 and pay better attention to what you're saying if I'm not looking at you. So when my gaze wanders and I'm staring at the floor or the walls or anything but you, I'm listening intently. I, I relate to that so much. It's like someone, someone comes up to you and say, I really need to talk to you Tom. And you're like, okay, let me sit down. What's up? It was most people like, oh, okay. And then sort of staring intently in the like, like that. And it's, man, I can't do that. If you want me to process what you're saying, I'm like, and deeply and put myself in your shoes and all that, it needs to be, I need to shut off all of the faculties of my brain to do that. Just one, one thing. And that includes eye contact and indirect communication to outsiders. Autism content and autistic people and autism in general, even can seem like a very unknown, scary topic to approach, especially if you are meeting an autistic person in real life. You might be wondering what exactly should you say? Should you ignore it? Should you talk to them about it? Well, today we're going to have a look at a variety of different Reddit posts from a channel called Reddit and Chill. Very nice, nice name there. Asking autistic people of Reddit, what would you like everyone to know? Very, very to the point. Let's get into it. r slash ask Reddit by Reddit and Chill. Autistic people of Reddit. What would you like everyone to know? If I'm asking questions that seem dumb, even though I seem smart, most of the time just answer them. Sometimes all I need is the context I'm asking for to help me sort things out. So annoying when people think that something is obvious and act all frustrated in these situations. Yeah, I think like that's, that's something that we can, we can all empathize with to a certain degree. Like the lack of clarity in a lot of people's communication is very, very apparent. Like, um, quite often I do have to ask quite a lot of questions. And I even, I even get labeled as like the person who always has like something to say, or I just stop doing it. I stop asking questions and just do things wrong. And then they ask me, oh, why, why have you done that wrong? Autistic adults exist. It's not like as soon as we turn 18, we wave our autism goodbye. Autistic women exist too. We're just harder to spot than the men. Yes. That autism isn't a one size fits all diagnosis. It's a very broad, nonlinear spectrum, more like a color wheel than a straight line. Also, just because you might not think someone looks autistic or you never would have guessed. Doesn't mean they aren't. Chances are those people expend a lot of energy masking their autistic traits to fit in. 100%. I like the fact that they included the nonlinear spectrum element of it. It's a lot of people kind of view or a lot of people sort of from the mainstream who don't really have a lot of information about autism. They tend to think it's like a scale. I mean, it kind of leads people into seeing it as that way. It doesn't matter because like you see like ASD one, two and three when you like Google search around autism, it kind of solidifies into people's brains that it's like this sliding scale of being autistic or not. It's definitely not like that. I mean, the ASD one, two and three scale is pretty much just about like support needs and presentations particularly. I mean, autistic people vary like so much like within those groups. It's good to both see it in that medical sort of context, but also to see it as that kind of trait spectrum. I always call it a radar diagram and people correct me on it, but I'm just going to keep saying it because it's solidified in my brain. Got this is what I want people to know. I spend so much time and energy to look normal and I hate it. I wish people like my classmates knew this. That's talking and working with them is so hard for that reason. If I mentioned that, I can't tell if you're joking or serious. Even if it's blindingly obvious that you were joking, I need you to bear with me when I ask because sometimes it is so difficult to differentiate between a joke and a serious sentiment. Yeah, it's it's it's not always like it depends on the person because some people are very dry in their humor, you know, like it's not always the easiest to to tell. Like, if you know someone quite well, you can sort of you can guess by their indirect communication what they mean. But if it's someone like a stranger or someone like that, it's so hard to to know sometimes it's. I've had so many situations where like a stranger's made a joke and I've just kind of looked at them blankly, right? And I ask is that a joke and they always take it as an insult. It's like, oh, you don't think I'm funny. Is he trying to try and take a dig at me? He's like, no, I don't know if you're joking or not. I was obsessed about having a perfect walking and standing posture. Yeah, I think that that that wasn't that was the thing that I looked at when I was like masking quite heavily to can definitely understand why the SD12 and Freakin Confused most neurotypicals. Yeah, I literally almost sat on my boss's lap at work because he made a gesture that I interpreted as come sit. Obviously, I'm terrible with body language. So I stepped toward him, then asked him, you don't want me to sit on your lap. Do you? One of the more embarrassing interactions with my boss. You don't look autistic is the worst thing you can say, like, yeah, I know that you would never guess that I'm autistic without me explicitly telling you that that still doesn't mean that I'm not. My question is always, how does one look autistic? It's not like we don't function. And I think a lot of people have noticed this very strange, like, I don't know if the right word is dichotomy, maybe, whereby, like, sometimes, like this, the same person can can both say that you're not strange, you're not different or weird enough to to be autistic. And then at the same time, call you sort of weird and sort of question your behavior around certain things is very strange. Why, like, how people do that, like, you know, I don't I don't really know how else to just to describe it other than, you know, sort of conflicting ideas. But I think it's maybe maybe because people don't see. Like your differences in your expression and your behaviors as being autistic, they just see it as you or like something that's like personality derived and to which some people use autistic instead of the R word. Yeah, I've seen that a lot. Mighty bounce. Love the name, by the way. The red-butt voice is killing me. I only think of memes. According to my trolls, I'm not autistic, but sometimes I am. They can't seem to decide. I've had a few. I think there's one person who came into the stream stream once and said, like, you're not autistic. I think it was over on Instagram when I did the Autie Time Live saying, you look completely normal. You're not autistic at all. And then, like, I mean, how exactly am I going to express more autism? I don't know. It's crazy. If I seem standoffish to you, it's literally because I have zero social skills and will not approach you to talk if you don't talk to me first. Exactly. I'm still an introvert, but I will be very nice and sociable if I'm not the one initiating conversation. Being autistic does not mean a lack of empathy. We may not express or process our feelings the same way as neurotypical people do, but it does not mean we don't have feelings. This, in fact, many on the spectrum have very intense feelings that can be overwhelming at times. And we don't know how to process them, which can lead to melt their ones. 100 percent. That is a call to the to the old Alexa Fimea, which I do love to talk about so much. You know, struggling to identify, notice your feelings. I think one of the reasons why, like, autistic people have been characterized as being as like struggling with emotional regulation. I don't necessarily think it's not having like the regulatory tools to actually calm ourselves down, because we have stimming. We have all sorts of different strategies that we can use to to sort of keep us feeling OK in a good place. It's just it's just the Alexa Fimea. Like it's it's almost like there's a fresh hold, you know, you only really notice it when it becomes an issue. You know, whereas most people, they can kind of be semi consciously or unconsciously aware of what their like state of emotions are, even at those very, very low levels. But in terms of lack of empathy, obviously, like a really big myth, it's very, very clear through the literature that autistic people display. A normal amount, or if not higher levels of empathy than most people, it's just those it's just that interpreting other people's indirect communication when it comes to emotions. That's something that we can struggle with quite often. The jokes I get is slapstick. I love that type of comedy. Yeah. Have you guys have you seen, you know, have you seen the the naked gun? That's like one of my one of my favorite films. I don't often find comedies that funny, but the naked gun just it just gets me so much. It's crazy. Do people look autistic? I don't think so. People used to think I don't want to talk because I don't approach and I used to be upset at myself for not being more assertive socially. But realizing I'm autistic makes me kinder to myself. I did go through a long period of time, like particularly at university, where I became very, very, very sociable. And I did get to a point where I did start approaching people quite a bit. And I do go through phases in my adult life where I'll go up and talk to people at the gym. But most of the time I'm just focused on what I'm doing, you know, I don't necessarily want to have interaction with people. One reason I sometimes seem cold or not affectionate toward others is because if I were to really allow myself to feel and express the empathy that I have towards them, it would be too much and I'd be overwhelmed by depression or anxiety for days. That I contact is a weird horrible thing and I don't know how you people do it. Oh, shit, that one hit hard. Sometimes it just works. But once I'm aware of it, it's complete and utter hell lot. Oh, I have kind of a weird, a weird thing. So I don't necessarily find eye contact difficult. Like it's it's it's pretty natural for me to make like a probably less than average amount of eye contact, but I do make it. I'm very aware of how eye contact in the past like impacted me emotionally. So I'm always very, very like careful with making too much eye contact, you know, I don't want to make too much. So I just I don't necessarily think about it too much because if I try to make like the optimum amount of eye contact, like sometimes I'll just make too much and I'll get get like a feeling like I'm somewhat trying to like intimidate someone or something, which I'm not. This is so so much. It's like an extra aspect of socializing as well. Like you have to speak to someone. You have to process. You have to listen to them and you have to monitor your eye contact. No, I don't think so. Actually, I'm a vampire. I need to be invited in. I love that. Inferdumping opted to mention it because a sheer amount of horrid things that I had seen being aimed at autistic people for inferdumping is nasty. We often get special interests in things and enjoy gathering information and talking to others about them. We find someone to talk to about it and everything comes out. Talk your ear off for hours easily and the details will often be very intricate. We don't mean anything other than being excited about the thing. We don't always catch on that you're not interested in the intricacies of George Cardis' relationship with the Chess Ascendancy. Sorry, it's not just trying to show off to look superior being elitist or gatekeeping. We're just excited over something we enjoy. Yeah. And do you guys think when it comes to to info, because in my experience, I find that, like, I mean, maybe the way that people characterize or categorize info dumping is by like somebody who's trying to take the conversation to more of like a deep sort of interesting level rather than making small talk, you know what I mean? Like perhaps in a sort of conversation over dinner where everyone's had like a few drinks or something and you're having like a deep sort of one to one conversation. I don't think that would necessarily be characterized as info dumping. But in the context of like having sort of small talk, a small talk like conversation, maybe maybe that's that's why people characterize it in that way. I don't know. It's just a thought. What do you guys think? I think a lot of us would come up to talk to you. Oh, that's nice. I don't know. I think I'm always like hyper aware, somewhat of like my size. So I always try to somewhat offset like the intimidation factor about myself by not making as much eye contact and being a little bit silly, you know, they call it info dumping because they can't concentrate for more than two minutes. Yeah, I mean, it's it's it's kind of nice, isn't it? It's like who wouldn't want to like come away from a conversation knowing more about something? Isn't that like one of one of the great things about it? Do you talk with people much at the gym? I talked to a few. There's a few like regular people that I see about. And we have sort of semi small talky kind of conversations. It's not really small toys. Well, I guess it is. But we have interesting conversations. There's a few people like that I do talk to. But I don't tend to like go up to people at the gym. Number one, because I'm focusing on my workout and I'm trying to get it done in like a reasonable amount of time. Number two, like I don't know what they're like. I have no idea other than what they look like as to whether I'll enjoy talking to them, you know, and some people can be a bit weird like when it comes to sort of strangers coming up to talk to them. Not weird, but, you know, I mean, I'm not like. Oh my God, like they're just kind of a little bit annoyed. That's the better word, not weird. So they're annoyed that you've come over to talk to them. Some people are like that. That's funny. I prefer listening to info dumps and info dumping. I don't necessarily think like it needs to be characterized as an info dumping, really. Like it's just like a different style of communication, you know, exchanging large amounts of segment of text or like a conversation with somebody and then allowing them to respond. It's kind of like a debate, isn't it, to a certain degree? I find it a bit more interesting than usual. Are you tall? Yes, I'm six foot three and I weigh 100 kilos and quite a big person. I tend to wear a lot of goffy kind of black clothing as well. The shit is probably not the best thing to do if I'm wanting to be approachable, but. My 13 year old grandson with ASD has this same passion. He's a gamer with astonishing recall on the intricacies of his favorites, including release dates, updates, designers, character details. The list goes on and on. I committed at his birth to be the best grandma he could ever want. So I listen excitedly as he chat is on and though I'm not a great player, have learned so much about game culture and development from him. I wish so much that everyone he meets would take the time to listen to his excitement. I understand. That's so great that they're they're listening to. They're they're autistic grandson. Like, it's so nice to hear stuff like that because people do sometimes meet that characterisation as it being annoying. You're 15 inches taller than me. And your emotions. In fact, I understand them so well that my own emotions are influenced by other peoples and other people's emotions can easily overwhelm me. Emotional states of myself and others are easy to read, especially in voice tone and expression, but I don't get your body language at all. Yes, this isn't universal. I just get annoyed at the whole you're all a social. You don't understand emotions when, in fact, it differs for everyone. Yeah. Yeah. Like the people's expressions as well can can differ from person to person. I'm very, very good at like I've I've developed my cognitive empathy quite a lot over the years to the point where it's probably better than most most neurotypical individuals that I come across. If you do struggle, like with somewhat being like an emotional sponge, like you struggle in situations where people are being particularly angry or they're sad or they're annoyed or they're upset around you and you you sort of feel and absorb that energy. I'd really highly recommend looking into this concept of autistic mirroring because quite often what we can do as a somewhat of a way of masking is is something that like psychologists do as well, like psychotherapists. We inadvertently mirror their facial expression, their body language, the way that they're talking to the point that it actually has an actual impact on our own emotional state. Like it's it's quite significant. Like it's a two way street, like your emotions. Well, for some people, the express is on the outside. But also if you express things on the outside, it infects how you feel as well. So when people say if you smile more, you'll feel a bit happier. There is some level of truth to that. And that is this kind of strange sort of dual feedback feedback mechanism. I would recommend if you if you do find yourself in a situation like that where someone is in like an emotional state, which is quite negative, try to stay a little bit more centered in how you how you are feeling and what you were feeling before that. It does it does help. And over time, I've tried doing that and it's it's very much helped me in a lot of circumstances like that. Especially if people are being like angry, you know, you can just sort of keep a bit of a bit more of a center. I think it there is a limit to it. Like there is a point, of course, but smiling doesn't work for you. I love it. The thing is with, you know, because a lot of a lot of us do have a lexifier, it might not always be apparent as well. Like it could actually have like a positive impact on on you as it would do with with most people. It's just like sort of identifying, noticing those small changes in emotions can somewhat be quite hard for us. I mean, I understand like when when people say that it's kind of this whole toxic positivity thing and it's just a bit annoying. But I think if you stack a lot of these like suggestions that people give you about staying a bit more regulated and you combine them together and you see it, you do all of these things, you will be able to notice like a change to a certain degree. Oh my God, I didn't know not know about mirroring sounds familiar. It's a good skill. Like it's actually a really good skill, but it does also impact you. You know, you've got to use it sparingly. 100% I can read other people's emotions easily, but not everyone can. I forget to put emotions on my face sometimes. Some people I know get overwhelmed more by their own. Some can't read expression or tone like I can. Some can read body language where I go blank. We're not one size fits all. I actually came here to say that not everyone with autism has a lexithemia, which you describe perfectly. Feel free to tell me to back off if you don't want to talk about it. But I'm really curious about something when I got tested for ASD as part of my ADHD intake, a large part of the testing procedure was based on mind blindness. That is the ability to put yourself in someone else's shoes. I've kind of been wondering if people who have autism, but not a lexithemia are actually much better at this than people with both. If so, would it be much harder to diagnose because being able to recognize emotions perhaps also automatically causes lower mind blindness and therefore higher reciprocity orders, recognizing emotions, not really help with reacting appropriately? Can I ask how this works for you? That's a very interesting point that they make. I think it's it's it's so difficult, isn't it? When when we talk about like the aspects of autism and what we look for because there is such a massive amount of variation in the expressions that people have and also these little subcategories of things that we can have like like a lexithemia. How much of an impact is that? And also one thing about a lexithemia is is it actually something that we are born with that we carry through our life just because of our genetics? Or is it something that we develop free time because a lexithemia is pretty common to people who have like PTSD and things of that that nature? I'm an adult who does actually struggle with fear of mind. I still do. Yeah. I mean, there's been a lot of debate like within the autistic community about it. I mean, the usual suspects obviously like characterise anything that comes from Simon Baron Cohen as being inherently sort of wrong and ableist. And I don't know. I mean, a lot of the tests around sort of mind blindness. I mean, it's basically this this aspect of I mean, putting yourself in someone on another person's shoes. It's a bit difficult to say that that is just something of because we're autistic because would that be the same for us with other autistic people? Or is that or is that just a product of us just having a different brain with working and perceiving and all that stuff to like other people? If it's not an autism thing, I just do struggle with it. I'm not saying that you're wrong necessarily. I just I think I think people have like definitely like debated this quite a bit within the autistic community. Like if you mention anything about fear of mind, like in the online spaces, people tend to be very combative about that stuff. Did you all know Simon's related to Sasha? Yeah, I thought I think I talked to him about it on the podcast. It's cool. Valentine says my empathy is so bad. I do experience sympathy, though. I just don't feel what other people feel when it comes to negative emotions. But positive emotions can influence me. I wouldn't say your empathy is bad, Valentin. I there is like different aspects to it, one of which being. Cognitive and the other one being adaptive empathy and adaptive empathy is what we see as, you know, sympathy, like like of what you're saying, which is actually what most people see empathy as. The cognitive element, which is something that again, Simon Baron Cohen has looked into trying to dispel this empathy myth is the actual interpretation of indirect communication. So like reading people's emotional states without them telling us that can be something that a lot of us struggle with. But when it comes to like empathy, as we know it, sort of in the mainstream, you know, kind of bit more of a lay perspective, we definitely do not struggle with that. It's for sure. That's that's something that's related to psychopathy, sociopathy sometimes. Sometimes I'm watching a show, I get more information than the character. So I would make different decisions. So I get upset how someone is acting. But it's because I know more info than them. Yeah, I mean, that's that's quite a good analogy around like the concept of mind blindness, I suppose. And the same as Valentin. Hmm. And do you think you were more difficult to diagnose because you do recognize emotions? I was diagnosed with Ascudges at the age of 11. I feel like I'm part of a play where everyone has the script except me. I'm sorry, but I can't help but think. Well, that's deep. I totally get what you mean, just because I think the best the best way that I've described, like, neurotypical, like social rules and communication is kind of like, you know, every everyone in the world or the neurotypicals of the world sort of got together in this secret club. And they've all given each other like pointers on different things that they're going to do to each other. And, you know, obviously, like, it's something that they develop and they understand with time and learn to implement as just a part of their own development. Like, for us, it can be quite different. We have to be very cognitive in like understanding these different things. But as I'm quiet, doesn't mean I'm smeaty or aloof and deserve to be excluded. Reading through these comments, I'm getting worried that I might have autism. How did you who have autism find out? Speak with a doctor and try and find a professional who can identify. I think that's that's the way that most people these days, who are like diagnosed, find out. Maybe not, not, not particularly through Reddit, but, you know, through online content. I think that's one of the great things, but which is also something that is criticized quite heavily a lot about the autistic community is is our ability to be relatable to people, because there is quite a heavy stigma around it. And I do find that being able to like relate to to people in such a way and sort of share our experiences, I think that's one of the really great things about it. But there will be a lot of people outside of the community sort of saying, you know, everything is autism now and what you're talking about. And these are things that most people experience. And this this is just an introvert thing or like stuff along those lines. Fight and honestly, if you've lived your whole life not knowing you're autistic, it's not like finding out now is going to fix your problems. But it might explain them. I disagree that I think there are some things like it can definitely be like a like one of the best sort of like just being aware of that stuff and learning about that stuff is definitely like. Pretty pretty sure fire ignition to like self development. And, you know, even even things that you didn't necessarily see as autism things, you might might be able to identify them. You could just, you know, for your entire life, you sort of trying to compensate for different differences that you have sort of compared to other people. And when you realize you can be like, oh, actually, this is, you know, this is an autism thing and I can actually do some things about their difficult situations again to, you know, and pay better attention to what you're saying if I'm not looking at you. So when my gaze wanders and I'm staring at the floor or the walls or anything but you, I'm listening intently. I, I relate to that so much. So someone comes up to you and say, I really need to talk to you, Tom. And you're like, OK, let me sit down. What's up? There's most people like, oh, OK. And then sort of staring intently in the like, like that. And it's, man, I can't do that. If you want me to process what you're saying and like, and deeply and put myself in your shoes and all that, it needs to be. I need to shut off all of the faculties of my brain to do that. Just one, one thing. And that includes eye contact and indirect communication. I just can't focus on looking at you or making eye contact and understand what you are saying at the same time. If I look at you, I won't hear you. If you call me on the phone, I will also not hear you. Phone, stress me out. I can pay better attention to what you're saying if I'm not looking at you. Damn, honestly, there are times when I wonder if going blind would make the world less of a sensory nightmare or at least make it easier for me to talk smoothly. When I seem slow to you, it's because I need you to be more specific in what you need from me. My brain is literally unable to play the guessing game. Edit one. Oh, my God. Thanks for all the upvotes. Didn't expect this. Thanks, everyone. A better way of explaining this is probably be the processing delays. There's one thing that hasn't changed, like, since I was I was very small, is that my processing delay is it's pretty consistent. It doesn't really matter like what my emotional state is. I will always be at least one or two seconds behind people when it comes to processing. And it's one of the things that that sort of makes makes people interpret me as being a bit awkward or perhaps a little bit shy or introverted is that it does take me a while for me to process what someone's saying to me. And by the time that I've done done that, I'm kind of a little bit behind when it comes to talking. So I do tend to interrupt people because I am just like very much behind and people tend to do communicate and do things and, you know, very quickly, like, compared to what to how I am. I definitely do take things very, very slowly. Edit to thanks for the gold first one. Finally, more accurately, it can play the guessing game. It just plays it way too seriously. We are not all like Sheldon Cooper, Sean Murphy, Forrest Gump or other extremely autistic people in movie series, Sheldon. It's it's Forrest Gump, an autistic character. It's Forrest Gump, an autistic character. I didn't really get that maybe. I don't know. I don't really get that impression. I guess what what what exactly is he supposed to be a representation of now they think about it. I mean, I always assumed that perhaps he had like a significant sort of intellectual disability. What do you guys think? Do you guys do any of, you know, like, was it based on like an autistic being an autistic character? Never thought Forrest Gump was autistic. No, me neither. After this, after some reading. Do a Google search and someone do a Google search is Forrest Gump supposed to be autistic. So I think he is and is like the black face of autism. We tend to notice the weirdest stuff or things in the background. A skill that has served me well in my line of work. Please don't be one of those people who assumes autism means we have a high low mental age. I'll be insulted if you talk to me like I'm eight. I'll be confused if you talk to me like Albert Einstein. I feel like a lot of the, you know, perhaps AST one characterized kids, they tend to have and I would say even for my own experiences that the mental age in terms of like vocabulary, in terms of like skills and knowledge in certain areas tends to be a lot higher. But when it comes to the emotional social stuff, it does appear to be a lot lower in in autistic kids like compared to people of their age. So you get a very sort of interesting combination of being like in terms of cognitive ability, being exceptional, but at the same time sort of struggling with like the emotional social world. He made better choices than Jenny, though. Jenny. Jenny. Yeah, he definitely did, didn't he? Textures and sounds are painful. Sometimes even being touched can hurt. This world is very isolating for many of us. Some are too autistic for the NT world and some aren't autistic enough for the special needs world. No. Not everyone is a little autistic. Yes. You don't understand why how what. Some of us may have flat tones and cannot express emotion, but we do feel. I mean, that's that's the whole vocal monotony and flat affects concepts. And the autism jokes sometimes make us sad and or angry. Meltdowns aren't tantrums. In a meltdown, you lose all awareness and it can be very difficult. 100%. That's one. That's one thing that I wish parents and all sort of people, people in the mainstream understood, because I've talked to a lot of parents of autistic, autistic kids. And one of the things that they talk about very, very frequently is the judgments from like other parents and people around them when when their kids having a meltdown. Like they really don't understand it. They think that they're like acting out and that there is a really big difference between the two. You know, in a meltdown, you do lose a lot of your awareness and your functionality and you tend to have very, very extreme sort of emotions, depending on the person, like what what those emotional states look like. And tantrums are usually like an emotional display to get to get something that you want. And there's a very big difference between the two. Google seems to think Forrest Gump has an intellectual slash developmental disorder. Well, I mean development, neurodevelopmental autism is neurodevelopmental disorder in terms of medical literature, at least. Thanks for saying all these things. I don't have autism, but my kid does. He's a toddler and still learning to express himself and I'm still learning how to be the parent he needs. Reading accounts from people with autism is very helpful. People used to tell me to discipline him during meltdowns, but I could tell he was in a lot of pain. I just stay close to him. Oh, yeah. Yeah, do not discipline. Discipline about that. My God. Just want to put this out there. Like if you are an autism parent, if you've come to watch my stuff, or if you're watching any sort of content from other autistic adults and you're learning about it. Like I have so much respect for people like you because man, like we just really don't get enough people like you who really do want to understand their kids. There are some people who very much like try to ignore it or just, you know, they have this mentality where they just don't want to, I don't know, accept to some degree that their child's different. And so rather than seeking to learn more and seeking to understand, you know, they're very much like try to fit them into a certain mold or even, in some cases, halt their progress in some areas and say that like, oh, you can't do this because you're autistic kind of thing. I made a post recently which got a lot of mixed reviews, I would say on Instagram, which is the autism is not an excuse thing. You know, a lot of people interpreted that as me saying, you can't use autism as an excuse because that's, you know, that is something that we hear quite a bit from other people which definitely gets on our nerves. So I understand that. But I was more talking about, you know, this kind of tendency that we either enforce ourselves or people around us, particularly parents would enforce on us, which is that we can't do things, which is wrong because we can do things even if we find it difficult because we're autistic. It's just finding different routes. It's making adjustments. It's a whole host of different things that you have to do in order to get to the same result. And it's also remembering that although we might struggle in some areas that we do actually have some really key positives, some real skill, some real area of life that we do definitely excel in. Offer comfort, words and touch. If he allows it, and it seems to be a far more constructive way to deal with it. That autism speaks as a hate group. The autistic self-advocacy network is a better organization to support. What did autism speaks do? I don't doubt that they're a hate group, but just out of curiosity. I am going to say something that offends you. It's going to happen. And when I do, tell me. Tell me or I won't have any idea what I did wrong or why you're upset. I might be different, but that doesn't mean I want to be treated any differently to anyone else. I've had people pull 180s on me and start talking to me and baby talk after me telling them that I'm autistic. I ducking hate it. The infantilization man. God damn it. We hate that stuff. Baby talk. Oh my god. I've had a few people do that to me in the past. Very strange. Very, very strange. I definitely feel like the general statement of I might be different, but I don't want to be treated differently. I don't want to be treated differently in a negative way, but if people can be a bit more direct with me, then that would be great. You know what I mean? Everyone with autism is like Rain Ma. We can't all recite from memory what day of the week certain events happened or our 7s, however we all have different strengths and some of us have intense interests that we know a lot about. We are not a party trick for this either. Ever heard of autism hitting in plan site? Next time they want to make one of your stupid autism jokes in class, keep that in mind. Someone is sitting in there. Already feel bad about having the diagnosis and being scared what people might think. It doesn't help us. No. No, 100%. I mean the likelihood that you will have one autistic person in your year is pretty high. You know? Or even more than that. It just makes us shut up even more. We are everywhere. You just doesn't see. Sometimes my brain hard locks trying to process sentences out loud, sort of like when you can't remember a word. But for the entire sentence forming apparatus, the analogy I use is when a program goes not responding on your computer. It's not thinking or waiting. It's just stopped and spam clicking on it does nothing. Have you ever spam clicked your dialogue option? 31. People watching yet? Yeah, I was only 13 in likes. Spank that button in order to spread love for Thomas. Yeah, guys. Yes, please. Spank that like button. I think this is something that is related to like the processing delays again. And also the pressure of social communication can be a lot sometimes. Why do people do that? To be TF. Did they already know you? Did they or did they just meet you and heard that you had autism baby talk so insulting? Yeah, it sucks. I mean, I don't even use baby talk for kids even usually. I mean, sometimes I'm a bit more sort of emotionally expressive, but I don't do it. Like especially not to adults. It doesn't matter what what support needs they have, what kind of intellectual differences they have. I think talking to anybody like that is sometimes not great. Although like particularly with my grandma, she's very sort of firing to into dementia into Alzheimer's. She does respond quite positively to what we would consider baby talk, but that's kind of an isolated circumstance. You know, she's very she's very late on in it. You know, it's only recent recently that I've started doing it. I'm supposed to be talking, but my brain was stored. It's not that I couldn't work out what to say. It's that I couldn't work out how to speak. Every autistic person is different. Some hate physical contact. Some love it. Some can't speak. Some can. Do not assume we are all the same ever. Caps locks. Sorry to hear that, Thomas. I'm so sorry about your grandmother. Yeah, it's not the best, you know, but I still I still really enjoy going to Sierra and interacting with her. You know, like a lot of people think that, you know, when someone sort of gets into late dementia Alzheimer's, that they're not really like the same person. And they sort of view them that way that they're kind of like a different person. I try not to view it like that, you know. I think, you know, I always enjoy, you know, talking to her and conversing with her even though communication can be quite hard for her. But, you know, there's some moments of lucidity and some points at which you can formulate sentences and such, which I definitely cherish quite a bit. But I enjoy going to Sierra and talking to her. It's just different, you know, and you've got to kind of adapt. But she's still the same person and I still care about her like a lot. I hope this blows up because people on the spectrum need more of a voice on society. I want to know more because people are educated about this stuff. Great question. I thought so too. Because I feel like people see autism as not being able to do a lot of things, but that's not true. Having autism doesn't mean we're immediately incapable of doing anything. I think the key word is they're like immediately sort of inherently incapable. It very much varies from person to person. You've got to take each individual for each individual. People who have bullied me in the past bullied me because I'm different and they made me hate who I truly was as I got older. I learned to love myself and learned to embrace my flaws. I had to get diagnosed in my mid-20s so that people would finally accept that I have difficulties. I didn't want to get diagnosed. But I felt forced to. Just so I could prove once and for all that it's not me choosing to be a difficult person. In the UK the process takes so much time and in the end you can't really be treated anyway so what's the point when I already know and have accepted it? It's like if you weren't diagnosed as a kid then you're not valid. But only the kids with the most extreme symptoms get diagnosed early and I guess that's what people think autism looks like. I don't think it's just the kids that have more signs. I think there's a lot to do with the environment. Are the parents picking up on it? Are some of the teachers picking up on it? Is the doctor, is the occupational therapist picking up on it? It's really dependent on who's around there. And also there is a really big feed-in when it comes to stigma which stops people from going for it. It really doesn't take much to adjust the way you interpret what I'm saying just to understand I might not be as clear as I want to be. But people will still overreact and misinterpret. Despite knowing I have difficulty communicating even if I didn't have autism it wouldn't be unreasonable to understand that. But people in general still don't get it. Even ones who rave about mental health awareness it's like autism isn't taken as seriously as depression or anxiety because it's not urgent. It is a permanent thing that can't be cured so it's treated like a lost limb. Anxiety and depression are easier to understand I guess and are somewhat curable with treatment in time. Well it's relatable isn't it? To some degree. All the people can relate with feelings of panic. Perhaps not in terms of generalized anxiety like understanding what daily life is like. Day to day the experiences and living with that condition. And maybe depression either. You have a lot of instances of situational depression when it comes to living life. Some bad things happen. Some people develop situational depression. Autism? Maybe not so much relatable for most people. On the surface I suppose. I do find that people who aren't autistic can relate to me when I explain it to them in terms that they understand. But that's not really something that we're necessarily taught a lot about through life just through the mainstream. Aidan asks are you high functioning? Can you do things on your own completely independently? Although people don't like the term high functioning I think it could definitely be solved by saying relatively high functioning because I do function a lot more objectively than perhaps someone with ASD-free. Someone who has an intellectual disability. I do have some support needs. I do struggle with transport quite a bit. I struggle with executive functioning so it's like planning and sort of organizing myself and my life. But particularly things which are very small and maintenance related. Those things tend to be things that I struggle with. There are ways that I've got around that and the way for me to function independently is to make sure that everything that I need to do is part of a daily or weekly routine. So I can do it. The only time at which I would be considered to have quite high support needs is during very severe depressive periods. Those are times where I do need a lot of support. And the way that my depressive symptoms manifest tend to manifest sort of atypically because of the things that I find difficult myself that I can maintain usually that those things tend to drop and they're not necessarily the same as what neurotypicals would experience. So those executive functioning skills tend to drop quite a bit. Can you do some things on your own independently? I think that there is importance of the context of the question because I can do everything independently if I wanted to. But managing it, maintaining it, doing it over a long period of time, it really depends. It's not necessarily a question about skill. It's more about maintenance over a long period of time. They said I was high functioning but I struggled a lot, especially socially and financially. Yeah, and I can understand the reaction because a lot of people use it in the context of light saying, oh, okay, you don't struggle that bad. You're high functioning. When people use it in the context like that, it's quite offensive to a lot of us because it's kind of undermining the difficulties that we may have. But again, with a lot of these things related to stigma and stereotypes, the whole thing about everyone being a little bit autistic, it's used to make people feel a bit more at one with a group or relatable or trying to empathize with them a little bit and make them feel less alone. Same thing with saying high functioning. It's kind of like they think that it's better. It's better to be more neurotypical or functioning the way that most people do. So they're kind of making this value judgment which can hit quite hard sometimes. That means I'm paying attention to what you're saying. I'm not ignoring you. Having to act normal is so ducking-straining. I'm monotone and don't like being touched, but family and social pressure, including having teachers screaming in my ducking ear, to act normal. Not normal but a non-disabled normal. I'm always multitasking, acting, dealing with sensory issues, sight, sound, and touch, and doing whatever I am. It's like being in the closed for a gay person in a bigoted area, which I was. The stress broke me in different ways. I was also supposed to be the good autistic who could prove we were just as smart and worthy as normal kids. We're not all introverted. I love going out and talking to different people. Trying new things. Physical activity can be difficult as we have coordination issues. I have trouble at jobs because I don't talk about my... Physical activity can also be great for us because we're very, very good at sticking to routine and focusing. I would counteract that. Because I do have vestibular difficulties in terms of vestibular insensitivity, so that's like to do my balance. And also proprioceptive insensitivity. So my awareness of my body in space never stopped me being good at Taekwondo. I condition as I have been terminated for it for threats of termination. The people in charge who should do something about the discrimination are usually against me. Or they treat me like I'm trying to freeload off the system. I have other disabilities and doctors. Teachers. ETC only tell me it could be worse instead of being helpful. Ducking like and subscribe. Ducking like and subscribe. That was a video from Reddit and Chill. Autistic people of Reddit. What would you like everyone so now? Very interesting video. Brought out some interesting points that we could have a little talk about. Definitely. Go check out their channel if you are interested in this type of video. And consider liking the video. My video. And subscribing for daily autism content.