Autism assessment: question 1
Oct. 4th, 2022 08:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormFirst attempt at question 1 of the autism screening, I don't think I did what they wanted cause there's not much specificity, it's all abstract, but I got something out. PDA is kicking up anyhow.
What they want in the answer
*3-4 memories or examples
*list which parts are relevant
*in the context of my culture, is the example behaviour different as compared to predominant neurotypes
*is the behaviour present across multiple contexts
1) What differences in social interactions do I experience?
Some examples they give: 1a) Do I prefer to interact in social situations with a purpose or a goal vs unstructured activities? 1b) Am I quiet and passive in conversations? Do I dominate conversations and feel a need to share at length? 1c) Do I share belongings, time, and space in relationships? 1d) Can I infer what another person expects in conversation? 1e) Can I assess the other person's motives with whom I am communicating? 1f) In my community, do I know the unspoken rules to follow in various settings such as work, school, home, social, church, etc?
1a) Structured social situations are tricky for me. Like nearly all answers to this, my answer is yes and no.
I don't like structured social situations as a general rule. I cannot tolerate competitive situations such as games, even “casual” card or physical games. I feel terrible if I lose or seem like I’m going to lose, and I’m smug and weird and feel a lot of uncomfortable body sensations if I win. This occurs even if no one is paying attention to who’s winning. Obviously this is very unusual in our hypercompetitive society where people will take sides and use competitive language over nearly anything.
On the other hand some structure can be useful to me. I enjoy taking on a role in social situations, usually I sit in the kitchen at parties and help people get tasty snacks or the drink they’re looking for. When my friends play board games I’ll cook and bring food out and top up drinks. Because I’m viewed as female this both makes me “good at” my gender role and gives me a role that doesn’t involve the competition of a game. It also lets me observe before socializing. I don't often have a lot of consistent company in these roles, so I'll say that's unusual and that most people in dominant society like a more active or foregrounded role.
In a social situation with new people, or people I haven’t socialized with extensively, I will always sit back and very quietly watch how people interact. In this way I learn what’s appropriate in a situation. At work I make plans to go out with another person in my position several times and watch them interacting with the public before I feel like it’s even possible (let alone comfortable) for me to interact with the public in that same role. Structured activity that I can tolerate is useful for providing something for everyone to do while I'm watching, so they don't notice or worry about my lack of interaction at the start. I know this is unusual, since people always remark on how quiet I am in the beginning. I get lots of surprised "wow, you seemed so quiet and now you're so fun" when I start engaging after having observed the rules for awhile.
1b) So following from the above, I'm quiet and passive in unknown or new situations. Once I know the rules of a situation, either through observation or familiarity with similar types of situations, and if and when I feel comfortable with the people involved, I can be pretty gregarious. I don't know whether I dominate conversations at that point or not; I think it depends on the person I'm talking to and their conversational style. I really enjoy overlapping conversational styles but try to dial it back when a conversational partner doesn't do well with interjections. I honestly don't know how this compares with dominant society, I get the sense they also tend to ramp up as they get to know people? But clearly not in the same way that I do, since people seem surprised by the transition.
1c) I prefer having my own home in relationships, and visiting with (multiple) partners in one of our homes, rather than navigating shared space. I like sharing time with people, especially engaging in parallel play, but I'm not often comfortable sharing important objects since my level of care for them is often either much higher or much lower than other people's. The physical setting for my ideal relationship would be a single common/shared room with each partner having a private but connected space for their own kitchen, projects, bathroom, bedroom(s) etc. This is obviously different than the standard nuclear single-partner family.
1d) Social interaction and relationships are a special interest of mine. I’ve done a lot of directed study to understand what people want from interpersonal interactions. I’ve learned to try and assess whether people want validation or whether they want a solution when they share something; I’ve learned that some people just want to talk something through and aren’t looking for input. These are hard-won lessons. When I'm in burnout, or low-energy, I am less able to tell what people want from an interaction. I have extreme difficulty figuring out what a masking autistic adult wants from an interaction. People are not good at knowing what I want from an interaction, autistic or neurotypical, so I'm not sure I consider being inaccurate in this to be atypical.
That said, I don't understand how people in any context fluidly discuss situations where they don't agree, or how people check to be sure they're using the same basic assumptions when they're discussing a topic. My base assumption in a conversation is that my facts and assumptions will not be the same as the other people involved at least some of the time, and so I'll often point out these (often implied) differences as the conversation goes on, in order to either accept them as assumptions or to get in alignment. I'm often viewed as confrontational, disagreeable, aggressive, or defensive when I'm trying to get in alignment and it takes a tremendous amount of extra words, leaving out things that seem important, and emotional reassurance when I'm not talking with someone who already agrees with everything I am saying. I really enjoy when I have differences of opinion with people, I think it's really neat to delve into those differences, to understand the how and why of someone else's thought as compared to mine, but if that's something dominant society every does with each other I have not yet learned how to do it fluently or well. This often makes me feel isolated and shut down, since I have to pretend to think like other people in order to not offend them. I know my tone in particular contributes to this, but I think it's more all-encompassing than that. (I had this written down as "difficulty adjusting for social/emotional receipt of information).
I did a lot of reading on things like nonviolent communication when I was young, trying to figure this stuff out, but even clear statements of fact limited to myself ("I don't believe in God" "I don't understand how they come up with that answer") don't seem to work well so I've more or less given up on that lately, especially in recent burnout.
1e) I generally think I can assess people’s motivations, and I can predict behaviour ok, but my assessments don’t line up with what other people say their motivations are. When I tell people what I think their motivations are, they’re often surprised but think I’m right. So I don't assess people's motivations to be the same as they or a neurotypical society might assess their motivations to be (I couldn't tell you what someone thinks their motivations are). So while I'm not aligned with dominant society on this one I think I'm pretty good at it. Lately I've been burnt out, and just haven't cared enough to direct energy into it, but I always try to hold to the precautionary principle: assume that people are, at least consciously, acting from best intentions and probably just misstepping or having a bad day if they impact me negatively. Most people are not thinking about other people as having a true full internal life, so they don't make decisions on that basis.
1f) Do I know the unspoken rules to follow? Not without study. As mentioned, I observe awhile before I interact and that helps me pick up rules. In many workplaces I've been able to ask for clarification of rules and receive them. I have been having extended difficulty picking up on the unspoken rules at my current workplace because I can't get people to explicate them ("don't flex your hours, it's against the rules. But you can flex them sometimes, just not too much. But you really shouldn't" (spoken) but "don't talk about flexing your hours, and people shouldn't know, but it's ok to hint at it sometimes, but don't talk about it to certain people, and don't really say you do, and don't count on it, and don't do it in a patterned way" (unspoken). In places with a set of explicit spoken rules that contradicts a set of unspoken rules I often feel guilty, I can't settle into my context and interact comfortably, and my moral sense feels abraded so I avoid those kinds of places when I can. I like social situations such as kink events where rules are made explicit, though I need the underlying reasoning behind the rules in order to respect them.
In general rules without good reasons feel like a demand I tend to push back against.
Because I need to intellectually understand the rules of a particular social situation before I can comfortably engage in it, initiating conversations without the correct script for the situation is particularly challenging for me. When someone is already interacting with me I can pick up their expectations on the fly, but approaching someone to initiate a conversation is the time when I have the least information about how the interaction is supposed to flow, so it's the hardest.
There are some very general rules of engagement I work to maintain. At work or during presentations or during important relationship talks I'll make up a short, point-form agenda to keep me on track and will take notes so I can remember what we spoke of (I tend to lose memory in intense or emotional situations). So this is some self-support I've created to maintain the one conversation/one topic unspoken rule.
1g) Finally I have to mention what I believe to be my PDA response. When there is an expectation or pressure of some kind (demand) placed on me to do something, I have a strong internal counter-response which often prevents me from doing that thing, even if it something I would like to do. That can be something as simple as "we agreed to go for a walk, let's go now" which then causes a physical and mental wall to go up against doing that thing. I have many work-arounds; in the case of the walk I might reduce the pressure by saying "Actually, I need to go to the bathroom" and so I'm not actually doing the thing required, but then the bathroom is in the hallway by the shoes so when I come out I can put on my shoes, go outside, and therefore have kind of snuck past my own mind to do the thing without the impossible "having to do something, thinking about having to do it, then doing it" sequence. This especially strongly influences my ability to do very structured activities or to obey any seemingly arbitrary rules. Unspoken rules are especially hard for my demand avoidance, since there is a demand to figure the rule out, a demand to obey it, and a demand to not talk about it all at once -- triply difficult compared to a simple rule that I understand is in place because it has a desirable consequence or outcome. Taking a role is easier, I have guidelines to follow to present my role but I can self-direct within those guidelines, which doesn't trigger my resistance.
I feel the requirement to agree or to fit into a homogenous group to be a demand which I cannot accept easily. Neurotypical or autistic, people seem to like to be with a group of other people who give the illusion of being the same as them, who only present their similar faces, and within such a group I feel trapped, invisible, constrained, and simultaneously like an impostor and angry at the group for eliding the rest of themselves in order to project homogeneity. As such, I do best in explicitly heterogenous groups (so I'll do well in a group that welcomes ldbtq+ people to include a wide range of perspectives and experiences, but not one only for women and nonbinary people, for example).
My demand avoidance is a tremendous tool in my own personal growth, where my own motivations and needs can feel like demands. The demand avoidance gives me energy to look at myself and assess whether I'd like to keep certain thought patterns or whether I will use tools to try and shift them, whether I can find a deeper interpretation of a need and meet it in a different way, etc.
A tremendous amount of my relationship structure comes from avoiding demands; even when someone needs something very reasonable from me like a schedule, when it becomes a true need my avoidance kicks in and I won't do it. Therefore my relationships must feel optional to me, chosen again every day, and separate spaces really help with that. Constant overlapping spaces introduce demands on every moment of my behaviour: to be kind, to be thoughtful, to constrain my actions, to be tidy and not dive into a giant project in the middle of the livingroom, to eat meals at normal times several times a day, etc. With that much demand I get completely shut down and often can't move much or talk or make eye contact with the person doing the (unconscious and reasonable!) demanding. Monogamy is a demand I can't tolerate.
Setting a particular time and date to do something with someone is always a strong demand, and very difficult to follow through on for me. This makes it challenging for me to socialize with people, since the two methods of socializing are either setting a date in advance (which is a demand for me) or spontaneously getting together (which is a last-minute schedule change for me). I have several work-arounds for this, including socializing at a multi-person event held by someone else that I don't need to commit to in advance but can rough in on my calendar and make a choice to attend on the day of; setting a range of dates ("let's see how we're feeling Thursday, and if that doesn't work we'll do Friday") and realistically just scheduling to see individual people once every year or two so they don't come to expect (demand) my presence, and I can manage the amount of energy required to force past my demand avoidance once every couple years usually. Most people seem to be able to schedule frequent, routine social events without too much trouble, so I feel very different in this regard. A recurring weekly commitment is hardest for me, and seems to be easiest for other folks.
Future categories to help me maintain scope: Nonverbal differences; relationship differences; repetitive speech, motor movement, or organization of objects, differences in routine, changes, transitions, questions about special interests, and samefood or same clothes, difference in intensity and scope of interests and perfectionism, sensory hypo or hyper, masking, meltdown shutdown overwhelm
Unrelated/later thoughts:
What is the difference between social differences and relationship differences? Maybe relationships are repeated, patterned social situations with one particular person where social refers to how I interact with the pattern of a group.
Is organizing objects physically in the same conceptual space as making spreadsheets to organize things by their physical or conceptual qualities, such as seeds by planting to harvest date, or roses by colour and height?
I cannot figure out graphic/nontextual UIs to save my life
Is samefood and same clothes in the same conceptual space as other same sensory experiences?
Stimming: dancing, pacing, swinging, running (treadmill) or other heavy muscle use/exercise, singing, repeating words (first syllable, almost like a stutter?)
Rigidity: I do best with forewarning of transitions, eg Josh's "need to stop talking in 5 minutes" on a phone call rather than saying goodbye, react poorly to plans changing even if it's better for me.
I don't like the unknown so I'll do a flyby of an area on google streetview or go to just watch the first time, so I don't need to act/behave in a new situation but can just spend my energy absorbing the new situation, does this count as rigidity/routine? I actually quite enjoy exploring spontaneity but only if there are no required outcomes. Maybe I need one of: a realistic plan, a routine, or control in any situation.
My sensory stuff is proprioception/feeling where my body is in space (low, aided by swinging) and my internal feeling of my body "being ok" (hypersensitive? often feel sick, tired, muscles ache, etc). Also don't process and hear sound at the same time. Scent is hard on my body. Cool/pressure is hard on my body, as is cold which reads as pain, so I stay away from cool fabrics that don't feel "warm" and I try to keep warm. I have synethesia between proprioception and music. Don't do background noise filtration. Touch will often sound like pain.
Support in initiating conversation
Alien/fuck you story
Unicorn from outer space story
What they want in the answer
*3-4 memories or examples
*list which parts are relevant
*in the context of my culture, is the example behaviour different as compared to predominant neurotypes
*is the behaviour present across multiple contexts
1) What differences in social interactions do I experience?
Some examples they give: 1a) Do I prefer to interact in social situations with a purpose or a goal vs unstructured activities? 1b) Am I quiet and passive in conversations? Do I dominate conversations and feel a need to share at length? 1c) Do I share belongings, time, and space in relationships? 1d) Can I infer what another person expects in conversation? 1e) Can I assess the other person's motives with whom I am communicating? 1f) In my community, do I know the unspoken rules to follow in various settings such as work, school, home, social, church, etc?
1a) Structured social situations are tricky for me. Like nearly all answers to this, my answer is yes and no.
I don't like structured social situations as a general rule. I cannot tolerate competitive situations such as games, even “casual” card or physical games. I feel terrible if I lose or seem like I’m going to lose, and I’m smug and weird and feel a lot of uncomfortable body sensations if I win. This occurs even if no one is paying attention to who’s winning. Obviously this is very unusual in our hypercompetitive society where people will take sides and use competitive language over nearly anything.
On the other hand some structure can be useful to me. I enjoy taking on a role in social situations, usually I sit in the kitchen at parties and help people get tasty snacks or the drink they’re looking for. When my friends play board games I’ll cook and bring food out and top up drinks. Because I’m viewed as female this both makes me “good at” my gender role and gives me a role that doesn’t involve the competition of a game. It also lets me observe before socializing. I don't often have a lot of consistent company in these roles, so I'll say that's unusual and that most people in dominant society like a more active or foregrounded role.
In a social situation with new people, or people I haven’t socialized with extensively, I will always sit back and very quietly watch how people interact. In this way I learn what’s appropriate in a situation. At work I make plans to go out with another person in my position several times and watch them interacting with the public before I feel like it’s even possible (let alone comfortable) for me to interact with the public in that same role. Structured activity that I can tolerate is useful for providing something for everyone to do while I'm watching, so they don't notice or worry about my lack of interaction at the start. I know this is unusual, since people always remark on how quiet I am in the beginning. I get lots of surprised "wow, you seemed so quiet and now you're so fun" when I start engaging after having observed the rules for awhile.
1b) So following from the above, I'm quiet and passive in unknown or new situations. Once I know the rules of a situation, either through observation or familiarity with similar types of situations, and if and when I feel comfortable with the people involved, I can be pretty gregarious. I don't know whether I dominate conversations at that point or not; I think it depends on the person I'm talking to and their conversational style. I really enjoy overlapping conversational styles but try to dial it back when a conversational partner doesn't do well with interjections. I honestly don't know how this compares with dominant society, I get the sense they also tend to ramp up as they get to know people? But clearly not in the same way that I do, since people seem surprised by the transition.
1c) I prefer having my own home in relationships, and visiting with (multiple) partners in one of our homes, rather than navigating shared space. I like sharing time with people, especially engaging in parallel play, but I'm not often comfortable sharing important objects since my level of care for them is often either much higher or much lower than other people's. The physical setting for my ideal relationship would be a single common/shared room with each partner having a private but connected space for their own kitchen, projects, bathroom, bedroom(s) etc. This is obviously different than the standard nuclear single-partner family.
1d) Social interaction and relationships are a special interest of mine. I’ve done a lot of directed study to understand what people want from interpersonal interactions. I’ve learned to try and assess whether people want validation or whether they want a solution when they share something; I’ve learned that some people just want to talk something through and aren’t looking for input. These are hard-won lessons. When I'm in burnout, or low-energy, I am less able to tell what people want from an interaction. I have extreme difficulty figuring out what a masking autistic adult wants from an interaction. People are not good at knowing what I want from an interaction, autistic or neurotypical, so I'm not sure I consider being inaccurate in this to be atypical.
That said, I don't understand how people in any context fluidly discuss situations where they don't agree, or how people check to be sure they're using the same basic assumptions when they're discussing a topic. My base assumption in a conversation is that my facts and assumptions will not be the same as the other people involved at least some of the time, and so I'll often point out these (often implied) differences as the conversation goes on, in order to either accept them as assumptions or to get in alignment. I'm often viewed as confrontational, disagreeable, aggressive, or defensive when I'm trying to get in alignment and it takes a tremendous amount of extra words, leaving out things that seem important, and emotional reassurance when I'm not talking with someone who already agrees with everything I am saying. I really enjoy when I have differences of opinion with people, I think it's really neat to delve into those differences, to understand the how and why of someone else's thought as compared to mine, but if that's something dominant society every does with each other I have not yet learned how to do it fluently or well. This often makes me feel isolated and shut down, since I have to pretend to think like other people in order to not offend them. I know my tone in particular contributes to this, but I think it's more all-encompassing than that. (I had this written down as "difficulty adjusting for social/emotional receipt of information).
I did a lot of reading on things like nonviolent communication when I was young, trying to figure this stuff out, but even clear statements of fact limited to myself ("I don't believe in God" "I don't understand how they come up with that answer") don't seem to work well so I've more or less given up on that lately, especially in recent burnout.
1e) I generally think I can assess people’s motivations, and I can predict behaviour ok, but my assessments don’t line up with what other people say their motivations are. When I tell people what I think their motivations are, they’re often surprised but think I’m right. So I don't assess people's motivations to be the same as they or a neurotypical society might assess their motivations to be (I couldn't tell you what someone thinks their motivations are). So while I'm not aligned with dominant society on this one I think I'm pretty good at it. Lately I've been burnt out, and just haven't cared enough to direct energy into it, but I always try to hold to the precautionary principle: assume that people are, at least consciously, acting from best intentions and probably just misstepping or having a bad day if they impact me negatively. Most people are not thinking about other people as having a true full internal life, so they don't make decisions on that basis.
1f) Do I know the unspoken rules to follow? Not without study. As mentioned, I observe awhile before I interact and that helps me pick up rules. In many workplaces I've been able to ask for clarification of rules and receive them. I have been having extended difficulty picking up on the unspoken rules at my current workplace because I can't get people to explicate them ("don't flex your hours, it's against the rules. But you can flex them sometimes, just not too much. But you really shouldn't" (spoken) but "don't talk about flexing your hours, and people shouldn't know, but it's ok to hint at it sometimes, but don't talk about it to certain people, and don't really say you do, and don't count on it, and don't do it in a patterned way" (unspoken). In places with a set of explicit spoken rules that contradicts a set of unspoken rules I often feel guilty, I can't settle into my context and interact comfortably, and my moral sense feels abraded so I avoid those kinds of places when I can. I like social situations such as kink events where rules are made explicit, though I need the underlying reasoning behind the rules in order to respect them.
In general rules without good reasons feel like a demand I tend to push back against.
Because I need to intellectually understand the rules of a particular social situation before I can comfortably engage in it, initiating conversations without the correct script for the situation is particularly challenging for me. When someone is already interacting with me I can pick up their expectations on the fly, but approaching someone to initiate a conversation is the time when I have the least information about how the interaction is supposed to flow, so it's the hardest.
There are some very general rules of engagement I work to maintain. At work or during presentations or during important relationship talks I'll make up a short, point-form agenda to keep me on track and will take notes so I can remember what we spoke of (I tend to lose memory in intense or emotional situations). So this is some self-support I've created to maintain the one conversation/one topic unspoken rule.
1g) Finally I have to mention what I believe to be my PDA response. When there is an expectation or pressure of some kind (demand) placed on me to do something, I have a strong internal counter-response which often prevents me from doing that thing, even if it something I would like to do. That can be something as simple as "we agreed to go for a walk, let's go now" which then causes a physical and mental wall to go up against doing that thing. I have many work-arounds; in the case of the walk I might reduce the pressure by saying "Actually, I need to go to the bathroom" and so I'm not actually doing the thing required, but then the bathroom is in the hallway by the shoes so when I come out I can put on my shoes, go outside, and therefore have kind of snuck past my own mind to do the thing without the impossible "having to do something, thinking about having to do it, then doing it" sequence. This especially strongly influences my ability to do very structured activities or to obey any seemingly arbitrary rules. Unspoken rules are especially hard for my demand avoidance, since there is a demand to figure the rule out, a demand to obey it, and a demand to not talk about it all at once -- triply difficult compared to a simple rule that I understand is in place because it has a desirable consequence or outcome. Taking a role is easier, I have guidelines to follow to present my role but I can self-direct within those guidelines, which doesn't trigger my resistance.
I feel the requirement to agree or to fit into a homogenous group to be a demand which I cannot accept easily. Neurotypical or autistic, people seem to like to be with a group of other people who give the illusion of being the same as them, who only present their similar faces, and within such a group I feel trapped, invisible, constrained, and simultaneously like an impostor and angry at the group for eliding the rest of themselves in order to project homogeneity. As such, I do best in explicitly heterogenous groups (so I'll do well in a group that welcomes ldbtq+ people to include a wide range of perspectives and experiences, but not one only for women and nonbinary people, for example).
My demand avoidance is a tremendous tool in my own personal growth, where my own motivations and needs can feel like demands. The demand avoidance gives me energy to look at myself and assess whether I'd like to keep certain thought patterns or whether I will use tools to try and shift them, whether I can find a deeper interpretation of a need and meet it in a different way, etc.
A tremendous amount of my relationship structure comes from avoiding demands; even when someone needs something very reasonable from me like a schedule, when it becomes a true need my avoidance kicks in and I won't do it. Therefore my relationships must feel optional to me, chosen again every day, and separate spaces really help with that. Constant overlapping spaces introduce demands on every moment of my behaviour: to be kind, to be thoughtful, to constrain my actions, to be tidy and not dive into a giant project in the middle of the livingroom, to eat meals at normal times several times a day, etc. With that much demand I get completely shut down and often can't move much or talk or make eye contact with the person doing the (unconscious and reasonable!) demanding. Monogamy is a demand I can't tolerate.
Setting a particular time and date to do something with someone is always a strong demand, and very difficult to follow through on for me. This makes it challenging for me to socialize with people, since the two methods of socializing are either setting a date in advance (which is a demand for me) or spontaneously getting together (which is a last-minute schedule change for me). I have several work-arounds for this, including socializing at a multi-person event held by someone else that I don't need to commit to in advance but can rough in on my calendar and make a choice to attend on the day of; setting a range of dates ("let's see how we're feeling Thursday, and if that doesn't work we'll do Friday") and realistically just scheduling to see individual people once every year or two so they don't come to expect (demand) my presence, and I can manage the amount of energy required to force past my demand avoidance once every couple years usually. Most people seem to be able to schedule frequent, routine social events without too much trouble, so I feel very different in this regard. A recurring weekly commitment is hardest for me, and seems to be easiest for other folks.
Future categories to help me maintain scope: Nonverbal differences; relationship differences; repetitive speech, motor movement, or organization of objects, differences in routine, changes, transitions, questions about special interests, and samefood or same clothes, difference in intensity and scope of interests and perfectionism, sensory hypo or hyper, masking, meltdown shutdown overwhelm
Unrelated/later thoughts:
What is the difference between social differences and relationship differences? Maybe relationships are repeated, patterned social situations with one particular person where social refers to how I interact with the pattern of a group.
Is organizing objects physically in the same conceptual space as making spreadsheets to organize things by their physical or conceptual qualities, such as seeds by planting to harvest date, or roses by colour and height?
I cannot figure out graphic/nontextual UIs to save my life
Is samefood and same clothes in the same conceptual space as other same sensory experiences?
Stimming: dancing, pacing, swinging, running (treadmill) or other heavy muscle use/exercise, singing, repeating words (first syllable, almost like a stutter?)
Rigidity: I do best with forewarning of transitions, eg Josh's "need to stop talking in 5 minutes" on a phone call rather than saying goodbye, react poorly to plans changing even if it's better for me.
I don't like the unknown so I'll do a flyby of an area on google streetview or go to just watch the first time, so I don't need to act/behave in a new situation but can just spend my energy absorbing the new situation, does this count as rigidity/routine? I actually quite enjoy exploring spontaneity but only if there are no required outcomes. Maybe I need one of: a realistic plan, a routine, or control in any situation.
My sensory stuff is proprioception/feeling where my body is in space (low, aided by swinging) and my internal feeling of my body "being ok" (hypersensitive? often feel sick, tired, muscles ache, etc). Also don't process and hear sound at the same time. Scent is hard on my body. Cool/pressure is hard on my body, as is cold which reads as pain, so I stay away from cool fabrics that don't feel "warm" and I try to keep warm. I have synethesia between proprioception and music. Don't do background noise filtration. Touch will often sound like pain.
Support in initiating conversation
Alien/fuck you story
Unicorn from outer space story
