8 ms·

I have a very mild form of autism but I would say that I suffer from autism. I'm very sensitive to which environment I can be productive in and I need very clea

by pimmen 8y ago

I have a very mild form of autism but I would say that I suffer from autism. I'm very sensitive to which environment I can be productive in and I need very clear protocols for human interaction. It's fine for engineering but I want to work more with people too (that's generally how you advance career-wise) and I have big problems knowing when to keep quiet in meetings and what topics for discussion are poor choices, even though I'm close to 30 years old now. If I could just be "normal" I think my life would improve immensely. I say "I think" because I'm not sure if I would like losing the things that make me "me". A friday night just reading all kinds of odd books to learn new things is totally fine by me right now and even though I have problems regulating my emotions I can now, after decades of coping, channel them into passion to get stuff done. I do however think my childhood would've been much easier if I was somehow treated as a young child; the years of being bullied and not making friends have taken its toll on me, something I struggle with to this day in business settings when I have to deal with unfamiliar people.

billman 8y ago
Maybe the world needs more people like you. We have far enough "normal" people.
hyperbovine 8y ago
> A friday night just reading all kinds of odd books to learn new things That's simply a hallmark of intellectualism, not autism.
- loriverkutya 8y ago
  Thanks for giving a diagnosis based on one sentence :)
  - hyperbovine 8y ago
    What diagnosis? Your word, not mine.
pault 8y ago
My story is pretty much the same as yours, but I have an extra ten years on you. I've been able to get it under control (my career is really taking off now at the age of 39) by practicing it like any other skill. Mostly it's the art of omission; I consciously suppress my impulse to interrupt people in meetings and conversation by preparing a response in my head until they finish. This has the effect of making people think of me as a good listener, and also gives me time to cut their argument to shreds if they are spewing nonsense (the old maxim "don't interrupt your enemy while they are making a mistake"). Also, it's good to be thought of as the quiet smart guy. On the topic of inappropriate topics, I just don't say anything that isn't related to work in public conversations. Once you start getting close to people in a company you can usually talk about anything in private. All the "acting normal" can take a toll on you, though.
- pimmen 8y ago
  I know I have to get it under control like you, but it's super hard and it looks so effortless for other people. They can just sit there, take in all the nonsense people are spewing with a straight face and then send an email to the appropriate people about it. It takes me all the efforts in the world to do something like that, and it would exhaust me for hours afterwards. It is easier doing it now at 29 than it was at 19, though. Maybe 10 more years of practice is all I need.
lawlessone 8y ago
> A friday night just reading all kinds of odd books to learn new things I think that's just you(nothing wrong with that), a man i used to know has it he'd rather just party(nothing wrong with that either).
dboat 8y ago
Never formally diagnosed but I had similar difficulties to yours and it had been brought up to me multiple times that I probably had some form of ASD. I am a dev and probably had quite similar experiences to yours in meetings in my first couple office jobs. What made a profound difference for me was adopting empathy as an intellectual practice. I have never once "experienced someone's feelings as if they were my own" so I long regarded myself as being naturally deficient in empathy, but it also didn't seem very important to my engineer mindset. The habit I cultivated was to simply compile lists of rules, not written, just in my head. Things to say, things to not say, and how to say what you need to say and when. How people react, etc. It meant paying close attention and making guesses in a way that did not come naturally to me at first. It took a lot of effort to build up these habits. I did not realize just how self-focused and self-centered I was as a human being. After doing this for a while, without really trying, general principles emerged from my compiled rules. These, combined with my efforts at paying attention to people, really turned things around for me in a profound way. People really began to warm up to me, and most importantly, my interactions almost completely stopped being surprising and painful, due to me knowing a lot more about how to get along unselfishly. I avoided learning this for a long time, because I think I assumed I would end up spending my days just pleasing other people. A silly worry in the end. The rules I compiled were an important middle step. It was applying the rigor and attention I usually reserve for interesting codebases or videogames, to getting along with humans. In hindsight it is perhaps not so surprising that with diligent effort I acquired a skill, but I cannot overstate how much I wish I had done this sooner. I don't want to oversell it. It wasn't that I became an amazingly charismatic wunderkind, yet for the impact it made on my life, I may as well have. With great effort, in my mid 30s I reached the social starting line where most people (from my perspective at least) were lucky enough to begin. It could be that I only managed this because my autistic behaviours had a different root cause or milder expression than someone else's. It could be that some forms of autism are purely viral and other ailments merely resemble it. In short, I don't know that anyone else can benefit from this, but am inclined to think that many could. Also, FWIW, I wouldn't attach too strongly to this idea of "me" that you mention. I have had similar feelings in my journey, and the answer I found was to trust that whatever nebulous merit exists in this "me" concept, it will survive my efforts to improve myself towards a more healthy sociability. Your "me" might be holding you back. Incidentally, per the main topic, as a result of my other health issues gut flora had entered my radar and I've encountered a lot of similar, potentially promising, claims about the brain gut connection. I personally think there's something important there to be found but we haven't had the right studies done to really sort it out. If this study was an important step in that process, great I guess, but like others have said, I would have preferred they had done a more useful study on the subject, that would propel our knowledge further, faster. For all the mystery surrounding ASD, one thing I feel absolutely certain of, is that it is causing a lot of suffering that will become unnecessary once it is more thoroughly understood. The sooner the better.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

by pimmen 8y ago

billman 8y ago

Maybe the world needs more people like you. We have far enough "normal" people.

hyperbovine 8y ago

> A friday night just reading all kinds of odd books to learn new things That's simply a hallmark of intellectualism, not autism.

loriverkutya 8y ago
Thanks for giving a diagnosis based on one sentence :)
- hyperbovine 8y ago
  What diagnosis? Your word, not mine.

pault 8y ago

My story is pretty much the same as yours, but I have an extra ten years on you. I've been able to get it under control (my career is really taking off now at the age of 39) by practicing it like any other skill. Mostly it's the art of omission; I consciously suppress my impulse to interrupt people in meetings and conversation by preparing a response in my head until they finish. This has the effect of making people think of me as a good listener, and also gives me time to cut their argument to shreds if they are spewing nonsense (the old maxim "don't interrupt your enemy while they are making a mistake"). Also, it's good to be thought of as the quiet smart guy. On the topic of inappropriate topics, I just don't say anything that isn't related to work in public conversations. Once you start getting close to people in a company you can usually talk about anything in private. All the "acting normal" can take a toll on you, though.

pimmen 8y ago
I know I have to get it under control like you, but it's super hard and it looks so effortless for other people. They can just sit there, take in all the nonsense people are spewing with a straight face and then send an email to the appropriate people about it. It takes me all the efforts in the world to do something like that, and it would exhaust me for hours afterwards. It is easier doing it now at 29 than it was at 19, though. Maybe 10 more years of practice is all I need.

lawlessone 8y ago

> A friday night just reading all kinds of odd books to learn new things I think that's just you(nothing wrong with that), a man i used to know has it he'd rather just party(nothing wrong with that either).

dboat 8y ago

Never formally diagnosed but I had similar difficulties to yours and it had been brought up to me multiple times that I probably had some form of ASD. I am a dev and probably had quite similar experiences to yours in meetings in my first couple office jobs. What made a profound difference for me was adopting empathy as an intellectual practice. I have never once "experienced someone's feelings as if they were my own" so I long regarded myself as being naturally deficient in empathy, but it also didn't seem very important to my engineer mindset. The habit I cultivated was to simply compile lists of rules, not written, just in my head. Things to say, things to not say, and how to say what you need to say and when. How people react, etc. It meant paying close attention and making guesses in a way that did not come naturally to me at first. It took a lot of effort to build up these habits. I did not realize just how self-focused and self-centered I was as a human being. After doing this for a while, without really trying, general principles emerged from my compiled rules. These, combined with my efforts at paying attention to people, really turned things around for me in a profound way. People really began to warm up to me, and most importantly, my interactions almost completely stopped being surprising and painful, due to me knowing a lot more about how to get along unselfishly. I avoided learning this for a long time, because I think I assumed I would end up spending my days just pleasing other people. A silly worry in the end. The rules I compiled were an important middle step. It was applying the rigor and attention I usually reserve for interesting codebases or videogames, to getting along with humans. In hindsight it is perhaps not so surprising that with diligent effort I acquired a skill, but I cannot overstate how much I wish I had done this sooner. I don't want to oversell it. It wasn't that I became an amazingly charismatic wunderkind, yet for the impact it made on my life, I may as well have. With great effort, in my mid 30s I reached the social starting line where most people (from my perspective at least) were lucky enough to begin. It could be that I only managed this because my autistic behaviours had a different root cause or milder expression than someone else's. It could be that some forms of autism are purely viral and other ailments merely resemble it. In short, I don't know that anyone else can benefit from this, but am inclined to think that many could. Also, FWIW, I wouldn't attach too strongly to this idea of "me" that you mention. I have had similar feelings in my journey, and the answer I found was to trust that whatever nebulous merit exists in this "me" concept, it will survive my efforts to improve myself towards a more healthy sociability. Your "me" might be holding you back. Incidentally, per the main topic, as a result of my other health issues gut flora had entered my radar and I've encountered a lot of similar, potentially promising, claims about the brain gut connection. I personally think there's something important there to be found but we haven't had the right studies done to really sort it out. If this study was an important step in that process, great I guess, but like others have said, I would have preferred they had done a more useful study on the subject, that would propel our knowledge further, faster. For all the mystery surrounding ASD, one thing I feel absolutely certain of, is that it is causing a lot of suffering that will become unnecessary once it is more thoroughly understood. The sooner the better.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]