Post B4EcxAnOytDudy6wvQ by pathfinder@beige.party
(DIR) More posts by pathfinder@beige.party
(DIR) Post #B4EblQdk9AtYM2Qg7M by pathfinder@beige.party
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@autistics "I'm tired, I'm tired of being tired." All too often I can't help thinking that this should be our motto, or legend written on our flag, were we ever to raise one over a land of our own. And it's hardly surprising really, given how exhausting just being autistic is in the human world. We are constantly having to try and understand and translate what allistics are saying and trying to communicate, whether that be through speech or the written word, or ads, or everything really, into something that we can at least vaguely understand. But that, to say the least, is always an uphill and somewhat fruitless endeavour. Their speech is filled with so many allusions and stuff "we should just know and understand", givens and common understandings, that only really work if you actually ever fucking understood them in the first place. With meanings that are meant to be perceived, or invoke an emotive response, or show the important things, at least to them, of their existence and relationship to you, like status and position, power and authority. All the things that are so often lost on us, because it's not the way we see, or think about the world and yet without which make their words lack the meaning or substance that can actually make them useful. And then, of course, we are in the wrong, or just wilful, or just rude when we ask for an explanation, or fail to understand. And then there is the sensory hell of the world they live in. All the noise and lights and smells that they just take for granted and seem to consider normal. So normal, in fact, that complaining or trying to protect yourself from them, is also often considered rude, or weird and certainly nothing you can explain to them with any hope of them really understanding. In fact trying to explain pretty much anything to them, or trying to get them to understand your needs and experiences, the way you need people to communicate with you for it to work, or the environment that you can live in, is so often a fruitless enterprise, or, at worst, the sort of encounter that ends up making you want to bash your head repeatedly against a brick wall until something, literally fucking anything, no matter how small, can make sense. Because rarely what we try to communicate to them, normally because of bitter experience, is that difficult or demands that much effort and yet still it still seems to be beyond them. All too often, to a lesser or greater extent, this is the story of our lives. Masking can help, but that is its own energy drain. Being able to surround ourselves with the right people can help more, as can stubbornly looking after your own needs. But the wider world is always there, like an opinionated black hole, always ready to drain so much away. Getting older doesn't help with all this, as the natural wear and tear and the struggle of the years begin to gang up on us. As the energy reservoirs become less and less what they used to be, or fill back up with anything like the vigour of our youth. Everything becomes its own kind of harder. So perhaps is it any wonder that burnout dogs our ageing footsteps like an over eager puppy just waiting for the chance to trip us up and slobber all over us. In fact, you could almost argue that it is an inevitability, especially for those of us who expanded so much masking and uncertain and not realising that we were autistic for so long and didn't know all the things we could do to help ourselves, as little as they can sometimes be. So perhaps it is no wonder that tiredness is so often our default state. We live in a world that all too often makes little or no sense, that can be hateful and harmful and care not a wit for us, or our needs. Why we spend so much time trying to understand how many spoons, or spell spots, or however we like to think about it, things will cost us and how much we can afford to spend. How we can be like paupers counting their small change, over and over again, in the vague hope that we can afford the simplest things that we desire. So yes, all this and more is why I'm tired and tired of being tired, but then that just means I'm alive and still going. That I am still struggling and fighting and paying the price to just live in this world and if you think about it, that is no small thing.#Autism #ActuallyAutistic
(DIR) Post #B4EcCgFkCrrmb0CNLE by mirabilos@toot.mirbsd.org
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@pathfinder @autistics I have been wondering whether the “tact filters” from http://www.mit.edu/~jcb/tact.html (specifically the input filters mentioned there as “nerds” that “when nerds were growing up, they continually got picked on”) are related to this, or even part thereof.Thanks for writing this into words, it helps. Thanks @wifwolf for making me aware of this post.
(DIR) Post #B4EcO16V1XBKRuHQ24 by markc568@beige.party
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@pathfinder @autistics Thank you for posting this. I’ve had 50+ years of life on “hard mode”. It’s been difficult for me to continue as is, now that I know why everything takes so much effort.
(DIR) Post #B4EcRfTLOJjyWChr16 by pathfinder@beige.party
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@markc568 @autistics I suppose, better late than never applies here. But in some respects it's no consolation, for the damage is done and all we can do is try to manage it with the knowledge we now have at our disposal. Oh, and the knowledge that we have always been and done so much more than others and the strength and pride that can come from that.
(DIR) Post #B4EcVvMkF1KGyBeJNo by Tim_McTuffty@beige.party
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@pathfinder @autistics Morning Kevin 👋😊 Once more you voice exactly how I feel, far more eloquently than I can! No matter how much sleep I get I seem to exist in a state of tireness. Sleep helps but only in the way it reduces the levels of exhaustion, never really eliminating it.I hope today is a good day for you mate, I’m lucky today, Mrs S is off to the office so at least I can hide from the world for a day & not expend any energy on having to interact with people face to face. 😊🫶:party_major_squirrel:🖖
(DIR) Post #B4EciQhnXzerduSZIO by mirabilos@toot.mirbsd.org
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@Mepurfield @pathfinder eh, I started drinking coffee at, what, 5, 6? Didn’t help much.
(DIR) Post #B4EcsrTerfmdZPoua8 by CynAq@beige.party
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@pathfinderIt’s getting worse by the day, as the dominant neurotype is hell bent on ending the world in their lifetime.Seeing where all the patterns lead to without having power to do anything about it doesn’t help.Shit, sorry to be so sour 🫂
(DIR) Post #B4EcxASqDKmDcCUWsS by undefined_variable@mementomori.social
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@CynAq @pathfinder It's exhausting to see those patterns and not being able to do anything. And being blamed for being too dramatic or being a scaremonger or whatnot. Like yeah, I'm scared, I'm fecking terrified. I'm not going to put on a brave face and pretend bad things are not happening.
(DIR) Post #B4EcxAnOytDudy6wvQ by pathfinder@beige.party
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@undefined_variable @CynAq We live in "interesting times", which for the Chinese was a curse they wouldn't wish on anyone but their worst enemies. I think many of us could see it coming and in some ways where it is going. The advanced pattern recognition that many of us have, that borders on the preternatural, does us no favours. We can see the writing on the wall, even if no one else believes it, its own form of exhaustion, and terrified about so much, is no more than the appropriate response.
(DIR) Post #B4Ed1CR2pNswt1Zcmm by Jargoonco@mastodon.online
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@Mepurfield @pathfinder When I was four years old, on Christmas morning, my parents came to wake me up for presents. They said “Santa came!” They expected me to jump up and run to the living room for presents. I apparently said “Tell him to come back later.” and rolled over, trying to go back to sleep. So much makes sense now for why I am always overwhelmed.
(DIR) Post #B4Ed1CjphWujpIMd4S by Jargoonco@mastodon.online
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@Mepurfield @pathfinder Absolutely. I have three older sisters who behaved VERY differently. I never responsed the way they expected based on my siblings who were 8/10/12 years older than me. They all just called me an “old soul” and left it at that.
(DIR) Post #B4Ed4Og7lRazj89SmO by arisummerland@beige.party
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@pathfinderAhhhhh, this is such a true and powerful reflection! I love the way you write. 🤗 Thank you. And yeah. I'm tired. All. The. Damn. Time. 🥱I read something recently (yet I did not bookmark it), that posited that we autistics have something like 50% more neuronal connections in our brains? Which I think may be part of the not being able to selectively filter out and process sensory information? (I'm offering this piece of information with a grain of salt, because I don't know if it's true -- or even if I want it to be true…) It's no wonder that a lot of us end up with substance issues. We've got to try to dull that firehose of sensory input somehow.To me it makes sense that our bigger brains and more robust connections might contribute to mental and emotional exhaustion. Even if we're able to control our sensory environments somewhat, there's still 20 to 30,000 pieces of sensory information coming in from the world at all times.I don't understand how ordinary people can even walk and talk and chew gum at the same time. Honestly. I would fall flat on my face! So much for the big brain...
(DIR) Post #B4EdJv4raUzKYR7nto by pathfinder@beige.party
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@mirabilos @autistics @wifwolf Yes, we can often learn to apply such filters. Although, unfortunately, somewhat inappropriately, because I don't think we ever really understand them. Our understanding of what requires tack and what is required for accurate information flow is different and for us the purpose of so much communication, is that it should be accurate and useful.
(DIR) Post #B4EdJvHcp3CFC15zn6 by mirabilos@toot.mirbsd.org
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@pathfinder @autistics @wifwolf yeah.After having read about this a bit more, I sometimes realise now that when I just ask for more information, people take that as criticism, even people who know… this is exhausting, too.
(DIR) Post #B4EeCLSFjYTA0217mi by pathfinder@beige.party
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@mirabilos @autistics @wifwolf Indeed it is. They assume that they have given us enough, so any request for more is seen as an attack on them and more importantly their position. The obvious is always lost in their reading between the lines, something that was never there.
(DIR) Post #B4EeGmFK48WiFZ5BJI by mirabilos@toot.mirbsd.org
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@pathfinder @autistics @wifwolf and “AI” slop is making this worse in several even different ways…… but I’ve been noticing for a while already that people tend to reply to the question they think I said, not the one I precisely worded.
(DIR) Post #B4FliJD2VkYl8i39EG by autoperipatetikos@neurodifferent.me
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@pathfinder @autistics This is so true. I was diagnosed with Chronic Fatigue Syndrome in 2000. It was long before I knew about being autistic, but I did know CFS wasn't an adequate explanation. The CFS label was a big let down because there was nobody who seemed to understand what my needs were and nothing actually helped. It made more sense when I got the autism diagnosis and then I understood that the problem is with the vast majority refusing to accept me as I am.
(DIR) Post #B4FliJWBMZs8650R4C by mirabilos@toot.mirbsd.org
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@autoperipatetikos @pathfinder @autistics heh, I have been thinking that mild ME/CFS symptoms could come close to an explanation, but if it is this, it makes more sense (wrt. the possible cause), though the two (very late, as we were careful and got vaccinated a lot, still do, but at some point others got so rude we couldn’t avoid it) COVID-19 infections certainly didn’t help.Loss of energy from having spent so much over the years… does ring a bell.
(DIR) Post #B4FliJjeYUeClrJC40 by autoperipatetikos@neurodifferent.me
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@mirabilos @pathfinder @autistics I'm so tired, that I forgot to mention that there are other co-occurring conditions which also come with fatigue. EDS and sleep disorders for example. So in a lot of cases people could have multiple causes piling up.On top of that there's the added strain of these being hard to get diagnosed. Because if you're not already drowning in it all, fighting to get cooperation from doctors is a nightmare.
(DIR) Post #B4FliJx7kPQHRdbx3o by mirabilos@toot.mirbsd.org
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@pathfinder @autoperipatetikos @autistics tbh under the current regime I’d rather not have anything officially diagnosed. I doubt I’d get anything useful out of the system anyway.