Autistic women assemble!

[Nepmarthiturn]

...only if and when you're not feeling antisocial and want the entire world to +%$¥ off, or course. 😉😆

A few of us were talking on another thread and thought it would be nice to have a support/ chat thread on here to share interests/ challenges/ parenting issues or whatever we feel like. A little community of autistic women on here that we can dip in and out of but will be supportive and friendly and people who actually get it.

Might also be a nice counterbalance to all of the horrific posts about autism that we find here so regularly!!

P.S. Have deliberately posted this in chat rather than in the ND Mumsnetters topic because it will hopefully reach more people who would like to join in. I didn't even realise that section existed for a long time and often miss threads there as they don't show in active and expect I'm not alone in that. However, in posting this here, we will be relying on the people with obnoxious and ignorant views about autism who so regularly post on Mumsnet, to demonstrate to us their allegedly superior empathy (ha!) and please just leave this thread alone: it's not for you. Many thanks!!

Sorry that is meant to say "expected for you to talk to people you don't know". 🤦🏻‍♀️

Hello! I didn't even realise it was there for ages, then always forgot to check it. I think many others do too, hence often not many replies to threads which is a shame, and deciding to post this in chat in the hope more autistic women would see it! Glad you found us. 😊

NT people are extremely ritualistic.
It makes me laugh when we are talked about as though we're the ones obsessed with that stuff.

Every interaction has complex and often nonsensical rules that 'everyone' somehow just knows and understands.

It's exhausting.

Me too. 😀

*nod with interest

Gah! Obviously too tired to type properly today. Need to stop procrastinating, finish packing and leave.

Hope everyone has a good day!

Yes! That's such a good observation. They have immense numbers of rituals and rules that they can't seem to articulate any rationale for other than "this is what I think should be done" or "this is what everyone does so not doing it is rude" or "we've always done it like this and it will make us uncomfortable if other people don't do the same". No actual, valid reason to impose this stuff on others when it serves no genuine purpose other than showing a willingness and ability to comply with the conventions for which nobody can explain a reason that makes any sense. 🤣

Absolutely.
The two I tend to use as examples are the gift giving ritual and the come in for a cuppa ritual.

Both batcrap crazy and completely unnecessary.

And actually, to expect people to do these things that have no substantive benefit that they can articulate - when they have a condition like autism and doing so will actually cause that person exhaustion, distress, or even eventually burnout or mental health difficulties - shows an immense selfishness and lack of empathy... 🤣🤣🤣

Obviously I comply with things I can see a reason for. I need to work and earn money. I want to spend time with friends and family even though it's tiring (but with gaps in between!), but to constantly force people into overwhelming, awful sensory environments or pointless social interactions "just because it's what you should do" even when you know it causes them distress, is not very compassionate is it? One might say this constitutes sticking very rigidly to rules and lacking the ability to show empathy and compromise. 😆

".....................or I stay longer and then obsess later that I annoyed them"

Yes, yes! This, 100%.

It's awful. I get this all the time. I think I'm doing well and all of a sudden I realise that I've made quite a few mistakes, trying to navigate what people really mean.
And if I tell them, they patronise me.
UGH.

Telephoning people can also get in the bin.

If I can use email to sign legal contracts, there is absolutely no need for anybody to be insisting on speaking to me on the phone. Or video calls. 😒

When I first met a school mum who dropped her son at my house I asked her if she would like to come in and have a coffee.

She said no thanks should get going or something like that.

So I said ok, see you later, bye (or words to that effect) and shut the door.

My husband then gave me this massive talk about how she did want to come in!

Then, I asked, why the fuck did she say no?

I do not have the energy to deal with every interaction resembling bartering in a flea market.

Would you like a drink.

Yes.

Job done.

Hi there and welcome. This is a brilliant thread.

Yes to hyperemesis and yes to weird smell ability- my dh calls it a super power, I'm not sure how super it is to be able to recognise what crisps he had for lunch from 2m away 3 hours later!

Oh yes!

I struggle with conversations (with people I don’t know well), especially in busy places / large gatherings. There are too many conversation strands and I never know which one I should join (and how do you just jump in anyway?) I find a lot of people also terrible at turn taking and they often seem to talk over each other?

I sometimes have a tendency to zone out for a short period (not on purpose), and then I need to get my focus back, but because I’ve missed part of the conversation, my mind starts trying to catch up and work out what’s being talked about and while I’m mentally working through all that, I’m missing more conversation. Vicious cycle!

Whhhhat. I still don't understand.

I meam last night at dinner my 4 year old decide that she wanted to play "yes means no", where we have to say the opposite of what we mean.

So for example she said how much she hates us all. 🤣 I told her I absolutely hate her and her brother more than anyone in tue universe and I asked her please to not eat her food because I really want to throw it in the bin and then we will not watch a film together because we hate movie night.

She and her brother find this game hilarious, as do I, but after about 5 mins we all always agree that it's exhausting and confusing and we will stop now.

How people are expected to effective play "yes means no" 24/7 for up to 100 years I have no idea. 🤣

Sorry for all the typos - as you can see I cannot multitask!!!

Fortunately (?) all three of us are autistic so at least in our house such mental gymnastics are only required for the short duration of the game.

The "quiet game" is my favourite: a competition to see who can be silent the longest. Much less tiring. 🤣

I guess it means we will never eat any food that is off? And I can always tell when a child lies about having brushed their teeth. 🤣 But it does indeed have some very significant downsides. When I was being shown the controls on my new car the first question I asked was where the air circulation button is, to switch to recycling the air already inside, not wanting to repeat the incident where I was stuck behind a bin lorry in a traffic jam and didn't press it fast enough and had to vomit out of the car window with bemused drivers in other cars staring at me.

Telephoning people can also get in the bin

OMG Yes to this.
I always want to correct the grammar of people with whom I am having a telephone conversation. Sometimes I actually do, which doesn't go down well at all.

If I do not understand what someone says to me, or if I get redirected to several different departments of the same company, and the next person doesn't know why I'm calling, I generally end up shouting at them.
DH goes and hides in the kitchen while I'm ranting.

I hate doing it but I don't seem to be able to stop myself.

Oh, and when I get emails which are grammatically incorrect, or misspelled, (looking at you, Femiola from Octopus Energy) I cannot resist the evil temptation to correct them.

I know I shouldn't. I mean, I know that other people do not do this. However, I do not seem able to stop myself.

I sometimes have a tendency to zone out for a short period (not on purpose), and then I need to get my focus back, but because I’ve missed part of the conversation, my mind starts trying to catch up and work out what’s being talked about and while I’m mentally working through all that, I’m missing more conversation. Vicious cycle!

This is exactly my experience too. It's like when a computer freezes and crashes from trying to run too many applications at once. And by the time your brain reboots, the conversation has moved on, you don't know what's being discussed, and if you're very unlucky everyone is looking at you because someone has asked you a question and they're all waiting for you to speak. 😩😩

This is the worst. Why on Earth would it be efficient for them for you to have to repeat the same thing 5 times to 5 different people, then them not understand properly anyway and usually make notes on the account that are wrong, then resulting in the need for yet more phone calls.... it's Kafkaesque. What on Earth is wrong with an email, where everything is expressed clearly in writing?

From what I've heard NT people also hate working in call centres, so you'd think they'd also prefer to spend their time responding to emails so problems can be resolved clearly and there is a paper trail so no disputes on what is said or agreed.

It may well be designed this way because such a large proportion of the population cannot communicate properly in writing, so we all suffer for that. 😒 I have started recently trying to exert boundaries on this, telling organisations I am autistic and do not speak on the phone so you'll need to email or write to me, and it does seem to work in most cases. But ironically - when it should be far more efficient - often takes longer because most of them don't have proper systems in place to do it and don't respond and then you have to chase them up. And remember to do that. 😡

Or, I send an email with say 4 clear bullet points, and they only respond to one or two. 🙄

.........or fail to respond at all.