 Good day and welcome back to the Asperger's growth YouTube channel with your host, of course, Mr. Thomas Henley. Today we're, I'm, well, I'm coming at you with a different video as you can tell with the title. We're going to be doing a Q&A. Yes, it's been a while. It's been a long time since I've done something like this, but I think it should be really, really cool to get into. There's a lot of cases where I make videos on my, on my dating and autistic, like series of videos. The thing is with that kind of stuff, it's very generalized. So although it may be applicable to, to most people and it may help neurotypical people understand autistic people. It's not very specialized and, you know, there's a lot of nuances in, in relationships in general. And so today I'm going to be looking into some of the comments that I've received on my previous videos. And if you want to have your, your comment answered or your, your story, please just put it in the comments of this video and I will get on it for the next one. So we have a lovely woman here. To my knowledge, my boyfriend is undiagnosed and I've been doing some research and info such as this seems to line up with what I've experienced. If we're together and I relax and go quiet, he asks me repeatedly if I'm okay, am I sick? What's wrong? Even if I tell him that I'm okay, he keeps on and eventually curls up on my lap. I'm not sure what that's about. I'm not sure what that's about, but it happens a lot. If he had a bad day, I never know about it until later on because he goes radio silent. He lets it ruin his whole day and it bleeds out into other areas. He says he knows he over-thinks and he says, I have to tell myself it's not the end of the world. You know, this, this comment was posted on one of my dating and autistic videos. I guess we should first, first look at the, the evidence say if your boyfriend is undiagnosed and he, he doesn't think that he's autistic. You should try and, you should try and accept that to some degree because I understand that it can be absolutely glaringly obvious to you. But the thing is, is that it's not, it's not up to you and it's not up to, to most, most people in the world to tell you if your partner is autistic or not. And I've received many messages and emails before around this question, around diagnosis. You know, a lot of people seem to, they see the traits in their partner and some of the negative traits are very, very apparent to them. They ask the autistic partner about it, they don't want to hear any about it. And even about it, there's a stigma attached to that and so they're very, you know, especially even if they're older, even if they've gone through life and it would be a late diagnosis. They've already established themselves and to make that change and to make that switch, it's a very, very, it's a very big change to be making. You know, our brain, our brains tend to develop up until the age of 25. So up until that point, once you reach that, that age and above, you know, you already have your brain fully formed and you already have set patterns that you do throughout the day. A lot of things are sort of inbuilt to you as routines. And when something along like this comes along goes pow, everything you thought about yourself and your experiences in life. It's a different angle on it because you're autistic. It's a very daunting thing and it's something that needs to be done very slowly. The only real, real way that you can get around it is by watching autistic people talk, watching films, watching shows, you know, you can't force it upon someone. I know this isn't the issue of the comment, but it is a very important key thing to keep in mind. It's not your choice and they're an adult. So you should kind of respect their desires as frustrating as it may be. So I digress going into the actual topic around. I think for the first thing that you mentioned about a masking, if you relax and go quiet, it may be just that he's got a lot of difficulties from the past. As an autistic person myself, I developed my cognitive empathy quite well. I can tell when people are off or different or, you know, even the minutest things I can tell. But there's always a nagging thought in the back of my head from previous experiences in life that says, you know, you don't understand the situation. You know, you need to know, you need verbal confirmation about these things. You need strong verbal confirmation with all the body language and facial expression incorporated for you to feel okay with it and not freak out and think that you're not getting something that the other person is trying to communicate to you. There's a common anxiety around that, especially in relationships. You've got a lot tied into your partner. You know, there's a lot of history, there's a lot of emotions. You know, they're obviously going to be a bit more cautious about your relationship. And if they have those experiences in the past where they didn't quite understand the situation and they said something that was out of place in that situation. If they've received a lot of negativity because of it, then it's going to stick with them. I would say that that's more of an issue of cognitive empathy than more than anything. It may just be that he's working himself up because the outward presentation that you display is different and he's not really sure how to characterize that. Anxiety tends to be very, very high in autistic people. So, you know, combining those two together, being in a relationship and having all these emotions and it likes to find me and not being able to understand how you feel about things. It lends a lot to getting very anxious about interpersonal stuff. So, the second part is, you know, if you had a bad day and you go as radio silent, it lets it ruin this whole day and it bleeds out into other areas. I think the best way to, I mean, this is related to alexophemia. You know, if you can't notice or categorize your emotions, how are you supposed to make adjustments to things and cope with changes. The best way to explain this is through some form of analogy. When we plan for our day, when we wake up, before we go to sleep at night, we have an idea of how our week's going to go, how the day's going to go. I love, you know, this is not something just for autistic people, but it tends to be a lot more structured. It tends to be a lot more time bound. It tends to be a lot more in depth than how most people would plan out their day. You know, it gives time to transition, gives time to do various special interests, to exercise, to go to work, to socialize. A lot of this stuff, we have an idea of what we're going to be doing in the day. We would just take a day in a situation. And maybe the thing is that he has a plan that he has in his mind of the day that he's going to have. He's going to go out. He's going to go to work. He's going to, after that, he's going to go to the coffee shop and have a coffee or something and then perhaps come home and do some gaming and talk to you a little bit. That in his head is a routine. The thing is with us in routines is that it can be really helpful for us. It can keep us very structured. It can keep us very productive if we want to be. But it also means that if something doesn't quite go to plan, something doesn't really turn out how we thought it would be. It has knock-on effects for the entire day. We obsess over it. We can't move on to the next segment in our calendar without completing this. All the anxiety builds up. We tend to have a lot of anxiety issues, autistic people in general. It's very high prevalence and even severe anxiety, quite high anxiety. These routines are quite central to us because they keep us grounded. They make us feel in control of what's happening in control of our day, especially if we're doing things that perhaps are around people or there's a lot of sensory issues or the stressful things that we need to do to get to the place that we need to go or to do the thing that we need to do. And if we have difficulties transitioning from one part to another or something doesn't go right, something goes wrong, we'll hyper-focus on it. It'll tie our brain in knots trying to think of ways to approach it or think of ways to fix it. I've got in many situations, especially with video and audio editing where I had a deadline in mind or I was going to shoot a video or I was going to do a podcast and then it didn't happen because something happened during the day, during at work. I didn't plan on it. I didn't get to the places that I wanted to get to on time. I didn't do all that. And it had a knock-on effect on this, you know, my whole day. It bothers us even if we can move past it. For example, I was trying to upload a video. YouTube was down and I had a schedule in mind for uploading a video. And, you know, I can't do anything to fix that. It's out of my control. But it doesn't stop my rampantly increasing anxiety from making me feel like what I need to do is work on it until it's fixed, even though there's nothing that I can really do. And I'd probably better sort of take a break and come back to it with a bit more of a fresh face. It may be that he's struggling with something similar to that and he doesn't want to bother you because it may seem quite silly to him as well, but he's getting upset. And around the communication, you know, our social abilities and our battery for socialising tends to be quenched. Trying to think of a descriptive word for it. It's reduced. It's flatter than it would usually be. And so we don't tend to engage in as much communication with people. It may also be that he's thinking about how to fix this situation. And it will bleed out into other areas if it's not fixed or if it's not fully processed or if it's not dealt with. It's good that he knows that he over-thinks things. That's the first step, acknowledging that, you know, you've got some maladaptive pattern of behaviour that you have, whether it's thinking about things or not. You know, and it's good that he knows that, you know, it's not the end of the world. And it may just be that he's trying to process things in his own time. He maybe doesn't need any help with it. He maybe just needs that space to relax on his own and not necessarily bombard you with messages or call you. You know, because we quite like to be independent. We're adults. We don't want to bother people as much as you'd be happy to help and you'd probably even like it. It may not be something that they want to do. And I suppose where the issues come in is when it bleeds out into other areas. I think that's the time where you have to have a conversation about it. You know, if I'm struggling, the best thing that people can do around me, if I'm getting to the point where I'm going to have a meltdown or I'm going to have a panic attack or something. I will ask people to tell me what to do. I will remove that responsibility from my head to think about what to do and how to fix this and just leave it to someone who isn't in such an anxious meltdown state. Definitely have a conversation and ask him if there are things that you can do to help him in that situation. Maybe it's okay to message and just tell me that you're having a good time but you don't necessarily have to talk about it on the spot. But just know that I'm here. There's lots of different things that you can do. And it's worth having a conversation about it if it's something that comes up a lot. I've talked about both of these things that I've talked about, the cognitive empathy and the past trauma for the first point. And also about the radio silence and bleeding into other areas, the difficult time during the day sort of impacting the rest of his day. A conversation around how you can help will probably help. As you said, he's undiagnosed so he may not listen to a lot of autism related stuff. So maybe don't frame it in that sense. And just offer some advice and ask him if you can help. Now, no expectation for communication. But don't worry about it. I realized that it can seem really a really big issue. But you know, you've got to lead him, let him have his own autonomy, independence. You can be there and you can have that conversation and you can offer your help. But really, that's the only thing that you can do. And I'm sure if you have that conversation, it'll work. And you know, there'll be things that come up and there'll be changes that you can both make that you're both happy with. Communication is key, as I said, even more key for NT and the relationships. I'm not sure you didn't say in the comment, but I'm not sure if you're autistic or not. If you're not, then take why I say quite, quite seriously. And if you are autistic, I'm sure you could understand these situations. So that that's the end of our little Q&A video. I hope you've enjoyed it. As I said at the start, if you want me to address your question in another future video, please just drop it down in the comments here. And I will pick one that I like and I will ask you if it's okay if I do a video on it. Just to make sure. And yeah, well, I'll address it next week. Obviously, follow the social medias, Asperd is growth on Instagram. Instagram, 40 other podcasts on Spotify and Apple broadcasts. And also my website, thomshandley.co.uk, where you can ask to inquire about me doing some public speaking or training or modelling portfolios up there. Yeah, I hope you have a lovely day and thanks for tuning in. See you later, folks.