To ask what your neurotypical view is… What is normal?!

We all a little bit weird and different to each other rather than different from each other

if you have mental capacity, praise the Lord and run with it
any socialising - do it as it suits you best

I think most humans struggle to one extent or another with the complexities of social behaviour in our modern world, and this is made a lot worse by technology and social media. The socially confident, utterly competent, easy personality with a level head and a calm approach who makes friends easily and is never anxious doesn’t exist, or is very rare imo. I think the massive increase in ND diagnoses just points to the fact we are all ND to some degree and we are living in times and societies completely unsuitable for the human brain and almost all people’s personalities to cope with.

You couldn’t be more wrong. I am NT and have been completely ‘disabled’ by those things. At times I have struggled to leave the house, I had months of work and dropped out of my university degree.

I would never tell an ND person what they should think/feel or how they experience life, so I would appreciate it if you didn’t do that to NT people such as myself.

What the OP means is there's a constant voice in her head with different thoughts like an ongoing narration or conversation 24/7. Which NT people don't have

^

😂

I'm as 'NT' as they come, and yes, there's a 24/7 narration

No silence....because we're alive

I am NT with a ND daughter and DH. They are very loved and we rub along well.

The closest I can describe it is just that I kind of bosh my way through life. Phone rings, pick it up. Bit stinky? Have a shower, who cares if you had one earlier. See someone I wasn't expecting to see and CBA to talk to? Tell a white lie about an appointment. Don't like the look of a food? Just eat the other stuff on the plate. Forgotten to prep for a meeting? Either wing it, or do a quick skim read before going in. Car accident? Well these are the logical steps, what a faff but I'll sort it.

Life just really isn't that hard for me but for them, it really really is. One wobble and the whole house of cards is at risk of tumbling down. It's like they can't deviate from the expected very easily, won't fib or fudge to make life easier and need a level of predictability that I just would find stifling.

I think this thread is at risk of just saying ND = introvert, which isn't the case at all. I do happen to be an extrovert, but my DD3 is an introverted NT person who is drained by people and has a rich inner world, but she is, like me, one of life's "boshers" 😀

I think , normal is different for all of us
No two people are the same regardless of any diagnosis
You can have siblings in a family who are completely different,same upbringing but different personalities,
It's a three year wait minimum on NHS for an autism assessment as an adult,and there's no help after receiving a diagnosis
But you do get peace of mind and if you read some books on autism,you get a bit of understanding
I have a diagnosis of autism that I received after my children were diagnosed.
I can predict a bit now ,what I'm going to find difficult and plan for it ,or avoid it .
I can understand how I've ended up in certain situations and why I acted as I did which lead to where I am today.
But I've not changed as a person,having a diagnosis
I'm still struggling with my moods ,all the things I've spent my life finding difficult are still there ,and then throw menopause in to the mix and it's a volcano.
It definitely didn't change my life , having a diagnosis..for the 3 years waiting for assessment it's all I thought about ..would I get a diagnosis or would I not ..
Then when it was a yes ,I've barely given it a thought since .

I would think entering an unknown space alone is less comfortable than entering with friends or entering a well-known space alone for everyone. I wouldn’t think that’s a NT/ND difference necessarily.
I do exactly the same as you with phone calls because I can’t hear 100%. There are many other challenges with the phone besides being NT.

Going somewhere new/entering a room/bar/restaurant on my own.

Not my favourite but I've got better as it as I got older and now I hardly think about it whereas I used to really stress about it

Making a phone call (I have to plan it, it’s stressful. If unexpected I can’t do it. I can answer a call much better

I have to pretend I'm not making the phonecall then sneak up on the task like a ninja. It was never a problem for work but I've put off calling my daughter's orthodontist for over a week.

Understanding social niceties/manners/how to begin convos, lots around this.
Sometimes I find beginning conversation harder than others. I think I can be overly polite/formal rather than blunt as I'm never sure if someone can take a jokey, more casual approach. As I get older I realise I'm old enough to get away with it more now.
I used to hate the niceties of work phonecalls. "How are you?" "Fine, how are you" and just think get to the point please.

Have a low tolerance for liars
I am a good pattern matcher so good at spotting patterns in people's behaviour. It's not so much liars that I struggle with but inauthenticity and inconsistency and incongruency.

. Understanding text messages.
I think it's quite normal that people take shortcuts in communication that makes it not always clear

Moods. I can really lose my temper.
I handle my emotions well. Too well. Sometimes a more immediate 'I'm not going to accept that' response is more appropriate.

No idea where I fall on the spectrum.

@2024namechanger I don't think you can point at any one thing and say - I'm NT or I'm ND. Nor do I think that if someone finds something difficult/impossible/ hard to understand or do it must be because they have ASD. Life IS hard sometimes and we are not all the same in how we deal with things.

Even those who are NT will be different to each other. Some will be outgoing, some will be introverts. Some will be rude and noisy, others quiet. The effects of their environment when they are growing up can impact hugely too. But ASD is how your brain is wired ( for want of a better way of putting it), so not caused by your environment

I see nothing in what you said, that screams ASD to me. It seems normal to me anyway. I can identify all those things you have said, in me, SOME of the time - but that doesn't mean I never react to things in other ways too.

I have thought about it, yes, because I have a grandson who was clearly Autistic from a very young age and was diagnosed at age 3. But I believe I am NT - and really, what does it matter ( for me)? I had a successful career, have a lovely husband, brought up two children ( some of it on my own), am now retired and have plenty of interests to keep me busy.

It worries me so much, as a PP said upthread, that being a human being is now pathologised and whoever we are as people, if things aren't perfect in our lives, there must be something wrong with the individual person, and we need to stick a label on them, instead of trying to fix the ( very imperfect and unequal) world we live in

So are you saying all introverted people who aren’t social are ND?

I've always assumed I'm NT, I've never felt the need for assessment so presumably I'm right. There's such a wide range of ND, someone on MN said if you know one person with Autism, then you know one person with Autism- it's not a one size fits all and being NT is the same. I love day trips and lunches with friends but I wouldn't want to holiday with them - I'm happy at home with my DP and drunken hen nights are my idea of Hell.
The only real example I can offer you Op - someone at work with ASD, every day he'd stop and have a chat but he seemed to be almost following a script, I knew what he'd say before he said it, and I was polite, but puzzled. When I left work he came to say goodbye and said he'd seen me as a friend, which I found surprising and touching. Maybe that's the difference, I didn't understand that what I considered a casual chat was more to him?

Indeed, there is much literature and art on just how difficult being human is.

Truer words were never spoken. A lot of us women in or post menopause fantasise about living alone. A lot of us get angry. We are not necessarily ND.

@Plastictrees

Well said 👏

Social anxiety used to disable me, actually. When I was in my early twenties, I barely spoke to anyone except at work. I was scared of many things including public speaking, speaking to strangers, walking into a party alone... so many things.

Let's just say that life taught me a few lessons and I had no choice but to learn how to do all of these things. As pp said, sometimes we learn these skills over time and with practice. I still don't like talking on the phone, but that I think is not a sign of being NT, but simply a thing now.

Life is hard. Labelling everyone makes it harder.

Indeed. I am NT. But I have constant internal narration/conversation to the extent it can stop me from sleeping.

The obsession with labelling and pathologising behaviours and experiences is too much.

These things aren’t always easy for NT people. My brother close in age is dyslexic and I used to help a lot with his schoolwork and essays. I realised one day that he thought this was easy for me. It wasn’t - I still had to put in a lot of thought and effort (on top of my own work) and found it generally exhausting. It wasn’t easy for me, it was just easier.

I find socialising and networking draining and need time alone to recharge. I think this makes me an introvert. That said I don’t struggle with ‘reading’ people. That does seem to come naturally so maybe that is easy for me. I manage people at work and several have talked about being ND and how I can support them. They will tell me as though it’s a big reveal but to be honest I’ve never been particularly surprised (I do appreciate it’s hard to tell your manager I’m not criticising that). Was blindsided when my sister told me she had an autism diagnosis, though.

OP, I can relate to much of what you say - you could be describing me, in fact. To me, it all sounds perfectly normal. I've never been diagnosed as ND, and don't regard myself as such. I hate labels. I am definitely an introvert though, so I wonder if a lot of it is just down to different personality types, rather than being either NT or ND. I don't think anything you've done will have affected whether or not your daughter is diagnosed with autism.

Don’t they?

This and comments from @Lentilweaver and @FastFood tell you a lot about the NT perspective.

ie they don't experience any of the things the OP mentions to a degree that it disables them

I have no idea whether I’m NT or ND - not a thing when I was young enough for anyone to be interested. I hate social occasions, have never had many friends, was always the one ‘in the kitchen at parties’, had difficulty understanding social/work structures and hierarchies. Spent all my working life working with people, and was fine in uniform, but not when I was ‘me’. I don’t like phoning people. I’m very self conscious and don’t like getting up in front of people. I need time alone to wind down. I have the radio on when I’m going to sleep to block out the intrusive thoughts and constant going over things I have got wrong throughout my life. I do however manage life ok and have worked since I left school, married, had a family, seem largely to get on with people, feel relatively normal. I think I’m an introvert with social anxiety and an inferiority complex

I have ADHD and honestly I find that this happens a lot on social media relating to ADHD/ASD - there are memes or jokes or whatever suggesting that the ADHD/ASD person has struggles which are entirely unique and for NT people that thing is perfectly easy and natural and they just breeze through life and everything happens perfectly around them.

It is a bit of a bugbear honestly - it squashes something complex into something ridiculously oversimplified, it encourages in-group vs out-group thinking, and discourages empathy. The fact is whatever it is - social skills or organisation or whatever, everyone has to learn it and everyone has a different starting point. ASD and ADHD aren't the only possible thing to affect those, they are just one factor which makes it especially difficult (so much so both things factor into the major symptoms).

I don't mind it when it's clearly a joke but the problem is that the jokes get repeated so often that it seems to give the impression to some people that being NT is literally being a superhuman, and if you struggle with organisation ever then you must be ADHD.

I am not aiming this at OP but at some of the responses. I can't really help with the above question, and think it's interesting to discuss the real lived experiences people have.

I don't like a doing lot of the things you struggle with OP, but as far as I know (or care) I am NT. What does NT really even mean anyway? Unless a person is obviously ND by their behaviours then which of the rest of us can say we are definitely ND or ND - and does it even matter anyway unless we are trying to access some kind of relevant healthcare or support?

I’m recently diagnosed autistic. I can relate to some of what you say but not others and I think some is just down to personality rather than ND. The thing that stuck out to me though is you teaching your dd to fit in (mask). My dd has just started reception and I find myself doing this a lot. I’ll tell her how she should respond to situations, give her different scenarios and tell her what to say. It’s not that she herself has show any issues with social interactions, it’s just I somehow assume she does as I didn’t realise my experiences weren’t normal. I have to try really hard to stop myself doing this.

This.