Batmansbrotherspidey
New Member
Warning- it's going to be a long post.
I'm researching all I can about autism and I highly relate to the social experience that people who are on the autism spectrum describe. There's almost a blindspot for me when it comes to sensing social cues, reading moods of people or determining how to talk and what to talk. Even my best friend agrees that it's extremely hard for me to get along socially unless I fake myself to a high degree. So the problem goes beyond social anxiety and awkwardness. There are many reasons for this. One reason is that I am too formal when talking, whether that's online or real life. Another reason is that if I'm talking about something, I tend to explain it in great detail which annoys people because they expect a short and succinct explanation. Thirdly, for some reason it's very hard for me to greet people. It's very difficult to properly say "Hello!" and "Bye!". I almost never say goodbye even to my best friends and I don't understand why that is because talking about an actual topic is way easier than saying hello and goodbye.
Fourthly, people say that I live in "phases." I'll get interested in something and then almost every conversation I have with people tends to centre around that topic even if my intention was not to talk about it. Somehow we find ourselves talking about it which annoys others people because they want to talk about different things but for that temporary period of time, I'm attached to that topic so they just happen to centre around it. I try to avoid it though and there has been some success.
Fifthly, I see some connections between different concepts and I can't differentiate between obvious connections that people are going to agree and get and the connections that people say don't exist and I've to explain it and sometimes people understand it but they're still annoyed because it seems quite off topic from what's being discussed (although to me it seems highly related and I can't differentiate).
As a kid I also engaged in a behaviour where I'd blurt out movie dialogues to other kids completely out of context because they'd get stuck in my head. Same with song lyrics. It persisted until I was 14 or 15 years old. It kept reducing with age though and I rarely do it but as a kid it certainly did impact my social life because when I was quite young I'd say the dialogues over and over and other kids would sometimes not recognise the dialogues and it would get quite weird. I don't do it as an adult though. It has become extremely rare.
In general I also have a hard time understanding jokes, sarcasm and anything non literal in conversations. Sometimes I don't understand them unless it is explained and sometimes I understand them quite late so that has been an issue.
Socially there are a lot of issues and I'd say they've been quite severe and impairing all my life. I've been bullied a lot, I've been hated, my intentions have been misunderstood etc.
But autism is more than social issues. My younger brother is actually diagnosed with autism and experiences plenty of non social issues. I don't think I've sensory issues for instance. My brother has hypo sensitivity in certain contexts as well as hyper sensitivity in other contexts I believe, because my brother gets extremely upset if he's not taken outside for a walk or something like that atleast once everyday and a lot of stimming I think occurs because of the hypo sensitivity and he also refuses to wear certain clothes which I suspect is because of hyper sensitivity (I'm using the word "suspect" because I don't actually know since my brother is very young and is semi verbal so he doesn't give full explanations). I don't think I have something like that though. I do stim but it's not done as frequently and I just run a lot and jump when listening to songs and movie dialogues(i do it in secrecy though so no one knows except me). I do have routines which people find awkward but I don't get upset when they're changed so it's not impairing because it only bothers other people and not me (which I don't care about because my routines don't directly affect someone else. It's just that they find it weird). I do have interests though but they're not unusual. I'm highly interested in physics and math and can keep talking about it all day. I find other stuff interesting too like some games and all that and some of these can be particularly intense but these only cause problems when conversing with another person. There's also a strong urge to info dump to other people which I'm working on. But the point is that it impacts me socially on an extreme level but not so much outside of that. So I don't know if I'm truly autistic or whether I have spcd (the new social pragmatic communication disorder and I think there's a good probability I've either of them. There's a possibility of adhd but I don't think it explains things like being completely confused in social interaction even when you're paying attention). I would have gone to a psychologist but in my country I've never heard of an adult getting diagnosed so I've to see if it's even possible. Socially it has been almost completely disastrous throughout my life. It made me hate literally everyone at one point and I've come out of that but other than my attitude towards people that has become positive with time, nothing has ever been fixed socially and I don't think I can fix myself. It is the way I am and I've learnt it the hard way. Changing my self has not worked and I think I understand why. Weirdly enough, I think I'm an extrovert though. If not for the social impairment, I'd like to have friends etc.
I'm researching all I can about autism and I highly relate to the social experience that people who are on the autism spectrum describe. There's almost a blindspot for me when it comes to sensing social cues, reading moods of people or determining how to talk and what to talk. Even my best friend agrees that it's extremely hard for me to get along socially unless I fake myself to a high degree. So the problem goes beyond social anxiety and awkwardness. There are many reasons for this. One reason is that I am too formal when talking, whether that's online or real life. Another reason is that if I'm talking about something, I tend to explain it in great detail which annoys people because they expect a short and succinct explanation. Thirdly, for some reason it's very hard for me to greet people. It's very difficult to properly say "Hello!" and "Bye!". I almost never say goodbye even to my best friends and I don't understand why that is because talking about an actual topic is way easier than saying hello and goodbye.
Fourthly, people say that I live in "phases." I'll get interested in something and then almost every conversation I have with people tends to centre around that topic even if my intention was not to talk about it. Somehow we find ourselves talking about it which annoys others people because they want to talk about different things but for that temporary period of time, I'm attached to that topic so they just happen to centre around it. I try to avoid it though and there has been some success.
Fifthly, I see some connections between different concepts and I can't differentiate between obvious connections that people are going to agree and get and the connections that people say don't exist and I've to explain it and sometimes people understand it but they're still annoyed because it seems quite off topic from what's being discussed (although to me it seems highly related and I can't differentiate).
As a kid I also engaged in a behaviour where I'd blurt out movie dialogues to other kids completely out of context because they'd get stuck in my head. Same with song lyrics. It persisted until I was 14 or 15 years old. It kept reducing with age though and I rarely do it but as a kid it certainly did impact my social life because when I was quite young I'd say the dialogues over and over and other kids would sometimes not recognise the dialogues and it would get quite weird. I don't do it as an adult though. It has become extremely rare.
In general I also have a hard time understanding jokes, sarcasm and anything non literal in conversations. Sometimes I don't understand them unless it is explained and sometimes I understand them quite late so that has been an issue.
Socially there are a lot of issues and I'd say they've been quite severe and impairing all my life. I've been bullied a lot, I've been hated, my intentions have been misunderstood etc.
But autism is more than social issues. My younger brother is actually diagnosed with autism and experiences plenty of non social issues. I don't think I've sensory issues for instance. My brother has hypo sensitivity in certain contexts as well as hyper sensitivity in other contexts I believe, because my brother gets extremely upset if he's not taken outside for a walk or something like that atleast once everyday and a lot of stimming I think occurs because of the hypo sensitivity and he also refuses to wear certain clothes which I suspect is because of hyper sensitivity (I'm using the word "suspect" because I don't actually know since my brother is very young and is semi verbal so he doesn't give full explanations). I don't think I have something like that though. I do stim but it's not done as frequently and I just run a lot and jump when listening to songs and movie dialogues(i do it in secrecy though so no one knows except me). I do have routines which people find awkward but I don't get upset when they're changed so it's not impairing because it only bothers other people and not me (which I don't care about because my routines don't directly affect someone else. It's just that they find it weird). I do have interests though but they're not unusual. I'm highly interested in physics and math and can keep talking about it all day. I find other stuff interesting too like some games and all that and some of these can be particularly intense but these only cause problems when conversing with another person. There's also a strong urge to info dump to other people which I'm working on. But the point is that it impacts me socially on an extreme level but not so much outside of that. So I don't know if I'm truly autistic or whether I have spcd (the new social pragmatic communication disorder and I think there's a good probability I've either of them. There's a possibility of adhd but I don't think it explains things like being completely confused in social interaction even when you're paying attention). I would have gone to a psychologist but in my country I've never heard of an adult getting diagnosed so I've to see if it's even possible. Socially it has been almost completely disastrous throughout my life. It made me hate literally everyone at one point and I've come out of that but other than my attitude towards people that has become positive with time, nothing has ever been fixed socially and I don't think I can fix myself. It is the way I am and I've learnt it the hard way. Changing my self has not worked and I think I understand why. Weirdly enough, I think I'm an extrovert though. If not for the social impairment, I'd like to have friends etc.
