Serious question: how do you manage not to lose the organizers, and how do you remember to add stuff to it?

It always works a few days for me then I forget to bring it or add stuff and when I remember I feel like I ruined everything cause now there’s a gaping hole of nothing in it and don’t go back to it :(

Because workers dont pick the low-paid shitty job when there is jobs they can do just as easily that pay higher.

Why work with low pay in retail when you can work in a plant on a production robot after a few days of training? The plant job most likely pays more, because the productivity is higher due to automation.

Retail can’t become more productive because you can’t automate it, yet you have to raise wages to make workers consider retail.

When you are more calm, take him aside and ask him to respect your preference. Asking for a reason why is not respecting it. He can always ask for a reason, but if you can’t give him one, he still needs to accept that you have a preference. It also does not matter if he agrees or understands.

Edit: typo.

If you’re comfortable in your skin, don’t worry too much about it. But looking further into autistic communities and their struggles and solutions can still help you see issues you weren’t aware of or find coping mechanisms for things you didn’t realize could be easier.

Worth pursueing a diagnosis? Probably not.worth looking into? I’d say yes. But go with your gut :)

Yay, more Konsi!

hugs well, now you know: you’re not lazy, this is your brain working against you. I found bribing myself with something I enjoy after I did one thing I don’t helps. It’s like giving my stubborn brainchild a lolli :)

Not the person you asked, but I always felt guilty for “claiming” a diagnosis, long after it was official. What if the doc was wrong? What if I’m just too lazy and need to get my shit together? Surely I’m just looking for excuses, because that’s what had been drilled into my head for over 30 years: I can’t be that exhausted, I’m just trying to get out of doing what I’m supposed to.

It’s a weird thing to use the word imposter syndrome on a diagnosis, but that’s exactly what it felt like. I don’t deserve a valid “excuse”. I am conning everyone into cutting me some slack when I’m really just lazy. Took me years of therapy - and, honestly, a job where they tell me I’m doing a lot and supporting my team, even though I still feel like I don’t do anything. The brainwashing is strong when you’re late-diagnosed :(

I’m grateful for my adult diagnosis (at age 35) because all of a sudden things made sense. I wasn’t being lazy - people liked to call me that, because on a good day with a topic that interests me I will outperform most people. The logical conclusion was if I can do it once, i can do it all the time, and when my performance is subpar it must be because I’m lazy.

The diagnosis has become my shield and armor. I’m not lazy, my brain just refuses to engage on things that do not interest me. There’s no way I’ll ever get economics, and it’s not because I’m lazy.

It helped me be kind to myself and adjust my plans and choices to my nourology. I may be shitty at economics and in being tactful with people, but I’m a great softwaretester, because I do care about people and want to help avoid making people cranky with dumb mistakes in software. The helpless rage I get from a piece of malfunctioning software is something I want to minimize.

Instead of struggling I enjoy my work now, and having a diagnosis allows me to communicate to people what to expect. I can’t read between the lines - if you want me to do A, tell me so. Don’t mention to me that B and C need someone that needs doing, because I may or may not get you want me to do that - but I sure as hell won’t get that you also want me to do A, even if it is a prerequisite.

I’m able to say that I work better with a dark, quiet place, so please don’t seat me next to the person who has meetings all day. I can probably work without these accomodations, but I’ll be miserable and my work quality will be poor.

Coming back to your question: you don’t need a diagnosis per se. I know people that I suspect are autistic but they would probably feel worse knowing it. But what I think you should do is read up on autism like crazy. For your kid, but also for yourself. Read accounts from autistic people, look for autistic spaces. There’s plenty of organizations that care for profit and not for actually helping autistic people.

What you will gain is insight into how autistics manage life, what helps them, and youecaneuse that knowledge to help your kid and maybe even find ways to improve your environment. Even if you feel well-adjusted, maybe understanding why something works for you and how youecan make it better can help.

The benefit in the diagnosis for me was understanding myself and the ability to adjust my environment to my needs. For me, the diagnosis is incredibly helpful, but for you and your unique situation, it may not. I heard from people in other places that an official diagnosis has negative legal effects on them. Go research, take away what you need, and once you digested the idea and feel you understand more about it ask yourself again if a diagnosis could benefit you.

You’ve lived so long without, a year or two probably won’t make a difference. If anything, hopefully more doctors are aware of autism and able to successfully diagnose you.

The author acknowledges that if you know one autistic, you know one autistic - just like with neurotypical people - and then proceeds to call for us to become one bloc where everyone loves everyone else.

It’s not gonna happen, for the simple reason thät autistics are so diverse. We all know that. It’s the same as asking for all humans to hug and get along because we’re all humans.

It’s one thing to long to be accepted, but another to expect it to happen without a healthy pre-selection. Find the right people and they will accept you. Cast your net to wide and you will be disappointed.

The point I was trying to make is that no one considers neurodivergen people not human. They may sometimes treat us that way, but that’s a different story.

Cvsting two things as opposites doesn’t necessarily mean they are complete and total opposites. You can, and that is a common rhetorical device, pick only some relevant properties of something to make a point.

Humans and animals often get seen as opposing. But they all breathe, they all have vital organs, a lot of the time the same ones. Definitely not total opposites according to you. Our genome is more than 60% identical to a banana (source: https://www.pfizer.com/news/articles/how_genetically_related_are_we_to_bananas), so according to your logic, we cant even oppose human ratio to plants. Btw, chickens and humans have about the same ration of shared genome as bananas and humans.

Your interpretation is way too rigid to ever be able to use the concept of opposite, because you can always find something in common. This is why I think your answer was flawed.

By your logic, for a person to be considered “neurodivergent” they would have to be completely 100% unlike a neurotypical person in every single way, which is simply not the case.

By that reading, would neurodivergent people even be human?

Dude. Just look at the dictionary mening of the words. That’s the actual meaning. If you want to say A, use words that mean A literally. Don’t say A and B and expect us to know that you actually mean C.

You know exactly what you’re doing because you proceed to complain about us wanting to not have poetry and metaphor.

If you think about it as a dialect the only way to learn it is like any other language that doesnt have a textbook: exposure with the native speakers.

I think the point OP was trying to make is that most likely people who know this dialect (i. E. Are used to working with your bess) have an idea of how he wants things.

In this case, the dialect would have a very small subset of speakers (only the people used to working with your boss).

I can see the logic in this argument, but I don’t think such a small subset of speakers qualifies as a dialect and I think your boss is just being difficult. Also I’m pretty sure this would have been an issue for many neurotypicals too, since the info wasnt communicated properly.

I think this is more an example of power play - your boss is in power and how dare you not know? It’s the same treatment we get from NTs everywhere. They are “in power” in the sense that they can expect most people to pick up on their code and don’t have to change. Your boss on the other hand just doesn’t care if you had a chance to understand and that’s why I think he’s just power trippy.

Like liquorice, the really intense one (salmiak). i don’t think English has a word for it, since it was not recognized as a flavor before.

The thing is, I know the flavor but wouldn’t know how to describe it to someone who doesn’t. Asian (Korean and Chinese, to be precise) friends told me it tasted like medicine to them, because apparently it’s a common flavor in traditional medicine for them?

Edited for typos.

I’m kinda frowning at the thought that you requiring time to yourself and taking care of yourself is avoiding demands. If my therapist told me that I’d rip him a new one. Thankfully he doesn’t and actually encourages me to remove myself from unhealthy situations.

My social battery isn’t endless. My processing ability isn’t endless. I recharge both by spending time alone in my thoughts and hopefully getting into a flow state with whatever I’m doing.

I’m lucky enough that I have a job where that happens - I’m partially able to offset the social and mental cost of a job by simply working. But other than that I allow myself to not be productive.

My awesome therapist once prescribed me to get bored. Sit on the couch, stare out the window and try not to do anything. My brain needs that time to process everything happening during the day. Scrolling the web, comics, news that interest me? Also helping to process and get lost in a flow state.

Once I started allowing myself that, I fell asleep much better, because the input throughout the day gets processed througout the day and not at night. If you always keep busy, try to always be productive, the whole input waiting to be processed builds up like water behind a dam. Once you lay down, the dam breaks and you can’t stop. It’s not a bad habit to break. It’s just a necessity for your brain to do.

If you’re anything like me, the only thing you’re doing “wrong” is not creating little islands of boredom and flow. If people refuse to accept that, they are the problem. They are crossing boundaries without a second thought. They may think they are helpful but they are not. To me it sounds like you are having your best interest in mind and acting on it despite this weird feeling of “but they love me, I should be grateful”.

Love is about a lot of things, and respect is a big one. If boundaries are ignored, these people are acting toxic. I know this feels unhelpful, because you want human connection, but imho these people most likely took more out of you than they gave you. Maybe your friend has his own issues that make him not able to shut up, but it can’t be you who pays the price. Maybe that girl thought you need someone to take care of you and who knows better than you and guide you through life, and that’s why she nagged.

Long story short: no matter the intention, not everyone who cares about you will be actually helpful. Not everything is your fault. Keep doing you, identify your needs, communicate them (it sounds like you already did that, which is huge) and then enforce them.

From what you mentioned, I actually think you’re doing great. Took me years of therapy to get to that point.