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.
this post was submitted on 14 Dec 2025
555 points (95.1% liked)
Autism
9037 readers
361 users here now
A community for respectful discussion and memes related to autism acceptance. All neurotypes are welcome.
Community:
Values
- Acceptance
- Openness
- Understanding
- Equality
- Reciprocity
- Mutuality
- Love
Rules
- No abusive, derogatory, or offensive post/comments e.g: racism, sexism, religious hatred, homophobia, gatekeeping, trolling.
- Posts do not need be related to autism, off-topic discussions are allowed. This is a safe space where people with autism can feel comfortable discussing whatever they feel like discussing, as long as it does not violate the standing rules.
- Your posts must include a text body. It doesn't have to be long, it just needs to be descriptive.
- Do not request donations.
- Be respectful in discussions.
- Do not post misinformation.
- Mark NSFW content accordingly.
- Do not promote Autism Speaks.
- General Lemmy World rules.
- No bots. Humans only.
Encouraged
- Open acceptance of all autism levels as a respectable neurotype.
- Funny memes.
- Respectful venting.
- Describe posts of pictures/memes using text in the body for our visually impaired users.
- Welcoming and accepting attitudes.
- Questions regarding autism.
- Questions on confusing situations.
- Seeking and sharing support.
- Engagement in our community's values.
- Expressing a difference of opinion without directly insulting another user.
- Please report questionable posts and let the mods deal with it.
.
Helpful Resources
- Are you seeking education, support groups, and more? Take a look at our list of helpful resources.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
That person is a gentleman and a hero.
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.
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.
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
Wait. I thought this was an ADHD thing.
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
If I dont have social permission to doomscroll, you don't have social permission to interact with me.
AKA if you start making comments/complain/try to take away my phone or other fidgety thing, I just won't deal with you going forward. I am getting way too old to care about Karen's opinion on my attention span.
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.
load more comments
(1 replies)
C-PTSD here, I know this situation also all too well: I just want to be prepared and do my best!
It’s just a human being thing. Be careful with mental health communities on the internet, they can be quite toxically exclusive sometimes.
load more comments
(1 replies)
In my experience people receive it better when I preface the "How long" with a "Just curious," or some such thereof. Results may vary.
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.
Yes ! 🙏🏼 (I don't know where I fit in all this, but) I have been opting more and more for sentences that mimic my mental model of things- with added sugar to make it palatable to most. My intentions are less often mistaken, I think. But more importantly I am happier. Because that's a whole "abstraction layer", so to say, shed off my mind
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.
load more comments
(4 replies)
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?
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.
load more comments
(1 replies)
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."
yes. some clients say it like that to service workers :(
load more comments
(1 replies)
But asking the time something takes is a completely normal and valid question? I have never encountered a situation where someone would think asking for a time frame would be rude or impatient. Maybe this is a cultural thing, since I'm finnish and our norms can be a bit different at times
Here in the USA being in a rush is perfectly acceptable, especially in cities.
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.
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
Solution: stop talking to people.
My wife did not understand at all. Still insists that I'm just impatient.
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 mean this is basically the exact same for neuro typical people, the only difference is the ability to understand the social cues.
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.
I'm so sick of people telling me that symptoms of my crippling neurodevelopmental disorder are not clinically relevant. You mean no harm, but this shit hurts.
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.
gee, its almost like people with ASD have tone issues of some description.
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.
load more comments
(3 replies)
I mean... I am impatient, but under the dictionary definition of "being quickly driven to irritation." Not whatever bullshit definition it has in common usage relating to waiting for a thing.
Mfw somebody has internality and a schedule 😡
You've got me in the first half.
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.
view more: next ›