Nicholas Johnson

Antiperfectionism

2026-03-15T00:00:00+0000

I’ve recently become more aware of how perfectionist I am, and how it affects my life.

Done is Better Than Perfect

I’ll explain by example. A few months ago, I started tracking my monthly spending so I could understand better where my money was going. I created a budget for myself using this lovely piece of software called GnuCash. Then I created dozens of accounts, put in my fixed assets and liabilities, entered each receipt as a set of transactions, and averaged my spending over time in order to create a realistic budget.

I followed my budget until I reached my financial goal. It sounds like everything went as intended, but recently something occurred to me: I didn’t need to use double-entry bookkeeping and track everything down to the last centavo to reach my financial goal. It was like using a bazooka to kill a fly. I could’ve met my goal by just doing a few rough calculations and changing some habits.

Trust me, there are many more examples I could give of me optimizing things that don’t need to be optimized, but I think I got my point across.

So why did I do it? I think it’s because I feel a compulsion to be highly precise about things, even when the need for such precision isn’t really there. And for me, that’s the essence of perfectionism—doing a huge amount of additional work to achieve a marginally better result.

Sometimes getting the best possible result is worth the additional work, but in most circumstances good enough is good enough. I have enough going on in my life that I can’t afford to waste time and energy perfecting everything anymore. Accepting this limitation has boosted my efficiency and reduced my stress. I’m able to get more done with less, because I’ve stopped hyperfixating on tiny details that don’t matter in the end.

Now whenever I get the urge to perfect my work, I just repeat my new mantra, “Done is better than perfect”, and leave it at that.

Decision-Making

The desire for perfection also extends to my decision-making. While there’s value in considering all my options and making decisions carefully, one eventually arrives at the point of diminishing returns. I’ve literally spent years considering and reconsidering my options without arriving at a decision. Doing that is not only unproductive, it’s stressful.

There are several problems with overcontemplation. The first is that the way you get better at making decisions isn’t by meticulously scrutinizing every possibility ad infinitum. It’s by taking a reasonable amount of time to consider your options, making a reasonably good decision, then seeing its results and iterating on them so you can make better decisions in the future.

The second difficulty with overcontemplation is that the best decision often isn’t even knowable in advance, due to limited information. So you’re expending cognitive resources that you could be using on other things, just to obtain the same result anyway.

The third concern with overcontemplation is that, unless you’re making a huge life decision, the difference between the best decision and a decent decision is marginal. I.e, making a decent decision instead of the best one isn’t going to radically alter the trajectory of your life, so it’s not worth worrying about.

I find that the same mantra I use for tasks can also be applied to decisions: “Done is better than perfect.” So lately, when I’m hesitating for too long, I just make up my mind. Because having a decision, even a bad one, often leads me to better outcomes in the end than having no decision at all. At least I can iterate on a bad decision. If the choice never even gets made, I won’t know if it’s good or bad, and I can’t iterate on it.

The Need to Finish a Task I’ve Started

Another OCD-like tendency of mine I’ve been working on is this need to work all the way from start to finish in everything I do. I tend to hyperfocus on one task until it’s complete, regardless how long it takes me to complete it, and I get very irritable if I’m interrupted and have to go do some other unrelated thing.

What I’ve realized recently is that my unwillingness to stop a task and resume it later is a direct result of having a small working memory and monotropic attention. What happens is this:

I realize I don’t have enough time to complete the task in one sitting.
Since I can’t complete the task in one sitting, I put it off hoping I’ll find that uninterrupted block of time later.
I keep putting off the task indefinitely, never finding that block of time because it doesn’t exist.
Eventually, I get so desperate that I begin the task anyway.
After I’ve begun the task, I have to finish it, so I neglect other things like my job, close relationships, and sleep, until the task is done.

Subdividing Tasks

One solution to the aforementioned chain of events I’ve been exploring is breaking up tasks into subtasks and completing those subtasks all at once.

The “subdivision strategy” lessens the overhead of resurrecting information into my limited working memory because each subtask demands less working memory than the full task, and I can just outsource tracking the full task to a system like GTD.

This strategy also mitigates my monotropic attention problem because there’s fewer interruptions—I’m able to find time to complete subtasks from start to finish more easily than I could find time to perform the entire task from start to finish. And I don’t end up starting the whole task at an inopportune time due to desperation.

Acknowledging My Priorities

Although I have a strategy now, there are still times when I have to interrupt what I’m doing and move on to something else. I’ve noticed that when I get absorbed in a task, I tend to lose sight of my other priorities. When that happens, I try to remember the bigger picture by telling myself:

“$CURRENT_TASK is not a priority.”
“$CURRENT_TASK doesn’t have to be completed right now.”
“I can come back to $CURRENT_TASK later after I do $OTHER_THING.”
“Not doing $CURRENT_TASK now will leave me something to look forward to later.”

This positive self-talk helps my brain not go into full-on panic mode whenever I’m interrupted.

Conclusion

I’m glad I was at least able to gain some self-awareness about my perfectionism and that I’m learning to allow the pendulum to swing back in the opposite direction. As always, thanks for reading and I hope this entry turns out to be useful for others out there who also struggle with perfectionism.

Autism is a Spectrum

2025-09-20T00:00:00+0000

What does it mean exactly that autism is a “spectrum”? To me, it means that there are constellations of autistic traits, which different autistic people exhibit to varying degrees. For example:

I am hypersensitive to noise and light. Some autistic people aren’t hypersensitive to noise and light, but are hypersensitive to other things.
I am very high in masking. Some autistic people don’t mask at all.
I have a high systematizing quotient—I think in terms of systems. Some autistic people don’t.
I have poor short-term memory. Some autistic people have excellent short-term memory.
I had no speech delay in my developmental years. Some autistic people never learn to speak.

Imagine how many possible combinations of autistic traits there are. This is why you can’t effectively represent autism by thinking of something akin to a number line. Unfortunately, autism is often misperceived as a linear condition, ranging from barely autistic on one end to very autistic on the other end. I think this way of thinking about and talking about autism causes confusion because it obscures the multidimensionality of it. That’s why I’m a fan of the term “autism spectrum” instead.

And I think we should talk about the autism spectrum like we do pregnancy. You’re either pregnant, or you’re not. You’re either somewhere on the autism spectrum, or you’re not. There’s not much middle ground there. Just because there are many types of pregnancy doesn’t imply that “Everybody is a little bit pregnant.” Similarly, that there are different combinations of autistic traits doesn’t mean we should say “Everybody is a little autistic.” Most people aren’t autistic.

Obviously we still need a way to differentiate the kind of autism that expresses itself as social awkwardness with genius-level intellect versus the kind that expresses itself in non-verbal people who can’t tie their shoes. For that, I prefer to consider the level of extra support someone requires to meet their day-to-day needs. While different supports may be required for different autistic people, the overall level of extra support needed is a useful way to differentiate “levels” or “types” of autism without losing sight of the true multidimensionality of the broader autism spectrum.

As a final note, just because someone doesn’t use my verbiage for autism doesn’t make them ableist. My terminology is not without its own pitfalls. What matters most is that people understand autism, not that they use all the right words all the time. I’m not the final word on which words people should use to refer to this condition. I think there’s plenty of room for disagreement here. I just wanted to talk about why I prefer “the autism spectrum” over other popular terminology that has been used.

Neurotypicals Lack Empathy Towards Autistic People

2025-08-24T00:00:01+0000

Poor Treatment of Autistics by Neurotypicals

Have you had neurotypicals repeat nonsense to you about autism? Have you tried to educate them about your condition, but they just won’t listen?

Do they pick apart every little quirk you have, then simultaneously insist that you can’t possibly be autistic and everybody is a little autistic? Do they outright deny easily verifiable facts about autism? Do they refuse to educate themselves about it, or even obligate you to educate them, only to argue with everything you say?

Or maybe they agree to look at the information, but cherry pick the parts that seem to support their conclusion that you’re either not autistic, you’re not that autistic, or the behavior you do that they don’t like can’t be attributed to autism. Like with many other neurological conditions, you present a constellation of traits, not all the traits all the time. However, they read on Facebook that “autistic people are organized”, so that time when you forgot something is irrefutable evidence that you can’t be autistic.

Do they use euphemisms like “weird”, “different”, “strange”, or “stubborn” when referring to autistic behavior? When you try to explain your behavior in terms of autism, do they act like you’re justifying it and accuse you of making excuses? Do they supposedly know another autistic person who doesn’t exhibit the behavior you do, and use that as proof that your behavior isn’t autism-related, as if all autistic people were the same?

If they concede you’re autistic, do they maintain a strict distinction, criticizing the behaviors they dislike by insisting that’s “you”, not “the autism”? Does it feel like “all roads lead to Rome” with them in the sense that they somehow always find a way to shift the entire burden of change back to you, the autistic person?

Can their mindset be summarized as follows: “You’re the one who is different, so you should adapt to society, not the other way around. I don’t have these problems with anybody else, so you must be the problem. All these people have problems with you, you’re the common factor. If you’re struggling, it’s your fault. If others are struggling with you, it’s because you just don’t know how to communicate or you’re being difficult.”

If they offer any sympathy towards your general direction, is it exclusively for your parents, coworkers, or anyone who has to be around you? If you solicit any sympathy at all, is it met with an immediate negative reaction where you’re reminded how difficult you are to deal with and that you should be more grateful? If you live with them, are there minor adjustments they could make to greatly improve your quality of life, but they refuse to even try?

If you relate to the above, the most important thing for you to know first and foremost is that this isn’t your fault. You’re just dealing with people who don’t give a fuck about autistic people. Now let me dissect some of their behaviors to shed some light on what’s going on.

Neurotypical Justifications for Poor Treatment of Autistics

Let’s start with the way they think. If you try to understand it in terms of evaluating the evidence, then using logic to come to a conclusion based on that evidence, you’re not going to understand because that’s not what they’re doing. They’re doing the exact opposite. They start with their conclusion, then retroactively perceive the facts as confirming what they’ve already concluded and ignore any evidence that contradicts their conclusion. This is why giving them more information only seems to solidify their conclusion.

So the next most natural question is “Where does the motivation for this motivated reasoning come from?” Well, basically everything they say about autism is a big hint to answer that question.

When they insist that you should adapt to “society” rather than the other way around, they are presenting a false dilemma where the only two options are either you fully adapt to society or society fully adapts to you. A middle ground is not considered. And the conclusion is that since you are the one who is different, it’s unfair to ask everybody else to change, so you should adapt.

This reasoning is very faulty though. For one, autistic people fully adapting to neurotypical society on our own is not possible. For two, we’re usually with only a few other people at a time, and they are the ones refusing to make any effort to accommodate us, not society as a whole. For three, there’s a hidden assumption that accommodating our needs is zero-sum. But in fact, it’s often positive-sum.

They don’t consider any of that though because they don’t care if it makes logical sense. They’re just looking for a sequence of words they can string together that justifies them treating you unfairly, without admitting what they’re doing outright. When they talk about “society”, that’s really code for “them”. What they really want to say is “I am not willing to meet you even ten percent of the way, but I expect you to go one-hundred percent of the way for me.” They’ll never come out and say that, because that’s obviously unfair. That’s why it gets dressed up as a half-baked logical-sounding argument instead.

It’s for the same reason that they criticize your behavior using euphemisms for autism, but they’ll never admit autism has anything to do with it. They don’t want to think of themselves as discriminating, therefore if your behavior bothers them, it can’t be related to autism. And if they ever admit it is related, they’ll immediately put the burden of change right back on you by insisting it’s your responsibility to overcome your autism somehow.

The crux of it is that they want to avoid the responsibility for meeting you in the middle. They want you to make all the compromises and then blame you if you don’t, without being seen as an asshole. That’s where all their mental gymnastics and justifications come from. That’s why they complain endlessly about your autistic traits and then deny you have autism, say you’re not that autistic, they know an autistic person who doesn’t do that, your behavior isn’t caused by the autism, etc. In effect, you’re dealing with a bigot who doesn’t want to admit to themselves that they’re a bigot.

In my own experience, the most common reason for this bigotry is that neurotypicals lack empathy towards autistic people, and more generally anyone who is too different from them.

What exactly do I mean that they lack empathy? For example, you may have noticed neurotypicals can be very empathetic towards others going through challenges they can relate to, such as break ups with a romantic partner. But when it comes to challenges autistic people face, such as feeling deeply misunderstood by everyone or sensory sensitivity, suddenly they show complete disregard. Suddenly, that’s your problem, you need to deal with it on your own, and you shouldn’t expect support from anybody else, especially not them.

Just to be crystal clear, the reason I say neurotypicals lack empathy toward those of us who are different is not because it’s hard for them to understand us, or that they don’t adapt to us. It’s the utter disregard, and the double standard. They don’t even try to understand us or adapt to us, yet they demand that we autistics change our entire beings to make them more comfortable, and it’s still not good enough.

How can we fix this failure of empathy?

Ending the Poor Treatment of Autistic People

In your personal life, I wouldn’t hold out hope. For your own sanity, it’s probably best to just give up and cut the person off. If you still want to try though, you should engage with them on an emotional level. Talk to them about how they feel about it. Giving them more information will never work, because their emotions will drive motivated reasoning which will only convince them that they’re right even more.

On a societal level, I think there needs to be more research focus on figuring out what improves autism acceptance and implementing those findings. More education about autism at a young age would be good. Having more representation in films, TV shows, etc that isn’t just stereotypes would also be good.

The problem now is that the focus is in the wrong place. As always, all the responsibility is put on the autistic person, trying to force us to be like everybody else while most neurotypicals refuse, on principle, to even try to accommodate us. So we have to shift the focus. Instead of asking “How can we make this autistic person seem more normal?” let’s instead ask “How can we make society more inclusive of those who are different?”

Society Should Be More Accessible to Autistic People

2025-08-06T00:00:00+0000

Silencing My Chairs

I recently bought a few chairs to furnish my apartment. When I scooted one across the floor, it made this awful noise. I couldn’t stand it.

So I went for an easy DIY solution I found online to correct it. I just used box cutters to cut a small cross in tennis balls, like so:

Then I used my index and middle fingers of both hands to peel back the four flaps of the tennis ball and slide it onto the chair legs. The final result was… silence.

Much better.

Note #1: Tennis balls are not very aesthetic. They may ruin the decor of your space. If that matters to you, you may want to purchase more discreet chair silencers instead.

Note #2: After further testing, I noticed that there’s still some noise produced by my chair legs with this method. It’s still much better than before and, most importantly, no longer overwhelming. But again, you may want to purchase actual chair silencers if eliminating all noise is a requirement.

For a More Autism-Friendly Society

Why write about this if there are already tutorials online on how to do it? Because I’m going to use it to make a larger point.

These chairs are yet another example of products not being made with the autistic population in mind, which leads to environments that are inaccessible to us. Without any changes, this noise would’ve happened every single time I or somebody else pulled my chair out to sit down for a meal. Also potentially when they got out of the chair to get something or use the restroom. Even if you’re not sensitive to noise, if you’re in the same room watching a movie, you could miss important dialogue. If someone is trying to talk to you, you could miss what they have to say.

My point is that when you make products friendly to autistic people, you not only make spaces more accessible to us, but you improve them for everybody. Many of the things that are unbearable to us autistics also annoy non-autistic people. This noise is essentially a design bug in chairs that we collectively tolerate, but we don’t have to.

Making society fully autism-friendly, if that’s even possible, would require a massive redesign of public spaces, transportation systems, businesses, products, and many other things, at a minimum. I don’t know if anyone advocates for that, but I do know there are a lot of simple and inexpensive changes that would make it easier for us to exist in society, such as making chairs less noisy, and those things aren’t being done.

We have wheelchair ramps because we recognize that it’s important for society not to exclude people in wheelchairs. So what is the excuse for not improving accessibility for autistic people as well?

How to Maintain a Healthy Self-Image With Autism

2025-07-28T00:00:00+0000

In my previous entry “Labels”, I talked about how living as an undiagnosed autistic person in this neurotypical world caused me to accrue a bunch of hurtful, inaccurate labels assigned to me by people who were ignorant about what autism is. Being assigned these labels damaged my self-esteem and left me with a confused self-image.

I should not have listened to those people, but at the same time, one doesn’t want to rely entirely on oneself to gauge who one is. Each of us has biases and blind spots in our individual perception. Also, the input of others can be useful because others have diverse perspectives and experiences we don’t have, and can show us things about ourselves that we alone can’t see.

So how can you, as an autistic person, filter out the inaccurate input given to you by ignorant neurotypicals who don’t know what autism is so that you can gain useful insights about yourself from others, without being left with a twisted self-image and destroying your self-esteem in the process? Do you just put less stock in what anybody else says about you? What is the solution?

I think the key lies in redirecting your attention from whether other people perceive you accurately to why they perceive you the way they do. Take an attitude of curiosity, of wanting to understand their perspective, rather than immediately agreeing or disagreeing.

For instance, if someone says you’re emotionally immature, try to find out why they say that. You could say “That’s interesting. Can you help me understand what makes you say that?” Based on their response, it’ll be easier to decide whether it’s coming from a place of ignorance and you don’t need to take them seriously, or maybe they have a point that you need to consider.

For example, if they respond “You throw temper tantrums where you go into the corner, rock back and forth with your eyes shut, and then ignore me when I’m talking to you.” then it’s likely that they just don’t understand autistic shutdowns. On the other hand, if they respond “All your close friends are a decade younger than you.” that’s probably something worth reflecting on.

You have to bring the conversation there though. If you just immediately get defensive and say “I’m autistic, I can’t help it.” or “So are you.” or something like that, you’ll never understand why they think that way. With some people, it may not be necessary to ask follow-up questions if it’s obvious that they’re just bigoted. For example, if they say “I don’t think you’re autistic.” or “You’re not that autistic.” and then accuse you of exaggerating because you cower when facing loud noises, that person is just an ignoramus and there’s no need to engage.

But it’s also important to remember that you can get useful feedback even from people who are dead wrong. For instance, in my case, people often tell me that I seem so normal, that I’m not that different. If I were to immediately judge their statement, I would dismiss it and say they’re wrong because they don’t understand masking. But instead, thinking about why so many different people perceive me as normal tells me that perhaps I mask too much. Maybe my masking causes their misconception, and letting my mask slip more earlier in our relationship would prevent those misunderstandings.

To conclude, the point I really want to drive home is that it’s not only about whether someone has a correct assessment of you. From a social awareness perspective, it’s extraordinarily helpful in life to understand why other people see you the way they do, regardless of whether you agree with their assessment. Once you understand why, then you can decide whether it warrants you adjusting how you see yourself or how you behave.

Loop Earplugs Review

2025-06-04T00:00:01+0000

Note: This review is not sponsored. I’m writing it because I liked the product.

About a year or so ago, I ordered Loop earplugs for my noise sensitivity. I was happy that I could finally stop using the bulky noise-cancelling headphones I was using that stood out like a sore thumb in public, easily fell off when I bent over, took up a lot of space when transporting them, and made my ears ache and sweat.

The first model I ordered was the original Loop Switch, which permitted three different volume options by rotating a sliding plastic piece in the earplugs. It was a neat feature. I didn’t even have to take them out to change the volume setting. Sadly it came at the cost of being able to wear them for more than a few hours and thoroughly clean them. Due to discomfort from the hard plastic, they couldn’t be left in for long. And only the tips were able to be washed, not the plastic part.

So I changed them for the Loop Quiet 2 Plus earplugs, which only have a single fixed noise setting, but are easy to clean and don’t make my ears ache even after wearing them for hours. If you’re considering buying a pair of Loop earplugs, get the pure silicon models, not the Loop switch.

In both models, the package itself came with all different sizes of silicone ear tips. It took some trial and error to figure out which size best fit me. I had an issue where they kept falling out because I was using a size that was too large. Also, I initially didn’t know how to properly insert them, so I wasn’t getting a seal and the insertion was creating uncomfortable pressure inside my ear canal. So if you buy a pair, take the time to test out which size is right for you, and practice inserting them properly so you avoid these issues.

The Loop case was compact and easy to carry around in my pocket and put on a keychain. The interior of the case was shaped to secure the earplugs, so they didn’t fall out when I opened it, which was a nice detail.

I can’t comment on the Loop Link accessory since I didn’t get one. It’s a device that you wear like a necklace, and it holds your Loop earplugs. Perhaps I will someday get one since it allows for quick and easy removal and insertion of the earplugs, but I find the carrying case quite convenient already anyways.

I’m happy with the volume option I chose (Quiet, 24 dB). I live in Mexico, a noisy country, and a higher volume option would’ve been insufficient. At this volume, I’m able to navigate around in the city without becoming overwhelmed by the ambient noise, while also hearing enough to be able to hold conversations. Sometimes I miss what people say, but asking them to repeat themselves louder is better than suffering from the surrounding noise.

For acute loud noise, such as a neighbor’s dog barking as I walk past or a trailer truck passing by, the earplugs work great. But there are certain situations I face where they don’t help, like with continuous moderate noise. Here in Mexico, it’s not unusual to hear music being blasted outside for hours at a time. It’s not very loud if you’re indoors, so the volume isn’t the issue. It just makes it hard for me to focus since I can’t tune out noise. For that, I may invest in the Loop Dream, which has more noise reduction than the Quiet model.

The price of the Loop earplugs seems reasonable for what you’re given. I base this on the quality of the product and cost comparisons I’ve done with other noise-cancelling earplug brands.

Overall, I’m a satisfied customer. The Loop earplugs have significantly improved my quality of life here in noisy Mexico. They’ve enabled me to go out and do things I otherwise wouldn’t have been able to do. For instance, sometimes the movie theater sound is overwhelmingly loud without earplugs, and wearing headphones the whole time is too uncomfortable. They’ve also made regular tasks easier, such as going out to buy groceries. I’ve been able to use them in situations where using big, bulky headphones just wasn’t feasible.

In conclusion, I would recommend Loop earplugs to anybody else who has noise sensitivity and has been managing using headphones like I was. My only regret is not having discovered these earplugs years earlier.

Presumptuous Neurotypicals

2025-05-13T00:00:00+0000

When I was younger, people scolded me probably hundreds of times for “not paying enough attention”. No matter how hard I tried to pay attention though, it didn’t help. When I told them it wasn’t helping, they still kept insisting that I wasn’t paying enough attention anyways.

Eventually, I got to the bottom of my “attention” problem. Surprise surprise, it had nothing to do with a lack of attention. I found out that I’m autistic, and other factors were at play.

One of which was an overwhelming environment. I was unable to keep my attention narrowly focused on what I needed to focus on because my brain can’t filter out distractions as easily as neurotypical brains can. What I needed was a calmer, quieter environment with fewer people. No one ever suggested that a change in environment was part of the solution though.

Another was people communicating too quickly. There are certain situations where I don’t process new information as quickly as most people, so I need to ask them to repeat things more slowly, or write them down for me. No one ever suggested that was the answer either.

And being told to pay more attention is but a single example of people who didn’t even have a solid grasp of the problem blaming me when their solution didn’t work. I’ve been assigned so many harmful, innacurate labels by cocksure neurotypicals who thought they knew what my problem was.

For example, they told me I was dramatic when reacting to loud noises. Considering they couldn’t climb inside my head and see what noise is like for me, the only basis I see for them to have concluded that I was being dramatic is the fallacious assumption that I am like them. It’s incredibly frustrating when someone who doesn’t have autistic noise sensitivity and hasn’t done any research on the topic prescribes an overly simplistic solution for it, and then blames you when it inevitably fails.

And I think this is a common problem us neurodivergents face. Tourette syndrome? “You’re just undisciplined. Try harder to control it.” Autism? “You’re just antisocial.” OCD? “Just don’t think about it.” A lot of it just comes down to ignorance about mental health. People either don’t recognize you’re different than them, they explain it away because they’re in denial, or they watch one documentary and think they know it all. My wife has known me for over ten years and she still learns new things about my autism.

So neurotypicals, please have some humility. Some of us have autism, alexithymia, ADHD, dyslexia, dyscalculia, sociopathy, or some other deviation from the neurological average. You may think you know what we’re going through, but you don’t. And you definitely won’t fix our unique problems with a soundbite.

In my own life, the effective strategies I’ve learned for coping with autism (more like coping with non-autistic society) have either come from experience, my own research, or another autistic person like myself. Perhaps my memory fails me, but I don’t recall a single time when a neurotypical suggested how to deal with an autism-related challenge I was having, and it worked for me.

I’m not trying to say that you neurotypicals should never give neurodivergents advice. More like you should recognize that you don’t have all the answers. Remember that others face challenges that you don’t. They may require unusual or uncommon strategies for overcoming even common challenges. Recognize that not everyone is like you, things are not always what they seem on the surface, and it’s not others’ fault if some generic piece of advice doesn’t work for them, even if they don’t have a diagnosable condition.

Finally, if you found this entry insightful, you may also enjoy my other entry “How to Help an Autistic Person”. I know the title says it’s for autistic people, but I think the advice generalizes to neurodivergents and people with disabilities as well.

Snow White Syndrome, The Autism Version

2025-04-26T00:00:01+0000

Introduction

This journal entry is supplements a previous entry I wrote titled “Why Autistic People Are Targets of Manipulation and How to Avoid Becoming a Victim”. In it, I wrote about a common autistic trait that makes us vulnerable to manipulation. First, I’ll explore that trait and its consequences more deeply, then I’ll share some advice for autistics on how to avoid being manipulated.

Please keep in mind that my writing in this entry comes from my own personal experience as a low-support-needs autistic person. Other autistic people may have different experiences.

With that out of the way, let’s move on to the meat and potatoes of this entry.

Analysis

Here’s the quote from the previous entry I mentioned that explains what this autistic trait is:

“[…] we tend to assume other people are always telling the truth. […]

I think the reason for this is due to a cognitive bias everybody has: we tacitly presume others are like us, that they do what they do for the reasons we would do them.

So us autistic people assume everybody is straightforward and rarely lies. The problem with that is first, the average person communicates mostly via body language and doesn’t say exactly what’s on their mind. And second, the average person frequently lies.”

In my own life, I’ve had people tell me insane fabrications just to mess with me or see what they could get me to believe. I’ve also had manipulators tell me obvious lies in furtherance of their malicious goals. And all too often, I fell for it.

I call this phenomenon of autistic people believing whatever we’re told “Snow White Syndrome” because many of us autistics are like Snow White—innocent, naïve, and assuming that everybody has good intentions. Thus, like Snow White, we’re also exceptionally vulnerable to deception.

As a side note, there’s already a condition called Snow White Syndrome, which is why this entry clarifies by appending “The Autism Version” in the title.

Underestimating Autistics

Now despite what I just said about autistic people being like Snow White, I don’t think we’re quite as naïve as non-autistics suppose, especially those of us like myself with low-support-needs autism. In fact, I think non-autistics underestimate our social understanding because they’re so bad at reading us. They think our unusual gaze or lack of reaction means we don’t know what’s going on. They think we don’t know when we’re being made fun of even when we do. They think they’re getting away with lying to us even when we’re not buying it.

Backfire

Another observation I’ve made coming from my own personal experience is that those who do manage to deceive me in an attempt to gain an advantage for themselves very rarely achieve the results they’re hoping for in the end. I’ll attempt to explain why I think this is using the plot of Atypical, a comedy-drama following the life of Sam, an autistic teenager.

In Season 2 Episode 5, Arlo, a school bully, suggests that Sam donate $700 to a party at Arlo’s house. Arlo, knowing that Sam loves penguins, offers to let Sam watch the penguin egg hatching on Arlo’s home theater system at the party as a ploy. Sam falls for it and gives Arlo the $700. Then Sam tells his mom Elsa about the party because he doesn’t realize it’s a secret. Elsa then tells Arlo’s mom about the party, and Arlo’s party is spoiled. In anger, Arlo smashes Sam’s phone at school while Sam is watching the penguin egg hatching, then pushes Sam down to the ground. Another student lends Sam her phone to watch the penguin egg hatching. Later, Sam’s parents visit Arlo’s parents, and Arlo’s parents return the $700 with a new phone for Sam.

So in the end, Arlo not only didn’t achieve his goal, but also ended up ruining his party and costing his parents money. I think this is a good portrayal of what can happen when non-autistic people try to take advantage of autistic people for personal gain.

It could be that people just overestimate the chance of a favorable outcome when tricking someone in general. But what if tricking autistic people actually has a greater chance of backfiring than tricking non-autistic people? To be clear, I don’t have any hard evidence that this is the case. It’s just a hypothesis, but allow me to explain why I think it might be the case.

If you’re not aware of the double-empathy problem, it posits that the struggle of autistics to understand and empathize with non-autistics isn’t always an inherent deficit of ours, but rather stems from bidirectional differences in experiences between neurotypes. I.e, non-autistics also struggle to understand and empathize with us.

Therefore non-autistics’ attempts to trick autistics for their own gain often fail to take into account how we’re different from them. Think about it. If the person you’re trying to trick doesn’t share your motivations, has different emotional reactions to situations, perceives the world in a different way, has a different brain structure than you, then why would you expect that deceiving them would result in a predictable outcome that’s favorable to you? What if, like with what happened in Atypical, we act on the information you give us in ways you didn’t anticipate?

For me, even when their only goal was to provoke, my reaction never satisfied them. We don’t necessarily react in ways that non-autistics recognize. Many people with bad intentions have made themselves extremely frustrated, almost to the point of madness, trying to get a rise out of me.

Summary

Summarizing my analysis of Snow White Syndrome, The Autism Version, we autistics can be overly naïve and trusting, but non-autistics overestimate their ability to trick us and, I believe, underestimate the chances of their schemes backfiring.

How Not to Be Snow White

So now that I’ve discussed Snow White Syndrome and explored how it plays out, at least based on my experience, I want to talk about what we autistics can do to prevent it from being exploited in the first place. This is important too because, although it often backfires for the person trying to exploit us, the consequences of their attempts can be ruinous for our lives.

Talk is Cheap

My first tip is to recognize that people can say anything. For all you know, this entire blog could be bullshit. It could be AI-generated. Maybe my name isn’t even Nicholas. Maybe this is a copy of someone else’s blog. It’s not, but are you going to confirm that?

We tend to assume people are being truthful unless we have a reason to suspect they’re lying. This basic assumption holds society together, but it’s problematic at the same time, because we know that people lie a lot. So take that as your new mantra, and repeat it to yourself until it sinks in:

People lie a lot.

Context is Expensive

Another thing to pay attention to is context. I can’t emphasize this enough. We autistics have such a myopic focus on content that we completely forget about context. Content is always intentional, which means it’s the most likely way people will try to deceive you. Context is usually unintentional because it takes more mental effort to fabricate.

Talk is cheap, but masking one’s tone of voice, speech patterns, posture, mood, when one wants to say something, etc, especially over a long period of time, is very expensive. It takes a lot of cognitive resources to keep up an elaborate act, so you’re less likely to be fooled if you focus on the overall context in which someone says something rather than just the content of what they’re saying.

“Vaccinate” Yourself

I have one final strategy to avoid your Snow White Syndrome being exploited that I’d like to share in this entry. It might seem a bit unusual, but it’s based on my own personal experience from enduring years of bullying, deceit, manipulation, and fake friends. The fact that I had to learn how to resist this the hard way had big negative impacts on my well being. No one should have to go through that, which is why I’m sharing this tip. I’ll introduce it by means of analogy.

Vaccines expose you to a weakened version of a pathogen that triggers an immune response. That way, if you come into contact with the real thing, your immune system will recognize it and be prepared to fight it off. You don’t want your immune system to fight off the real virus first, because it may not figure out how to fight back in time.

Likewise, you don’t want your first encounter with malicious behavior to be with a highly manipulative person, because they can wreak havoc on your life. Ideally, you want to inoculate yourself against being taken advantage of before it happens. That means learning to recognize toxic and manipulative behaviors, and effective ways to respond to them, before you encounter them in the wild. Neurotypicals pick up on things more through socialization, but we autistics don’t always. For us, it can be better to explicitly learn it.

I’m not going to cover all that information here, because I’d be here all day. There are just too many ways people can fool others. But there are plenty of free online resources that cover how to recognize it, and how to fight back. Take advantage of those resources.

Autistic people are seen as easy targets (regardless of whether we are or not) and it’s frequently the very people we trust, like “friends” and family, who are taking advantage. That’s why it’s so critical to at least be aware of the telltale signs someone is being deceitful or manipulative.

Conclusion

To round off this entry, I just want to make a few comments.

Manipulation is everywhere, not just in certain places. Autistic people can be just as manipulative as non-autistics. Someone who is mostly honest may be deceitful in certain situations or with certain people. Manipulative people can be very popular and charming. Deceit can take place inside trusting relationships too. You may be the manipulator in a relationship and not even realize you’re doing it.

Also, don’t think you’re above being tricked. None of us are. While we’re not all equally vulnerable to it, all of us are vulnerable to some form of manipulation.

Don’t let that make you paranoid. My goal in this entry isn’t to make anybody worry excessively, but rather to educate and prepare you so that you don’t have to learn things the hard way, as I did.

Don't Overthink It

2025-04-26T00:00:00+0000

Many of us autistics have a habit of overthinking things. When I say overthinking, I’m referring to using thinking as a substitute for other things like socializing, feeling, and taking action.

Socializing

For example, I used to avoid asking questions. Instead, I’d try to figure everything out on my own. If I didn’t understand some part of a lecture, I wouldn’t raise my hand in class or ask my study group. I’d go back and read the textbook, or research it by myself. If I didn’t understand how to do a work task, I’d try to deduce it instead of asking my boss or coworkers.

I think it was partly a masking thing. Sometimes when I ask questions, people tell me nobody else has ever asked them that. Also, I sometimes ask very basic questions whose answers are obvious to neurotypicals from context that I don’t pick up on. So to not stand out, I used to avoid asking questions.

Another part was social. Sometimes the person I’m talking to either doesn’t have the answer or doesn’t understand why I’m asking. If they don’t know the answer, it can make them feel bad, which isn’t my goal. And when they don’t understand why I’m asking, they provide me with what they think I want to know rather than what I asked for literally.

Despite that, I still regret not asking more questions when I was younger. The best way to get better at asking questions is to ask lots of questions, and realize that it’s not always that you asked a bad question. Sometimes the other person’s reaction has more to do with them than your question or the way you asked it. So don’t do what I did and waste lots of time trying to piece things together on your own when you can just ask.

There are times to use your problem-solving skills to figure something out, and there are times to use your social resources instead. Relying too much on either one isn’t good. When you overrely on socialization, it can get annoying and waste other people’s time. When you rely too heavily on problem-solving, you’re not making an efficient use of your limited time and cognitive resources. The way you find that balance is not by thinking about it, but by asking questions.

Feeling

Another example is using your problem-solving skills as a substitute for feeling. This is related to alexithymia, a phenomenon characterized by difficulties in noticing, sourcing, and expressing emotions. It co-occurs with autism at a higher rate than in the general population, but it’s also not uncommon in the general population. To give you a better idea about it, I wrote a few statements that might describe an alexithymic:

I don’t know what I feel
I can’t explain how I feel
I get happy/sad/angry/[generic emotion] without knowing why
I (don’t) like it when… (using “like” instead of an emotion word)

Alexithymics might do something like create a pros and cons list, assigning points to each item, and calculating the total to decide whether to be with someone instead of feeling out the relationship. It’s turning an emotional matter into a logical analysis. Another way to think of it is literally using the logical brain for a situation that calls for the emotional brain—you’re thinking when you should be feeling.

Regardless, the reason it’s so bad to use the thinking mind instead of the feeling mind is that you never actually process your emotions. They’re suppressed, which leads to health problems, directionlessness, and an inability to account for your own actions. E.g:

I woke up angry. It must be because my roommate didn’t do the dishes yesterday

You’re not recalling what made you angry. You’re deducing it post hoc, because you don’t actually know. Your logical brain and emotional brain aren’t communicating properly, so the logical brain fills in the blank the only way it knows how.

This can lead to serious consequences for your relationships. Since you can’t identify your feelings or motivations, all you can offer others to account for your behavior are post hoc rationalizations (i.e. guessing). When these guesses contradict each other, or they don’t seem to line up with the other things you do, you appear unpredictable and untrustworthy.

Lack of trust quickly erodes relationships. So if I just described you, taking steps to become more familiar with your emotions should be a top priority.

Taking Action

The last example I want to cover is when people sit around overanalyzing a situation and making no progress. This is called analysis paralysis and I have a good story for this one:

I once met an older autistic man online who, judging by his career history and how good he was at strategy games, certainly had some impressive skills. But he had been out of work for a very long time and was struggling to find employment. What was he doing about that?

Well, he created a very detailed requirements list of what he wanted out of a job. He took into account factors that he thought were preventing him from getting a job. He shared his thoughts on the job hunt process. He talked about potential mental blocks he was facing and the therapies available to overcome them. He received feedback from others, and came up with reasons that the feedback either wouldn’t work or didn’t apply to him.

In short, he was stuck in analysis paralysis. He was wasting tons of energy thinking about how to get his dream job. Now in my experience, it can be useful to take a step back and reconsider the strategy you’re using to find a job. What isn’t a good use of your time though is spending all day considering and reconsidering your options as a substitute for actually doing something.

What became clear to me was that this guy needed to stop thinking and start doing. Even if you start with a really ineffective strategy for getting a job, you can iterate on it to improve your chances over time. You can apply with different versions of your résumé. You can apply for different positions. You can gain experience interning for a non-profit project. Getting firsthand experience by doing, even if it takes you a long time to refine the process, is more valuable than just aimlessly second-guessing yourself over and over.

Conclusion

It’s important to point out that non-autistic people also suffer from overthinking. Personally though, I’ve seen it way more in autistics. It’s something I can speak to because I’ve personally battled against it. People still tell me all the time that I overthink, and I know they’re not wrong. I just don’t always notice when I’m doing it.

So if you know someone who’s autistic, or who tends to overthink things, please share this with them. If my experiences with it help even one person, this entry will have been worth it in my book.

To mask, or not to mask

2025-04-05T00:00:00+0000

For anyone who is unfamiliar, masking is when an autistic person pretends to be neurotypical (normal). We mainly do it for social survival because many normal people won’t treat us with basic human dignity unless we pretend to be like them. We can’t mask continuously however, because pretending to be someone you’re not is exhausting and causes a lot of stress and anxiety.

So in my high-masking autistic experience, one of the most difficult decisions I have to make is when to mask. I’ve recently come to the conclusion that I’ve been masking too much, due to sheer number of times I’ve had the following happen:

I meet someone. I’m masking. We’re getting along. Things seem to be going well. Over time, they start noticing that I have some quirks, that I’m a little bit different. I disclose that I’m autistic, thinking it will clear up their confusion. They either deny it or insist I’m “not that autistic” thinking they’re giving me a compliment. They start to critique my differences. Over time, the criticisms become harsher, hateful even. I try to explain to them how what they’re criticizing are actually traits of autism. They deny it, and insist that I’m making excuses. This continues until I make the decision to cut them off, because they’re just not listening and there doesn’t seem to be any other option available.

This exact story has played out in my life countless times. And I’ve wasted years of my time and energy, and sacrificed my mental health, trying to build and maintain relationships with bigots who didn’t want to get it. Obviously I can’t control that other people are bigoted, nor that they disbelieve me because I don’t fit the stereotypes. But looking back, I’ve begun to realize that much of the suffering I endured was probably avoidable had I masked less around the person from the beginning.

The trouble is this: Bigots don’t carry around a neon sign saying they’re bigots. One doesn’t find out who the bigots are until they have something to be bigoted against.

When I’m masking, bigots see me as “mostly normal”, so they treat me like they treat everybody else. Meanwhile, I’m not aware that they would be treating me differently if I were being genuine. When they start to see through the masking months or years into the relationship, they don’t see an autistic person trying to be normal. They see a normal person intentionally being “difficult”. I learn that they’re only friends with who I can pretend to be, and they hate the real me. I don’t want to believe that I’ve wasted so much time and energy on this person, so I try to educate them, but they don’t want to learn. They just want to hate.

If I had been genuine and not masked around them from the very beginning, and set a clear boundary at being disrespected, those relationships never even would’ve gotten off the ground, and I would’ve saved myself the trouble. I thought that masking would allow me to make friends and avoid being a target. But in the end, I only made fake friends, and I was bullied and taken advantage of anyway. Had I not masked so much, I may have found people who liked me for who I really was, and I could’ve put energy into those relationships instead.

This is not to say that there aren’t moments where masking is the best option. I think that telling high-masking autistic people to never mask, or to always mask, are both terrible and unrealistic pieces of advice. Always masking can backfire in ways I’ve already illuminated. Never masking can keep you from getting past the job interview stage. There’s no easy answer here. In an ideal world, we would never have to mask, but that’s just not the world we live in.

I think that deciding when to mask, with whom, and how much, is one of the most difficult things about being high-masking autistic. There’s no one-size-fits-all answer for everybody. Making good choices with respect to masking takes a lot of trial and error, and actually implementing those choices is at least equally difficult.

Masking is a social survival strategy that has been reinforced in us our whole lives. For most of us, the mask is not just a switch we can turn on or off. It’s part of us. It can be very subtle — we may not even be aware that we’re wearing the mask. Sometimes it’s difficult to know when it ends and where we begin.

To summarize, masking is complicated.

That’s all I have to say about it for now. If you have any stories you’d like to share about how masking did or didn’t work out for you in some situation, I’d love to hear them. You can find my contact info on the about page. If you’re a neurotypical reading this, I hope I’ve given you some idea of the challenges autistic people go through related to masking.

Do Autistic People Make You Uncomfortable?

2025-02-14T00:00:01+0000

Many neurotypicals get uncomfortable when I mention that I’m autistic.

I think the main reason for that is they immediately feel like they’re walking on eggshells, like they have to watch everything they say around me lest they say something wrong. If that’s you, maybe I can assuage your concerns:

I can’t speak for all autistic people, but I don’t go around looking to “expose” people to the “woke police”, get them fired from their job, or summon an online mob to demand a public apology. The most I’ve ever done is report someone to their manager. And I only did that when they were overtly discriminating against me. I just want to get through my day like everybody else. I’m not looking to pick fights and the people who are trying to pick fights annoy me.

Another thing to keep in mind is that I have a lot more to be worried about from a bad interaction than you do. I may not realize there’s been a grave miscommunication or that I’ve pissed someone off until it’s way too late. At all times, I have to watch out for social predators who think they can take advantage of me because I’m different. I’m naturally more trusting of people, and thus very socially vulnerable, so I have to counteract that by being a little bit paranoid. You neurotypicals can just trust your instincts to pick up malicious intent most of the time.

If it’s the way I am that makes you feel uncomfortable, as opposed to you saying the wrong thing, that’s also completely normal. I admit that normal people make me a little bit uncomfortable too. The difference is I’ve had my whole life to get used to you all. Even though I can’t personally relate, I have come to accept your differences. Autistic people are less common, so you haven’t had as many chances to get used to us.

To clarify, when I say “get used to us”, I’m not suggesting we’re all the same. I’m referring to growing accustomed to common autistic traits. For instance, you don’t need to get used to me flicking a fidget spinner, a different autistic person tugging on a piece of string, etc for each one of us. You only need to know what stimming is, and it would probably help to know why we do it as well. You may never be able to relate to it, but learning to recognize it and acknowledge why we do it can help you feel more comfortable around it.

Remember, all of this is mutual and works the same way in reverse. There are certain traits neurotypicals exhibit that I’ll probably never be able to relate to either, but I accept that that is how you are. For example, I’m more deliberate and rational in my thinking than most of you. I still have cognitive biases just like everybody else, but some of you seem to believe literally whatever you find personally comforting, and just avoid thinking about the rest. It terrifies me that normal people can operate that way. I can’t relate to it at all, but I acknowledge that that’s the way some of you are and I understand the reason for it.

And I think that’s the key. We may not always be able to relate to each other, but trying to understand and respect our differences is progress towards us coexisting more harmoniously, and more comfortably.

Labels

2025-02-14T00:00:00+0000

One thing that has helped me get over my autistic shame is realizing that, when other people describe me in a negative light, it’s typically because they perceive me as normal, and judge me through that false lens.

For example, I have always been blamed for being a “picky eater”. I dislike that term because it gives the impression that I choose not to eat certain foods because they’re not my favorites. But that’s not what’s happening. What’s happening is the tastes and textures of certain foods are so overwhelming for me that I can’t force myself to eat them.

Another example is the term “antisocial”. It carries a negative connotation meaning someone who avoids people, who doesn’t care about others, and is rude. That’s not me at all. Exactly the reverse: Neurotypicals avoid me, they don’t care about me, and they are rude to me. And I don’t avoid going out because I dislike people, but because environments which contain lots of people tend to be hostile to my senses. Notice how that’s not at all what comes to mind when you think “antisocial”.

I have also been told that I’m selfish. I think there are several reasons that I’m misperceived as selfish. I’ll mention two of them. One is that neurotypicals don’t notice all the effort I make masking just so that they feel more comfortable around me. Masking is an exhausting, stressful, thankless act, which I do to others’ benefit. Another reason I think I’m misperceived as selfish is that this world wasn’t made for autistic people. Oftentimes, I’m so busy just trying to survive that I don’t have as much left to give others as they can give me. Contrast that with a selfish person, who doesn’t want to give to others.

Just to make it perfectly clear, for added emphasis:

I am not weird. I am not awkward. I am not antisocial. I am not a hermit. I am not a picky eater. I am not stubborn. I am not lazy. I am not selfish. I am not retarded. I am not a child. I am not a robot. I am not oversensitive. I am not oblivious.

I am just autistic.

I’m not claiming that autistic people like myself don’t have negative traits. I’m merely pointing out that most of the negative labels I have accrued are a result of neurotypicals misunderstanding me. I adopted those labels in the past because I assumed that ten people telling me the same thing about myself couldn’t all be wrong. As it turns out, they were all wrong. Some were genuinely misunderstanding me, while others were mislabelling me on purpose, weaponizing their ignorance so they could continue to blame me for things I had no control over. I’d like to close with a message aimed directly towards them:

To all of you who have assigned me hurtful labels, giving me a false sense of self for my whole life, and denied my autism so you could continue blaming me for things I can’t control, I’ve got a label for you:

You are a bigot.

And I will no longer allow you to define me.

The Fair-Weather Friend

2023-11-17T00:00:00+0000

A fair-weather friend is someone who’s there for you when things are going well in your life, when it’s convenient for them, or when they benefit, but whenever you need a favor or you’re not doing well, this ‘friend’ is nowhere to be found. Needless to say, fair-weather friends aren’t really your friends. Real friends care about your well being.

What does this have to do with autism? Well, when I first heard the term “fair-weather friend”, I thought the concept was similar to the treatment of autistic people by neurotypical society. Allow me to go into more detail:

Autistic people engage in masking, the suppression of our authentic autistic selves to fit into society. Pretending to be someone we’re not all the time is exhausting and unsustainable, so occasionally our autism shows. Other times we may voluntarily cease masking or involuntarily become unable to hide it due to an overwhelming sensory environment. Whichever the case may be, when the mask comes off, it often happens that the people we thought were our friends vanish into thin air.

Someone who’s too embarrassed to be seen around autistic people unless we pretend to be normal isn’t an ally of the autistic. Like a fair-weather friend, they’re only there for us when it’s convenient for them. The moment we make them look uncool by being ourselves, they’re gone. If we have neurotypical problems with neurotypical solutions, then they’re helpful, but the moment we have a challenge that neurotypicals don’t face though, then we’re on our own. These ‘friends’ are never there when they’re needed most. This is insufficient.

So if you have a friend in a marginalized group, listen to them, try to understand their unique challenges, and defend them even when it’s socially inconvenient, because that’s when your support can make the biggest difference.

Re: You're Not Autistic! 65 Reasons You Can't Be Autistic

2023-11-06T00:00:00+0000

In this entry, I’ll be responding to Paul Micallef’s video “You’re Not Autistic! 65 Reasons You Can’t Be Autistic”. I’ll start by listing the reasons that I’ve personally experienced people tell me.

You can’t be autistic, …

(1) you’re so intelligent
(7) you don’t have diagnosis
(9) you don’t look autistic
(17) you’re so smart
(20) I know someone who’s autistic and you’re not like them
(21) you look normal
(46) you managed well in life
(49) you’re not weird enough
(55) you don’t look disabled
(61) you’re just an asshole
(62) there’s nothing wrong with you
(63) you’re just like me
(65) everyone’s on the spectrum

Like Paul says, read between the lines. If someone thinks I can’t be autistic because I’m intelligent, then they must think autistic people are unintelligent. If they think I can’t be autistic because there’s “nothing wrong with me”, then they must think autistic people have something wrong with them. It’s insulting.

Paul is also right that many professionals are barely more educated about autism than autism deniers, making it difficult to get an autism diagnosis as an adult. Luckily the person who diagnosed me was autistic themself, so they were not ignorant about autism.

One thing I’d like to add is that autism denial and non-acceptance is, in my experience, just as often implicit as it is explicit like in Paul’s video. I’ll give one example of each from my life:

I was once in a family photo where everybody was directly facing the sun. Bright light is very painful for me, so I held a salute gesture to block it from my eyes. When a member of my family who was also in the photo (I’ll call them Z) noticed, they told me to put my hand down for the photo. They kept repeating it, eventually telling someone else to pull my arm away. I explained that I am sensitive to light. Z responded “I know, but…” and I interjected “No you don’t.” angry that they had tried to enlist someone else to violate my bodily autonomy and cause me pain just for a better photo. Luckily, the person Z asked to pull my hand away had enough sense not to. At no point was autism mentioned, but Z’s implicit message of autism denial and non-acceptance was loud and clear.

For an explicit example of autism denial, a few days preceding this event, Z attempted to shame me in front of several other people over refusing to go to loud and crowded places. I defended myself saying that I couldn’t because being autistic made it too overwhelming. Z then told me “You’re not autistic.” even though there’s undeniable evidence that I am and Z was aware that I’ve been formally diagnosed.

In my experience, it quickly becomes obvious when someone is an unreachable autism ignoramus because they make it my responsibility to simultaneously convince them that I’m autistic and educate them about autism, meanwhile they argue with me and dismiss every autism example I give using the same debunked nonsense stereotypes Paul mentions.

Autistic people are a diverse group, autism has different ways of presenting itself, and some autistic people are adept at masking. Even though I have autism myself and I’ve researched it quite a bit, I still wouldn’t feel qualified to diagnose others, especially not adults. It is monumentally arrogant for someone who isn’t autistic themself, has no medical training, and has spent zero time researching autism to insist that they can disconfirm it in others.

I think the takeaway from Paul’s video is that you’re probably not in a position to confirm or disconfirm autism in others. If someone claims to have autism, unless you have a strong reason to think they’re lying, you should take them at their word, validate their experiences, and give them support if they need it.

Autism From The Inside

2023-10-16T00:00:00+0000

I’m writing this journal entry to promote the videos made by Paul Micallef from Autism From The Inside.

Paul is someone who discovered his autism at age 30. His videos offer insight into what it’s like to be autistic, the challenges that people with autism face because of the way society treats us, myths, misconceptions, and how to live well with autism.

If you asked me what the best resources are for educating oneself about autism, I would direct you to Autism From The Inside. Paul’s explanations are the best resource I’ve found, hands down. Paul doesn’t just talk about the science, but shares his real, day-to-day lived experience as an autistic person.

Admittedly, I’m biased in favor of Paul’s videos because I relate to his experiences. It’s important to keep in mind that all autistic people are different. No single voice, not mine nor an informed articulate one like Paul’s, can represent all of us.

I already write about my own experiences with autism, but I think it could be even more insightful to share my thoughts on Paul’s autistic experiences and how they relate to my own. I’ll probably do that at some point in the future. Stay tuned!

Should Autistic People be Held Accountable for Their Actions?

2023-10-10T00:00:03+0000

I want to address one of the biggest misunderstandings about autism and other mental health conditions, which I think can partially be blamed on the confusing nomenclature. In English, we say that a person “has” autism. This is a misleading verb for the context of mental health conditions because the idea of “having” something, in most contexts, implies that that which is had is separate from the haver. This leads to a conception of autism that I call “the ghost in the machine”.

As an example, sometimes people laboring under this conception of autism ask me strange questions to the effect of “Is X caused by your autism or is it just you?” as if the two were so easily separable. It’s not like part of my brain is autistic and the other part is the “real” me and we’re fighting over control. The whole brain is autistic.

But neurotypicals make this uncritical, hard and fast distinction between “myself” and “my autism”, appointing themselves as the ultimate authority on where that line gets drawn without having done any research on autism. Then they use their uninformed and fallacious notion of autism to dismiss all my real challenges, claiming that any traits they deem undesirable aren’t “caused by autism”, but rather “of my own doing”, and therefore my fault as well.

A live example of this thinking is “Oh, you burn out at every job you perform? Don’t blame that on autism! That’s just because you are lazy.” Comments to this effect aren’t always self-evidently negative either. Sometimes they take the form of toxic positivity: “Oh, you burn out at every job you perform? I know you can overcome your autism! Just try harder! :)”.

Let’s consider some better ways of holding autistic people accountable:

Example 1

If we cower and cover our ears in the presence of loud noise, our behavior might be breaking social mores, but it’s both harmless and involuntary.

So there’s really no basis to castigate us over it.

Example 2

If we hurt someone’s feelings due a lack of social awareness, our behavior is harmful but unintentional.

In that situation, it might be prudent to pull us aside and fill us in on what we just unintentionally did, but there’s no basis to criticize us over it. It was an accident.

Example 3

If we hurt someone’s feelings intentionally, our behavior is harmful and we should be held accountable.

Sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference between someone who is unintentionally a jerk due to lack of social awareness and someone who, unfortunately, uses autism as an excuse to be a jerk. One just has to use their best judgment knowing the person. Autistic people can be jerks too.

Example 4

If we regularly show up to work exhausted and late and our coworkers have to pick up the slack, are we responsible for that?

Well, we could be held responsible if we make no effort to sleep on time. At the same time though, a high percentage of autistic people suffer from sleep problems, so we might still be sleepy even doing everything right. In that case, it wouldn’t make sense to attribute our tardiness to a moral failure on our part.

From the perspective of any of our coworkers, even if they know we’re autistic and the implications of autism for sleep, it’s not obvious to them how much effort or lack thereof we’re making to sleep on time. The point is that one may not be in a position to have sufficient information to effectively hold someone accountable. It’s not always black and white.

Conclusion

To answer the original question posed in the title of this entry, autistic people and those with other mental health conditions absolutely should be held accountable for our actions, but there are a few important things to remember when doing so:

Autism and other mental health conditions are descriptive, not causal
“Being weird” is not a moral failure, even if it makes others uncomfortable
We shouldn’t be held to the same expectations as neurotypicals
We have to be judged differently than normal people, according to what behaviors we can and can’t control, given the fact of our condition

Is Autism a Disability or Neurodivergence?

2023-06-10T00:00:00+0000

The text I’ll reference throughout this entry to help answer the question posed in the title of this entry is Neurotypical Spectrum Disorder, written by Autism advocate and licensed pastoral therapist Matt Lowry. The linked version contains a small addition by licensed marriage and family therapist Stephanie Winn. It’s written in the style of a Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders 5th Edition (DSM-5) diagnosis. It classifies being neurotypical as a disorder, listing the disadvantages and differences of being neurotypical relative to autism.

I’d like to start by addressing the apparent deficits in autistic social communication.

The DSM-5 says that autistic people have “Persistent deficits in social communication and social interaction across multiple contexts”. However, at least in autistic people who are verbal, a “substantial number of studies in recent years” consistently support the double empathy problem, the hypothesis that “This lack of understanding may stem from bidirectional differences in communication style, social-cognitive characteristics, and experiences between autistic and non-autistic individuals, but not necessarily an inherent deficiency.”

The DSM-5 criteria for autism doesn’t reflect this at all. It essentially places all the blame on autistic people for failing to communicate with neurotypicals.

The Neurotypical Spectrum Disorder text mentions multiple ways that neurotypical socialization might be considered abnormal and pathologized as a “disorder” by a hypothetical majority autistic society. It can be read as a critique of the old theory of Mind Blindness which posits that autistic people lack theory of mind.

Neurotypical Spectrum Disorder seems to support the Neurodiversity-based view of autism, which asserts that:

“…there is intrinsic diversity in human brain function and cognition, and that certain things currently classified as neurodevelopmental disorders are differences and disabilities but are not necessarily pathological.”

and that

“…disability partly arises from societal barriers, rather than attributing disability purely to inherent deficits.”

The diversity model sits in contrast to the dominant Medical Model of Disability, which asserts that:

“…disability may reduce the individual’s quality of life and aims to diminish or correct this disability with medical intervention.”

I think both frameworks have a point.

The Neurodiversity Framework

The DSM-5 classifies the ways autistic people differ as symptoms of a disorder even though not all those differences are deficits and even when they are disadvantageous, that’s often only because society has made them so, not because of anything inherent about autism. As Neurotypical Spectrum Disorder points out, many traits of neurotypicals would probably be classified as deficits in an autistic society and the only reason they’re not is because the majority of people are neurotypicals.

Saying that all autism is nothing more than a “disorder” ignores that it can actually be a mixed blessing. Without the autistic “deficits” such as noise sensitivity due to a hyperconnected brain, one might lose certain “autistic superpowers” that neurotypicals lack. For example, a much larger fraction of autistic people are savants than neurotypicals. So autism is perhaps better thought of as a trade-off. Let me give an analogy.

Imagine spending skill points on a skill tree for your character in a video game. Neurodiversity is like spending your skill points on atypical strengths while negating commonly taken branches of the skill tree. Your atypical skill tree doesn’t necessarily make you better or worse than the other players overall. If the strengths your character possesses balance out the weaknesses, it just makes you different.

The Medical Framework

On the other hand, I do think the medical model has its place. Something like 25% to 30% of children diagnosed with autism never develop spoken language beyond a few words. For many high-support-needs autistic people, there simply is no “trade-off” being made. They’re worse off than the average person by every metric, they have an impossibly difficult life prone to suffering, and others’ lives are ruined because they require constant care and supervision.

If there were a cure for autism, what possible reason would there be for not treating these individuals? I suppose one could argue that curing these individuals would be akin to killing them and replacing them with a neurotypical since there would be significant psychological discontinuity. However, I don’t find this objection convincing because I place no value on personal identity, only well being.

As far as terminology goes, I think it’s fine to refer to people that have severe debilitating autism with no advantages as people with “disorders” and “disabilities”. Since diversity is normally seen as a good thing, the word “neurodiverse” gives the false impression that their condition doesn’t need to be cured. It does need to be cured and we need medical terminology to talk about it.

To return to the video game analogy, it’s less like they spent their skill points atypically and more like they just started out with less points overall than everybody else. It’s pure disadvantage.

Neurodiversity + Medicine

By creating this distinction between autistic people who should be treated primarily as neurodiverse versus primarily as having a disorder, I’m not saying the neurodiverse can’t benefit from treatment. It’s often the case that the skills autistic people lack, although counterbalanced by “autistic superpowers”, are still important for living in neurotypical society and can actually be learned by autistics. If one can treat or cure what’s bad about being autistic while retaining everything good, I see no reason not to do that.

If you still want to take the hardline position that neurodiversity is a complete load of horseshit and autism should always be classified as a medical disorder, I have one question for you:

How do you justify that position?

If it’s because autism carries deficits compared to being neurotypical, so does being neurotypical carry deficits compared to being autistic, as Neurotypical Spectrum Disorder demonstrates. So both would be disorders under that logic. If it’s because autism carries deficits compared to being neurotypical and differs from the majority neurotype, then in order to be consistent you’d have to concede that neurotypicals living in a majority autistic society should also be considered disabled and ought to be cured.

Also, are you counting autistic deficits that only exist because of an inability to conform to neurotypical society? If so, you also have to count neurotypical deficits that would arise from being forced to conform to an autistic society as symptoms of Neurotypical Spectrum Disorder.

Conclusion

For the relatively small number of people who have exceptional abilities compared to the average, we call them gifted. For the relatively small number of people who have exceptional deficits compared to the average, we call them disabled or say they have a disorder. But what should we call people who have a mixed bag of both exceptional abilities and exceptional deficits compared to the average? Should we just call them disabled too?

I don’t think so. Firstly, we don’t treat all deficits as diseases that need to be cured, at least not in a medical sense. Secondly, calling all autistic people disabled ignores the inherent advantages of autism. That’s why I’m in favor of using the word “neurodiverse” over “disability” or “disorder” in autism with counterbalancing inherent advantages. We need terminology that acknowledges that the categories of disabled, normal, and gifted aren’t mutually exclusive. There are shades of gray.

Autistic people are disabled in the sense that it’s hard for us to function in society, but that doesn’t necessarily mean autism is a disease to be cured. Maybe society needs to be cured instead.

To give the medical framework its due, I think it’s possible to flip around any definition found in the DSM-5, but not to the same effect that the Neurotypical Spectrum Disorder text creates. That’s because some conditions are better off being labeled as disorders and cured, despite however having that disorder might be incidentally beneficial and despite any social good that might come of having people in society with disorders.

What is Sensory Overload Like? (Attempt #2)

2023-05-27T00:00:00+0000

In the second half of my last entry about autistic sensory overload, I think I may have gotten too off-topic overemphasizing how autistic people can’t control their sensory overload as opposed to actually explaining what sensory overload is like. So I’m going to try to properly explain what it’s like in this entry.

Although there are many forms of sensory overload, loud noises are responsible for me becoming overloaded most of the time. So I’m going to focus on the special case of auditory overload. Please keep in mind that I’m just one autistic person and my experiences probably don’t accurately reflect those of all autistic people.

The first thing to understand is that autistic sensory overload has nothing whatsoever to do with having better sensory organs than everybody else. I do not have better eyes or ears than anybody else. I do not have a better nose or tongue. Nor do I have more receptors to enhance my sense of touch or anything like that. What’s different is how my brain processes sensory inputs.

Basically, my brain filters less input than neurotypicals (normal people). In other words, I hear/taste/touch/smell/feel everything at once. It’s a very powerful and at times overwhelming experience that neurotypicals cannot relate to. For example, imagine I’m at a standard party. Even with someone directly in front of me, it’s incredibly hard for me to concentrate on what they’re telling me not because I’m not listening, but because I’m also helplessly parsing the five other conversations going on around me at the same time and there’s just not much attention/brainpower left for the conversation I’m actually having.

So what happens subjectively is I start understanding fragments of sentences here and there from all the conversations going on around me while my brain “tunes out” the person talking to me. My brain is receiving so much auditory input that it can no longer effectively process its environment as a whole. Keeping up with what’s going on feels like running a mental marathon. Now there’s three components to why this is stressful:

Sensory overstimulation causes physiological stress
Since I can’t process my environment in its entirety, I can’t effectively respond to it, putting me in potential danger
Since my brain is preoccupied with processing sensory input, I cannot mask my autism as well, causing social anxiety

One thing that makes sensory overload even more stressful is that neurotypicals seem to have difficulty accepting it. If someone tries to tell me something while I’m overwhelmed, I can explain to them “I’m autistic and I’m overwhelmed right now. I cannot understand you. Whatever you’re saying, please tell me later.” but that usually doesn’t do any good. It usually just prompts them to start repeating themselves, thinking that I didn’t hear them properly or something.

But when I don’t understand neurotypicals, it’s not because I don’t hear them. What’s happening is that their words have no meaning attached because my ability to understand language is offline. I can make out that they’re saying words as opposed to gibberish, but I have no idea what those words mean. Repeating themselves with different words won’t change that. It doesn’t matter how inconvenient this is for them because my autistic brain doesn’t function according to the convenience of neurotypicals.

If I continue being overwhelmed by my senses, I experience a shutdown. From the inside, a shutdown looks like a breakdown of the ability to perceive and interpret what’s happening in my environment. Language and physical objects no longer have any meaning. There’s only raw sensory awareness of light, colors, sounds, smells and sensations. From the outside, I look frozen. I become temporarily mute, lose my ability to mask or socialize, and may abruptly leave the scene before matters get worse.

Shutdowns are caused by the environment I’m in being too stimulating. They are involuntary, extremely unpleasant, and stressful. The only way I can recover from a shutdown is by giving my brain a break from all the sensory stimuli. That means being alone (where I don’t have to socialize) in a non-stimulating quiet place for at least a few hours. During that time, my brain slowly comes back to reality again. I regain my ability to perceive my environment, socialize, and reason and I can reenter the world.

You may have also heard about autistic meltdowns as an alternative to shutdowns. Some autistic people claim meltdowns are triggered by sensory overload. In my experience though, meltdowns are more related to stress, anxiety, and emotions. So I’ll discuss meltdowns in a separate entry.

So I hope that explains a bit better what sensory overload is like and what’s going on from the inside when autistic people experience it. Thanks for reading.

Police Mistake Autism for Suspicious Behavior

2023-05-20T00:00:00+0000

It’s an unfortunate fact that autism symptoms overlap with what police consider suspicious behavior.

For example, police use of indirect communication and body language leads to misunderstandings with autistic people. Autistic persons’ atypical behavior including our lack of eye contact leads police to believe we’re hiding something. Shutting down and having meltdowns is dangerous around the police because they don’t understand what’s happening.

There’s supposed to be autism training in police departments to reduce this problem. However, from what I’ve read, the training is inconsistent. For someone like me who is autistic and decent at masking (pretending I’m not autistic) in public, police will never realize I’m autistic unless I disclose it. In other words, their training is useless unless I disclose my autism.

It’s always my discretion whether to inform the police that I’m autistic, but it poses a dilemma:

Suppose I disclose my autism to a police officer. Many neurotypicals, perhaps even most, treat autistic people poorly. It has been my personal experience that, if a neurotypical becomes angry enough at me, they will eventually make fun of my autism or try to use it as a weapon against me. How do I know the police won’t do the same? I’ve certainly heard cases where they did treat known autistic people worse. So maybe it’s better that they don’t know.

On the other hand, if I don’t disclose, it’s highly likely there will be miscommunication, I’ll be seen as suspicious or suspected of being on drugs, and I won’t necessarily even realize that the officer sees me as suspicious, so I won’t even have the opportunity to try to clear up any confusion.

Whether or not to disclose my autism is a judgment call I have to make and just hope that I get right. Personally, I find it highly preferable not to interact with police at all. There’s nothing for me to gain from it and a lot to lose.

As for ideas on how to improve the situation, I think that police officers should, at a minimum, be exposed to autistic people of different age ranges and support levels. The reason for that is because autism treatment and awareness focuses primarily on children. So it might not occur to a police officer that an adult behaving atypically may be autistic.

Additionally, with someone who can mask convincingly such as myself, police officers are more likely to see my behavior as suspicious even if I do disclose my autism. However, if they’ve already seen examples of autistic individuals masking, it may be possible to prevent misunderstandings.

I don’t think it’s reasonable to expect the police to identify an autistic person every single time they encounter one. Even as an autistic person myself, someone you’d think should be good at identifying autism in others, I cannot identify some people as autistic. So I don’t expect neurotypical police to be able to do so either, at least not in every case. However, I think they can still do a better job than what we’re seeing right now given better training. That’s the point I’m trying to make.

Autism Is Not Relatable

2023-05-12T00:00:00+0000

In the past, I’ve had people tell me that they “understand” my autism, only to demonstrate shortly after that they don’t have the first clue what autism actually is. People want to understand it, so they try to make it relatable to their own experience. They say things like:

“You feel rejected? I’ve been there.”

“You’re different? Hey, we’re all a little different.”

When people say these things, they have the best of intentions. But the truth is they have no clue what they’re talking about. They’re trying to compare autism, a pervasive developmental condition, with their neurotypical (normal person) experiences. It’s a category error.

When neurotypicals say they feel rejected, they usually mean a specific person or group of people rejected them. Us autistic people naturally exist so far outside the norm that we are rejected by everyone by default. It’s not just people mocking us or not getting invited to social gatherings. We expect that. It’s all the little subtle things people don’t even realize they do that lets us know we’re not accepted the way we are. Finding acceptance as an autistic person is like finding a needle in a haystack.

And there’s also the classic “everybody is different” line. Obviously everyone is different, but it’s meant to imply that us autistic people aren’t that different. Well if we’re not that different, then why do we get called “different”, “weirdo”, etc and others don’t? I’ll tell you why. Because while everybody is different, some of us are more different. Much more different.

Here’s what neurotypicals need to understand:

You will never be able to relate to a lot of what I go through as an autistic person and that’s okay. I find the behavior of neurotypicals unrelatable too. There are so many things you all do that I’ll probably never understand intuitively. I’ve just learned to accept the fact of how you are, even though I can’t relate to it myself.

No one is saying you have to like us autistics or invite us to go places. But you do need to accept our experience of the world instead of trivializing it with comparisons that make it more relatable for you. Autism is not relatable. So forget trying to relate to it and just accept it, the same way we accept neurotypicals.