Your wildest confessions

Okay thankyou that's starting to make sense

We can and should have a conversation about what neurotypicality means - briefly, yes, there is no imaginary 'normal' to which the term applies. Neuroscience and psychology are necessarily incredibly fuzzy, which can make some of these terms difficult to define and use, but neurotypicality in the sense that 'most' (possibly not most, but at least the most common) type of brain works in specifically different ways to those with neurodivergences such as adhd and autism (I have both). This topic has become my special fixation which means I can and would happily explain in as much detail as you like.

Yes, these aren't really 'confessions' in the religious sense. No-one's seeking absolution for the sins they share here. I'm not clear on how that would make the leap to narcissistic, though. My drug dealer story is not a brag, it's an interesting thing that happened in my past; I am, though, ashamed of having done that to a lovely young woman, hence me saying I wouldn't do it again. Doing something in public doesn't make one a narcissist. A narcissist makes everything about them. It could be seen as just the adjective, narcissistic - that argument holds a bit more water, but, then again, you're still assuming intent in a way that is inappropriate, and in my case, wide of the mark.

wazz, when I was much younger, I had a difficulty speaking and thinking simultaneously. I couldn't maintain a train of thought while communicating verbally, and so I had to memorize full statements before giving them with almost everybody except my family. Which meant I was pretty much screwed in any back and forth conversation. Does this sound familiar to you?

No - other than starting speech a little late (very common for autism) I've never had any issues around that area. What's your flavour of spicy if you don't mind my asking?

Yeah, I wasn't saying I agreed with MSchu, just trying to clarify what he was hinting at.
I definitely believe in neurodivergence, and certain types of it being classifiable. I'm just not so sure there really are any "normies." Once you dig under the surface, everyone seems to be in "fake it until you make it" mode about normality to a certain extent.

i remember reading through that and wondering what percentage was real

i mean i'm sure we all have done terrible things at one point or another, but it's one thing to have done it and another to wish to share

There's so many flavors to my spice it's hard to put in condensed form. I have two pages of diagnoses.

Delayed development
Stimming until about 2nd grade
Father was subtarded. My genes :(
Fine motor skill issue early in life
People have said I walk funny

At least 7 disorders on record including ADD

Learned how to adapt mentally
Experienced savantism on mushrooms

My preference is to sit and do nothing at my computer while thinking rigorously

Also I'm a radiohead. Theres an orchestra and jukebox in my mind that is vivid.

Yeah, this certainly has got legs, and it's not easy to disprove. One way to look at it might be that autism and adhd are genetic, with a known and predictable range of possible effects. Those that don't have those genetic predispositions can of course have a wide range of other genetic predispositions, and/or traumatic life events that have shaped their brain significantly. However there does remain a significant proportion of people who do not have any of those things, and are just 'normies', or NPCs if you want to be offensive about it. There's plenty of flies in this ointment, though, one being that it's very difficult to guess at just how many people are neurodivergent and either masking heavily or just not aware of it themselves (I wasn't until a few years ago).

The ultimate point is that even if it's not true that neurotypicality exists, it remains a useful frame. Society is built for neurotypicals that don't have the social or sensory issues I have (loud traffic and machinery feel like lightning going up my nervous system - genuinely feels like I'm on fire on the inside). There's a number of ways you could specifically compare autistic or adhd peeps and see what the 'average' difference might be between them and 'neurotypicals'.

Another way to think about it might be in comparison to physical health. Do you have any physical health problems? I've been bowling around my whole life assuming that everyone has some thing, right, something that annoys them, they have to go to the doctor for, get meds for, whatever. But there's plenty of people who genuinely have no recurring health issues whatsoever. They get sick once every couple of winters, and that's about it. It's similar to neurotypicality in that respect.

But, again, fuzziness. Too fuzzy a topic to be able to talk about these things with 100% certainty. Should we consider those with an eidetic memory to be neurodiverse? Synaesthesia? Brain injuries? Downs? My answer is yes - there's probably an 'official' answer, but those change anyway, and are often politically motivated one way or another.

It's probably easy to assume we all respond to shame in similar ways, but I don't at all. I seem to have a strong resistance to others shaming me - though I shame tf out of myself. For example, I'm ashamed of how I've talked to you in the past, just because we disagree on some political stuff. I like to deal with shame sometimes by getting ahead of it, and threads like this are useful for that.

Have you been specifically tested for autism? There's a lot of things getting diagnosed as others and then it turning out it was autism all along. Delayed development, stimming, savantism are all signs of autism.

I haven't. A genius doctor must have seen me not talking near the age of three while rocking my head back and forth and thought it was totally normal.

Haven't made that many really wild confections, despite having worked at a candy shop for a few years. I guess the wildest one I made was a beer-pretzel chewy caramel candy. It was yummy imo, but we had to use a ton of beer (guinness) to get a good beer flavor, so the food costs were too high and we didn't sell those for very long.

What makes you say it didn't happen, or is this just a baseless troll attempt?

Now, see, this is another thing that happens a lot.

Neurotypical: makes joke
Me: plays along with the joke
Original neurotypical, or some other neurotypical, or high-masking neurodivergent: 'why did you say that, are you trolling'

Do you play chess? d4 is the second most common opening behind e4. Please, I'd love to understand what's going on in your brain right now

a. reading this is close to the most fun experience i've ever had on 2+2 so far. thx for that
b. in line with the topic:
i once set an oldtimer (that i bought and brought over from the US) on fire in the middle of a night in a field bc i was short on money, didn't manage to sell it and wanted to get paid by insurance (reported it stolen). i was helped by a guy (which was good bc alone i most likely would have pissed my pants) who owed me over 20K from playing BG and couldn't pay (after that he re-located to south africa to grow/sell grapes). insurance paid, but only about 50% of the expected value ... still felt bad for years after

I'll speak on behalf of All-inMclovin.

I got confused with usernames - thought someone else had said the first post, not you - please disregard my last post on this subject - delete if you like. Obv you play chess if you're playing USCF and playing 1. d4.

I thought you were joking in some capacity. I still think you were. Do you normally only ever play e4, and you played d4 to mess with someone's prep? Why would I be trolling you? I was trying to play along with the joke. You could certainly accuse me of not being funny, but I don't understand why you would assume trolling.

I can’t speak for him but I don’t play chess and when I read “1. d4”, I thought it was some sort of league division for chess tournaments.

So when you made your comment, I thought you were calling him out because playing in a division “1. d4” must be a hard thing to do.

Ignorance on my part caused me to think you were genuinely skeptical of that guys post.

But again, that was just me and I can’t speak for McLovin

It was a bad joke. I didn't imagine someone would read my response to their joke and think I was making a personal attack. My assumption was that when someone puts a joke like that out there, they're looking for someone else to play along. The idea that someone could think me casting doubt on their choice of chess openings was some of random personal attack confuses me

I'm glad to participate in an Autism thread once again. It's been a while.

1. I wasn't joking.
2. I have only played 1. d4 once in an OTB rated game. I've played other first opening moves multiple times. I played 1. d4 once based on preparation for an opponent (he didn't play into my preparation but I ended up winning anyway).
3. Again, I wasn't joking. Stop trying to figure out why or how I was joking. Because I wasn't.
4. ?????
5. Profit

Fwiw, McLovin is a former world open champion of over the board chess and his word is gold.

My biggest confession is reading this thread for longer than 30 seconds

Damn, McLovin is 43 already, how the time flies

And his license is expired.

Okay I see you were just having fun with it -- I don't really know you here on 2p2 so couldn't gauge where you were coming from.

Yes, I was posting tongue-in-cheek.