Exceeding My Cognitive Capacity for Certain Activities

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I am not saying here that I am working at my cognitive capacity entirely, more that certain activities seem to draw on more energy than I can spare than other activities. The thing is, that most of these activities are leisure activities.

Specifically, until the end of November, I played a lot of WoW - I was working on getting my fourth character up to level 80, and that took a lot of play time until a migraine made it difficult for me to continue, and I didn't have quite the same interest when I got back. I was also doing a lot of heroics every day for points, and of course the imminent launch of Cataclysm made that less appealing. Right around the same time, the noise level here increased significantly, which caused an increasing number of shutdowns due to pure overload. When Cataclysm launched, I also found it difficult to play due do the crowded zones and competition for monsters and quest items, and I ended up quitting after an hour or two feeling overloaded and unable to continue.

For the two months the noise levels remained high, I cut back on my gaming and spent most of that time here instead, since this had forced me to confront again the fact that I am autistic. I also found that playing any video games could push me into overload within a couple of hours, but I assumed it had to do with the noise. I also had an increasing number of shutdowns (I peaked on December 25-27 with six shutdowns over three days, so not as many as some, but more than I was accustomed to).

The noise ended at the end of January, so I've had a month and a half of relative quiet, but the shutdowns continued - I ultimately cut chat out. I know a lot of people online, and I enjoy chat, but I found that the amount of attention some people seemed to expect was really draining. When I stopped chatting entirely, I found I was tying up a lot of energy into that, and in general my shutdowns and even emotional issues (not necessarily meltdowns, but definitely in the direction of meltdowns) cut way back. I have also found that I don't actually have the daily/routine energy to go back to that level of engagement. That I was maintaining this social interaction beyond my ability to maintain social interactions. I don't mean I was using up all of my available energy, but that the energy available for this felt like it was coming out of reserves I really shouldn't burn up all the time.

So today the internet goes out and I have to call tech support. I hate the phone, I always feel like my brain is being scraped by a cheese grater. My name is not easy for people to pronounce, so I have to go through this ritual with them to reassure them that they are pronouncing it to my satisfaction, and they keep forgetting what it is and want me to tell them again. And I have to go over the same information over and over again (address and phone number), and basically I feel like during this process that I am pulling myself to a level of social functioning that is above my default level, and that it's eating up more energy than it really should. In addition, my sister ran through the house screaming because my nephew got accepted into the university he applied to during the call. So when I can finally hang up and return the phone, I feel like I'm metaphorically at the top of a teetering ladder and I need to climb down as fast as possible or I'm going to crash. And my sister insists I have to hear the news I already know, which delays me just long enough that by the time I get back to my room, I do crash and shut down. Not that the conversation itself is something that would normally drain me, but that I need to let go of trying to speak to people and pay attention to them, and I have to hold on for those extra seconds.

And I mean, this is not an unfamiliar feeling for me, it happens a lot, but I'd never really had language for it? But I am kind of nonplussed to feel like my limits here are where they are - I didn't think they were. When I visit my therapist, I don't usually push up against my limits (the one time I did I stopped processing what she was saying and only heard her tone of voice), and I can talk about things I'm interested in (usually myself or autism ), which isn't very draining at all. The one appointment I was drained at, I was not really into the topic.

I don't feel like these limits apply across the board, I am sure there are other things I have more capacity for. I know I actually pushed myself beyond my limits to raid with my WoW guild because I enjoyed it, and felt a bit burned out after every raid (they used voice communication to coordinate, and I probably understood half of what was said at any given raid, as well as sensory issues with watching the fights and the special effects and paying attention to the changing situation, listening to audio cues as well as trying to hear what the raid was saying) whether we had made progress or not, and I know that when I stopped raiding, that while it was a relief, I didn't have all the energy I spent on it suddenly available. So I wonder how many ways even while unemployed and engaged in my hobbies I have either been pushing myself beyond my limits in certain areas. And I don't mean I was raiding intensively - three nights a week for 3.5-4 hours each and I generally played very little outside those windows.

I feel a bit silly talking about leisure eating up energy like this, but the activities all involve social or sensory aspects, and I just wonder if my capacities for these things have really reduced, or if I simply developed a habit of overcommitting to them and finding it hard to get back to that level of involvement once I let go.

One thing that kind of prompted this too was I mentioned in another thread that I feel like being autistic is less obvious to me when I am alone, and what I mean by that is that since being autistic is pretty much normal for me, I have trouble separating a lot of it from the idea of being "normal" where normal is what I perceive as "not autistic," which is my own cognitive barrier. So things that apparently to other people would tell them I am autistic to me makes me question whether I am. Or rather, it did as of maybe a month ago. It's getting increasingly more difficult for me to take my doubts seriously as I have more days like today with the context of knowing that I am autistic, as I explained them away in other ways before. So I would say that it's not that it's less obvious to me when I am alone, but rather I have been oblivious to many of my autistic traits. Like the fact that spending 95+% of my time alone itself is a sign, and finding online asynchronous "socialization" more rewarding than face to face or other real time socialization. Or constantly focusing on my interests.

This has given me a lot to think about and I'm not sure how to answer it yet.
I was going to say that it only takes me minutes to become overloaded by a video game, especially the boss levels on Donkey Kong Country.

I suppose my non-leisure activities are spent while medicated and even some leisure activities are spent with the residue medication. And today I'm hyper so energy really hasn't been a problem.

I don't have a lot of non-leisure responsibilities, but they're generally not overloading or difficult for me. I mean cleaning up after myself, doing my laundry, feeding the cats, doing some of the dishes, preparing food, none of them really overload me or push me to my limits.

Any kind of shopping pushes me to my limit every single time. I can handle a store for an hour or so. I can keep going past that hour but I get worse and worse. And even during that hour things are going downhill (they start the second I enter the store), I can just outwardly hold things together while they do. I guess for a certain value of "holding things together" that includes a roadrage-esque attitude toward other shoppers just for being in the same aisle as me. Maybe "handling" is the wrong word.

It is interesting that playing video games stresses you but simple chores does not. Perhaps you need to take up a hobby that is more tactitle? I took up the classical guitar a few years ago and that acts like "magic" in helping me to stay calm and happy.

With respect to cognetive abilities very specifically I had this presentation given to me by a local psychologist once that explained autism and lack of cognative functioning so perfectly. I wish I could draw it for you. Net is that our brains only have so much RAM (that is the word she used for my purposes since I "get" computers) space for processing real-time happenings. In that space we have to do processe of, ATTENTION (executive functioning processing), Sensory, Recall (IQ) and emotions. In An NT the Map of their processing looks like this..

Attention gets .25
New Sensory gets 1.0
Recall gets 0.1
emotions get 0

In a person with ASD it plays out like this...

Attention gets .5
New Sensory gets 1.5
Recall gets 0.1
emotions get .5

Because we see things in such detail, we have to use more of our congnative RAM for processing and attention. We also are plaugued with anxiety so we have more RAM used up for emotions. The NET result of this natural way of our being is that we push up to the end of our RAM which results in meltdown.

This was a very visusal way for me to understand how important it is that we keep our anxiety levels down. If the anxiety levels are down, I can function pretty "normally" but when they go up, I start to fall apart. For me, the first sign of things breaking down is that I can no longer process things with ease. Visually, I cannot see objects in a room without standing still in that room for some time and audio processing is painful. Once that starts to happen I know it is time for me to back off and relax.

Besides this awareness, I can also attest to the fact that it is more important for me than any of my NT friends to have all the "basics" in order in my life. By that I mean that I must have proper nutrition (I tend towards whole foods), proper exercise and proper rest. If any of these things are off, my anxiety and shut down levels all go up.

It's interesting you mention guitar - I used to play (as a hobby, never performed) and picked it up really fast at the time. Due to various issues (not limited to a jealous ex who wanted to prove I wasn't as smart/talented as she was who sort of lost her temper at me for picking it up so fast, but this did not help) I ended up setting it aside, but I still have said guitar (A G&L Invader - electric, candy apple red, covered in stickers). Given that video games have become so overstimulating, I really do need to do something else that isn't overwhelming, and this is something I do legitimately love. I am not sure what to do about video games (games are my longest-running interest at this point at 30 years or so), but since it seems playing them for maybe 3-4 hours in a week seems my limit now , that leaves a lot of time for other things.

It would be interesting to see that visual representation, but what you describe sounds pretty clear to me, and it makes sense. Emotional processing frequently takes up too much processing for me, to the point that whatever drives said emotions can completely fill my attention until I find some way to deal with it or stop thinking about it. I have in the past had something happen in video games when things got visually intense that my visual processing shut off entirely. This happens in other contexts as well, but it just means I see things without really knowing what they are, but the way it happened, I felt like something in my brain just blew out.

Looking at my history, I think I tend to hit shutdown when it gets to be too much. When I had fast food jobs as a teenager, I took a huge number of bathroom breaks just to get away from everything, and this carried over to my call center job when I was 25. I also get headaches and meltdowns when I don't shutdown. This is is also what happened with every attempt at college, to the point I'd start avoiding classes, which isn't helpful in the least, but I didn't know what was going on and I didn't even think to ask for help/counseling for what was going on.

I haven't reached a point where I have to visually process everything like you describe, but I do have points where it's obvious to me I am doing this to some extent (like that one thread I started a few weeks ago about it, or watching my brother in law play Red Dead Redemption I had to keep processing and reprocessing the scenery to make sense of it while he moved around until I finally got tired of it and got back on my usual forums). And of course, I lose audio coherence as in the raids - I understand less and less of what I hear. I used to fake the boss fights by having read the strategy in advance (although we didn't always use those strategies) and just watch how everything played out and figure out my own part based on what I did understand. One person actually caught on and started sending me text whispers so I'd know what the strategies were right at the start. And it was silly of me to not say so, but I didn't want people to think I wasn't paying attention, etc.

My rest and diet are generally good, and it is probably true I need more exercise.

Thanks.

One thing I didn't mention: I've already gone through all this once before with work and school in 2001-2003, although it was over a longer period of time and with a much more sharply pronounced difference over time than I'm noticing right now, and that I didn't really understand what was going on (not that I really understand now).

Also, while what happened then has turned out to be relatively permanent, I am not sure this is permanent as well. By "not sure" I mean "I hope not."