions of a pretty judgemental teenager x) and stored in a different language than English since my english back then was still pretty bad.

But their education seemed to lack real preparation for anything but social sciences. It’s been a while, though, maybe it has changed by now.

I think Chinese and Korean culture share this concept, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more Asian languages who did. Since a daughter joins her husband’s family upon marriage, their children are considered belonging to the other family. I recently learner that apparently there’s a saying in Korean that daughters always leave things at their mother’s house when they get married so they have a reason to come back despite having left the family.

Just because it is here as a meme doesn’t make it a symptom. People’s crusade against self-diagnosis is really getting ridiculous.

I’m autistic and I do this. My SO who is not (but most likely ADHD - sadly, diagnosis is impossible) does it too. It’s just a fun thing that lots of people seem to relate to. Let’s have some fun here, alright?

You didn’t do anything wrong, both is fine. Me and most of my autistic friends actually prefer to call ourselves autistic. Figure out what you prefer first and foremost :)

Speak for yourself only, please. It’s s fine if you prefer autistic person, but I and many autistics I know don’t. The bottom line is not to teach someone what’ s best but to inform them that there may be preferences and to listen to the reason there talking to, not to make blanket statements about what’s the right thing.

If you want to convince people it’s up to you to bring the evidence. I’m not doing your work for you.

Besides, there have been studies shoing that autistics among themselves don’t have the same communication breakdown as they do when interacting with neurotypicals. So if Japan was truly an autistic culture it should be easier for autistic people, but it’s not.

Besides, I’m very curious to see how you are going to apply diagnostic criteria for a neurodivergence to a culture. Like, how do you even begin? Is the culture averse to bright lights? Loud sounds? Does the culture go into hyperfocus moments? Does it suffer from PDA?

The only way you could do this is if you were to take stereotypes about how autistic people behave and try to somehow match them to cultural traits.

Link to those studies?

Edit: me being autistic make everything I say useless? Really?

I really admire your ability to mental gymnastics. No matter what anybody says, you always find a way to tell them their opinion doesn’t matter. Must be nice to be so secure in your own superiority that nothing can convince you otherwise.

As an autist who studied Japanese and gave up when I realized I just couldn’t connect with any of the Japanese people I met - even the ones where it was obvious we wanted to be friends - I can assure you the culture is even more impenetrable for autistics. And I don’t have such issues with other autistic people usually, no matter the culture.

Don’t mistake your stereotypes for reality and tell everyone people call you out because of political correctness. You’re just plain old wrong in this.

That is so cool! Are there any theories as to why elephants have grown so big when one of the closest relatives is so small?

Fun fact: I had to look up what a shrew is, since I’m not a native speaker. It turns out in my native tongue the name has mouse in it, despite shrews not being mice!

That’s so interesting! I didn’t expect convergent evolution to happen so often, I always thought it was a huge accident when that happens. Are there specific areas where it happens more often or is it combletely random?

Are all reptiles dinosaurs, or did reptiles and dinosaurs have a more distant common ancestor? I often heard things like chickens are the distant cousins of t rex or crocodiles are living dinosaurs. How much truth is there to that?

Yes, please!

I get where you’re coming from. But if everyone thought your way, adversity will only ever grow.

You need to be upset, and you need to be working to reduce adversity for those who don’t have the resilience it takes. Adversity is like chaos, if you never do anything it will overwhelm even the strongest person.

Your perspective is not wrong (perspectives rarely are), I just think it’s unhelpful for the greater picture. It works for an individual, but it will do nothing for your peers. Instead, it serves to protect those who benefit from other people suffering and being disadvantaged, because if everyone practiced that there would not be enough anger to fuel change. And change is needed.

Anger and frustration is your energy. If you never get angry you’ll never have the incentive to change the world. Your perspective is probably helpful with chronic conditions, because there’s nothing to change about that, but in my opinion it’s wrong to apply it to every situation.

If you find yourself facing human-constructed adversity, like in a society that doesn’t want to do minimal changes that would only slightly inconvenience them but would greatly benefit some of their peers, I think your advice is harmful - because it quells the flames that are needed to fight for a better society.

You’re missing the point here. This is not about making someone feel better about themselves but about making others realize how bad it was to finally spur them into action. Because it’s so much easier to “admire” someone strong than just to do something about the adversity.

I know nothing about you, but if I just read your comment in this context I want to scream at you: You, too, think you’re making a differene by trying to make someone feel good about themselves, but what have you done about easing their suffering? It’s not like it has stopped, it will go on for the rest of our lifes.

You’re just taking the easy way out by giving a pep talk then it’s back to normal.

Now, like I said, I know nothing about you, and maybe this pep talk was from one survivor to another, but I’m just so damn tired to hear the same song and dance over and over. We don’t need pep talks that make the talkers feel good about themselves, we need change. Good change.

Ahhh, that makes more sense. Yeah, when it comes to food atm I generally listen to my body even though it may be not the healthiest option. My main reasons are 1) that I believe you typically crave the nutrition your body desires and 2) it’s a “pick your battles” situation.

If you try to change everything at once cause you’re fed up and decided your life needs to finally get back on track after an eternity of slacking, you’re setting yourself up to fail. I know, I’ve failed umpteenth times that way 😔

So I decided what area to focus on and in those areas I’m like the first officer who offers commentary to the captain when the captain makes a decision (cause captain is impulsive and often doesn’t even ask for comments before making that decision). I’ve fould a way to “phrase it” that makes the captain consider things I say and sometimes we change course.

Food/weight is not among the areas I’m actively involved in right now cause my energy is just not enough to change my eating habit while fighting my other habits. I’m still trying to keep it within boundaries that I decided on first, so I’ll detail the compromise that I made with myself below. If that bores you, feel free to skip :) Most of it involves reasoning with myself, though, which I also like to frame as compromising with the inner child. I guess I just think of my impulsivity as someone to reason with, and you win some, you loose some?

I work in IT and sit a lot, though, so if I constantly crave chocolate I do question myself if this is just one of the following three:

• being bored. You wouldn’t believe how often I just go open the fridge not out of hunger, but of boredom! I trained myself to always focus on my stomach when I open the fridge door and see if , I’m actively hungry before I decide anything
• I’m so frustrated with something that chocolate/something sweet is needed to regulate my mood
• this is is one of the moments where evolution has trained me to scream “sweet stuff! This is a rare treat! You cannot ignore this gift from the gods!” Because sugar is so rich in energy and that was really important in the stone age where you used a lot.

Being bored and the sweet stuff moments I go, well, this is not a healthy reason to snack, what can I do instead? With frustration I more often than not give in.