I appreciate this community and am grateful for the work you do to organize it and support its growth!

Thank you, hearing that my words were valuable to you is probably the most valuable gift you could have given

What you describe is eerily similar to my story. In summary, being so good at masking all the various symptoms of depression/anxiety/autism that I never considered it possible I was autistic. My entire life I’ve never belonged to the group I was participating with, I was always a step removed because the “language” of the group wasn’t native and took a degree of effort/concentration to use. That’s a tangent…

The question was raised by a new friend a few years ago and I finally got professionally evaluated a few months ago. Yeah, I’m obviously autistic.

Having that label, in my experience, has been intensely validating. No longer was my status as a social failure an implication of my lack of effort or disrespect for others or oversensitivity. Now I knew that I didn’t fit for a reason, a reason outside my control and not just laziness or selfishness.

That separation–being other, not belonging–absolutely still exists and it still is painful but now the difference I guess is that I know I’m not imagining it.

To your case; maybe getting evaluated could be a good idea. It opens up access to workplace accomplishments [EDIT: accomodations] that can, so easily, make a living less painful to earn. Or it can just bring a sort of peace-of-mind like mine did.

The label itself isn’t terribly important. So long as you understand yourself and are comfortable with who you are, maybe you don’t need a doctor to certify that you are exactly this-kind-of-weird. I went into my evaluation expecting I wouldn’t qualify for an autism diagnosis but rather satisfied already with my own conviction that I was not neurotypical.

It’s been years since I played Minecraft, probably version 1.2 maybe, but

Glacier

was always a pretty good seed that I remember being shared a lot

Oh my god! This is Theory of the Mind! What you’re referring to as the ‘conception of the reality of others’ is I think what is called Theory of the Mind!

I was chasing the idea down through google-available scholarly journals the other day. The theory of the mind is the ability for a person to understand others don’t share the same experience of reality as themselves. This is something that people develop around three or four years old. I was reading about how the possession of language affects the development and retention of this ability that humans are supposed to achieve.

It’s easier for me to describe my understanding of Theory of the Mind by explaining the way it’s tested for in children.

The test proctor shows the child where they hide an object in a room, then leaves the room. While the proctor is outside, another person comes into the room and moves the object from where it is hidden to some other place, the child is watching them do this. The proctor returns to the room to retrieve the object and someone asks the child where the proctor will look. Children who haven’t reached the mental development / maturity where they recognize others aren’t simply copies of themselves will answer that the proctor will look where the child saw it moved. Children who have obtained a ‘theory of the mind’ will know the proctor didn’t see the object moved and will look first for it where the child saw the proctor hide it.

I was ruminating on this and thinking how Theory of the Mind is the missing piece to so much of the culture war bullshit conservatives obsess over;

• When a homeless person who doesn’t ‘look’ disabled is begging for money, they know the person is just lazy;

Because laziness is the only reason they would beg on the street ‘obviously’ laziness is the only reason a person would beg!

• When somebody has an undiagnosed mental health issue and is discussing suicide, that person is just making immature and manipulative threats;

Nobody has a mind that doesn’t work exactly like theirs and since they can’t imagine craving suicide this person’s reasons are obviously fabrications!

• They can’t understand that male-bodied persons who identify as anything-other-than-male would want to use women’s restrooms for any reason other than horny rape shit because that’s what they would do!;

They don’t understand that different people have different reasons and desires and haven’t lived exactly the same life as them.

Right, I honestly couldn’t define any cue really that I use. Maybe a change in my voice? But yeah, I often use it and the person I speak to often stares long and asks what.

Right, not limited to that phrase

But like, there’s so much implied understanding of this concept in our language, our idioms and cliches etc.

“You need to get some perspective” “I’d appreciate your perspective on this” “It would be good to hear an outside perspective” (I don’t think I’m making these up, imagining their common turns of phrase)

I think I’m misunderstanding his point probably. He’s not saying that allistics can’t or that they aren’t able to conceive the idea of it, rather he’s saying that allistics often don’t notice that we’ve made the perspective switch when we do?

We perhaps do it so often and so fluidly (or in my case probably with no more substantial a skip or conversational hiccup than is ordinary in my speech) … -so often or so fluidly that others tend not to notice whatever we think we’ve used as a sufficient cue to designate the back-stage explanation.

Wait what? He’s saying that allistics don’t understand when I say “let me back up…” that I’m backing up to try to clarify the misunderstanding we’re having?

I am lost too
~ English Native Speaker

God fuck, this is such a beautiful illustration of how well you understand each other! I hope the two of you enjoy to the fullest the time that you share!

Congratulations!

That first exception was the exact reason I dismissed my first Mental Health Professional’s suspicion that I might be autistic. I could understand others’ emotions and I could reliably recognize them. These are stereotypically weaknesses of individuals with autism and so clearly I must not be autistic.

Roughly five years after that question was raised I was finally evaluated at nearly thirty years old and diagnosed as Definitely Autistic.

As my (entirely layman) understanding of autism / Autism Spectrum Disorder has evolved I’ve come to realize that this set of DOZENS of symptoms that has collectively been associated with what is referred to as Autism cannot be independently relied on for the diagnosis of autism. The presence or absence of any single one of them, or even any particular group of them, isn’t a reliable indicator of the verifiability of a diagnosis.

(It is my impression that-) Autism is a large umbrella that has been given to a vaguely associated set of symptoms which may or may not be truly related to each other but do appear together an apparently significant fraction of the time.

(It is therefore also my impression that-) The diagnosis of Autism by a mental health professional is little more than a legal loophole for the purposes of seeking professional and medical accomodations etc. I recognize that some mental health professionals have studied this far more than I have but I don’t believe the common understanding of even the bleeding edge of medical knowledge is capable of determining the “healthier” side of what is referred to as the “Autism Spectrum”.

\

I was mostly sober when I began typing this comment but I think I lost the point I intended to make about halfway through my last drink.

Holy fucking goddamn christ your description of how you parent your child is so incredibly heartwarming! God, if every parent could care like you the world would be a paradise within two generations!

naturally…

Sir… (said I, “or Madam truly-”)
I believe you have identified the issue exactly. How does a person do this “natural” thing or, if it does somehow happen, how does a person avoid interfering with its progress?