How I pass as neurotypical, a breakdown

[flamingsword]

stim with my feet instead of my hands (squish my toes around in my shoes, alternate bouncing left and right heels, bounce my feet quietly, turn feet side to side)

Look at left eye 2 seconds, look at right eye for 2 seconds, look at mouth 3 seconds, repeat this triangle until the body shifts, and then scan for new body language. (because I have a "confrontational stare" unless I do this) If there is noise or a movement nearby, scan surroundings before re-establishing eye contact.

mirror body language, especially the body language of the person in the room with the most social power, unless they are in the grip of strong emotion that I don't want to amplify.

mirror vocal tones of feelings I want to encourage in conversation partners, but not tones I want to comfort, fix, or rebuke.

Hang an expression on my face/put a tone in my voice, even when I don't feel things very intensely. NT folx don't hide their feelings unless they are doing something they need to hide, so they consider it untrustworthy to not display anything.

When anxious and can't do regular stims or listen to music, count to 10 and check the clock/my watch. It communicates that I am anxious without having to say anything.

I'm never going to catch microexpressions, I'm not fast enough. But if something is confusing or too stereotypical, give it some thought to see if I'm being lied to.

Watch where strangers/new people's eyes are looking, and maintain enough situational awareness to see what they are avoiding looking at. This helps me know what they want and who/what intimidates them.

People like certainty, and they like people who are certain. Pretend to be certain about things but also give up my illusions lightly when they turn out to be untrue.

watch people's hands when they are doing something interesting, not their faces, bc they find it creepifying

Do not place my body between someone and the exit to a room. It is considered a dominance/threat display behaviour that most people do not appreciate.

Respond to a debated point with close to the same level of emotion and engagement as the person whose opinions are being disputed.

Respect personal space by inviting others into mine instead of invading theirs (Offer hugs, handshakes, fistbumps, etc.)

Get used to the speech pacing of my conversational partners so that I understand what they sound like when they are done talking. This keeps me from interrupting frequently enough to be considered rude.

figure out what gender norms I am ignoring or not complying with and call them out specifically, before I get friction.

And a few things that can't be broken down into bullet points:
Active Listening for Autistics
On "NO DRAMA" as a social fallacy
Pavlov For Dummies

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And that's the big stuff that I've got. I trained myself to stim with my feet instead of drumming my fingers and hands on things in Junior year of High School, and everything else since then has been building off of that unqualified success in learning to be less annoying to neurotypical people who don't realize how ableist they are.

Comments

[obstinatecondolement]

I was going to comment something to the effect of "It's comforting to have a system for these things" but like... god, how exhausting that we are expected to put this level of conscious effort and self-policing into existing in the world

This!!!

[silk_dragon_zen]

I can't imagine what it's like to have enough working memory to even attempt to do all these things in real time! (Also, we're legally blind, so just can't eyes)

— Dor

Re: This!!!

[flamingsword]

Luckily, with luck I did nothing to earn, I have a brain that is capable of “deep masking”, so it’s less a case of working memory than it is one of trained instincts and reinforced habits working together. The first reinforcement of those habits was deliberately done on the part of my instructor in How To Human 101, but the rewards were things like smiling at me and being happy when I got things right, instead of just stopping the thing that was making me miserable.

After I had learned to not drum my fingers on things and visibly stim, people started to be less aggravated by me and became much more willing to leave me alone, which was great. And then it turned into a special interest to learn human interaction and train the “mask version” of me. And then a bunch of those neural pathways got rewritten to make feet-stimming etc a lot more natural and less like being forced to keep my hands still the way I was in grade school so much. All things considered I was really quite lucky, both that my friend J was a good instructor and that I have the kind of brain that could respond well to the things she had to teach.

Re: This!!!

[silk_dragon_zen]

[quote] Luckily, with luck I did nothing to earn, I have a brain that is capable of “deep masking”, so it’s less a case of working memory than it is one of trained instincts and reinforced habits working together. [close quote]

That makes sense. Also a thing our brain doesn't do, alas: our behavior isn't exactly consistent. Like we don't really have what other people would call habits. It's mostly just chaos and the fact that we can sometimes *choose* to do a thing over and over, but it's not a habit in that it doesn't come naturally and it's never rhythmic.

E.g.: we always brush our teeth in a fully conscious way. Otherwise it doesn't happen. And if we could drive and then zoned out and forgot to go to the store on the way home from work, we wouldn't actually end up at home either — we'd just end up driving around aimlessly until we'd become aware enough to realize we weren't anywhere near where we'd meant to be. I mean once we would become conscious enough to realize this, we might have forgotten altogether about the store and therefore would go home, but it's not like many NTs describe where they zone out while driving and end up *where they habitually would have gone* (i.e.: home) rather than the somewhat less usual place they'd meant to go (in this case the store).

Having a nearly chaos brain sucks and I've had a hard time seeing how this is a benefit to us. I know that's not a popular opinion among neurodiversity advocates, but it's my/our experience. Sage has some ideas about how having a chaos brain could have essentially forced us to seek out something like Zen or other way of life that is deeply spiritual. So Idk maybe that's a silver lining of sorts. But otherwise It's meant we could barely manage school and can't work, etc., and most important, it meant years of loneliness and isolation because we couldn't mask as needed to avoid interpersonal conflicts and to make meaningful social connections.

Yeah things are a tonne better these days, but it took decades to learn how to operate this brain in a way that wasn't *constant* misery. It's why I burnt out when we turned 15 and Sage took the reigns, and it's why I still wouldn't want to have to operate this body full time ever again, nor even more than a couple of hours at a time. Thank goodness Sage, Silke, & Ben can handle most things most of the time and that they are forgiving and understanding that I'd rather only game and sometimes comment on internet posts and not do much of anything else.

Also thanks for your kindness in recognizing how lucky you are that you have these abilities. And thanks for listening. 💕

— Dor

[flamingsword]

Yeah. I don’t blame other neurodivergent folk for not being able to do the thing that I lucked into. It’s not to my credit that I can do the thing, nor any moral defect of theirs that they either can’t or don’t want to invest the literal decades of their lives in the possibility of maybe getting where I have gotten, and exhausting myself to do so.

But a friend asked me what my thoughts were on masking and how I manage to look and sound so mainstream for somebody so very not, and you all know how I get when people I like ask me for things.

[obstinatecondolement]

Oh yeah, to be clear, I didn't intend to be criticial of you, just of Society™. Because, as someone who also masks a lot, it is comforting to know the "tricks of the trade" at this point in my life, but I do also finding it very draining and I wish that it wasn't expected of us, not least because in my more existential moments I feel like I've lost touch with my baseline personality with all the pretending to be neurotypical. Also, to be clear, I didn't think you were calling me out as having been mean to you, I just over-clarify a lot for... some mysterious reason ;)

[flamingsword]

I didn’t think you were criticizing me, just that you might want to know that I didn’t blame you for being exhausted. Other people have felt judged by me for this.

"not least because in my more existential moments I feel like I've lost touch with my baseline personality with all the pretending to be neurotypical”

I have studied enough neuroscience to go with the Buddhist belief that there is no such thing as the “true self”. My personality is just whatever traits and habits I happen to be employing at the moment. It is not only a belief that makes me less bitter about the world, it is also a belief that helps me grow and understand things more easily. You can miss previous versions of yourself, but it may be a crazy-making waste of time trying to get them back.

[obstinatecondolement]

You can miss previous versions of yourself, but it may be a crazy-making waste of time trying to get them back

I suppose this is closer to what I was trying to say. I mourn the person I could have been if I wasn't changed by living In A Society. Or, at least, in this society, lol. But I guess it's kind of crying over spilled milk too at this point and we can only move forward, not backwards.

[princessofgeeks]

Thank you for sharing this. I know what an enormous amount of work this all is. Wishing you places and people with whom and where, you don't have to work so hard all the time.

[flamingsword]

Thank you. I do have some zero-spoon-cost friends, and they are a treasure.

[dewline]

It's good to see other people's "how to" lists.

[flamingsword]

I make lists, it is a thing.

[cora]

Lists spark joy. It is known.

[chemicalcain]

Oof. Yeah. Neurotypical people don't recognize how much work it is for us to look neurotypical.

[cora]

Do not place my body between someone and the exit to a room. It is a dominance/threat display behaviour that most people do not appreciate.

Oooh, is that the root cause for why I would be irrationally angry at people who have conversations in doorways? I thought it was because they were keeping me from my end goal (entering or exiting a room in a timely manner).

Respond to a debated point with close to the same level of emotion and engagement as the person whose opinions are being disputed.

The converse point is also true: If you are trying to de-escalate a situation, talk in a calm, low tone voice. The other person (or people) will eventually mirror you. Emotions are contagious.

For hand stims, fidgets work in some social situations...if you aren't comfortable with using fidget toys (fair, given that until seemingly recently "neurodivergence magically cures the moment your body reaches 18 years of age and there are no neurodivergent adults - also, your mom found out she has ADHD when you got diagnosed!"), knitting or crochet are good, too. Potentially be aware for people to be curious and to receive many comments/questions about this (I am not sure how many questions/comments I got about my knitting as a kid was because I was knitting or because I was a kid who was knitting - I found it as irritating as someone asking you 'What book are you reading? What is it about? What are the plot points? What are the character's like? What genre is it?' etc. when you are trying to read said book).

[flamingsword]

I do knit, and I often get these questions, but knitting is less aggravating to have my concentration broken unless I’m doing like, colorwork or lace or something where I have to count carefully or mess up a whole row and have to carefully frog everything back.

The standing in doorways thing is a threat display because they are in your way. It’s a power play that says, “I get to choose when you come and go”, and that impinges on your bodily autonomy. It registers as a subtle threat to most people at the unconscious level. I am not one of those people who recognizes or responds readily to fear (unless my anxiety is going, but that is largely self-focused) so I totally didn’t get it until it was explained to me.

[genderjumper]

Great list!