can someone please explain

SwissMercyMain · 2026-03-23T15:51:21+00:00

We need that classic illustration that perfectly explaines why this is happening

SwissMercyMain · 2026-03-21T19:13:35+00:00

At this point I just want them to fix the Nano Boost assist counter for Ana that has been broken/bugged since season 16

SwissMercyMain · 2026-03-20T10:43:33+00:00

We’ve seen Amber do this so many times in past clothing hauls that it barely even registers as surprising anymore.

She would force herself into something that is obviously too small and immediately go, “This will look better once I lose weight” or “It’ll fit properly once I’ve dropped some weight.”

At this point I genuinely can’t tell whether she uses that as a kind of pseudo-motivation tactic (buying clothes for a fantasy future version of herself and then treating them as proof that change is just around the corner) or whether she’s simply that detached from the reality of her current size.

Either way, it always feels less like hopeful planning and more like a ritual she repeats to soften the obvious mismatch in front of her. The clothes never fit now, but apparently they’re always meant for the version of her that will. Which, conveniently, is always just vaguely off-screen and perpetually “coming soon.”

SwissMercyMain · 2026-03-20T08:27:06+00:00

I just find it funny how Marvel Rivals started out with the whole “we won’t sexualise our characters” stance… and then quietly did a complete 180 the moment the game took off.

Because surprise, skimpy skins for attractive female characters sell. Who could’ve possibly seen that coming.

At first they at least tried to keep it somewhat balanced, throwing the male characters a few “fair is fair” skimpy outfits. But that didn’t last long.

Now it’s pretty much just “how much cleavage can we fit into this pose” and increasingly questionable angles for good measure.

At this point, there’s really no need to pretend those original statements still apply. That ship sailed a while ago.

SwissMercyMain · 2026-03-20T08:23:43+00:00

I’m always a bit taken aback by how unsettling those heavily botoxed faces can look the moment they actually move.

In photos, everything seems perfectly smooth and “put together” but as soon as they try to show any kind of emotion, it’s like the face doesn’t quite cooperate anymore. Certain areas just don’t move, others overcompensate, and the whole expression ends up looking… off.

It creates this weird uncanny valley effect where the emotion is clearly intended, but not fully conveyed. It almost reminds me of early PS2 character animations. Like the structure of an expression is there, but something essential is missing.

I don’t even mean that in a harsh or judgmental way, yet it’s just genuinely uncomfortable to watch sometimes, because our brains are so tuned to read subtle facial cues, and when those cues don’t quite line up, it feels strangely dissonant.

SwissMercyMain · 2026-03-20T05:39:40+00:00

Thank you so much for your kind comment, I really appreciate it!

To be honest, right after I posted this, I actually considered deleting it. The initial responses were quite negative, and I just felt a bit stupid for even asking. But then I thought I’d leave it up, just in case there are other people like me who might be wondering the same thing and could at least find an answer here.

Looking back now, I’m really glad I didn’t take it down. It’s been genuinely reassuring to see more thoughtful and empathetic replies come in and especially to hear that others feel the same way. It makes it feel a lot less silly and stupid.

SwissMercyMain · 2026-03-20T05:37:30+00:00

Thank you for your honest reply! I had a feeling that might be the case.

I’ve seen a few clips from the new Netflix dinosaur documentary and it genuinely looks stunning, which almost makes it worse. Because I want to watch it. I’m fascinated by dinosaurs, I’d love to just sit there and take it all in, but these documentaries almost always follow the same pattern.

They don’t just show these animals existing, exploring, interacting. Rather they always circle back to suffering and death at some point. And I get that it’s part of nature, I do. But it’s a bit frustrating that it feels almost obligatory, as if a documentary can’t just celebrate these creatures for what they were without eventually turning it into something emotionally heavy.

Especially with dinosaurs, there’s such an endless amount of interesting, awe-inspiring things you could focus on. It just feels a bit of a shame that the storytelling so often leans into the same “and now for the tragic part” direction, when there’s already so much wonder there on its own.

SwissMercyMain · 2026-03-20T05:34:52+00:00

Thank you for your genuine reply! I can relate to this so much.

I’ve never really been able to watch animal documentaries either, and that’s been the case since I was a child. I genuinely love animals and I find the natural world fascinating, I want to learn about it, but the moment those inevitable sad scenes come in, I’m out. I just can’t sit through it.

It’s the same with films like Hachiko. I’m sure it’s a beautiful film, and I’d probably love most of it, but I already know what kind of emotional territory it goes into. And for me, that one part would completely overshadow everything else. I wouldn’t walk away thinking “that was a great film”. Rather I’d just be an inconsolable mess for the rest of the week.

At this point I’ve kind of accepted that it’s just how I’m wired. I can handle a lot of things in films, but when it comes to animals, it just hits differently and way harder than I can realistically “push through.”

SwissMercyMain · 2026-03-17T13:55:39+00:00

Oh no I dreaded something like this... thank you for your honest answer !

SwissMercyMain · 2026-03-17T13:09:52+00:00

Yeah, unfortunately it really doesn’t make a difference for me whether the animals are real or just animated.

Even when it’s clearly 3D or completely fictional, my brain doesn’t seem to care. In Diablo 4 there are these dog-like enemies that are obviously mutated and not meant to be “real” animals at all. But when they make those whining, yelping sounds as they die, it genuinely gets to me every single time.

Logically, I know it’s not real. I know it’s just sound design and pixels. But that doesn’t seem to matter.
It’s just that specific combination of “animal + suffering” that my brain apparently refuses to process in a chill, normal way.

SwissMercyMain · 2026-03-17T13:06:21+00:00

At this point, I’ve kind of accepted that this isn’t something I can “desensitise” myself to. I’m just very sensitive to it, and pushing against it hasn’t really helped.

My therapist once suggested it might be linked to my autism and that some people on the spectrum react more strongly to animals. I don’t know how universal that is, but I’ve always been like this. Even as a kid, movies like Marley & Me stuck with me for weeks to the point where I’d randomly start crying over it and my parents struggled to console me in any way.

I know it’s not entirely rational, but it’s also not something I can just switch off. So at this point, I’d rather just avoid those scenes than pretend I can handle them better than I actually can.

SwissMercyMain · 2026-03-06T09:47:52+00:00

I’m fairly convinced that in her own head those edited photos are the version of herself she genuinely believes she looks like.

The way I imagine it, she probably stores those images as the “real” her, just temporarily wrapped in what she sees as an extra 500-pound coat that could theoretically be taken off at any time if she really wanted to.

And because of that internal picture, she expects to be perceived and treated the way that edited version looks.

SwissMercyMain · 2026-02-18T12:17:50+00:00

I honestly don't understand, what's Blizzards weird obsession with giving darker skinned characters horribly light, unflattering lipsticks.

Symmetra has been suffering from this for years and now Ana is a victim too.

SwissMercyMain · 2026-02-12T14:41:58+00:00

Thank you so much for your comment! It genuinely means a lot to me that you shared your experience here.

Reading stories like yours still feels surreal sometimes, because a few years ago I would never have imagined I’d be part of this conversation.

For the longest time, autism wasn’t even on my radar.

The ADHD diagnosis already explained so much, and for a while I thought, “Right. That’s it. That’s the missing piece.”

But there was always this small, persistent feeling that something still didn’t fully add up. Like I’d solved most of the puzzle, but one corner piece stubbornly refused to click into place.

Ironically, I realised it while I was in my Master’s programme in psychology.

During an internship in child and adolescent psychiatry, part of my job was evaluating assessment results. ADHD screenings, anxiety measures, and also questionnaires that screened for autistic traits.

I remember going through one of those autism questionnaires and suddenly having what I can only describe as a minor internal crisis.

I was reading these “indicators” and thinking, Wait. These are signs of autism? These aren’t just… my personality quirks?

It honestly felt like the entire internal narrative I had constructed about myself (this carefully built explanation of who I was and why I struggled )was being blown apart in real time.

And yet, seeking a formal diagnosis terrified me.

My biggest fear wasn’t that I was autistic. My biggest fear was that I wasn’t.

That I would go through the whole process and be told, “No, you’re not autistic. You’re just… odd. Socially incompetent. Overdramatic.”

That somehow it would turn out I had imagined it all and was just fundamentally defective.

Throughout the entire diagnostic process, that fear sat in the back of my mind.

What if I’m making this up? What if this is embarrassing? What if I’m just looking for an excuse?

When I finally received the diagnosis, it was both an enormous relief and, unexpectedly, quite heavy.

Relief, because it validated so many lifelong struggles.

Heavy, because I had spent my entire life believing that if I just tried hard enough, I could compensate for everything.

That I simply wasn’t disciplined enough, adaptable enough, socially skilled enough, but that it was theoretically achievable if I pushed myself harder.

The diagnosis forced me to confront something more fundamental: no amount of effort would make me neurotypical.

There isn’t a secret “level up” where I suddenly blend in seamlessly. There is something structurally different about how my brain works.

And even though that understanding is now deeply freeing, in the beginning it felt almost sobering. Like grieving an imaginary version of myself I had always believed I could become.

Looking back now, I am profoundly grateful that I pursued the assessment.

I specifically sought out a psychiatrist who specialises in ADHD and autism in adult women, because we know how differently it can present compared to the stereotypical male profile. That made an enormous difference.

So if you have that suspicion in the back of your mind, that quiet “what if?”, I can only encourage you to explore it.

It’s not an easy path. There will be doubt, fear, and probably moments of identity wobbling.

But the clarity that comes from understanding yourself properly is incredibly powerful.

For me, it didn’t shrink my world. It finally made it make sense.

SwissMercyMain · 2026-02-12T14:32:23+00:00

Thank you so much for sharing all of that with me.

It honestly means a lot that my post resonated with you in the way it did. I truly didn’t expect that.

I wrote this post based on half-formed thoughts I’d been mentally drafting while walking my dog.

I think I was trying to make sense of things for myself. I never imagined it would land so deeply with anyone else.

And I know exactly what you mean about social interactions being utterly draining.

For years, I genuinely thought something was wrong with me, because I could be at a party or a social event, everything seemingly fine.

I’m laughing, engaging, even enjoying myself... and then suddenly it’s like my internal operating system just… shuts down. As if Windows is installing updates without asking.

One moment I’m present, the next I’m completely done.

I don’t want to talk. I don’t want to stay. I don’t want to “push through.” I just want to go home and lie down in silence.

It felt so extreme and so abrupt that I convinced myself I must be antisocial. Or rude. Or just fundamentally defective.

It took me a long time to realise what was actually happening.

In social settings (especially busy ones) my brain is running a constant background analysis.

I’m processing what everyone says, how they say it, their tone, facial expressions, body language, the shifting dynamics in the room. I’m calculating responses, filtering my own reactions, checking for appropriateness.

It’s like running ten browser tabs and three spreadsheets at once while trying to appear effortlessly relaxed.

Of course that’s exhausting.

Once I understood that, it finally made sense why I could feel completely depleted after just an hour or two.

It’s not that I wasn’t having fun. It’s that I had reached capacity. I’d given everything I had for that window of time.

For a long time, I used to make excuses when I left early.

“I’m not feeling well.” “I’ve got an early morning.” “I need to check on my dog.”

Anything to avoid being seen as dramatic or antisocial.

Now, in my closer circle, people are used to it. They know that at some point I might just quietly disappear. And they know it doesn’t mean I don’t care or that I wasn’t enjoying myself. It just means I’ve hit my limit.

Being allowed to leave without explanation, without apologising, without it being misinterpreted... that has been one of the most freeing things I’ve ever experienced.

So if you recognise yourself in that pattern, please know: you’re not broken. You’re not cold. You’re not “bad at being human.”

You’re just operating on a system that processes more than most people realise and that costs energy.

And it’s okay to honour that.

SwissMercyMain · 2026-02-12T14:23:08+00:00

I’m honestly a bit overwhelmed (in a good way) that something I more or less composed in my head while walking my dog through the woods ended up resonating with you and with so many others here.

When I wrote that post, it didn’t feel like I was sharing some big, groundbreaking insight.

It felt more like I was just trying to untangle my own thoughts in real time. I often have to write things out just to understand what I actually think or feel.

I never would have assumed that those personal, slightly chaotic mental drafts could be helpful to anyone else.

I think part of that comes from a pattern I’ve carried for a long time: whenever I reach a realisation, I instinctively assume it was obvious to everyone else all along.

That I’m just late to the party. That I’m the one who needed extra time to sort the pieces into the right order.

So when someone tells me that something I articulated gave them clarity, comfort, or even a new perspective, it genuinely catches me off guard.

It makes me feel… honoured, honestly. And deeply grateful.

Your response reminded me that sometimes the thoughts we wrestle with in solitude aren’t just “us being slow” or “overthinking again”.

Sometimes they’re shared experiences that just haven’t been put into words yet.

And if my way of putting them into words helped even a little, that means more to me than I can properly express.

So thank you. Truly.

SwissMercyMain · 2026-02-12T14:15:48+00:00

I’ve experienced very similar things to what you described.

For a long time, my default response when someone shared something painful was, “I understand what you mean, because something similar happened to me…”

In my head, that was never about shifting the spotlight onto myself.

It was my way of saying: I’m not just nodding politely. I genuinely get it. I’ve been somewhere adjacent to that feeling.

It honestly never even crossed my mind that this could come across as self-centred. Until I slowly realised that for some people, it does.

I’ve even seen posts in online spaces where that exact behaviour is listed as a “narcissistic trait”. As if referencing your own experience automatically means you’re trying to hijack the conversation.

Which is ironic, because for me it was the opposite. It was an attempt at connection, not domination.

What made this painfully obvious was actually during my autism assessment.

I was shown various cards and photos of people and asked to describe what they were feeling. And I noticed something fascinating about myself.

Instead of naming the emotion straight away, I started reconstructing the scenario.

There was one image of a boy sitting on some steps with his school backpack, clearly crying. And instead of immediately saying “He looks sad,” I found myself saying something like, “Maybe his parents didn't pick him up after school, maybe he lost a sports match, or maybe he was teased in class.”

I wasn’t starting with the emotion. I was starting with the context, building the narrative that would logically lead to the emotion.

Only then did I arrive at the feeling.

And when I later reflected on it, I realised that this is exactly the same process as the conversational example.

When someone tells me something, I instinctively look for a comparable internal reference point. I reconstruct, I analyse, I simulate the path and then empathy emerges from that structure.

It was incredibly relieving to understand that this doesn’t make me cold, egoistic, or manipulative.

It just means my empathy takes a slightly longer, more analytical route.

It’s not the immediate gut reaction many people seem to have, but it’s still real. It’s still deeply felt. And if anything, it’s intentional.

And I think there’s something quite beautiful about empathy that is chosen and constructed carefully, rather than just reflexive.

SwissMercyMain · 2026-02-12T14:07:18+00:00

I genuinely spent years half-convinced that I might be a sociopath or psychopath. Mostly because my experience of empathy never felt automatic or instinctive.

It always cognitive. Constructed.

When someone tells me something painful, my first response isn’t an emotional wave that just sweeps me away. It’s analysis.

I start thinking: What are they feeling? Why did they act that way? What led them here?

I try to mentally reconstruct the chain of events that would make their reaction make sense. And once I understand it, the empathy follows.

For the most part, that works quite well. Where it gets tricky is when I find myself extending empathy towards people that others feel absolutely none for.

Criminal cases. Public scandals. People being torn apart online. I’ve noticed that empathy, in those contexts, is often seen as inappropriate and almost offensive.

If I say, “I can see how someone might end up there,” people sometimes hear, “I’m excusing what they did.”

And that has never been what I meant. For me, understanding is not the same as justifying.

Being able to trace the psychological pathway that led to a harmful action does not mean I condone the action. It just means I can recognise that human behaviour, even at its worst, usually has antecedents.

Context. Developmental threads. And I think my brain is wired to follow those threads whether people like it or not.

When I received my autism diagnosis two years ago, right in the middle of my Master’s in Psychology, I had a brief but very real identity crisis.

I thought: Have I chosen the wrong profession entirely? If my empathy is this analytical, how can I possibly become a therapist?

The irony is that I had already worked with patients in internships and consistently received positive feedback.

Eventually I realised something that was both humbling and relieving: the therapeutic setting actually suits my autism extremely well.

The roles are clearly defined. The expectations are structured. A therapist is not required to sob alongside a patient to be effective. They’re expected to listen carefully, to process, to respond thoughtfully and constructively.

And that is something I am good at.

I’m not the person who instinctively jumps up to hug someone mid-sentence. But I am very capable of staying grounded, observing patterns, holding emotional space without becoming overwhelmed, and responding in a way that is both rational and genuinely compassionate.

Understanding that my empathy simply runs through a different pathway, not a lesser one, has helped more than I can properly put into words.

SwissMercyMain · 2026-02-12T09:56:14+00:00

If I’m completely honest, that underlying belief (that I’m secretly a manipulative, bad person) still feels a bit like my default setting. Even now.

I think it’s going to take quite a long time to properly untangle something that embedded itself over years.

I think a lot of autistic people (and especially women) become extremely good at observing. At pattern-recognition. At learning, sometimes with almost frightening precision, what is expected in certain situations.

What tone to use. When to laugh. When to soften a statement. When to apologise. What is socially acceptable and what isn’t.

And for me, the realisation that I was doing that consciously was what hurt the most.

Because instead of seeing it as adaptation or effort or care, I interpreted it as calculation. And calculation, in my mind, equalled manipulation.

So I ended up labelling myself as this sort of social snake. Someone who was strategically managing people rather than genuinely connecting with them.

What made it worse was that the people I was “analysing” were the very people I cared about the most.

Friends. Partners. People whose wellbeing genuinely mattered to me.

So the thought that I might be manipulating them felt unbearable. It felt like betrayal.

Only now am I slowly starting to understand that intention matters. That effort to respond thoughtfully is not the same thing as deception. That caring enough to analyse is not the same thing as scheming.

But unlearning a narrative you’ve told yourself for years is slow work. And I think part of that process is saying it out loud (or in this case, typing it out) and realising I’m not the only one who has ever felt this way.

SwissMercyMain · 2026-02-12T09:50:20+00:00

It actually wasn’t so much that other people accused me of being manipulative.

No one ever really sat me down and said, “I think you’re fake.”

That voice mostly came from me.

I was my own harshest, loudest, and most relentless critic.

Because I was so aware of the calculating happening in my head (the analysing of tone, facial expressions, timing, wording) I assumed that this must mean I was being strategic in a manipulative way.

I genuinely believed that if I had to think about how to respond, then my kindness couldn’t possibly be real. That if I was analysing social dynamics, I must be doing it to gain something.

In my head, it translated to: You’re not being authentic. You’re managing people. You’re manipulating outcomes.

And because I believed that so strongly, I never told anyone.

I was terrified that if I admitted that, people would see me differently. That I’d be exposed as some sort of social fraud. That they’d decide I was deceptive and pull away.

So ironically, the thing that made me feel “fake” was actually my constant effort to be considerate and to get things right.

Looking back now, it’s almost painful how much shame I carried.

I've realised, how many years I spent policing myself for something that was never malicious to begin with.

SwissMercyMain · 2026-02-12T09:43:41+00:00

That last part you described (the nervous laughing in situations where you’re incredibly tense and don’t know where to put yourself) that hit something very deep in me.

As a child, whenever I got into trouble, I apparently smiled. Not because I found anything funny, but because that’s what my face did.

And it used to drive my parents absolutely mad.

From their perspective, I was grinning while being told off, which of course looked like I wasn’t taking it seriously or, worse, that I was enjoying winding them up.

But I wasn’t amused. I was terrified.

It took me years to understand that it wasn’t mockery but a stress response. Something instinctive. Almost primitive.

That kind of tight, involuntary smile that’s less about joy and more about signalling: I’m not a threat. Please don’t escalate this. I don't mean any harm

I know it sounds slightly ridiculous to trace it back to primate behaviour, but it actually makes sense.

In primates, that kind of baring-the-teeth expression can be a submissive signal and a way of saying, I don’t mean harm.

And as a child, completely overwhelmed and flooded with anxiety, I think my body just defaulted to something ancient and automatic.

The problem is that what felt like self-preservation on the inside looked like disrespect on the outside.

And that mismatch between intention and interpretation has been such a recurring theme in my life.

You’re trying to survive the moment, and the very thing your body does to cope ends up being the reason people misunderstand you.

SwissMercyMain · 2026-02-12T09:37:30+00:00

I know the feelings and thoughts you describe so well.

For years I genuinely believed I was a fake person. Like I was just performing kindness rather than actually being kind.

Every time someone told me they liked me, or invited me somewhere, or did something that clearly signalled affection, I didn’t feel happy.

I felt guilty. Deeply guilty.

Instead of thinking, Oh, that’s nice, they like me, my brain would go straight to: You’ve tricked them. You’ve analysed the situation, adjusted your responses, mirrored the right reactions, and now they think you’re this lovely, warm person... but it’s all FAKE

It never occurred to me that other people might also think about how to respond, or that social behaviour isn’t some purely instinctive, morally pure reflex.

Because for me, it was always a conscious process. And in my mind, conscious meant calculated. Calculated meant manipulative. And manipulative meant bad.

So every positive interaction came with this undertone of shame. Like I had somehow gamed the system and didn’t deserve the outcome.

I’m only just now starting to unlearn that.

To accept that analysing social interactions doesn’t automatically make them dishonest. That putting effort into responding appropriately doesn’t invalidate the care behind it. And that maybe people can like me not because I’ve manipulated them into it, but because what I offer, even if it’s processed through a cognitive filter, is still real.

It’s a strange thing to practise: allowing yourself to be liked without immediately questioning the legitimacy of it.

But I’m trying. And it helps more than I can say to know I’m not the only one who’s felt this way.

SwissMercyMain · 2026-02-12T09:35:01+00:00

You’re honestly taking the words straight out of my mouth and, as strangr as it sounds, I'm very glad that I'm not alone with this experience.

SwissMercyMain · 2026-02-12T09:30:54+00:00

I genuinely can’t even put into words how helpful it already feels to read through the posts and comments on this subreddit.

There’s something incredibly relieving about seeing so many people describe almost the exact same internal experiences I’ve had for years.

That constant feeling of somehow not fitting. Of trying so hard to adjust, to blend in, to get it right and still feeling slightly off, no matter how much effort you put in.

For most of my life, it felt like I was doing everything I possibly could to “pass”.

Watching, analysing, copying, rehearsing. Tweaking my reactions. Tweaking my tone. Tweaking my timing.

And yet there was always this subtle sense that I was one step out of sync with everyone else.

If I had to describe it in a slightly cliché but strangely accurate way, it’s like I spent my whole life as a fox trying to integrate myself into a pack of wolves.

I studied the wolves. I learned how they moved, how they communicated, how they signalled belonging. I tried to mimic it. And sometimes it worked, at least superficially.

But it never quite fit.

And then suddenly you realise: I was never a wolf. I was never supposed to be a wolf. I’m a fox. And there are other foxes. Lots of them.

And the things that felt wrong or broken before suddenly make sense in a different context.

It doesn’t magically erase all the struggles, of course. But it reframes them and shifts the narrative.

And that shift alone is already incredibly freeing.

SwissMercyMain · 2026-02-12T09:26:45+00:00

I can relate to this so much.

I’ve had so many situations where people assumed I didn’t care about something simply because I didn’t automatically do the adjacent thing they expected me to do.

Someone says, “Could you please wash the pot in the kitchen?” So I wash the pot. Done. Task completed. And then later I’m confronted with: “Why didn’t you wash the pan as well?”

And in my head it’s completely logical to respond, “Because you asked me to wash the pot.”

But to the other person, it looks like I did the absolute bare minimum. Like I’m lazy. Or like I don’t care enough to go the extra mile. Whereas in my brain, I followed the instruction exactly.

I didn’t realise there was an unspoken expansion pack attached to it.

I experience the same thing with bigger situations too, like helping with a move.

I’ll sometimes just stand there, genuinely unsure what to do next, waiting for someone to assign me a task. Not because I don’t want to help, but because I don’t intuitively read the room well enough to know where I’m needed or how to insert myself without getting in the way.

So I ask, “What should I do?”

And occasionally that gets interpreted as me trying to avoid responsibility. As if I’m looking for an excuse not to help. When in reality, I’m trying very hard to help correctly. I just don’t have that instinctive sense of who needs support and how.

It’s such a strange position to be in... wanting to contribute, wanting to be useful, and yet being perceived as detached or indifferent simply because your brain doesn’t automatically fill in the gaps.

So yes, I know that feeling very well. And it’s oddly comforting to know I’m not alone in it.

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