AxelHeyst wrote: ↑Sat Jun 01, 2024 10:15 am
- I'm having a lot of "oh, most people don't do that too?" moments when coming across descriptions of atypical inner experiences (e.g. using the pfc to run every aspect of social interaction). I'm realizing that there are NT inner experiences that I simply don't understand.
This blew my mind when I discovered MBTI in my early twenties. Similar reaction: "oh, most people don't actually have a self-consistent logical reason for their choices as derived from fundamental axioms?" My simple theory of mind was that everybody thought in a self-consistent logical way (Ti) and the only difference was that some humans (like me
) were good at it (Te) and most were bad. Expanding my theory of mind, it was astounding to learn that many people make choices based almost exclusively on how they feel (Fi) or as a further complication based on how other people feel (Fe). Another insight was that not everybody was interested in understanding many things (Ne) or creating a mental system of the world (Ni). No, most people were focused on experiencing various sensations like good food or seeing exciting sports games (Se) and then talking about them later (Si) with other people.
It was basically like growing up thinking that religion was just a bunch of weird rituals in church and then realizing that most people sincerely believe in the reality of a divine all powerful being. IOW, there were different cognitive "takes" on the same cultural behavior!
AxelHeyst wrote: ↑Sat Jun 01, 2024 10:15 am
- I'm beginning to notice a lot of things I do that are on various lists of atypical traits, that I've just done for so long that I don't notice (e.g. a significant portion of my barely-conscious thoughtstream throughout the day is rehearsing/scripting conversations with particular emphasis on delivery and tone. It's so normal for me that it's like wallpaper inside my head, I don't even notice it.)
Seeing these different cognitive takes is less obvious if you're not fraternizing on a deep level with other people. (IIRC, we both grew up in the sticks with little diversity in terms of social contact.) For example, small talk doesn't really reveal much about how a person really thinks. So if you're a nerd hanging out with other nerds, you're never really exposed to non-nerd mental patterns; or when you are, they're superficial small-talk/social niceties. This is why these insights [into other humans] can take a long time to manifest. I'd even say that for the majority of people, the insight never happens. As such, humans tend to divide everybody into two categories: "Normal like me/us" and "Weird like them".
AxelHeyst wrote: ↑Sat Jun 01, 2024 10:15 am
- I'm beginning to notice a lot of things I do that are on various lists of atypical traits, that I've just done for so long that I don't notice (e.g. a significant portion of my barely-conscious thoughtstream throughout the day is rehearsing/scripting conversations with particular emphasis on delivery and tone. It's so normal for me that it's like wallpaper inside my head, I don't even notice it.)
FWIW, I strategize and plan out conversations too---just like I plan out everything. You're actually one step ahead of me in that you care about delivery and tone. I suppose I do too, but I've felt rather dirty/manipulative the few times I've played around with it and seen it working on others. A lot of people are oblivious to it though as they do it automatically via mirror-neurons. "Monkey see sad face. Monkey become sad and put on own sad face." Or they've simply been taught the various "
games people play" and proceed to repeat them because "that's how you're supposed to behave" (Si). For example, when angry, a stereotypical southern European will raise their voice and act hot-headed, whereas a sterotypical northern European will lower their voice and act icy. That's just what people do. Which is right? Depends on the situation. If an angry northerner meets and angry southerner, the former will think the latter lacks self-control and the latter will think the former is not really angry.
One thing that distinguishes humans from all other animals is the human ability to intellectualize. Some humans do this to a greater degree than others and some retain the emotional parts, which we share with all mammals, to a greater degree than others. Mammals on the other hand is just emotions all the way. Mammals other than humans demonstrate no capacity for intellectualizing and symbolic representation. Make an XY diagram of thinking and feeling. What matters here is the strength/use of either one AND the ratio being their preferred use.
AxelHeyst wrote: ↑Sat Jun 01, 2024 10:15 am
- At first take I thought my sensory system didn't match a lot of the descriptions I was reading about for ND people. And then I noticed myself saying "well, except for X, Y, and Z," and also to Scott's (I think?) point, if you look at my daily environment it's just about perfect for someone with atypical sensory wiring. Coincidence? I'm not sure. I share <5% of my meals with other humans partly because the sound of other humans chewing makes me want to rip my skin off. There are no barking dogs within 1.5miles of here. A significant portion of my tshirts don't have tags in them or have the collars entirely cut off, and when I don't need to wear shirts I don't. I eat the same thing every day. I haven't experienced loneliness since my 20's, which is a longer story. I also see signs of what might be hyposensitivity in a couple areas(??), e.g. preferring wall-of-noise metal or edm to drown out 'light' noises in environment.
- At first take I thought my sensory system didn't match a lot of the descriptions I was reading about for ND people. And then I noticed myself saying "well, except for X, Y, and Z," and also to Scott's (I think?) point, if you look at my daily environment it's just about perfect for someone with atypical sensory wiring. Coincidence? I'm not sure. I share <5% of my meals with other humans partly because the sound of other humans chewing makes me want to rip my skin off. There are no barking dogs within 1.5miles of here. A significant portion of my tshirts don't have tags in them or have the collars entirely cut off, and when I don't need to wear shirts I don't. I eat the same thing every day. I haven't experienced loneliness since my 20's, which is a longer story. I also see signs of what might be hyposensitivity in a couple areas(??), e.g. preferring wall-of-noise metal or edm to drown out 'light' noises in environment.
I see sensory-overload as biggest counter-indicator between autism and "galaxy brain" intellectuals. Autists struggle with sensory overload. At any one point we have thousands of inputs coming into the brain---how the fabric feels, how the tag is scratching our neck, the four voices currently audible in the background, the three powertools, the 60Hz hum from the electricity,... Non-autists don't even notice these things. Indeed some people are so out of touch with their sensory inputs (internal and external) that they require "grounding exercises", for example, by concentrating on their breathing. Autistic people are too much in touch so it becomes overwhelming. Coping mechanisms thus include behavior like stimming (tapping a finger to increase focus), shutting out the world with LOUD music, closing the eyes and going lalala to override the sensory input. Also included would be picking very narrow focus, such as memorizing the complete train departure schedule in order to take the train (because once one has started one must finish!). It's not like knowing all the train schedules is super-interesting. Their autistic brain just doesn't know when to stop or sort the information inflow according to relevance.
The "galaxy brain" is the complete opposite. It is actually very good---better than the typical human---at picking through information with the goal of generalizing and abstracting. In some sense, it is almost too good [for normal conversation]. What is an interesting story to a normal human ("That cup game in 2017 when Messi scored that goal after ...") becomes an uninteresting ("some soccer player scored a goal") in the galaxy brain. Since most information offers nothing new in terms of abstraction-potential, the intellectual is on a never ending quest for ever more information that could potentially be turned into ideas. If information-gathering energy is limited (introverts), the intellectual becomes rather sensitive to the signal/noise ratio ("there are no new ideas in this conversation, I'm checking out!"), like is this conversation worth it? Conversely, if the information-gathering energy is unlimited (extroverts), every conversation is worth it.
It may be worthwhile to split out the RAADS-R. Here's mine: Language 3 + Social relatedness 66 + Sensory/motor 3 + Circumscribed interests 9 = 81. The total score is almost as high as yours, but note how almost all the weight happens along one dimension. I'm simply not all that into interacting with the majority of humans (signal/noise). However, from your descriptions, I'm betting that your weights are different.
AxelHeyst wrote: ↑Sat Jun 01, 2024 10:15 am
- The grief/relief experience of this process is real.*
It's nice to be seen.
AxelHeyst wrote: ↑Sat Jun 01, 2024 10:15 am
- So far my experience with becoming aware of masking, on top of the expected 'who tf am I even?' is that of a heightened sense of agency. 100% demasking strikes me as a peculiarly terrible idea, but being in conscious control of when, how, and to what degree I mask seems like a great idea. I've started being able to play with this in conversations. Someone will say something, and I'll look up the range of appropriate responses in my internal database as per usual, and then (the new thing) I'll notice myself retrieving those entries, and I'll think, "but am I? do I actually feel that way or think that thing? Is making X facial expression in alignment with how I actually think/feel about what they just said?" and I'll make a decision to either go ahead with the retrieved response or not. Deadpanning or simply not responding to things that I truly have no real response to feels amazing, but also delivering the 'acceptable' response by conscious choice feels fine.
[edit:moved paragraph]
The meat of this process so far is unlocking a different layer of internalized shame and 'I should/not" responses. I'm realizing how far back the process of learning from my environment that my 'real' responses are not acceptable goes, to the point that learning to navigate the world really just boils down to learning the script/rtfm and follow the instructions. [Side note: I binged the scyfy show Alien a few months ago and it is about the neurodivergent experience of the world, duh. It resonated hard with me.] I'm seeing this in a lot of small subtle ways.
Did you read the Cook-Greuter pdf yet? This very much sounds like the concerns of the individualist/pluralist-stage in which the person begins to question who they really are vis-a-vis to which degree they've just been getting good a/the role according to the expectations or what worked in their environment. The break from optimizing behavior for the external world and bringing it into alignment with a [to the person] previously unconscious internal world is the transition from being really good at conventional thinking and discovering post-conventional thinking, which is more subjective in nature.
AxelHeyst wrote: ↑Sat Jun 01, 2024 10:15 am
- I was reading about how a lot of autistic people don't leave the house very often, <1/wk, and I went "whoa, really, wtf, I could never.... oh wait.
" Again, my chosen environment seems to be designed to suit what apparently are my preferences, which if I lived in a different environment would seem abnormal. Someone in a city or suburbia who leaves the house <1/fortnight is a shut-in. Someone who lives where I do and goes to town for a resupply ~1/mo is just living his best life, #offgrid edition. This whole "environment or wiring?" question is a very entangled chicken-or-egg inquiry with me.
- I'm now questioning how much of my experiences of the world are "fine", and how much of them are just a level of pain I've always assumed is normal.
Well, according to the adaptive theory of social psychology, "pain" comes about when the individual doesn't fit into the culture they're placed. The typical response is treat the individual because thinking that the cultural norms are somehow sick is simply inconceivable. (Not much grant money in that). However, there's a Danish idiom that says "I de gales dal er det de gale der er de normale" (it has rhyme and rhythm), that is, "In the valley of the insane, the insane ones are the sane ones" (shite translation). This suggests that one should at least consider the possibility that one is sane but living in an insane environment. IOW, insofar that the mismatch forces either the individual or the culture to be sick, maybe it's the culture!? Note how mental problems in our culture seems to be trending upwards as we get more and more productive and affluent? Why is that? Is our culture, perhaps, insane?
[Mental] pain is obviously not great, but there is a choice between treating the individual or changing the individual environment if not the cultural environment. I chose to change and build my own environment. This is a big part of what freedom-to is about. Remember Plato's Cave. Not everybody is a good fit for being chained and talking about that one time that famous shadow on the wall scored some soccer goal... of it you want to be advanced about it, put on an "excited face", while retelling the story as you're having a socially-approved beer.
