You must log in or # to comment.
If that ain’t the fucking truth
People say this but it basically never fails that I, the overthinking spaz, save everyone’s ass if something goes sideways because I have a plan A, B and C and usually some scraps left over for a D.
Because I thought once about the possibility of failure and what it might look like. Which apparently nobody else did.
Which also makes me a cunning genius and an evil mastermind who planned to ruin everything so I could save the day when it works.
Makes you think, how much of the out-of-the-box thinking is actually just adaption?
Mhhhh croissants.
sometimes is true tough.
GAD
Weird how we get told we’re “over-thinking” things, but nobody else gets called out for “under-thinking” about things.
I think when people call someone stupid, they meant that.
Of course they do. It just takes the form of “you should have thought it through more”. How you’re supposed to tell you’re overthinking vs. underthinking is left as an exercise for the reader.
Clearly it’s more a matter of https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/wrongthink then.
And then those same people will read subtext into whatever you say even though they’ve known you for a decade and they know you are just direct. And then you have to deal with reassuring them that no you didn’t mean anything by it other than what was written/said, and don’t they know you never use subtext without making it explicit in the next breath?
Yes they communicate entirely through implication, but they are not conscious and do not generally think at all; it’s just a collection of reflexes, with very rare actual thought and zero self awareness ever.
Everything they do makes more sense when you remember this.
Um, are you talking about human beings?
Do consider that there are those who do not detect the implied meanings and by happen-chance behave well enough to be tolerated.
There is no meaning. Meaning requires consciousness on the part of the speaker. Only patterns, call and response.
Yeah… no. Everyone else is just as thinking and conscious as you are. I promise. You sound like Elon Musk talking about “npcs”. They may not think about all the same things as you, in all the same ways as you, but they are full humans with the same agency as you. We can’t go around dehumanizing people.
I think it’s a case of deep Vs wide thinking. Aspies are a lot better at deep thinking than wide. It’s great for things like science or engineering, it’s a problem however for socialising.
The side point is, however, that deep thinking is often more intellectually driven, while wide is more semi-conscious (still a poor word but the best I can come up with). It’s also hard to remap from one to the other. It’s the reason aspies struggle to follow social implications, and NTs struggle to follow informational deep dives.
I used to think this! Then I went outside and talked to them.
I think they’re made to be like that, and I escaped that fate by chance, but it is the case. Most do not have their own agency, many do not have their own imaginations, and many do not have any self awareness. Can’t fix a problem if you can’t look at it.
Good goddamn, yes
“Fall in line or we’ll diagnose you.”
Demonizing intelligence. Typical fascist shit, but embedded in our medical systems.
And then arguing that it’s just clear and natural to know.
It has genuinely been something I’ve had to understand the other way and be really aware of now that I interact with more neurodiverse people, because to me it absolutely is clear and natural to know and it is intuitive because that is how I was brought up with people, media etc. And being British we almost seem to take it to another level at times… it genuinely was hard for me to understand that there are people that struggle with it which almost doesnt seem possible when you are so used to it. And I still do it, its a very hard habit to unlearn but as soon as i notice any confusion im quick to clarify or correct myself. Some people are just pricks though and will argue it out…
Thank you for the insightful experience. As studies have shown it does go both ways and the opposing groups don’t have this issue within. It’s just that the neurodiverse group is smaller.
Since I’m ‘on the mild end’ of the spectrum it’s also not full coverage here nor there, so to say.
Edit: I wish that people like you with such understanding of the implications were in the medical field. That would help immensely. Aside from struggling to get a diagnosis for ‘being too normal’ often the challenges and pain is simply not understood and just shrugged off.
I have to admit I’m not entirely outside though, I do have ADHD and, well, that has been an exercise of learning in its own right but in different ways and learning to understand myself and others.
I think when I first got my ADHD diagnosis I kind of rejected the umbrella term of neurodiverse because it lumped things like this, which are often autism related traits, with ADHD which I assumed to be purely around executive dysfunction. That is to say I didn’t like to be perceived as being socially different, my issues were related to more easily identified things around task management and nothing to do with how I think or behave or act.
But I’m recently learning that it doesn’t really seem to be true at all. I didn’t realise how many of my “personality quirks” are actually common to other people with ADHD or actually how there can be significant crossovers of traits with those that are autistic (either mostly alone or AuDHD). For example RSD seems to be something that I experience rather acutely and understanding it as something other than a flaw in my personality has been really healthy. Same with the way that I talk to people or understanding that talking about shared experiences can be perceived by others as making the conversation all about me…
So whilst I score low on autism spectrum tests, I am learning more and more about how neurodiverse is a not a term to shy away from or reject as there really is a lot more in common than I previously admitted to myself. And to that end, how could I possibly reject, fail to understand or learn to accommodate somebody else’s issues just because they are different to my own?
Weirdly, I am actually in the medical field, -ish. I’m more in one of those background healthcare support type roles (biomedical scientist) but have worked in and have a good understanding of the medical field as a whole and sometimes I’ve managed to use that knowledge to try to help some of my friends who do have some of these struggles to help them understand the best way to actually navigate healthcare and “how to play the game”. (Not that playing the game should be required but we are talking short term healthcare here rather than long term change).
Examples I can think of was when I was talking to a friend looking for help with a non-specific chronic pain problem and things like explaining or understanding pain from the Mankoski Pain Scale compared to the typical 1-10 “how much does it hurt” scale - because the former relates the pain to life and how it affects you, not just an arbitrary “ouchy” scale.
Similarly I had to recommend that she not try to over explain everything. Some doctors have egos or can be very dismissive of certain patients so was helping her understand that she should just be purely descriptive - “this hurts when I do this”, “it hurts most in the morning”, “it stops me doing x, y or z” rather than trying to use any researched terminology or any self diagnosis “I think I have fibromyalgia”. Let the doctor come to the conclusion based on what you tell them.
Now, to be clear to anyone reading this, that does absolutely not mean that you just accept whatever they say or that you cannot challenge them. In a perfect would you could tell them whatever you want and they will listen and come to, hopefully, the correct answer. However we know that doctors, particularly GPs, can often be stressed, overworked, dismissive, wary of hypochondriacs, people seeking drugs that can be abused or even just having their egos bruised. The advice I try to give is really just around not setting off those alarm bells - and for some who do think a little more literally and don’t speak in the way that the original post talks about - because that leads to missed diagnoses, frustrations with the system and worse outcomes, just because the two people don’t quite understand each other. It is a genuine problem in healthcare and we need to be better at training doctors to deal with it but if in the short term I can help some people out in not being dismissed then I consider it worth it.
Sorry this got waaaaay too long before I even noticed… so, errrr, thank you for coming to my TED talk?
Haha, yeah happens to me too a lot. But getting into details there is a lot to say!
Yes indeed our symptoms overlap like 80-90%.however in some cases adhd can be treated with medicine somewhat (without judgement either way).
Yeah the doctor game. I mean I mask all my life and for them I have to do it even more. Wtf that’s not helpful (not directed at you). I had doctors I overexplained as it seems and got treated worse for it (either they were annoyed or thought I was exaggerating). And then I had doctor’s who asked why I didn’t tell something sooner (well, because of the former experience?) and also the pain scale is way off.
Like Spock, I tell them when it hurts like hell and they just don’t believe me until worse things happen.
Where was I going? I don’t know 😁
Ah yes one thing. I gave up getting diagnosed because I even unsuccessfully put some money in. You don’t get more than ‘severely disabled’ anyhow so nothing to win by this anyhow. It’s not like the world is suddenly more accommodating.
If they communicate entirely through implication, how do we know that’s what we’re being told?
