Residual Self-monitoring

[Jumpinbare]

Warning: this post may be the result of excessive naval-gazing.

So during all those undiagnosed decades, I really didn't care what people thought about me in general. I had no social life and didn't want one. But I didn't want my weirdness causing me trouble at work or with the police, so I did a lot of self-monitoring and evaluating in those interactions. I had no idea what masking was of course, but I spent a fair amount of time trying to determine whether my actions were likely too weird or not.

Old habits die hard, so while I was engaged in a relatively complex computer task today, my "step back and evaluate" reflex kicked in, and I realized that my VERY manual text-to-speech-followed-by-audio-editing task was not even remotely something people generally do just to have audiobooks on their car stereo.

Does anyone else have these moments?

 

[Outdated]

But I didn't want my weirdness causing me trouble at work or with the police, so I did a lot of self-monitoring and evaluating in those interactions.

I think I likely cared even less about what other people thought and had less of a filter than you. I knew I was a good bloke and that was all that mattered to me, what other people thought really had little effect on me.

Interestingly, I always got along really well with police and usually got away with far more than most people can expect. I think a large part of that was simply because I had no filter and spoke to them completely without any guile, plain simple honesty without any animosity or emotional demands. I was easy to deal with.

 

[Neonatal RRT]

@Jumpinbare, my experience is very similar to yours. Decades of trying to figure out why other people were responding/not responding to me like other people. I was fooling myself into thinking I was an observant person, when in fact, I wasn't able to put these things together. I am a rather Stoic, self-disciplined, focused individual...not a people person, but also positive. My mind simply doesn't "go there", jumping to the worst possible conclusions. I tend to analyze things from multiple perspectives, but autism wasn't really on my radar until much later in life. It wasn't until things got a bit too much at work that I considered autism may be contributing...and ultimately lead to a diagnosis.

Afterwards, once I took my deep dive into all things "autism" that I was able to put the pieces of the puzzle together and THEN be more self-aware. Better late than never, I guess. It's been a journey.

 

[grommet]

Warning: this post may be the result of excessive naval-gazing.

So during all those undiagnosed decades, I really didn't care what people thought about me in general. I had no social life and didn't want one. But I didn't want my weirdness causing me trouble at work or with the police, so I did a lot of self-monitoring and evaluating in those interactions. I had no idea what masking was of course, but I spent a fair amount of time trying to determine whether my actions were likely too weird or not.

Old habits die hard, so while I was engaged in a relatively complex computer task today, my "step back and evaluate" reflex kicked in, and I realized that my VERY manual text-to-speech-followed-by-audio-editing task was not even remotely something people generally do just to have audiobooks on their car stereo.

Does anyone else have these moments?

Maybe every day or if not, very often. I need to adapt things and it can mean a lot of time, hours or weeks but they do not work for me otherwise. I cannot remember all the projects but so many hours put in.

Oh I remember one now. The curtains near my room let light in at the top. It was hard, I got up high, and put some light blocking fabric on the edge with magnets. It had bothered me for a long time, finally it was dark. I spend a lot of effort covering lights, even the smallest dimmest ones.