Secret Life of an Autistic Stripper

In my opinion, people are different. Attributing differences to disorders is not productive, and tends to lead to things such as medication and expensive treatment and therapy when such things are not only unnecessary but absurd and can even be harmful - especially in the longrun. It's reminiscent of various 'treatments' for homosexuality in the earlier years of psychology/psychiatry, which by the way does not mean the 19th century or whatever - this was normal practice as late as the 70s.

Of course the fundamental issue is that the difference between disorder and being different is not well defined. I think a reasonable definition would be a disorder is something that's likely to cause an individual to harm themselves or others in a way completely outside of their control. Schizophrenia is a good example, as are the sort of autistic children you can find that have little to no ability to communicate and might see engaging in 'autistic flapping' in a corner.

Imagine if we treated things like schizophrenia the same way we do autism. We better stick every single religious individual that claims to be able to communicate with or hear the voice of god on antipsychotics and scheduled 'treatment', as they're clearly on the scale. From a secular point of view, that's kind of an amusing idea but only as a form of schadenfreude - it's of course an idiotic idea and notion. They may have eccentric views or behaviors, but that is not schizophrenia. The definition of mental illness should not slide so far as to begin to encompass people that clearly are not ill by any meaningful definition of the word.

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I’ve often wondered if I’m ASD or if I’m just an asshole. I’m horrible with faces/names. I’ve seen people daily for two years, and every day it’s like they’re someone new. But at the end of the day...I just don’t care.

Then there’s the stimulus thing. I’d rather go hungry than go to a crowded grocery store. I can’t stand it. It makes me want to scream. So I usually just order a pizza. Which itself is awkward and I hate it but at least it’s over quickly.

But with technical things I typically pick them up quickly. And I enjoy them so long as their sufficiently challenging. I get bored easily though and prefer to just abandon problems once I’ve solved them or pass the solution on to someone else to implement. So maybe I am just an asshole.

Why not both? If you can identify a "ideal/expected" choice in most situations but purposefully decide to do something that is more "convenient" it certainly merits some internal reflectio. I know for a lot of folks the decision isn't really a decision, so I used quotes. But, like the author, many ASD sufferers build scripts of what the world around them expects and executed those when their real time processing would fail them.

As someone with ADHD, though, the solving something and then dropping it thing is a real problem. Inability to complete a project or task can be hard. I can work a problem until I am satisfied I got to the core of it, got my dopamine hit from that satisfaction. Then I will leave the problem rough around the edges sometimes. Or just abandon it. I don't know how ADHD and ASD intersect though I imagine having both is quite possible?

> Facial expressions, body language, and eye contact are the bones of communication and it’s quite difficult to build and maintain relationships without the ability to read them.

As a blind person this was quite difficult to read (emotionally). I don't have any additional mental needs, but for obvious reasons I'm unable to read other peoples' visual body language, maintain eye contact or gauge their facial expressions. And because I can't do those things, and have never been able to do those things, they don't always come naturally to me either. I have a habbit of appearing to have a very serious expression on my face when actually I feel quite light and carefree, for instance. Maybe great in a poker game, I don't know.

As an example of this, I never learned to nod or shake my head in response to questions until a recent trip to visit my partner in Mexico. Her sister is hearing-impaired, and so gestures like those were often the simplest way to communicate meaning. My partner, who is also blind, has grown up using those gestures because of her sister, but for me it was like learning something new.