Work out a lot, enough to be buff

Respectfully, I don’t think you necessarily have to be buff; you just have to be able to handle physical violence if it happens to come your way, and confident in your ability to do so. Because if you know that you “can take 'em” then you will have less reason to care about what they think of you, and less reason to fear that their bullying might ever go that far. Thus, IMHO, something like training in martial arts can be a very effective substitute for “becoming buff”. But “buff” without necessarily looking it can also be good enough, in some cases.

I was never “buff” in school. In fact, from all outward appearances, I looked every bit the scrawny nerd that everyone always assumed I was. And I was a nerd… but I was also strong. I carried a book bag around throughout middle school and high school that contained all of my schoolbooks. I didn’t go to my locker; as I saw it, there was no reason to. I literally tore through bookbag after bookbag over the years. By about my junior year or so, it was a sports bag that held twice as many books as any backpack – because it kind’a had to be, since that’s just how many books the school had issued to me that year – but I was nonetheless easily manhandling that bag like it was paper mâché.

I don’t recall the rest of the context of the conversation, but I remember this one football dude commenting about my sports bag, something along the lines of, “Yeah, whatever… it’s not that heavy.” So I called him out on his comment; I said, “Feel free to pick it up.” Having received the challenge, he certainly wasn’t going to back down – especially not from the scrawny nerd. He puffed himself up, walked down the aisle between the desks until he was towering right over me, and wrapped his big ol’ hand around the handle. He stood up with it by his side and paused in that position for a moment. He then very quietly put it back down on the floor and walked away without another word.

(Morgan Freeman voiceover) It was that heavy.

But you don’t even have to be “strong” necessarily; in some cases, what matters most is confidence. Later that same year, another bully – not another football player, just a rando dude who had decided he didn’t like me for some reason – told me to watch myself, because he was going to follow me home and (oh, so trite, reflecting upon it now) “beat me up.” Well, I knew who I was and I knew what I could do. Without even a hint of fear or hesitance, I responded to him, “Okay. When and where?”

He didn’t show.

Bullies are all talk and no show, especially when they’re alone and especially when you can confidently call them out on their crap. If they’re “just” making fun of you, do your best to ignore it; it’s not worth your time or energy to give them even the slightest bit of attention. But consider making an effort to get to a point where you’re confident in what you can do, if you should ever need to defend yourself… and then, never show them fear. They will usually back down and leave you alone when confidently confronted. And if they don’t back down… well, you’re confident for a reason. Defend yourself if you have to – but only if they start the fight. There’s never any point in picking a fight yourself.

You’re probably right – but let’s pick that apart for a bit. What you are basically describing is “doing what’s right when nobody is watching.” How is that not a “superior code of conduct,” as you put it?

This chart hits me hard, in so many ways.

There are certain traits common to neurotypicals which I have always considered to be detrimental to not only that person in whom I’ve observed the trait, but to society as a whole – but because I’m the one who is considered “different” I usually find that it’s easier to just keep my trap shut, rather than be browbeaten by NTs for my strong opinions.

As a very obvious example: “Highly developed morals” is tucked away in the corner of the Autism/Giftedness sub-quadrant. I’m going to make the obvious assumption that Ms. Higgins Lee clearly did not intend to imply that only neurodivergents hold that trait… but, anecdotally, I have nonetheless on more than one occasion observed that far too many people who are considered by the larger populace to be “normal” not only appear to lack that trait, but actively despise anyone who holds such high morals.

NTs so often derisively label us as “autistic” or “neurodivergent” or (my personal favorite) “nerds”… like these are all somehow bad things – but maybe society as a whole needs to reevaluate the entire notion of what constitutes “good” and “bad”.

Sorry… am I being too divergent? Should I shut my trap… yet again?

One of the most frustrating thing about being “different” is that people don’t understand you… and you don’t understand them either. It doesn’t really matter whether we put labels on it like neurotypical vs. neurodivergent, or nerd vs. jock or liberal vs. conservative… the basic nature of the divide is still much the same. So at some point, you just have to learn to accept it, and stop trying to comprehend that which will never come naturally to you. Embrace who you are, and do what works best… for you. Live your life the best way you know how to, and don’t be afraid to tell others that, while you appreciate that they’re trying to help, their advice just isn’t what you need right now.

Life isn’t about conformity… it’s about growing as a person, and becoming a little bit better every day. So maybe, just give yourself a break… I mean, you’re expressing your problems in this forum and you’re interacting with people, even if it’s not in person. That means you did a lot better than you might have by just sitting there and stewing about those differences, right?

I think you’re doing alright.

I voted as “self-diagnosed” – but that’s really an inadequate description.

I’m an adult with multiple autistic kids who have themselves each been professionally diagnosed… and I share an overwhelming percentage of my personality and characteristics with them. But I’m clearly in the “high-functioning” category, and have managed to reach a certain level of stability and success in my own life; so even ignoring the obvious monetary cost of getting a professional eval, at this point there just isn’t much that such a diagnosis would do for me… whereas my kids benefit by having that official piece of paper in their school records; it provides concrete evidence to justify the requests for accommodations which we’ve submitted on each of their Individualized Education Programs (IEP).

Which is to say, I believe that there are certainly good reasons to go to a professional – but there are also circumstances which can significantly mitigate those good reasons.

Welcome to the fold. There are other resources worth exploring in the sidebar, if you haven’t already done so.

Dan’s final comment succinctly calls out the situations which irk me the most. You asked me how I’m doing. I answered honestly… and now you’re going to judge me for that? Yeah, nah. I’d rather just not answer at all, thanks, instead of dealing with that bullcrap.

Which, over the course of time, led me to the analytical conclusion that more often than not, most people don’t actually care how – or even if – I answer at all, unless I make the “mistake” of answering honestly when I’m not feeling perfectly peachy. That’s why I almost always answer with something vaguely nonsensical when asked how I’m doing by random strangers, such as, “Howdy, howdy!” Most of them are so locked into their autopilot that they only ever hear that first syllable, and immediately think I just asked them how they’re doing… so they reflexively toss back their obligatory, “Oh, I’m fine.” Once in a blue moon, one of them will skip a beat and realize what I actually said just after their reply, making the passing interaction vaguely uncomfortable for them. Which, you know… is actually just fine by me, since that’s how I feel almost all the time.

Welcome to the fold! Be warned: coders tend to be a weird bunch of folks.

The most important lesson I ever learned as I was starting out in software engineering came from my Design Principles teacher, during my short stint at a community college. That was a class which was technically not associated with a specific programming language, though the same teacher also taught various programming classes in different languages. She also wrote her own textbook for that Design class, actually… I still have my prepublication copy of it somewhere, that she had handed out to the entire class for free that semester. To this day, I still have a great deal of respect for that teacher. But I digress.

The lesson I learned from her was this: Programming languages are just tools like any other. Tools come and go over the years. The skills that you learn which will last beyond whatever language you’re learning and using right now are going to be things like how to construct good logic and how to structure a meaningfully intuitive user interface. These are the things that you should focus on perfecting first and foremost, rather than the syntactical nuances of any given language. If you have a good design at the outset, everything else should fall into place much more easily.

Minecraft and No Man’s Sky. (But then, I repeat myself.)

Also, to a lesser extent, Lemmy. That one is still more of a growing fixation, rather than a hyper-fixation.

I can’t really say from personal experience – mostly because I’m quite certain that I would offend someone in-so-doing – but I have an idea that might offer some insights:

There’s a link in the right hand sidebar of this community to helpful resources; from there is a link to Autism tests. Click on the AQ-10 test, and take it. After you finish, look back over your answers, see if you can guess which questions would have made your score lower, and change those answers accordingly. Play around with it a bit, and maybe even think of it as a game. If you get your score down to zero… that’s roughly how the most “neurotypical” person would have answered. That’s not to say that all NTs will answer that way, but it gives you an idea of the traits that suggest neurotypicality, with the opposing answer obviously suggesting neurodivergent traits. Analytically, this also means that the more strongly you gravitate towards the ND trait answers, the less “typical” is your natural behavior.

You could also do this with the 50 question version of the test, but I imagine that would take a lot more time and effort with a much more limited return on investment, as compared to just doing the 10… but even as I’m writing this, I’m finding myself tempted to go do it anyway. That’s probably one of the ND traits in me.

(Alternatively, if you’re familiar with the structure of HTML, you can easily figure out all of the answers from the page source.)

Full disclosure: I have not been officially tested by a doctor, myself, because depending upon your insurance, it can be pretty expensive. So money could certainly be one very valid reason to not get tested. On the other side of that, my wife and I did choose to have our kids tested, so that they can take advantage of options that such a diagnosis opens up within the public school system. You obviously aren’t looking towards that path, yourself, but that doesn’t mean it is entirely without value.

That said, I did take the online test, which is primarily targeted at an adult audience and which (unsurprisingly) showed very strong indicators that I’m also autistic. I would suggest starting there. The way I look at it, knowledge is a tool; you get to decide how (or if) to use that tool. And when the barrier to obtaining that knowledge is low, it’s worth the effort to step forward and see where that knowledge takes you.

The website with online tests is linked under helpful resources in the collection of links in the sidebar, but I’ll also go ahead and link directly to that website right here for your convenience: https://embrace-autism.com/autism-tests/

The ten question test is merely a subset of the fifty question test; if you’re at all distressed about the process, feel free to start at the short test. (I took both, and they both scored me extremely highly.)

Totally get this. Regardless of the answer, try to think of knowing the answer as another tool in your belt to help you figure out solutions to your daily struggles. Of course, knowing by itself doesn’t necessarily solve anything… but it’ll at least help point you in the right direction.

I absolutely related to several of the elements of this video – but there’s one issue that I don’t deal with quite as much myself, that I know my daughter struggles with: misophonia. I’m going to have to show this video to her, as I think that bit with the bird noises probably conveys a good sense of how she feels about certain sounds.