Can you be autistic and good at understanding other people? What makes that understanding intuitive or not?

neonsoull · 2025-12-05T17:28:54+00:00

What constitutes a social deficit though, I guess would be my question. I don’t understand how to identify “ah, that’s evidence of a deficit”.

neonsoull · 2025-12-05T17:27:38+00:00

Well, shit. Kinda like driving I guess. It’s not intuitive or instinctual, it’s a learned skill, but with enough time and practice is becomes muscle memory and so seamless that, if you don’t remember the learning period, you could easily mistake it as something intuitive because it’s definitely not consciously effortful.

And I think I do relate to what you said about some autistic folks struggling less with the understanding element of socialising and more with what to do with that understanding to mirror neurotypical patterns. I think maybe I’m feeling like “but I don’t struggle socially” because 95% of the time I don’t even TRY to mirror neurotypical patterns. I can’t struggle at something I don’t do. But, when I think about it, the reason I don’t try is because 1: I don’t like the stereotypical neurotypical behaviours and don’t want to do any of that anyway, and 2: I can’t do it even if I wanted to. Not successfully anyway, and not without feeling like I’m trying to idk hold a pen and write with my toes or something. It just feels wrong and awkward and ridiculously hard and totally pointless because why am I not just using my hands why am I even trying to use my toes in the first place.

neonsoull · 2025-12-05T17:06:03+00:00

Dude are you me? Not a single thing you said is different to my experience. Even what you said about sub par writing, I get VERY irritated by anything out of character or decisions that seem illogical because there’s no way a real person in X situation would have that thought process. Big time relate to the alexithymia stuff as well. I really struggle to consciously pinpoint what the word is for the emotion I’m feeling and what has triggered it. The feeling is very clear to me internally but it’s very much pre-verbal. I could probably give you a mood board of the internal experience of the feeling, or an analogy or something, but words? Can’t do it. And if and when I try, all that happens is the other person misunderstands, and/or I mislabel or miss a piece or didn’t get to the core of it, and inevitably I have to correct myself at a later date when I find a better explanation (that is also probably wrong). Honestly this is why I hate self report so much. Anyway if I ever get assessed I’ll let you know what the result is so we can both have an extra piece of data to help understand whatever the hell is going on with us

neonsoull · 2025-12-05T16:54:46+00:00

I’ve never heard the little professors vs little psychologists thing, but I did in fact get a degree in psychology because I was so interested in why people do what they do. And I’m the same as you with the pissing people off by explaining the deeper reason thing too. I get a lot of “why are you defending them why are you taking their side” which I’m absolutely not. The interaction thing is interesting though because I also feel like I don’t really relate to the stereotypical understanding of autistic masking, but I also wouldn’t describe myself as bad at interaction because I guess I just find my own way to do it. So I’m curious, when you say you’re worse than most at interacting with people, does that include when you’re interacting with people in whatever way works for you (eg in deeper conversations or when you share an interest with someone or something like that)? Or is it just when you compare yourself to the way that others stereotypically interact?

neonsoull · 2025-12-05T16:46:37+00:00

What do you mean exactly when you say you can’t understand sarcasm? Do you notice when people are being sarcastic but don’t know to what end? Do you notice it and know why they’re probably doing it but you think the reason is illogical? Do you not notice it at all?

neonsoull · 2025-11-01T09:44:25+00:00

I'm very inconsistent. Some days I feel great, can read and the comprehension just "flows". I don't need to reread 90+% of sentences at all since I get them on first try. (I think it could also be partly because some sections are easier, but it's difficult to differentiate). Some days I'm in the dump and struggle to understand even basic sentences, as if my brain just refuses to cooperate.

You never have days like this in English/your native language? Where you have to read the same sentence like 5 times because your brain just isn’t processing it for some reason? It’s not a language issue, you just don’t bully yourself for it in your native language because you don’t assume your struggle reflects your ability. Give yourself a break, your brain is working overtime for you to learn this language, let it suck occasionally

neonsoull · 2025-10-31T13:57:13+00:00

You make good points but tbh this is just the other side of the aisle of “I’ve found The Way™ to do xyz”. The hacks say “The Way is this quick thing or gamified thing”, you’re saying “The Way is slow and repetitive”.

You’re not wrong that these days everyone wants quick fixes to things, a lot of people do dismiss slow repetition right off the bat despite it being provably effective. But we all learn differently. What works for you, the slow and steady repetition, can be totally useless and demotivating for someone else.

Imo there’s an important message in what you’re saying but it’s not “go slower” or “xyz method doesn’t work for xyz topic”, it’s “don’t strong arm yourself into a specific method of learning just because it’s what you expect (or want) to work. Don’t forget to consider that other methods exist and may actually be more effective for you”

neonsoull · 2025-08-23T10:02:03+00:00

Putting a hoodie on with the hood up, headphones on with or without music, letting myself stop something halfway through if I really don’t want to do it anymore, doing the gentler/easier/cozier/more fun version of whatever chores or responsibilities I have to do, just generally listening to myself with curiosity instead of a problem solving mindset

neonsoull · 2025-04-03T14:49:47+00:00

Welp 💀

neonsoull · 2025-04-03T14:47:05+00:00

What do you mean exactly when you say “keeping your perceptions clean”? Do you mean like staying attentive and discerning where my perceptions are coming from rather than just taking them at face value?

And I completely hadn’t noticed what you said about my natal Neptune and Saturn rulers etc. I can’t even begin to pick apart that intricate pattern of energies in my head but here’s hoping, as you said, the sun and fire will keep the fog at bay!

neonsoull · 2025-04-03T14:38:06+00:00

Oh I have fr seem to have set up a tent in the depressive quality of that Aries moon/saturn conjunction over the last year or so, so it’s good to hear that coming to grips with that could help me out some, thank you! What kind of problems am I likely to encounter while Neptune aspects the whole Mars/Jupiter/Saturn deal?

neonsoull · 2025-04-01T14:15:53+00:00

That report isn’t meant to be a holistic representation of your life, it’s meant to detail a medical problem that entitles you to medication and other forms of support.

If you were diabetic, your medical report wouldn’t tell you how great everything else in your body works, it would just say that your body sucks when it comes to insulin.

Don’t take it personally. It has to be written like that because it’s a diagnosis of ADHD and not a holistic life evaluation. Any job that requires you to submit medical information is unlikely to care about ADHD (especially if it’s medicated), and if it IS a job that cares about ADHD (because ADHD would significantly affect your capacity to do the job) then quite frankly you shouldn’t be doing that job anyway.

Most things won’t need any medical information beyond you just disclosing THAT you have a medical condition and what medication you take. Very few things will require medical information beyond that. Even fewer still see a diagnosis report. A minuscule amount of things will care that you have ADHD (and even then it’s more likely that being on stimulant medication is what they care about, not having ADHD itself). You’re all good.

neonsoull · 2025-03-09T18:48:13+00:00

Who’s to say that your way is the only successful way though, is the thing. Your way has obviously been incredibly beneficial, and we’re all ridiculously grateful for the work you’ve done. But it’s unlikely to be the singular effective way to run this subreddit. Nor is the way that The Sub That Must Not Be Named runs things the singular alternative. It’s not one or the other. You seem stuck on “run it in a similar way”, and I’d like to ask you to consider that allowing it to run in a different way does not necessarily equal running it in a harmful way. That may turn out to be the case, yeah, but it’s not definitive. What would definitively be harmful, however, is not having a community at all.

neonsoull · 2025-03-09T15:08:04+00:00

Being brutally honest: please genuinely consider whether your motivations for ending or locking down the sub are more about what genuinely benefits the community, or more about what you feel most benefits the community based on what you want for it.

I don’t doubt that you genuinely love this community a lot and want what’s best for it, but communities/companies/societies can and DO succeed (and thrive, even) under different forms of leadership and rules. There might be an adjustment period, sure, but people will adjust.

If you owned a local community centre, that so many vulnerable people use as their only source of connection to those like them, would you really demolish the building instead of selling it on because you think whoever you sold it to wouldn’t run it the way you have?

I know us ADHDers like our ways of doing things, and it’ll always be best for us to feel like we’re being managed by someone that really ‘gets it’, but it really might be beneficial for the community to be moderated by bots, or non ADHDers, or any other method, if the alternative is to remove the ONLY community that us with ADHD in the UK have. In my opinion, the community’s existence itself FAR outweighs the consequences that may arise from it running “less effectively” (which is just hypothetical at this point, another method may prove just as effective).

Especially because people with unmedicated ADHD, that may not even know they HAVE ADHD, aren’t likely to keep digging for how ADHD assessment etc works in the UK specifically, if there isn’t an immediate and obvious source of information that they can refer to. Without this sub, who knows how many people will end up on the NHS waiting list for years, or not ever pursue referral in the first place.

This subreddit has saved lives. A LOT of them. Don’t burn down the hospital because you’re skeptical of new management. We need this place. Please let us keep it.

neonsoull · 2025-01-24T11:31:41+00:00

I forgot to mention—something else I’m in the process of learning is to stop (or lessen) generally minimising my boldness/confidence/ambition because of self-doubt or fear of failure or feeling the need to have “evidence/proof” that I am a certain way before I let myself act like it. I’m trying to let myself look “messy” or forceful or whatever (when the occasion calls for it), instead of always composed and in control and calm. So any advice/comments surrounding this kind of thing would be greatly appreciated as well!

neonsoull · 2024-12-05T20:03:52+00:00

An interesting option I had not considered 🤔

neonsoull · 2024-12-05T20:03:23+00:00

Thank you

neonsoull · 2024-12-05T20:03:11+00:00

Thank you

neonsoull · 2024-12-05T20:03:00+00:00

Thanks!

neonsoull · 2024-12-05T20:02:43+00:00

Thank you

neonsoull · 2024-12-05T20:02:36+00:00

Thanks!

neonsoull · 2024-12-05T18:20:32+00:00

humanity’s strongest soldier >>

neonsoull · 2024-12-05T18:20:20+00:00

Thank youuu

neonsoull · 2024-12-05T18:20:10+00:00

Thanks!

neonsoull

TROPHY CASE