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BreathlessJade
Velociraptor
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Joined: 25 Aug 2022
Age: 40
Gender: Male
Posts: 483
Location: Cali

17 Sep 2022, 5:41 pm

what were your experiences masking as you grew up? I'm wondering if my experience lines up with others.

this is about the 5th time i've tried wording this post. I really wish mom had gotten me tested for autism as a kid. the dr who told her ocd, i feel, was incompetent. Of maybe he suggested autism and she thought otherwise. but i grew up forced to stifle my behavior. I always described it as an itch i couldn't scratch. And it was sad because mom gave me the best life she could, but she didn't understand i was ready to jump out of my skin much of that time. Anytime i could get away id play and stim. teen years and adult years, id say, was the hardest because more sophisticated behavior was expected. i was in choirs, groups, at events, played football (had no idea what i was doing). i thought that knot in my gut, that pang, that inner storm was something i may have caused. I hadn't prayed enough, i wasn't dating, i wasn't "trying"
and let me tell you, since i've revisited and finally get to explore being on the spectrum, i stim freely and that knot is massaged daily! sure i have problems, but I can express openly (most of the time). I'm new to this and its really hard to share because it gets gaslighted or shot down a whole lot so it's nice to be able to share very personal things.



jimmy m
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Joined: 30 Jun 2018
Age: 75
Gender: Male
Posts: 8,463
Location: Indiana

17 Sep 2022, 7:16 pm

Welcome to Wrong Planet. Big questions. There are different types or forms of Aspies/Autistic individuals. It is not a one side fits all. Many aspies will try and blend in. This approach can cause stress buildup. In a way they are trying to fit in by repeating the approach of others. I took a different approach. I just stayed me. I am like a small child who never grew up, like Peter Pan. So I just try to be me. When I got into my 20s, I grew a mustache and after that everyone just assumed I was an adult. It was an easy fix for me. I am now 74 years old and that approach still works well for me. But unlike the brains of most NTs, my learning never stopped. I kept evolving and growing. I went through 3 years of terror from my peers during 6-8 grade but then when I entered high school, all that physical and mental attacks melted away. And my life has been good ever since.

I think at this stage in my life, I have finally figured out what caused my condition called Asperger's Syndrome.

The human brain has two sides. One on the left and one on the right. These two sides are nearly identical except on the left side there is some additional connecting tissue. At around the age of 12 these two sides complete their interconnections and we go from children to adults. When I was around 3 years old, I died. A large bull that weighed more than 1000 pounds attacked me. I was less than 20 pounds at the time. It was like being attacked by a dinosaur. But my right side of my brain survived and became the dominant brain rather than my left side. It was a brain flip. I came back from the attack but I was a very different person. This is because the brain on the right side is very different from the left side. For one thing, my right side brain was fearless. But the right side brain is a type of internal brain that functions near the speed of light and it is designed to shed information once every night. This made if difficult to learn. I was a slow reader until I took a class in Speed Reading when I was in my first year of high school. After I learned to read from the inside out, I became very capable of going to college. And life was good.

So as an Aspie, life has been good for me. So I guess my perspective is BE YOURSELF. Don't try to be someone else. I never had much friends but I feel I have had a good life. Sometimes the world needs a few Right hand brains just to keep others aware that there are two sides to everything.


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