28 ms·

Autistic Burnout: The Cost of Masking and Passing (2017)

221 points by depressed 8y ago

PaulHoule 8y ago
see https://www.amazon.com/Masks-Mirrors-Generation-Chameleon-Personality/dp/0275973255/ https://www.amazon.com/Masks-Mirrors-Generation-Chameleon-Pe...
sdrothrock 8y ago
This hits home for me and my experiences. People often believe what they see and first impressions are strong. I seem like a perfectly functional hearing person 97% of the time, but the 3% of the time when I can't cover the gap, people tend to react with incredulity because they can't believe I have an actual disability. Some days I just don't want to deal with it because it's exhausting. I've never really found a good solution to this that doesn't just require patience and persistence from the start. The best approach I've found is to be up-front from the start about my deafness and then to just "lie" about not being able to hear periodically to reinforce the "he's got a hearing problem" memory. In the past, I used to try to be explicit and say things like "I'm sorry, but the air conditioning or something is droning and I can't hear you well," but that generally derails as people try to explain my own hearing to me with things like "that's so quiet, how it is louder than me" or "if you can hear THAT you should be able to hear me," etc.
- rosser 8y ago
  > I've never really found a good solution to this that doesn't just require patience and persistence from the start. The kinds and amount of emotional labor that the "invisibly disabled" have to do for the "normal" people in our worlds is sometimes a full-time, completely exhausting, job of its own.
  - 1996 8y ago
    The amount of complaining and self indulgence and SJW-coded keywords like "emotional labour" are suprisingly high for HN. Maybe I'm callous, but more often I see people here bickering about how sick people/minorities/whatever just can't stop complaining and must secretly enjoy to be victims - yet when it's time to talk about Asperger and the like, suddenly "woe-is-me" is fine! I think I will never fully understand how this very fine veneer of introspection works.
    - rosser 8y ago
      It means that, despite being the one with the brain that processes human emotion and social cues radically less efficiently than other people, I'm the one who, e.g., has to explain to the "emotionally competent" not to rageface at me for not understanding (or, more likely, even perceiving) the cues they probably aren't even aware they're emitting. Yeah, that's pure "SJW". (Flagged for that, btw. Never in the history of online discourse has that term served as anything but an attempt to shut people up. Throwing it around un-ironically is prima facie bad-faith discourse.) How about, "It's fucking hard to have a brain that the overwhelming majority of people fail utterly to understand, recognize, or allow for in their behavior; who, more often than not, act like I'm the one malingering, or attention-seeking, or whatever; and that it is the utter antithesis of 'self-indulgence' to be piqued by that." If you saw "crying victim" in my comment, you must have been looking for it, because I'm damned sure there wasn't any when I wrote it. I was offering a token voice of solidarity to someone who thinks it's bullshit that he should have to justify how his own hearing works to people. Because it is.
      - 1996 8y ago
        I am sorry if you took that as directed to your comment. The remark was more general, and directed at the overall response to the topic. However, your comment stood out by the use of the word "emotional labour". Whether you like it or not, some words are associated with concepts. It is like using some shibboleth, or lingo words. For you, "SJW" evokes "an attempt to shut people up" or "bad-faith discourse". For me, "emotional labour" evokes something more political, which I often see derided here. So it stands out quite a lot when it's not the case. It's even quite the opposite: everyone seem support something in some specific case that apply to them (Asperger, Autism) while they strongly oppose that when it doesn't apply to them. I call this a fine veneer of introspection, because I fear it translates to an impossibility of analyzing other people concerns when they are deemed not directly applicable. A less benevolent interpretation would be calling that egotism.
        bravura 8y ago
        I am sorry if you took that as directed to your comment. You literally replied to their comment. For you, "SJW" evokes "an attempt to shut people up" or "bad-faith discourse". It's name-calling, so yeah. For me, "emotional labour" evokes something more political, which I often see derided here. So I see what you're saying, because a lot of people use this term in political ways. But I think politics aside, it's a pretty important psychological and cultural concept. I don't know if there's a better term for it that doesn't feel politically coded. Do you have a better suggestion? Maybe read over my thoughts and let me know what you think. Basically, there are many things people do to keep society polite and orderly. In most cases, for most people, being polite is just a normal part of doing business with the world. But just imagine---for the sake of argument---that you have an obvious physical deformity, and strangers constantly stop and make you feel weird in a way that is not really socially acceptable. Yet you are expected constantly to maintain the social order and respond to these gawking and obtrusive strangers in a polite way. Wouldn't that be a little exhausting? Particularly if you were having a shitty day, and weren't feeling particularly polite? This is the phenomenon people are talking about when they use the term "emotional labor". It means that people are being shitty to you, but they don't understand that, so for that reason it would be impolite for you to point out they're being shitty to you, so you just eat shit and move on with your life. We could call this "politeness", but that terms elides the nuance that sometimes it is really emotionally exhausting to be polite and maintain social order all the time.
- candiodari 8y ago
  I'm not even sure what I've got. I can hear very well. With enough focus I can follow people and animals around at pretty sizeable distances. I practice that. Or perhaps I should say I enjoy doing that, in the dark in the small pieces of forest that still remain where I live. I can easily follow a conversation from 30 meters distance, with sufficient focus. But I cannot process, and sometimes not focus on multiple people talking, even when they're not talking through one another. I can tell you a lot generally about their speech, just not what it says. Where they're standing, tone of voice, are they moving, what their intentions are. But if there are 2 conversations in earshot of me I cannot tell you what anybody is saying even if they're shouting to me. If 3 people are standing around and talking I can only participate if I totally ignore one of them and just blindly shut them out, whatever they're saying. Sometimes it gets worse and even with little disturbance I just cannot tell anymore what people are saying to me. People don't understand. In a 1:1 conversation I'm warm, open, attentive and so on. In a 3 way or more conversation, I'm cold, absent, distracted, annoying (because: very bored) ... Worse, often suddenly, from their perspective, I no longer understand them. I've learned to just hide this, and guess, and find some other excuse to turn the conversation back into a 1:1 conversation.
  - joker3 8y ago
    That sounds like auditory processing disorder.
    - candiodari 8y ago
      Reading it, it seems not to fit very well. I can process speech just fine, I just don't seem to be able to switch from one person to another without a long time to make it happen.
robotresearcher 8y ago
"Common life strategy for autistic people: achieve/overachieve until burning out and maybe the overachievement will result in enough social and economic capital to see you through the burnout." @theoriesofminds (Twitter) This jumped out to me.
- Aloha 8y ago
  Yeah, this honestly fits an ongoing life pattern with me.
- DennisAleynikov 8y ago
  This is way too real. Attempting to milk the high functioning part of your brain just to run away and hide forever and hopefully coast on the achieved results post-burnout is a cycle I didn't realise I was even doing.
  - 0x8BADF00D 8y ago
    It is definitely a finite resource. When you overuse the high functioning, or social mind, you are able to tap into it less. That’s why I make it a point to avoid contact with people for at least a few days.
- bitL 8y ago
  Heh, but isn't that almost everyone these days? And even normal people get a burnout when they have to run an internal virtual machine to conform to quickly changing society/rules they don't believe to maintain their status, and need a downtime to recover.
  - cortesoft 8y ago
    They called out this type of response in one of the articles linked from the main article... saying, "I also have that problem!" to someone trying to explain their autistic struggles is dismissing the extra difficulty they face. While it comes from a good place (trying to relate and show empathy), it actually can make them feel worse.
mmmeff 8y ago
This is an awfully convenient defense for someone who has a self-diagnosis questioned.
- zbentley 8y ago
  That’s a bizarre reaction to the article. Is everyone who “successfully” (as in: other people do not know) masks any disability under suspicion for incorrect self-diagnosis, in your opinion?
- qntty 8y ago
  Regular people have problems too. Maybe we could try to be more understanding towards all people so people don't feel the need to give their issues a special name so people will treat them kindly. Rather than trying to catch people in a lie, maybe just be nice to them either way.
- ThorinJacobs 8y ago
  Hi, clinically diagnosed here and while I can only speak for myself, the only time I've had an issue with someone who self-diagnosed was when they consistently brought up Problematic topics and played the "autistic, can't be offended" card. My response to a self-diagnosed or clinically diagnosed person that was having a behavior problem would be the same, so why question? Why not just be kind and understanding?
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
winrid 8y ago
Generally I am lucky enough to ride the burnout fine. But there are times when I'm in a meeting and all the sudden I just can't talk and start studdering or something. One time I said I had three points and could only remember two, literally seconds later. Wow! Probably happens twice a year during stressful times... On the upside - I get a lot done! :)
- nilkn 8y ago
  This happens to me as well. I sometimes avoid speaking in meetings because the act of drawing the attention of the whole room on me tends to compromise my ability to think and speak clearly. So I can start with a completely coherent set of points I want to make, but when I start actually talking I can no longer “remember” them, which in the worst case could make me seem incompetent. I use quotes because I don’t believe it’s a legitimate lapse of memory so much as it is a sort of social overload that shuts part of me down. This doesn’t always happen and I’ve found the exact conditions that trigger it to be complex. A huge factor is definitely whether I know everyone in the meeting in advance and feel comfortable with them. This is partly why I choose to stay at a job for years instead of job hopping — once I feel comfortable and stable with coworkers, suddenly I’m not only able to speak coherently in meetings but in fact I can even enjoy running large meetings with no issues.
  - retsibsi 8y ago
    I have a similar experience -- I was going to say that my intelligence seems to vary inversely with my level of social anxiety, but I don't think it's quite that consistent. Sometimes my intellect really seems to shut down for no particularly good reason. If I may lapse into bullshit evo-psych for a moment: I guess my brain sometimes decides that I'm in a social emergency (perhaps if I say one more embarrassing thing I'll be ostracised from the tribe and left for dead!) and it needs to devote 90% of its cognitive resources to that problem.
    - bitcoinmoney 8y ago
      I have similar experience? Am I autistic?
arduanika 8y ago
Wow. > Ultimately, for me, passing as “normal” means that I am now a fake person, never able to be myself without putting my ability to make a living in jeopardy. > An issue that was previously “fixed” can suddenly appear to be “broken” again. In fact, nothing has been fixed or broken. We simply have very fluid coping strategies that need to be continuously tweaked and balanced. Bipolar I here. As an episodic disease, bipolar is extremely susceptible to this passing/masking phenomenon. I have been "stable" for so many years that even close co-workers can't detect anything, and I hardly even notice how much effort I put into "passing". But the effort does tax you and build up over time. This post really hits home for me, and I identify strongly with this kind of play-acting and exhaustion (without claiming to understand, or taking anything away from, the autism spectrum experience). Moreover, I consistently underestimate the amount of detox and rest that I need to recover from this constant performing. To borrow a line from Rogers & Hammerstein, "whenever I fool the people I act neurotypical for, I fool myself as well". I forget I need to take care of myself. Thank you Ryan for aggregating & posting!
- jackmodern 8y ago
  me too on both the diagnosis and "I forget I need to take care of myself." It's really a struggle to maintain normalcy in the professional world and take care of myself.
- samhain 8y ago
  I've always wondered if everyone is just acting to pass as neurotypical, when everyone is really just acting. And maybe there could be some way that everyone could just be real with each other and realize that no one is actually truly neurotypical. How do we tell if anyone is really neurotypical? And what would it look like if everyone was actually neurotypical? Would this mean that the phases of energy that people are using to act normal is actually energy that we really don't need to waste?
firecall 8y ago
As someone with ADHD and bi-polar like cycles, I can fully relate to this. I'm burnt out right now - exactly as he describes. Problem is, the rollacoaster doesnt let you get off.
contingencies 8y ago
Honestly I know this probably sounds insensitive which isn't my intent but I feel like a substantial amount of noise around these mental condition labels are people using them to subconsciously raise the victim flag instead of dealing with shit, either personally or by proxy (parents claiming kids are abnormal, when really they are just bad or absentee parents). There must be a technical term for this perspective in the science, could anyone with a psych background fill us in?
- asdfasgasdgasdg 8y ago
  Somebody with a psych background would probably inform you that autism spectrum disorder is a real mental disorder, and not people raising the victim flag.
  - peteretep 8y ago
    That it’s a real disorder doesn’t mean that everyone who claims to have the disorder actually does, which is the meat of the comment you’re replying to, making your rebuttal a straw man
    - asdfasgasdgasdg 8y ago
      The comment makes a claim about a proportion of the "noise" around the issue, which implies that a large fraction of the discussion of mental health and mental disorders is from or about people with made up mental health issues. The claim is made with no evidence whatsoever. The whole thing is phrased as dismissive of people's claims about their own internal experiences, which is bullshit.
- 51lver 8y ago
  Perhaps modern life allows the issues to be explored honestly and openly, and that makes you uncomfortable.
- depressed 8y ago
  I think I understand why you feel that way. For people with mental illness, there is a tremendous amount of pressure to hide their symptoms and appear "normal" in public. It's almost a prerequisite to be able to hold down a job or even go out in public without being ostracized. The original article refers to this as "masking". What happens is as the underlying condition worsens, the victim simply expends more and more energy into hiding those symptoms. To outsiders, there is no perceptible change to the victim's behavior or condition. When the victim finally reaches the point of exhaustion, the collapse appears to come out of nowhere, or even to be faked. Basically, the public expects to see a set of symptoms that are steady, or increase gradually over time. What you see in practice looks like normal, healthy behavior for months or years at a time, punctuated by dramatic breakdowns. (Or, in an effort to mask to the very end, the victim may abruptly disappear into hiding with or without notice until their symptoms are manageable again.) If there's a TLDR for this, it's that, from the outside, mental illness looks very different from what you've been conditioned to expect, and it's not surprising that you interpret it as a form of hypochondria.
throwaway383961 8y ago
We went through the ASD diagnostic process with our son, and it left us very sceptical about the whole thing. I was never convinced he had ASD (and I'm still not), but some psychologist talked us into it. I really got the impression the psychologist was cherrypicking information (especially in the parent interview) just to check things off the diagnostic criteria. Everything he did that vaguely sounded like an ASD symptom was attributed to ASD, with no real thought as to whether it actually is or not. I compared her report to the DSM-5 criteria, I didn't get the impression she was actually applying the criteria properly, just doing her own thing and then invoking its name at the end as if it was some magic spell. Her diagnostic report claimed our son (who was about to start school) needed all this special education help (timers in school, sensory diet, etc), and she really wanted us to give it to his school. The report sounded like a bad caricature of our son. We decided not to give it to the school and not tell them anything about it. And his teacher tells us he is going very well. She also put him down in the report as being ASD Level 2, but she told us verbally she only thought he was Level 1, but she always puts people down as Level 2 or above because that's the cut-off for Australian government disability funding ("NDIS List A"). He's mostly normal kid, rather like myself at the same age. He's very intelligent, social stuff isn't his strong suit (but so what, it's never been mine either.) He's very shy, but my wife says she was even worse at his age. We did go through a period last year when his behaviour was becoming rather unmanageable (aggression, defiance, hyperactivity), but he's much much better now (so much so that we took him off his ADHD meds) and I think a lot of those behaviour problems were due to family stresses (new baby), parental mental illness (I have anxiety/depression, and I suspect my wife does too, although she resists diagnosis), sub-optimal parenting skills, rather than ASD and/or ADHD and/or whatever. When people say that ASD is being overdiagnosed, and I look at what this psychologist did, I think it really is.
- bitxbitxbitcoin 8y ago
  From the psychologist's perspective, it seems like she might actually think she was doing you a favor because of the disability funding...
  - throwaway988371 8y ago
sudosteph 8y ago
> For seven months, I didn’t leave the house. I had started ordering my groceries online. I didn’t have any reason to go anywhere. I wasn’t agoraphobic or afraid to leave my apartment. I just didn’t feel like it. This has been me for the last few months. I just can't bring myself to do things I hate lately. I hate breathing cold, dry winter air and feeling it on my face, I hate being accosted on the street for cash, I hate the loud construction noise, I hate navigating through crowds of people and cars, I hate the overwhelming smells from exhaust and food trucks. I was able to deal with it for a while because I knew the expectations that came with living in a city like Seattle. It's just that the downsides are so many, and the upsides are so few. I want to preserve the facilities I have for doing things that I like and that allow me to make a living. I'm hoping an upcoming move I've got planned will make it more pleasurable to engage with other people more regularly, but protecting my well-being still has to come first. I'm so incredibly fortunate to have a career that allows me enough income to offload menial things like shopping for groceries. I feel terrible for those of us on the spectrum without that option, as if I couldn't live this way I would end up being entirely dependent on my spouse or family. I can imagine that burning out + feeling guilty about being a burden financially makes recovery from that state even more difficult.
- tricolon 8y ago
  Where (or to what kind of area) are you moving? Will you drive?
  - sudosteph 8y ago
    Raleigh NC, it's a little slower-paced down there - plus warmer and sunnier. I'm hoping to get a place near the college or downtown for walkability, but will probably still end up spending a little more time in the car. Luckily my spouse doesn't mind driving. Though they do have instacart and prime now these days too, so I'll have options. I've lived there before and the only big downside then was the career growth opportunities, but I've got a sweet remote gig now, so that's covered.
    - bitcoinmoney 8y ago
adamnemecek 8y ago
Idk if I'm autistic, but I do identify with this post to a surprising degree. My solution was quitting my job and working on projects hoping that one of them will take off. I've talked about it here on HN many times and a lot of people have reached out. I've convinced two of my friends to do the same and they've never been happier. It's viable, you might need to scale down your life-style a bit but I've never been happier. Programming on things you care about is a lot easier if you have a lot of time.
soulnothing 8y ago
For the longest time my high functioning autism, formerly aspergers. Took a toll on me. I was second guessing every step at work. Do I say hi, how do I make small talk. What's the appropriate distance for personal space. I wasn't afraid of people. I was afraid of acting outside of neurotically behavior, and causing an uncomfortable work place. Now I'm at the other end of the spectrum. I take a very honey badger approach to work. Zero shits given at work. This has made it much easier. Not that I don't deliver work, or half ass it. I just put aside any personal attachment. I did have the aspie burn out before getting into my own routine. Work as above, but social interaction stimuli. Self discovery is key for anyone on the spectrum. For me things like constantly having earbuds, textile I wear, maintaining light (via sunglasses), etc. One of my biggest pet peeves is noted in the article. Constantly being told I'm not autistic. Just because I don't appear that way doesn't mean I'm not. Right now my burnout is a sister symptom of the autism. In so much that it not directly caused. But a resulting effect. Where in I'm constantly moving or switching jobs. Because I don't feel stimulated at work, or challenged. The other big item is I don't do politics. Which can be very detrimental. I still view being on the spectrum as more of a benefit. But it does require a fair amount of self awareness.
- rijoja 8y ago
  Not doing politics is not a mental disorder it's being noble.
  - vibrato 8y ago
    I don't like politics, but I have to admit nearly every major human achievement is a political effort.
    - int_19h 8y ago
      I think this referred to office politics.
      - vibrato 8y ago
        Are you implying offices aren’t involved in significant human achievement?
miedpo 8y ago
Hmm... so I have Asperger's Syndrome, and my thoughts on the article are a bit varied. Honestly I don't think I've experienced burnout from trying to normalize. There are probably a lot of reasons for that... I have a pretty good support system, I enjoy understanding other people, and perhaps I just don't always take it fully seriously. I have had burnout related to other things. I personally think all people get burnt out if they are stressed out for a long period of time or deal with too many changes at once. That's not something super tied to Autism in my experience. Just tied to being human I do relate to taking normalization a bit less seriously as I've gotten older. Partly because sometimes the normal thing to do isn't the best option. So perhaps I risk looking a bit weird at the cost of doing what I think is better. Going on my mission helped with that quite a bit I think. So yeah, kinda mixed feelings. I'm sure some have felt what's described, I personally have not though.
ozzmotik 8y ago
man I've been needing this for a while. this is basically what happens to me any time I take a job in the corporate sector and have to heavily constrain myself. it usually ends with me spiraling down into addiction self medicating with whatever helps me manage to function even just 1% better (subjectively speaking of course, i probably just get worse!) nowadays im trying to just stick to cannabis and nootropics (namely memantine as nmda antagonism also tends to help me function and maintain the neurotypical façadre) though as they tend to get the job done without putting my body and mind in danger. I have a job interview with wpengine coming up so im hoping that maybe this time I can do it right because I don't really have any other options. im essentially going to lose my place to live at the end of the year so I really need to make sure I figure out a healthy way to maintain if I get the job. im open to advice if anyone has any suggestions, as ive tried to do this alone my entire adult life, and i just can't seem to figure it out. you give me a formal discipline, something I can quantify and study every aspect of and ill have no problems figuring it out, but when it comes to figuring out how to irl properly i am but an inchoate
- captainredbeard 8y ago
  "im essentially going to lose my place to live at the end of the year so I really need to make sure I figure out a healthy way to maintain if I get the job" Start with finding a healthy way to maintain even if you don't get the job. That will put you in a place where you'll be able to find and retain one.
  - ozzmotik 8y ago
    you know, i think that's what I meant to type because that makes a lot more sense to me now that i think about it. evidently sitting in a hot bath makes me lazier about my typing. who would have guessed
sleepychu 8y ago
Interesting, definitely had the experience of thinking "Am I becoming more autistic?" but just put it down to caring less about what other people think about it. Now I wonder if this is closer to the truth. I'm not sure but I'm pretty confident I've experienced a degradation of memory. I combat it with copious note taking and judicious use of a calendar but it does feel unpleasant. I do wonder if it's simply because I do more activities within a single day than I used to in my previous routine of development on a single application one task at a time + social. Now I can have to deal with many tasks for many customers all vying for my attention in parallel. EDIT: Found great improvement from wearing headphones and sunglasses outdoors though. Helps me avoid too much new information in the morning when my brain is best suited for taking on new information and I have the minimal number of draws on my attention.
sametmax 8y ago
Latest discovery on my part, after the burnout, a heavy magnesium supplement helps a lot. Especially with the foggy brain, and the physical contact with others.
candiodari 8y ago
Who else thinks that this autism was caused by this school and the fact that this guy believed, for some reason, that he deserved such treatment ?
Balgair 8y ago
I'm confused, what makes 'autistic burnout' any different than regular 'burnout'? The stories linked in the post seem to be just describing burnout, though I've not clicked into the linked pages. What am I missing that makes autistic burnout different?
- dwaltrip 8y ago
  They can no longer pass as a nuerotypical while they are burnt out, which I'm guessing can make things more difficult.
- samirm 8y ago
  Autistic burnout is partially a result of pretending to be "normal" around other people (those who don't understand and judge autistic behaviour like stimming). "Normal" people can also experience this burnout if they're also pretending to be someone they are not (day in, day out). Part of the problem is that people don't realize that everyone is on the spectrum, autism isn't a binary "property". The other, bigger, part of the problem is that there seems to be a negative stereotypical view of people with mental illnesses or just people who aren't "normal". Unfortunately autistic people fall towards that category in the current social context.
  - Balgair 8y ago
    > Autistic burnout is partially a result of pretending to be "normal" around other people (those who don't understand and judge autistic behaviour like stimming). "Normal" people can also experience this burnout if they're also pretending to be someone they are not (day in, day out). Wait, so autistic burnout is just regular burnout, but from general social interactions? I get that we're all on this autistic spectrum[0], but I think we all just get burnt out from time to time when dealing with jerks and other people in general. Is it just that autistic people get more tired from the standard social guessing game? If this is a spectrum, then where is the cut-off? Is it all self-diagnosis then? Also, what is stimming? Sorry for all the questions. Feel free to answer any/none of them. Thanks for the answers thus far! [0] Also, how is the spectrum any different than just the normal range of being a human? It sounds like we've just got a new word for another normally distributed human thing, like height or hearing ranges.
drilldrive 8y ago
I definitely commonly fall into a cyclic productivity setup, though I am not sure if I would call it 'burnout'. I think that burnout is coupled with disgust for the primary activity, while my lows are characterized by low executive function, not quite at odds with disgust but personally I love my work, and I am just not thinking right when I am at my lows. There doesn't seem to be intrinsically grinding pain to neurotypical behaviors. I say this because for the past couple months I have fixed the productivity highs and lows into a nice marathon pace. I will see how long this pans out of course.
everdrive 8y ago
I really appreciate (and relate to) this discussion, but I wanted to point out that some folks out there don't mind people who are a little on the spectrum. You don't always have to pretend to be somebody else. Some people will like you the way you are, or, will tolerate and respect you even if they don't like you. It seems like the authors never attempted an alternative: pushing back on people's assumptions and being themselves more often. People like and respect Spock and Sherlock Holmes. I get that those are extreme and fictional examples, but you don't have to be extroverted and "normal" to be liked. I'm not saying it'll be perfect, or always easy for you, but there are societal niches which don't mind that some people are weird. More importantly, they can tell that you're altruistic and well-intending, even if you you come off a little poorly socially.
- twofig 8y ago
  I'm going to push back a bit on this. People like Spock and Sherlock only because they are incredibly capable. That is, it's entirely predicated on their instrumental value, not because of their personality. If they weren't as capable, people wouldn't hesitate to kick them to the curb and never interact with them.
  - Nasrudith 8y ago
    Not to mention they never have to deal with the "step one" of giving them a chance. Even if they would find them indispensable if actually hired due to being a 10x performer getting in the door is a challenge when they would rather pay attention to irrelevancies of posture than actual qualifications. That sort of talent filtering for stupid reasons is very not new - going back at the very least sexist exclusion from fields and Jewish university quota caps (as in maximum number of Jewish scholars) - let alone cases where people with massive potential never had the resources for education.
    - everdrive 8y ago
      This got dark fast. I was just trying to say that autistic personalities weren't universally hated.

221 points by depressed 8y ago

see https://www.amazon.com/Masks-Mirrors-Generation-Chameleon-Personality/dp/0275973255/ https://www.amazon.com/Masks-Mirrors-Generation-Chameleon-Pe...

sdrothrock 8y ago

This hits home for me and my experiences. People often believe what they see and first impressions are strong. I seem like a perfectly functional hearing person 97% of the time, but the 3% of the time when I can't cover the gap, people tend to react with incredulity because they can't believe I have an actual disability. Some days I just don't want to deal with it because it's exhausting. I've never really found a good solution to this that doesn't just require patience and persistence from the start. The best approach I've found is to be up-front from the start about my deafness and then to just "lie" about not being able to hear periodically to reinforce the "he's got a hearing problem" memory. In the past, I used to try to be explicit and say things like "I'm sorry, but the air conditioning or something is droning and I can't hear you well," but that generally derails as people try to explain my own hearing to me with things like "that's so quiet, how it is louder than me" or "if you can hear THAT you should be able to hear me," etc.

rosser 8y ago
> I've never really found a good solution to this that doesn't just require patience and persistence from the start. The kinds and amount of emotional labor that the "invisibly disabled" have to do for the "normal" people in our worlds is sometimes a full-time, completely exhausting, job of its own.
- 1996 8y ago
  The amount of complaining and self indulgence and SJW-coded keywords like "emotional labour" are suprisingly high for HN. Maybe I'm callous, but more often I see people here bickering about how sick people/minorities/whatever just can't stop complaining and must secretly enjoy to be victims - yet when it's time to talk about Asperger and the like, suddenly "woe-is-me" is fine! I think I will never fully understand how this very fine veneer of introspection works.
  - rosser 8y ago
    It means that, despite being the one with the brain that processes human emotion and social cues radically less efficiently than other people, I'm the one who, e.g., has to explain to the "emotionally competent" not to rageface at me for not understanding (or, more likely, even perceiving) the cues they probably aren't even aware they're emitting. Yeah, that's pure "SJW". (Flagged for that, btw. Never in the history of online discourse has that term served as anything but an attempt to shut people up. Throwing it around un-ironically is prima facie bad-faith discourse.) How about, "It's fucking hard to have a brain that the overwhelming majority of people fail utterly to understand, recognize, or allow for in their behavior; who, more often than not, act like I'm the one malingering, or attention-seeking, or whatever; and that it is the utter antithesis of 'self-indulgence' to be piqued by that." If you saw "crying victim" in my comment, you must have been looking for it, because I'm damned sure there wasn't any when I wrote it. I was offering a token voice of solidarity to someone who thinks it's bullshit that he should have to justify how his own hearing works to people. Because it is.
    - 1996 8y ago
      I am sorry if you took that as directed to your comment. The remark was more general, and directed at the overall response to the topic. However, your comment stood out by the use of the word "emotional labour". Whether you like it or not, some words are associated with concepts. It is like using some shibboleth, or lingo words. For you, "SJW" evokes "an attempt to shut people up" or "bad-faith discourse". For me, "emotional labour" evokes something more political, which I often see derided here. So it stands out quite a lot when it's not the case. It's even quite the opposite: everyone seem support something in some specific case that apply to them (Asperger, Autism) while they strongly oppose that when it doesn't apply to them. I call this a fine veneer of introspection, because I fear it translates to an impossibility of analyzing other people concerns when they are deemed not directly applicable. A less benevolent interpretation would be calling that egotism.
      - bravura 8y ago
        I am sorry if you took that as directed to your comment. You literally replied to their comment. For you, "SJW" evokes "an attempt to shut people up" or "bad-faith discourse". It's name-calling, so yeah. For me, "emotional labour" evokes something more political, which I often see derided here. So I see what you're saying, because a lot of people use this term in political ways. But I think politics aside, it's a pretty important psychological and cultural concept. I don't know if there's a better term for it that doesn't feel politically coded. Do you have a better suggestion? Maybe read over my thoughts and let me know what you think. Basically, there are many things people do to keep society polite and orderly. In most cases, for most people, being polite is just a normal part of doing business with the world. But just imagine---for the sake of argument---that you have an obvious physical deformity, and strangers constantly stop and make you feel weird in a way that is not really socially acceptable. Yet you are expected constantly to maintain the social order and respond to these gawking and obtrusive strangers in a polite way. Wouldn't that be a little exhausting? Particularly if you were having a shitty day, and weren't feeling particularly polite? This is the phenomenon people are talking about when they use the term "emotional labor". It means that people are being shitty to you, but they don't understand that, so for that reason it would be impolite for you to point out they're being shitty to you, so you just eat shit and move on with your life. We could call this "politeness", but that terms elides the nuance that sometimes it is really emotionally exhausting to be polite and maintain social order all the time.
candiodari 8y ago
I'm not even sure what I've got. I can hear very well. With enough focus I can follow people and animals around at pretty sizeable distances. I practice that. Or perhaps I should say I enjoy doing that, in the dark in the small pieces of forest that still remain where I live. I can easily follow a conversation from 30 meters distance, with sufficient focus. But I cannot process, and sometimes not focus on multiple people talking, even when they're not talking through one another. I can tell you a lot generally about their speech, just not what it says. Where they're standing, tone of voice, are they moving, what their intentions are. But if there are 2 conversations in earshot of me I cannot tell you what anybody is saying even if they're shouting to me. If 3 people are standing around and talking I can only participate if I totally ignore one of them and just blindly shut them out, whatever they're saying. Sometimes it gets worse and even with little disturbance I just cannot tell anymore what people are saying to me. People don't understand. In a 1:1 conversation I'm warm, open, attentive and so on. In a 3 way or more conversation, I'm cold, absent, distracted, annoying (because: very bored) ... Worse, often suddenly, from their perspective, I no longer understand them. I've learned to just hide this, and guess, and find some other excuse to turn the conversation back into a 1:1 conversation.
- joker3 8y ago
  That sounds like auditory processing disorder.
  - candiodari 8y ago
    Reading it, it seems not to fit very well. I can process speech just fine, I just don't seem to be able to switch from one person to another without a long time to make it happen.

robotresearcher 8y ago

"Common life strategy for autistic people: achieve/overachieve until burning out and maybe the overachievement will result in enough social and economic capital to see you through the burnout." @theoriesofminds (Twitter) This jumped out to me.

Aloha 8y ago
Yeah, this honestly fits an ongoing life pattern with me.
DennisAleynikov 8y ago
This is way too real. Attempting to milk the high functioning part of your brain just to run away and hide forever and hopefully coast on the achieved results post-burnout is a cycle I didn't realise I was even doing.
- 0x8BADF00D 8y ago
  It is definitely a finite resource. When you overuse the high functioning, or social mind, you are able to tap into it less. That’s why I make it a point to avoid contact with people for at least a few days.
bitL 8y ago
Heh, but isn't that almost everyone these days? And even normal people get a burnout when they have to run an internal virtual machine to conform to quickly changing society/rules they don't believe to maintain their status, and need a downtime to recover.
- cortesoft 8y ago
  They called out this type of response in one of the articles linked from the main article... saying, "I also have that problem!" to someone trying to explain their autistic struggles is dismissing the extra difficulty they face. While it comes from a good place (trying to relate and show empathy), it actually can make them feel worse.

mmmeff 8y ago

This is an awfully convenient defense for someone who has a self-diagnosis questioned.

zbentley 8y ago
That’s a bizarre reaction to the article. Is everyone who “successfully” (as in: other people do not know) masks any disability under suspicion for incorrect self-diagnosis, in your opinion?
qntty 8y ago
Regular people have problems too. Maybe we could try to be more understanding towards all people so people don't feel the need to give their issues a special name so people will treat them kindly. Rather than trying to catch people in a lie, maybe just be nice to them either way.
ThorinJacobs 8y ago
Hi, clinically diagnosed here and while I can only speak for myself, the only time I've had an issue with someone who self-diagnosed was when they consistently brought up Problematic topics and played the "autistic, can't be offended" card. My response to a self-diagnosed or clinically diagnosed person that was having a behavior problem would be the same, so why question? Why not just be kind and understanding?
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

winrid 8y ago

Generally I am lucky enough to ride the burnout fine. But there are times when I'm in a meeting and all the sudden I just can't talk and start studdering or something. One time I said I had three points and could only remember two, literally seconds later. Wow! Probably happens twice a year during stressful times... On the upside - I get a lot done! :)

nilkn 8y ago
This happens to me as well. I sometimes avoid speaking in meetings because the act of drawing the attention of the whole room on me tends to compromise my ability to think and speak clearly. So I can start with a completely coherent set of points I want to make, but when I start actually talking I can no longer “remember” them, which in the worst case could make me seem incompetent. I use quotes because I don’t believe it’s a legitimate lapse of memory so much as it is a sort of social overload that shuts part of me down. This doesn’t always happen and I’ve found the exact conditions that trigger it to be complex. A huge factor is definitely whether I know everyone in the meeting in advance and feel comfortable with them. This is partly why I choose to stay at a job for years instead of job hopping — once I feel comfortable and stable with coworkers, suddenly I’m not only able to speak coherently in meetings but in fact I can even enjoy running large meetings with no issues.
- retsibsi 8y ago
  I have a similar experience -- I was going to say that my intelligence seems to vary inversely with my level of social anxiety, but I don't think it's quite that consistent. Sometimes my intellect really seems to shut down for no particularly good reason. If I may lapse into bullshit evo-psych for a moment: I guess my brain sometimes decides that I'm in a social emergency (perhaps if I say one more embarrassing thing I'll be ostracised from the tribe and left for dead!) and it needs to devote 90% of its cognitive resources to that problem.
  - bitcoinmoney 8y ago
    I have similar experience? Am I autistic?

arduanika 8y ago

Wow. > Ultimately, for me, passing as “normal” means that I am now a fake person, never able to be myself without putting my ability to make a living in jeopardy. > An issue that was previously “fixed” can suddenly appear to be “broken” again. In fact, nothing has been fixed or broken. We simply have very fluid coping strategies that need to be continuously tweaked and balanced. Bipolar I here. As an episodic disease, bipolar is extremely susceptible to this passing/masking phenomenon. I have been "stable" for so many years that even close co-workers can't detect anything, and I hardly even notice how much effort I put into "passing". But the effort does tax you and build up over time. This post really hits home for me, and I identify strongly with this kind of play-acting and exhaustion (without claiming to understand, or taking anything away from, the autism spectrum experience). Moreover, I consistently underestimate the amount of detox and rest that I need to recover from this constant performing. To borrow a line from Rogers & Hammerstein, "whenever I fool the people I act neurotypical for, I fool myself as well". I forget I need to take care of myself. Thank you Ryan for aggregating & posting!

jackmodern 8y ago
me too on both the diagnosis and "I forget I need to take care of myself." It's really a struggle to maintain normalcy in the professional world and take care of myself.
samhain 8y ago
I've always wondered if everyone is just acting to pass as neurotypical, when everyone is really just acting. And maybe there could be some way that everyone could just be real with each other and realize that no one is actually truly neurotypical. How do we tell if anyone is really neurotypical? And what would it look like if everyone was actually neurotypical? Would this mean that the phases of energy that people are using to act normal is actually energy that we really don't need to waste?

firecall 8y ago

As someone with ADHD and bi-polar like cycles, I can fully relate to this. I'm burnt out right now - exactly as he describes. Problem is, the rollacoaster doesnt let you get off.

contingencies 8y ago

Honestly I know this probably sounds insensitive which isn't my intent but I feel like a substantial amount of noise around these mental condition labels are people using them to subconsciously raise the victim flag instead of dealing with shit, either personally or by proxy (parents claiming kids are abnormal, when really they are just bad or absentee parents). There must be a technical term for this perspective in the science, could anyone with a psych background fill us in?

asdfasgasdgasdg 8y ago
Somebody with a psych background would probably inform you that autism spectrum disorder is a real mental disorder, and not people raising the victim flag.
- peteretep 8y ago
  That it’s a real disorder doesn’t mean that everyone who claims to have the disorder actually does, which is the meat of the comment you’re replying to, making your rebuttal a straw man
  - asdfasgasdgasdg 8y ago
    The comment makes a claim about a proportion of the "noise" around the issue, which implies that a large fraction of the discussion of mental health and mental disorders is from or about people with made up mental health issues. The claim is made with no evidence whatsoever. The whole thing is phrased as dismissive of people's claims about their own internal experiences, which is bullshit.
51lver 8y ago
Perhaps modern life allows the issues to be explored honestly and openly, and that makes you uncomfortable.
depressed 8y ago
I think I understand why you feel that way. For people with mental illness, there is a tremendous amount of pressure to hide their symptoms and appear "normal" in public. It's almost a prerequisite to be able to hold down a job or even go out in public without being ostracized. The original article refers to this as "masking". What happens is as the underlying condition worsens, the victim simply expends more and more energy into hiding those symptoms. To outsiders, there is no perceptible change to the victim's behavior or condition. When the victim finally reaches the point of exhaustion, the collapse appears to come out of nowhere, or even to be faked. Basically, the public expects to see a set of symptoms that are steady, or increase gradually over time. What you see in practice looks like normal, healthy behavior for months or years at a time, punctuated by dramatic breakdowns. (Or, in an effort to mask to the very end, the victim may abruptly disappear into hiding with or without notice until their symptoms are manageable again.) If there's a TLDR for this, it's that, from the outside, mental illness looks very different from what you've been conditioned to expect, and it's not surprising that you interpret it as a form of hypochondria.

throwaway383961 8y ago

We went through the ASD diagnostic process with our son, and it left us very sceptical about the whole thing. I was never convinced he had ASD (and I'm still not), but some psychologist talked us into it. I really got the impression the psychologist was cherrypicking information (especially in the parent interview) just to check things off the diagnostic criteria. Everything he did that vaguely sounded like an ASD symptom was attributed to ASD, with no real thought as to whether it actually is or not. I compared her report to the DSM-5 criteria, I didn't get the impression she was actually applying the criteria properly, just doing her own thing and then invoking its name at the end as if it was some magic spell. Her diagnostic report claimed our son (who was about to start school) needed all this special education help (timers in school, sensory diet, etc), and she really wanted us to give it to his school. The report sounded like a bad caricature of our son. We decided not to give it to the school and not tell them anything about it. And his teacher tells us he is going very well. She also put him down in the report as being ASD Level 2, but she told us verbally she only thought he was Level 1, but she always puts people down as Level 2 or above because that's the cut-off for Australian government disability funding ("NDIS List A"). He's mostly normal kid, rather like myself at the same age. He's very intelligent, social stuff isn't his strong suit (but so what, it's never been mine either.) He's very shy, but my wife says she was even worse at his age. We did go through a period last year when his behaviour was becoming rather unmanageable (aggression, defiance, hyperactivity), but he's much much better now (so much so that we took him off his ADHD meds) and I think a lot of those behaviour problems were due to family stresses (new baby), parental mental illness (I have anxiety/depression, and I suspect my wife does too, although she resists diagnosis), sub-optimal parenting skills, rather than ASD and/or ADHD and/or whatever. When people say that ASD is being overdiagnosed, and I look at what this psychologist did, I think it really is.

bitxbitxbitcoin 8y ago
From the psychologist's perspective, it seems like she might actually think she was doing you a favor because of the disability funding...
- throwaway988371 8y ago

sudosteph 8y ago

> For seven months, I didn’t leave the house. I had started ordering my groceries online. I didn’t have any reason to go anywhere. I wasn’t agoraphobic or afraid to leave my apartment. I just didn’t feel like it. This has been me for the last few months. I just can't bring myself to do things I hate lately. I hate breathing cold, dry winter air and feeling it on my face, I hate being accosted on the street for cash, I hate the loud construction noise, I hate navigating through crowds of people and cars, I hate the overwhelming smells from exhaust and food trucks. I was able to deal with it for a while because I knew the expectations that came with living in a city like Seattle. It's just that the downsides are so many, and the upsides are so few. I want to preserve the facilities I have for doing things that I like and that allow me to make a living. I'm hoping an upcoming move I've got planned will make it more pleasurable to engage with other people more regularly, but protecting my well-being still has to come first. I'm so incredibly fortunate to have a career that allows me enough income to offload menial things like shopping for groceries. I feel terrible for those of us on the spectrum without that option, as if I couldn't live this way I would end up being entirely dependent on my spouse or family. I can imagine that burning out + feeling guilty about being a burden financially makes recovery from that state even more difficult.

tricolon 8y ago
Where (or to what kind of area) are you moving? Will you drive?
- sudosteph 8y ago
  Raleigh NC, it's a little slower-paced down there - plus warmer and sunnier. I'm hoping to get a place near the college or downtown for walkability, but will probably still end up spending a little more time in the car. Luckily my spouse doesn't mind driving. Though they do have instacart and prime now these days too, so I'll have options. I've lived there before and the only big downside then was the career growth opportunities, but I've got a sweet remote gig now, so that's covered.
  - bitcoinmoney 8y ago

adamnemecek 8y ago

Idk if I'm autistic, but I do identify with this post to a surprising degree. My solution was quitting my job and working on projects hoping that one of them will take off. I've talked about it here on HN many times and a lot of people have reached out. I've convinced two of my friends to do the same and they've never been happier. It's viable, you might need to scale down your life-style a bit but I've never been happier. Programming on things you care about is a lot easier if you have a lot of time.

soulnothing 8y ago

For the longest time my high functioning autism, formerly aspergers. Took a toll on me. I was second guessing every step at work. Do I say hi, how do I make small talk. What's the appropriate distance for personal space. I wasn't afraid of people. I was afraid of acting outside of neurotically behavior, and causing an uncomfortable work place. Now I'm at the other end of the spectrum. I take a very honey badger approach to work. Zero shits given at work. This has made it much easier. Not that I don't deliver work, or half ass it. I just put aside any personal attachment. I did have the aspie burn out before getting into my own routine. Work as above, but social interaction stimuli. Self discovery is key for anyone on the spectrum. For me things like constantly having earbuds, textile I wear, maintaining light (via sunglasses), etc. One of my biggest pet peeves is noted in the article. Constantly being told I'm not autistic. Just because I don't appear that way doesn't mean I'm not. Right now my burnout is a sister symptom of the autism. In so much that it not directly caused. But a resulting effect. Where in I'm constantly moving or switching jobs. Because I don't feel stimulated at work, or challenged. The other big item is I don't do politics. Which can be very detrimental. I still view being on the spectrum as more of a benefit. But it does require a fair amount of self awareness.

rijoja 8y ago
Not doing politics is not a mental disorder it's being noble.
- vibrato 8y ago
  I don't like politics, but I have to admit nearly every major human achievement is a political effort.
  - int_19h 8y ago
    I think this referred to office politics.
    - vibrato 8y ago
      Are you implying offices aren’t involved in significant human achievement?

miedpo 8y ago

Hmm... so I have Asperger's Syndrome, and my thoughts on the article are a bit varied. Honestly I don't think I've experienced burnout from trying to normalize. There are probably a lot of reasons for that... I have a pretty good support system, I enjoy understanding other people, and perhaps I just don't always take it fully seriously. I have had burnout related to other things. I personally think all people get burnt out if they are stressed out for a long period of time or deal with too many changes at once. That's not something super tied to Autism in my experience. Just tied to being human I do relate to taking normalization a bit less seriously as I've gotten older. Partly because sometimes the normal thing to do isn't the best option. So perhaps I risk looking a bit weird at the cost of doing what I think is better. Going on my mission helped with that quite a bit I think. So yeah, kinda mixed feelings. I'm sure some have felt what's described, I personally have not though.

ozzmotik 8y ago

man I've been needing this for a while. this is basically what happens to me any time I take a job in the corporate sector and have to heavily constrain myself. it usually ends with me spiraling down into addiction self medicating with whatever helps me manage to function even just 1% better (subjectively speaking of course, i probably just get worse!) nowadays im trying to just stick to cannabis and nootropics (namely memantine as nmda antagonism also tends to help me function and maintain the neurotypical façadre) though as they tend to get the job done without putting my body and mind in danger. I have a job interview with wpengine coming up so im hoping that maybe this time I can do it right because I don't really have any other options. im essentially going to lose my place to live at the end of the year so I really need to make sure I figure out a healthy way to maintain if I get the job. im open to advice if anyone has any suggestions, as ive tried to do this alone my entire adult life, and i just can't seem to figure it out. you give me a formal discipline, something I can quantify and study every aspect of and ill have no problems figuring it out, but when it comes to figuring out how to irl properly i am but an inchoate

captainredbeard 8y ago
"im essentially going to lose my place to live at the end of the year so I really need to make sure I figure out a healthy way to maintain if I get the job" Start with finding a healthy way to maintain even if you don't get the job. That will put you in a place where you'll be able to find and retain one.
- ozzmotik 8y ago
  you know, i think that's what I meant to type because that makes a lot more sense to me now that i think about it. evidently sitting in a hot bath makes me lazier about my typing. who would have guessed

sleepychu 8y ago

Interesting, definitely had the experience of thinking "Am I becoming more autistic?" but just put it down to caring less about what other people think about it. Now I wonder if this is closer to the truth. I'm not sure but I'm pretty confident I've experienced a degradation of memory. I combat it with copious note taking and judicious use of a calendar but it does feel unpleasant. I do wonder if it's simply because I do more activities within a single day than I used to in my previous routine of development on a single application one task at a time + social. Now I can have to deal with many tasks for many customers all vying for my attention in parallel. EDIT: Found great improvement from wearing headphones and sunglasses outdoors though. Helps me avoid too much new information in the morning when my brain is best suited for taking on new information and I have the minimal number of draws on my attention.

sametmax 8y ago

Latest discovery on my part, after the burnout, a heavy magnesium supplement helps a lot. Especially with the foggy brain, and the physical contact with others.

candiodari 8y ago

Who else thinks that this autism was caused by this school and the fact that this guy believed, for some reason, that he deserved such treatment ?

Balgair 8y ago

I'm confused, what makes 'autistic burnout' any different than regular 'burnout'? The stories linked in the post seem to be just describing burnout, though I've not clicked into the linked pages. What am I missing that makes autistic burnout different?

dwaltrip 8y ago
They can no longer pass as a nuerotypical while they are burnt out, which I'm guessing can make things more difficult.
samirm 8y ago
Autistic burnout is partially a result of pretending to be "normal" around other people (those who don't understand and judge autistic behaviour like stimming). "Normal" people can also experience this burnout if they're also pretending to be someone they are not (day in, day out). Part of the problem is that people don't realize that everyone is on the spectrum, autism isn't a binary "property". The other, bigger, part of the problem is that there seems to be a negative stereotypical view of people with mental illnesses or just people who aren't "normal". Unfortunately autistic people fall towards that category in the current social context.
- Balgair 8y ago
  > Autistic burnout is partially a result of pretending to be "normal" around other people (those who don't understand and judge autistic behaviour like stimming). "Normal" people can also experience this burnout if they're also pretending to be someone they are not (day in, day out). Wait, so autistic burnout is just regular burnout, but from general social interactions? I get that we're all on this autistic spectrum[0], but I think we all just get burnt out from time to time when dealing with jerks and other people in general. Is it just that autistic people get more tired from the standard social guessing game? If this is a spectrum, then where is the cut-off? Is it all self-diagnosis then? Also, what is stimming? Sorry for all the questions. Feel free to answer any/none of them. Thanks for the answers thus far! [0] Also, how is the spectrum any different than just the normal range of being a human? It sounds like we've just got a new word for another normally distributed human thing, like height or hearing ranges.

drilldrive 8y ago

I definitely commonly fall into a cyclic productivity setup, though I am not sure if I would call it 'burnout'. I think that burnout is coupled with disgust for the primary activity, while my lows are characterized by low executive function, not quite at odds with disgust but personally I love my work, and I am just not thinking right when I am at my lows. There doesn't seem to be intrinsically grinding pain to neurotypical behaviors. I say this because for the past couple months I have fixed the productivity highs and lows into a nice marathon pace. I will see how long this pans out of course.

everdrive 8y ago

I really appreciate (and relate to) this discussion, but I wanted to point out that some folks out there don't mind people who are a little on the spectrum. You don't always have to pretend to be somebody else. Some people will like you the way you are, or, will tolerate and respect you even if they don't like you. It seems like the authors never attempted an alternative: pushing back on people's assumptions and being themselves more often. People like and respect Spock and Sherlock Holmes. I get that those are extreme and fictional examples, but you don't have to be extroverted and "normal" to be liked. I'm not saying it'll be perfect, or always easy for you, but there are societal niches which don't mind that some people are weird. More importantly, they can tell that you're altruistic and well-intending, even if you you come off a little poorly socially.

twofig 8y ago
I'm going to push back a bit on this. People like Spock and Sherlock only because they are incredibly capable. That is, it's entirely predicated on their instrumental value, not because of their personality. If they weren't as capable, people wouldn't hesitate to kick them to the curb and never interact with them.
- Nasrudith 8y ago
  Not to mention they never have to deal with the "step one" of giving them a chance. Even if they would find them indispensable if actually hired due to being a 10x performer getting in the door is a challenge when they would rather pay attention to irrelevancies of posture than actual qualifications. That sort of talent filtering for stupid reasons is very not new - going back at the very least sexist exclusion from fields and Jewish university quota caps (as in maximum number of Jewish scholars) - let alone cases where people with massive potential never had the resources for education.
  - everdrive 8y ago
    This got dark fast. I was just trying to say that autistic personalities weren't universally hated.