The Uncanny Valley is real.
I was undiagnosed my whole life until early adulthood, and therefore always tried to pass as NT, because I never knew what's wrong with me.
I trained myself for years to mimic NT behaviour, including facial expression, gestures, voice tone, and much more.
Everyone here can probably relate to that how incredible hard it is to achieve that, but I somehow did! Great! Right? Right...?NOPE!
While I was 99% there, the 1% missing made everything worse.
Those are the tiny tiny nuances that you just can't replicate, like microexpressions, or some minor mistakes you made, like looking at the wrong direction while "thinking" or whatever shit they made up.And those tiny incoherences are what will destroy everything. Many people will dislike or mistrust you, and the worst thing about that is that they don't even know why!
They'll accuse you to being a liar, because you act sketchy, or that you are "fake", or whatever you can think about.I'm currently in the process of un-learning all of that and stop being someone else. Sure, many people will dislike you just for who you are, but seriously, if someone doesn't have a good time around you just because your voice sounds too flat or because you don't laugh back at them then fuck that person.
We have 8 billion people on this planet, there will be at least one person out there that appreciates your weirdnessthere will be at least one person out there that appreciates your weirdness
The best compliment I IMHO ever received was after I went on a (positive) rant about LEGO: "Einkorn, you are weird. But weird in a very positive way".
Seek internal validation over external validation. Once I learned how to value my opinion of myself over other peoples', my life improved tremedeously.
This is super important (and hard)!
idk if this is an autism thing or not, but for me I logic myself into valuing external opinions as more important/credible than my own since they are potentially less biased.
Then I’m essentially judging myself based on my perception of the perception of others; two degrees of separation from reality!
It's extremely difficult. For me personally, it was like a "light switch moment" where all of a sudden I stopped giving a shit about what other people thought about me when I was in high school. I came to the realization that these strangers aren't my friends, and I'm not going to be hanging out with them ever.
I still value my friends' opinions, but I also don't have judgmental friends, so it still ends up working out.
It's also not a black and white thing. When you've spent your entire life convincing yourself that strangers' opinions matter, then deprogramming yourself is going to take some time. Don't be discouraged if you feel like your mindset hasn't immediately changed after reading a random internet post from a person you've never met. Just because something happened to me a certain way doesn't mean that you'll have the same experience.
A good Calendar and notes app has helped me considerably
Yes! I love Standard Notes & the Reminder app on iOS.
I can sometimes do a sort of manual override and force my brain to behave a certain way. Doesn't always work for very long, though, and it's also worth noting I'm quite low (if there is such a thing as a low) on the spectrum.EDIT: Turns out this is masking. Please ignore me.
I think you are talking about masking.
That's masking? Fuck...
Try to find a way to incorporate one of your hyperfixates into how you make money. It makes work suck a little less.
No, don't. Good idea at first glance, but horrible on the second, at least from my experience.
While work will be way more pleasant, it might be too pleasant, and you'll spend more energy and focus than you might realise.
Your boss will notice that too, and give you a heck lot of more work to do than your colleagues, for the same wage.
You'll work and work and work, and then you wake up with a burnout.
No one, except you, will notice that.And then you can't give 200% anymore, but only 100% from now on.
In your bosses eyes, you have gotten just lazy and not interested anymore, just because they're used to you overstraining yourself.
And last but not least, they'll dump you into the trash because they can't extract even more resources out from you, and no one will care. You are just a human resource, that's why the department in companies is called that way.
Don't be stupid. Don't be me!
Ah yeah, I did forget about that and I have experienced it before many years ago.
As an example: if you enjoy Factorio, you might want to find yourself a job in supply chain. I run a production planning department and autism is basically a required skill. Started asking potential hires if they enjoy Factorio a while ago and quality improved dramatically.
Not autistic but my partner is. One of her hacks is having me put alarms on my phone so I can gently remind her of things. The alarms are too jarring for her to have them on her own phone.
Oh fuck, do I have autism?
I'm constantly asking my SO to do this because I just straight up ignore my own.
A slew of organisational tools to help me keep track of things and prevent overwhelm:
- ClickUp is really good for big projects. I can break them down into smaller pieces, set dependencies and priorities, etc. so that only the next relevant steps are shown and I don't get overwhelmed by the sheer amount of work involved in a large project.
- Trello I find really handy for day-to-day stuff. I have a weekly template card with a checklist for each day and the regular activities on it. This reduces the amount of bandwidth I need to plan my day or week, as I already have a rough structure in place to build upon.
- Google Calendar (although really any calendar app should do). Use repeating events and take advantage of the email reminder options. If it's something important that I need to prepare for, I can set a reminder email a day or two (or even a week) in advance so that it doesn't sneak up on me.
Beyond that, I find it very important to keep my space organised, neat and tidy. Too much visual clutter is overwhelming. Making sure everything has its own place and is readily accessible takes a lot of hassle out of anything I have to do, whether it be day-to-day stuff or one-off tasks.
I've tried numerous times to use tools like these, and found having to set up everything for every day quite tedious. I'm not sure if that was the actual reason but I could never keep up with scheduling, or creating new routines that I set out for myself.
I like the idea of having recurring checklists for each day with regular activities on a Trello board to save time in making a plan. How specific do you get with the board and specific activities? Do you maybe have tips to stay consistent?
At the core, my Trello system works like this:
- I have a template Trello card for a generic week. This has a checklist for each day with the tasks that I don't do by default (e.g. in my case eating breakfast/lunch/dinner isn't on it because my sense of hunger and thirst works really well!). It's typically things like doing my exercises (which I will often forget if I am busy), checking whether the cat litter tray needs cleaning before bed (at the end of the day I am tired and can miss things that should be done, so this serves as a useful reminder) or regular things that don't happen every day (like watering my indoor plants on Tuesdays and Fridays).
- I also have a Task Pool card where I note down all the things I need/should/want/would like to do. I'm currently working with an OT to help improve how I prioritise and select what to work on (this is where energy accounting comes in if you use it), but the idea so far (which mostly works) is that on Friday evening (when my wife and I discuss the weekend and the following week), I create the next week's card from the weekly template and grab any items I need/want to do that week from the Task Pool.
For more irregular activities, like holidays/trips, I also have a template card. It makes it much easier to prepare for a trip; I have checklists on that template card for:
- Things I need to do before leaving
- Things I need to take that aren't regular packing
- Normal packing list (e.g. clothes, medication, toiletries, etc.)
When I know a trip is coming up, I then create a card from the template specific to that trip and start adding things as I think of them. For example, I might be planning to visit family for a birthday or other event, so "birthday present" would go on the non-regular packing list.
