…I am talked out of AS for a while, but here’s the interpretation of IQ vs. thought process, verbal limitations, and interpretation …I think…I can’t be sure I’m even categorizing right. This is as close a description you will have until I learn more. Trust me. I am trying to figure it out too and it is as weird to not have a solid “answer” yet lol
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I was too lazy to move the fruit out of the way. I asked Taylor when we got the pineapple and he said it has been in the same spot for two days. …Attention to detail, hyper-focus, does not apply to my surroundings. Anywhere. My attempts to be observent last for the amount of time I clue in enough to remind myself, which is rare and unintentionally, randomly applied; most of the time it isn’t me reminding myself, but an off hand comment by the person I’m around, saying something that makes me look around because it involves the topic at hand.Â
It lasts for a minute or two, or however long scenery is talked about, and then I’m back in my own world, oblivious to everything, but my interests and/or the people I’m around. The thoyght to pay attention is fleeting. Now that I think about this subject, I cant remember the last time I thought “be aware” other than photographing new places and landscapes. …O.O Wow. I never realized the extent of my lack of attention to this until writing it out. I knew I was unobservent…but not to this extent. LolÂ
Weird. I guess I focus more on people watching.
The sad part about this is knowing this newfound epiphany will be lost on me once I am past writing about it. Obviously, sketchy surroundings make me focus, but even then if people are around me, I focus my whole attention on the social setting. Never the full setting. People say “if you really want to do it, you can be an aware of everything around you” ….MEH. Agree to disagree, I think. lolÂ
I have had others frequently remind me to watch where I’m going (same with paying attention while driving), made multiple attempts at applying this, but sincerely state I have an inability to think in sequence when I’m not writing. I dont think in words or with logic until made to talk or when writing. It’s not that my mind is airy, but it is…my verbal limits stem from my mind not recognizing words. It captures pictures instead of words.Â
Take a pen out of my hand or remove typing and I feel almost handicapped. I can “socialize”, sometimes well enough that people think I’m only shy, maybe simple if they dont know me well lol but there are no “words” when left to relying on speech. My mind does not register what comes out of my mouth even though I can speak on spot and seem relatively normal.Â
The quote “I write to know what I think” literally applies to me. I cant shape full concepts without applying it to paper or screen. …I don’t fully understand it because I have yet to find information that explains my thinking to me. I am struggling to state the full scope of my mind’s crossed wires because I “know” (which is also a struggle to put plain words to) my explanation of my neurology does not come across right in the way as to what “is”.Â
This is frustrating. This is also probably why I learn and know factual data on neurological differences, but forget or avoid trying to apply logic to explaining how everything connects. I haven’t found the connection. All I can put words to sum this all up is writing becomes the only way for me to convey “logic” and “sentences” in the way most of your minds interpret data and/or words and words to sentences. Mine shows pictures or is blank until speaking. I dont know how I speak without thinking, but my brain does it naturally.
If I were to sit and “think”, there is no way for me to force it to try thinking in sentences, except when I apply all effort, eyes closed to concentrate and only for one or two attempts can I get a simple sentence out, thought, before I unwind so headaches don’t start. It’s like my brain skips the part of “thought” and interprets to speak.Â
So my mind, in your interpretation, is always blank if I can’t write it. It is not meant to say people think I dont think. It is a “literal” definition of my mind when left to itself and speech. I try to explain it in words that interpret what your interpretations can interpret because the way I “know” or “think without thinking”… is not the way an NT’s mind thinks of thought.Â
Bridging the gap, the work put into learning your neurology, is the only way I can socialize with even a modicum of understanding in connection through thought… well, connect comfortably. I have connection otherwise, but … it is a lot of work and will continue to be a lot of work. When my mind is forced to reshape, by my own hand, it is, in essence, a mental marathon and it takes a physical toll the way running takes its toll on the body.Â
That ^exhausts me more than non-stop, no sleep hours long reading. *sigh* I will leave it there for a while. I have no complete explanation that bridges the gap of understanding. At least not to the full or stunted capacity in which mine connects thoughts and feelings to…you, me, and …everything. I am surprised my mind connects this fluidly in written speech and has sequence when my hands are working. It’s like, suddenly “my brain connects easier”, but my frustration remains in not adequately explaining the “zero forethought”. I know, but do not think (not with words) and when I write, even then my mind is only shaping words as my hands shape letters and sentences. As I am writing a word, I can say it out loud at the beginning of writing it.
To be at this age, to make it to my twenties not knowing that minds had different connections, everything relating to the autistic mind, is hard to explain (awareness would have prevented a lot of confusion and misunderstandings …but that point is moot now)
I thought I was less intelligent than the norm through K-12 and couldn’t complete half a semester at college because my mind didn’t make the connection “write to think” even though I wrote, obviously for homework/in class, but didn’t know I wasn’t “thinking”…just applying muscle memory and it stopping there (which made me stop trying in school, middle school age and up); bad grades, broken self-esteem due to the issues accumulated, influenced most of my life before 23 years old; being uninformed, me as well as all of the people that knew me until my therapist, Cindy, told my mom I may be autistic and asked to work with me (Thank.God. lol), bred depression and anxiety from the time a human starts to recognize social awareness.Â
Children recognize and develop this ability, becoming cognizant enough to “notice” ostracism around 7-9 years old or round abouts, and if there is no education on AS… it handicaps a non-NT in so mant ways. It stops a person, eventually, from…interacting, thinking, trying, etc in all areas of life and interchangeably applied negative, repetitive cycles during young (baby to young adult) development, when people (parents, teachers, Dr.’s/therapists who couldn’t put two and two together despite their degrees) tried using all ways NT to teach and train. Which didnt work for obvious reasons. LolÂ
You can not force different kinds of neurology to learn “one way, but with different tactics”, or try to bend the way you “want perception to work”, because that is not the natural law or makeup of neurological diversity. That is like trying to take the severly, mentally impaired and forcibly trying to “change the impairment” so that they are no longer like that. Make sense? People work with them, not against them.Â
Well. If someone did that, that would equal abuse, but this is its own topic. Same logic applies to those of us who are higher functioning, I think. It is not seen as as abusive or wrong because of how ignorance (new diagnosis=not everyone’s fault because of time delaying knowledge) connects “has a couple of NT appearing traits” with “can do this like this and should be done like taught”. We become the accused for not changing, growing, responding, and reacting in the NT way: “rules and regulations and code of conduct”.Â
That is not said with condescension. Until awareness spreads far and is comprehended, accepted, and worked with, we non-NT’s will do the brunt work of shaping ourselves (which leads to brokenness if we and others are ignorant of the diagnoses), as best we can to a NT world. I don’t think that will be realized by the mildly aware or unaware for a long time yet.
The world dictates and judges by NT “generalized beliefs and set standards” for anyone capable of intelligent thought. The higher functioning Aspies have the capacity to think beyond a NT’s scope, when combined with a naturally high IQ, in certain ways and on certain levels/subjects, but that is rarely realized by us and NT’s well read on the topic. When we are born into unintentional ignorance, which is slowly fading away, thanks to awareness, all we have is information and hierarchy, from birth and up, that raises us in a world that stamps “wrong” to a lot that makes us, us.Â
Aspies try to change and can, to an extent, but we give up what we are to shapeshift into the world’s concept of: “this is ok and this is the right way to be”. All of the “quirks” we have that set us apart are worked over to “be a fitting member” of the human race. Not to say all is allowed free reign in the first place because everyone shapeshifts to culture until introduced to new ideas, but our perception takes more than “i need to study for this test” and applying the regular waus of going about it (that might be a bad example lol). It is not a fickle statement of “unique is beautiful” lol It is the kind of different that is or was painful.
There was nothing “awesome” about it. My experience (I cant speak for the other stories) was alienation, labels, namecalling, moods I couldn’t control, being able to excel at most anything, etc. and the ripple effects of it all wrappee together. There is a direct correlation between late AS diagnoses and, specifically: anxiety and depression. I hqve read countless blogs and FB sharw commentsru… and we all seemed to hqve gone through, in different variants, the same inner turmoil.Â
This isnt explained to interject my story. It is to show the severity of most Aspies. If you meet one, especially one later diagnosed, be compassionate. I’ve been lucky in being given three years, every day, to sit, read, write, and work through and “heal myself” to a point of real change.That amount of time to that extreme of an effort is not the norm, from what I have read and heard. I am weird even on an autistic scale LolÂ
In all seriousness, any adults on the spectrum you meet or know, may still be going through the gruelling process of sifting through their inner turmoil. Hell. I have mood swings like I’m pms’ing as an older woman, but the hard hurtles I couldn’t get past in the past, the biggys, got worked out. I went to …creative, reclusive extremes to fix the brokenness.Do not expect that kind of situation to happen with others. If anything, help them by understanding the complexity instead of assuming all interaction is taken as you and many take it. Learn the quirks and the interaction subtleties of an Aspie so that the connection becomes less superficial. It is as simple and complex as that. I dont even know if I’m explaining it well lol
If you know an Aspie and are close to one (the ones that know me well on here have already done this so I’m speaking for others in life you chance upon)…just Google and read a little bit about it if you haven’t up until that point. It has taken Taylor nearly as long as me to get a handle on it lol so read up. AS is lifelong. We don’t “grow out of it” lolÂ
We spent our lives, the people past teen years before this new awareness movement, doing what was within our capability and will, changing and making hard compromises for the world around us. A little “meet ya halfway” in studying up on it, goes a long way lolÂ
tsatterwhitets 