I have been recently diagnosed as autistic, and now I seem to see autism everywhere in my social circle. My brother, a daughter, at least two friends. . . Either there are a lot of undiagnosed autistic people out there OR I tend to become friends (more comfortable) with fellow autists, OR I am just being silly and am attributing autism to NT people with strong interests. Fellow neurodivergent folks of all types, what is your experience? (Edit: changed ND to NT. oops!)
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gestures all around
Uh… Yeah?
Hahaha
First of all, Autism is genetic, so finding several cases (or at least borderline cases) in a family is not surprising.
Well, and of course people of similar interests tend to aggregate. You will find a lot of us in jobs and hobbies that are suited for us.
In my experience, I tend to feel more comfortable around other autistic people, but there are some types of autistic people where I feel the opposite way. It’s called a spectrum for a reason!
We absolutely find each other unconsciously. I think it’s a combination of factors such as shared interests, dislike of small talk, the way we look, body language. Those quirks don’t seem odd to us, they feel familiar and comforting.
Nearly everyone in my discord server is somewhere on the spectrum. We seem to gravitate towards other ND people when we can
I think we do it automatically. I only realised recently how prevalent we are, to the extent where my favourite comedian ‘came out’ to me in a conversation with him the other month.
Same thing happened to me with music. I have two favorite musicians that I listen to mostly 95% of the time: Ren Gill and Residente. About 2-3 weeks ago, I heard a new-to-me song from Residente where he says that he was diagnosed as autistic in childhood. I haven’t heard Ren come out as autistic, but it’s evident to me that he is. A lot of his songs cover struggles that autistic people endure. He even has a songs where he sings “na-na-na-na-nee-nee-nee” and shares how his mind works, which sounds pretty autistic to me. I almost want to go on his YouTube channel and tell him that I think he’s autistic in case he has as much self-awareness as I did before I found out (zero), but it might come off as rude. Perhaps if I frame it in a caring and inclusive way, it will come across better.
I think it’s a multitude of things:
- autistic people tend to gravitate to other autistic people since we share strong interests and other traits
- although there is a cutoff for diagnosis, autistic traits are everywhere and if someone has them, they might not be diagnosed but still have some traits
- autism is hereditary. So some people in your familiy will have it too
- a lot of people don’t get diagnosed for vaious reasons so they don’t necessarily identify as autistic but they might be.
I could name many more but those are the top reasons I could think of.
Summary: It’s awesome to see that people actually are like you in a way. You‘re in a brave new world. Try to enjoy.
autism is hereditary. So some people in your familiy will have it too
Or in my case, my mother’s side was likely autistic, while my father’s side was narcissistic (dad was 100% classic NPD), and unfortunately, I lost my mother around ~3 y/o, so I only knew the abusive jerks that thought I was the perfect scapegoat to take advantage of.
Oof. I‘m so sorry. I absolutely know what you mean. My parents are both highly abusive. I hope you have people to talk to.
Thank you! I ran away once I was old enough, and now I keep them far away. I’ve been finding my own crew, which is pretty hard when I don’t have a template of what to look for, but I have an idea of what I don’t want.
Thats a rough story man. I can’t imagine the pain you went through. From my experience, we do have a template, it’s just toxic.
It took me decades to understand I‘m building new circles of abusers around me so I had to cut them off one after the other.
Now I‘m very picky about people I let into the inner circle.
Thank you for the warm validation 😊
we do have a template, it’s just toxic
Yep! I agree with that 100%.
Now I‘m very picky about people I let into the inner circle.
What I’m working in therapy is to keep track of places and social settings that make my senses feel comfortable and uncomfortable. Then, slowly start engaging further in the comfortable spaces while avoiding the uncomfortable ones. The goal is to find the places and people that are healthy for me. It’s a taking a while and there are a bunch of experiments I have to push my self to complete because I’m going into totally new settings, but I’m hopeful it will be fruitful.
That sounds like a pretty good strategy. What I don’t understand is the comfort thing. I grew up under the impression that we need to step out of our comfort zone. I pretty much lived outside of it all my life. From that perspective, maybe inside the comfort zone should be the norm and outside should be „a dare“. Sorry if I‘m rambling. I‘m trying to find my own place in the world as well. :) good luck in any case.
I pretty much lived outside of it all my life.
Same! So I was constantly burnt out, dissociated, or having melt downs. That’s probably why I was diagnosed with so many MH considtions, but the therapies weren’t really effective. They were treating the symptom (depression, anxiety, PTSD, bipolar), not the problem (over- and under- sensory stimulation). Part of what we’re working in therapy is to switch my perspective of life from something that I have to endure to something that I enjoy.
Thank you!
I find that autistic people tend to attract each other the same way stand users tend to attract each other. It’s a little weird tbh.
What’s a stand user?
It’s a reference to the anime JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure (hahahah, I said the funny). A Stand user is a person that possesses a Stand, a sort of supernatural manifestation of one’s fighting spirit, which can take on many forms (though most commonly, they appear humanoid.)
Autism is a stand confirmed
Legit, tho.
From my experience, if I think you’re smart or cool, you’re probably autistic. I really like autistic people in general, while allistic people are hit or miss for me. Even the ones that I do like I can only be around them for short periods of time. To be clear, I’m not placing responsibility on allistic people. It’s just that it takes a lot of cognitive effort on my part to consider every possible way something could be misinterpreted before I say/do something, then get frustrated when I missed something and unavoidably upset someone. We have different cultures. However, some allistic people are quite annoying with their social games, manipulation, taking offense out of seemingly nowhere, and the need to look down on me.
For example, I was at the hospital visiting a friend. She had a friend of hers there too. I have known her friend for years now, but I don’t enjoy their company. Anyway, I made a minor mistake with a request my friend made regarding her dinner because of a miscommunication, so I jokingly said, “Sorry, I’m autistic.” Somehow, this offended her allistic friend enough that she had to butt into the conversation and say, “So that’s your excuse for everything now? That you’re autistic?” I just ignored her comment, but it was still mentally exhausting to be around. For the future, I’m prepared to confront her the next time she pulls out one of her antagonizing remarks because she thinks she’s superior and can get away with it. Just because I stay quiet doesn’t mean she “got me”. It means I didn’t find it worthwhile to defend myself and create a nastier environment while my friend was in the hospital.
I can find some autistic people annoying, too, but I find that I can address that with them much easier than I could with allistic people who will more likely unnecessarily jump to incorrect conclusions.
I would consider the inverse to seeking them out at first.
You tend to avoid people you don’t “click” with, are draining to be around or don’t accept you. Meaning you sort them out, until you have the people left that you are comfortable around, which are often other NDs.
And then it switches around. You increasingly enjoy their company and THEN you seek them out more and more, while the prospect of spending time with NTs becomes less appealing.
Eventual result: NDs attracting each other
Trans people are said to have a telepathic way of identifying and finding one another, even when they cannot clock each other.
Before I really understood ND, autism, etc. I thought my ‘type’ in romantic partner was… well, essentially females with ADHD.
Now that I understand myself better and have experience reading people, I just intentionally seek out NDs. Like those memes about how introverts don’t make friends, extroverts simply adopt them? I’m the extrovert. I understand my social needs and I can assemble my tower of friendly interactions wherever I go.
I imagine most people flock along some set of similarity characteristics; even if there were no attractive force between neurodivergent people, ND people would flock by the nature of being otherwise excluded, as per hydrophobic molecules
TIL I am a hydrophobic molecule ❤️
There are a lot of undiagnosed autistic people. And you, like all other humans, are going to be more comfortable around people with similar modes of behaviour to yourself.
My NT girlfriend has two (other) autistic friends. Apart from that there are none or at least none, who would describe themselves as ND or “on the spectrum”.
I’m not autistic, but uh, I can see it from my house. Autism runs strongly in my family (enough so that our genetics have been studied). And I happened to marry an autistic woman. She was undiagnosed at the time - we only learned after getting our son diagnosed a couple years ago.
Since we started learning some of the less common symptoms of autism, we’ve started noticing them in family members on both sides. Pretty sure both of our fathers are autistic, for instance.
It’s just that… If you’re “passing” for NT, and/or of an older generation, you probably won’t seek out a diagnosis. Remember, autism was only described a couple decades back. As diagnoses go, it’s still pretty young - we’re still learning a lot about it. Including how prevalent it is.
