In Germany? :o

As a diagnosed German I can tell you not much changes, there’s virtually no therapy for adult autistics. I understand why your doc said that.

Though there was one large benefit for me and it’s that after we applied for disability the Arbeitsamt got much more lenient with me and was actually useful in helping me find a job.

In the end, if you can’t let go, seek the diagnosis, if not, take from autistic communities whatever little tricks help you, discard what doesn’t and call it a day. Much less trouble :)

There’s one thing in your post that I haven’t seen you mention yet it’s all over the place: depression.

I don’t know anything about you but this post, and I’m not a professional, but from very painful personal experience I’m almost sure you’re severely depressed, maybe even to the point where you need hospitalization.

Depression fucks with your head. It makes you not-do things you’re looking forward to and you don’t understand why. It makes you unable to see anything positive. You cannot get out of it without help after a certain point, and you cannot trust your own thoughts anymore.

These days, after years, I’m better. For me it’s never going completely away, but I recognize patterns, I know how to break the spiraling (and most importantly, no one shames me for how I’m doing it anymore) and I can say " this sounds like depression speaking, let me do something else and return to this thought tmr and see how I feel."

But it took years of therapy and several months of hospitalization. If you’re at the point where your outbreaks scare your family, maybe it’s time to look into that.

Another thing: depression in men is critically underdiagnosed, because most docs look for physical reasons if a man comes to them with symptoms of depression. If you haven’t been diagnosed yet, it may be that it didn’t occur to your doc, maybe because you’re masking well or because he’s just not used to seeing men with depression.

However you go on, I wish you all the best. I hope that you can find a way, with or without meds, to live in peace with your brain.

“Hey, it’s me, Amazon. I noticed you recently bought a fridge! Here’s five more fridges for you to look at, on case you need to complete your fridge selection!”

Like. Why?!

I love it, Ty!

I think Chinese and Korean culture share this concept, and I wouldn’t be surprised if there were more Asian languages who did. Since a daughter joins her husband’s family upon marriage, their children are considered belonging to the other family. I recently learner that apparently there’s a saying in Korean that daughters always leave things at their mother’s house when they get married so they have a reason to come back despite having left the family.

If you want to convince people it’s up to you to bring the evidence. I’m not doing your work for you.

Besides, there have been studies shoing that autistics among themselves don’t have the same communication breakdown as they do when interacting with neurotypicals. So if Japan was truly an autistic culture it should be easier for autistic people, but it’s not.

Besides, I’m very curious to see how you are going to apply diagnostic criteria for a neurodivergence to a culture. Like, how do you even begin? Is the culture averse to bright lights? Loud sounds? Does the culture go into hyperfocus moments? Does it suffer from PDA?

The only way you could do this is if you were to take stereotypes about how autistic people behave and try to somehow match them to cultural traits.

Link to those studies?

Edit: me being autistic make everything I say useless? Really?

I really admire your ability to mental gymnastics. No matter what anybody says, you always find a way to tell them their opinion doesn’t matter. Must be nice to be so secure in your own superiority that nothing can convince you otherwise.

As an autist who studied Japanese and gave up when I realized I just couldn’t connect with any of the Japanese people I met - even the ones where it was obvious we wanted to be friends - I can assure you the culture is even more impenetrable for autistics. And I don’t have such issues with other autistic people usually, no matter the culture.

Don’t mistake your stereotypes for reality and tell everyone people call you out because of political correctness. You’re just plain old wrong in this.

That is so cool! Are there any theories as to why elephants have grown so big when one of the closest relatives is so small?

Fun fact: I had to look up what a shrew is, since I’m not a native speaker. It turns out in my native tongue the name has mouse in it, despite shrews not being mice!

That’s so interesting! I didn’t expect convergent evolution to happen so often, I always thought it was a huge accident when that happens. Are there specific areas where it happens more often or is it combletely random?

Are all reptiles dinosaurs, or did reptiles and dinosaurs have a more distant common ancestor? I often heard things like chickens are the distant cousins of t rex or crocodiles are living dinosaurs. How much truth is there to that?

Yes, please!

Not culturally dense, but absolutely unwilling to consider cultures outside their bubble other than as mere curiosities for entertainment. I stand by that.

Not unable to learn a new layout, but unwilling, because I don’t see the point. Why would I waste time and energy on something that will at most bring me one more shortcut to use? Programming is not about typing speed. If the bottleneck for you is typing speed, your job is very different than anything I’ve seen or heard of.

I have never seen anyone but my computer-illiterate mom use two fingers for ctrl-z, hence I was expressing my bewilderment about that. I’ll probably be able to do that move blind with one hand, and so are all of the people I know who use the computer in a professional setting. The only explanation I had for that was that they have exceptionally small hands so it’s a necessity. If you want to take that as an insult of your hands, be my guest, but I’m done here.

Wtf, who needs two hands for that? Do they have children’s hands?

It’s all a matter of habit - for me all layouts but my native sucks for anything to do on a keyboard. The only thing that sucks is if keybinds are set to shift-/ because / is already shift-7. I haven’t found a replacement for that yet. Forgot which program used that and for what, but I remember it was a bummer. Still wouldn’t spend all that time and energy and slowdown learning a different layout.

There’s lots of programmers on languages that need more keys readily than us keyboard has. Äöüß, just to give an example.

I don’t know, every time I read a post like this I’m kinda speechless. I know lots of Americans and many of them are brillant and open-minded, but then there are posts like this which are completely oblivious that there are reasons for other keyboard layouts.

The reason OP can’t fathom programming on those is that they aren’t used to it. If you grew up with non-us layouts you similarly couldn’t fathom programming on the us layout.

Sometimes I feel like people refuse to even think about acknowledging that there are other experiences than their own. Go out, try out new things, exercise your brain and callenge yourself.

Ahhh, that makes more sense. Yeah, when it comes to food atm I generally listen to my body even though it may be not the healthiest option. My main reasons are 1) that I believe you typically crave the nutrition your body desires and 2) it’s a “pick your battles” situation.

If you try to change everything at once cause you’re fed up and decided your life needs to finally get back on track after an eternity of slacking, you’re setting yourself up to fail. I know, I’ve failed umpteenth times that way 😔

So I decided what area to focus on and in those areas I’m like the first officer who offers commentary to the captain when the captain makes a decision (cause captain is impulsive and often doesn’t even ask for comments before making that decision). I’ve fould a way to “phrase it” that makes the captain consider things I say and sometimes we change course.

Food/weight is not among the areas I’m actively involved in right now cause my energy is just not enough to change my eating habit while fighting my other habits. I’m still trying to keep it within boundaries that I decided on first, so I’ll detail the compromise that I made with myself below. If that bores you, feel free to skip :) Most of it involves reasoning with myself, though, which I also like to frame as compromising with the inner child. I guess I just think of my impulsivity as someone to reason with, and you win some, you loose some?

I work in IT and sit a lot, though, so if I constantly crave chocolate I do question myself if this is just one of the following three:

• being bored. You wouldn’t believe how often I just go open the fridge not out of hunger, but of boredom! I trained myself to always focus on my stomach when I open the fridge door and see if , I’m actively hungry before I decide anything
• I’m so frustrated with something that chocolate/something sweet is needed to regulate my mood
• this is is one of the moments where evolution has trained me to scream “sweet stuff! This is a rare treat! You cannot ignore this gift from the gods!” Because sugar is so rich in energy and that was really important in the stone age where you used a lot.

Being bored and the sweet stuff moments I go, well, this is not a healthy reason to snack, what can I do instead? With frustration I more often than not give in.

Oh, interesting. To me it doesn’t feel like orders, more like nagging? And the more I say no the more I want it. After I was able to afford things, my impulse buying went way down, because I didn’t instantly think “no”, but instead went “I could. But then I would use it once, and it would be in the way for the rest of my life, and it’s a hassle” and all of a sudden thinking about the consequences makes me go “you know, maybe I don’t need it after all…”

I encountered the concept in therapy, no idea where it comes from, but it just feels right to me :)

When I read your comment the first time and saw the “respectfully” I thought, wow, you are more polite than I have been x) it made me chuckle to see you reconsider (rightfully, in my opinion).

Edit: forgot a word

Yeah, I found the concept of the inner child very helpful. I think because of my upbringing I got disconnected from this and now I’m trying to not act yowards my inner child like my parents acted with me, but instead with love and patience and convincing instead of forcing. The more I do that, the easier it gets and the more cooperative the inner child becomes, because it is heard and believed and that is the basic for compromise imho.

More like sweettalking it? Like, brain is impulsive and wants instant gratification, and I’m like, “but if we finish this before, we could have this!” since I’m trying to set up my life in a way that I can coax my impulses into something productive.

I don’t think my brain tells me much wrong shit. More like “wouldn’t it be fun to tip this precariously stacked thing over and watch the chaos unfold…?” But I usually have a pretty good handle on this x)

I guess it’s more setting up everything so the impulses go a productive way instead of them scattering. And bribing the brain x)