This could be in ADHD Memes, too. Or if there were a “my version of relaxing is doing things but I don’t want to get interrupted during my relax time” community, if one existed.
Straight up. I recently had to get my car serviced for a recall, and was told I’d be contacted when the parts came in. Fast forward a month, and I had to call them up because I hadn’t been called or anything. Turns out, the parts were already in and they just forgot about me. I was really annoyed about that, not because of the time waiting, but rather because I just hadn’t been told what was happening
Similarly, when I took my car in, I just told them I’d be hanging around the area. They took this as “needs to be done asap”, when I would literally be fine if the process took 8 hours. I’ve got my steam deck, I’m good
Sometimes neurotypicals assume you’re being needy when all you want is an accurate time frame
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This is why Medical clinics really need to adopt the automatic call system already that rings your cel phone for when your appointment draws near and actually gives you a number of how many people are ahead of you.
Like am I a coffee away from my appointment or can I go get a massage
I’ve adopted “should I do something else and come back?” as a less-affronting way to ask this question. It’s not perfect, but it usually gets me decent results.
Absolutely
And I love that a few people have learned this about me.
One even once told me “Long enough for your earbuds.” It was the best answer I’d ever gotten to that question.That person is a gentleman and a hero.
My wife did not understand at all. Still insists that I’m just impatient.
This has happened to me in the worst possible way not long ago:
I got involved in a car crash (ugly thing, a truck hit me while I was in my car stopped in a traffic jam and the asshole was looking at his phone so he didn’t see the cars in front of him) and ended in the hospital.
On thursday morning, they told me that they would send me to OR to fix my broken vertebra at 16.00. At 20.00 I was still waiting and nobody had given me a reason. At 21.00 they finally decided (after I got angry) to tell me that I wasn’t going to OR due to an unexpected emergency. I’d be having the surgery instead early in the next morning.
At 11.00 of that next day I snapped because I was still waiting without any information at all and couldn’t hold it anymore so I started yelling. They knew (I told them) that I was autistic. They decided to ignore my constant request for even the slightest info to make the wait more bearable, I ended up yelling and I was told that I was acting childish.
I went to OR at 14.00 that day.
Worst time ever I’ve spent in a hospital.
Sadly, this is consistent with my experience with hospitals. The schedules are constantly in flux and no one bothers to tell the patients/advocates. It really sucks and seems unnecessary. Sorry that happened to you.
Thats the worst thing! If they just said THAT then we have the data to process!
Instead we’re left with the impression there is a static arranged schedule in place but it’s being withheld from us
What country? I experienced something similar, with the Danish healthcare system. I had to get my arm operated on, so I was scheduled to being operated on at 8 am, but due to some accidents happening on that day, the people from the accidents got moved ahead of me, as their lives were in danger. So I got operated on at 5 pm. But my case was nowhere near as frustrating as what yours sound like - the hospital personnel communicated transparently about my deprioritization to me, and I only had to wait 7 more hours than expected.
Italy. I understand about deprioritization, I really do. I don’t understand the lack of information.
Nope, that’s just awful with the lack of communication
that’s got nothing to do with being autistic; that’s just insanely rude!
yelling is absolutely warranted in that situation.
seriously fuck those people.
you’re already in a state of stress due to having major surgery ahead of you. unnecessarily withholding information, for absolutely no reason, would stress out anyone, regardless of wether they’re neurotypical or not.
fuck that bullshit.
I mean this is basically the exact same for neuro typical people, the only difference is the ability to understand the social cues.
Since when has ‘how long will it take’ been considered rude?
It depends on who you ask. There are definitely people who hear it as “this is super slow and you should be faster.”
In my experience people receive it better when I preface the “How long” with a “Just curious,” or some such thereof. Results may vary.
I go with “Do you know roughly how long this will take? 5m, half hour, hour, three hours?”
The answer will be either higher or lower end answer so you can get a ballpark estimate.
The trick is to make up a deadline. "I need to get home to swap the Dilithium crystal in my lizard tank, do you think this will take longer than an hour?
Then you get a “Not long.”
Sir I must insist on a standardized measurement scale.
I would interpret “not long” as a bad faith answer and become more aggressive.
What if I don’t know how long it will take? Trying to figure that out is a quite a bit for me, I have to stop and process what I already completed, what’s going on now, and what is left to do. A lot of these commenters are speaking as if the knowledge is being withheld from them, not as though they’re making an inquiry of someone who is already working on getting the job done and didn’t start with some previously defined end-time that they’re winding down to.
You could give an upper bound, or even just say you don’t know.
Go full robot: “Estimated timescale for the completion of this task?”. I doubt they’ll get annoyed at that, might just find it funny, or weird. no, definitely wierd.
I hate being in waiting mode (unless I’m at the location I must wait at) and it’s just hhh especially in video games. I could be doing other quests but no. I’m waiting for three other people to get here because they don’t give a fuck ten people are waiting on them.
Pretty much every post on here: Thing that everyone thinks or does, perfectly normal behavior.
And yet, people who are autistic are castigated for it.
A lot of this one comes down to how you ask. This question is not a problem for most people, but if you ask in a tone of voice that sounds like you are asking because you are impatient, people will think you are annoying.
if you ask in a tone of voice that sounds like you are asking because you are impatient
I don’t want to hear this crap in an autism community, and I doubt I’m alone in feeling that way.
We are well aware that our “tones” are misinterpreted. We frequently either cannot recognize or regulate our tones of voice. For some of us, this lifelong issue has hurt us to the point of trauma. I can still hear my mom, denying me because, “It’s not what you say, it’s how you say it,” while she’s still unwilling to admit or unaware of the fact that sometimes, changing my tone is an impossible task.
I don’t want to be upset, but this is absolutely a sore spot for me. I’d be shocked if I were the only one here that gets triggered by this ableist talk.
thank you. I was having that friggin’ moment where you’re not sure if someone’s back chatting you or you’re just ASD skating past some hidden meaning in their comments - the whole damned thread was “everyone has this, you’re not special” then why are we the ones getting pathologised for it???
It especially sucks when there’s only a particular energy range in which you can control your tone and volume. If I’m too tired, distracted, or stressed, people think I’m upset at them. If I’m excited (usually when around a friend I’m in-tune with), I become too loud. I often don’t notice these changes. When I’m excited, I appreciate someone politely informing me that I’m being too loud. But when I’m stressed, I don’t have the mental bandwith to modulate my tone. Harping on me about it, or holding it against me, is only going to escalate the issue.
I’ve learned to outright tell people, “Don’t worry, I’m not upset at you. I’m just stressed.”
Unfortunately, when I’m past my limit and I desperately need help, I can barely communicate at all. This came up a few months ago at a new job. I was having a shut down and barely squeaked out an, “I need help” while looking at two managers. They looked me in the eye, then completely ignored me. After that I took heavy breaths to try to regulate myself. Unfortunately, the managers mistook my behavior for impatience (they even called my breathing “huffy”), and shortly after they wrote me up for “unprofessionalism.”
I was so upset, when I went home I wrote my perspective of the situation. I even included a comic that illustrated what it’s like in my brain when I get overwhelmed. I presented it to the top management in my center in an emotional roller coaster of an essay, where I explained that I can’t always control my tone, and how I can lose the ability to speak if the stress gets too high. Thank goodness, they were receptive!
Later that same week, we had a meeting with the entire center. The topic was “Professionalism.” At first, my heart sank, expecting to feel horrible all over again.
But to my incredible relief, “helping a teammate who’s struggling” was highlighted as a core pillar of “professionalism.” I was shocked to be vindicated. I’ve never had someone stick up for me like that, it’s still kind of hard for me to believe it happened.
Ugh I feel you. When I hit the limit my vocal subprocessor just shuts right the fuck down. And of course especially in moments in high emotion everyone is TALK TO ME and it’s like I literally friggin’ can’t and your insistence is NOT HELPING.
That workplace is a helluva keeper. And they’re right, professionalism is leaving your own biases at the door, which includes neurotypical ones. It’s just rare to see it actually applied!
And of course especially in moments in high emotion everyone is TALK TO ME
Ugh, this is the worst. Like, I don’t want to appear snippy to those who are trying to help me, but insisting I talk in that moment is going to guarantee “an attitude” in my tone and words that don’t make sense (and that I can’t explain in the moment.) As well, every word I utter will feel “wrong” in my heart, only being emitted due to coersion, soon to be followed by regret. All because language production in my brain has checked out - my mind’s too fogged to edit my speech properly, and I can’t access the words that fit appropriately. So any word salad that comes out will be more confusing than silence.
Then when my tone is off, I feel bad for making other people feel bad, and it’s a vicious cycle of stress and self-disgust.
After the event mentioned in my last comment, the upper management directly asked how they could help me in those times. I said, “Don’t try to make me talk. Instead, get me somewhere where I can be alone for a few minutes.” So that’s the plan in place now.
Wait. I thought this was an ADHD thing.
Hahahha my hubs is adhd, i’m asd, the overlap is where we found each other long before respective diagnoses :P
It’s just a human being thing. Be careful with mental health communities on the internet, they can be quite toxically exclusive sometimes.
the overlap is staggering
i have become practically incapable of doing nothing. i will start fiddling with things in the room if not given social permission to doomscroll phone
Something something spectrum
It’ll be interesting if over time these diagnosis merge.
Currently, the diagnostic criteria for ADHD isn’t based on social or sensory clues so one can have ADHD and autism.
The currents stats are: many people initially diagnosed with autism also meet the definition of ADHD while people initially diagnosed with ADHD rarely have autism.
But that really does mean it’s not the same spectrum because it’s based on a diagnosis manually that only recently acknowledged one could have both.
I’m autistic with quite a few ADHD friends. What I’ve gathered from sharing our experiences is that we all encounter similar problems with everyday life, but our internal experiences (and thus probably also the underlying causes) differ so much. For example, I may go to the kitchen because it’s lunch time, but since that lunch time is interrupting my work, all of my mental energy is going towards trying to not forget the things I’m working on, which will often push out the reason I went to the kitchen in the first place. The experience I hear from all my ADHD friends is that they have new trains of thought entering and leaving their heads at all times, and those new thoughts are what make them forget their reason for being in the kitchen. Holding multiple thoughts is hard for me, while it seems to be the natural state of things for ADHD.
