Noba Loney
Active Member
Hey everyone. New poster, lurked for a bit. I hope this is an appropriate place to post.
I'm in my 40s. In 1996 I probably innapropriately said to an acquaintance in the course of a night out that I thought I was "autistic or something." They said, you're not autistic. That settled that, then.
Soon after this I hit what I now see as a crisis and burn out point. Not for the first time, but this one precipatated some major situation changes. The work I had been doing seemed out of the question so I managed to get on a college course and moved to another town, which was a relief as my living situation had deteriorated.
I started on an engineering course but transferred to arts and didn't complete it, so don't get the idea I was super functional just because I managed to move and get on a course ;-)
I did think that the 'exhaustion' might be partly due to indulgence in psychoactives, and bad 'romance' had definitely contributed, but I see now that probably underlying it was autism. Additionally if I'd been hip to the latter I'd also have approached the other things differently.
Autistic burn out is a new concept to me but a good explanatory one. I'd actually wiped out before. At one point I was in a job that was driving me round the bend - phone line tech support in a busy open plan office. We'd take a large quantity of calls all day about this complicated computer product whose user base was geberally not at all tech savvy. A lot of older people This, it turned out, was a near ideal combo for a communication nightmare for me. I am very good at solving 'tech' problems and that sort of thing, I don't LIKE it as such, but my brain is grimly attracted to them and there can be satisfaction in identifying solutions. But apparently I could not fathom why callers often wouldn't describe what they see accurately, follow simple instructions precisely or directly answer straightforward questions, and so on.
And I realise now that maybe I wasn't equipped to offer convincing consolation for whatever inconvenience they felt; surely my task was to get the problem fixed? Wouldn't getting the machine working remove the source of any annoyance? Perhaps you get the picture. (A)typical IT support asshole. But from my perspective it's an unreasonable expectation and to demand that I do 'emotional labour' in addition to a good job of the actual task is bordering on torture. I've REALLY hated talking on the phone ever since.
In the midst of this, having already been through some periods of semi-homelessness (you could find squats in those days but there were situations without electricity or gas or windows (yeah) or co-habiting with (other) crazy people), sometimes while trying to work jobs, the rent money for the entire large shared house I was living in was stolen by a housemate who had acquired the kind of drug problem that demands a lot of cash.
I ended up staying with a family member, that's a whole other story. Having been in that job 18 months and with nothing more to give I simply stopped going in. The management expressed concern and paid me for another month or so but it was finished. Then I broke off the relationship I'd been in for the last five years, which was pretty devastating but it was just another (major) thing that I couldn't meet expectations for without having a good framework for understanding why that was. She recovered much sooner than I did, don't worry.
What did all that have to do with autism? At the time I wouldn't have known, beyond the occasional vague inkling. But it's becoming clearer. There's been a good deal further chaos since, and I now haven't had a job as such for fifteen years or so (I have a small business that's mainly online and do a couple of other things that don't involve too much interaction with humans.) Gradually getting the message about what my system needs and can handle.
I have twelve months to wait for an interview. Assuming the service still exists on the NHS by then. Since I began seriously considering trying to get a referral, and especially now that I'm in line I have naturally been thinking more about this condition and how it's been a part of my life.
About how it works (a red flag in itself, right?) What mind 'blindness' and context 'blindness' are, from the inside and relationally. Do NTs have the only applicable ideas about what's happening there. And a whole lot more. I guess it can be kind of interesting.
Anyway, how you doin'?
I'm in my 40s. In 1996 I probably innapropriately said to an acquaintance in the course of a night out that I thought I was "autistic or something." They said, you're not autistic. That settled that, then.
Soon after this I hit what I now see as a crisis and burn out point. Not for the first time, but this one precipatated some major situation changes. The work I had been doing seemed out of the question so I managed to get on a college course and moved to another town, which was a relief as my living situation had deteriorated.
I started on an engineering course but transferred to arts and didn't complete it, so don't get the idea I was super functional just because I managed to move and get on a course ;-)
I did think that the 'exhaustion' might be partly due to indulgence in psychoactives, and bad 'romance' had definitely contributed, but I see now that probably underlying it was autism. Additionally if I'd been hip to the latter I'd also have approached the other things differently.
Autistic burn out is a new concept to me but a good explanatory one. I'd actually wiped out before. At one point I was in a job that was driving me round the bend - phone line tech support in a busy open plan office. We'd take a large quantity of calls all day about this complicated computer product whose user base was geberally not at all tech savvy. A lot of older people This, it turned out, was a near ideal combo for a communication nightmare for me. I am very good at solving 'tech' problems and that sort of thing, I don't LIKE it as such, but my brain is grimly attracted to them and there can be satisfaction in identifying solutions. But apparently I could not fathom why callers often wouldn't describe what they see accurately, follow simple instructions precisely or directly answer straightforward questions, and so on.
And I realise now that maybe I wasn't equipped to offer convincing consolation for whatever inconvenience they felt; surely my task was to get the problem fixed? Wouldn't getting the machine working remove the source of any annoyance? Perhaps you get the picture. (A)typical IT support asshole. But from my perspective it's an unreasonable expectation and to demand that I do 'emotional labour' in addition to a good job of the actual task is bordering on torture. I've REALLY hated talking on the phone ever since.
In the midst of this, having already been through some periods of semi-homelessness (you could find squats in those days but there were situations without electricity or gas or windows (yeah) or co-habiting with (other) crazy people), sometimes while trying to work jobs, the rent money for the entire large shared house I was living in was stolen by a housemate who had acquired the kind of drug problem that demands a lot of cash.
I ended up staying with a family member, that's a whole other story. Having been in that job 18 months and with nothing more to give I simply stopped going in. The management expressed concern and paid me for another month or so but it was finished. Then I broke off the relationship I'd been in for the last five years, which was pretty devastating but it was just another (major) thing that I couldn't meet expectations for without having a good framework for understanding why that was. She recovered much sooner than I did, don't worry.
What did all that have to do with autism? At the time I wouldn't have known, beyond the occasional vague inkling. But it's becoming clearer. There's been a good deal further chaos since, and I now haven't had a job as such for fifteen years or so (I have a small business that's mainly online and do a couple of other things that don't involve too much interaction with humans.) Gradually getting the message about what my system needs and can handle.
I have twelve months to wait for an interview. Assuming the service still exists on the NHS by then. Since I began seriously considering trying to get a referral, and especially now that I'm in line I have naturally been thinking more about this condition and how it's been a part of my life.
About how it works (a red flag in itself, right?) What mind 'blindness' and context 'blindness' are, from the inside and relationally. Do NTs have the only applicable ideas about what's happening there. And a whole lot more. I guess it can be kind of interesting.
Anyway, how you doin'?
