An Autistic World

[RemyZee]

@Jumpinbare No electric hand dryers?! I used to love those things. Great for air pressure/current and similar experiments they are.

haha--do you really do experiments on hand dryers?

 

[FayetheADHDsquirrel]

T

haha--do you really do experiments on hand dryers?

Yep! Testing how strong the air pressure feels at different distances, noticing how the air cools as it expands further from the exit point on the dryer, and even playing with sound effects as you move your hand back and forth in front of it are all delightful.

 

[Jumpinbare]

But the noise is absolutely EVIL!!

 

[grommet]

Thank you @grommet for that. Holy Krap!!! Such a perfect communication. Made me cry.

Everyday I suffer communication frustration. It feels like no one understands what I'm saying nor can I understand what anyone else is saying. It's a constant struggle. Most NT's communicate in fragmented and truncated sentences, I can never figure it out. My mind works serially. If I loose a single word I can't figure out what the sentence is or means. So, I have to keep re-asking them to repeat what they said, only they never repeat the sentence. They just say another sentence, confusing me even more. Anyway, That has been my life.

That is what they do with me and I get frustrated and feel helpless because I needed them to repeat exactly what they said but now they say a new thing. So now I have to understand the new sentence but if I ask, they will say a third thing. Just say it again so I can work on understanding it.

So when you said an Autistic World would be like home, that was the defining thought I have been searching for all my life.

Thank You.

The first in-person autism meeting felt like that. The strangest feeling I ever felt. Always awkward, always like a space alien, always floating trying to make sense of what everyone was saying and doing but all my life lost. They made no sense to me. It was like walking around a circus where everyone spoke a foreign language I did not know. All strange sights and sounds and what was said I could not understand.

When I was in that first in-person autism meeting I got mad because I was so happy. I realized in that one moment, that single moment that it had been a lie all my life that something was wrong with me, that I was not like other people. I was like everyone in that room. I understood everyone there perfectly. Everyone understood each other. Our words, our movements, our pauses when no one in the room did anything for a few moment, we just sat, then started talking again. It was like music we all knew. Not one odd thing.

I got mad , I felt this deep betrayal. I was never wrong, I was just not with my people. I did have a home.

 

[velociraptor]

How would it be if we lived in an autistic world?

Irritating. We all have different sets of rules we operate by and compatibility is not a given.

 

[the_tortoise]

My mind works serially. If I loose a single word I can't figure out what the sentence is or means. So, I have to keep re-asking them to repeat what they said, only they never repeat the sentence. They just say another sentence, confusing me even more. Anyway, That has been my life.

My mind does not work serially but I experience a similar difficulty (at least: the outcome is similar -- I miss or mishear some key thing or a statement doesn't translate to anything and I lose all or most of the words and ask the speaker if they can say their words again). See below, the rest is a response to both you and grommet...

That is what they do with me and I get frustrated and feel helpless because I needed them to repeat exactly what they said but now they say a new thing. So now I have to understand the new sentence but if I ask, they will say a third thing. Just say it again so I can work on understanding it.

I get this, too...

(Please forgive me if either/both of you [or everyone on the forum except me] already know[/s] this and has for a long time, I did not ever think of this until recently after it had been explained countless times:_)

I think it's usually because they are looking for implied meaning in our words, and think we are asking about implied meaning in their words...

So they don't understand that we are literally asking them to repeat exactly the same words they just said, verbatim...because we didn't process or understand those exact words...

Because they think we are asking them to elaborate...that we heard and understood at least partly but need more information...So they say something to elaborate when we still don't get the first point they are adding to...

Or that we are surprised by whatever they said...So they say something to explain or justify it...

Or that we are uncertain of their meaning, so they try to use a different set of words that to them means the same thing and will confirm a tentative understanding they think we have and were asking them to confirm....

It doesn't seem to matter how long NT people know me, they forget (or maybe can never fully understand) how literal and concrete I am both in how I usually speak and how I understand what others say (the exceptions are rare and I usually explicitly point them out)...so:

When I say things, they are often/always looking for implied meaning that is not there;

And/or responding to implied non-literal meanings they imagine my words have, and that I usually cannot ever imagine myself...

Leading to endless confusion on both sides of the interaction.

 

[MROSS]

More arts and creativity everywhere would be cool. More folks that see a problem and squash it right away would be nice. It might be like the Jetsons, which would be really awesome.

Focus on the arts and creativity would be terrific. Such efforts alreadly underway in more and more places.

Anybody picturing a 'Renaissance 2.0' beginning in ten-years??

 

[MROSS]

An Autistic world is unrealistic. As a person who is not disabled-enough to relate to Autism, yet not quite able enough to better understand an NT world. An Autistic world would also prove difficlut to understand.

In short, with High Functioning Autism (HFA), or even (NT-like HFA), it is best to become acquainted with like- minded people concerned with HFA, or NT-like HFA.

Hence, we would gain perspectives on the type of (doable) world that proves beneficial.

 

[grommet]

An Autistic world is unrealistic. As a person who is not disabled-enough to relate to Autism, yet not quite able enough to better understand an NT world. An Autistic world would also prove difficlut to understand.

In short, with High Functioning Autism (HFA), or even (NT-like HFA), it is best to become acquainted with like- minded people concerned with HFA, or NT-like HFA.

Hence, we would gain perspectives on the type of (doable) world that proves beneficial.

Reading The Speed of Dark by Elizabeth Moon makes me crave a place where I could go to be around just autistic people. In the book they have an Autism Center. I wish. It's not real, the story is fiction and if there were a center me and all the people there would not just get along because we were but I am around NT people all day and they never understand me. Just to be understood sometime or even a little better feels now like it would mean so much.