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Cake day: June 7th, 2023

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  • I had to think about your comment for 2 days before responding.

    it’s also about hiding my strengths because they are not always well received. Deep critical thinking, eternal curiosity and precision are skills often respected in theory - but in practice: not so much.

    Yesss!! I totally make myself stupid or seem distracted in/with the vast majority of places/people for two main reasons. One is the apparent one, which is making others feels less than. For some odd reason, me being able to learn quickly or know information already is insulting others. This then results in me either coming off as bragging or becoming the target for the insecure people to attack. I saw this happen a lot in the dance community, especially from other men. It was difficult for me to make male friends in that scene. In fact, I’ve only made two male friends in 2 years. One was autistic and the other is just a chill Christian dude.

    The other reason I have to mask by seeming dumb or distracted is that if I am highly capable in one area, then whenever I make any social mistakes, I am not given as much compassion or understanding. Rather, they get upset and treat me as if I purposely wanted to violate whatever rule. I think the reasoning is that if I am “smart”, then surely I must understand social minutiae. That is absolutely not the case. From my perspective, I don’t jump to conclusions, so I miss a lot of implications that most other people get naturally. This is for real. It is so extreme, that I often end up making major faux pas. For example, when I was in college, I was at a bar and ran into a girl I had been friendly with in class throughout the semester. We hit it off that night. Towards the end, she told me she wanted me to come to her place to sleep with her. What did I do? I went to her place and literally went to sleep in her bed with her as soon as I got in. It’s been 20 years, and I still remember the face she made when I asked her if it was okay that I took my pants off to sleep in boxers because jeans were too uncomfortable for bed. She straight up answered, “Duh!!” and made a face as if I was joking, which I took as her being the same about jeans in bed. The next day, she was all weird when she gave me a ride home, so I was confused. It wasn’t until I told others about this weird experience where someone was really friendly then stand-offish that they pointed out that she wanted to have sex. This girl, who I imagine was upset at me for agreeing to “sleep with her” then not having sex with her, probably thought that since I earn good grades in class, I must have absolutely understood that she meant have sex. Nope. I had no idea.

    a large part of it is (heartbreakingly) empathetic!

    I really like this neurodiversity movement. It’s like a lot of us have been living and suffering in secret, not knowing that many of us existed and we had similar experiences and struggles. With many of us coming out about it, we see that we are not alone and give each other validation, support, and encouragement. I’m so happy with it. It’s one of my favorite things about this particular community.

    I have this hypothesis that masking their authenticity in order to fit in with ther respective social group is the normal way also in NT people. The difference being, that to them it comes naturally and effortlessly to wear a mask (read: self-protecting persona), while for NDs it is exhausting and may lead to a sense of self-denial. Consider also the difficulty with the perceived need of constant dishonesty/lying which is a part of camouflaging.

    I have never thought of this, but it makes sense. From what I can tell, there are two major fundamental differences between autistic and NT people. One, we are sensory hypersensitive by comparison and cannot filter out sensory input like they do. This means that we have a lot more information to process, taking up processing resources in our brains. Two, we are monotropic in that we can only really focus on one thing at a time, and we are hyperfocused by comparison. Combining these both, we come off as slow in social situations because while an NT can focus on the many social aspects of an interaction, I have to process the noise of cars driving by, the weather, previous interactions with a person to find out how this current interaction fits into their patterns, consider if I look weird somehow, making sure my tone and volume are appropriate, try to look like I’m making proper eye contact without overwhelming myself, etc. This is all too much for me to do smoothly, while it may be something absolutely natural for an NT. Since it’s natural for them, they do it all the time without any concern. For us, it’s exhausting and makes us feel as if we are not being authentic, which violates a core value among autistic people, further making us feel inauthentic and taking up more mental resources.





  • Tertiary education: university professor.

    LPT: Talk to your professor and ask questions!!

    I have so many students that don’t perform well because they didn’t understand some material. I’m seriously getting paid to help you understand it, but I can’t present it in a way that works perfectly for every student since they all have their own learning styles. I also wont know if they aren’t getting it of no one speaks out.

    I want:

    • to help
    • everyone to learn the material
    • to talk about science because I’m a super nerd
    • what is and isn’t working for you in class
    • students to show up to office hours

    I don’t:

    • expect anyone to already know something they haven’t learned about
    • care if you ask me a million questions
    • want you to perform poorly
    • want you do go to the field unprepared
    • like it when students treat me like they are bothering me
    • grade papers that are ridiculously wrong because students didn’t try to ask me for help

    The vast majority of university professors are obsessed with what they teach, so much so, that they made a career out of talking about it. Asking then about it would make their day. If you go up to one that seems like they’re being bothered, then that’s the exception. Don’t let that one stop you from engaging with all of the others.

    Note: This is true for almost all courses. However, there are some courses in certain universities that are considered “weed out classes”. These classes, typically taken in the first 2 years, are informally designed to have lower performing students fail before they advance too far into the major and find out later that they don’t have what it takes to be successful in the field. The professors of those classes are more commonly not helpful at all. Don’t give me shit about it because I didn’t design this system nor do I teach those classes.



  • I was born and raised in the US. My parents spoke Spanish only. They maybe knew 5 words in English. I grew up learning Spanish fluently at home. Everything else (i.e. school, tv, friends) was in English, so I learned that naturally.

    Downside: I feel like it created 2 personalities. I feel emotions, relate to family and romance, and cook in Spanish. I think logically, conduct business, and have friends in English.


  • I’m almost certain that every state not only requires at least an accredited master’s degree, but also a state board license that involves at least 2 years of clinical supervision. However, the supervision is based on the honor system of other licensed therapists, so there isn’t much oversight of the quality. Clinical supervisors usually charge for supervision, so there is a conflict of interest.








  • Ah, that makes sense. I think part of the author’s intention is possibly to help educate people that aren’t familiar with autism on signs that someone might be autistic but doing a good job at masking it. So that when someone that has been diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder comes out to them, the other person doesn’t invalidate the diagnosis, identity, or efforts the autistic person makes to function in normal society. I’m almost certain that the author of the video is not trying to help laypersons diagnose others (check out his channel if you’re interested in looking into it further). While I think that the info in the video may help some individuals develop some possible insight into uncommon behaviors, I believe a legitimate ASD diagnosis can only be provided by a trained specialist.