This is so real. It also reminds me how "sensitivity" or "being sensitive" often is used with the negative connotation of being weak and thus not being able to handle situations/stimuli. However, high sensitivity more specifically means being highly receptive and thus easily affected/changed by stimuli- which is basically a major point you were making.
For most people, anything that describes other people IS negative (and everything that describes themself IS positive). George Carlin had a bit about this, e.g. anyone driving slower than you is an idiot, but anyone that passes you is a MANIAC! There's a great CZcams channel called "TRYING BEINGS: From Life's Origins to Total Jerks" in which Jeremy Sherman PhD uses the term Hero-Bots to describe these people, because they automatically assume they're the hero of every situation. So yeah, to those people, they're the "proper" amount of sensitive: anyone that's more sensitive is touchy and anyone less sensitive is a jerk. And of course because they already know that they're right, these people are also completely incapable of taking in any new information and seeing things from any other point of view. They are the perfect example of "inflexible thinking" that autistic people are accused of, as they'll endlessly repeat the same list of reasons they know they're in response to any challenge, but never actually engage with any possibility of how they may be wrong even if only to disprove it.
That feeling when someone says “you’re overthinking” 🙃 then resisting the impulse to respond “thinking probably looks like overthinking to an underthinker.” 😅
PS I appreciate you mentioning your experience with foods. I definitely experience this to the point of frustration and embarrassment. Going out to eat with friends and family becomes quite overwhelming sometimes, balancing social expectations with my own comfort/limits/preferences. Thank you for putting words together to describe and relay this
This is exactly how I've felt when it comes to my autistic experience. It's always felt more like everyone else was at a deficit and I couldn't understand why they had so much difficulty processing information. It felt like people were guessing to fill in the gaps.
Omg YES i feel like there’s no way to explain it in real life without sounding arrogant but this is exactly how I feel, it always seemed liked everybody else lacked something
That is exactly what it is, and it’s called heuristics. The allistic brain is designed for efficacy of resources (energy, time), so if they can make a generalization and get away with it most of the time, then they will make it. Which isn’t to say autistic people can’t make generalizations or that allistics can’t unlearn those generalizations, but it seems there’s a trend that allistics are more prone to generalizations than those that aren’t
I explain to people that it appears to me as though Neurotypical people think in a straight line, from A to B. And that line tends to get clouded by their emotions. Whereas people with Autism like me think in every dimension of the multiverse simultaneously. I may experience delayed processing, but that's just because my processing is way more elaborate. To me, in this case, neurotypical people experience a deficit, not me.
I've had people remark about how when facing a problem or dilemma that I multiply it into countless other problems, but then also acknowledge that I end up finding the problems that resolve each other with just a little effort, leaving what is then a quick and efficient path to my goal. How long it took me to get to that quick and efficient path though.....
@@SeeingBackward Username absolutely checks out, lol And my processing has also been described from the outside similarly to yours and c.ferraro's, so glad I found this video
what if we’ve been looking in the wrong place for autism? what if it’s not just a brain thing, but a general nervous system thing? hypersensitivity, overstimulation, pattern recognition, etc. all these have to do with senses. neurotypicals having less input data, but relatively similar processing power means they can sort thru it faster. i’ve got a super strong sense of smell, taste, color differentiation, & sensitivity with light, sound, textures, & temperature. there might even be a whole thing with higher emotional sensitivity/general empathy due to literally feeling more
This is where, as someone with an overactive nervous system, I found the concept of the triune brain useful. The nervous system is the oldest cognitive system, and the limbic system more or less evolved on top of that, with the cortex evolving most recently. But they all still work together, and there was never an overall structural redesign of an increasingly complex system. When you keep piling functionality onto a piece of software without fixing structural issues that arise, it eventually becomes unstable. The upshot is that the nervous system is not well suited for many of the tasks it is now asked to help with, and that’s true for everyone. But some of us develop more or different issues. Since monotropism was introduced as an autistic concept, there’s been some debate about whether autism is best described as a monotropic condition or as issues with the nervous system. Different autistic people say one or the other, though most have a foot in both worlds. It’s pretty clearly more than one thing - I’m somewhat monotropic, but have pretty big nervous system issues. Even there, it manifests less for me as sensory issues and more as dysregulation. Lots of variations in people.
the nervous system IS part of the brain tho? I agree that wayyyyy too many people assume autism is purely neurological (or psychosomatic, "you can do it if you try") without realizing that it is ALSO a sensory processing disorder that goes hand in hand with it. Also tied with autism is the way you process vitamin D, dopamine/attention, and a range of overlapping conditions like anxiety/depression/bpd/adhd, gi, eds, etc
I believe that there are many different ways “disorders” with which a body can be wired entirely differently to prioritize mental processes over physical/external ones. This is what autism is. I believe we have too little understanding of dna, and that there will always be a treble dna strand that causes a specific group of “disorders” in a person, which always includes their autism. I know from experience of myself that the group EDS+MCAS+POTS=AUTISM is one example of the body working in a way that’s shorter lasting, but more energy efficient in the short term, to allow for increased brain function. I know that Marfan’s syndrome (often+hyperthyroidism) is an entirely separate connective tissue condition that accomplishes the same goal of short term efficiency. almost always resulting in autism. The only reason that such varying genetic differences would evolve into the same result is through natural selection, making this AN ADAPTATION, NOT A MISTAKE. More and more people are being born autistic and natural processes don’t make mistakes, especially not that last this long. When the human body has one deficit, the benefit it causes can ALWAYS be traced. We see this in every bodily difference. It truly is common around us, and I learn more, it becomes clear to me that EVERY GREAT THINKER OF HISTORY WAS AUTISTIC. All over earth there are species who have evolved to have patterns where individuals are born who have different instincts. Think of the evenly dispersed patterns through generations that disabilities show up in. Bees have a cycle of producing the right amount of individuals with differently geared brain types to benefit their society. THAT IS WHAT THIS IS. WE HAVE EVOLVED BECAUSE WE ARE NEEDED FOR OUR SPECIES’ SURVIVAL. With the absurd point we’ve come to, look around and see how more minds like ours are the only thing that could save us.
Actually there's a lot of evidence showing autism and adhd is correlated with differences in metabolism and the levels of neurotransmitters but there is hardly any research that follows these breadcrumbs very far. I think it should be studied more because I think this is why some neurodivergent people find a lot of help for how they feel by taking certain types of vitamin B, or N acetyl-L-cysteine, or other things that affect neurotransmitter levels.
I taught my councilor what I call fires/not fires thinking. She wanted to know why I always use so much of my bandwidth on things I'm worried about. I said 'if there are seven things that are your responsability or even your survival in front of you and 4 of them are on fire, how much energy do you devote to dealing with the not-fires?' now, imagine you are aware that any one of the not-fires could become a fire it just hasn't caught yet. and you think that if you learn more you will be better able to anticipate and prevent fires... but what you learn only tells you all the other things that can go wrong, and now that new info taints all your other knowledge it's suddenly connected to in your head. because our minds don't just toss new info into a corner we incorporate it into our patterns... even if we have to rebuild into a new pattern to incorporate it.
I'm sure that makes perfect sense to a lot of people on this particular channel on first reading.... But you say you "taught" it to your councilor, I wonder how much effort that took?
It's probably why even though I'm a psychologist for years that only recently I have noticed my autistic traits. I never related a lot to what were talked about when I saw studies about autism specially because it was focused on kids. When I saw more adults talking their experiences, that's when it clicked. And it was even more difficult because of how I don't struggle with social interactions, actually having people say how good I am at it. Saying autistic people can't deal with social interactions is such a misleading thing to say and doesn't really tell about the whole experience people could have in the spectrum.
Same here. I grew up around a variety of autistic people my age. While I knew instinctively that we had something in common and I always felt like an outcast despite my good friends, I still viewed these kids as "other." When I started looking into it and realized I related to other adults (and learned more about what autism actually is), it was both upsetting and freeing. I still struggle with feeling like I'm "not autistic enough." Theories that focus more on sensory processing bring me a lot of comfort.
@@NoiseDay That feeling of "not autistic" enough is SO strong. I have that with dyslexia as well. I think having good social skills and learning how to communicate with everybody made me feel like a cameleon. I relate mostly with autistic adults nowadays, but I have learned so much through my life how to be around NTs that I don't feel far from them. It's a great skill to have, but didn't help me start seeing myself as autistic even though it becomes more obvious the more I look into it.
Regarding socialization, would you say that we autists have less of a built-in intuition for how to navigate communication with allists, but that those of use who are good at it have developed a strong direct understanding of it? I’m curious about your experience. How conscious are you of how you are communicating as it happens?
@@EMLtheViewer From what I understand, the communication mishaps is present in both sides exactly because of how we communicate differently. People on the spectrum have to make an effort to understand and communicate better with allistics as well as allistics will have to do the same to understand and communicate better with autistic people. Everybody may have certain difficulties trying to communicate even if their brains function more simmilarly, but it's like the difference between idk, someone from Mexico talking to someone from Spain versus someone from Mexico trying to understand someone from Brazil speaking portguese. They will understand some stuff, but there are more effort there to make it happen. But considering how people on the spectrum tends to overanalyze stuff, that would explain why when it clicks for us, we sometimes see these interactions in a more conscious way. Talking about my experience, I've "always" noticed how people behave. I notice their moods, mannerisms, tendencies etc. I know most of people's intentions when we speak and can handle interactions in a way that feels pleasant both ways generally. There is a certain level of consciousness during the interactions, but after so many years, it's less of an effort and more of a trained skill. The thing is, I feel that way interacting with EVERYBODY, probably because of how I'm "trained" to be able to interact with everyone, always having that active consciousness in every word, but in a way I can handle fine. TL;DR: Both types of people communicate differently. Autistics who learn to communicate better with allistics can see it in a more structured way and do it so more counsciously and with more effort. I do it counsciously, but it's not a struggle for me personally.
@@EMLtheViewerSocializing is a learned skill like any other. In my experience, it took more time and effort to become proficient at it, but I can now confidently say that I am more skilled at talking to new people than the average person. I see them, their patterns of speech, how they dress/present themselves, and I know what they are intentionally signaling and what they are signaling natively (or without conscious choice). Using those patterns and relating to them is the basis for empathy in social communication. Allistic individuals have a small advantage starting out, but unless they’ve done the work to improve that skill set they will eventually plateau. Autistic individuals can become incredibly charismatic and charming if they put the work in and get appropriate feedback in the early stages of social development.
8Gb of RAM can be plenty of memory for most CPUs. My gaming laptop runs a i9 CPU. Without 16-32 GB of RAM, it feels slow. And when you get into really powerful applications and games, you need 64Gb of RAM. When your brain is running faster than the RAM you were born with, it's not a deficit. It's just an understanding that it takes time to process the same types of information through the powerful software and CPU we have. At least, that's what my autistic brain thought up from this video.
My working memory is “high average “ but my processing speed is in the 99.5 %ile, and this is exactly what it’s like. The gap between my highest and lowest IQ scores brought the over functional IQ average down from 139 to 134 on my assessment to account for my (poorly) min-maxed stats
I love the "mechanics of autism x basic human psychology" kind of perspective. This feels like it's a very accurate way of looking at things! Perhaps, indeed, it is key to understand autism through individual differences with regards to basic psychological processes. Rather than thinking of autism as a series of impairments, it might be revealing if we try to make sense of autism as being overtuned and/or undertuned in specific ways
This video would've been so insanely useful to me at the beginning of my autism journey. One of the largest reasons why I dismissed autism as a possibility for SO long was because I was always told that autistic people were oblivious to all these things when I felt so hyper-aware of them that trying to process all this information at once made me feel like I was drowning. It wasnt until i started listening to actually autistic people explain autism that I realized that what I was experiencing WAS in fact autism.
It's a bit like arguments I've had with people who think I sleep the whole day, or I'm never going to bed. I get 7-8 hours like we're supposed to most of the time. MY 8 hours is just between 5am and 1pm. So if you find me sleeping during more than an hour or two of your wake cycle, you are measuring my sleeping from the start of your sleep cycle to the end of mine which looks like 10pm-1pm. where as if you happen to be awake and responding to social media or email or posting work on a project that was proposed late in your day and I was fiddling with it at 2am, while you see me running errands at 2pm you'll wonder when I'm possibly getting any sleep. The answer is that I'm doing it in my own time in my own way. It doesn't mean I am over or under sleeping, or doing it wrong. I'm not broken or defective.
These are the same people who show up early at the office and comment about how people are lazy for showing up later than them. But then if there's a problem at 4:45, well they wish they could help but they got there early so now they've got other stuff they need to do. Everyone else works until 8 or 9 pm and actually fixes the problem, and then the a**hole shows up early the next morning and claims the credit.
To me it's the fact that my mind can take in some new information while already taking in lots of other benign information and if there is any level of uncertainty or confusion about the application for the new information my brain goes into OVERDRIVE trying to make connections to try and come to some kind of resolution. I've tried to explain to psychologists that I will literally have 100 thoughts a minute some times and I stop functioning in the physical world. I don't think allistic minds can make so many connections or have their mind go off on so many tangential directions so rapidly. Guess that's part of our neural plasticity?
I've heard that autistic people are good at making connections between seemingly unrelated things, kind of like a puzzle. How does, say, a pineapple relate to a clock? I could point out all the things they have in common, whereas maybe an allistic person would say, "I have no idea how you got from a to b."
I don’t think people see beyond the behaviours we use to cope with how overwhelming the world is. They see us have meltdowns, avoid eye contact, and stick to our safe foods and that’s the summation of autism for them. They see it as a deficit or lack of something or even that we are broken. However, I bet if allistics could experience the world as our brains do, they would behave exactly the same way. Us high masking autistics spend our lives trying to understand and behave like NTs, but when we finally figure out we’re autistic and work on unmasking we don’t always get the same courtesy and effort in return. I’m starting to think the double empathy problem would be better described as an unfortunate symptom of allism. Of course, we’d have to get them formally diagnosed first.
Yes, this is what I’ve been thinking! Our “problematic” behaviors are coping mechanisms, they are not the “root” of autism moreso than they are responses to make things easier for us. Meltdowns especially, ppl do when they are extremely distressed and no one else is fucking listening. Autistic ppl just have a lot more to be stressed abt that others unfortunately aren’t likely going to be able to understand or address adequately
Which is why it's such a huge problem that research has mainly been done through caretaker perspectives (how does your child behave?) instead of asking autistic people about their experiences
@@fariahcriss5696 I heard this the other day that's apparently a saying in the autism community (the autism community that actually is of people with autism) and might even have come from temple grandin - and it's a criticism of "research" and "helping" efforts for autism (and yes, usually from and for the helpers perspective) like the often criticized by autistic people organization Autism Speaks. It's "nothing ABOUT us, WITHOUT us". Meaning don't do autism related stuff without considerable input and involvement with a broad range of autistic people and their experiences.
@@tinaperez7393 Absolutely, very true for anything autism, but that also goes for all activism! You don't know what anyone needs without asking them. It's one of the first things you learn when you start getting involved in activist spaces 😊 For the future, if you find you have a hard time differentiating actually autistic community labels vs broader community labels, you can generally separate it into autistic community as being specifically people who are autistic, and autism community as autistic people and their support systems!
Literally why I called myself a highly sensitive person before I got diagnosed with autism and adhd. “You’re too sensitive” is the soundtrack to my life lol I would always ask why other people can’t just be less horrible, and most people would just look at me like I was the problem lol. Edit: just want to add that not all highly sensitive people will be diagnosed with autism, or relate to it. Autism, “highly sensitive people” (I don’t even think this is even recognized seriously as anything, but I could be wrong), and c-ptsd all share a lot of similar traits that overlap. This was just one label I tried to cling on to (amounts many) as I was growing up trying to explain to people that I felt really different.
C-PTSD is a common result of Narcissistic Abuse. We wouldn't think it weird that a child who grew up in only literal gaslight would end up being photosensitive. But for some reason, no one seems to think that narcissistic gaslighting of children would result in a person who is highly sensitive yet doesn't know how to connect with others, overly honest, looks to logic to resolve situations rather than authority or feelings, tries to reduce situations to fully understandable building blocks/monotropic processing, is gullible or easily manipulated having never been taught to look out for the usual cultural traps which are employed against them every day by people claiming to love them, is a perfectionist/anankastic, has a 'spiky profile' corresponding to areas that got positive attention (or at least avoided negative), and has an affinity for situations with clear directions like transportation or retail, leading to 'staging' of belongings which is only seen as "lining up" or "stacking" without ever noticing the connection with retail or transportation contexts. Many narcissistic households are essentially a "cult" of just one household, or even a network of similarly narcissistic parents who reinforce those patterns as correct, proper, and/or good to do, leaving the children confused about why things are so different at home and other places. But they're also taught cult-speak, resulting in alexythymia, which combined with the shame of the family situation and a desire to show people in a good light, causes the child to be unable to accurately describe their home life to those outside of it, and others to continue to tell them to "listen to your parents, they know what's best" even when that is far from the truth.
I’ve got audhd and this idea really explains my experiences with being autistic Like my favorite spaces are often quite and dark, limiting the stimulus And likewise I kinda self medicate with weed, cuz it in a way loosens all the stimuli and smooths them over like a blurry image And when I’m overwhelmed it’s often when there’s to much sensory input And it acts sometimes as a loop Where I’ll get overwhelmed by the noise making me think about it and then I’m overwhelmed by the voice in my head, and the tension of my skin on my skull, ect Tldr: intense world is the best way I’ve found to explain my experiences, by far
I have some form of neurodivergence; diagnosed adhd but might be audhd, I'm not really sure. I personally can't really do weed because it **sharpens** my stimuli. I've shared a bowl with my sister before and not been able to finish "my half" because I'm too locked in to keep smoking lmao. I start being aware of how my clothes fall on my body, or the tension in my temples, or how strong gravity is, or the difference in feeling between being motionless and moving. It really consistently makes moving at all cost more mental energy. I just generally don't like it. But then on the other hand. Shrooms (to below-threshold doses) exaggerate what I would consider my autistic tendencies without quite so much of what feels like internal monotropism or stimulus-sharpening as I experience on weed. But it's different every time. Sometimes it makes being motionless cost more mental energy, forcing me to stim constantly and with greater intensity than usual, but at the same time making those stims feel better than usual. That's my favorite effect. Sometimes it ramps up my verbal filter to the point where I don't feel like saying anything at all. It often comes with a pervasive sense of awe and wonder, but sometimes just doesn't. I guess it just depends on set and setting.
@@rarebeeph1783 That is exactly my experience with weed. It's like it opens the floodgates on all my senses, and it's usually too much to be enjoyable.
Something I read that resonated with me, was that where neural pathways, essentially the strength of connections between different neurons, in NT brains will strengthen commonly used pathways, and essentially degrade less used or unused ones such that they don't fire off to stimuli, whereas an autistic brain either does less "pruning" or not at all. So when there is a stimuli, any and all pathways that have been associated with it in the past can start to fire, which can both lead to very lateral, often surprisingly useful connections between ideas, but also can turn into overload with so much going on.
2:30 mins in and I have literally yelled "oh my GOD" THANK YOU! You’re the autistic creator who makes the most sense to me! I edited this because I had written that in caps and it was starting to feel like it could be taken the wrong way 😂
Before I ever understood anything about autism I had come to the "intense world theory" realization about myself (decades ago). I knew and could tell that I felt things a lot more intensely than many others, and I had realized that one of the coping mechanisms I had created in order to deal with that was by trying to "turn the volume down", which resulted in a lot of difficulties due to all of the far reaching consequences of doing that. Once I had this realization the fact of it made perfect sense. I could find specific examples of "seeing" it in action, it explained completely so much about my life. Now, looking back, I understand much, much more completely. I see how that "intense world theory" realization fits in with all of the other aspects of how I was growing up. I see how, and why, I started masking (hard and *competently*) even before I could read, how I had built a huge system of coping strategies to deal with constantly being misunderstood, misjudged, underestimated, excluded, let down, etc. And how to this day it can be difficult for me to enjoy certain things or experience things fully simply because I have gotten so habituated to "turning the volume down" on it and I don't know how to change that habit.
Well I couldn't have said it better myself lol. I would say we are on the same wavelength about it, but I have a feeling it's because we are on the same "spectrum". All joking aside it really is life on veteran difficulty.
oh boy the bit about new information that conflicts with your worldview having ripple effects activating a fear response... explains a lot about past relationships. One of my biggest fears in a relationship is learning something about a partner that conflicts with who I thought they were. And even if it's not a big deal at all or is largely a matter of optics, it activates this subtle panic response in me (though then I've learned things that WERE a big deal and actually rationally made me feel unsafe which kind of maladaptively taught that panic response that it was valid and now I'm just scared of dating)
I’m a slight variation on that. I toggle readily between safe and unsafe, but while there are so many places that my anxiety tries to game out potential problems, personal relationships aren’t among them. I’m not suggesting that this is an improvement over your coping mechanism. I have the common trait of not being able to judge what is appropriate to say to who, or when: people are people and I have an impulsive mouth. And I am hypervigilant but also rather trusting. So I will thrust myself into some situation, suppose it’s all good and I am safe, then pivot to fear when it sinks in I’m not safe or might not be. I can react with fury or depression if I was really counting on the person or situation. But the most debilitating thing is that I now get bursts of anxiety after almost every social encounter, because I shift automatically to unsafe - “sh*t, I shouldn’t have said that!” It’s become so automatic and associative that it doesn’t require a conscious thought any more. It’s kind of Tourette’s like.
It’s not that I have no possible idea what somebody is thinking or feeling, it’s that their behavior could easily mean many different things, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to know which one it is unless they tell me. It would be inaccurate to guess, miscommunications have been dangerous in the past. So it makes sense if we’re danger averse More intensely, that we’re less likely to guess in social situations because we’re afraid to error.
Exactly, I personally hate when people assume they know what I’m thinking or feeling because they’re usually wrong, which is partially why I don’t pretend to know what others are thinking or feeling because the possibilities are endless.
Yes, I think one of the things that makes humans problematic is that we may be the first mammal that cares about what motivates others to do something. A small bird just needs to know that a hawk wants to eat it, it doesn’t worry about why. Judging why someone did something is not really what instincts are good at, and the fact that complex social systems make it necessary to try and make those determinations has created all kinds of chaos, because the likelihood of being wrong is so much greater - in spite of the fact that most people’s visceral reaction will insist to them that they are right.
This is a very well presented description of this experience. I literally can feel myself reaching a level of stimulus, good or bad, and then drawing within to escape it. The more days I spend in chaotic environments, the faster I end up in a burnout state.
The evidence that we have a lot more can be seen in those of us that have comorbid adhd: we see a simple task that neurotypicals can do in autopilot and get overwhelmed by the number of steps that "one task" actually entails. Similarly, I feel emotions much more strongly, to the detriment of my relationships that think I'm too emotional. I can bond with people, animals, or even things with minimal prompting, and I hear the noises of every electronic in the house from the couch. It looks like I lack the ability to ignore because I do. Because there is too much to ignore. I do, however, want to hear more about the neuroplasticity aspect because studies of brain matter have shown that autistic brains have difficulty pruning, which I think adds to your point about being pattern and stimulus aware, problem-focused, and having an initial resistance to new information that goes against our world view (I would argue that while confirmation bias is a problem for everyone, I think it's a bigger problem for allistics than autistics because while we may initially reject an idea, we're more likely to think about it rather than just dismiss it, from my observations). So can you explain what you mean (examples) when you say we're better at neuroplasticity? ?
I've found a good way of describing this... idk, kind of thing? Theory? Is that my brain wants to treat all of the information it gets, as "new". So there's a certain kind of urgency to how it rushes to the forefront of your consciousness/awareness. It's like I have only a few MB of RAM available, so on days if I haven't taken care of myself, those drives are busy filtering more internal negative signals. This results is my filter getting easily overwhelmed, so sounds that normally just irritate me will infuriate or even hurt me, for example. I wish there were more ways that higher communicating autistics could contribute to research so we can get this odd, outside/allistic perspective rooted out of what's a very inwardly experienced "disorder".
This last part has always seemed so odd to me. Like when people go to the doctor, usually they're the one telling the doctor what their experience is, and the doctor listens to that experience and then determines tests to order and treatments based on that. Also with a some other mental health issues, e.g. addictions, there is an expectation for the professional to provide something, maybe medication or advice, to result in some sort of relief. Even with ADHD, there's some level of "these are things that have helped others with ADHD" But with Autism, they just tell the patient what autism is like, as if the autistic person wasn't there because they were looking for help with their autism. There's no real help, there's no real understanding, not even a desire for understanding. I'd imagine that's how a child would feel if they moved from France where they lived their whole life to the United States and take French as a Foreign Language elective in high school only to have French explained to them poorly And I'm really starting to wonder if ADHD is just the result of masking, whether because of ASD or BPD or any other closeted situation where a person feels they must hide themselves leading to an extra layer of processing on top of what others would experience.
@@SeeingBackward My experience has been that when I first suspected ASD, my at the time doctor literally walked in and before even greeting me said "you're not autistic". I'd been seeing this guy for years, wouldn't even entertain the idea. I think it's the fact that I'm articulate that put him off the idea, but just complete dismissal. Then upon getting a new doctor after he retired, it just turned into a fight of proving that my experiences were as I was describing them, and not what they saw. My masking was THAT heavy that only other ND's picked up on it and pushed me towards looking deeper. Hell, the second doctor, when I brought up that I was looking into a diagnosis just asked "why? You can't cure it anyway". She got amazingly close to seeing why that day as I was a hair's breadth away from a meltdown. All the more important that ND voices speak up in any way that they can, being silent and hiding can only get us so far, right?
@@ryanmahaffie329 Amen to that! > I think it's the fact that I'm articulate that put him off the idea, but just complete dismissal Because being overly-articulate and hyperlexic with a giant vocabulary is a counter-indication for autism, right? They show their own confirmation bias and refuse to see it, while telling us that we are inflexible thinkers for being able to operate a checklist....
(in case this is confusing for anyone, my meaning is that autistic people are known for those things, so they shouldn't ever be used to say someone isn't autistic. just to be clear!)
"Some processes are better left running in the background." ...YES. Even just taken on the most literal, physical level: please tell my body that it doesn't need to notice every skipped beat and change in pulse, blood pressure or circulation, or feel every piece of lint or stray hair. Why do I have to smell the inside of my own sinuses or feel myself digesting food or my eyelids folding up and sticking to themselves? Then I dissociate from my body to keep from going insane, and people wonder how I can forget to eat otherwise go to the bathroom for hours at a time. I hate that this is so relatable, lol, but it is validating.
Ugh, my body feels so gross all of the time. I wish I was a ghost or some kind of poltergeist so I wouldn't have to deal with having a body. I hate existing in flesh. It is miserable, and it has always been miserable since I could remember. I used to hurt myself when I was really little, because I was so frustrated with having a body. It doesn't even feel like it's really mine. I know I was born with it, but it's like a baggy, dirty, itchy woolen coat someone is forcing me to wear. ...I bathe regularly, but you have to admit bodies in general are really gross and uncomfortable.
I buy this because I've always felt like a sponge. I absorb things without effort, and it usually sticks in some capacity somewhere. It's why I know lyrics to songs that I don't like, and can remember plot points of shows I wasn't actually watching, but was on in the same room as I was doing something else, ER and soap operas being my favorite examples. It's like having input on full blast all the time, and how much else is happening effects how well I deal with it and process it, and often how it's retained.
I find when I read new books I am constantly modifying my thinking and predicting the next page, which is useful for getting at the truth but also exhausting. It takes a long time to get through new materials.
Just another thought on filters: an important part of brain development is synaptic pruning. We start of with loads of connections and reduce them down to just the important ones. I'm loath to allegorise too closely literal synaptic connections with phenomenological connections between thoughts, but I think there's a shared principle that healthy development can involve getting rid of connections that are not useful to us.
I don’t yet have a good grasp of the dynamics behind synaptic pruning - in particular, why does the brain develop this way, and what drives the decision choice of what gets pruned? I’m going to have to start reading about this. I know that less synaptic pruning is believed to have some connection to autism, and it’s been supposed that larger head size could be a marker in kids. But I’m not sure to what extent there’s scientific evidence behind this or if it’s mostly conjecture. It’s of interest to me, because my baby pictures suggest both a change in my perception of others and the development of a blocky head in my first six months. Could well be a false flag but I would love to know.
@@jimwilliams3816 synaptic pruning happens at a cellular level, which is why I don't like to link it directly with our experience of connected thoughts. The cellular principle is "use it or lose it". The synapses that transmit the fewest signals are the most likely to be pruned. Again, I wouldn't want to translate that to our inner experience of the mind. On large head size, I have no idea. The bulk of the brain is glial cells, not neurons, but that may or may not relate to synaptic density.
“Use it or lose it” is what I presumed, and is similar to the “Fire together/wire together” maxim people cite with regard to the relationship between neuroplasticity and cognitive adjustment. It makes sense, though the notion that “use it or lose it” is a factor in very early childhood development is a scary idea. Which is not to say it’s not necessarily true; it simply places a lot of pressure on formative experiences. I know this to be a basis for trauma theory, and one of the things that always makes me uneasy about this is how readily it interfaces with what the “refrigerator mother” theory of autism, which was common in my youth. I don’t know if my mother had postpartum; given her capacity to dysregulate she could have. The one thing I’m sure of is that I have a predisposition to high stress hormones born of prenatal exposure to her own high levels. I know there’s science supporting this mechanism. I don’t know about head size either. It has a slightly preposterous feel to it, and I am aware that - what was it called? Cepholometry of craniometry? - was a thing with some criminologists. The brain of a famous (supposed) murderer is preserved at the local university. The whole concept feels dubious, but I suppose the cranium does at least have to adapt to whatever size the brain grows to, it would be a problem if it didn’t. But whether reduced synaptic pruning results in a measurably larger head...? Like you said, the mass of the brain is mostly other things. I once saw a description of how neural nets interface with the glial cells, and it had a strange “two objects occupying the same space at the same time” aspect I couldn’t comprehend. Just blathering out loud now! :)
This slots in pretty seamlessly with Monotropism Theory. When you have only one attention tunnel and can't compartmentalize stimuli, you can much more easily get overwhelmed but you also get more creativity and propagation of new information to different contexts. It also fits tidily with Heuristic Governor Theory, which says that Allistic neurons are set up to process information for a certain amount of time before cutting off and outputting a "good enough" result, Autistic (and ADHD) neurons are more prone to processing information until exhausted (both in the sense of being considered exhaustively and exhausting their energy). I suspect this may have something to do with chemical differences in our myelin sheaths, but there's not enough research on that yet. This one is actually measurable with things like upside down reversed text. Most Allistics pretty much have to learn how to read it from scratch because processing multiple orientation changes goes over the limit of their Heuristic Governor, whereas most Autistic people can read it almost as easily as normal text. This may also explain why we process language word-by-word or even sound-by-sound rather than phrase by phrase like Allistics (which in turn explains our much higher sensitivity to small changes in wording and our struggles with idiomatic speech). It's nice that all of our Autistic-lead theory seems to be converging on the same ideas even when approaching the subject from very different angles.
What happens with hypo sensitivity? My husband doesn’t experience the world as too intense. I do though, I’m constantly in burnout. My theory is that a lot of autism symptoms get worse from trauma. I had the most traumatic childhood possible for an ND person to go through. My husband’s parents loved him very very much. So he’s just ok with being his weird self and doesn’t pick up on or care about how others are responding. I pick up the subtlest micro expressions of negativity from others.
I also think this is a theory that should be looked at for dermatillomania as it is common in the autism/ADHD world. Focusing "too much" and literally feeling "too much".
Things getting ruined by one bad experience happens more often with me with media/entertainment/hobbies/people than with foods, but this is so real. And sensing way more information about my body than others do... so true! I tried once as a child that I can feel my internal sphincter of my bladder and my urinary tract, and the doctor told me I didn't because I couldn't. Or feeling my bones, the difference between milk in summer versus winter (for brands that the cows get to eat grass in the summer anyway), hothouse v. hydroponic v. vine tomatoes, different feel of different cats' fur, certain face muscle tics mean certain emotions, the feel and weight of new money v. 1yr old money v old money, being able to tell what material type of pan was used to cook food, etc... The list is endless.
I had to stop the video to comment or I would forget, as a good AuDHDer… but I think that, if we interest this with the Cognitive Gestalt Processing theory, as a different way to starting with blocks of built information and the exercise of adding chunks, deconstructing them to then reconstruct, it might help to fill in some gaps… I also think that it would be fascinating to have an autistic discussion group, just for fun to experiment with all those possibilities in different autistic experiences context
I would so love that. Cognitive processes are my obsession now, but as per the disclaimers at the start of this video, speculations on cognitive physiology and process can easily be misconstrued as suggesting that “this is how autistic minds work.” I’ve triggered people unintentionally that way, and I am sympathetic, because we get a lot of that. But it would be incredible to be able to discuss ideas in a forum where it’s understood that people are simply exploring theories, and not making declarations about other autistic people.
@@jimwilliams3816 exactly! I get it too why some people will not identify, as we’re all individuals, and like many other aspects of the autistic identity that present very differently from individual to individual. But for me, a someone with gestalt cognitive processing, that’s very much true.
When i heard that people with ASD have "a rich inner world," I immediately related to it. I think about it all the time as the way I want to explain my experience to others. This "intense world theory" seems to be a related idea, but in order to relate the mechanics of ASD to the observable behavior of ASD. I also relate to this more than Monotropism, which was discussed a lot on social media as the primary experience of ASD. I also experience monotropism, but this video is more commonly what is going on inside me. In fact, it makes me think that monotropism is almost a coping mechanism for the "intense world"
I really appreciate your take and expansion on this topic! I have watched as others have gotten "full" from what I have offered them in conversations. For me, with AuHD, I tend to info dump if I am not careful and, often with many creatives I've spoken to, I can watch their "overwhelm" meter fill up. My fiancé and I are working hard to find ways to Co-regulate with each other, our life style, and major changes. In the past, I learned that we, as autistics, were "missing an awareness bouncer"-basically the function that "turns down" all the information that isn't important enough to pass through, like a bouncer at a club. Since I came to understand that we are hyper aware of everything (the sub-conscious has this ability to pick up even what we can't consciously perceive and many on the spectrum can tap into that awareness farther and faster than other allistics). So, for me, creating an "artificial bouncer" to focus on what I can and can not affect/have control over. This helps me build a better "window of intolerance" for living life. However, I am still very "fragile", and some things it just takes one event to remind me of 45 years of similar issues and I can really get locked up in my head. Thank you for your content and to those growing in understanding more each day.
You saying you feel your bones reminded me im constantly blocking out the sensation of feeling my bones. Ugh 😂. But no it’s definitely a faster processing brain that picks up more at once. Existing can overwhelm me in a heartbeat if I let myself sink too deep into my senses. Plus to function on top of it. Whew.
This explains why my coping mechanism is straight out avoidance, and why I spent almost a decade of my life using weed to cope; I'm trying to reduce or prevent negative stimulus. This theory really rings true for me. You somehow put words to things that I've never been able to articulate. I don't have words for how valuable your videos are. Thank you.
I think it’s pretty amazing that some humans experience the world a little more intensely than I do. I have compassion for the challenges that presents, and at the same time and jealous of the ways that it must also enhance the human experience of existing in some ways.
This relates to the idea of high sensitivity for me. I see and hear more. Even at 46, I hear frequencies that only kids and teenagers hear. I track multiple conversations at a time. Then I hit a wall. Relatable.
Everything you're describing here I'd already accepted a long time ago. But having settled on that I do notice things and think about things more than others, it felt judgemental to try to presume some reason that others wouldn't. However, I recently seem to have stumbled onto the pieces that connected the rest for me. The best way I can describe it is "Theory of Multiple Possible Minds" So the "Theory of Mind" test is a well-known part of the autism assessment in children. This may be conducted in this manner: 1) A person in room places object somewhere out of view, maybe in a drawer 2) They leave the room 3) Another person moves the object to a different out of view location, maybe in a cabinet 4) The original person returns 5) The child is assessed for their understanding of where the person would look for the object, maybe by that person asking the child if they remember where they had put it In this setup, the assessor is looking for the child to say the first location, i.e. the drawer in this example. They would say that this demonstrates "Theory of Mind" and not be indicative of autism. But what this setup does demonstrate is: 1) The child assumes that the person who placed the object to think the same way they do 2) The assessor is looking for the child to demonstrate an assumption that they knowledge they have is both full and correct 3) The assessor is looking for the child to demonstrate a lack of empathy for the person who moved the object For one who thinks that they are either right or wrong, they will either assess the child to demonstrate "Theory of Mind" or not. For one who has "Theory of Only One Mind", they'll be very sure that anyone who answers differently than them has "No Theory of Mind". To them "Theory of Multiple Possible Minds" is exactly the same as "No Theory of Mind" And there's another name we give to people who assume that others think the way they do: Narcissist. The standard "Theory of Mind" test is truly a Narcissism test, and failing it is an indicator of Autism.
I have to wonder if the increased neuroplasticity (Which I heard mentioned in John Elder Robinson's book "Switched On" as a reason TMS was more effective in Autistic people, but nowhere else until today) is a reason autistic people often have hyperfixations, since while there are definitely regions for information processing or emotional regulation that some kind of disorder could mess with, it's harder to figure out what mental process causes some people to obsess over Fallout or Star Wars. A higher level of neuroplasticity making it easier for the brain to absolutely latch onto an interest and not let go until you had thought every possible thought there was to think about it could be a viable explanation.
10000% agree, today I felt so stuck, I had a talk with myself to dig into the problem and realized that over past 3 days I generated like 15 post it notes full of ideas/todo’s/stuff to research and I was so overwhelmed by all the stuff I set myself to do some time in the future. I had to take an hour of reset time to get rid of these and categorize them into my filing system in Notion. Also I realized I was super hungry and that I did not want to start any task, because my kitchen was messy. Solved it, moved on. But I spent in this state almost the whole day prior to the reset. GRR
I completely agree with this and even had what I see as an example of it today. My cousins were over and I was getting very quickly overstimulated. Recently my best solution to overstimulation has been to smoke a little weed or have a bit of an edible. My cousins were kind of opposed to it at first, but shortly after it kicked in, i was way less over stimulated because I wasn't capable of taking in as much stimulus. And I was able to act like I normally do when my cousins come over, when I have more time to mentally prepare beforehand. I don't know how to wrap up my thoughts here. Also, I'm still a bit high right now, so if this comment doesn't make sense, that's why
Completely relate! I love how cannabis is like magic that can turn you into a ‘normal person’ for a few hours. It’s so nice to have the mental break, and just experience life the way NT people do
Your comment makes total sense. Personally I wish there was a way to get the "turn down" effect without the 'high', because I actually don't really like that part
I think I get what you're saying. From a cognitive neuroscience point of view there are many automated processes that we don't experience. For example associating a set of shapes that you see with an invariant representation of an object, or anticipating the trajectory of a ball you see and coordinating that with proprioceptive input so you can move your hand to catch the ball. The processing that we're aware of is only the tip of the iceberg. Sometimes an automatic process might require conscious effort, for example if a person has had a stroke and needs to relearn how to use their arm (in the process "rewiring" parts of the intact brain to take over from the damaged part). A process that is sometimes unconscious rising to conscious awareness could be interpreted as evidence of a deficit in an automatic process. For example, an automatic filter that assigns salience to inputs. If this stopped working, all inputs would be equally salient and bandwidth would be used up quicker. I remember when I was a kid I was trying to explain that my brain felt like one of those Swatch watches with the transparent case so you could see all the workings. Normal brains kept all that hidden but mine didn't and unlike the Swatch it wasn't cool and interesting it was distressing, more like a body with no skin on walking around. The nub of it for me is whether the information coming in is useful and whether I can achieve useful processing. Unfortunately the usual answer is "no" for me. I'm not having brilliant new ideas for research or to reorganise my flat. I'm usually just going round and round about something that I've thought through before but forgotten I already thought about it. Moreover, I'm usually not reaching a conclusion and moving on.
I’m sorry the Swatch thing doesn’t work well for you. I do have the interoceptive tendency to feel individual processes more than I gather most people do, and I am aware now of when my nervous system sends me into fight of flight, though I didn’t used to be. But I can also pick up intersting data points (the only potential upside to a really bad interval), and pattern matching my way into an improved understanding of my mind is my obsessive interest these days. It’s not much good for improving my autopilot though, and improving my manual control takes a long time. The main reason I barfed all that out is to get to this observation: I saw a video on implicit bias when I was sitting for jury selection, and in it they put the ratio of conscious processing to subconscious processing at 40 bits to 11 million bits. Obviously most activity is under the surface in general, and I’ve come to think that the question for neurodivergent people is: how do conscious and subconscious interface, and how does our way of doing this differ from neurotypical minds? There are surely multiple variations on this across all cognitive profiles.
@@jimwilliams3816 if those numbers are correct it would only take 0.00036% of the subconscious processing to fail to result in double the load on the conscious system. Not sure those numbers even have face validity though. It's hard to put a number on information processing. One letter is one byte in ASCII, and when we read we're not just identifying the letters but processing meaning and syntax and interrupting the author's intent etc. Maybe some of those are automated but I'm pretty sure they're conscious. Anyway. My point is that it only takes a tiny difference in automated processing to make us very different people, and it may be different for each of us.
Yeah, this checks out with my experience with my ADHD. I run into a lot of problems where I seem to find _extra_ social cues that aren't actually there, probably due to my anxiety, and then people get very off-put by the intensity of my reactions. There's never been a question that my emotions seem _much_ more intense than most. As for amounts of things I notice? Typically, when I try to explain _why_ I got angry, the explanation ends up taking a full paragraph to describe, even though for me, it was an instant and instinctive connection. Things just seem obvious to me that _don't_ for everyone else.
You are a genius! You explain my experience and my partners experiences EXACTLY. I shared one of your other videos with him and he was like, how is this guy me?!
This year I learned that I'm both autistic + ADHD, at 54 years old. The assessment has answered many nagging mysteries and explained some uncomfortable memories. When I began telling friends (in my teens) that the sound of plastic shopping bags was disgusting is when I began seeing that look on a neurotypical person's face that clearly conveyed "What is wrong with you?!" and "you're crazy/complicated". Don't know how many times I have been told "you're too sensitive" or have been asked to explain why I don't eat certain foods. Explaining that the texture was uncomfortable would elicit that same perplexed facial expression. The tone of a person's voice is another area of sensitivity for me. Accents are a multiverse of experiences for me. I get lost in accents. As for "sensitivity" I believe that I can detect deceptiveness or "fakery" much better than most neurotypical people can. But, others consider me negatively conspiratorial for voicing those perceptions. Now that I have begun talking with family and friends about this neurodivergent assessment I'm paying close attention (as, of course, my brain always does!) to the difference between those who express understanding/support (they turn out to be fellow neurodivergent's) and those who reply "well, aren't we all on the spectrum!" which seems to confirm that they are actually neurotypical. The chats with others living with ADHD &/or autism have been a comfort.
Neuroplasticity! Thank you for another keyword to assist with describing what I go through. The more I learn and recognize my differences the more people I find that don't have them and the more explaining I need do. Two things I do related to this subject: 1: Compartmentalization - I can store suites of information and personality traits such that I could play a game as all the players and 'not know' what the other players are up to. - When I was younger I would often talk about myself in the third person etc 2: Dimensionality - I experience multiple timelines and alternate realities, viewing possible realities in cinematic detail, but also encounter intermittent chunks of lost experiences - I've described it as spheres of attention, vehicles of myself leaving myself to go off and experience perhaps specific goals. When they're gone, I lose, but when they return I then "remember" - and this shedding and returning is occurring potentiality constantly. A younger me gave into spirituality and magic, time travel, alternate reality travel etc - imo unacceptable conclusions. Well this video could inspire solutions. I'm encountering Neuroplasticity. 1: Reform neuropathways to compartmentalize 2: The dimensions I experience aren't elsewhere. It's all in my mind, and as I reform neuropathways I sense and visualize those changes. I lose parts because their access is perhaps literally blocked
It sounds like, based on this theory, maybe allistics would have a pre-processing filter that we don't, so the processing power they have isn't as easily overwhelmed. It seems to me a distinction without a difference, because ultimately the result is that we're overwhelmed with more input than we can process, and allistics aren't.
I guess that is why Shadow work helps me a lot. Pre-exposing myself to negative emotions in a safe environment helps me a lot, but yeah, it never goes away :/
Honestly study dialectics and materialism. It did wonders for my autism and understanding the world and realizing we are more in touch with the world as it actually exists: a complicated web of competing forces that need to be resolved to avoid conflict and advance harmony!
As always, incredible content. Thank you for taking the time and effort to so eloquently explain the theory and your experience. Your work is fantastically helpful!
Overall I think this makes sense. Assorted thoughts that came up while listening: I just was listening to Robert Sapolsky talk about an inate human bias toward the negative, because it is more stimulating. This coming from what I know to be the case, that we would prefer to think there is a tiger in the bushes and be wrong, than think there isn’t and be wrong. In terms of too much information and awareness of inputs: apparently the ratio of conscious thought processing vs. subconscious processing is about 40 bits per second vs. 11 million bits per second. If we have easier access to the subconscious chatter than average, this would tend to overwhelm us. In the same vein: a computerized learning system, once it has worked out certain parameters, is very efficient, say working with the understanding that a bird is a creature with feathers and a bill, which flies. Introduce an anomaly, say a penguin, which has feathers, a bill and swims, and suddenly the processing demands increase massively. If we do better at incorporating new information, it likely still involves intensive processing, and the difference may be that we’re like that all the time. I submit that this increased processing demand has a lot to do with why people balk when their implicit biases are challenged. Finally, the idea of increases neuroplasticity intrigues me, and I’m interested in if there is science to support this. It has been supposed that neurodivergent brains have more short range neural connections and fewer long range ones, and also that the long range connections tend to skew to the left hemisphere (apparently male brains in general have some skew). I think about all this because I observed of myself decades ago that, while I often had trouble accessing parts of my emotions, if I had a really intense emotion, sometimes it would open up access to that area, and I could feel and analyze those emotions for a little while. This sort of thing tends to get framed in psychological terms by therapists, but it feels fairly structural to me, like opening up a problematic pathway, more neuroscience than psychology. (Anyway, psychology is neuroscience.) Some thoughts, anyway.
@@jimwilliams3816 good thought but "psychology is neuroscience" is like "traffic planning is motor mechanics". Both involve cars but at very different scale and answering very different questions.
Lots of things are a matter of framing - human behavior can be viewed through the lens of philosophy, psychology, neuroscience or religion/spirituality. All of these shed light in different ways, and it’s been my observation that different individuals are often most comfortable with a particular language. Mine is generally neuroscience, but psychology and, Tina small degree, philosophy offer language that is more instruction at understanding certain ideas. My main point with psychology and neuroscience being the same thing is that cognition and behavior is heavily rooted in physiology. I get the sense that most people envision the brain as this dark empty space filled with intangible and ephemeral thoughts and feelings, which are all freely chosen. Of course, this is not the case. If someone found they had a solid, rational reason to pick up a hammer and slam it down on their other hand, they would still find doing so extremely difficult or impossible. Psychology is heavily rooted in instincts that we don’t fully understand and cannot outright control. As long as we use it as a language intended to help us understand why we do what we do, with an eye toward making changes where we can, it’s on fairly solid ground. Unfortunately, it seems to me that it is often invoked in a way that suggests that everything about behavior is learnable and thus changeable. That’s especially frustrating to those of us whose mental health profiles deviates significantly from expected and/or optimal “norms.” (I’m not specifically talking about autism here, I have many irons in the fire.) I would say that the feelings of moral failure that this attitude that these attitudes invoke are best described in psychological terms.
@@jimwilliams3816 I think the problem you're describing is not an incorrect framing but a misuse of psychology. CBT emphasises behaviourism but even a CBT practitioner would recognise there are fixed, unconscious forces at play as well as conscious or semi conscious interpretations of the world that can be negotiated in talk therapy. Actual psychologists study both from the starting point of measurable behaviour or describable experiences. My issue is that real neuroscience concerns measurements of the physical brain, not allusions to behaviour of subjective phenomenology that seems more "biological" and less conscious. It is very hard to operationalise a high level behaviour or experience to the extent that you can do experiments on it that are measuring the brain (imaging, electrical recording, lesion studies etc.). That's why we understand primary sensory and motor systems much better than, say, emotional regulation. And emotional regulation is usually studied in a very simplified way like a gambling task, which is quite far removed from something like shutting down because an essay question has too many possible answers. I'm not saying it's impossible but I've worked in brain imaging for twenty years and few papers give us anything applicable or reproducible. So I just want to distinguish between using the term neuroscience properly, to describe literal, physical measurements of the brain, and figuratively, to describe behaviours and experiences that appear more biological than psychological. The letter is still in the realm of psychology.
Perhaps behavioral biology, what Sapolsky taught, is a better term. At the same time, it’s true that neuroscience has serious limits in what it can measure, but that isn’t necessarily because it’s not measurable, or even that neuroscience won’t eventually be the tool that does so. The capacity to look for hard science markers in Physics has increased markedly in the last 50 years, for example. It’s still nowhere near the point where theories can be thoroughly proven, but any place where theories can be tested puts cognitive science way ahead of where it used to be, which was and often still is unproven conjecture. I grew up in a Behaviorist era, and the extent to which professionals could formulate their own hypotheses and have them accepted as moderately established fact has done msssive damage to human beings since the beginning. This is why I’m pretty heavily triggered by any suggestion that psychology as it is currently practiced should accept as settled any matter that cannot be corroborated by some form of scientific means. It’s still an astonishingly self confident field, when IMO it has every reason to be extremely humble.
@@jimwilliams3816 with you. Never heard of behavioural biology but, yeah. The whole point of science is that it is constantly adjusting theory to new data. It's done by humans though. Ramon y Cajal said something like it's his job as an old scientist to defend the orthodoxy and it's the young ones' job to prove him wrong.
I'm in the process of getting my diagnosis for ADHD and Autism, nevertheless, I'm always watching videos and getting information about neurodivergence, sometimes it fits, sometimes it doesn't, however, I always have that feeling that it fits just to a certain point, not entirely. It's amazing that your video, this specific time, FITS COMPLETELY. Thank you for this.
I've never been evaluated for autism, but what you said makes total sense to me. I used to try to guess alllll the potholes in life ahead of me, and I would get totally overwhelmed. An ex-boyfriend had to explain it would be less distressing to just go at life, if you hit a pothole, ok well deal with it, but wasting time thinking of every possible pothole causes me distress and you probably won't even think of the one you'll hit anyway. It really changed how I thought. (Although it's a hard habit to break, I still try to cover every base!)
I definitely understand many social rules and do (after many years of practice) respond mostly correctly to social cues. What you said about having more information running in the background that disrupts the process or (my Achilles Heel!) start to overthink a process, resonated with me. As I'm anaylsing the situation later I can tell exactly "where I went wrong," in a social situation, but until I have time to process the day, I am often ar a loss as to what may have gone haywire 😅
@fariahcriss5696 I heard this the other day that's apparently a saying in the autism community (the autism community that actually is of people with autism) and might even have come from temple grandin - and it's a criticism of "research" and "helping" efforts for autism (and yes, usually from and for the helpers perspective) like the often criticized by autistic people organization Autism Speaks. It's "nothing ABOUT us, WITHOUT us". Meaning don't do autism related stuff without considerable input and involvement with a broad range of autistic people and their experiences.
A super useful take-away for me from my psych undergrad (cog) was a little evolutionary context- imagine a tribe of 100-150 people. What benefit would there be to having a few of those people be super sensitive to changes in food and water, constantly improving things and looking for dangers- if you think of humans as an insect colony then suddenly a statistical occurrence of asd and adhd start to look like they might be wildly beneficial to have in small numbers doing our Neurodivergent thing to diversify and maximize survival strats. (Love your work, great video, boy do we need some social change to save all these canaries)
9:17 Alternatively, we are hypersensitive to stimuli that does not register as strongly to others. I do notice uncomfortable sensations in my skin and airways that others may not register within themselves unless I point them out. I think of it more as a heightened allergic response to external stimuli. Loud music at bars and clubs is too much sound that would hurt my eardrums. Fragrances are chemicals that I inhale and irritate the lining of my lungs. Alcohol in all forms tastes awful, and people have given me many beverages to try, and it makes my body upset even though I always spit it out. Clothing that rubs against my skin slightly as I walk will give me a rash if I ignore that texture feels off. This also occured with psychotropic prescriptions I tried many years ago where I would get paradoxical effects and come out treatment-resistant on the other side.
I’ve always said the emotions wheel is designed for NT people who can’t identify complex and conflicting emotions at once. A couple others commented about feeling like others had the deficit, not us. I think that’s the frustrating part of high IQ with spiky profile. It’s taken me 4 years since diagnosis to develop better context and understanding. Lots of relatable stuff here. Thanks for sharing.
When I was young, when I was overloaded/shutting down I had the visual thought of my mind being like a clockwork machine that was breaking down as it was unable to keep up with the new information. If you think about those connectable cog toys you might of played as a kid, it was easy to add too many things and stop the system from turning. Now the analogy of a shutdown being like adding/replacing a cog in the wrong place makes it sound less like I'm a bad adapter and more that I tinker with my brain to the point that sometimes it just stops workings.
The Intense World Theory would dovetail quite nicely with anatomical observation that the pruning of neurons that generally occurs in early childhood is less than in neurotypical people--we (or at least many of those of us who have had their brains dissected) have more neurons, but(presumably) less organized.
This makes sense to me. When I am parking in a new place, I have to turn down the volume of my car stereo because otherwise I can't think straight. Bright lights hurt my eyes, but only when I have both eyes open. This in particular never made sense to me when growing up, because obviously the one eye is still getting hit by an amount of sunlight that was painful when I had two eyes open, but now I'm pretty sure that it's just an overwhelming amount of visual stimulation. I'm fortunate that my food aversions fade after around a decade, but I've had my share of those too.
It's like picking up social cues, there are a lot of different cues that I pick up, but the person only mean 1 of them. And sometimes it's hard to select the right one. Exemple: I really enjoy sarcasm, but if someone I don't know comes with a sarcastic comment in an education facility of some kind, and the sarcasm could be interpreted as genuine and not sarcastic, I will choose to ignore the sarcasm because it's more damaging if the person was genuine and I respond sarcastically than otherwise. But I've picked up on the sarcastic take and the context and the environment and so on
This reminds me of a realization i had recently. Ive never liked driving. But ive identified that i do like driving! I just hate stop lights - because they are a schrodingers box of stop and go at the same time, and i cant mentally prepare from them. Driving on a highway away from civilization, or a route with only stop signs? Simple and enjoyable! 20 stoplights at dusk? Unbearable suffering, lol.
There was a term i had found a while ago; Habituation. It's for when the brain tunes out certain stimuli it is repeatedly exposed to. I think this is also part of the problem. There was a study done on the skin reacitvity of autistic people exposed to stimuli. I cant remember what the results were. My ears never stop hearing things. There were noises at work that other people wouldnt be annoyed by, that i couldn't just stop hearing, hum of the lights and the hum of the freezers. I also started wearing a visor to help with the constant barage of light. We are too aware and we never stop being aware.
@@anlongyi This is one of the reasons on the back of my mind I still worry that my diagnosis was incorrect. Hyper vigilance is a response to trauma. I was raised in a deeply evangelical, fear of hell, house, which I recognize now was incredibly traumatic for me. From my understanding, hyper vigilance could easily result in an experience that’s just like this, where you feel like it’s your responsibility to be aware of everything. It’s a survival mechanism. That leads to overstimulation and burnout. And maybe we find out someday that autism has other mechanics that lead to extreme overstimulation and burnout. Maybe it’s a whole bunch of different sets mechanisms for different people and that’s why autism can present so differently. But what we have all lumped together now as the autism spectrum are all ways that humans are chronically extremely overstimulated. Kind of like depression. There are many forms of depression. There are chemical imbalances which are chronic and severe. There’s situational depression which can also be severe but more of a result of circumstances. I struggle somewhere in the middle. I certainly have a chemical imbalance that makes me prone to struggle with depression but the severe periods are usually a combination of that plus situational. It’s all depression. Even as a parent now it’s fascinating to watch my kids develop some of the same characteristics I have that I associate with autism though, which would lead me to think there’s still some genetic component. Sorry, long answer 😅 I find the overlap between trauma and autism incredibly interesting & very difficult to understand.
@@GenericArtDad Yasssssss. Thank you for your long response. Absolutely that overlap between AuDHD and trauma and something about fried nervous systems in general. I suspect one day they'll be in the same DSM category. And how a lot of "autistic" behaviours ARE stress responses - i.e. stressed people act more autistic (less socially responsive, more rigid behaviours, safety seeking etc). I'm late diagnosed as well, so fully relate to the imposter syndrome. And wondering whether autism characteristics I had as a child were masked or underneath dissociation, or if it originated from childhood itself, and whether that's an important distinction or not if using strategies for autism ultimately helps relieve my burnout 🤷 (speaking of depression...). re genetics - I'm not an expert, so don't quote me, but I tend to wonder if there's a epigenetic component - i.e. heritable traits external to DNA code itself. And I wonder if it's possible to "inherit" a nervous system? :O Anyway, thanks so much for your content. I discovered your channel recently, and you've been really on point! I wish you and your family wellness and hope your self-journey continues to flourish.
I always related to River Tam from Firefly. When Simon takes her to get that brain scan and he says "she feels everything all the time, she can't not" I turned to my partner at the time and said that's what it feels like
One of my coping mechanisms is excessive self-soothing dialogue. I tell myself irritating stimulus is not important and I tell myself that I am okay. It's comparable to "pure O" OCD, where the compulsion is focused on controlling one's thoughts rather than enacting behaviors. My theory is that my ability to identify what's important to pay attention to and what's not has led me to having only a couple meltdowns my whole life. That or I'm on the severely low support needs end of the spectrum. However, this only serves to perpetuate the burnout I've been trying to escape for the last decade.
This instantly makes me start thinking for those of us that are AuDHD like myself, and discover ADHD much earlier and is usually in the foreground and autism background (so to speak) does it ease the excess of information slightly? But then you have tug of war and contradictory behaviour that you’re thinking about and externally doing at all times? Thanks for sharing this, adds so much and lots to think on
😂 I literally have told doctors, for DECADES, that I can feel my bones hurting. None of them believed me until 2020 when I saw my new GP then a spine doctor then a rheumatologist. Turns out, PEOPLE CAN TOTALLY FEEL THEIR BONES HURTING because that's what literally happens with arthritis. So yeah to all the others who didn't believe me... come apologize for your "bones don't have nerves, you can't possibly feel them."
Also to anybody dealing with pain in your bones TRUST YOUR BODY you are feeling the pain, in your bones, it is 100% a thing. "it appears that both the periosteum and the marrow cavity of bones must be innervated by primary afferent neurons capable of transducing and transmitting nociceptive information. These bone afferent neurons provide the central nervous system with information that elicits primary pain arising from bone." www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4844598/#:~:text=Thus%2C%20it%20appears%20that%20both,primary%20pain%20arising%20from%20bone.
I vibe with this so hard I wish I could express to you how seen I feel ! I feel seen watching ALL ur vids but this one I vibe with ! cuz I to have never felt like I am missing something necessarily it’s like too much ! My brain gets overwhelmed
this is a really great explanation of what its actually like to have and experience autism and i hope this theory catches on. so much of understanding of mental disorders is always from the outsiders perspective and therefore tends to not actually understand whats going on. also for the being able to feel things other people cant, i can feel food being digested in my stomach and it feels different depending on the foods.
A personal example taking in excess information. Babysitting my 3 nephews who are all screaming and playing while the 4 dogs i am also babysitting are going ballistic at the door cause they saw a bike going down the road while I’m cooking steak for the kids and myself and my grandma calls me asking to talk to my parents even though they are out camping with my sister and weve told her this multiple times weeks in advance. This situation was extremely stressful because I am taking all of it in at once, i am cognizant of what everyone and everything is doing and what needs to be done, but my brain doesnt prioritize and i cant hear my thoughts (not because of the loudness of the situation, but because of the thoughts on how to handle it all talking at once. I cant make sense of it and i get overwhelmed
yea, i thought the same years ago though. it felt oddly strong to have fallen in love and stuff and i couldnt get rid of the general idea, that, despite everything else was normal, my feelings hit me like a wall, while others couldnt understand my sorrows. And i was already very socially active back then, so, it couldnt have been about a lack of emotional knowledge or introspection capabilities. But it's hard to tell whether it's still the case. Not only has time passed significantly, but also my social activity went way down. Maybe it was just a puberty thing? Maybe it was just a development-dependent adhd thing? (the PFC is maturing till 30 after all)
Omg! I didn’t realize some people couldn’t feel their bones! I get what I call “bone tired.” That’s when I’m so overworked and running on so little sleep that my bones feel achy. I thought other people felt this because of the expression “rest your bones.” Is it an autistic thing? The flu is miserable for me too because of the pain I feel in my bones too. I’ve luckily only had it twice, at 10 and at 34 but the bone pain is next level for me.
I get told that I'm "overthinking" things sooooo often. I tell everyone else that I'm actually thinking a normal amount, and they're all actually underthinking. It's partially a joke, but seriously, I think that plays into the theory you're describing here.
Makes a lot of sense to me; not that every autistic person always lacks XYZ, but that autistic people aren’t in the middle of the bell curve (so to speak) when it comes to XYZ. They may be to the left where they lack some things, they may be to the right where they have a surplus of things, but the point is that allistic are in the middle and we’re not
7:11 Right, I experience the same, and it is a maladaptive coping strategy. Avoidance cannot be practiced at all times and severely limits our opportunities for growth and expansion. Yes, overstimulation, especially due to unpleasant external stimuli, needs to be countered with other techniques and strategies to downregulate stress responses and triggered reactions. This is where lifestyle interventions come in so that we can better process our emotions and thoughts as we receive blindsiding amounts of new information in real time. We also need to consciously and intentionally disentangle singular negative experiences that arose during specific past circumstances from our general associations with certain people, places, things, and ideas. Relaxation techniques are very important here as well as monitoring our thoughts and impulses in a detached way so that we can release physical tension the moment that our reactions to discomfort intensify. This is not to say that we must endure environments that are simply not suitable for us; in fact, we must walk away fast from places that do not serve us. That being said, we need to build up our reserves of calm and equanimity to be able to navigate the surprise storms of the outside world without having a meltdown because our nervous systems naturally take in much more information from the environment than people who are not neurodivergent.
This is all very interesting. I would like to hear more. Years ago I studied world-modeling theories from Sue Blackmore, and recently, AI cognitive theories. But I'm been unable to apply these to autism. But it sounds like you have been developing one. I agree with your intensity of perceptions and exhausting revision after new knowledge. I would be interested in more, and how to communicate these theories to therapists, etc. I am finding it hard to get them to listen to these cognitive theories.
I think the explanation of the processing power "deficit" you're looking for is that our automated processing (subconscious processing) has more neural pathways resulting in more outputs for our conscious processing to sift through. It's not a processing power deficit it's a processing method difference that results in more varied outputs at the cost of raw speed. So it's less that we take in more information but rather we discard/ignore less information and thus actually have to process more information total. Does that help?
I have absolute zero spontaneity; I have to plan everything and all possible contingencies. Any unexpected thing is extremely (even dangerously) destabilizing for me. This is, in my opinion, an important autistic trait. My instinct is not working well; I have to consciously analyze everything instead of being guided by my instinct ... when I have little time to react.
For years I've said my meltdowns are a normal response to an abnormal world. Also, I've had the privilege to move to the middle of nowhere, with no people around except my husband, and I'm a different person when there's no one to mask for.
This is so validating but the more I learn about how AuDHD has impacted my life, the more despair I feel. I need help and my therapist is an awesome person but i don't think a person half my age, not going through menopause can really relate and understand and help in really deep and impacted ways. I'm 2E (3E if you separate asd and adhd 😂) w/CPTSD, over 40, perimenopausal, and just diagnosed last year. My background is even more atypical having been passed around in foster care as a teenager (12 different homes, some of which i lived in twice), bullied throughout school, terrible grades and high SAT scores, both natural parents having severe mental health issues, and poverty. I never had a support system before being let out into the world b4 I even reached the age of 18 and I never learned about that until now. the domino effect it's had on me is something I can't even explain. My brain is brilliant but everything else about me is garbage. This video is so relatable to a degree that I can't even express, so thank you for that. Can you recommend any particular type of therapy I should look into??
This is so real. It also reminds me how "sensitivity" or "being sensitive" often is used with the negative connotation of being weak and thus not being able to handle situations/stimuli. However, high sensitivity more specifically means being highly receptive and thus easily affected/changed by stimuli- which is basically a major point you were making.
For most people, anything that describes other people IS negative (and everything that describes themself IS positive).
George Carlin had a bit about this, e.g. anyone driving slower than you is an idiot, but anyone that passes you is a MANIAC!
There's a great CZcams channel called "TRYING BEINGS: From Life's Origins to Total Jerks" in which Jeremy Sherman PhD uses the term Hero-Bots to describe these people, because they automatically assume they're the hero of every situation.
So yeah, to those people, they're the "proper" amount of sensitive: anyone that's more sensitive is touchy and anyone less sensitive is a jerk.
And of course because they already know that they're right, these people are also completely incapable of taking in any new information and seeing things from any other point of view.
They are the perfect example of "inflexible thinking" that autistic people are accused of, as they'll endlessly repeat the same list of reasons they know they're in response to any challenge, but never actually engage with any possibility of how they may be wrong even if only to disprove it.
I am a raw nerve
It’s like an emotional sunburn
That feeling when someone says “you’re overthinking”
🙃 then resisting the impulse to respond “thinking probably looks like overthinking to an underthinker.” 😅
PS I appreciate you mentioning your experience with foods. I definitely experience this to the point of frustration and embarrassment.
Going out to eat with friends and family becomes quite overwhelming sometimes, balancing social expectations with my own comfort/limits/preferences.
Thank you for putting words together to describe and relay this
Oh yeah that! It used to infuriates me when people said that. I became an engineer because they're mostly paid to overthink things 😂
This is exactly how I've felt when it comes to my autistic experience. It's always felt more like everyone else was at a deficit and I couldn't understand why they had so much difficulty processing information. It felt like people were guessing to fill in the gaps.
Omg YES i feel like there’s no way to explain it in real life without sounding arrogant but this is exactly how I feel, it always seemed liked everybody else lacked something
That is exactly what it is, and it’s called heuristics. The allistic brain is designed for efficacy of resources (energy, time), so if they can make a generalization and get away with it most of the time, then they will make it. Which isn’t to say autistic people can’t make generalizations or that allistics can’t unlearn those generalizations, but it seems there’s a trend that allistics are more prone to generalizations than those that aren’t
I explain to people that it appears to me as though Neurotypical people think in a straight line, from A to B. And that line tends to get clouded by their emotions.
Whereas people with Autism like me think in every dimension of the multiverse simultaneously.
I may experience delayed processing, but that's just because my processing is way more elaborate. To me, in this case, neurotypical people experience a deficit, not me.
I've had people remark about how when facing a problem or dilemma that I multiply it into countless other problems, but then also acknowledge that I end up finding the problems that resolve each other with just a little effort, leaving what is then a quick and efficient path to my goal.
How long it took me to get to that quick and efficient path though.....
@@SeeingBackward Username absolutely checks out, lol
And my processing has also been described from the outside similarly to yours and c.ferraro's, so glad I found this video
what if we’ve been looking in the wrong place for autism? what if it’s not just a brain thing, but a general nervous system thing? hypersensitivity, overstimulation, pattern recognition, etc. all these have to do with senses. neurotypicals having less input data, but relatively similar processing power means they can sort thru it faster.
i’ve got a super strong sense of smell, taste, color differentiation, & sensitivity with light, sound, textures, & temperature. there might even be a whole thing with higher emotional sensitivity/general empathy due to literally feeling more
This is where, as someone with an overactive nervous system, I found the concept of the triune brain useful. The nervous system is the oldest cognitive system, and the limbic system more or less evolved on top of that, with the cortex evolving most recently. But they all still work together, and there was never an overall structural redesign of an increasingly complex system. When you keep piling functionality onto a piece of software without fixing structural issues that arise, it eventually becomes unstable. The upshot is that the nervous system is not well suited for many of the tasks it is now asked to help with, and that’s true for everyone. But some of us develop more or different issues.
Since monotropism was introduced as an autistic concept, there’s been some debate about whether autism is best described as a monotropic condition or as issues with the nervous system. Different autistic people say one or the other, though most have a foot in both worlds. It’s pretty clearly more than one thing - I’m somewhat monotropic, but have pretty big nervous system issues. Even there, it manifests less for me as sensory issues and more as dysregulation. Lots of variations in people.
@@jimwilliams3816that’s so interesting!!! thanks :)
the nervous system IS part of the brain tho? I agree that wayyyyy too many people assume autism is purely neurological (or psychosomatic, "you can do it if you try") without realizing that it is ALSO a sensory processing disorder that goes hand in hand with it. Also tied with autism is the way you process vitamin D, dopamine/attention, and a range of overlapping conditions like anxiety/depression/bpd/adhd, gi, eds, etc
I believe that there are many different ways “disorders” with which a body can be wired entirely differently to prioritize mental processes over physical/external ones. This is what autism is. I believe we have too little understanding of dna, and that there will always be a treble dna strand that causes a specific group of “disorders” in a person, which always includes their autism. I know from experience of myself that the group EDS+MCAS+POTS=AUTISM is one example of the body working in a way that’s shorter lasting, but more energy efficient in the short term, to allow for increased brain function. I know that Marfan’s syndrome (often+hyperthyroidism) is an entirely separate connective tissue condition that accomplishes the same goal of short term efficiency. almost always resulting in autism. The only reason that such varying genetic differences would evolve into the same result is through natural selection, making this AN ADAPTATION, NOT A MISTAKE. More and more people are being born autistic and natural processes don’t make mistakes, especially not that last this long. When the human body has one deficit, the benefit it causes can ALWAYS be traced. We see this in every bodily difference. It truly is common around us, and I learn more, it becomes clear to me that EVERY GREAT THINKER OF HISTORY WAS AUTISTIC. All over earth there are species who have evolved to have patterns where individuals are born who have different instincts. Think of the evenly dispersed patterns through generations that disabilities show up in. Bees have a cycle of producing the right amount of individuals with differently geared brain types to benefit their society. THAT IS WHAT THIS IS. WE HAVE EVOLVED BECAUSE WE ARE NEEDED FOR OUR SPECIES’ SURVIVAL. With the absurd point we’ve come to, look around and see how more minds like ours are the only thing that could save us.
Actually there's a lot of evidence showing autism and adhd is correlated with differences in metabolism and the levels of neurotransmitters but there is hardly any research that follows these breadcrumbs very far.
I think it should be studied more because I think this is why some neurodivergent people find a lot of help for how they feel by taking certain types of vitamin B, or N acetyl-L-cysteine, or other things that affect neurotransmitter levels.
I taught my councilor what I call fires/not fires thinking. She wanted to know why I always use so much of my bandwidth on things I'm worried about. I said 'if there are seven things that are your responsability or even your survival in front of you and 4 of them are on fire, how much energy do you devote to dealing with the not-fires?' now, imagine you are aware that any one of the not-fires could become a fire it just hasn't caught yet. and you think that if you learn more you will be better able to anticipate and prevent fires... but what you learn only tells you all the other things that can go wrong, and now that new info taints all your other knowledge it's suddenly connected to in your head. because our minds don't just toss new info into a corner we incorporate it into our patterns... even if we have to rebuild into a new pattern to incorporate it.
Wow this is so true! What a great way to put this! I never know how to word things to NT people, especially therapists so this is great
Jesus. So true. Thank you for sharing how you conceptualize it, it's helpful.
I'm sure that makes perfect sense to a lot of people on this particular channel on first reading.... But you say you "taught" it to your councilor, I wonder how much effort that took?
wtf
Fuuuuck...this is me
It's probably why even though I'm a psychologist for years that only recently I have noticed my autistic traits. I never related a lot to what were talked about when I saw studies about autism specially because it was focused on kids. When I saw more adults talking their experiences, that's when it clicked.
And it was even more difficult because of how I don't struggle with social interactions, actually having people say how good I am at it. Saying autistic people can't deal with social interactions is such a misleading thing to say and doesn't really tell about the whole experience people could have in the spectrum.
Same here. I grew up around a variety of autistic people my age. While I knew instinctively that we had something in common and I always felt like an outcast despite my good friends, I still viewed these kids as "other." When I started looking into it and realized I related to other adults (and learned more about what autism actually is), it was both upsetting and freeing. I still struggle with feeling like I'm "not autistic enough." Theories that focus more on sensory processing bring me a lot of comfort.
@@NoiseDay That feeling of "not autistic" enough is SO strong. I have that with dyslexia as well.
I think having good social skills and learning how to communicate with everybody made me feel like a cameleon. I relate mostly with autistic adults nowadays, but I have learned so much through my life how to be around NTs that I don't feel far from them. It's a great skill to have, but didn't help me start seeing myself as autistic even though it becomes more obvious the more I look into it.
Regarding socialization, would you say that we autists have less of a built-in intuition for how to navigate communication with allists, but that those of use who are good at it have developed a strong direct understanding of it? I’m curious about your experience.
How conscious are you of how you are communicating as it happens?
@@EMLtheViewer From what I understand, the communication mishaps is present in both sides exactly because of how we communicate differently. People on the spectrum have to make an effort to understand and communicate better with allistics as well as allistics will have to do the same to understand and communicate better with autistic people.
Everybody may have certain difficulties trying to communicate even if their brains function more simmilarly, but it's like the difference between idk, someone from Mexico talking to someone from Spain versus someone from Mexico trying to understand someone from Brazil speaking portguese. They will understand some stuff, but there are more effort there to make it happen.
But considering how people on the spectrum tends to overanalyze stuff, that would explain why when it clicks for us, we sometimes see these interactions in a more conscious way.
Talking about my experience, I've "always" noticed how people behave. I notice their moods, mannerisms, tendencies etc. I know most of people's intentions when we speak and can handle interactions in a way that feels pleasant both ways generally.
There is a certain level of consciousness during the interactions, but after so many years, it's less of an effort and more of a trained skill. The thing is, I feel that way interacting with EVERYBODY, probably because of how I'm "trained" to be able to interact with everyone, always having that active consciousness in every word, but in a way I can handle fine.
TL;DR: Both types of people communicate differently.
Autistics who learn to communicate better with allistics can see it in a more structured way and do it so more counsciously and with more effort.
I do it counsciously, but it's not a struggle for me personally.
@@EMLtheViewerSocializing is a learned skill like any other. In my experience, it took more time and effort to become proficient at it, but I can now confidently say that I am more skilled at talking to new people than the average person. I see them, their patterns of speech, how they dress/present themselves, and I know what they are intentionally signaling and what they are signaling natively (or without conscious choice). Using those patterns and relating to them is the basis for empathy in social communication.
Allistic individuals have a small advantage starting out, but unless they’ve done the work to improve that skill set they will eventually plateau. Autistic individuals can become incredibly charismatic and charming if they put the work in and get appropriate feedback in the early stages of social development.
8Gb of RAM can be plenty of memory for most CPUs. My gaming laptop runs a i9 CPU. Without 16-32 GB of RAM, it feels slow. And when you get into really powerful applications and games, you need 64Gb of RAM. When your brain is running faster than the RAM you were born with, it's not a deficit. It's just an understanding that it takes time to process the same types of information through the powerful software and CPU we have. At least, that's what my autistic brain thought up from this video.
I appreciate this analogy
Aside from the fact that you can upgrade your CPU but you cant "upgrade" your brain in the same way
Donnow why this analogy isn't more commonly used. It's the only that makes 100 percent sense to and has been ever since i knew computers
My working memory is “high average “ but my processing speed is in the 99.5 %ile, and this is exactly what it’s like. The gap between my highest and lowest IQ scores brought the over functional IQ average down from 139 to 134 on my assessment to account for my (poorly) min-maxed stats
I use the same metaphor!
I got no ram!!!
I love the "mechanics of autism x basic human psychology" kind of perspective. This feels like it's a very accurate way of looking at things!
Perhaps, indeed, it is key to understand autism through individual differences with regards to basic psychological processes. Rather than thinking of autism as a series of impairments, it might be revealing if we try to make sense of autism as being overtuned and/or undertuned in specific ways
This video would've been so insanely useful to me at the beginning of my autism journey.
One of the largest reasons why I dismissed autism as a possibility for SO long was because I was always told that autistic people were oblivious to all these things when I felt so hyper-aware of them that trying to process all this information at once made me feel like I was drowning. It wasnt until i started listening to actually autistic people explain autism that I realized that what I was experiencing WAS in fact autism.
It's a bit like arguments I've had with people who think I sleep the whole day, or I'm never going to bed. I get 7-8 hours like we're supposed to most of the time. MY 8 hours is just between 5am and 1pm. So if you find me sleeping during more than an hour or two of your wake cycle, you are measuring my sleeping from the start of your sleep cycle to the end of mine which looks like 10pm-1pm. where as if you happen to be awake and responding to social media or email or posting work on a project that was proposed late in your day and I was fiddling with it at 2am, while you see me running errands at 2pm you'll wonder when I'm possibly getting any sleep.
The answer is that I'm doing it in my own time in my own way. It doesn't mean I am over or under sleeping, or doing it wrong. I'm not broken or defective.
These are the same people who show up early at the office and comment about how people are lazy for showing up later than them.
But then if there's a problem at 4:45, well they wish they could help but they got there early so now they've got other stuff they need to do.
Everyone else works until 8 or 9 pm and actually fixes the problem, and then the a**hole shows up early the next morning and claims the credit.
To me it's the fact that my mind can take in some new information while already taking in lots of other benign information and if there is any level of uncertainty or confusion about the application for the new information my brain goes into OVERDRIVE trying to make connections to try and come to some kind of resolution. I've tried to explain to psychologists that I will literally have 100 thoughts a minute some times and I stop functioning in the physical world. I don't think allistic minds can make so many connections or have their mind go off on so many tangential directions so rapidly. Guess that's part of our neural plasticity?
I've heard that autistic people are good at making connections between seemingly unrelated things, kind of like a puzzle. How does, say, a pineapple relate to a clock? I could point out all the things they have in common, whereas maybe an allistic person would say, "I have no idea how you got from a to b."
I have been trying to articulate this exact thing to my peers for decades 😂 my thoughts move too fast to get comprehensive words out tho 🙃
I don’t think people see beyond the behaviours we use to cope with how overwhelming the world is. They see us have meltdowns, avoid eye contact, and stick to our safe foods and that’s the summation of autism for them. They see it as a deficit or lack of something or even that we are broken. However, I bet if allistics could experience the world as our brains do, they would behave exactly the same way. Us high masking autistics spend our lives trying to understand and behave like NTs, but when we finally figure out we’re autistic and work on unmasking we don’t always get the same courtesy and effort in return. I’m starting to think the double empathy problem would be better described as an unfortunate symptom of allism. Of course, we’d have to get them formally diagnosed first.
😂👏👍
Yes, this is what I’ve been thinking! Our “problematic” behaviors are coping mechanisms, they are not the “root” of autism moreso than they are responses to make things easier for us. Meltdowns especially, ppl do when they are extremely distressed and no one else is fucking listening. Autistic ppl just have a lot more to be stressed abt that others unfortunately aren’t likely going to be able to understand or address adequately
Which is why it's such a huge problem that research has mainly been done through caretaker perspectives (how does your child behave?) instead of asking autistic people about their experiences
@@fariahcriss5696 I heard this the other day that's apparently a saying in the autism community (the autism community that actually is of people with autism) and might even have come from temple grandin - and it's a criticism of "research" and "helping" efforts for autism (and yes, usually from and for the helpers perspective) like the often criticized by autistic people organization Autism Speaks. It's "nothing ABOUT us, WITHOUT us". Meaning don't do autism related stuff without considerable input and involvement with a broad range of autistic people and their experiences.
@@tinaperez7393 Absolutely, very true for anything autism, but that also goes for all activism! You don't know what anyone needs without asking them. It's one of the first things you learn when you start getting involved in activist spaces 😊
For the future, if you find you have a hard time differentiating actually autistic community labels vs broader community labels, you can generally separate it into autistic community as being specifically people who are autistic, and autism community as autistic people and their support systems!
Literally why I called myself a highly sensitive person before I got diagnosed with autism and adhd. “You’re too sensitive” is the soundtrack to my life lol
I would always ask why other people can’t just be less horrible, and most people would just look at me like I was the problem lol.
Edit: just want to add that not all highly sensitive people will be diagnosed with autism, or relate to it. Autism, “highly sensitive people” (I don’t even think this is even recognized seriously as anything, but I could be wrong), and c-ptsd all share a lot of similar traits that overlap. This was just one label I tried to cling on to (amounts many) as I was growing up trying to explain to people that I felt really different.
C-PTSD is a common result of Narcissistic Abuse.
We wouldn't think it weird that a child who grew up in only literal gaslight would end up being photosensitive.
But for some reason, no one seems to think that narcissistic gaslighting of children would result in a person who is highly sensitive yet doesn't know how to connect with others, overly honest, looks to logic to resolve situations rather than authority or feelings, tries to reduce situations to fully understandable building blocks/monotropic processing, is gullible or easily manipulated having never been taught to look out for the usual cultural traps which are employed against them every day by people claiming to love them, is a perfectionist/anankastic, has a 'spiky profile' corresponding to areas that got positive attention (or at least avoided negative), and has an affinity for situations with clear directions like transportation or retail, leading to 'staging' of belongings which is only seen as "lining up" or "stacking" without ever noticing the connection with retail or transportation contexts.
Many narcissistic households are essentially a "cult" of just one household, or even a network of similarly narcissistic parents who reinforce those patterns as correct, proper, and/or good to do, leaving the children confused about why things are so different at home and other places.
But they're also taught cult-speak, resulting in alexythymia, which combined with the shame of the family situation and a desire to show people in a good light, causes the child to be unable to accurately describe their home life to those outside of it, and others to continue to tell them to "listen to your parents, they know what's best" even when that is far from the truth.
I’ve got audhd and this idea really explains my experiences with being autistic
Like my favorite spaces are often quite and dark, limiting the stimulus
And likewise I kinda self medicate with weed, cuz it in a way loosens all the stimuli and smooths them over like a blurry image
And when I’m overwhelmed it’s often when there’s to much sensory input
And it acts sometimes as a loop
Where I’ll get overwhelmed by the noise making me think about it and then I’m overwhelmed by the voice in my head, and the tension of my skin on my skull, ect
Tldr: intense world is the best way I’ve found to explain my experiences, by far
I have some form of neurodivergence; diagnosed adhd but might be audhd, I'm not really sure. I personally can't really do weed because it **sharpens** my stimuli. I've shared a bowl with my sister before and not been able to finish "my half" because I'm too locked in to keep smoking lmao. I start being aware of how my clothes fall on my body, or the tension in my temples, or how strong gravity is, or the difference in feeling between being motionless and moving. It really consistently makes moving at all cost more mental energy. I just generally don't like it.
But then on the other hand. Shrooms (to below-threshold doses) exaggerate what I would consider my autistic tendencies without quite so much of what feels like internal monotropism or stimulus-sharpening as I experience on weed. But it's different every time. Sometimes it makes being motionless cost more mental energy, forcing me to stim constantly and with greater intensity than usual, but at the same time making those stims feel better than usual. That's my favorite effect. Sometimes it ramps up my verbal filter to the point where I don't feel like saying anything at all. It often comes with a pervasive sense of awe and wonder, but sometimes just doesn't. I guess it just depends on set and setting.
@@rarebeeph1783 That is exactly my experience with weed. It's like it opens the floodgates on all my senses, and it's usually too much to be enjoyable.
Something I read that resonated with me, was that where neural pathways, essentially the strength of connections between different neurons, in NT brains will strengthen commonly used pathways, and essentially degrade less used or unused ones such that they don't fire off to stimuli, whereas an autistic brain either does less "pruning" or not at all. So when there is a stimuli, any and all pathways that have been associated with it in the past can start to fire, which can both lead to very lateral, often surprisingly useful connections between ideas, but also can turn into overload with so much going on.
2:30 mins in and I have literally yelled "oh my GOD" THANK YOU! You’re the autistic creator who makes the most sense to me! I edited this because I had written that in caps and it was starting to feel like it could be taken the wrong way 😂
Before I ever understood anything about autism I had come to the "intense world theory" realization about myself (decades ago). I knew and could tell that I felt things a lot more intensely than many others, and I had realized that one of the coping mechanisms I had created in order to deal with that was by trying to "turn the volume down", which resulted in a lot of difficulties due to all of the far reaching consequences of doing that. Once I had this realization the fact of it made perfect sense. I could find specific examples of "seeing" it in action, it explained completely so much about my life.
Now, looking back, I understand much, much more completely. I see how that "intense world theory" realization fits in with all of the other aspects of how I was growing up. I see how, and why, I started masking (hard and *competently*) even before I could read, how I had built a huge system of coping strategies to deal with constantly being misunderstood, misjudged, underestimated, excluded, let down, etc. And how to this day it can be difficult for me to enjoy certain things or experience things fully simply because I have gotten so habituated to "turning the volume down" on it and I don't know how to change that habit.
Well I couldn't have said it better myself lol. I would say we are on the same wavelength about it, but I have a feeling it's because we are on the same "spectrum".
All joking aside it really is life on veteran difficulty.
oh boy the bit about new information that conflicts with your worldview having ripple effects activating a fear response... explains a lot about past relationships. One of my biggest fears in a relationship is learning something about a partner that conflicts with who I thought they were. And even if it's not a big deal at all or is largely a matter of optics, it activates this subtle panic response in me (though then I've learned things that WERE a big deal and actually rationally made me feel unsafe which kind of maladaptively taught that panic response that it was valid and now I'm just scared of dating)
I’m a slight variation on that. I toggle readily between safe and unsafe, but while there are so many places that my anxiety tries to game out potential problems, personal relationships aren’t among them. I’m not suggesting that this is an improvement over your coping mechanism. I have the common trait of not being able to judge what is appropriate to say to who, or when: people are people and I have an impulsive mouth. And I am hypervigilant but also rather trusting. So I will thrust myself into some situation, suppose it’s all good and I am safe, then pivot to fear when it sinks in I’m not safe or might not be. I can react with fury or depression if I was really counting on the person or situation. But the most debilitating thing is that I now get bursts of anxiety after almost every social encounter, because I shift automatically to unsafe - “sh*t, I shouldn’t have said that!” It’s become so automatic and associative that it doesn’t require a conscious thought any more. It’s kind of Tourette’s like.
It’s not that I have no possible idea what somebody is thinking or feeling, it’s that their behavior could easily mean many different things, and I don’t know how I’m supposed to know which one it is unless they tell me. It would be inaccurate to guess, miscommunications have been dangerous in the past. So it makes sense if we’re danger averse More intensely, that we’re less likely to guess in social situations because we’re afraid to error.
Exactly, I personally hate when people assume they know what I’m thinking or feeling because they’re usually wrong, which is partially why I don’t pretend to know what others are thinking or feeling because the possibilities are endless.
Yes, I think one of the things that makes humans problematic is that we may be the first mammal that cares about what motivates others to do something. A small bird just needs to know that a hawk wants to eat it, it doesn’t worry about why. Judging why someone did something is not really what instincts are good at, and the fact that complex social systems make it necessary to try and make those determinations has created all kinds of chaos, because the likelihood of being wrong is so much greater - in spite of the fact that most people’s visceral reaction will insist to them that they are right.
This is a very well presented description of this experience. I literally can feel myself reaching a level of stimulus, good or bad, and then drawing within to escape it. The more days I spend in chaotic environments, the faster I end up in a burnout state.
The evidence that we have a lot more can be seen in those of us that have comorbid adhd: we see a simple task that neurotypicals can do in autopilot and get overwhelmed by the number of steps that "one task" actually entails. Similarly, I feel emotions much more strongly, to the detriment of my relationships that think I'm too emotional. I can bond with people, animals, or even things with minimal prompting, and I hear the noises of every electronic in the house from the couch. It looks like I lack the ability to ignore because I do. Because there is too much to ignore.
I do, however, want to hear more about the neuroplasticity aspect because studies of brain matter have shown that autistic brains have difficulty pruning, which I think adds to your point about being pattern and stimulus aware, problem-focused, and having an initial resistance to new information that goes against our world view (I would argue that while confirmation bias is a problem for everyone, I think it's a bigger problem for allistics than autistics because while we may initially reject an idea, we're more likely to think about it rather than just dismiss it, from my observations). So can you explain what you mean (examples) when you say we're better at neuroplasticity?
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I've found a good way of describing this... idk, kind of thing? Theory? Is that my brain wants to treat all of the information it gets, as "new".
So there's a certain kind of urgency to how it rushes to the forefront of your consciousness/awareness. It's like I have only a few MB of RAM available, so on days if I haven't taken care of myself, those drives are busy filtering more internal negative signals. This results is my filter getting easily overwhelmed, so sounds that normally just irritate me will infuriate or even hurt me, for example.
I wish there were more ways that higher communicating autistics could contribute to research so we can get this odd, outside/allistic perspective rooted out of what's a very inwardly experienced "disorder".
This last part has always seemed so odd to me.
Like when people go to the doctor, usually they're the one telling the doctor what their experience is, and the doctor listens to that experience and then determines tests to order and treatments based on that.
Also with a some other mental health issues, e.g. addictions, there is an expectation for the professional to provide something, maybe medication or advice, to result in some sort of relief.
Even with ADHD, there's some level of "these are things that have helped others with ADHD"
But with Autism, they just tell the patient what autism is like, as if the autistic person wasn't there because they were looking for help with their autism.
There's no real help, there's no real understanding, not even a desire for understanding.
I'd imagine that's how a child would feel if they moved from France where they lived their whole life to the United States and take French as a Foreign Language elective in high school only to have French explained to them poorly
And I'm really starting to wonder if ADHD is just the result of masking, whether because of ASD or BPD or any other closeted situation where a person feels they must hide themselves leading to an extra layer of processing on top of what others would experience.
@@SeeingBackward My experience has been that when I first suspected ASD, my at the time doctor literally walked in and before even greeting me said "you're not autistic". I'd been seeing this guy for years, wouldn't even entertain the idea.
I think it's the fact that I'm articulate that put him off the idea, but just complete dismissal. Then upon getting a new doctor after he retired, it just turned into a fight of proving that my experiences were as I was describing them, and not what they saw. My masking was THAT heavy that only other ND's picked up on it and pushed me towards looking deeper.
Hell, the second doctor, when I brought up that I was looking into a diagnosis just asked "why? You can't cure it anyway". She got amazingly close to seeing why that day as I was a hair's breadth away from a meltdown.
All the more important that ND voices speak up in any way that they can, being silent and hiding can only get us so far, right?
@@ryanmahaffie329 Amen to that!
> I think it's the fact that I'm articulate that put him off the idea, but just complete dismissal
Because being overly-articulate and hyperlexic with a giant vocabulary is a counter-indication for autism, right?
They show their own confirmation bias and refuse to see it, while telling us that we are inflexible thinkers for being able to operate a checklist....
(in case this is confusing for anyone, my meaning is that autistic people are known for those things, so they shouldn't ever be used to say someone isn't autistic. just to be clear!)
"Some processes are better left running in the background." ...YES.
Even just taken on the most literal, physical level: please tell my body that it doesn't need to notice every skipped beat and change in pulse, blood pressure or circulation, or feel every piece of lint or stray hair. Why do I have to smell the inside of my own sinuses or feel myself digesting food or my eyelids folding up and sticking to themselves? Then I dissociate from my body to keep from going insane, and people wonder how I can forget to eat otherwise go to the bathroom for hours at a time. I hate that this is so relatable, lol, but it is validating.
Ugh, my body feels so gross all of the time. I wish I was a ghost or some kind of poltergeist so I wouldn't have to deal with having a body. I hate existing in flesh. It is miserable, and it has always been miserable since I could remember. I used to hurt myself when I was really little, because I was so frustrated with having a body. It doesn't even feel like it's really mine. I know I was born with it, but it's like a baggy, dirty, itchy woolen coat someone is forcing me to wear.
...I bathe regularly, but you have to admit bodies in general are really gross and uncomfortable.
I buy this because I've always felt like a sponge. I absorb things without effort, and it usually sticks in some capacity somewhere. It's why I know lyrics to songs that I don't like, and can remember plot points of shows I wasn't actually watching, but was on in the same room as I was doing something else, ER and soap operas being my favorite examples. It's like having input on full blast all the time, and how much else is happening effects how well I deal with it and process it, and often how it's retained.
That was delightful to listen to because it lets me feel not so alone and also now more aware of myself as to how to talk about myself.
I find when I read new books I am constantly modifying my thinking and predicting the next page, which is useful for getting at the truth but also exhausting. It takes a long time to get through new materials.
Just another thought on filters: an important part of brain development is synaptic pruning. We start of with loads of connections and reduce them down to just the important ones. I'm loath to allegorise too closely literal synaptic connections with phenomenological connections between thoughts, but I think there's a shared principle that healthy development can involve getting rid of connections that are not useful to us.
I don’t yet have a good grasp of the dynamics behind synaptic pruning - in particular, why does the brain develop this way, and what drives the decision choice of what gets pruned? I’m going to have to start reading about this. I know that less synaptic pruning is believed to have some connection to autism, and it’s been supposed that larger head size could be a marker in kids. But I’m not sure to what extent there’s scientific evidence behind this or if it’s mostly conjecture. It’s of interest to me, because my baby pictures suggest both a change in my perception of others and the development of a blocky head in my first six months. Could well be a false flag but I would love to know.
@@jimwilliams3816 synaptic pruning happens at a cellular level, which is why I don't like to link it directly with our experience of connected thoughts. The cellular principle is "use it or lose it". The synapses that transmit the fewest signals are the most likely to be pruned. Again, I wouldn't want to translate that to our inner experience of the mind.
On large head size, I have no idea. The bulk of the brain is glial cells, not neurons, but that may or may not relate to synaptic density.
“Use it or lose it” is what I presumed, and is similar to the “Fire together/wire together” maxim people cite with regard to the relationship between neuroplasticity and cognitive adjustment. It makes sense, though the notion that “use it or lose it” is a factor in very early childhood development is a scary idea. Which is not to say it’s not necessarily true; it simply places a lot of pressure on formative experiences. I know this to be a basis for trauma theory, and one of the things that always makes me uneasy about this is how readily it interfaces with what the “refrigerator mother” theory of autism, which was common in my youth. I don’t know if my mother had postpartum; given her capacity to dysregulate she could have. The one thing I’m sure of is that I have a predisposition to high stress hormones born of prenatal exposure to her own high levels. I know there’s science supporting this mechanism.
I don’t know about head size either. It has a slightly preposterous feel to it, and I am aware that - what was it called? Cepholometry of craniometry? - was a thing with some criminologists. The brain of a famous (supposed) murderer is preserved at the local university. The whole concept feels dubious, but I suppose the cranium does at least have to adapt to whatever size the brain grows to, it would be a problem if it didn’t. But whether reduced synaptic pruning results in a measurably larger head...? Like you said, the mass of the brain is mostly other things. I once saw a description of how neural nets interface with the glial cells, and it had a strange “two objects occupying the same space at the same time” aspect I couldn’t comprehend.
Just blathering out loud now! :)
@@jimwilliams3816 pruning goes on into the 30s in the prefrontal cortex, so it's not just in childhood.
Thank you for saying this. I have been experiencing this for so long and had no way to explain it to others.
This slots in pretty seamlessly with Monotropism Theory. When you have only one attention tunnel and can't compartmentalize stimuli, you can much more easily get overwhelmed but you also get more creativity and propagation of new information to different contexts.
It also fits tidily with Heuristic Governor Theory, which says that Allistic neurons are set up to process information for a certain amount of time before cutting off and outputting a "good enough" result, Autistic (and ADHD) neurons are more prone to processing information until exhausted (both in the sense of being considered exhaustively and exhausting their energy). I suspect this may have something to do with chemical differences in our myelin sheaths, but there's not enough research on that yet. This one is actually measurable with things like upside down reversed text. Most Allistics pretty much have to learn how to read it from scratch because processing multiple orientation changes goes over the limit of their Heuristic Governor, whereas most Autistic people can read it almost as easily as normal text. This may also explain why we process language word-by-word or even sound-by-sound rather than phrase by phrase like Allistics (which in turn explains our much higher sensitivity to small changes in wording and our struggles with idiomatic speech).
It's nice that all of our Autistic-lead theory seems to be converging on the same ideas even when approaching the subject from very different angles.
What happens with hypo sensitivity? My husband doesn’t experience the world as too intense. I do though, I’m constantly in burnout. My theory is that a lot of autism symptoms get worse from trauma. I had the most traumatic childhood possible for an ND person to go through. My husband’s parents loved him very very much. So he’s just ok with being his weird self and doesn’t pick up on or care about how others are responding. I pick up the subtlest micro expressions of negativity from others.
I also think this is a theory that should be looked at for dermatillomania as it is common in the autism/ADHD world. Focusing "too much" and literally feeling "too much".
Things getting ruined by one bad experience happens more often with me with media/entertainment/hobbies/people than with foods, but this is so real.
And sensing way more information about my body than others do... so true! I tried once as a child that I can feel my internal sphincter of my bladder and my urinary tract, and the doctor told me I didn't because I couldn't. Or feeling my bones, the difference between milk in summer versus winter (for brands that the cows get to eat grass in the summer anyway), hothouse v. hydroponic v. vine tomatoes, different feel of different cats' fur, certain face muscle tics mean certain emotions, the feel and weight of new money v. 1yr old money v old money, being able to tell what material type of pan was used to cook food, etc... The list is endless.
I had to stop the video to comment or I would forget, as a good AuDHDer… but I think that, if we interest this with the Cognitive Gestalt Processing theory, as a different way to starting with blocks of built information and the exercise of adding chunks, deconstructing them to then reconstruct, it might help to fill in some gaps… I also think that it would be fascinating to have an autistic discussion group, just for fun to experiment with all those possibilities in different autistic experiences context
I would so love that. Cognitive processes are my obsession now, but as per the disclaimers at the start of this video, speculations on cognitive physiology and process can easily be misconstrued as suggesting that “this is how autistic minds work.” I’ve triggered people unintentionally that way, and I am sympathetic, because we get a lot of that. But it would be incredible to be able to discuss ideas in a forum where it’s understood that people are simply exploring theories, and not making declarations about other autistic people.
@@jimwilliams3816 exactly! I get it too why some people will not identify, as we’re all individuals, and like many other aspects of the autistic identity that present very differently from individual to individual. But for me, a someone with gestalt cognitive processing, that’s very much true.
When i heard that people with ASD have "a rich inner world," I immediately related to it. I think about it all the time as the way I want to explain my experience to others. This "intense world theory" seems to be a related idea, but in order to relate the mechanics of ASD to the observable behavior of ASD.
I also relate to this more than Monotropism, which was discussed a lot on social media as the primary experience of ASD. I also experience monotropism, but this video is more commonly what is going on inside me. In fact, it makes me think that monotropism is almost a coping mechanism for the "intense world"
I really appreciate your take and expansion on this topic! I have watched as others have gotten "full" from what I have offered them in conversations. For me, with AuHD, I tend to info dump if I am not careful and, often with many creatives I've spoken to, I can watch their "overwhelm" meter fill up. My fiancé and I are working hard to find ways to Co-regulate with each other, our life style, and major changes.
In the past, I learned that we, as autistics, were "missing an awareness bouncer"-basically the function that "turns down" all the information that isn't important enough to pass through, like a bouncer at a club. Since I came to understand that we are hyper aware of everything (the sub-conscious has this ability to pick up even what we can't consciously perceive and many on the spectrum can tap into that awareness farther and faster than other allistics). So, for me, creating an "artificial bouncer" to focus on what I can and can not affect/have control over. This helps me build a better "window of intolerance" for living life. However, I am still very "fragile", and some things it just takes one event to remind me of 45 years of similar issues and I can really get locked up in my head. Thank you for your content and to those growing in understanding more each day.
You saying you feel your bones reminded me im constantly blocking out the sensation of feeling my bones. Ugh 😂. But no it’s definitely a faster processing brain that picks up more at once. Existing can overwhelm me in a heartbeat if I let myself sink too deep into my senses. Plus to function on top of it. Whew.
Haha the toilet sequence was really unpredictable
Yeah, that really threw me; I had no idea what was going on, and trying to figure it out meant I missed everything he was saying and had to go back
This explains why my coping mechanism is straight out avoidance, and why I spent almost a decade of my life using weed to cope; I'm trying to reduce or prevent negative stimulus. This theory really rings true for me.
You somehow put words to things that I've never been able to articulate. I don't have words for how valuable your videos are. Thank you.
Is there another way to reduce/prevent negative stimuli, or do you just have better coping mechanisms now?
I think it’s pretty amazing that some humans experience the world a little more intensely than I do. I have compassion for the challenges that presents, and at the same time and jealous of the ways that it must also enhance the human experience of existing in some ways.
This relates to the idea of high sensitivity for me. I see and hear more. Even at 46, I hear frequencies that only kids and teenagers hear. I track multiple conversations at a time. Then I hit a wall. Relatable.
Everything you're describing here I'd already accepted a long time ago.
But having settled on that I do notice things and think about things more than others, it felt judgemental to try to presume some reason that others wouldn't.
However, I recently seem to have stumbled onto the pieces that connected the rest for me.
The best way I can describe it is "Theory of Multiple Possible Minds"
So the "Theory of Mind" test is a well-known part of the autism assessment in children.
This may be conducted in this manner:
1) A person in room places object somewhere out of view, maybe in a drawer
2) They leave the room
3) Another person moves the object to a different out of view location, maybe in a cabinet
4) The original person returns
5) The child is assessed for their understanding of where the person would look for the object, maybe by that person asking the child if they remember where they had put it
In this setup, the assessor is looking for the child to say the first location, i.e. the drawer in this example.
They would say that this demonstrates "Theory of Mind" and not be indicative of autism.
But what this setup does demonstrate is:
1) The child assumes that the person who placed the object to think the same way they do
2) The assessor is looking for the child to demonstrate an assumption that they knowledge they have is both full and correct
3) The assessor is looking for the child to demonstrate a lack of empathy for the person who moved the object
For one who thinks that they are either right or wrong, they will either assess the child to demonstrate "Theory of Mind" or not.
For one who has "Theory of Only One Mind", they'll be very sure that anyone who answers differently than them has "No Theory of Mind".
To them "Theory of Multiple Possible Minds" is exactly the same as "No Theory of Mind"
And there's another name we give to people who assume that others think the way they do: Narcissist.
The standard "Theory of Mind" test is truly a Narcissism test, and failing it is an indicator of Autism.
I have to wonder if the increased neuroplasticity (Which I heard mentioned in John Elder Robinson's book "Switched On" as a reason TMS was more effective in Autistic people, but nowhere else until today) is a reason autistic people often have hyperfixations, since while there are definitely regions for information processing or emotional regulation that some kind of disorder could mess with, it's harder to figure out what mental process causes some people to obsess over Fallout or Star Wars. A higher level of neuroplasticity making it easier for the brain to absolutely latch onto an interest and not let go until you had thought every possible thought there was to think about it could be a viable explanation.
10000% agree, today I felt so stuck, I had a talk with myself to dig into the problem and realized that over past 3 days I generated like 15 post it notes full of ideas/todo’s/stuff to research and I was so overwhelmed by all the stuff I set myself to do some time in the future. I had to take an hour of reset time to get rid of these and categorize them into my filing system in Notion. Also I realized I was super hungry and that I did not want to start any task, because my kitchen was messy. Solved it, moved on. But I spent in this state almost the whole day prior to the reset. GRR
I completely agree with this and even had what I see as an example of it today. My cousins were over and I was getting very quickly overstimulated. Recently my best solution to overstimulation has been to smoke a little weed or have a bit of an edible. My cousins were kind of opposed to it at first, but shortly after it kicked in, i was way less over stimulated because I wasn't capable of taking in as much stimulus. And I was able to act like I normally do when my cousins come over, when I have more time to mentally prepare beforehand.
I don't know how to wrap up my thoughts here. Also, I'm still a bit high right now, so if this comment doesn't make sense, that's why
Completely relate! I love how cannabis is like magic that can turn you into a ‘normal person’ for a few hours. It’s so nice to have the mental break, and just experience life the way NT people do
Your comment makes total sense. Personally I wish there was a way to get the "turn down" effect without the 'high', because I actually don't really like that part
I think I get what you're saying. From a cognitive neuroscience point of view there are many automated processes that we don't experience. For example associating a set of shapes that you see with an invariant representation of an object, or anticipating the trajectory of a ball you see and coordinating that with proprioceptive input so you can move your hand to catch the ball. The processing that we're aware of is only the tip of the iceberg. Sometimes an automatic process might require conscious effort, for example if a person has had a stroke and needs to relearn how to use their arm (in the process "rewiring" parts of the intact brain to take over from the damaged part). A process that is sometimes unconscious rising to conscious awareness could be interpreted as evidence of a deficit in an automatic process. For example, an automatic filter that assigns salience to inputs. If this stopped working, all inputs would be equally salient and bandwidth would be used up quicker.
I remember when I was a kid I was trying to explain that my brain felt like one of those Swatch watches with the transparent case so you could see all the workings. Normal brains kept all that hidden but mine didn't and unlike the Swatch it wasn't cool and interesting it was distressing, more like a body with no skin on walking around.
The nub of it for me is whether the information coming in is useful and whether I can achieve useful processing. Unfortunately the usual answer is "no" for me. I'm not having brilliant new ideas for research or to reorganise my flat. I'm usually just going round and round about something that I've thought through before but forgotten I already thought about it. Moreover, I'm usually not reaching a conclusion and moving on.
I’m sorry the Swatch thing doesn’t work well for you. I do have the interoceptive tendency to feel individual processes more than I gather most people do, and I am aware now of when my nervous system sends me into fight of flight, though I didn’t used to be. But I can also pick up intersting data points (the only potential upside to a really bad interval), and pattern matching my way into an improved understanding of my mind is my obsessive interest these days. It’s not much good for improving my autopilot though, and improving my manual control takes a long time.
The main reason I barfed all that out is to get to this observation: I saw a video on implicit bias when I was sitting for jury selection, and in it they put the ratio of conscious processing to subconscious processing at 40 bits to 11 million bits. Obviously most activity is under the surface in general, and I’ve come to think that the question for neurodivergent people is: how do conscious and subconscious interface, and how does our way of doing this differ from neurotypical minds? There are surely multiple variations on this across all cognitive profiles.
@@jimwilliams3816 if those numbers are correct it would only take 0.00036% of the subconscious processing to fail to result in double the load on the conscious system. Not sure those numbers even have face validity though. It's hard to put a number on information processing. One letter is one byte in ASCII, and when we read we're not just identifying the letters but processing meaning and syntax and interrupting the author's intent etc. Maybe some of those are automated but I'm pretty sure they're conscious. Anyway. My point is that it only takes a tiny difference in automated processing to make us very different people, and it may be different for each of us.
Yeah, this checks out with my experience with my ADHD. I run into a lot of problems where I seem to find _extra_ social cues that aren't actually there, probably due to my anxiety, and then people get very off-put by the intensity of my reactions. There's never been a question that my emotions seem _much_ more intense than most. As for amounts of things I notice? Typically, when I try to explain _why_ I got angry, the explanation ends up taking a full paragraph to describe, even though for me, it was an instant and instinctive connection. Things just seem obvious to me that _don't_ for everyone else.
❤ Thank you for this ❤ skillfully put together very accurately relevant for both my son and I❤
You are a genius! You explain my experience and my partners experiences EXACTLY. I shared one of your other videos with him and he was like, how is this guy me?!
This year I learned that I'm both autistic + ADHD, at 54 years old. The assessment has answered many nagging mysteries and explained some uncomfortable memories.
When I began telling friends (in my teens) that the sound of plastic shopping bags was disgusting is when I began seeing that look on a neurotypical person's face that clearly conveyed "What is wrong with you?!" and "you're crazy/complicated". Don't know how many times I have been told "you're too sensitive" or have been asked to explain why I don't eat certain foods. Explaining that the texture was uncomfortable would elicit that same perplexed facial expression. The tone of a person's voice is another area of sensitivity for me. Accents are a multiverse of experiences for me. I get lost in accents.
As for "sensitivity" I believe that I can detect deceptiveness or "fakery" much better than most neurotypical people can. But, others consider me negatively conspiratorial for voicing those perceptions.
Now that I have begun talking with family and friends about this neurodivergent assessment I'm paying close attention (as, of course, my brain always does!) to the difference between those who express understanding/support (they turn out to be fellow neurodivergent's) and those who reply "well, aren't we all on the spectrum!" which seems to confirm that they are actually neurotypical.
The chats with others living with ADHD &/or autism have been a comfort.
Neuroplasticity!
Thank you for another keyword to assist with describing what I go through. The more I learn and recognize my differences the more people I find that don't have them and the more explaining I need do.
Two things I do related to this subject:
1: Compartmentalization - I can store suites of information and personality traits such that I could play a game as all the players and 'not know' what the other players are up to. - When I was younger I would often talk about myself in the third person etc
2: Dimensionality - I experience multiple timelines and alternate realities, viewing possible realities in cinematic detail, but also encounter intermittent chunks of lost experiences - I've described it as spheres of attention, vehicles of myself leaving myself to go off and experience perhaps specific goals. When they're gone, I lose, but when they return I then "remember" - and this shedding and returning is occurring potentiality constantly.
A younger me gave into spirituality and magic, time travel, alternate reality travel etc - imo unacceptable conclusions.
Well this video could inspire solutions. I'm encountering Neuroplasticity.
1: Reform neuropathways to compartmentalize
2: The dimensions I experience aren't elsewhere. It's all in my mind, and as I reform neuropathways I sense and visualize those changes. I lose parts because their access is perhaps literally blocked
It sounds like, based on this theory, maybe allistics would have a pre-processing filter that we don't, so the processing power they have isn't as easily overwhelmed. It seems to me a distinction without a difference, because ultimately the result is that we're overwhelmed with more input than we can process, and allistics aren't.
I guess that is why Shadow work helps me a lot. Pre-exposing myself to negative emotions in a safe environment helps me a lot, but yeah, it never goes away :/
Honestly study dialectics and materialism. It did wonders for my autism and understanding the world and realizing we are more in touch with the world as it actually exists: a complicated web of competing forces that need to be resolved to avoid conflict and advance harmony!
As always, incredible content. Thank you for taking the time and effort to so eloquently explain the theory and your experience. Your work is fantastically helpful!
Overall I think this makes sense. Assorted thoughts that came up while listening:
I just was listening to Robert Sapolsky talk about an inate human bias toward the negative, because it is more stimulating. This coming from what I know to be the case, that we would prefer to think there is a tiger in the bushes and be wrong, than think there isn’t and be wrong.
In terms of too much information and awareness of inputs: apparently the ratio of conscious thought processing vs. subconscious processing is about 40 bits per second vs. 11 million bits per second. If we have easier access to the subconscious chatter than average, this would tend to
overwhelm us.
In the same vein: a computerized learning system, once it has worked out certain parameters, is very efficient, say working with the understanding that a bird is a creature with feathers and a bill, which flies. Introduce an anomaly, say a penguin, which has feathers, a bill and swims, and suddenly the processing demands increase massively. If we do better at incorporating new information, it likely still involves intensive processing, and the difference may be that we’re like that all the time. I submit that this increased processing demand has a lot to do with why people balk when their implicit biases are challenged.
Finally, the idea of increases neuroplasticity intrigues me, and I’m interested in if there is science to support this. It has been supposed that neurodivergent brains have more short range neural connections and fewer long range ones, and also that the long range connections tend to skew to the left hemisphere (apparently male brains in general have some skew). I think about all this because I observed of myself decades ago that, while I often had trouble accessing parts of my emotions, if I had a really intense emotion, sometimes it would open up access to that area, and I could feel and analyze those emotions for a little while. This sort of thing tends to get framed in psychological terms by therapists, but it feels fairly structural to me, like opening up a problematic pathway, more neuroscience than psychology. (Anyway, psychology is neuroscience.)
Some thoughts, anyway.
@@jimwilliams3816 good thought but "psychology is neuroscience" is like "traffic planning is motor mechanics". Both involve cars but at very different scale and answering very different questions.
Lots of things are a matter of framing - human behavior can be viewed through the lens of philosophy, psychology, neuroscience or religion/spirituality. All of these shed light in different ways, and it’s been my observation that different individuals are often most comfortable with a particular language. Mine is generally neuroscience, but psychology and, Tina small degree, philosophy offer language that is more instruction at understanding certain ideas.
My main point with psychology and neuroscience being the same thing is that cognition and behavior is heavily rooted in physiology. I get the sense that most people envision the brain as this dark empty space filled with intangible and ephemeral thoughts and feelings, which are all freely chosen. Of course, this is not the case. If someone found they had a solid, rational reason to pick up a hammer and slam it down on their other hand, they would still find doing so extremely difficult or impossible. Psychology is heavily rooted in instincts that we don’t fully understand and cannot outright control. As long as we use it as a language intended to help us understand why we do what we do, with an eye toward making changes where we can, it’s on fairly solid ground. Unfortunately, it seems to me that it is often invoked in a way that suggests that everything about behavior is learnable and thus changeable. That’s especially frustrating to those of us whose mental health profiles deviates significantly from expected and/or optimal “norms.” (I’m not specifically talking about autism here, I have many irons in the fire.) I would say that the feelings of moral failure that this attitude that these attitudes invoke are best described in psychological terms.
@@jimwilliams3816 I think the problem you're describing is not an incorrect framing but a misuse of psychology. CBT emphasises behaviourism but even a CBT practitioner would recognise there are fixed, unconscious forces at play as well as conscious or semi conscious interpretations of the world that can be negotiated in talk therapy. Actual psychologists study both from the starting point of measurable behaviour or describable experiences. My issue is that real neuroscience concerns measurements of the physical brain, not allusions to behaviour of subjective phenomenology that seems more "biological" and less conscious. It is very hard to operationalise a high level behaviour or experience to the extent that you can do experiments on it that are measuring the brain (imaging, electrical recording, lesion studies etc.). That's why we understand primary sensory and motor systems much better than, say, emotional regulation. And emotional regulation is usually studied in a very simplified way like a gambling task, which is quite far removed from something like shutting down because an essay question has too many possible answers. I'm not saying it's impossible but I've worked in brain imaging for twenty years and few papers give us anything applicable or reproducible. So I just want to distinguish between using the term neuroscience properly, to describe literal, physical measurements of the brain, and figuratively, to describe behaviours and experiences that appear more biological than psychological. The letter is still in the realm of psychology.
Perhaps behavioral biology, what Sapolsky taught, is a better term. At the same time, it’s true that neuroscience has serious limits in what it can measure, but that isn’t necessarily because it’s not measurable, or even that neuroscience won’t eventually be the tool that does so. The capacity to look for hard science markers in
Physics has increased markedly in the last 50 years, for example. It’s still nowhere near the point where theories can be thoroughly proven, but any place where theories can be tested puts cognitive science way ahead of where it used to be, which was and often still is unproven conjecture. I grew up in a Behaviorist era, and the extent to which professionals could formulate their own hypotheses and have them accepted as moderately established fact has done msssive damage to human beings since the beginning. This is why I’m pretty heavily triggered by any suggestion that psychology as it is currently practiced should accept as settled any matter that cannot be corroborated by some form of scientific means. It’s still an astonishingly self confident field, when IMO it has every reason to be extremely humble.
@@jimwilliams3816 with you. Never heard of behavioural biology but, yeah. The whole point of science is that it is constantly adjusting theory to new data. It's done by humans though. Ramon y Cajal said something like it's his job as an old scientist to defend the orthodoxy and it's the young ones' job to prove him wrong.
I'm in the process of getting my diagnosis for ADHD and Autism, nevertheless, I'm always watching videos and getting information about neurodivergence, sometimes it fits, sometimes it doesn't, however, I always have that feeling that it fits just to a certain point, not entirely. It's amazing that your video, this specific time, FITS COMPLETELY. Thank you for this.
I've never been evaluated for autism, but what you said makes total sense to me. I used to try to guess alllll the potholes in life ahead of me, and I would get totally overwhelmed. An ex-boyfriend had to explain it would be less distressing to just go at life, if you hit a pothole, ok well deal with it, but wasting time thinking of every possible pothole causes me distress and you probably won't even think of the one you'll hit anyway. It really changed how I thought. (Although it's a hard habit to break, I still try to cover every base!)
I definitely understand many social rules and do (after many years of practice) respond mostly correctly to social cues. What you said about having more information running in the background that disrupts the process or (my Achilles Heel!) start to overthink a process, resonated with me. As I'm anaylsing the situation later I can tell exactly "where I went wrong," in a social situation, but until I have time to process the day, I am often ar a loss as to what may have gone haywire 😅
@fariahcriss5696 I heard this the other day that's apparently a saying in the autism community (the autism community that actually is of people with autism) and might even have come from temple grandin - and it's a criticism of "research" and "helping" efforts for autism (and yes, usually from and for the helpers perspective) like the often criticized by autistic people organization Autism Speaks. It's "nothing ABOUT us, WITHOUT us". Meaning don't do autism related stuff without considerable input and involvement with a broad range of autistic people and their experiences.
A super useful take-away for me from my psych undergrad (cog) was a little evolutionary context- imagine a tribe of 100-150 people. What benefit would there be to having a few of those people be super sensitive to changes in food and water, constantly improving things and looking for dangers- if you think of humans as an insect colony then suddenly a statistical occurrence of asd and adhd start to look like they might be wildly beneficial to have in small numbers doing our Neurodivergent thing to diversify and maximize survival strats. (Love your work, great video, boy do we need some social change to save all these canaries)
9:17 Alternatively, we are hypersensitive to stimuli that does not register as strongly to others. I do notice uncomfortable sensations in my skin and airways that others may not register within themselves unless I point them out. I think of it more as a heightened allergic response to external stimuli. Loud music at bars and clubs is too much sound that would hurt my eardrums. Fragrances are chemicals that I inhale and irritate the lining of my lungs. Alcohol in all forms tastes awful, and people have given me many beverages to try, and it makes my body upset even though I always spit it out. Clothing that rubs against my skin slightly as I walk will give me a rash if I ignore that texture feels off. This also occured with psychotropic prescriptions I tried many years ago where I would get paradoxical effects and come out treatment-resistant on the other side.
I’ve always said the emotions wheel is designed for NT people who can’t identify complex and conflicting emotions at once.
A couple others commented about feeling like others had the deficit, not us. I think that’s the frustrating part of high IQ with spiky profile. It’s taken me 4 years since diagnosis to develop better context and understanding. Lots of relatable stuff here. Thanks for sharing.
Really enjoyed the positive perspective of this video. Followed the flow well, and relate to many of your thoughts. Good video
B) Have a good day
.....i have never felt more seen and understood.......thank you
When I was young, when I was overloaded/shutting down I had the visual thought of my mind being like a clockwork machine that was breaking down as it was unable to keep up with the new information. If you think about those connectable cog toys you might of played as a kid, it was easy to add too many things and stop the system from turning. Now the analogy of a shutdown being like adding/replacing a cog in the wrong place makes it sound less like I'm a bad adapter and more that I tinker with my brain to the point that sometimes it just stops workings.
The Intense World Theory would dovetail quite nicely with anatomical observation that the pruning of neurons that generally occurs in early childhood is less than in neurotypical people--we (or at least many of those of us who have had their brains dissected) have more neurons, but(presumably) less organized.
This makes sense to me. When I am parking in a new place, I have to turn down the volume of my car stereo because otherwise I can't think straight. Bright lights hurt my eyes, but only when I have both eyes open. This in particular never made sense to me when growing up, because obviously the one eye is still getting hit by an amount of sunlight that was painful when I had two eyes open, but now I'm pretty sure that it's just an overwhelming amount of visual stimulation.
I'm fortunate that my food aversions fade after around a decade, but I've had my share of those too.
It's like picking up social cues, there are a lot of different cues that I pick up, but the person only mean 1 of them. And sometimes it's hard to select the right one. Exemple: I really enjoy sarcasm, but if someone I don't know comes with a sarcastic comment in an education facility of some kind, and the sarcasm could be interpreted as genuine and not sarcastic, I will choose to ignore the sarcasm because it's more damaging if the person was genuine and I respond sarcastically than otherwise. But I've picked up on the sarcastic take and the context and the environment and so on
This reminds me of a realization i had recently. Ive never liked driving. But ive identified that i do like driving! I just hate stop lights - because they are a schrodingers box of stop and go at the same time, and i cant mentally prepare from them. Driving on a highway away from civilization, or a route with only stop signs? Simple and enjoyable! 20 stoplights at dusk? Unbearable suffering, lol.
There was a term i had found a while ago; Habituation. It's for when the brain tunes out certain stimuli it is repeatedly exposed to. I think this is also part of the problem. There was a study done on the skin reacitvity of autistic people exposed to stimuli. I cant remember what the results were.
My ears never stop hearing things. There were noises at work that other people wouldnt be annoyed by, that i couldn't just stop hearing, hum of the lights and the hum of the freezers. I also started wearing a visor to help with the constant barage of light.
We are too aware and we never stop being aware.
Absolutely love this description. I want to hear your opinion on how hyper-vigilance fits into this
@@anlongyi This is one of the reasons on the back of my mind I still worry that my diagnosis was incorrect. Hyper vigilance is a response to trauma. I was raised in a deeply evangelical, fear of hell, house, which I recognize now was incredibly traumatic for me. From my understanding, hyper vigilance could easily result in an experience that’s just like this, where you feel like it’s your responsibility to be aware of everything. It’s a survival mechanism. That leads to overstimulation and burnout.
And maybe we find out someday that autism has other mechanics that lead to extreme overstimulation and burnout. Maybe it’s a whole bunch of different sets mechanisms for different people and that’s why autism can present so differently. But what we have all lumped together now as the autism spectrum are all ways that humans are chronically extremely overstimulated.
Kind of like depression. There are many forms of depression. There are chemical imbalances which are chronic and severe. There’s situational depression which can also be severe but more of a result of circumstances. I struggle somewhere in the middle. I certainly have a chemical imbalance that makes me prone to struggle with depression but the severe periods are usually a combination of that plus situational. It’s all depression.
Even as a parent now it’s fascinating to watch my kids develop some of the same characteristics I have that I associate with autism though, which would lead me to think there’s still some genetic component.
Sorry, long answer 😅 I find the overlap between trauma and autism incredibly interesting & very difficult to understand.
@@GenericArtDad Yasssssss. Thank you for your long response. Absolutely that overlap between AuDHD and trauma and something about fried nervous systems in general. I suspect one day they'll be in the same DSM category. And how a lot of "autistic" behaviours ARE stress responses - i.e. stressed people act more autistic (less socially responsive, more rigid behaviours, safety seeking etc).
I'm late diagnosed as well, so fully relate to the imposter syndrome. And wondering whether autism characteristics I had as a child were masked or underneath dissociation, or if it originated from childhood itself, and whether that's an important distinction or not if using strategies for autism ultimately helps relieve my burnout 🤷 (speaking of depression...).
re genetics - I'm not an expert, so don't quote me, but I tend to wonder if there's a epigenetic component - i.e. heritable traits external to DNA code itself. And I wonder if it's possible to "inherit" a nervous system? :O
Anyway, thanks so much for your content. I discovered your channel recently, and you've been really on point! I wish you and your family wellness and hope your self-journey continues to flourish.
I always related to River Tam from Firefly. When Simon takes her to get that brain scan and he says "she feels everything all the time, she can't not" I turned to my partner at the time and said that's what it feels like
One of my coping mechanisms is excessive self-soothing dialogue. I tell myself irritating stimulus is not important and I tell myself that I am okay. It's comparable to "pure O" OCD, where the compulsion is focused on controlling one's thoughts rather than enacting behaviors. My theory is that my ability to identify what's important to pay attention to and what's not has led me to having only a couple meltdowns my whole life. That or I'm on the severely low support needs end of the spectrum. However, this only serves to perpetuate the burnout I've been trying to escape for the last decade.
This instantly makes me start thinking for those of us that are AuDHD like myself, and discover ADHD much earlier and is usually in the foreground and autism background (so to speak) does it ease the excess of information slightly? But then you have tug of war and contradictory behaviour that you’re thinking about and externally doing at all times? Thanks for sharing this, adds so much and lots to think on
You have described it very well.
This is deeply relatable.
Wait! People normally don't feel their bones?!
😂 I literally have told doctors, for DECADES, that I can feel my bones hurting. None of them believed me until 2020 when I saw my new GP then a spine doctor then a rheumatologist. Turns out, PEOPLE CAN TOTALLY FEEL THEIR BONES HURTING because that's what literally happens with arthritis.
So yeah to all the others who didn't believe me... come apologize for your "bones don't have nerves, you can't possibly feel them."
Also to anybody dealing with pain in your bones TRUST YOUR BODY you are feeling the pain, in your bones, it is 100% a thing.
"it appears that both the periosteum and the marrow cavity of bones must be innervated by primary afferent neurons capable of transducing and transmitting nociceptive information. These bone afferent neurons provide the central nervous system with information that elicits primary pain arising from bone." www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4844598/#:~:text=Thus%2C%20it%20appears%20that%20both,primary%20pain%20arising%20from%20bone.
Yes! This explains the experience exactly.
I vibe with this so hard I wish I could express to you how seen I feel ! I feel seen watching ALL ur vids but this one I vibe with ! cuz I to have never felt like I am missing something necessarily it’s like too much ! My brain gets overwhelmed
this is a really great explanation of what its actually like to have and experience autism and i hope this theory catches on. so much of understanding of mental disorders is always from the outsiders perspective and therefore tends to not actually understand whats going on.
also for the being able to feel things other people cant, i can feel food being digested in my stomach and it feels different depending on the foods.
Omg the flaps nasal thingy
Q_Q too relatable and it sucks
A personal example taking in excess information. Babysitting my 3 nephews who are all screaming and playing while the 4 dogs i am also babysitting are going ballistic at the door cause they saw a bike going down the road while I’m cooking steak for the kids and myself and my grandma calls me asking to talk to my parents even though they are out camping with my sister and weve told her this multiple times weeks in advance. This situation was extremely stressful because I am taking all of it in at once, i am cognizant of what everyone and everything is doing and what needs to be done, but my brain doesnt prioritize and i cant hear my thoughts (not because of the loudness of the situation, but because of the thoughts on how to handle it all talking at once. I cant make sense of it and i get overwhelmed
yea, i thought the same years ago though. it felt oddly strong to have fallen in love and stuff and i couldnt get rid of the general idea, that, despite everything else was normal, my feelings hit me like a wall, while others couldnt understand my sorrows. And i was already very socially active back then, so, it couldnt have been about a lack of emotional knowledge or introspection capabilities.
But it's hard to tell whether it's still the case. Not only has time passed significantly, but also my social activity went way down. Maybe it was just a puberty thing? Maybe it was just a development-dependent adhd thing? (the PFC is maturing till 30 after all)
Omg! I didn’t realize some people couldn’t feel their bones! I get what I call “bone tired.” That’s when I’m so overworked and running on so little sleep that my bones feel achy. I thought other people felt this because of the expression “rest your bones.” Is it an autistic thing? The flu is miserable for me too because of the pain I feel in my bones too. I’ve luckily only had it twice, at 10 and at 34 but the bone pain is next level for me.
I get told that I'm "overthinking" things sooooo often. I tell everyone else that I'm actually thinking a normal amount, and they're all actually underthinking. It's partially a joke, but seriously, I think that plays into the theory you're describing here.
6:30 and this reasoning is also why I don't date anymore
Makes a lot of sense to me; not that every autistic person always lacks XYZ, but that autistic people aren’t in the middle of the bell curve (so to speak) when it comes to XYZ. They may be to the left where they lack some things, they may be to the right where they have a surplus of things, but the point is that allistic are in the middle and we’re not
7:11 Right, I experience the same, and it is a maladaptive coping strategy. Avoidance cannot be practiced at all times and severely limits our opportunities for growth and expansion. Yes, overstimulation, especially due to unpleasant external stimuli, needs to be countered with other techniques and strategies to downregulate stress responses and triggered reactions. This is where lifestyle interventions come in so that we can better process our emotions and thoughts as we receive blindsiding amounts of new information in real time. We also need to consciously and intentionally disentangle singular negative experiences that arose during specific past circumstances from our general associations with certain people, places, things, and ideas. Relaxation techniques are very important here as well as monitoring our thoughts and impulses in a detached way so that we can release physical tension the moment that our reactions to discomfort intensify.
This is not to say that we must endure environments that are simply not suitable for us; in fact, we must walk away fast from places that do not serve us. That being said, we need to build up our reserves of calm and equanimity to be able to navigate the surprise storms of the outside world without having a meltdown because our nervous systems naturally take in much more information from the environment than people who are not neurodivergent.
This is all very interesting. I would like to hear more. Years ago I studied world-modeling theories from Sue Blackmore, and recently, AI cognitive theories. But I'm been unable to apply these to autism. But it sounds like you have been developing one. I agree with your intensity of perceptions and exhausting revision after new knowledge. I would be interested in more, and how to communicate these theories to therapists, etc. I am finding it hard to get them to listen to these cognitive theories.
this finally explained it… thank you
Exactly what I’ve been thinking!
Never been diagnosed but my son is in the process of diagnosis. I definitely feel seen by this though. Interesting
You should look into the dialectical misattunement hypothesis. It’s extremely similar to what you described.
I think the explanation of the processing power "deficit" you're looking for is that our automated processing (subconscious processing) has more neural pathways resulting in more outputs for our conscious processing to sift through. It's not a processing power deficit it's a processing method difference that results in more varied outputs at the cost of raw speed. So it's less that we take in more information but rather we discard/ignore less information and thus actually have to process more information total. Does that help?
Makes sense , and matches my experience
I have absolute zero spontaneity; I have to plan everything and all possible contingencies. Any unexpected thing is extremely (even dangerously) destabilizing for me. This is, in my opinion, an important autistic trait. My instinct is not working well; I have to consciously analyze everything instead of being guided by my instinct ... when I have little time to react.
For years I've said my meltdowns are a normal response to an abnormal world.
Also, I've had the privilege to move to the middle of nowhere, with no people around except my husband, and I'm a different person when there's no one to mask for.
Makes so much sense to me
This is so validating but the more I learn about how AuDHD has impacted my life, the more despair I feel. I need help and my therapist is an awesome person but i don't think a person half my age, not going through menopause can really relate and understand and help in really deep and impacted ways. I'm 2E (3E if you separate asd and adhd 😂) w/CPTSD, over 40, perimenopausal, and just diagnosed last year. My background is even more atypical having been passed around in foster care as a teenager (12 different homes, some of which i lived in twice), bullied throughout school, terrible grades and high SAT scores, both natural parents having severe mental health issues, and poverty. I never had a support system before being let out into the world b4 I even reached the age of 18 and I never learned about that until now. the domino effect it's had on me is something I can't even explain. My brain is brilliant but everything else about me is garbage. This video is so relatable to a degree that I can't even express, so thank you for that. Can you recommend any particular type of therapy I should look into??
That's not even including the SA and relationships I've had with abusers....
Minute 4-5 is hitting me hard on this topic