*muffled cursing from the next room*

I read a thing today, and I'm tired of some of the implications, so you guys get to read one of my 10 paragraph subtweets again, sorry.

My mother once told me that I was "hard to get along with", and so I should apologize to someone I had done nothing wrong to, in order to keep up a friendship that was unfair to me, with the silent addendum that this was the best someone like me could expect. I realize now that a lot of that last bit was her damage, but at the time I was 13. Yeah, guess how well that went over. I was hard to get along with, to my neurotypical mother, because I was always doing things people didn't understand, being a hyperactive little maniac, picking fistfights with bullies instead of telling a teacher who would (and did!) do nothing about it. But I was the common denominator in all of the problems that people had with me, therefore Occam's Razor said that I was the problem.

Having been accused of being a psychic vampire by one of my best friends in high school during our friend-breakup, I took that shit to heart. It's part of where I learned to blame myself for everything that goes wrong in relationships, including for other people's choices and feelings. In Tina's mind I was a psychic vampire because I was always needing to be reassured from my anxieties (clinical anxiety was diagnosed 5 years later), needing a place to hang out with one of my 5 friends (not at home near mom's emotionally abusive boyfriend), needing to disappear into myself for a week because I was too depressed (also diagnosed 5 years later) to keep up the person-facade that I was so bad at back then.

Basically, I was an undiagnosed autistic, and she liked my "weirdness" when it was quirky and brought social cache to her (it was the 90's, kooky white "girls" were very In). But she resented it (and me) because it cost her too much human concern to be friends with someone whose brain worked differently from hers. But I didn't see that at the time. All I saw was one more friend who perceived that something was wrong, and I was the only target she could see to be the cause of that, and so I believed her and blamed myself. Our human expectations are often invisible to us, and we tend to blame other people for that "bad feeling" we have about them. Especially when it is our unrealistic expectations which people can't consistently meet that are the source of the problem. It doesn't occur to us that our preconceptions are the problem, much like most racists don't think they're racist.

People with PTSD ... ARE difficult to get along with; you kinda have to watch your step interacting with us because there are landmines, often in weird places. It's not our fault the landmines are there. We did not put them there. But still, "difficult" is a word that tends to follow the traumatized. And then we have a panic attack or yell because someone stepped on a trigger that we warned them about, and suddenly other people "knew they had a bad feeling about us". And we get dumped and ghosted.

And you know, now that I'm older, I have noticed that a lot of the people who get accused of being "difficult", "hard to get along with", or of being "psychic vampires" are just ... average neurodivergent people. Not all of the accused are, people who are not doing their best do exist, but just ... so many of us are not what you tell us we are, y'all. So many. The whole brown monkey vs. pink monkey thing is as depressing now as it was when I was 12.

People with autism/OCD/ADHD/PTSD/Bipolar/Depression/etc.? We are not your tribe, and that pings the brown monkey need to "correct" our whole being as human people. We are not allowed to exist differently from you. And that? That is fucked up.

And it is a "you" problem.

Intense World Theory - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3010743/ (Markram & Markram 2010)

There is a part of mammalian brains that is supposed to pick which stimuli deserve attention. Due to a difference in both the information gathering systems and how this part of the autistic human brain functions, the world is likely to be painfully intense for autists.

Autism Spectrum Disorder is a constellation of behaviors plus their root in neurological and psychological differences, but at its most basic, these behaviors can be interpreted as a way to limit and control stimuli.

The fear centers and local neuronal networks of rats with induced autistic-type behaviors were found to be hyper-reactive, as well as exhibiting hyper-plasticity. This likely gives rise to runaway cognitive processes that can cause overwhelming emotions, specializations and intense focus and attention as well as having effects on memory and perception.

When the world is overwhelming, even NT people adopt strategies to limit information intake, like needing dim lighting and quiet environments for people with headaches. Autistic people are not "picky and controlling" about their environments for no reason - we're overstimulated and painfully sensitive. A great many autistic behaviors make sense if this theory is applied.
⬆️ If I could only offer non-autistic academics one thing to read about autism, this would be it. It explains a lot more than it doesn't about the neuro-biological basis for autism, as well as predicting the higher rates of PTSD and the higher stress response as measured by cortisol which were only found years later. [Author's Note: It is a seminal work in the field, having been cited at least 142 times, and if anyone wants me to break down what it says into layman's English, I will do so here on my journal as well.]


Association of autistic traits in adulthood with childhood abuse, interpersonal victimization, and posttraumatic stress (Roberts et al. 2015) - https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4784091/ (if you're reading between the lines on this you get:)
The cycle of trauma
1. Behavioral and communication differences create the possibility for misunderstandings and social friction to arise.
2. Those problems are often used as an excuse to do something traumatizing to the autistic person.
3. Traumatized autistic people experience trauma more intensely than neurotypical peers and thus are at higher risk for PTSD, and thus develop even more behavioral differences from neurotypical people in response to that trauma.
4. Peers, institutions, and caregivers blame/neglect/reject/bully the autistic person further, causing more trauma.
5. Process repeats.


Autism Spectrum Disorder and the Experience of Traumatic Events: Review of the Current Literature to Inform Modifications to a Treatment Model for Children with Autism - https://www.sci-hub.st/10.1007/s10803-018-3854-9 (Stack et al. 2018)
Lots of assumptions! And some are potentially harmful ones! This is the ranting portion of the talk.

The willingness of researchers to say that therapeutic interventions helped based on reports from persons other than the affected autist is baffling. The autistic kids reported that the therapies did not make them feel better, but scientists were coming up with reasons to listen to NT parents on why their kid appearing more compliant with social norms is beneficial to the child. Way to use therapy to manipulate autistic kids into using their mental resources toward masking their autistic traits, there, folks. (Weiss et al. 2018)

Applied Behavioral Analysis-tainted research and reviews that speak of all autists as though we are badly-behaved children who need to be taught obedience instead of self determination. (Petersen et al. 2019)

Saying that therapists should not practice exposure therapy "when contraindicated” because of the risk of re-traumatization (Cohen et al. 2010), but not acknowledging that the signs of this may not look the same in autistic children. No accounting is made for this possible variance in the literature reviews, even though they admit they are discussing things which could re-traumatize autistic children! [Author's note: I cannot with this bullshit. Cannot!] (Stack & Lucyshyn 2018)

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Okay, folks, I think that's what's going to be my notes for this talk. Is there anything that doesn't make sense or that you have questions about that I should expand on? Should I talk about the Broad Autism Phenotype? I feel like that should be a thing that more people should know about, even though it doesn't have as many implications on trauma and PTSD risk ... that I know of.

And if you do the Facebook thing, the salon I'm giving the talk with is going to be on Facebook Live @: https://www.facebook.com/events/689117575693839/ tomorrow/Saturday 3PM 'til maybe 5PM Central Daylight Time.

I take the aspie quiz every five years or so, just to see how my progress is. My current score isn't as different from the last one as the last one was from the first one, so the rate of change has slowed a bit since I'm not actively studying human social interaction any more. I think since I pass as neurotypical in almost all social interactions now, I don't put as much desperate energy into studying and practicing and honing my skills at socializing. I now have points on both interaction scales, enough to get by. I don't feel hounded any more. I can rest.

In other news, I have been writing poems. I hope to have one done later tonight and posted in a couple of days.

I'm taking a look at shame and other bullshit class issues I've given headspace to, trying to understand why I've had them and how that informs my opinion of American class structure and the Occupy movement. The internet does not desegregate the older generations, but maybe there's hope for the current generation growing up in online culture; maybe the internet can cross class lines enough for them to see each other across the gap.

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When I was a kid I had the usual horse-madness that descends on so many little girls, but you might not be able to tell beside ( the larger and more obvious obsession with dolphins )

This is all background to the real point of this essay: if I can't trust a rich member of my own family to buy me an appropriate birthday present for my circumstances, how can I, as an American, trust the rich upper class to know the circumstances of the poor or best judge their welfare?

One of the most important lessons I have learned is that 'just being myself' sets people on edge. Left to my own devices, I stare, make eye contact too long, and use body postures that have more to do with what's going on in my head than what I am trying to communicate. Just being yourself sounds simple, and if your actions were occurring in a context vacuum where they were not open for misinterpretation that might even work. And with other people who have no social context, it does: Aspies feel comfortable with other Aspies. The muggles are not so enlightened.

So, things that I've learned are creepifying:

making direct eye contact for longer than two seconds.

Watching the person doing something interesting instead of just watching their hands.

Using the muscles of the nose to snarl when expressing disgust, or for almost any reason. To most people that implies violence.

Standing bodily between someone and the only exit from a room. Its a dominance/control behavior that implies that you get to decide whether to let them leave and people who feel trapped are not comfortable people.

Speaking at a volume to be heard over noise without softening your tone is pretty much the definition of yelling. Only appropriate to be used in very noisy places.

Standing at a direct angle to someone who is angling themselves away from you. Mirroring posture is an advanced trick but it starts in the 'don't be creepy' sector.

Have a default expression. Your face being completely blank makes people truly uncomfortable, probably because they only wear no expression when they're hiding something. Also, there's a Hollywood trick of using expressionlessness to characterize madness. Thanks ever so, Hollywood. :/

The specifics of how to be comforting will be the next post, but tell me if I missed something obvious, yeah?

EDIT TO ADD:

Acknowledge the conversations that you are a part of. Use active listening and make noises of assent and interest where appropriate. Do not remain silent when a response is expected. Do not appear to not be listening only to chime in at the end with something that sets the conversation in a different context; people get really upset when what they thought was a private conversation turns out not to have been.

Fierce debate out of proportion to the person you talking with comes across as interrogation and intimidation. Respond to debate with the same level of emphasis as your opponent.

Stand in your own space and not too close to others whose personal space you have not been invited into.

Talking out of turn and interrupting consistently annoys people, and while it's not creepy, it quickly becomes a respect issue and is still socially inept.

*I was going to do the April Fool's Day post about how Xenoix and I had broken up, and put the 'details' under a cut-tag that only went to the words "Do you know what day it is?" Unfortunately I just don't feel like it. I feel kinda crappy, physically, like sinus-shoggoths are trying to invade my throat. What I wouldn't give for some nice homeopathic Elder Sign extract! . . . See? I just am not funny today, and I don't feel like failing continuously. Meh. :|

*So: in order to come up with some direction and feelings of continued utility and relevance, I've decided to go through old journals for records of my uncompleted goals. And knowing me there will be enough things that I've forgotten about to fill several pages. I'll then winnow them down according to whether they appeal to me currently, see what I've got left over, and post it up here to see if any themes emerge. Y'all might have to help with that bit, I totally won't be able to spot the obvious stuff. If you get the sense that I'm kind of down on myself at the moment, you'd be right. I had to explain the way my memory works to not one but two different co-workers today, and other people's pity is uncomfortable to me. I'm kind of glad that "I meant what I said, even though I may not remember it later" a convo you only have to have with people once.

*I was at the library the other day to find Women From Another Planet which apparently they don't have in any library in Texas (fail!). And when I was up in the psychology section for books on the autism spectrum, I picked up a mis-shelved copy of The Sociopath Next Door and read a bit. And it disturbed me. I'm not gonna lie. cluegirl says it's a fascinating read, and I believe her, but I'm not entirely sure that people understand sociopaths correctly. Because according to the most fundamental definition, I qualify. I don't feel shame or regret when I've hurt someone. I feel stupid and like a failure, because hurting people is bad for a system which ~hello, I live inside of~ and I hate making bad judgment calls that I will have to fix the repercussions of later so I try to be as nice as is reasonable and practical. I don't feel jealousy, or fear of mortality, or greed in any normal sense, and my expression of a lot of emotions is not what it is for other people. But just because I have fewer and more limited emotions doesn't mean that I want to destroy society or be a serial killer. I would have to also be under several delusions about my impact on the world and in a lot of chronic emotional pain for either of those to occur. I think it's possible that there's another invisible spectrum in human behavior, of the weight and importance of feelings. For some people emotions are this dominant, inexorable force. I have no idea what that's like, so my lack of affect must be just as freaky to them as their paradigm is to me and the sociopaths. :\

*When I was a teen, every day was Opposite Day. I'm an adult now. Can I have just one Apposite Day? That's all I'm asking for.

Aspie quiz from HERE.



Huh.