Love this guy's Rust and tech videos, feel like this one has some insightful and useful ideas about autism.

Posting here cuz this rant that is coming together in my head is too long for the megathread and these events interact too much with my ADHD lol.

I have been off of the site for a bit just cuz I've been feeling so awful :(

Sooo I have some kind of unmanaged ADHD thing that's been wrecking my life for the last few years (it's a long story). The way I mildly kinda cope with it is huge doses of caffeine that sometimes give me the ability to get things I've been putting off (everything) done. But it also destroys my sleep and stresses me out so much I actually think it's starting to kill me lol. I have this issue with my eyes where I get random blind spots that develop and last for like a few minutes to an hour and no doctors have been able to tell me what it is. Stress makes it worse which makes me even more stressed and anxious about it :(

It's hell but somehow I'm still alive even though I feel like I'm nearing death every day. Also developing hypertension lmao. Recently, I actually got my ADHD certified as actually real and existing (diagnosed) but this shit they gave me (atomoxetine) cuz I made the mistake of telling them I've used recreational drugs before just makes me feel more depressed, wrecks my sleep even more, and makes me even more stressed-out lol. Idk I'm looking forward to trying all manner of blood pressure drugs and whatever else they can dig out of the pharmacopoeial backlog that makes me feel worse when I probably just need healthier stimulants to make me more able to deal with living in hellworld. I suppose I could ask but that probably won't go well considering the nurse practitioner who gave me this stuff was dismissive and mean toward me without me even asking for drugs lol. I have met like... maybe 2 nice mental health ""professionals"" in my life? (and I've seen many and not one seriously considered my concerns about ADHD until I met the first good one lol)

Anyway, this brings us to the real topic of this rant: I finally got a shitty, cheap, used MSM8916-based (Qualcomm system-on-chip (derogatory)) Moto G4 Play off of the the Internet after being without a working phone for like the last two weeks. The reason I got this phone in particular is because I deluded myself again into thinking postmarketOS was worth another try and this phone seemed to have decent support. It came yesterday and yesterday I was feeling particularly bad :(

I slept even worse than usual so I thought I would forego the usual caffeinemaxxing, drug myself with this kinda bad-feeling research chem GABAergic I have to calm down, setup this new phone quickly, and go back to bed. Yeah, and then I ended up staying up for the next 18 hrs trying to make this fucking awful phone work with my fucking awful... phone service provider (I'm gonna say PSP from now on) or whatever they're called. The initial setup was easy and fine but the phone had no service in either Android or postmarketOS. I had forgotten my PSP has some kind of rage-inducing IMEI allowlist system where if you're not using a specifically approved phone they won't allow your phone to register with their network regardless of if and has the capabilities they expect from an 4G LTE-speaking phone and it would have worked fine. I tried talking to customer service and they basically said "nah, we're not letting you use your phone, wanna buy another one? If not, get out of my face you disgusting removed modded phone user. I was gonna say you belong in prison for owning that but Linux phone users like you should go to a death camp. We're working on that :)". I had forgotten that this happened last time I got a phone like this and the only way I got around this was by changing the IMEI to an old iPhone. OoooOOOoh, IMEI changing, the forbidden topic of the XDA forums, yeah it's illegal in some places, which is fine because lying about your phone to your PSP is cool and good. Unfortunately, changing the IMEI of this phone was not as easy as with a Pinephone Pro (just one unsanctioned AT command! <3 <3 <3).

So I started on this journey of great trial and discovery: changing the IMEI of the embedded MSM8916 modem. At first, I thought this would be easy... but I underestimated the frustration-power of an undocumented-for-working-class-people SoC meant only to deliver slop into the eyes of a waiting, captive user. I could go into great detail here about what I tried, so many, many things that simultaneously blur into a morass of (ancient (relative to how fast the phone market moves), arcane malware-infested tools and forbidden incantations) and it being so frustrating that I remember it all. Different modem firmware, different Android systems, wiping modem configurations in different orders, different uhhhh "Qualcomm HS-USB Windows diagnostic drivers", (soooo many different tools, first-party (leaked Qualcomm tools) and otherwise), editing the IMEI in backups from Qualcomm tools and trying to write them back, grepping the modem configuration in flash for the IMEI, etc, etc, etc, etc, etc. I got so close sometimes but the attempt would always fail for some absolutely inexplicable, indecipherable reason.

For those not aware, this is just what phones are like. It all barely fucking works, any """"""consumer"""""" equipment may fall apart at any moment and be impossible to repair, it has a trillion mechanisms to prevent users from modifying their slop-feeder, data-collecting device yet is riddled with security problems for those with the time, energy, and money to find them (the state lmao), chips or whatever are undocumented except to those who can prove to Qualcomm or whoever that they're a servant of some capitalist who needs documentation in the service of their lord, infrastructure barely interoperates despite the great efforts of phone cartels to standardize because their members can't help themselves from introducing things like vendor-specific extensions or practices like carrier locking or IMEI whitelisting in the endless pursuit of higher profits

Unlimited destruction upon phones, computers are fucked now we need a Butlerian Jihad NOW!

We need to return to PDAs

Fuck it, I guess I just live without a phone now I sure hope no one needs to call me lmao

Am I really hitting post on this lol

I posted here a couple months ago asking people here how to deal with schizophrenia symptoms without being prescribed meds. It was a difficult conversation to have with me because I wasn't just being paranoid about going to get help, those people actually ruined my life for a solid year after I stopped going to them. A lot of people on here gave me a lot of great support. Their care kept me from doing what I did for a few months, and probably went into it being a half hearted attempt.

Things boiled over a few months later unfortunately. About a month ago, I was drinking heavily. Fought with my partner, went to bed, and tried to kill myself the morning after all of it. I didn't end up dying. I tried calling 911 in the moment, but lost my phone and learned that Alexa cannot do emergency calls. I seized out and slept for a day. Woke up the next day with clear symptoms of serotonin syndrome and went about getting it treated without getting locked up. Thought about it for a bit and realized I was also an alcoholic who needed to get help for drinking, and my plan was cooked and honestly pretty fucking fire.

I went into a mental health center that focused on rehabilitation and told them that my clearly visible serotonin syndrome was alcohol withdrawal. Did my intake, they sent me to their urgent care, who proceeded to send me to the emergency room. They gave me a bunch of benzos for the week, and that took care of the alcoholism and the building serotonin syndrome. Afterwards, I returned to the rehab center because they also offered psychs and 24/7 walk in counselors, which I've found very helpful. The psych listened to me and said that to him, it is clear as day that I'm suffering from PTSD and brain damage, with everything else being secondary. He said I may have schizophrenia, it's definitely in the family history, but was far more concerned about everything else. Sent in a referral for neurologist appointment. The meds have proved it so far. He gave me meds for PTSD and they've been quite helpful. I asked for my risperidone back and he gave it back to me without second thought, even at the dose I asked for. Between the two, 70 percent of my psych med needs are met. Not perfect of course, but I have a psych appointment with them next week so it hasn't been too much of a pressing matter. Also, they helped me sign up for medicaid, and that's pretty cool

To anybody questioning if they need psych meds or not, the answer is probably yes. I'm on one of the heaviest knockout meds on the planet and get an inexplicable boost of energy from it because of how well it medicates all my issues. I'm starting to get a routine again, and it's great. Like I feel like I can actually live a long term life again

So many options to learn about things. I genuinely haven’t had an idea for how to make friends like a “normal” person since I hit burnout (and subsequently started to unmask with seemingly little control). Also, does anyone have tips/tricks for how to retain existing friendships without appearing codependent/needy?

I can only stand to be around people who make my brain go brrrrrrrrrrr and I would die for those people. In fact, I’ve had nights staying up until 4 am going in circles with those people, and I wouldn’t change it for the world.

Title is the epiphany. Story as follows:

There's a fairly new neighbour that has moved in next to me. They are outgoing and extroverted in that needy or demanding way whereas for me as an autistic person, I'm much more self-contained and don't seek out idle chit-chat with acquaintances because I honestly don't need it in my life and I don't reap any benefit from it.

Anyway, there has been a few odd conversational topics that have arisen multiple times over the course of our interactions and with one of them it got to the point where I've thought to myself "What the fuck is up with their preoccupation with this topic? I'm sick of talking about this." and, upon reflection, I realised that they were insinuating themselves into a situation that they are completely oblivious to, that isn't their business, and that isn't a concern whatsoever.

I don't want to explain exactly what it is because it's pretty identifying info but think along the lines of someone "casually" mentioning that the soil your cacti are living in is very dry - yeah it really is, what of it?

Anyway once the penny had (finally) dropped for me that this person doing that weird Boomerish thing where they repeatedly drop mention of something like how nice the weather is today and they expect that you're going to understand that they're trying to suggest that you should mow the lawn today (a legit post that someone made on social media but maybe it was about mowing the lawn or maybe it was about putting the washing out - I forget the specifics), I turned this over in my mind and came to the conclusion in the post title above:

They are literally treating interactions with me like it's a chess match. They are making conversational manoeuvres in an attempt to force a particular response out of me. You don't do that sort of thing with a person unless you see them as an adversary. If you are gonna treat me like an adversary then we are not friends and I have no obligation to extend my goodwill towards you.

(On a tangent, this is the reason why I have a strong dislike of the Socratic Method - because it essentially treats people as your conversational adversaries.)

This is the newest development in my experience of unmasking and growing beyond my people-pleasing so I thought I would share this realisation with others.

Is a random phrase I thought of in the shower the other day and would like someone to steal for a Midwest emo track

Too niche a suggestion or can people see where I’m coming from?

This show is so fucking great. It's autistic comedy at its peak. But this episode is essentially just a compilation of Joe's excitement and joy after finding his new favorite song.

Lately, I’ve been realizing I’m really fucking unfunny, and I genuinely think that quality is important when building any type of relationship with someone, friendship or otherwise. I know people always say that there are no “rules” but I genuinely believe they don’t understand how neurodivergent people view rules, but it seems that there is one rule guiding everything. Because a shit ton of anything in life comes down to verbal delivery. I can speak fine, but the tone of my voice has been the source for a shit ton of trauma.

Going to go to a meetup tomorrow for a picnic with other people, hopefully to try to be social and talk to some new people. I know this is very casual and not a big deal, but I have had really bad social anxiety basically my whole life. I don't know if this is related to the Autism, or if its because I didn't make any friends or relationships in high school or college at all and got treated like shit by nearly everyone, and I'm just scared of people in general because of that. However, I'm done with having no one to talk to, so I think this will be a good thing for me.

...still really nervous tho.

(Also I'm debating if I should disclose if I am Autistic at any point tomorrow. Never did it before with anyone else I tried to talk and make friends with but it didn't help at all. Maybe only if someone else says it?? idk maybe if there is a right moment to do it.)

It had been 'Fly me to the Moon' for almost a decade before that which actually helped me develop as a singer a lot lol. I was a substitute teacher for a while and had this hysterical moment when I blooped out and was staring into space while my class was at recess and started singing. One of the students walks over with a concerned look and asked 'are you okay?'

There are two songs that can emotionally wreck me and both are associated with people I only went on a few dates with

I don’t know shit, but I think this means I’m not over those people. Not even my ex did this to me.

If this makes sense, the thought of willingly subjecting myself to this feeling again seems awful but the crying kinda helps. Fuck

OK. This is one of my most toxic qualities and has caused serious issues, specifically with other ND people, particularly femme ones. This is NOT something I should be ok with and something I need to work on.

But I do want to talk about WHY it happens.

There are two main reasons why when someone presents me with a boundary, I might try to "argue" or "negotiate" the boundary.

1. The boundary doesnt make logical sense to me, so I feel that if I merely explain why it doesnt make sense to me I can argue them out of it. The fact that its a deep discomfort that doesnt have to make sense does not occure to me in the moment.
2. A lot of the time its not even because I'm not willing to respect the boundary, its because I want to fully understand their reasoning, so I"m trying to draw that reasoning out more through discussion. Which comes off as "arguing".

Its also worth noting as Ive said before that boundary drawing has to be very clear with me for me to get it usually. White lies and subtle hints and stuff is completely unhelpful to me.

Ive also been in the position of thinking that the misunderstanding behind a boundary was "cleared up" and therefor thinking its ok to resume the behavior, without actually being given the go ahead to do so. And the person now feels uncomfortable drawing lines with me again because I argued last time (which is a manifestation of THEIR ND), and it just spirals.

The problematic effect this has is that it discourages the person from drawing boundaries with me again. This has led to nasty situations for me multiple times.

Everything I do. Every fucking second of my life. Is trying to feed the massive fucking black hole of RSD in me. Everything is begging for positive feedback. EVerything is people pleasing, but in ways that actually just put people off.

Noone loves me like I love them. Noone. Not one person. Im always the initiater. I send people memes, they dont send me shit. And oh ACTUALLY the WHOLE TIME I was actually ANNOYING THEM by sending them stuff.

It leads me into such awful, desperate, sometimes even fucking abusive behaviors. Manipulative. BEGGING for feedback. From everyone. All the fucking time. Taking advantage of nice patient people until I wear them out. I ping people too much. Sometimes I ping them again if they ignore the first one. I don't take ignoring a message for a no. I always am like "maybe they missed it or maybe they were too busy at the time and forgot" and sometimes that IS the case so it gets confusing.

People leave me constantly. Not always because of this but I've had like, five noteable peopel leave me in the last couple years. I have no irl friends left. Sometimes because of me neglecting those friendships and distance. But also my ONE really close irl friend left me because of a stupid misunderstanding. And I officially confirmed that Ive lost someone else today, this time over EXACTLY what i'm talking about.

I'm fucking exausted y'all. And I dont know what to do. There's no fucking medication for RSD. Coping mechanisms dont work. I cant fucking deal with this anymore. I'm fucking tired.

I just have to get this off my chest but I can't talk about it too anyone who knows me in real life.

About ten years I started a new job an instantly hit off with a co-worker. We had a ton of similar interests and she was super easy for my anti social self to talk too And holy shit the level of pure chemistry we had, I didn't even know that was possible. Only problem was I was married and she was engaged.

Over the next couple years we managed to keep our hands off each other only because one of us anyways had to stay sober enough to drop the other off and we both knew drunk consent isn't consent. We became the kinda friends that know things about each other no other person does. But things never went farther than the rare nude or a hand that would linger too long in passing.

Once I quit that job we both broke off all contact and I haven't talked to her since. I'm married thirteen years now, last I checked she was married with kids. And yet I still can't get her out of my mind. All of my best dreams are about her. I honestly think that if there was one thing I could fix about my life it would be to go back and make it work with her.

This is a really shitty feeling I haven't been able to get over for ten years. Maybe getting it out there will help and this ain't the kind of shit I could tell anyone in real life.

I’ve run into a problem from here though. Every Godamn company has their software of choice or whatever, EVEN THOUGH the softwares are functionally identical, have the same components, and work the same way overall. Is this not neoliberalism incarnate lol

So you HAVE to say that you’re familiar with this obscure software to get your foot in the door but then you have to talk about it in an interview like your previous org has used it in the past (even though they haven’t).

Does anyone have any life hacks for this particular situation

Sorry everything I write is the worst kind of venting monologue, something brainworms. Why am I awake at 4am.

I really wish that the desire for socialisation was not a natural part of being human because socialisation causes me brain damage now and has done for a long time. I'm a serial message deleter, I will comb back over messages and conversations and wondering what subtexts and implied meanings I have missed, in what ways I have unknowingly jammed my foot in my mouth. If I'm lucky it becomes obvious days or weeks or months, or even years later, and I get to feel fucking mortified about it. I refuse to keep putting myself through that.

So I wish my brain would stop feeling lonely and shitty and sad and desiring to talk to people about stuff. I barely even have the means now anyway, I have no idea where to find servers or groups or whatever else to talk in, and no I will not try to go out into the real world and talk to people. That seems like a really atrocious idea, I can barely manage speaking any of what pops into my brain irl, it just becomes painful and stilted script following. Plus, where do you even find opportunities like that? Fuck putting myself into new and scary situations that might not even benefit me.

In many ways I actually really regret doing the digging-around about autism. I miss the blissful unawareness I had; I used to just think things were fine, or if they obviously weren't people were just being weird, people were just weird sometimes. That's the correct mindset, because fuck neurotypical social rules obviously. I knew (know? idk) someone who told me just that, but since the NT rules are the assumed ground rules, I always find myself checking for what I missed. Sitting with the vague and unhelpful notion that I said or did something wrong. This is the part of being a person that I despise.

Also using semicolons is cringe, I'm pretty sure I don't even use them right.

This is probably the single most unhinged thing I've ever put on this website, but people have told me not to self censor and delete shit instead of posting it. I'm always losing that battle but I still have to try.

I'm not personally. If an NT person who's into comics says its a special interest Id be like "k". But im interested in takes here.

I call myself “ostensibly cishet” because I look very much like a straight man, but I certainly don’t feel like a man and live in an area where my life would be destroyed if I referred to myself as something else

My use of language in the above sucks, but as a kid, I would always hang out at “the girls table” or in “the girls section” because the guys would always pick on me. It’s made life super difficult because when I meet a friend who is a woman now and ask them to hangout, their assumption is always that I want a partnership.

I literally only have one female friend who isn’t like this. It’s gotta be the fucking patriarchy right

Anyways, it’s so fucking lonely.

Why are apps only for people looking to fuck/get into relationships :/

Never heard of this med before. Research seems to support it working well, but I'm curious if any of you guys are experienced with it

Elliot Sang has been doing a fair bit of neurodiversity stuff lately. Dr. Devon Price features prominently in this one.

WHERE TO GET THE BOOK: http://libgen.is/book/index.php?md5=F6B31A8DAFD6BD39A5986833E66293E6

People have been kind enough to link the audiobook in past posts, so hopefully they'll do that here, too.

In this chapter, Dr. Price goes over the various aspects of what exactly masking is. The various strategies that typically make up the mask, what their purpose is, and some insight on how to examine your own mask and see what it is you've been protecting yourself from. He starts by relaying more of Crystal and Timotheus's experiences, as well as some of his own, and the various things they were protecting themselves from. There's even an exercise you can go through to try and pinpoint the traumas that taught you which parts of yourself were unacceptable to the normies.

He talks about Camouflaging (blending in) and Compensating (covering for a perceived deficiency) and how most masking behaviors fall in one of the two categories. How all-pervasive these adjustments are in the life of a masked Neurodivergent, and how much it deprives us of and limits us.

Then there's discussion of the "being well-behaved" double-bind, where you can't possibly be autistic because they weren't able to penetrate the dense layers of masking that have become so intrinsic to your behavior that you've lost sight of who you really are. There's also discussion of ABA therapy, with fun things like spraying children in the face with water for not making sufficient eye contact, or talking "too much" about their special interest. Punishments for fidgeting, echolalia, compulsive chewing etc. Kids trained to repeat "please" and "thank you" over and over and over again until they reach an acceptable tone, to sit or stand on command while the therapist snaps their fingers at them like a dog. Painful electric shocks administered as "aversives." And of course, training children to exchange hugs and kisses for candy. There's no way that can create some incredibly harmful incentives for socially unsavvy kids!

And of course, this segues to the phenomenon where ASD seems to be primarily defined by caretakers in terms that center how much the patient inconveniences everyone else. DSM be like "the fuck is this guy's problem? what a fucking dork" and how this rather cruel enforcement of social norms is something those who dodge the ABA bullet pick up on naturally. Don't be cringe, or it's acceptable for people to deliberately hurt you. Look at the obviously Autistic guy and obsessively monitor his behaviors so you can not be like him and develop a deep-seated internal hatred of yourself. It's what the normies want.

From there, Dr. Price addresses specific things maskers tend to compensate for with over-correction. There's a handy-dandy chart of the undesirable qualities we wish to avoid being labeled as, and the strategies we use to avoid them.

This is a rather short chapter; roughly the length of the introduction. But there's certain to be a large excess of certifiable literally me moments within, so I like to think Dr. Price is pacing this shit a bit so we don't have to cry our eyes out completely every chapter.

DISCUSSION QUESTIONS:

• Any particularly striking quotes or passages for you?

• Which of these anecdotes hit you the hardest, due to a personal memory?

• Are there any aspects of yourself you realized you were compensating for that never really made themselves clear to you before?

• You doing okay there? If you're a person who needs to read this book, there's probably a lot of really nasty shit rising up in your memory as a result of reading this chapter. People here care about you. The world's not completely cruel and nasty. There's bright spots too.

Next chapter, we start going into the costs of masking. It ain't cheap. But we'll put that aside for next week.

Tag post and my own thoughts to follow, hopefully within the time frame while it's actually still stickied.

EDIT: By the way, if you're having trouble keeping pace, absolutely feel free to discuss prior chapters in the comments. This shit is entirely informal and I'm sticking to a post a week as a personal challenge to demonstrate to my brain that sustained efforts can have an emotional and social payoff.