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A comment on Noisy brain may underlie some of autism's sensory features. Parent comment

Re:Noisy brain may underlie some of autism's sensory features by renewiltord on Thursday January 18, 2024 @06:49PM (#39049655)
I'm sure things like these are quite common in normal humans. I have a bunch of odd behavioural characteristics too that overlap with mental conditions: clanging, rocking and stimming, and until my mid-20s if I 'touched' something (including stepping on a tile-edge or crack at an angle) on my one side I had to symmetrify with the other side. But my life was fine. I was and am a successful adult with a job and life. Many of these things are probably just the normal variation of the species. I only found out these are named behaviours within the last year. Till then, it was just things I did sometimes or at some time in the past.

I imagine many others are also like this and have single or few such things. It progresses to being a disorder when people can't function, but when they can, it's probably just a trait.

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Re:Noisy brain may underlie some of autism's sensory features by NoZebra120vClip on Thursday January 18, 2024 @07:08PM (#39049847)
Yes, it's odd: I had several debilitating behaviors and symptoms for decades, and nobody had ever identified them with me, so I hadn't discussed them or tried to ameliorate them.

For example: anxiety. I've always suffered from quite debilitating anxiety, which has verged into hypertension, panic attacks, and assorted complications by now. But 30 years ago, nobody was discussing this basic trouble with me, and so I had no tools for even recognizing it, much less reducing its impact on my life.

I was homeless/poor/unemployed for a long, long time, and intellectually I had no satisfying explanation of how I got into those situations. Once I was able to deeply reflect on myself and identify some root causes, and then gain tools to work on those debilitating symptoms, I was much better equipped to fashion a better life, some realistic goals, and a future for myself.

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