Urban HermitOct 30

Thinking about this, because I have had to accept some hard choices and some of the people involved believe that stressing me will make me do things.

I'm autistic. Stressing me is not a motivator. If anything it makes me freeze up. Is this an Autistic response, or an everybody response? And if everybody works worse when stressed, why is it the first thing anybody uses to try and motivate people?

Show threadKim ScheinbergOct 30

@Urban_Hermit
This is a tough one. I'm autistic, but I also grew up in an abusive household so "stress" is my normal and I don't function anywhere near as well without it

Most of my life I couldn't write unless I was under deadline. Then I got a job working for an (invisibly to me) abusive boss (who I absolutely adored) and was nearly always ahead of schedule

In my head it was the best job I ever had, but my body told another story

Show threadrootfakeOct 31
@kims @Urban_Hermit do you have ADHD as well? Cause that sounds a lot like the "poor person's adderall" thing a lot of us do without realizing it, where spiking your adrenaline with a deadline panic triggers that hyperfocus flow-state. (I'm also of the opinion that ADHD may be another ASD manifestation, cause there's *a lot* of commonality there)
Show threadUrban Hermit

@rootfake @kims just as a side note, because this is not aimed at me, I have autism and a friend with ADHD, and I think my autism has no trace of ADHD. I can, for instance, sit for 4 hours easily and concentrate on one thing without doodling, adding something extraneous, or getting bored. My hyper focused, super intelligent state either comes at 10am or 2pm, but that is just my circadian rythym. And I do not like the "adrenaline state" or coffee.

I think ADHD is outside my experience...?

Oct 31 at 6:16pmWeb
Show threadrootfakeOct 31
@Urban_Hermit @kims oh absolutely, they are definitely distinct subsets, and your experience very much doesn't sound like ADHD. I tend to think they're related due to the number of symptoms they share, but that could also just as easily be that a bunch of us just have both.