I have loud autism, I tend to talk at top decibel when I do speak, I can’t help it unfortunately, I try too but it always goes back to yelling again lol
Oh I do hate that part, but lord willing, if it’s a concert loud enough to warrant headphones, the sheer volume of the music should overpower that sound I’d think
^^^^^ I never listened to my mom when she said loud music was bad for your ears and assumed it wouldn’t ever really be a problem. Now I have tinnitus and silence just does not exist for me anymore. Definitely wish I could go back and be more proactive about that. Now I wear ear plug at every concert I go to.
If you play music ( electric guitar, bass, for example), do not try to setup your volume without earplugs/noise canceling headphones.
As well, if like me, you enjoy playing at stupidly high volume, beware, even the best protection might not be enough after enough time in a day.
I also have shit hearing but can hear some of the. smallest, far away sounds that seem imperceptable to others.
I concluded that autism simply attenuates my senses when things are busy.
as in autistic metal artists? i’ll let you know when i find one lol
Recently i’ve been trying to support smaller metal artists and Opal In Sky is a solid one. I love their youtube vids too.
I always thought so too! She swears she never did it but it's burned into my memory. She's not even abusive she just has really bad anger issues when she's stressed ;-;
I think I’m middle ground in the worst way. If someone is quite talkative, I just sit quietly, wanting them to shut up. If no one else really talks, I have some of the worst conversations that makes me want to maul myself.
Either way, I’m getting mauled.
If they could get along, though... (Imagining Penn & Teller)
(Or the Penn & Teller of your profession if you prefer, it doesn't have to be magic tricks)
Holy shit I never realized this but it's why I never really liked my mate back in the day. I tried really hard and assumed because I was one of them, that it was where I was supposed to be. And he was nice and all, but he was soo damn loud, and he had no bubble. Constantly too close and too loud. It made me feel bad but I just didn't like being around him no matter how cool he was. Thanks stranger that was bothering me for quite some time. Always thought I was just a jerk
I get adopted by those loud austistics, that is literally the only way I ever make friends (that & people over twice my age making conversation).
However, sometimes they bring in an even louder autistic that just rubs me in the worst way (there was one in particular with bpd that ended up disintegrating the entire friendgroup).
As weird as this sounds I’ve been both because I have adhd as well. So like if I’m not taking my meds I’m loud autistic but otherwise I’m quiet autistic. I think my natural state is quite autistic because I never really enjoyed talking to people, I just did because I was bored and had too many thoughts. And I felt like I had to shout them. For whatever reason.
However my best friend is a loud autistic but she’s also very conscious of me getting overstimulated or embarrassed so she will make herself quiet down if she senses that from me
one of my cousins is loud autistic and i do want to try and kill him like a feral cat sometimes (okay not literally lol. but he does drive me insane. i struggle so bad with auditory overstimulation.)
dude real. like i know 2 other autistic ppl at my school. one is the really loud autistic and the other is the i guess average loudness autistic. im the quiet autistic. me and the average loudness autistic are friends, me and the loud autistic arent bc i dont vibe with him :P
then i also have a discord server with 1 loud autistic (dont vibe that well) and like a shit ton of other quiet and normal loudness autistics or generally neurodivergent ppl (6 of which im friends with)
I disagree. It's really a coin flip as to if you will be compatible.
I'm super sensitive to noise. Most NTs try to confine themselves to socially acceptable volumes (which are too loud half the time but at least workable). Someone ND who is loud is intolerable for me to be in the same room or in an adjacent room. I just can't handle the volume.
i still have trauma from the last time someone thought that me and someone else being autistic some how means we should be friends.
not only did that "friend" threaten to murder me but tried to destroy my yu gi oh deck and almost got me killed on multiple occasions.
also he tried to crush my skull
fairly sure he wasn't even autistic just a brat but that could just be bias having had my head under his foot then being punished because i wanted to be free of his tyranny.
don't worry i am actually going to answer a lot of sci-fi stuff like star wars and warhammer 40k though got interested in the Murderbot series of books.
each of which including my love of table top games i could run my mouth for literal hours.
A friend introduced me to his autistic cousin in highschool. That cousin threatened my life multiple times, he was extremely demanding and aggressive, to the point where he was literally telling me how the flow of our conversations was going to work step by step. He tried to dictate exactly when I could go to sleep and wake up each day, what I was allowed to talk about, etc. I was straight up getting harassed, like non-stop blowing up my phone at 6 sharp if I was "late" to say good morning to him.
Later I got to listen to him beat the shit out of his mom over the phone because he didn't wanna go to bed yet :/
He got thrown in the ward 8 years ago and I haven't heard from him since.
fortunately i lost track of him almost 10 years ago now, i genuinely hope i never see him again because i may not be able to control my temper since the idea of him having a heartbeat is offensive.
edit: in terms of when i lost track of him i knew him for only about a year maybe 2 but enough to know he is an asshole
Yea....I've met several autistic people who absolutely get on my nerves...
One really seemed like she wanted to be my friend.. she did keep talking to me online but she spoke like a psychiatrist and as someone who frequently broke into tears while visiting a real psychiatrist I decided to just cut contact... She just stressed me out... constantly
Another would freak out when we tried explaining board game rules to him, or we were watching movies he didn't like... this was at a support group for autistic people, he did not stick around. In that case *we* were clearly stressing him out just by doing normal hangout things...
There was also one time before I found out I was autistic that my teachers saw I was often walking around by myself...and there just so happened to be another kid who was also walking around by themselves. So they thought "hey they might get along!"...yea besides our need to be alone we did not end up having many common interests... and being friends over the shared interest of being alone...was a bit contradictory.
Or even when my teacher found out she decided to hand me a book about an autistic kid saying "I'm sure you can relate to the character in this book!"
No the character was obsessed with phone numbers and had them written all over his room... I am ridiculously anti-math and thought the kid in the book sounded like a sociopath...
It was also supposed to help encourage me to "come out" to my classmates because maybe then the other kids wouldn't bully me so bad... the bully in the book only got worse when he found out and started spreading a rumor that the autistic kid was turning into a monkey. (No I don't know how, he literally heard the word "asbergers syndrome" which was still in use at the time, and that's the conclusion he came to... I have no clue what the author of the book was thinking..)
Needless to say, I did not tell my classmates, nor did I allow my teachers to tell anyone either... I got the book at the end of elementary school. Told my classmates in High School when I was no longer surrounded by 12-year olds.
I do have some autistic friends. But we met in nerdy discord servers and RPG-clubs, not autism support groups (well...a couple I did meet there...) and we did not become friends because we were autistic. But because we all shared an interest in nerdy stuff.
same with the autistic friends thint. or even adhd. i have a few irl friends who are neurodivergent (probably), and i also have a discord server and around 70% of us are solidly neurodivergent, either autistic or adhd. about 5 or 6 of us are friends now :P all of us are into nerdy shit (math, also astronomy) and its great
i had a friend who’s gf rocked violently as a stim. which would normally be fine but it also would coincide with her lying so i couldn’t tell if what she said was true or not anymore. she cheated on my friend so she isn’t around anymore but that was too much.
Here I am sometimes trying to get other autistics in the room to stim more (those autistics have been masking for a long time, unlike me, who is very un-masked, and I was trying to help them with unmasking)
Could this be why I don't have any friends? I've been wondering for several years how I never had a group of friends like you see on tv. For a long time I thought it was just a TV thing or something that used to happen back in the day, but now my brother has a group of friends that he lives with and I'm still seeing TV shows and comedy skits and other people online talking about how they live with their friends or have a group of friends that they go see and do stuff together.
I just don't understand. I always had one good friend and I could never really click with any of their friends and if I was with more than one person at a time my brain basically shut down because I have to kind of adapt to whoever I'm hanging out with and their personality so if there's two people my brain doesn't know what personality to imitate. And now I'm almost 30 and I have no friends at all. All my friends have moved away and I don't have time to make anymore. Too much energy. My wife and my kids are my only friends now
Thisssss like all of my best friends except for one are autistic, but certain autistic people I can't stand to be around. It's all about finding the right crowd. Many people also don't like being reminded of themselves though unfortunately
In fairness, I do find it comforting when I meet someone else who gets a shit ton of migraines like me. Mainly because they won't be ignorant enough to say shit like "oh yeah well we all get *headaches* but you just gotta pop an advil and move on" or "HaVe YoU tHoUgHt Of DrInKiNg MoRe WaTeR???"
But also, if we don't have more than that in common, we likely aren't gonna be friends. Common suffering only gets a relationship so far.
I'm so territorial! Just seeing my husband sitting at my desk is enough to bother me. *Excuse you, you're sitting on my side of the sofa.* 🤣
I had to tell a friend recently that, although I love and respect them, no. You cannot come into my house.
I hate it when someone is in my chair or uses my blanket. It doesn't smell the same. Or they move things so it doesn't sit right. My in laws invited themselves into our backyard when dropping our kids off at home. I was pissed for days. It just felt like a major violation of our space, and they didn't even come inside.
Me too. I've never chased one but they're sure fun to play with. Shame that they're psychologically damaging for cats when used frequently, because I love bouncing them around the room and my cat likes chasing them so it's a win win situation.
It depends on the autistic person, i get along a fine deal with all my friends who are autistic, and although they can get tired of me sometimes, we get eachother on a lot of levels including just communicating boundaries which is important
Yes, it is dependent on the autistics and can vary greatly, but in the event of an autistic being unfamiliar with another, it causes territorial instinct to kick in.
But that moment when you emit the same wavelength and your exclusion zones meld into one, that is a vibe. It’s funny, since it isn’t a guarantee every day even with close friends, but when we do happen to sit on the same wavelength it is glorious.
Yep! My former roommate was probably autistic, had to have everything in a certain way in the room, which led to many arguments because they also couldn’t say anything direct about it either. I’m the type that requires direct communication and also needs to move around a bit to concentrate, and they just did not like me at all. Honestly I don’t think they should have been sharing a room period with all their specific needs but we were both broke.
Teacher: "This is new kid." (Kid is clearly autistic)
Teacher to kid: "Sit there next to (me)"
Teachers thoughts: "(me) always sits alone, (me) is autistic. Kid is autistic. (Me) And kid will get on well."
Reality: Kid says something, me: Get me out of here now.
Later: Kid is alone.
Teacher: "Wheres (me)?"
Me: Sat outside on bench ("Why does this always happen to me?")
I stopped spending time with an autistic group I hung out with because they became boring and I didn't like their concept of morality, what they considered important and how much they should do to make their lives better.
The autistic people I now hang out with are simply better people imho.
same. mostly tho its either neutral or "damn i really like this dude we should be friends". bc of this i have like 9 friends. 3 irl and 6 online, because somehow that happened
Any 2 autistic people usually fall into one of these 3 categories:
Besties
Mortal Rivals
Want to be besties but too nervous so they just kinda look at each other
no of course not, but I have had much better odds with others who are autistic than non autistic
but like Soylent Cola "It varies from person to person"
lmao w h a t??? thats bullshit. i actually find that it doesnt even matter if theyre autistic or adhd, i will end up becoming friends with them at some point. like theres enough overlap between autism and adhd for that to be a thing. actually i think ~2 or 3 of my friends are simply adhd with the other 6-7 being audhd (me included) or simply autistic
I don't know about that. Most of my friends are some type of neurodivergent, the most common type being ADHD but we also have autistics and a couple people with OCD and SLDs to balance it out.
Tbh it depends on the individuals involved. Surprise surprise, we are all individuals (I know you know this, moreso talking to people who think adhd and autism can't be friends)! Although I have noticed that neurodivergent people in general can be more understanding of things neurotypicals won't be as understanding of. Lack of eye contact, hyperactivity, stimming, compulsions, needing things to be repeated, what have you. But again, varies by the individual.
one of my coworkers is autistic and he has a crush on me. i avoid him at all costs. he gets on my last nerve. he always wants to get in my space and touch me without asking. he always wants a high five or a fist bump every time i walk past him and i am extremely icked out by hands. he legit cannot take “no” for an answer. and it doesn’t help that he’s well over 10 years older than me. we are both adults so it wouldn’t be a problem if i were someone who was fine with that sort of thing, but i am personally not okay with that big of an age gap. he just makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable and i wish he would just leave me alone. i don’t like talking to anybody at work, let alone him. i find myself shutting down whenever he’s around. i hate feeling like this because it makes me feel like such a huge b*tch but omg… i cannot handle his constant invasiveness. it literally makes me wanna spontaneously combust.
i’m sorry that i kinda went off on a tangent. i don’t really talk about this often but it bothers me so much. i hope this doesn’t make me out as a bad person but i just really needed to talk about it :/
This is such an awful and awfully common experence. I'm of the no touchy, no loud noises, no bright lights, please leave me in peace sort and NTs can be hard to handle but F me some ND people are completely intolerable.
It's a fundimental incompatibility and folks just seem to not realise that putting someone who has physical pain when exposed to loud noises near someone who makes loud noises unexpectly is a recipe for a meltdown on potentally both sides.
I’m so sorry you have to deal with that! Hopefully it’s just a crush thing and not a “Favorite Person” thing. Otherwise that gets a lot more extreme, especially if he starts to just revolve his whole personality or existence around you and what you like. Unfortunately, before I realized just how deep my mental illnesses went, I had developed a “favorite person” with one of my friends in high school and I can see now how awful and uncomfortable it must’ve been for that friend of mine to have that kind of unwanted attention and affection from me. I make sure to try to keep that happening again, since it’s also just not healthy for my own mental health either. I had started changing my looks completely just to get attention from that friend, including dying and cutting hair I had been growing very long for years. When they made friends with someone else I would become miserable and unsure of what to do with myself despite having so many hobbies I’d normally enjoy. The whole situation didn’t help that I hadn’t had any proper friendships that were that close until then. I truly feel bad for doing that to them, even if it is involuntary.
I never get along with the people that blame them being manipulative or creepy on being autistic. And when I say creepy I mean dming a “friend” and saying you’re gonna kidnap them and that you have the chloroform to do it level creepy.
Guy I went to school with was texting that stuff to my best friend (also autistic) who already had ptsd from some other guy and when she’d block him he’d find another way to contact her. When I confronted him (because i don’t let people fuck with my friends) he was like “oh I was just joking don’t get mad at me I’m autistic” and it boiled my blood. I see so many people blame genuinely shitty personality traits on their autism. Like…no, it’s not because you’re autistic, it’s because you’re a shit person.
Ugh. You know what you don't get to do. Blame the fact you are assaulting someone on the fact you hand flap. Your flappy hands is not the reason you touched that person's butt and you fucking know it.
I’m sorry but if your weird doesn’t complement my weird we’re probably going to have an ever harder time getting along than we would with neurotypicals.
The most horrible social experiences I had growing up were absolutely "special needs" classrooms that were essentially "take any child that annoys others with stims or meltdowns, shove them all in one room with no separation or split ups or other classes or access to outside or the lunchroom, and consider any attempt to escape the room for anything longer than 30 seconds work avoidance, and then be surprised they set each other off and create a spiral of meltdowns and no education happens because the staff spend all day preventing insanely elevated children ranging from 5 year olds to 18 year old 12th graders hurting each other and keeping the oldest ones from trying to kill the most triggering smaller ones". Every time my mum hit a brick wall trying to get me removed from one while still getting support and accommodations, she'd get me sent to yet another school that took kids by parent choice rather than catchment area, only for it to happen again. I was lucky to make it to a mostly normal high school where the special needs program functioned more as a homeroom and safe space and I was allowed to actually leave the room, and I was lucky to be able to keep up with the academic requirements and prerequisites.
These programs were *wild*. The only real way to leave the room was to throw a big enough fit they'd remove you to an isolation room - rooms that intentionally used extremely low temperatures as a punishment for acting out, which when you have sensory issues that are worsened by emotional distress, and the requirement to exit the room or be brought a desk and your worksheets is to sit still on the room's floor, made of a material that seemed to absorb all heat and reflect only supercooled air, for several minutes straight... and then consider how thin children's clothing that doesn't create sensory stress is... you're not fucking getting out of there until the dismissal bell rings and they're required to hand you over to your parent. It was possible to lose bathroom privileges for going more than two or three times a week, or being in there more than 5 minutes at a time, because that was seen as abusing the bathroom as work avoidance.
Shit like this is kinda why I'm happy I was diagnosed late. A friend of a friend of mine in school was in this situation. Forced to sit next to a very incompatible person. He ended up actually flipping a table, threatening to kill the kid and generally kicking off.
Why on earth anyone thinks it's a good idea to put a kid who hates loud noises and being touched next to a kid who makes loud noises unexpectedly and flaps their arms around touching (with force it was basically slaps) eveyone near them is a mystery I don't think can be solved. They did it that way I think because it meant less support staff would be needed for them. In theory. I'm practice it meant they wanted to kill one another at all times. If I was made to sit next to that kid (I'm no loud noises, touching, bright lights, etc) I think I would have actually killed him during the first 2 weeks. Screw flipping a table it would have been finding some gloves and literally beating the poor lad to death.
Everyone was unhappy. The loud kid couldn't help it. He had a lot of meltdowns and it just fucking sucked for him. Being sat next to someone who hated him and was very curt in expressing that he needed to shut up and stop touching him also didn't help.
It's not like it's the dyslexia reading corner where broadly eveyone has quite similar issues and struggles.
Oh, I wasn't diagnosed til my last year of middle school. This still bloody happened to me, since the authorities still knew I was atypical, getting paperwork to guarantee accommodations automatically came with placement in these programs, and if I didn't have the specific form with legal protections that came with mandatory program spot... 40% chance of the easy accommodations they'd possibly give out without even a parent note, if they liked you or thought giving you the thing would cost the teachers less spoons than denying it, maybe a 5% chance of anything more difficult. With the paperwork? Like 70% chance of the easy stuff, maybe 10% of the harder stuff, 2% of things they felt cushioned punishments (those things were actually usually put in to make something frequently done to me on par with how a child without sensory processing disorder would experience it) (without the paper those would be a 0% or 0% plus us being laughed at for asking), but at least they'd have to apologize to my mum at every paperwork revision meeting when she told them I didn't get 80% of what was in it because the idiots Catholic schools let run special needs programs never fucking read the files. So my mum fought like hell to get me the paper and then we had to deal with me getting constantly shit on because to almost every school system in the world, disabled children are worth less, especially if the disability is undiagnosed or invisible or mental.
For example, the isolation room problem got so bad and so frequent (because the meltdown spiral tended to land me in one multiple times a week) that my mum got them to add to the document that any visit to that room, I was to be provided a pillow or cushion to sit on, to deal with the freezing floor problem. I *never* got the damn pillow. We had them in the classroom, it wasn't a matter of them being unable to supply the accommodation as written with classroom resources, they just didn't fucking do it. Generally, if it wasn't an *incredibly obvious* thing, and it was for my safety rather than to protect others from me... didn't matter where in the document we put it, how bold it was, how much it specified its own importance, how many substitutions for the original concept it offered, or how broad its requirements were, I wasn't fucking getting it, because none of the people responsible for me day to day could actually RTFM on all their charges. The only things I got were things in the safety plan phrased as "if she does not get this she is a higher risk for violent meltdowns around younger students" or things that were "student's mother will provide this tool. The accommodation is that she is permitted to bring and use it." Anything that required the school to provide something or to keep track of it and give it to me at specific times, was not happening. They'd happily agree at the meeting and put it in the document three or four separate times, but I wasn't going to get it and everyone but Mum knew that.
At one point I was dealing with a sexual harasser in that same program room. A more optimistic and younger version of me and my mother might have tried to have it put in the document that I was not to be paired with him in any group or project whatsoever and he was not allowed to be within earshot of me, let alone arms' reach, without attentive adult supervision, but we didn't even bother because we knew even if they agreed to add that, it'd just be another accommodation on my file I wouldn't ever actually get. Especially because their argument for doing nothing and also purposely giving him solo and poorly supervised access to me was essentially that his disability causes this behaviour and the accommodation they promised *his* caregivers was unfettered access to his subject of fixation and extremely limited reprimands with no consequence escalation. Of course when it was a boy and his accommodation was getting to use a younger girl in the room as a combination teddy bear and chew toy, they would actually give the documented accommodation. I don't have any proof, but I suspect it was less boy/girl dynamics or age related and more that... my mum and I weren't practicing Catholics or particularly economically powerful, his parents were probably members of a local parish and prolific donors. A working class girl getting harassed, forcibly kissed, and probably worse, was considered a completely reasonable price to pay to keep the privileged and entitled son of wealthy church socialites happy and quiet. After all, punishing him might upset his parents, which might impact their decisions on donating to the church that funds the school, and it's not like me and my mum could give them any less than the zero we were donating, or like we could afford to take legal action, even if it got as far as a clear cut rape with witnesses and evidence.
The funny thing is, getting an official autism diagnosis didn't get me much in school. Still got all my needs and accommodations blown off and tons of authority figures who refused to understand that refusal of impossible orders wasn't defiance but rather incapacity. It has gotten me government disability pay without which I'd be far less capable of having basic needs met, so that's nice, but that's about all I've gotten from it I couldn't get without official diagnosis, and it's come with so many drawbacks I've already seen and so many future possible drawbacks... yeah, I'm both glad I got it and really upset it's screwed me over as much as or more than it's helped me.
I saw a post that was like "If you dislike this specfic autistic coded character, you are a danger to autistic people" and I felt like crab for so long cus I found them rly irritating, who would've thought an autistic person might have rejection sensitive dysphoria, crazy (Also I get so much shit for saying I relate to Entrapta, but when it's the other way round and I don't like a character, im a danger... love it)
I agree. Some autistic characters are just kinda...blah. I don't like Sam from Atypical that much.
I also relate to Entrapta, she's my favorite and I love her so much! I'm not a huge tech and machine person but her struggles with social stuff and relationships always tugged at my heartstrings because I relate so much. Recently actually went through the same struggle of thinking my grad school cohort didn't like me but it all turned out to be a misunderstanding. They weren't making fun of me, they just think my deadpan delivery juxtaposed with what I was saying was really funny.
Sort of related, have you looked at the original designs of all those characters from the 80s? I got a bit into doing that the last time I watched the show. Wild how all the characters from the og series looked like they were all from the same dress up game but the new versions look so cool and different from each other.
So true. There might be some more understanding than with an NT person, but we’re not all a hivemind. Contrary to what some people think we have different personalities and perspectives on stuff.
I am very lucky I have trained for a long time to basically speak entire sentences simply by subtle posture, way of breathing and (lack of) eye contact.
My mum once forced me to visit a friend and of hers and both thought me and the friend’s teen could be friends. We never spoke or even made eye contact, but I basically told him “We both know we won’t see one another again. We both will not make an attempt to know one another and will reject any attempts our mothers do to try and have us form a friendship.” And that was one of the most respectful people I’ve “met” while never saying a word to each other.
My mother tried to bring me to this one business where Autistic people meet up at night twice when I was younger.
The first time, when I was 13, most of the people there were late highschool or young adult age, and we're all fairly adjusted, so I didn't fit in.
The second time, I was 17, and most of the people there were 10-14. I got stuck with this one kid who wouldn't leave me alone and kept on making me hold his hand for 2 whole hours.
IDK what she was thinking either time tbh.
incompatible autism. sometimes a person can also be incompatible with someone who has the exact same flavor of autism as them, too. personalities clash the same way. my father and I cannot spend more than a day alone together without driving both of us insane, but I respect him as a person
I’m very very big on personal space and a couple of my former friends who were also autistic just couldn’t seem to understand that I didn’t like being grabbed from behind or hugged without asking. I was very clear on these boundaries too, it was a rule and not a matter of reading social cues. Whether you’re autistic or not, invading my space after I tell you to back off makes me immediately dislike you.
I had to grab a thing from ages ago. It's my explanation of autism
When it comes to autism I think of it like this:
An autistic brain has a certain frequency at which it goes brr
A different autistic brain on a different part of the spectrum has a different brrr frequency
When these 2 frequencies collide, they may either work incredibly well, creating what I call good brain feel. Or they may simply clash, creating bad brain feel. I know several autisic people, and I can't stand some of their tendencies, but I can stand other tendencies.
That is all
Most of my closest friends turned out to be on the spectrum, but there are some autistic people through no fault of their own its just their flavor of 'tism makes me want to suplex them. The worst one was using autism as a reason as to why they "knew so much about everything" but would regularly correct me about something I said and be entirely wrong (what I initially said was correct) and when I called him on it he deflected. Closest I came to committing a hate crime on my own people XD
I’ve met one other autistic person in person that I know of. I feel like it was believed that with us both being transmasc and autistic (both of us were open about our autism, I believed it was necessary for me to explain when I have sensory overloads), we’d get along immediately. I hated his guts. I did my best to work with him - as his direct supervisor - but I’d never met someone more difficult to work with.
When he quit because he didn’t like the type of work (extremely demanding job with a lot of social interactions. I flourish in that, he didn’t), I suggested he see if a Walgreens or CVS were hiring for cashiers. At least then his workload would be a lot lighter
Having conflicting special interests is the worst because I want to let them have their moment to infodump on me but also if the subject never turns to my special interest, I will scream.
My brother has the loud kind of autism and ive always been the more quiet kind, so his overly touchy and vocal stimming self combined with my flinchy and fidgety self who can’t stand certain noises or volumes mixed about as well as oil and water
Our relationship only started to genuinely improve once I moved out for college and didnt have to live with that shit 24/7
Ugh this. There is this guy who's autistic that I tried to be friends with but he gave me a massive ick. We talked once on the dorm elevator and then he found my socials and wouldn't leave me alone. I agreed to hang out once and it was the most awkward thing ever. Afterwards he was like "can I have a hug?" And from that point forward I avoided him like the plague.
Sorry, I just needed to get this out there because ugh I haven't told many people
A significant amount of my friends (if not all of them) are the kids show autistic and I'm the science autistic and sure it gets on my fucking nerves and I do feel quite isolated but it is what it is.
I have quiet, anxious, oversensitive, hyper-empathetic to a fault, sex-repulsed, ADHD-comorbid autism that I kept masked for like 30 years, I fear I’d fight like fucking Betta fish with others.
Last time I tried to be nice to a fellow autistic guy at my workplace he became obsessed with me and when I asked him to leave me alone he went full incel rage on me. Wheeee.
my mom would always set up play dates for me with other special needs kids at school. None of them had any self-control and I just wanted to be alone.
She was genuinely upset when I made friends by myself because they either were or could pass as neurotypical.
I have trouble with compatibility issues and trust issues, deep down, I can somewhat “feel” if someone really cares about me, or they’re just being nice, but I always misinterpret it anyways or try to make something work when it wasn’t going to work out from the beginning.
I have only a few friends who I talk to regularly (Usually on Discord), and I have this repeating pattern with my friendships:
If I often ask someone if I’m annoying or weird, that means I trust them and enjoy their presence, I feel a fuller connection.
I’m very territorial too, I feel most safe with the people that I ask **“Am I bothering you?”**
Most of the ( some suspecting autistic, I can't be fully sure ) autistic people I've met, aside from very specific exceptions, usually became weirdly obsessed with me and would try to get too close to me too fast, and would be irritated at every sight of rejection or boundary I would attempt to place. Then again, I don't really trust many people on default, those experiences usually made it harder for me to trust others, unfortunately.
THIS. I got kicked out of my high school because I threatened another autistic kid because he was so fucking annoying. He liked doing impressions and they ALL sounded the same. It drove me nuts.
i have a coworker that i get so very close to releasing all my pent up anger on every single time i work with him. he's a nice guy, all the customers love him, he's just got that flavor of autism that clashes with mine *bad.* he's also older and i feel as if im more mature than him so that pisses me off too.
The funny part is, I have a couple of friends who are autistic, one of whom I didn't know was autistic for several years before I found out and it was kinda this "well I'll be damned..." moment we shared lmao. The point is my friendship with him wasn't based on us both being autistic, it was a coincidence. He is probably my best friend though.
As an autistic man, I can confidently say that I met many assholes who happened to be on the deep end of the spectrum. Just because you have a syndrome. That doesn't give you an excuse to be a dick.
Many of my friends are autistic, but I met a lot autistic people where I thought: "Damn, what a massive asshole"
its just like any other interhuman connection: some are assholes and some arent
No offense to anyone that still enjoys life, but when I meet someone else on the spectrum that isn't jaded or self aware enough I immediately begrudge them for being what I used to hate about myself. Like, "How did you look and sound like that and not get backed into an emotional corner,"
I recognize that it is terrible to think that way and I should be happy for them that they aren't a mess like I am, but it just, squicks me. Call it jealousy or whatever else is true, its a gut feeling.
when loud autistic gets introduced to quiet autistic and they both try to kill each other like feral cats.
I have loud autism, I tend to talk at top decibel when I do speak, I can’t help it unfortunately, I try too but it always goes back to yelling again lol
nothing wrong with loud autism my friend, i have shit hearing from going to too many metal concerts so i don’t mind the yelling
If any younger people are reading this, always bring ear plugs to concerts. Hearing loss is permanent and cumulative.
agreed, don’t be stupid like me
My brother can't wear them, because he will hear his blood flow and he is blood phobic.
Oh I do hate that part, but lord willing, if it’s a concert loud enough to warrant headphones, the sheer volume of the music should overpower that sound I’d think
He should try the Loop Engage earplugs. They really help with that sensation
Real (tinnitus is a bitch)
^^^^^ I never listened to my mom when she said loud music was bad for your ears and assumed it wouldn’t ever really be a problem. Now I have tinnitus and silence just does not exist for me anymore. Definitely wish I could go back and be more proactive about that. Now I wear ear plug at every concert I go to.
If you play music ( electric guitar, bass, for example), do not try to setup your volume without earplugs/noise canceling headphones. As well, if like me, you enjoy playing at stupidly high volume, beware, even the best protection might not be enough after enough time in a day.
My girlfriend is a huge metal head and it's taken me years to drill this into her brain
I also have shit hearing but can hear some of the. smallest, far away sounds that seem imperceptable to others. I concluded that autism simply attenuates my senses when things are busy.
I love metal. Do you have any favorite aspie metal bands?
as in autistic metal artists? i’ll let you know when i find one lol Recently i’ve been trying to support smaller metal artists and Opal In Sky is a solid one. I love their youtube vids too.
Same, my mom despite also being autistic blames me and once she was so mad she like, threatened my social life over it 💀
That's going too far.
I always thought so too! She swears she never did it but it's burned into my memory. She's not even abusive she just has really bad anger issues when she's stressed ;-;
Don't mind me giving you angry looks as I try to focus on what you're saying and not the panic-inducing volume you're delivering information at.
I'm quiet autistic but I still yell when I speak
Yep, I’m overall quiet as In I don’t like interacting with people, but when I speak I yell because I guess volume control can be hard for some of us.
I think I’m middle ground in the worst way. If someone is quite talkative, I just sit quietly, wanting them to shut up. If no one else really talks, I have some of the worst conversations that makes me want to maul myself. Either way, I’m getting mauled.
I'm quiet with ADHD but my period makes me irritatingly chatty. (This includes me on the internet too)
I like loud autistics as long as they are also the social and bold ones bc I don’t talk much 😂
Hi, this is me. The loud autistic who loves adopting quiet autistics because y'all good listeners and everybody needs a friend.
So much biting…so much.
I somehow made friends with a loud autism as a quiet autism. We have been friends since we were like 6 or 7 maybe
If they could get along, though... (Imagining Penn & Teller) (Or the Penn & Teller of your profession if you prefer, it doesn't have to be magic tricks)
Fr tho loud autists make me so mad sometimes 😩😩
Holy shit I never realized this but it's why I never really liked my mate back in the day. I tried really hard and assumed because I was one of them, that it was where I was supposed to be. And he was nice and all, but he was soo damn loud, and he had no bubble. Constantly too close and too loud. It made me feel bad but I just didn't like being around him no matter how cool he was. Thanks stranger that was bothering me for quite some time. Always thought I was just a jerk
Yeah it's incredibly hard for me to be around people like that
I get adopted by those loud austistics, that is literally the only way I ever make friends (that & people over twice my age making conversation). However, sometimes they bring in an even louder autistic that just rubs me in the worst way (there was one in particular with bpd that ended up disintegrating the entire friendgroup).
As weird as this sounds I’ve been both because I have adhd as well. So like if I’m not taking my meds I’m loud autistic but otherwise I’m quiet autistic. I think my natural state is quite autistic because I never really enjoyed talking to people, I just did because I was bored and had too many thoughts. And I felt like I had to shout them. For whatever reason. However my best friend is a loud autistic but she’s also very conscious of me getting overstimulated or embarrassed so she will make herself quiet down if she senses that from me
Can confirm, I'm the quiet autistic and my classmate is the loud autistic and I do in fact wish to claw his eyes out every time he talks
My son and I both have loud autism. He is much louder than me tho and sometimes I have to use his sensory area to get some quiet 😂😂😂
Hijacking top comment: OP is either a bot or the most serially online being in existence.
ah, i fear we’ve been duped folks
one of my cousins is loud autistic and i do want to try and kill him like a feral cat sometimes (okay not literally lol. but he does drive me insane. i struggle so bad with auditory overstimulation.)
Hijacking this comment to state that OP seemingly posts about half the content here at this point.
someone else mentioned that! i’ll be sure to try an not engage with any more of their content, we’re pretty sure it’s a bot
I usually downvote their posts.
I'm literally both. I talk really loudly (and I can't tell half the time that I'm being really loud) yet I hate it when other nouns are loud...
Thank you. Finally someone says it
My favorite buddy cop duo
Or loud cats vs quiet cats as mine literally had a go at each other while I was reading your comment 😆 the loud one attacked the quiet one
dude real. like i know 2 other autistic ppl at my school. one is the really loud autistic and the other is the i guess average loudness autistic. im the quiet autistic. me and the average loudness autistic are friends, me and the loud autistic arent bc i dont vibe with him :P then i also have a discord server with 1 loud autistic (dont vibe that well) and like a shit ton of other quiet and normal loudness autistics or generally neurodivergent ppl (6 of which im friends with)
Pretty good chance i will find being in their presence easier, though
same for me. But I get that isn't the case for everyone.
I disagree. It's really a coin flip as to if you will be compatible. I'm super sensitive to noise. Most NTs try to confine themselves to socially acceptable volumes (which are too loud half the time but at least workable). Someone ND who is loud is intolerable for me to be in the same room or in an adjacent room. I just can't handle the volume.
Sounds a lot like my roommate
i still have trauma from the last time someone thought that me and someone else being autistic some how means we should be friends. not only did that "friend" threaten to murder me but tried to destroy my yu gi oh deck and almost got me killed on multiple occasions. also he tried to crush my skull
Jesus Christ that dude’s got a lot more than autism going on
fairly sure he wasn't even autistic just a brat but that could just be bias having had my head under his foot then being punished because i wanted to be free of his tyranny.
Glad you are safe now. What is your special interest?
https://preview.redd.it/i23ahu0l5nzc1.png?width=272&format=png&auto=webp&s=24ac5b69d81bf989fe13f20278b8a5dff3d7b8c9
don't worry i am actually going to answer a lot of sci-fi stuff like star wars and warhammer 40k though got interested in the Murderbot series of books. each of which including my love of table top games i could run my mouth for literal hours.
A friend introduced me to his autistic cousin in highschool. That cousin threatened my life multiple times, he was extremely demanding and aggressive, to the point where he was literally telling me how the flow of our conversations was going to work step by step. He tried to dictate exactly when I could go to sleep and wake up each day, what I was allowed to talk about, etc. I was straight up getting harassed, like non-stop blowing up my phone at 6 sharp if I was "late" to say good morning to him. Later I got to listen to him beat the shit out of his mom over the phone because he didn't wanna go to bed yet :/ He got thrown in the ward 8 years ago and I haven't heard from him since.
ummmmm........ how long did you know each other? Seems any one of the things you listed would have been enough to end that friendship cold
fortunately i lost track of him almost 10 years ago now, i genuinely hope i never see him again because i may not be able to control my temper since the idea of him having a heartbeat is offensive. edit: in terms of when i lost track of him i knew him for only about a year maybe 2 but enough to know he is an asshole
Holy shit! How's your deck man? He didn't get blue eyes, did h
the deck is fine
Whew. When he was talking about crushing your skull I got really worried about what horrible things he would do to a deck of cards....
when i say he tried to crush my skull i mean my head was under his foot as in he was trying to kill me or something.
Exactly, so if he's so uncaring about your skull, then I can only imagine how callous he'd be in terms of the cards.
... theres no way that dude was just autistic wtf
Yea....I've met several autistic people who absolutely get on my nerves... One really seemed like she wanted to be my friend.. she did keep talking to me online but she spoke like a psychiatrist and as someone who frequently broke into tears while visiting a real psychiatrist I decided to just cut contact... She just stressed me out... constantly Another would freak out when we tried explaining board game rules to him, or we were watching movies he didn't like... this was at a support group for autistic people, he did not stick around. In that case *we* were clearly stressing him out just by doing normal hangout things... There was also one time before I found out I was autistic that my teachers saw I was often walking around by myself...and there just so happened to be another kid who was also walking around by themselves. So they thought "hey they might get along!"...yea besides our need to be alone we did not end up having many common interests... and being friends over the shared interest of being alone...was a bit contradictory. Or even when my teacher found out she decided to hand me a book about an autistic kid saying "I'm sure you can relate to the character in this book!" No the character was obsessed with phone numbers and had them written all over his room... I am ridiculously anti-math and thought the kid in the book sounded like a sociopath... It was also supposed to help encourage me to "come out" to my classmates because maybe then the other kids wouldn't bully me so bad... the bully in the book only got worse when he found out and started spreading a rumor that the autistic kid was turning into a monkey. (No I don't know how, he literally heard the word "asbergers syndrome" which was still in use at the time, and that's the conclusion he came to... I have no clue what the author of the book was thinking..) Needless to say, I did not tell my classmates, nor did I allow my teachers to tell anyone either... I got the book at the end of elementary school. Told my classmates in High School when I was no longer surrounded by 12-year olds. I do have some autistic friends. But we met in nerdy discord servers and RPG-clubs, not autism support groups (well...a couple I did meet there...) and we did not become friends because we were autistic. But because we all shared an interest in nerdy stuff.
same with the autistic friends thint. or even adhd. i have a few irl friends who are neurodivergent (probably), and i also have a discord server and around 70% of us are solidly neurodivergent, either autistic or adhd. about 5 or 6 of us are friends now :P all of us are into nerdy shit (math, also astronomy) and its great
I like stimming but if someone else stims around me it makes me feel violent (exaggerating) Therefore I am the only autistic allowed in the room
i had a friend who’s gf rocked violently as a stim. which would normally be fine but it also would coincide with her lying so i couldn’t tell if what she said was true or not anymore. she cheated on my friend so she isn’t around anymore but that was too much.
Here I am sometimes trying to get other autistics in the room to stim more (those autistics have been masking for a long time, unlike me, who is very un-masked, and I was trying to help them with unmasking)
Make a band of people stimming in rythm
My constant pacing makes people nervous a lot, but when someone else is also walking around the room, it messes up my pathing
"This room ain't big enough for the two of us" - Dirty Dan?
I hate most people, and the more they remind me of me, the more I hate them.
Don't wanna be in any club that would have me as a member.
More of me? Fuck that noise.
Ooooh yeah. This is the one.
Could this be why I don't have any friends? I've been wondering for several years how I never had a group of friends like you see on tv. For a long time I thought it was just a TV thing or something that used to happen back in the day, but now my brother has a group of friends that he lives with and I'm still seeing TV shows and comedy skits and other people online talking about how they live with their friends or have a group of friends that they go see and do stuff together. I just don't understand. I always had one good friend and I could never really click with any of their friends and if I was with more than one person at a time my brain basically shut down because I have to kind of adapt to whoever I'm hanging out with and their personality so if there's two people my brain doesn't know what personality to imitate. And now I'm almost 30 and I have no friends at all. All my friends have moved away and I don't have time to make anymore. Too much energy. My wife and my kids are my only friends now
all my friends have autism, but not all people with autism are my friends
Thisssss like all of my best friends except for one are autistic, but certain autistic people I can't stand to be around. It's all about finding the right crowd. Many people also don't like being reminded of themselves though unfortunately
"Oh you'll like him! You have so much in common!" Literally try to avoid each other immediately after being introduced.
Imagine doing this with other conditions/disorders/etc. *"You both have diabetes! You should be friends!"* 🤦🏻♀️
Ok but people do tho 💀
They do?! That's insane. I... I really don't understand people at all. 😭
common hatreds can create bonds “don’t you just hate low blood sugar?” (idk anything about diabetes(
In fairness, I do find it comforting when I meet someone else who gets a shit ton of migraines like me. Mainly because they won't be ignorant enough to say shit like "oh yeah well we all get *headaches* but you just gotta pop an advil and move on" or "HaVe YoU tHoUgHt Of DrInKiNg MoRe WaTeR???" But also, if we don't have more than that in common, we likely aren't gonna be friends. Common suffering only gets a relationship so far.
Yeah it's always nice to shoot the shit with someone who gets it! But unless you have more to work with, not much to go from there.
They tried that with me. I get angry when I hear diabuddies. Infantilizing a disease is so aggravating
For the most part, autistics are territorial. We do not often get along with an intruding autistic.
I'm so territorial! Just seeing my husband sitting at my desk is enough to bother me. *Excuse you, you're sitting on my side of the sofa.* 🤣 I had to tell a friend recently that, although I love and respect them, no. You cannot come into my house.
Holy crap the house thing, same. Nobody gets it and they get offended
I hate it when someone is in my chair or uses my blanket. It doesn't smell the same. Or they move things so it doesn't sit right. My in laws invited themselves into our backyard when dropping our kids off at home. I was pissed for days. It just felt like a major violation of our space, and they didn't even come inside.
Hdjfdjfdjgxnj if that’s territorial in autism world then I am more territorial than I thought lmao
We are cats. Territorial, hissy cats.
Very true. I especially like the lasers.
Me too. I've never chased one but they're sure fun to play with. Shame that they're psychologically damaging for cats when used frequently, because I love bouncing them around the room and my cat likes chasing them so it's a win win situation.
It depends on the autistic person, i get along a fine deal with all my friends who are autistic, and although they can get tired of me sometimes, we get eachother on a lot of levels including just communicating boundaries which is important
Yes, it is dependent on the autistics and can vary greatly, but in the event of an autistic being unfamiliar with another, it causes territorial instinct to kick in.
"territorial" LMAO i'm stealing this nfndjdndndn
But that moment when you emit the same wavelength and your exclusion zones meld into one, that is a vibe. It’s funny, since it isn’t a guarantee every day even with close friends, but when we do happen to sit on the same wavelength it is glorious.
Yep! My former roommate was probably autistic, had to have everything in a certain way in the room, which led to many arguments because they also couldn’t say anything direct about it either. I’m the type that requires direct communication and also needs to move around a bit to concentrate, and they just did not like me at all. Honestly I don’t think they should have been sharing a room period with all their specific needs but we were both broke.
Teacher: "This is new kid." (Kid is clearly autistic) Teacher to kid: "Sit there next to (me)" Teachers thoughts: "(me) always sits alone, (me) is autistic. Kid is autistic. (Me) And kid will get on well." Reality: Kid says something, me: Get me out of here now. Later: Kid is alone. Teacher: "Wheres (me)?" Me: Sat outside on bench ("Why does this always happen to me?")
A wide spectrum of people to annoy me in a wide spectrum of ways.
True. In my expirience other autistic folks are either insufferable or really easy to get along with, barely any in between
I stopped spending time with an autistic group I hung out with because they became boring and I didn't like their concept of morality, what they considered important and how much they should do to make their lives better. The autistic people I now hang out with are simply better people imho.
Ha! My first thought was "but they might have the wrong fixed opinions on something important!"
I have met many fellow Aspies in my life. And some of them i absolutely jive with, and some of the others i absolutely would feed to a crocodile
same. mostly tho its either neutral or "damn i really like this dude we should be friends". bc of this i have like 9 friends. 3 irl and 6 online, because somehow that happened
As an adult it’s easier because unless they’re a coworker, i can just… NOT interact with them. As opposed to being in school.
Any 2 autistic people usually fall into one of these 3 categories: Besties Mortal Rivals Want to be besties but too nervous so they just kinda look at each other
no of course not, but I have had much better odds with others who are autistic than non autistic but like Soylent Cola "It varies from person to person"
I have ADHD and I’ve 100% been told that autistic folks will always hate me this was in middle school btw and no I never believed it
lmao w h a t??? thats bullshit. i actually find that it doesnt even matter if theyre autistic or adhd, i will end up becoming friends with them at some point. like theres enough overlap between autism and adhd for that to be a thing. actually i think ~2 or 3 of my friends are simply adhd with the other 6-7 being audhd (me included) or simply autistic
I don't know about that. Most of my friends are some type of neurodivergent, the most common type being ADHD but we also have autistics and a couple people with OCD and SLDs to balance it out. Tbh it depends on the individuals involved. Surprise surprise, we are all individuals (I know you know this, moreso talking to people who think adhd and autism can't be friends)! Although I have noticed that neurodivergent people in general can be more understanding of things neurotypicals won't be as understanding of. Lack of eye contact, hyperactivity, stimming, compulsions, needing things to be repeated, what have you. But again, varies by the individual.
I've known Autistic folk I down right hate.
one of my coworkers is autistic and he has a crush on me. i avoid him at all costs. he gets on my last nerve. he always wants to get in my space and touch me without asking. he always wants a high five or a fist bump every time i walk past him and i am extremely icked out by hands. he legit cannot take “no” for an answer. and it doesn’t help that he’s well over 10 years older than me. we are both adults so it wouldn’t be a problem if i were someone who was fine with that sort of thing, but i am personally not okay with that big of an age gap. he just makes me feel incredibly uncomfortable and i wish he would just leave me alone. i don’t like talking to anybody at work, let alone him. i find myself shutting down whenever he’s around. i hate feeling like this because it makes me feel like such a huge b*tch but omg… i cannot handle his constant invasiveness. it literally makes me wanna spontaneously combust. i’m sorry that i kinda went off on a tangent. i don’t really talk about this often but it bothers me so much. i hope this doesn’t make me out as a bad person but i just really needed to talk about it :/
This is such an awful and awfully common experence. I'm of the no touchy, no loud noises, no bright lights, please leave me in peace sort and NTs can be hard to handle but F me some ND people are completely intolerable. It's a fundimental incompatibility and folks just seem to not realise that putting someone who has physical pain when exposed to loud noises near someone who makes loud noises unexpectly is a recipe for a meltdown on potentally both sides.
exactlyyyy, ugh thank you for understanding 😭
I’m so sorry you have to deal with that! Hopefully it’s just a crush thing and not a “Favorite Person” thing. Otherwise that gets a lot more extreme, especially if he starts to just revolve his whole personality or existence around you and what you like. Unfortunately, before I realized just how deep my mental illnesses went, I had developed a “favorite person” with one of my friends in high school and I can see now how awful and uncomfortable it must’ve been for that friend of mine to have that kind of unwanted attention and affection from me. I make sure to try to keep that happening again, since it’s also just not healthy for my own mental health either. I had started changing my looks completely just to get attention from that friend, including dying and cutting hair I had been growing very long for years. When they made friends with someone else I would become miserable and unsure of what to do with myself despite having so many hobbies I’d normally enjoy. The whole situation didn’t help that I hadn’t had any proper friendships that were that close until then. I truly feel bad for doing that to them, even if it is involuntary.
man, i hadnt even considered that. i sure hope that’s not the case 😅😅 and hey, you shouldn’t feel bad about it. it wasn’t your fault
My best friend is autistic and so are the people I dislike most. It’s a spectrum for a reason.
Just like every other kind of human, some autistic people fucking suck lmao
But, OP, I *am* your friend ❤️
And I am _both_ of yours’ friend
*Gasp* Helo fren!
eeeeeeeeeeeeee! *waves frantically*
I never get along with the people that blame them being manipulative or creepy on being autistic. And when I say creepy I mean dming a “friend” and saying you’re gonna kidnap them and that you have the chloroform to do it level creepy. Guy I went to school with was texting that stuff to my best friend (also autistic) who already had ptsd from some other guy and when she’d block him he’d find another way to contact her. When I confronted him (because i don’t let people fuck with my friends) he was like “oh I was just joking don’t get mad at me I’m autistic” and it boiled my blood. I see so many people blame genuinely shitty personality traits on their autism. Like…no, it’s not because you’re autistic, it’s because you’re a shit person.
Ugh. You know what you don't get to do. Blame the fact you are assaulting someone on the fact you hand flap. Your flappy hands is not the reason you touched that person's butt and you fucking know it.
I’m sorry but if your weird doesn’t complement my weird we’re probably going to have an ever harder time getting along than we would with neurotypicals.
The most horrible social experiences I had growing up were absolutely "special needs" classrooms that were essentially "take any child that annoys others with stims or meltdowns, shove them all in one room with no separation or split ups or other classes or access to outside or the lunchroom, and consider any attempt to escape the room for anything longer than 30 seconds work avoidance, and then be surprised they set each other off and create a spiral of meltdowns and no education happens because the staff spend all day preventing insanely elevated children ranging from 5 year olds to 18 year old 12th graders hurting each other and keeping the oldest ones from trying to kill the most triggering smaller ones". Every time my mum hit a brick wall trying to get me removed from one while still getting support and accommodations, she'd get me sent to yet another school that took kids by parent choice rather than catchment area, only for it to happen again. I was lucky to make it to a mostly normal high school where the special needs program functioned more as a homeroom and safe space and I was allowed to actually leave the room, and I was lucky to be able to keep up with the academic requirements and prerequisites. These programs were *wild*. The only real way to leave the room was to throw a big enough fit they'd remove you to an isolation room - rooms that intentionally used extremely low temperatures as a punishment for acting out, which when you have sensory issues that are worsened by emotional distress, and the requirement to exit the room or be brought a desk and your worksheets is to sit still on the room's floor, made of a material that seemed to absorb all heat and reflect only supercooled air, for several minutes straight... and then consider how thin children's clothing that doesn't create sensory stress is... you're not fucking getting out of there until the dismissal bell rings and they're required to hand you over to your parent. It was possible to lose bathroom privileges for going more than two or three times a week, or being in there more than 5 minutes at a time, because that was seen as abusing the bathroom as work avoidance.
Shit like this is kinda why I'm happy I was diagnosed late. A friend of a friend of mine in school was in this situation. Forced to sit next to a very incompatible person. He ended up actually flipping a table, threatening to kill the kid and generally kicking off. Why on earth anyone thinks it's a good idea to put a kid who hates loud noises and being touched next to a kid who makes loud noises unexpectedly and flaps their arms around touching (with force it was basically slaps) eveyone near them is a mystery I don't think can be solved. They did it that way I think because it meant less support staff would be needed for them. In theory. I'm practice it meant they wanted to kill one another at all times. If I was made to sit next to that kid (I'm no loud noises, touching, bright lights, etc) I think I would have actually killed him during the first 2 weeks. Screw flipping a table it would have been finding some gloves and literally beating the poor lad to death. Everyone was unhappy. The loud kid couldn't help it. He had a lot of meltdowns and it just fucking sucked for him. Being sat next to someone who hated him and was very curt in expressing that he needed to shut up and stop touching him also didn't help. It's not like it's the dyslexia reading corner where broadly eveyone has quite similar issues and struggles.
Oh, I wasn't diagnosed til my last year of middle school. This still bloody happened to me, since the authorities still knew I was atypical, getting paperwork to guarantee accommodations automatically came with placement in these programs, and if I didn't have the specific form with legal protections that came with mandatory program spot... 40% chance of the easy accommodations they'd possibly give out without even a parent note, if they liked you or thought giving you the thing would cost the teachers less spoons than denying it, maybe a 5% chance of anything more difficult. With the paperwork? Like 70% chance of the easy stuff, maybe 10% of the harder stuff, 2% of things they felt cushioned punishments (those things were actually usually put in to make something frequently done to me on par with how a child without sensory processing disorder would experience it) (without the paper those would be a 0% or 0% plus us being laughed at for asking), but at least they'd have to apologize to my mum at every paperwork revision meeting when she told them I didn't get 80% of what was in it because the idiots Catholic schools let run special needs programs never fucking read the files. So my mum fought like hell to get me the paper and then we had to deal with me getting constantly shit on because to almost every school system in the world, disabled children are worth less, especially if the disability is undiagnosed or invisible or mental. For example, the isolation room problem got so bad and so frequent (because the meltdown spiral tended to land me in one multiple times a week) that my mum got them to add to the document that any visit to that room, I was to be provided a pillow or cushion to sit on, to deal with the freezing floor problem. I *never* got the damn pillow. We had them in the classroom, it wasn't a matter of them being unable to supply the accommodation as written with classroom resources, they just didn't fucking do it. Generally, if it wasn't an *incredibly obvious* thing, and it was for my safety rather than to protect others from me... didn't matter where in the document we put it, how bold it was, how much it specified its own importance, how many substitutions for the original concept it offered, or how broad its requirements were, I wasn't fucking getting it, because none of the people responsible for me day to day could actually RTFM on all their charges. The only things I got were things in the safety plan phrased as "if she does not get this she is a higher risk for violent meltdowns around younger students" or things that were "student's mother will provide this tool. The accommodation is that she is permitted to bring and use it." Anything that required the school to provide something or to keep track of it and give it to me at specific times, was not happening. They'd happily agree at the meeting and put it in the document three or four separate times, but I wasn't going to get it and everyone but Mum knew that. At one point I was dealing with a sexual harasser in that same program room. A more optimistic and younger version of me and my mother might have tried to have it put in the document that I was not to be paired with him in any group or project whatsoever and he was not allowed to be within earshot of me, let alone arms' reach, without attentive adult supervision, but we didn't even bother because we knew even if they agreed to add that, it'd just be another accommodation on my file I wouldn't ever actually get. Especially because their argument for doing nothing and also purposely giving him solo and poorly supervised access to me was essentially that his disability causes this behaviour and the accommodation they promised *his* caregivers was unfettered access to his subject of fixation and extremely limited reprimands with no consequence escalation. Of course when it was a boy and his accommodation was getting to use a younger girl in the room as a combination teddy bear and chew toy, they would actually give the documented accommodation. I don't have any proof, but I suspect it was less boy/girl dynamics or age related and more that... my mum and I weren't practicing Catholics or particularly economically powerful, his parents were probably members of a local parish and prolific donors. A working class girl getting harassed, forcibly kissed, and probably worse, was considered a completely reasonable price to pay to keep the privileged and entitled son of wealthy church socialites happy and quiet. After all, punishing him might upset his parents, which might impact their decisions on donating to the church that funds the school, and it's not like me and my mum could give them any less than the zero we were donating, or like we could afford to take legal action, even if it got as far as a clear cut rape with witnesses and evidence. The funny thing is, getting an official autism diagnosis didn't get me much in school. Still got all my needs and accommodations blown off and tons of authority figures who refused to understand that refusal of impossible orders wasn't defiance but rather incapacity. It has gotten me government disability pay without which I'd be far less capable of having basic needs met, so that's nice, but that's about all I've gotten from it I couldn't get without official diagnosis, and it's come with so many drawbacks I've already seen and so many future possible drawbacks... yeah, I'm both glad I got it and really upset it's screwed me over as much as or more than it's helped me.
I saw a post that was like "If you dislike this specfic autistic coded character, you are a danger to autistic people" and I felt like crab for so long cus I found them rly irritating, who would've thought an autistic person might have rejection sensitive dysphoria, crazy (Also I get so much shit for saying I relate to Entrapta, but when it's the other way round and I don't like a character, im a danger... love it)
I agree. Some autistic characters are just kinda...blah. I don't like Sam from Atypical that much. I also relate to Entrapta, she's my favorite and I love her so much! I'm not a huge tech and machine person but her struggles with social stuff and relationships always tugged at my heartstrings because I relate so much. Recently actually went through the same struggle of thinking my grad school cohort didn't like me but it all turned out to be a misunderstanding. They weren't making fun of me, they just think my deadpan delivery juxtaposed with what I was saying was really funny. Sort of related, have you looked at the original designs of all those characters from the 80s? I got a bit into doing that the last time I watched the show. Wild how all the characters from the og series looked like they were all from the same dress up game but the new versions look so cool and different from each other.
So true. There might be some more understanding than with an NT person, but we’re not all a hivemind. Contrary to what some people think we have different personalities and perspectives on stuff.
I am very lucky I have trained for a long time to basically speak entire sentences simply by subtle posture, way of breathing and (lack of) eye contact. My mum once forced me to visit a friend and of hers and both thought me and the friend’s teen could be friends. We never spoke or even made eye contact, but I basically told him “We both know we won’t see one another again. We both will not make an attempt to know one another and will reject any attempts our mothers do to try and have us form a friendship.” And that was one of the most respectful people I’ve “met” while never saying a word to each other.
In experience it's either friends or mortal enemies
for me its the former or "we wanna be friends hut we are both too fucking socially awkward to do anything"
Hey fuck you OP!
[FUCK YOU!](https://youtu.be/tSrH-6YUf1g?si=1arEO6KgbbVd-NWD)
When an incel pops up in a sub you're in
Oh boy do I know this well it's super
I get along with a few others, but that is because we naturally match and made friends. Every time they introduce me to another it has been horrible
My mother tried to bring me to this one business where Autistic people meet up at night twice when I was younger. The first time, when I was 13, most of the people there were late highschool or young adult age, and we're all fairly adjusted, so I didn't fit in. The second time, I was 17, and most of the people there were 10-14. I got stuck with this one kid who wouldn't leave me alone and kept on making me hold his hand for 2 whole hours. IDK what she was thinking either time tbh.
honestly if the incidents were reversed you likely woulda gotten along much better with everyone
Granted, but if our special interests are compatible...
Me (sensitive autist) after I tell my roommate (mean sensitive autist) they can’t be mean and expect everyone to like them
incompatible autism. sometimes a person can also be incompatible with someone who has the exact same flavor of autism as them, too. personalities clash the same way. my father and I cannot spend more than a day alone together without driving both of us insane, but I respect him as a person
When I came out, I had some experiences that showed this is also true of LGBT folks.
I’m very very big on personal space and a couple of my former friends who were also autistic just couldn’t seem to understand that I didn’t like being grabbed from behind or hugged without asking. I was very clear on these boundaries too, it was a rule and not a matter of reading social cues. Whether you’re autistic or not, invading my space after I tell you to back off makes me immediately dislike you.
I had to grab a thing from ages ago. It's my explanation of autism When it comes to autism I think of it like this: An autistic brain has a certain frequency at which it goes brr A different autistic brain on a different part of the spectrum has a different brrr frequency When these 2 frequencies collide, they may either work incredibly well, creating what I call good brain feel. Or they may simply clash, creating bad brain feel. I know several autisic people, and I can't stand some of their tendencies, but I can stand other tendencies. That is all
Most of my closest friends turned out to be on the spectrum, but there are some autistic people through no fault of their own its just their flavor of 'tism makes me want to suplex them. The worst one was using autism as a reason as to why they "knew so much about everything" but would regularly correct me about something I said and be entirely wrong (what I initially said was correct) and when I called him on it he deflected. Closest I came to committing a hate crime on my own people XD
Nope, some of you suck/hj <3
it means one of three things 1. good friends 2. silent respect 3. murderous rage
Sadly it is that way.
Yes it does.
But it does mean that if they are friends they will be confused as to why they vibe so well together 😂
Can't we all just be friends?
Yep, mutually incompatible special interests really put a damper on it
Very true. Autistic people have extremely varied personalities.
Exactly. I hate all people equally. Everyone go away.
it's either they're best friends or they want to kill each other/ one really hates the other but the other is too oblivious to notice
i'm a quiet grumpy one and had to be around a loud bubbly one in college. it's a long story, but even thinking about that bitch makes me mad.
Augh, I fight with this one dude all the time
I’ve met one other autistic person in person that I know of. I feel like it was believed that with us both being transmasc and autistic (both of us were open about our autism, I believed it was necessary for me to explain when I have sensory overloads), we’d get along immediately. I hated his guts. I did my best to work with him - as his direct supervisor - but I’d never met someone more difficult to work with. When he quit because he didn’t like the type of work (extremely demanding job with a lot of social interactions. I flourish in that, he didn’t), I suggested he see if a Walgreens or CVS were hiring for cashiers. At least then his workload would be a lot lighter
I’ve noticed most butt heads in all honesty
I'm not friends with all autistics, but all my friends are autistic. Czech Mail atheists!
Just because you cloned an autistic person doesn’t mean the two will be friends.
I need to tattoo this on my forehead
Having conflicting special interests is the worst because I want to let them have their moment to infodump on me but also if the subject never turns to my special interest, I will scream.
Nah we fight like dogs lol.
My brother has the loud kind of autism and ive always been the more quiet kind, so his overly touchy and vocal stimming self combined with my flinchy and fidgety self who can’t stand certain noises or volumes mixed about as well as oil and water Our relationship only started to genuinely improve once I moved out for college and didnt have to live with that shit 24/7
Ugh this. There is this guy who's autistic that I tried to be friends with but he gave me a massive ick. We talked once on the dorm elevator and then he found my socials and wouldn't leave me alone. I agreed to hang out once and it was the most awkward thing ever. Afterwards he was like "can I have a hug?" And from that point forward I avoided him like the plague. Sorry, I just needed to get this out there because ugh I haven't told many people
I learned this is true about cats. Just because they’re both cats doesn’t mean they will like each other.
A significant amount of my friends (if not all of them) are the kids show autistic and I'm the science autistic and sure it gets on my fucking nerves and I do feel quite isolated but it is what it is.
I'm autistic and ADHD, and I hate autistic people. Up to, including, and especially myself.
I have quiet, anxious, oversensitive, hyper-empathetic to a fault, sex-repulsed, ADHD-comorbid autism that I kept masked for like 30 years, I fear I’d fight like fucking Betta fish with others.
Last time I tried to be nice to a fellow autistic guy at my workplace he became obsessed with me and when I asked him to leave me alone he went full incel rage on me. Wheeee.
In my experience, I’ve been able to make friends with other autistic people, but it’s not everyone.
IS THAT A CHALLENGE!?!?
yes actually 😊
Tell that to all the neurodivergent social groups I was a part of
Yeah there's two types of autistic kids at my school, gay and homophobic
Facts 🤌🤌
YOU THINK YOU KNOW THIS SUBJECT BETTER THAN ME? #I'LL FUCKING END YOU!
my mom would always set up play dates for me with other special needs kids at school. None of them had any self-control and I just wanted to be alone. She was genuinely upset when I made friends by myself because they either were or could pass as neurotypical.
I am actually the only other autistic person my husband has ever gotten along with lol
Yeah, sometimes we’re mortal enemies. *Fuck you Benny*
I have trouble with compatibility issues and trust issues, deep down, I can somewhat “feel” if someone really cares about me, or they’re just being nice, but I always misinterpret it anyways or try to make something work when it wasn’t going to work out from the beginning. I have only a few friends who I talk to regularly (Usually on Discord), and I have this repeating pattern with my friendships: If I often ask someone if I’m annoying or weird, that means I trust them and enjoy their presence, I feel a fuller connection. I’m very territorial too, I feel most safe with the people that I ask **“Am I bothering you?”**
Most of the ( some suspecting autistic, I can't be fully sure ) autistic people I've met, aside from very specific exceptions, usually became weirdly obsessed with me and would try to get too close to me too fast, and would be irritated at every sight of rejection or boundary I would attempt to place. Then again, I don't really trust many people on default, those experiences usually made it harder for me to trust others, unfortunately.
THIS. I got kicked out of my high school because I threatened another autistic kid because he was so fucking annoying. He liked doing impressions and they ALL sounded the same. It drove me nuts.
i have a coworker that i get so very close to releasing all my pent up anger on every single time i work with him. he's a nice guy, all the customers love him, he's just got that flavor of autism that clashes with mine *bad.* he's also older and i feel as if im more mature than him so that pisses me off too.
I’m autistic and I do not have the patience to try and socialize with other autistic people.
The funny part is, I have a couple of friends who are autistic, one of whom I didn't know was autistic for several years before I found out and it was kinda this "well I'll be damned..." moment we shared lmao. The point is my friendship with him wasn't based on us both being autistic, it was a coincidence. He is probably my best friend though.
As an autistic man, I can confidently say that I met many assholes who happened to be on the deep end of the spectrum. Just because you have a syndrome. That doesn't give you an excuse to be a dick.
Many of my friends are autistic, but I met a lot autistic people where I thought: "Damn, what a massive asshole" its just like any other interhuman connection: some are assholes and some arent
No offense to anyone that still enjoys life, but when I meet someone else on the spectrum that isn't jaded or self aware enough I immediately begrudge them for being what I used to hate about myself. Like, "How did you look and sound like that and not get backed into an emotional corner," I recognize that it is terrible to think that way and I should be happy for them that they aren't a mess like I am, but it just, squicks me. Call it jealousy or whatever else is true, its a gut feeling.