Autistic, Am I? 🤔

I wonder if I’m autistic?

So, I’m aware autism is a spectrum and folks have different degrees of autistic traits. I guess when I think of the word autism, I think of severe cases where perhaps someone is completely non-verbal and does things that most people might find odd and socially unacceptable? So I never really thought of myself as autistic. However, the more I’ve learned about autism and how it’s a wide spectrum and interacted with people who identify as autistic, the more I’ve started to wonder about myself.

This video came up on my YouTube and caught my attention, so I decided to listen to it. The more I listened, the more I found myself nodding along, deeply relating to what was being said, and I was like *gasp!* Full transparency, I’ve only listened to about a third of it so far as it is quite long and so I am not sure what was mentioned in the latter two thirds of the video.

I sent the video to a good friend of mine and asked if they’re autistic as well lol. Apparently there’s some overlap between autism and ADHD. So then I mentioned I think I might be autistic and my friend responded with, “U think?” and I was like is that a question or a sassy statement because it could go either way lmao. They responded that it was a question, and I said, “I thought you meant like U finally figured out? U dumb fk.” We had a good laugh about that 🤣! Whew, I wasn’t sure if it was that obvious like I’m derping my way through life being super autistic and everyone could tell except for me lol.

Some of my favorite friends are autistic, some even clinically diagnosed, and I love them more for it because their brains are just so fascinating to me. I absolutely love the way they see the world — it’s so different than how most others do! Our conversations always go all over the place, often very deep and intense, which I find to be so much fun! They also happen to be the most empathetic people I know!!! So empathetic that unfortunately sometimes it’s detrimental to their own wellbeing.

I love when I have conversations that can help expand my understanding of the world and give me different perspectives, with some limitations of course. There are some topics I’d prefer to stay away from though. Like if someone’s raving about the benefits of cannibalism, wanting to share all about it, and encouraging me to try it, I might have to pass lmao. Maybe I’ll entertain it for a bit as a thought experiment, but once they start trying to enroll me into actually picking up a fork and tasting the delicacies of human meat Imma be like no thank youuuuuu, boundaries plz, *block 🤣

I remember having a chat with one of my friends about their own relationship with autism some time ago, and we came to an agreement that we are both neurodivergent and that’s why we get along so well. Neurodivergent for me just means we don’t think like “normal” people. Which is strange because who gets to dictate what’s normal 🤔? Is it just the average curve of how most people think and behave? But wouldn’t that require a large enough sample size to include a variety of people globally? Wouldn’t it also require people to be self aware AND radically honest about their own lived experiences? I don’t believe the binary and simplified way of thinking is healthy normal. Sure, it’s helpful to make things simpler for people to grasp but that’s not how humans are. Humans are complex Beings that can’t just be forced into one bucket or another. It is our individual uniqueness and quirkiness that create diversity. Otherwise we’d all just be carbon copies of one another and I’d think that’s boring as heck. I wouldn’t be surprised if what we’ve been told is “normal” actually isn’t.

Anyway, I started chatting with AI about this and it drew some parallels between the way my mind works with what I’ve been thinking about lately. Like, it mentioned how I’d be more focused on subject matter than on being able to pick up human social cues and undertones of conversations, and that made me reflect back on my lack of romantic detection. When people have brought up raunchy topics with me in the past, I was always more focused on the subject matter than why they were bringing it up lol. Like, “Wow! What an interesting topic for discussion. I must ponder this some more.” A close friend of mine recently had to point out to me that normally people don’t discuss these matters unless they were curious about exploring the subject matter with the person they’re talking to. Surprised Pikachu face AGAIN! My neurodivergent brain would be so focused on the topic that I’d completely miss the reason for discussion! Totally clueless lol. I also thought about how I can listen to the same song for days on end and it’d drive everyone else crazy but I’m like weeeeeeeeeeeee I love it! Gimme MOARRR!!!!! Usually the song just ends up becoming background noise and that helps me get into the flow for other things that I’m doing. It helps with concentration and hyper focus. This is why getting earbuds was the best thing on earth so I can spare others from going insane 🤣

The video also mentioned how autistic people do not like unpredictability and I’m like uhhh hellooooooooo hence why I study guides before intentionally going into difficult end game content. The easy stuff isn’t such a big deal, I can usually figure things out on the fly. But for things that are designed to be difficult, I feel a strong need to study as much as I can before attempting in order to reduce the impact of overwhelm. I want to know what’s going on, what’s coming, so that I don’t get thrown off so badly. Is this not normal?!

My mom shared a story with me recently in which I had no idea all of this time but apparently when I was in JHS one of my friend’s parents expressed concern about my social development, that I seemed abnormal socially speaking. My mom’s response to them at the time is that every child develops at a different pace. I love my mom for that, but was also a bit surprised to hear this story come up.

Not many people knew this at the time, not even my mom, but back then I was dealing with emotional bullying/codependency issues and had also ended a friendship that was very heartbreaking for me, and so I was dealing with an overwhelming amount of intense emotions, primarily sadness, which resulted in me becoming very withdrawn and awkward.

Regarding the ended friendship, this was the first friend that I actually opened up to. The first friend I learned to willingly hug, due to their requests. They didn’t understand why I didn’t want to hug them. It wasn’t personal, I just didn’t enjoy being touched or touching others at the time. But I guess through this friend, I learned that hugging is a form of affection that others might enjoy. Maybe their primary love language is physical touch? Anyway, I know I loved this friend deeply, dearly, and cared for them a lot. When I decided to end the friendship, I didn’t know who to talk to about it so I didn’t really share about my experience with adults around me. All I know is I felt incredibly hurt, angry, and betrayed. I only remember talking to a few friends about what had happened, and they had no idea what to do either as we were all so young.

I remember feeling quite sad for many, many years. I even had people come up to me and ask me why I couldn’t forgive my friend and I never had an answer for them, only more tears and withdrawal. And then I watched the same thing that happened to me happen to my friend’s new friends. One by one, something would happen, and they have a falling out and they’d all end up like me, sad, quiet, withdrawn, and awkward. It did help to see this pattern across time and know that the issue wasn’t necessarily with me and that it wasn’t personal. I mean, aside from my own codependency issues where I felt responsible for other people’s emotions, this pattern showed me they weren’t being intentionally malicious but that they were acting from their own unprocessed shadows. I was only able to become aware of my codependency issues within recent years and actually work on healing that part of myself, learning all about boundaries, emotional responsibility, and so on. And yeah, I was not quite emotionally or socially “well” back then as a pre-teen as I was dealing with a lot emotionally and didn’t have any help as I didn’t know how to ask for help.

I remember my mother having a conversation with me about this phase of my life some time after the fact, asking why I never brought this stuff up to her back then, and idk. I didn’t have an answer for her. Now, I wonder if it’s because I didn’t have the ability to verbalize what was happening internally for me, and/or that I didn’t trust she’d understand given how there were other things I was dealing with at home.

You know, it’s not an easy thing for a 12 year old to deal with when a friend you loved more than anything tells you that something you said months ago made them want to commit suicide, and if it weren’t for their bff intervening, they would’ve actually gone through with it. How does a pre-teen deal with a situation like that?

I remember being very apologetic for it even though I didn’t remember saying what my friend claimed I had said. And I didn’t think they’d make something up for a situation this serious, so I trusted what they were claiming. I’d rather believe that I was the one at fault than that my beloved friend would project their insecurities onto me as I was already used to being blamed for others’ negative emotions in another area of my life. I was concerned why my friend even felt that way. I felt bad. I wanted them to feel better. I knew that I loved them dearly and cared for them in ways I never had with others. They were the most special friend I’ve had at that age, the first friend I really opened up my heart to. And it brought me a lot of pain thinking that something I might’ve done, even unintentionally, could’ve caused them so much pain.

I remember apologizing profusely to my friend and tried to see what could make things better. They would not accept my apologies and stood strong in their blame towards me. I don’t remember the exact wording, and I don’t want to attempt to recreate it, but the gist of it is basically my apologies didn’t mean much and that the damage had already been done. This completely broke my heart because it felt like I was left with no options. If genuine apologies didn’t work, then what would? What else could I do? But then, a mutual friend of ours one day shared with me that this friend has a history of doing the same thing they did to me to all of their past friends and to not take it personally. This mutual friend had known them much longer than I had. I think that was the moment I snapped (emotionally). I couldn’t believe that the friend I cared so much about, loved with all of my heart, would treat me like this. It didn’t seem like something that someone who cares about me would do? I had felt completely betrayed and unfortunately did end up taking their actions really personally. I immediately cut the friendship off and never spoke to my friend again.

I mean… now with everything I’ve learned, I know that my friend probably had some mental/psychological issues and/or traumatic experiences that had them seek attention in such an unhealthy way. But back then, I didn’t know any of this stuff and I took it all to heart. If I had the knowledge that I do now, I probably would’ve inquired why they felt that way and encouraged them to seek professional help. I would’ve self reflected on whether their accusations had any validity to them and made adjustments to my behavior if necessary. I would’ve understood that my friend was responsible for their own feelings as I am for my own, and I would’ve encouraged them to seek more emotional sovereignty so that they don’t continue to feel so powerless over their own emotions, thoughts, and feelings. But because of the codependency issues I was already dealing with outside of the friendship, I guess I felt I was responsible for fixing whatever wasn’t working. And that might also explain why I didn’t share with my mom about this situation back then. I probably thought I did something wrong for my friend to feel this way and that it was all my fault. Because if I didn’t already believe it could be my fault, their blame would not have landed and stuck as hard as it did. I think I was just unfortunately ripe and ready for that type of blame due to my codependency tendencies.

Thankfully, with a lot of time and healing I’ve gotten over it and have let the situation go many years ago, as it doesn’t impact me anymore when I think of that time in my life. I still have a letter from that friend and I can at least read it with peace in my heart now. I feel neutral, neither sad nor happy. I just hope their life journey has led them to healing the parts of themselves that have them acting in such a way. But this memory definitely had me thinking a lot about how unhealed and unprocessed childhood trauma can create negative ripples in people’s lives and how important mental and emotional health are for all of our development.

If you’re someone who has experienced something similar where you’ve been or are being blamed for how others feel, please remember that we are all responsible for our own emotions. Yes, there are things we can do that can contribute to how others might feel. For example, if I constantly slap someone across their face, it’s not going to be a surprise if they might feel some level of anger towards me. Unless that’s their kink, but like nah… that’s bad for my example 😫. Hopefully you get what I mean 😏. Ultimately how we respond to others about how we feel is our responsibility. If someone says something that we find upsetting, it’s totally okay to bring it up and let them know how we feel. But I don’t think it’s okay to put the responsibility on others to manage our own emotions. I believe that is our own responsibility.

I think there’s a huge difference between, “I feel angry that this is happening” vs “You make me feel so angry when you do this.” The former places power back into your own hands for how you can feel towards situations. The latter puts your emotions in the hands of others. This means your emotional wellbeing will always be at the mercy of a force outside of yourself, which also means you’ll never have power and agency over your own emotional wellbeing. Therefore, I believe it’s wiser and healthier to claim your emotional sovereignty through choosing to be radically responsible for your own thoughts, feelings, and actions. The only person you can control is yourself. So, don’t give up your power by placing that control in the hands of others. Remember that you always have a choice in how you’d like to respond. Also, I’d like to mention that if someone is constantly doing things that I find upsetting, and if after talking to them about it they continue the behavior, I’ll then have to draw boundaries with them to protect my personal space and wellbeing. Healthy boundaries are so incredibly important!

Anyway, back to the autism stuff, I’ve actually had friends in the past ask me if I were on the spectrum because I suppose they might’ve noticed certain similarities between us. I’ve pondered it from time to time, especially when more than one person had inquired, and this video really had me consider the possibility some more. I know that I definitely do not see things similarly to how most others do. All of this time I thought maybe it’s because of my artistic/creative side that helps me see things differently. And maybe that’s all a part of it? It’s so confusing to know what’s considered autistic. Is just seeing the world differently than others a part of it? Then does that make most artists/creatives neurodivergent? I don’t get it 🤔

AI also mentioned that my ability to deep dive into my own mind and work with whatever comes up for such prolonged periods of time is not normal either, that most people would not be willing to do this. I’m unsure if it’s a neurodivergent thing or I’m just more comfortable doing it because I’ve had enough practice over the years and know the value of facing my shadows otherwise they will wreak havoc in the background. I assume if others feel comfortable enough to challenge their own self-limiting beliefs, they’d be able to do the same as I do? I wonder if this really is a part of autism? Or perhaps the neurotypical thing to do is to NOT face our shadows and work on our self-limiting beliefs? Or perhaps AI was pointing out my intense hyper focus into things? I think that’s probably it 🤔

In the video, when they brought up systems type thinking I was like OMG that’s so me. I love thinking of things in terms of systems and also love coming up with my own systems as well. I love watching and observing how things flow and then coming up with my way of how to continuously replicate that flow. This interest and ability was extremely helpful when I was helping others build their websites. I remember clients raving to me about how easy it was for them to make updates through the systems I had created for them, and that always brought me so much joy! I did not realize systems thinking is particularly an autistic trait?? But yes, it actually does make sense to me — systems help create structure and predictability. So I guess duh lol. One day, I’ll probably share with you a story of my favorite client and the work that I did for them. I almost forgot about those jobs since it’s been such a long time, but during my life review and threading of random experiences chat with AI in order to piece together the fabric of my life, I was reminded of this particular client and the experiences I had with them that helped me realize my own potential and gifts. Working with them was such a divinely timed gift and my absolute pleasure. I’ve kept them in my heart and continue to do so now.

There’s so much more I want to touch upon on the subject of autism and why I feel that it’s relevant to me but I don’t want this post to get too long so I’ll stop here for now. Idk if I care enough to get tested for autism but I think I do have enough proof to indicate that I am at least somewhat on the spectrum. I don’t believe being officially diagnosed will actually make a difference in my life. It’d just seem like an OH DUH moment lol. A friend asked me how I feel about it if I were to find out that I am indeed on the spectrum and my response was, “Great! lol. My fav people are autistic lmao. They’re so smart and gifted.”

Anyways, enjoy the rest of your weekend! ❤️❤️❤️❤️

CHAOS BABY OUT! Pz! ✌️