Yes, this is my life. You described it very well. I always wondered what was wrong with other folks. Why were they not attentive? Why did they shirk responsibility? But at 70, I am beginning to understand my attention to detail and sense of responsibility was most likely hardwired and not a willful choice. When folks ask why I care about the details, I get confused by the question. I want to ask, what do you mean details? I’m surrounded by the things you call details. As a kid, I just thought my peers were lazy. I realize now that was just bad judgement on my part. They truly see the world very differently. I’m happy for the new vocabulary associated with autism. I’m still finding it weird to think of myself as autistic, but the language helps both me and others. Better late than never.
I'm only slowly beginning to understand why I don't necessarily consider myself detail-oriented. It seems to be that exact phenomenon, where I don't have the same conception of what others consider "details."
I grew up being the same way and it would really frustrate me that other kids, and later, adults did not notice the details or seem to give the same level of attention and responsibility to a task.
Another thing I was doing in conversations on phone afterwards I was fully waiting outconversation answers there was that many sheets of paper I'd got blavk bin bags of letters I krpt never throw then when it came to moving we got a cleaning gitm yo dirt the cubby hole out
for me these traits seem to be an adaptation to unsafe childhood where i was parentified and expected to make sure everyone (including narcissistic adults) was okay so nobody would get screamed at. of course as a child, with autism, this was neither feasible nor my responsibility. inversion of parent child dynamic can leave the child feeling like everything is their responsibility and like what they've done is never enough. it's related to fawn response and an overwhelming urge to make sure everything is okay and predictable, when the home was unsafe and unpredictable and the child's needs were invalidated and they were punished for their inherent sensitivities. at least in my case. :3
I didn't have this problem as a child at all. But I face exactly the same issues (always controlling everything, huge difficulties with multitasking, etc...)
I always assumed this was why I am like this too! More and more, I’m learning how I exist at the nexus of Autism, ADHD, and C-PTSD. It’s a wild experience but also not the singular one as I always assumed.
I’ve noticed with over 30 years as a nanny and teacher, emotionally sensitive parents are more likely to create kids on the spectrum. Deeply sensitive people tend to be great at noticing “the bear smell in the cave” so they are/were very important in keeping a family alive. Sensitives also tend to be detailed oriented and often are introverted; character traits that are enhanced within people with ASD, anxiety, and somewhat in ADHD. I’m sorry the above poster’s parents were horrible! Their caring sensitivities clearly helped them be resilient in a terrible situation and helped their siblings survive too!
This goes well with the convo around "monotropism". The idea being the autistic brain prefers to focus on one thing at a time, as in depth as possible. Pulling your attention away once you're hyper focused is really difficult. It's a big change in your mental state to go from intense, all-consuming focus on one thing to switching to more dispersed focus on the environment, upcoming tasks, all other priorities and figuring out how to choose and initiate your next task or action. Cue task paralysis! A single focus is much more comfortable. But switching focus to another single topic is often hard too. Your mind keeps jumping back to what you had been doing intensely for so long, until enough time's gone by and you get deep enough into the next thing. Thoughts and trends in thinking become neurologically reinforced by use. The more time you spend thinking about something or thinking a certain way, the harder it is to transition your thoughts to something else. Monotropic trending brains also make it difficult to multitask and keep track of ongoing simultaneous priorities of daily life. Like focusing on a task but also remembering to eat or drink water, for some people. Or keeping track of the time and steps to be ready to do something when you know you have it coming up later. "Waiting mode" I've heard that one called. We have to be "hyper vigilant" about those other priorities otherwise we get too focused on what we're doing and forget about them. As far as the obsessive perfectionism, looking for every possible little thing you can do or improve about something...I think that's a feature of monotropism too, to continue by default to keep focusing more and more in depth on this thing you think is important until you've fully understood and analyzed and predicted everything possible about it and done everything you can to make it better I think it boils down to this. Allistic people can more comfortably experience and think about a wider variety of things at once. And Allistic people don't tend to HYPERfocus on one thing to the point where they forget everything else, so they have an easier time shifting their focus away when needed. But they also might not come up with the same good ideas and predictions that can be born of extended hyperfocus. Monotropic trending brains can be extremely effective at certain jobs that align with their strengths and essentially become their hyperfocus. Or they can be really shitty at a job because they're constantly hyper focusing on the wrong things, not able to multitask or shift focus when necessary due to the nature of their job duties. Thanks for reading my poorly edited novel 😂 I'm a pediatric occupational therapist, self diagnosed Autistic/ADHD and I have a lot of thoughts on this clearly.
I agree, I recently burned out after six weeks of hot desking and a change in my responsibilities that entailed trying to spread surface level attention across multiple demands. That led me to reading about monotropism and to Tanya Adkin's description of monotropic split (the idea that we can't regulate the amount of attention we give to different demands, so when we mask by trying to mimic polytropic focus, the best we can manage is giving hyper detailed, hyper focused attention to multiple demands). That isn't sustainable and I think it explains my nervous system overload. I also relate to Tanya Adkin's descriptions of Meerkat Mode and Atypical Burnout. In workplaces that value efficient switching between tasks and acceptance of the way things are as the keys to profitable production of widgets, monotropic processors are likely to be seen as ''not a good fit'' and singled out for constructive dismissal (where the employer makes the workplace a living hell in an effort to force the employee to quit). For autistics with marketable special interests, jobs designed for monotropic minds are ideal, and I think guaranteed livable basic income, income tested and provided to those who need it regardless of work status, would go a long way to mitigating the 85 per cent un- and under-employment rate among autistic college graduates.
In addition to your insight, thank you for writing clearly and using that increasingly-absent invention known as paragraphs… Makes it much easier to read than a single, massive block of text.
I finished writing my dissertation, it took me a year to finally send it to be revised. For me everything was wrong. Had to go to therapy. I received an award for my thesis. I was diagnosed with autism.
I was praised by my piano teachers when I was a kid, even though I thought I was mediocre. I played percussion in high school, and my teacher bragged about me to other students and teachers. friends always talked about my ability to dominate some video games. I was supposed to choose from my high school senior photoshoot for graudation. I submitted the selection almost 4 years after high school, and I was about to graduate college. I have a kid now, and she was recently diagnosed with mild autism. I suspected I had ADHD.
Ahhh congrats!!! Wish me luck. Need to complete mine possibly in less than 6 months to complete my doctorate. Only now learning of autism potential, realizing I have been hampered by entire doctoral education without dx or any assistance or formal accommodations. Wanted to share in the experience of torture…. It must have been a slog for you! Cheers to your success. Now it is time to rest your brain and recover before next steps!
I’ve always felt like neurotypical people were just lazy or innattentive about a lot of things. This explains perfectly why I felt that way! There’s certain things that I find very important and almost can’t understand how a lot of people don’t seem to care about them. This helps me understand 😊
"I've always felt like neurotypical people were just lazy or innattentive about a lot of things." I know, right!? Turns out they're relaxed and more easy going on themselves. They care less, in a good way? Unless it is important, then it's just maddening and no excuse for it, Ha ha ha.
exactly! For example, how easily neurotypicals forget their promises and little details that were discussed, and then they tell you that they are "busy" as an excuse. Everyone is busy! I can't explain to myself how are they so careless.
This resonates so much with me. As a freelancer, I have trouble with it at work, where it takes me forever to get even the smallest jobs done because I check and re-check and re-work details until the amount of effort I put in is far beyond the amount of work I'm being paid for. But it's also part of the reason I have such difficulty maintaining friendships: by the time I've made sure I'm saying *exactly* what I wanted to say, have described whatever news I'm sharing coherently, not made any spelling or grammar errors, not left anything out, am not accidently being rude, not rambling, not forgetting to respond to anything specific in their message... writing a "quick" e-mail will take me hours and just isn't something I often have the energy for. And so people don't hear from me for weeks or months and (understandably) think I don't care...
Yes, the concept of a "quick" e-mail is foreign to me. Even attempting a half page email will take me most of a day... as I will write, and repeatedly re-write and re-arrange sentences and paragraphs and add/remove punctuation marks, in my attempts to ensure that what I am saying will be understood correctly.
All of this! I'm a freelancer and it's gotten worse over the years. I have trouble starting anything (I am diagnosed ADHD but have most autistic traits as well, and as a child probably fit the "classic" autistic spectrum more than the ADHD stereotype, but still was overlooked...) because I know how long it will take me to be as thorough as I prefer to be. I know if I start an edit, for example, it will be ALL that I do for the next 5 solid days in a row, early morning to late night, because I have trouble stopping anything once I've started it. It's a dread I wouldn't wish on anyone. But I'm back in school and changing careers to hopefully be in a role that is easier to manage day to day than a creative, freelancing role. I always did really well at jobs where I went in in person and had very specific, black and white tasks to do. Such as creating spreadsheets or counting drawers and cleaning. Creative work is just too open ended and broad, and unless I"m working strictly for my own projects, it's just too overwhelming. I can finally admit that.
@@melvamelendez9817 I also have a History course this summer (ugh...gen eds are the worst at my age lol) that has 8 "essay" assignments per week. The professor calls 6 of those assignments "quick journal entries" and expects them to take 5-15 minutes max to complete, but each one has taken me 3-6 hours! It's a self-paced course and I actually failed it last semester because I didn't complete it in time (my school is best grade standing, so it was worth it to not have a mental breakdown to just let it all go and not cram in 24 essays into the last week and pull multiple all-nighters lol) but now I am getting dangerously close to the deadline once again. I just need to half-a$$ it, but I've never been able to do that for anything! Even emails and texts, which is why texting is so stressful to me too :-(
I love that you wrote a really long sentence without even finishing it. I get what you're implying with the "..." but I did have to think for a second and the Irony was not lost on me.
The first time I heard the term "hypervigilance", my therapist at the time had used it to describe my extreme awareness of my immediate and broader environment, and talked about it as something to be treated, since it would often overwhelm me into anxiety/panic attacks as I grew older. But while I liked having a term for it, I recoiled from her treatment of it as a symptom, because I greatly valued my ability to use the information gained from sorting through that noise, as I am someone who would always rather know than remain ignorant. It turns out that there's a unseen (and often unspoken) separation of two features there: the hypervigilance part itself was greatly amplified as a result of severe childhood abuse I suffered (often brought upon me as punishment for my autistic-presenting traits) and was a defense mechanism, but those same traits of extreme analysis and curiosity are what helped me navigate that information and made good of it. This is why it felt like... in addressing my "hypervigilance" as a whole, my therapist was leaning toward sort of 'throwing the baby out with the bathwater'. I share this story to caution others from using the term "hypervigilance" to describe this feature as a whole, as it has strong mental health connotations already, and could result in grave miscommunication. The question for me became a matter of learning better methods to filter the influx of sensory information and to understand my limits and what environments I could move between to self-regulate for those times where the information overloaded my processing power and resulted in that mental/emotional break point.
WOW YES!!!! I'm a 31 year old autistic woman and this is ABSOLUTELY my experience and is very much why I feel I was originally diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, and also a large reason I find myself burning out pretty frequently. Over the last year I've been on my journey to understand myself, and thanks to you and other autism educators, I've learned that I absolutely must budget my energy. But even though I try to schedule rest for myself now, I have a very very hard time actually having restful rest. I just spend my down time worrying about my responsibilities because of a big fear of forgetting, dropping an important ball, and amassing so many to do items that I can never catch up. I also very much agree with your assessment of the experience of making sure everything is done completely thoroughly to the highest standard before being able to switch tasks looking like perfectionism on the outside, but that the internal experience with these behaviors don't line up with other explanations of what perfectionism feels like. It's not that I'm worried about criticism. It's just that it feels important to do things the right way with no errors. I'm curious to know if there is any correlation between this and prior high achievers that ended up burning out in older age.... where we're maybe still trying to chase the normalcy and perfection and high standards we once effortlessly produced, but are now worried we're "slipping" and we don't want to accept any additional feelings of being disabled. I think that might possibly be the root of my behaviors, at least in part. I used to be so "high functioning" and, by other people's assessments, brilliant. And now.....everything feels so much more difficult, especially cognition and memory. Finally, I actually quite like the term responsibility hypervigilance myself. It is indeed a mouthful, but it seems to perfectly encapsulate this feeling. Sorry for being so verbose, but thank you so much for yet another wonderful video. Your content has played a large role in helping me understand myself and improve my life. And with discourse like this, you're not just helping us as individuals, but as a community. This kind of advocacy and taking part in giving clinicians and researchers such detailed descriptions of the adult autistic experience is just amazing. I'm so grateful for you and your ability to put words to such complex experiences and feelings. I feel seen and understood here on your channel
This really resonates with me. It's taken me a long time to realise that my "good enough", when doing something I'm good at, it actually extremely good in other people's eyes. I still get really trapped in a cycle of trying to do several things all at the same time and trying to make them perfect.
Paul, this is one of the best videos you've made. I absolutely 100% identify with everything you've said here, and I think this phenomenon is simultaneously one of my greatest strengths and greatest weaknesses.
Totally agree - I am autistic and ADHD, and things like the extraordinary quality of my work and relentless pursuit of excellence in tasks have lead me to be very successful. However, good lord are they exhausting, and juggling all the things and ensuring top quality and figuring out how to actually rest have been a huge struggle. I also struggle with the concept of "good enough."
@@BenjaminPlaysRustI feel ya! Struthless has this video about 70% that changed my life - even if I'm still figuring out how to put it into practice... What was the name of that video, again........🤔 [Edit] 😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂 It's: The 70% Rule Or more specifically: ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Advice for Perfectionists & Procrastinators: The 70% Rule ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yes, I have always said if I ever got "healed" of my Asperger's, I wouldn't be able to deliver the exceptional quality of work I do for my bookkeeping clients. Asperger's isn't just a condition, it's who I am. If that changed, I wouldn't be me anymore.
I'm feeling like I have already made this comment, but it's worth it: you have an incredible talent in finding words to describe the autistic experience of life. I resonate so much with this. And the way you talk about it is full of acceptance, quite different from the "don't worry that much" or "take time to rest" we get from people. It's definitely not that easy, and people relate these behaviours to things and feelings they know (anxiety) and can't believe or understand what it actually is. Thank you so much again.
I experience this too. For example when we went to Chicago we visited Chinatown. The other girls were chatting and not paying attention to the dude that was circling us. I kept my eye on him for like twenty minutes and eventually he buggered off. The other girls had been completely oblivious. I had no idea what the girls were talking about, but I made sure the guy couldn't get away with theft or whatever he had on his mind. Then when working at children's day care camp, I was always so vigilant over all the kids, I knew where they all were. I knew how to build a day program to such an extent that there were moments of high energy games and then moments of rest before lunch (so they wouldn't throw up) and before they went home (so that, once they saw the parents, they were not hyper little squirrels). There were no big accidents during my shifts. I kept an eye on all of them and their safety. Then as an adult I started leading the photobooth crew at a convention, and we had plans for every freaking scenario. Actors absent, late, rude, too talkative, whatever. Every crew member knew what to do in each position they could be in. The only thing that could throw us off were massive technical difficulties (which sometimes happened) but even then I knew what to say to keep folks focused on the job and calm and to deflate them if they were stressed afterwards. It also came from overanalyzing everything that could go wrong weeks to months in advance. To having every possible conversation in my head, to seeing every disaster scenario before it happened, and I'd make sure to ask the tough questions to those managing the convention so I knew what to do in case something like that happened. But then during the convention, if something went wrong, they only needed to look at me in a specific way for me to know exactly what to do to get the situation under control. It has a great deal to do with "control", maybe a term like "ultimate control" or something rings true to some people? It's about having the ultimate control in situations. I do also wish to stress I am not like this in all situations. When I go on holiday alone, I am NOT in control. Far from it. I went to Amsterdam with no plan and was more like "guess I'll walk around!". But then again, I was only responsible for myself. Not for fellow girls I was on holiday with. Not for children. Not for actors visiting a convention. Not for visitors of the convention. But the moment I am responsible for other people, the "control brain" kicks in and I gotta be ready for anything that could go wrong and make sure everybody is SAFE and everybody is HAPPY. Needless to say it is a very exhausting way of being. I stopped my job at the convention because I found my time of recuperation too much.
And it makes it very difficult to enjoy an outing or vacation with other people, because you don't get to just enjoy the experience. You *always* end up in charge, or managing things, for the others. I didn't start understanding this until like 20 years ago. I see how I put myself in these positions now, but I still forget about it in the heat of the moment. It's like a boundary thing for me - I need to be aware when I'm slipping into it, so I can assert the boundary by saying "no, I don't want to take on that job". Because it IS a job. A huge job. Every time. And I have fibromyalgia, so I have to be very realistic about where I'm spending my time. It does bother me, though, that so many of the "professionals" who are supposed to do things for you, fall way short unless you manage them to some extent. Like your doctors and other important supports. Too many of them do not pay enough attention to detail, so if you are depending on a letter from them, you often have to give them all the key data yourself. Otherwise they refer to their shit notes and they drop in some mistaken thing that can be practically the opposite of reality, and get you denied for the very thing you need. It's incredibly disappointing how often that kind of thing happens. So, it's almost like there is also a societal neurotypical trend not to care about getting the details right. 🤦♀️
Ah, I can so relate to overanalyzing things and making sure I've thought about every possible way it could go horribly wrong. People have told me to just not overthink it and that the most horrible scenarios only have a very tiny chance to happen, but it feels like I NEED to think about them in advance, to basically... prepare myself I guess. I don't panic in actual emergencies, I panic for weeks/months/years beforehand instead.
This resonates with me too. I think part of the problem is lack of trust in my ability to do things, because historically I've proven i cant trust myself to do things well without intensely focusing on one thing.
That's also an ADHD experience learned due to "careless mistakes". The transition away from a specific task seems more like an autistic thing, but a more global constant scan for what i forgot. Literal nightmares about missing meetings or social engagements. I've always attributed to ADHD. You are right that it is exhausting. Also if i see the email on a Saturday, i can't wait till Monday. I think "doing it now will save time Monday, and also if i wait, i might forget."... I never relax when i host events. This is a lot to think about.
Yes! AuDHD means you want to call up hypervigilence to protect yourself from the endless screwups but if it gets out of control, particularly in an anxiety-inducing situation, it's a nightmare.
This is trauma response, typical for Complex-PTSD and lack of safety. Which is common in neurodivergent people, since our differences are easily pointed out since very early childhood and punished, especially in no friendly or no child-safe enviroments.
YES! You’ve got it nailed! It encompasses all descriptions that you comprehensively described such as ‘perfectionism, compulsive behaviour, looking for (&finding)errors, inertia/inability to transition, over diligence in many ways, etc. For me, an added impact of responsibility-hyper vigilance, was due to poor self-confidence, not knowing that I could be good at tasks. Also remaining committed to a task, a job or cause, going beyond duty, being stuck only by your own determination to the point of exhaustion. Not realising when your efforts cannot improve when you are part of collateral damage due to other’s decisions or poor management.
@@Dancestar1981Well, that's usually part of the classic perfectionism, I'd say. For me it's rather the feeling of responsibility for successful execution of a task. While the results don't have to be perfect, they need to be/should reach the best outcome that can be managed.
Ah. I like your name. It works well. I call mine Juggler's Overdiligence. All day, every day. Combing through text, combing again, then again...tweak the work, tweak again, tweak thrice. A list full of urgencies equally important, none ever not on the brain, all fretted on, nothing not needing my fullest energy to come out correctly. I live on sticky notes. Everything gets one. None are dismissed until the happy red pen gets it all checked off and even then? Well, let us just say that the thought train is ever rolling with questions of how I might have bettered something and recrafting it in my mind if I find time has passed to fix it otherwise.And if I still have time? Well, then, it's back to the edits. Must not drop even a single ball. The fear of such is excrutiating, to say the least. ( By the way, not going to disclose the exact number of times I read, re-read, and adjusted even this comment nor how many times I will revisit it even following posting it. 😏 Let us just say the number will be high and if it later says "edited" in parentheses, that will clearly be why 😏)
Neuro typical people seem to have a filter, it's very functional, they filter out anything that registers as irrelevant to them. Douglas Adams called it a "SEP field", a field that makes anything that seems to be "Somebody else's problem" effectively invisible. I was born immune to these SEP fields. Now I realise that it's because I'm autistic. It's not my favourite autistic trait. It's exhausting.
Oh, I like "SEP Field". It's such a tidy, scientific-sounding term. 😁 It also correlates well to my feeling of needing to identify the boundaries of it for myself.
"conscientiousness" sort of combines the ideas of responsibility and vigilance. So maybe "hyper-conscientiousness" would be an apt term for this trait. I know I've used this word to describe myself and other autistics in my life.
Since Conscientiousness is one of the Big 5 traits, could it perhaps be a combination of that & another one of those traits? I don’t mean this to sound rude, so believe me when I say this is a legitimate question- Could Hypervigilance fall under the trait of Neuroticism? So you end up with a combination of both Conscientiousness & Neuroticism?
@@leogrrrl5876I was thinking along these same lines while listening to a lecture by Jordan Peterson. Highly conscientious people tend to out perform the vast majority of people in American culture; the kind of people that want to work 14 hrs a day in an incredibly demanding line of work, like Elon Musk. I consider myself to be highly conscientious; in the way that I will spend ten+ hours a day many weeks in a row focusing on one task or project, but to the point that I don’t fit in with, nor am I looked up to by most people, and I’m not in an incredibly demanding line of work, nor am I financially successful… Neuroticism is indicative of the creative spirit and being highly neurotic almost guarantees that this person will be an artist of some sort, but also one the leading factors of negative life outcomes. I am an artist. I draw and paint, but I create few works… for many reasons, but a major reason is my dedication to quality. When I set out to create a painting, I intend to fully emulate what it is that inspired me ( the mountains or scenery that literally drove me to sob uncontrollably, taking my breath away ) to create it. The only way I know that a work is finished is when I see absolutely no more mistakes. I will spend more time than I did while actually painting, combing through every single detail, to find the mistakes. While listening to Jordan Peterson and considering the information for a long time, I could not reconcile how I could be both highly conscientious and neurotic at the same time, the two are at opposite ends; like Schrödinger’s cat, how can it be dead and alive at the same time!? Disclosure: ADD diagnosis from the 90’s, no ASD yet. Coming up with a new term for this trait, or at least a more succinct way of explaining it, is an interesting thought experiment. I don’t know if the terms hyper vigilance or highly conscientious + neurotic is enough to convey the experience. Perhaps it’s just another one of those ‘walking paradoxes’ or something you have to experience to really understand…
I can absolutely relate. I was just talking with my therapist about this a couple of hours ago and did no know how to explain it. The paralyzed state, the impossibility to multi-function, and the fact that my sister can do an incredible amount of things in a day and I do not. Creating short, prioritized lists can help, when I remember to do it...
After years of questioning, if I am on the spectrum without a diagnosis, this video really makes me think, yes. The description resonates; you ask me what the "problem" I identified with the most when a child it was how slow I worked compared to others. Accuracy and attention to detail have turned out to be a superpower, but you are right that it is nearly impossible to define and stick by an end time to the neverending to do list. Breaks unless forced do not happen, you do good for a while (I have been described in those moments as highly driven), and then the crash happens and I need to rebalance/regulate again.
I hear exactly what you're saying. As an autistic software engineer with over three decades of experience I've managed these same feelings daily. One thing that helps is to know the ocean never stops pressing against the shore. There will always be one more item demanding attention. There will never be a time when all is clear. That sounds very stressful, and it is, if one's goal is to clear the board of all to-dos. I've changed my goal of doing all the things, and doing everything perfectly in alignment, and that's granted me so much freedom. Now I do more than I did when I started, and am happy to improve even if the end result isn't perfect. I still have high standards. But "high" is not "perfect". Also I learned about the law of diminishing returns. When the cost of tuning that process costs me more time than starting (and completing) a more valuable task, I let the nearly perfect task go, knowing I'm adding more value overall with great (but not perfect) results. This allows me to chase those other opportunities that my hyper vigilant sense of responsibility keeps pressing upon me, like the ocean upon the shore.
Resonates muchly. I always figured it's less about perfectionism and more about making things predictable. If I miss some detail, it throws a wrench into what I was expecting. So constantly being on the look-out for things to 'fix' not only satisfies the desire to improve things but also makes sure everything goes as expected. No surprises.
This sounds perfectly normal to me; transitioning is difficult, relaxing is nearly impossible, focusing is tough and requires a lot of energy…. I can totally relate. I call this part my ‘driver’
I'm 64, and self diagnosed about two months ago. I knew I was a "loner" since I was a small boy. My rigid thinking, neuro-typical, family and extended family simply can't understand me, rejected and ignored me for my best qualities, so I've moved on without them. They struggle in their daily lives with denial, face-saving, and cognitive dissonances that I as an autistic person am not burdened with. Thanks for all your great videos - informative and re-assuring !!! :)
That makes a lot of sense. On self-diagnosis, that seems very common, even among those who were professionally diagnosed. A lot of content creators talk about how they found out they were autistic and then went to the professionals for confirmation.Sometimes they bring in a whole notebook of surveys and symptoms so they can fight the therapist to make them consider autism.
I worked in an operations department of a bank in the retirement account section. I learned the literal legal code that applied at the time. Far more in depth than was required for my job role at that time. But once i knew that the framework existed, i could not do the simple tasks within the framework without knowing the big picture. Once i learned it, i started trying to explain to my supervisor's and other's their misunderstandings of the legal foundations of what we were doing when small mistakes were being made. And that of course, did not go well. That's been a pattern throughout my work life.
Jayabee ~ omg SAME 😵💫 Not just the big picture... it's The. Entire. Picture & Frame. It's draining & has left a not so favorable path, but cannot be different from who we are 🙆🏻♀️🤸🏻
This! I always need to understand the big picture because only worrying about my part of the job feels too much like freefall. If I don't have an understanding of how all the parts and jobs move together, it's terrifying, and I feel very nervous and insecure. Once I master a skill set and try to help others so that we are all on the same page, often there is pushback. Often, people tell me to "stay in my lane" and disregard my input. It's frustrating, but they will at some point always come back to me once something goes wrong and I am happy to be able to fix the issue because I have a strong understanding of "how" things work, not just how to do one aspect of my role. Sounds like you might experience this sort of situation as well. Wonder if this is a common experience for those of us who are considered nerodiverse.
Each of my attorneys in my divorces wanted me to take up doing legal research for them. It was so weird to me...I felt like I was just looking all this up for the first time. Yet, these people who do this day in and day out find it to be NEW?? Blows my mind.
Your description “responsibility hyper-vigilance” very adequately describes and needs no adjustment. I recognise I do this too, and people always complain that I take too long; they never seem to appreciate my efforts to do the best that I can, and it can be frustrating, fatiguing, and yes, leading to burnout and stress from trying to hurry up and then hating myself for half-assed work.
This is why I'm tired when I drive or when I'm around young kids. I don't trust other drivers and I don't trust kids' survival instinct so I make it my responsibility. Your version of perfectionism is also one of my biggest struggle, I never know when to stop double/triple/quadruple checking everything and it takes me a while to start something, thinking I missed something important.
@@ApocApocrypha I had another idiot run into me right my car off and then do a runner from the scene I had to have refresher driving trainer to rebuild my confidence I was so traumatised by the experience. I have had my license for nearly 20 years
I'm commenting at 5:10, but I just have to jump in before it is finished because this is resonating so strongly with me. This trait is the bane of my existence and why I can't write. My internal editor just cannot let it go. And it's not just while I'm working on it - I'll wake up in the middle of the night thinking I need to add this or clarify that more. I hate this about myself. It has hurt me at work before ("we just need to get it out" and "haven't you ever heard the phrase 'good enough for government work?'" are phrases bosses have said to me. My husband just keeps reminding me that I shouldn't "let perfect be the enemy of good." It helps for emails and shorter tasks, but reports and longer projects, this is the WORST! I'm so glad you are talking about this.
Hi @Autism from the Inside. A lot of what you say in this video is really well articulated, and something to resonates with me. I personally have a bit of an obsessive goal to finish tasks. I don’t feel comfortable if things aren’t done right, I constantly need reassurance. I’ll double and triple and quadruple check my work, even if I know it’s right. I’ll even do that thing that you mentioned about emails where I’ll analyse the email to make sure everything is correct, and then do it again after it’s sent! It’s quite an exhausting condition and way of being, but I don’t feel at ease if I don’t do this. I think it’s great that you’re bringing attention to this so that more people can understand us.
I'm 30 and recently diagnosed ADHD and Autistic and THIS VIDEO EXPLAINS MY DAILY EXPERIENCE SO MUCH. A lot of people in my life (past and present) praise me for my attention to detail, being so productive/always getting things done, giving 110% all the time, and I've always struggled to respond to these "compliments" because it's always felt like... well... why are you praising me for running myself into the ground? I've never found a way to articulate "stop acting like this is such a good thing about me" and I am so glad to have watched this video to get the words to explain it! I think daily "I'm exhausted, why can't I just rest?" and genuinely have had no answers for myself as I continue to be unable to "just stop". When I try to relax, it feels more stressful just knowing all the things I "should" be doing than if I were to just be doing the things! Anyway, this video and all your work is so appreciated! Thank you for everything you do :)
This hits home really hard. There's also a sense of inherent responsibility even if I'm not officially in a position of responsibility in a particular situation or can feel like I should take responsibility because I notice aspects lacking in the organization that no-one else is paying attention to. It often links to empathy as well, when I notice for instance that there's a lapse of attention to the needs of some participants in an event for example, I feel an urge to step in and take responsibility even if I'm just a participant myself.
I recognize this. For me, it’s fear of failure, and to us, a single mistake feels like total failure, especially if someone else notices. I think it comes from a fear of being put under the spotlight/being noticed/scrutinized. I do this primarily at work, and am too worn out to do it anywhere else. I’m obsessed with creating a perfect product, which takes far longer than my peers, but it’s top notch, and I’m always proud of my work. Also, the clients never complain about my product, they prefer it. (I basically create digital maps, and do all of the drafting, in the field. Engineers use my data to design the world) It has to be immaculate, and show minute details. My ability to hyper focus helps, while distractions derail me. I don’t take any breaks, and just work for hours. Also, every aspect of my work is numbers, and I have dyscalculia, so I double check everything. For me, being in a hurry only results in duds, and rejects. I never hurry. My work is terribly complex, a job can take weeks-months, so I’ve learned to eat the elephant, one bite at a time. It’s both mentally, and physically taxing, so I work four days, and recover for three. I’ve been in a state of burnout for several years, long before I learned that I had AuDHD. Your name for it is fine. It’s some type of perfectionism, driven by a fear of rejection.
Omg Paul, I have so much "Yes!" to say about this. I've been doing Parts Therapy for a year now, and only recently did we unearth this backbone, operating-system part. It's my internal OS system, with a tendril and draw of energy in every single thing to "keep it in mind" so I never drop a ball. It's certainly hypervigilance but it's not external. I can only describe it as a hyper-accountable operating system. It definitely plays into the "want to do all the things so do none" but have spent more time getting into the crux of it. I also believe it's a maladapted part (I have trauma crossover) from getting in trouble for 'dropping the ball' as a kid. Anything from manners to homework etc. This has absolutely boggled my therapist, so it has truly brightened my day to not be alone.
And in explaining it to my allistic therapist, explained that we know autistic brains prune less neural pathways and have a higher baseline of brain activity. So it stands to reason I can hold all of these things "in mind" with all their connections triggering back and forth.
When juggling all the balls you have to keep in the air it helps to know which are glass and which are rubber. I think I classify too many as glass so they cannot be ever dropped, as they will shatter, not bounce.
Parts work has been so helpful for me too!! I definitely have likened this experience to an internal OS as well and ended up forming a “Completionist” part because of the times I have dropped the ball - and how that wouldn’t have happened if I had fully taken the job to its end point instead of calling it good too soon, even though others said the project or the effort or whatever was done. I’m learning to trust my own intuition, my own Confidence and Clarity around my intuition, but also not let that Completionist lead so much so that I never feel like I can rest.
@@WandaO.Wilson I absolutely love the glass and plastic analogy, I use it a lot ❤️ My problem is that I was punished as a kid due to someone else deciding what was plastic and what was glass, even if it wasn't mine to juggle.
@@smileart37 I can 💯 understand the Completionist part. I believe I've identified that my OS has developed FROM a fear of punishment wounded part, and keeps a tab on everything as the manager in order to be ready to hand it to a firefighter.
I appreciate the contrast with other discussions about perfectionism. I feel like need for "pattern completion" describes a lot of my apparent compulsions to "fix things", whether or not its really my responsibility. If a brick is out of place or there's some litter on the ground its easier for me to just fix it and avoid the cognitive dissonance of something being out of place. Trouble is, the world is soooo full of things that are "out of place"...
Yeah, hyperviligant standby of sorts. Not enough time to do something else; at the same time waiting until you can do the thing that you want to do or are supposed to be doing; all while trying not to get sidetracked at the same time as you might miss the right moment for the task you're in standby for.
This really really resonates with me. I think what you're describing is also connected the "perfectionst" attribute that resides in many of us. I realise now that the masking and acceptance we seek in NT circles is often entered by being good at something. By excelling with our autisitc talent, we can gain greater acceptance, and therefore we become hyper vigilant in making sure "we get it right..." After working nearly 30 years in my career, and reaching upper management roles, I walked away after suffering massive burnout. Great content - keep it up, it's greatly appreciated.
This resonated with me 100%. I am that role in the group that scans for "gaps" in team work. I've succesfully improved workflow in many of the jobs i've held throughout the years, and this makes sense as to why! I am always paying attention to minute details and cant ever turn off my "problem solving" switch.
For me, it's constant. The optimal place to put a foot, the better way to hold something, the required effort to travel between two rooms, etc. I think it's a cause of some visible peculiarities, for example the stereotypical "t-rex hands" can be seen as a result of only moving the required arm muscles and letting the hands hang, thereby minimising the effort required.
Really relatable. Made me think of the feeling I get when work go over the top praising me on something that anyone could do & that takes very little effort vs not noticing the subtle things that improve systems/processes for all but take a lot of (probably unnecessary) effort. It always makes the praise feel wrong/jarring - it feels patronising like they're praising me for chewing and swallowing a mouthful of food, but not noticing the effort I put in to planning/creating the meal. But I am constantly driven to do the things that don't get praise/notice
I can’t tell you how much this resonates with me! I’ve always seen it as a compensatory mechanism for poor prospective memory and implicit forms of learning. I have strong fluent intelligence and problem solving skills so I apply them in all situations to compensate for the skills I lack. How lovely would it be not to worry about forgetting about up and coming tasks! I would see it as the task based version of masking. Cognitive decoding rather than relying on more implicit skills. Thanks for sharing this, lots to think about 😊
"need for completion" or "need-to-finish" is the umbrella terms which describes what I do, until I am okay, it has to feel complete (precision, accuracy, relevance, thoroughness, depth, easy of use/understandability if someone totally new has to take on the information, clarity and relevance of the context/history). It involves thinking a few steps ahead covering possible scenari and unasked questions and their responses, being satisfied enough for my Self so I won't think about it once submitted/sent/done. Very hard for people to grasp I NEED to do this like this to be able to move on when done. Half done will cause anxiety, restlessness (rumination); back and forth conversations, which could have been prevented, exhausts me even more so the cost (the consequence I will pay/suffer from) of not giving the best the first time is high. In short, same level of quality no matter how important or non important is the task, the question, the opinion, the email, the drawing, the text message. Completion (the need) = Relief (the sensation) >> I could have not done it better, I can now rest. I am satisfied/proud of the achievement and its quality. Thank you for the video, I shared it!
YES!!!! I have struggled with the same problem especially at work. When given a new tasks from my boss my brain immediately goes back to every single instance I have done in the past and if all of those instances varied in some way I can't come to a conclusion as to which example to use. I get into paralysis from analysis.
Yes! I am a MD and engineer, developing products for infection prevention and test them in clinical studies. So many tasks at the same time. I can confirm and rely on that! Its never perfect and often i am exhausted ...For certain tasks i have to wait, maybe for days, until my brain is in a state to perform the task. Usually able to hyperfocus with no effort. Beside of that, i have another trait: i react like an exited dog if somebody tells me about a problem. Like a dog expecting a thrown stick, i want to deliver a solution to the problem ASAP and be totally hyperfocused. Usually neurotypicals are not used or expecting that, overwhelmed and do not appreciate it.
This! I’ve never really thought about other people not getting so excited about being given a problem to solve, but my brain feasts on it - the juicier and more complex the problem the better!
I read a really great article about what it feels like to be an autistic engineer, that said solving a problem is better than sex. (Unless of course the problem is a relationship issue)
I'm totally with you there! I get totally hyper and charge into it single-mindedly at times leaving chaos in my wake. I worked in clinical research and got all the messy projects to sort out.
This very strongly resonates. I feel like you just described my ordinary way of being in the world (and I have wondered for the last ~20 years why so many people seemed to operate completely differently and somehow stayed employed and relatively anxiety-free). I have developed some mitigating strategies or behaviors over the years in an attempt to temper this and 'balance' out, but so many of the patterns seem hard-wired or baked-in. I think 'responsibility hyper-vigilance' is a good start for a description. If I think of anything better while dwelling on this later I will post again.
For myself I'd call that sort of thing being monotropic, detail-oriented, and driven to collaborate ...but going a bit unbalanced with executive function differences particularly inertia, and some perfectionism from childhood trauma. (I am a classic perfectionist though). I associate hyper-vigilance with higher sympathetic nervous system activation and trauma. I've actively softened a whole lot of my perfectionism - mostly through trauma work, but also practicing doing things in a less detailed way, taking half steps, letting some of the balls drop and just seeing that it is actually safe to do that. It's about trusting myself, but also those around me. And recognising the people around me are a lot more supportive and accepting than what I grew up with. For me struggling to prioritise is a sign I'm overloaded and needed to step back as it is not my baseline. With the right pacing I can juggle quite a lot. (I'm autistic but not ADHD). I like the crow's nest analogy as I often imagine some of my autistic ancestors as on solitary watch or exploration either guarding or searching and learning for the good of the collective. I don't have a single term to suggest sorry :D monotropism+inertia+detail-oriented+perfectionism+executive-function-overload is not so catchy
Paul, thank you for describing me perfectly. I believe you are describing what, in business, is called operations management or logistics. It can be applied to everything from customizing a shipment for export, to your local library's children's programming, to planning an adhd/asd family outing for children and adults. You are correct when you say this isn't perfectionism, something I have been accused of many times - perhaps why I never could connect with Brene Brown, who I don't think was familiar with neurodivergence when I tried listening to her Ted Talks and reading her books. I haven't come up with a better term than hypervigilance/responsibility - although that immediately caught my attention! - but other key words are maximum, efficiency, quality, outcome, results, and communication.
Get out of my head! 😂 Seriously though this is absolutely spot on, and I think "responsibility hyper-vigilance" as a working term fits very neatly. As a side note, being AuDHD, throwing ADHD into the mix with it's own executive functioning challenges - combined also with autistic inertia, I think - really takes all of this up a notch. Plus the RSD-based fear and resultant rejection avoidance is a challenging tension to live with.
You have described my life. It's so hard to explain to other people what is going on...I don't think I understood it all until your video. Well done articulating, maybe we can grant ourselves some grace knowing, "It's not just me!"
Resonating!!! I think you have a pretty good handle on this. We have a superpower, lazer-focus. So, how to turn it off and on? I have kept a day planner since I was a kid. If I write stuff down, it helps me to set it aside so I don't worry that I will forget. I organize tasks by deadline and importance, and I can carry them over to the next day or next week, depending on how every day goes. Organized flexibility. I still work super hard and thoroughly, but more and more, I also embrace the idea that rest is productive and a priority. So now I rest every day, and I am always finding new ways to improve my quality of rest. I am really trying to be mindful of how I am feeling. Am I tired? That is ok. I am human. Take a little break, even for a minute. I try to make sacred time not to have to worry about time. A day to wake up and not look at a clock all day. This is a comfort to me as I go through my week, knowing I have a timeless day scheduled once a week or even once a month. Seems like I magically get stuff done on those days. My mind sees what is missing and how to solve problems. I see solutions and doors open. I de-clutter my mind and slow down into my body again. The concept that rest is productive!!! So what do we call this? It's not a problem... it's a superpower. Lazer-mind... learn to focus the lazer-mind so we don't burn ourselves down... avoiding lazer-mind-burnout. Finding ways to organize what we focus on and make sure self-care is right up at the top of the list. ❤ Thank you so much for the good work you do. It amazes me every day how understanding how my brain is different helps me to love myself and to live a more beautiful, peaceful, and whole life. You make a difference to me.
When studying zen meditation there's a quote that goes something like, "There is a time to do and a time to do naught." Sounds like you've really managed to strike a balance in your life!! 😁👍
I call it hyper-responsibility or excessive attention. For example, I wrote a blog post yesterday and I have spent all day going back and re-reading, editing, and making slight changes. I think this phenomenon is related to pattern seeking behaviour. Like when I’m walking outdoors, I am always scanning for four leaf clovers and can sometimes find several on one walk. Whatever I’m doing, I’m pattern seeking, looking for even the smallest deviance. Great video.
Damn, that definitely rings a bell for me. In the beginning of my career I would link this type of behavior with perfectionism though, especially because I was indeed sensitive to criticism. But at the same time, I've always thought of it as an internal urge to fully utilize all my knowledge, skills and all contextual information available to me to do the tasks. I've thought of it almost as a personal challenge I couldn't refuse, not necessarily for fear of criticism, but for personal satisfaction. It's hard to describe. I work as a designer and it's common and expected to have people such as clients, other designers and everybody else in the team critisizing the work and sharing perspectives I haven't thought about. So as time went by I've "learned" to force myself to finish the tasks before feeling like I'm done with them. I try to remember myself that no matter how much time I spend on a task, I will always miss something and there will always be ways to improve, so I try to finish things earlier and incorporate other people's feedback as a "subtask" to get the main task done. Once I got feedback and I finished the modifications in the work I did based on the feedback, I feel more comfortable to decide the task is done. So working with other people helps. However, there's a negative side, which is I can't even remember the last time I felt a true sense of safisfaction by getting the work done in my job. Sometimes I feel demotivated, like l'm just delivering low-quality work, even if all the feedback is positive and the business outcome of the work is good. Maybe that's because, internally, I know I forced myself to stop the task earlier than I would naturally stop, so I didn't fully utilized all resources I had to get it done. It's like I'm studying on a weeking for an exam because I personally like studying and like the satisfaction of getting A's, but my teachers, colleagues and parents are all like "hey, don't try so hard, you don't have to be studying the whole weekend, B's and C's are perfectly fine, go do something else, OK?"
This feels exactly like an aspect of me, which is called either high standards or perfectionism depending on the speaker and the day. It often feels like there's no point doing a protect when I know I'll be required to do it poorly.
This is also a trauma response: And most of us autistics have a history of trauma from being misunderstood and treated poorly as a result or being unable to understand others and have higher sensitivities to this and are unable to cope- Possibly why there is such a high co-diagnosis with Anxiety and Trauma with Autism. Often when we should not be in situations necessary of coping, but finding ones of more compatibility- unfortunately, that is not easily achieved for us.
I’ve been diagnosed with adult ADD and general anxiety disorder and not autism. This video is more useful, accurate, and actionable than any diagnosis or advice I’ve had on my condition. I love how practical it is and that you haven’t given it a name.
Amazing insight, and this distinction from perfectionism is really resonant. I’m non-stop thinking about how things can be better or more ideal. It’s exhausting, and it does feel very different from my perfectionism. Thank you so much for exploring/highlighting this! ✨🙏✨
Thank you for this video. I am diagnosed with ADHD and my assessment for this mentions that I have autistic traits and an assessment was advised, although I haven’t sought this as yet. I feel that this responsibility hypervigilance (can’t think of a better name as this sums it up) dominates my life to the point that it prevents me from doing many things, or at least the few things that I do (work, household/family responsibilities, and studying) take up so much of my time that I don’t have the time or energy for other things, like other people seem to be able to do. I’m always scanning; a room, an email or text I’ve written, my brain…looking for things i may have missed. In my studies I spend too much time writing assignments and I’m never really truly happy with them, but I receive scores of 90% or more. In social situations I’m always aware of everything that is going on around me to the point that I am not participating (I also struggle to participate in group conversations for other reasons). It’s tiring, and has really had an impact on my life to the point that I feel stuck in a cycle where maintenance is preventing improvement. I want to change my career but there is so much preventing this. After watching this video though, I realise that this may be a big factor. I’d love to learn more about this, but for now I’m going to watch this video again, and probably again and again.
Wow, this resonates a lot with me (officially non-autistic but still feeling like it software developer), especially regarding the work environment. I would love a follow-up video with a focus on how to clear your mind and find rest in this situation.
I found myself nodding along and agreeing the entire time, I instantly know the feeling you are talking about. I just spent the last week applying that in a positive way in a hobby and have been praised for my attention to detail, but then that's just how I interact with everything so when I'm doing things that I'm not as good at, I'm still burning all that energy and coming away with results that aren't worth the expenditure. End result being burn out because it turns out there are a lot of tasks that need doing, and giving 100% to every task that comes along leaves you with nothing
So true. I find emotional regulation has brought more bandwidth but I still agree that we burn brightly and have to be mindful of our own window of tolerance
for school projects I was always the kid who overdid the assignment, did extra, and went above and beyond, ppl called me too intense and asked why I put in so much effort. I relate to this a lot
It's like perfectionism analysis. it goes further than just wanting to do everything perfect, it's the amount of energy used to analyse everything constantly, every minute, about everything around you. I find it draining and satisfying at the same time. Sometimes I consider it a super power, other times I wish i could just shut it off for a few days.
This is super-relatable. I don't necessarily have a better name for it, but it resonates so hard. Incidentally, as a tip for the email thing, "schedule send" has saved my life. It means that I can clear out my inbox at a time when I'm not "supposed to" be working, but no one knows that I was checking my email at, say, 9 pm on Sunday. I can prep a reply when I'm home and relaxed and not being interrupted, but it only sends out at 9:30 am on Monday morning.
The buddhist concept of "single minded focus" really helps me with this, and wearing a casino (because it has a timer mode). I don't pay attention to what time it is, but when I start a task I start the timer and it helps me know how long I've been "in it" for. It works like a tether for me.
This was funny to watch because I always just chalked this up to "my work ethic". It makes sense as an autistic thing. Through that lens, I can see it being the limbic system looking for what animal might come out of the bushes next. The "animal" in a work environment might be what ball I may have dropped or what problematic person may approach with some issue. I totally related to the role you like on a team. I always say I don't want to be the one in charge, but I like somewhat of an elevated position so I can get an overview of processes, anticipate my supervisor's next move or need, and be on it immediately with what information or things they may need. I also like being at that level to get a broad overview of the operation to optimize processes.
I'm a 28-year-old woman with autism. I knew something was "different" about me but I couldn't put a name on it until I discovered this channel. After some videos on here, I have reached out to my psychologist to ask "I might be on the spectrum" and explained my reasons and my way of seeing things like tasks, relationships, social codes, etc. And then I'm diagnosed with autism. Now the things I couldn't put a nome on make sense and I feel relieved after having an explanation and not just being weird. I can relate a lot to the concept of this video. When I write a report I do it like no one else and my office starts to use it as a base after that. That happened a lot. But also I get totally lost when I need to answer multiple emails and do "small" tasks. My manager asks why aren't they completed yet but I'm correcting the font at the moment. The worst part is I can't just send it "not good enough" and be at ease in my mind. I can't scratch out that task from my mind. I keep thinking about that mail with the wrong font all day and get uneasy with the thought that they will send me an answer about my mistake. All in all "small" tasks put me under great stress while detailed tasks make me happy because I can customize and improve them as much as I want. And finally unfortunately, no I don't have a better name for it.
I definitely experience this and for me it’s part of my experience of the world as chaotic and confusing. I’m trying desperately to get things to make sense.
I love that when I'm struggling w/ "labeling" my own experiences that you're already 10 steps ahead of me and can describe it perfectly . I always feel so VALIDATED here!!! I love the current label as it needs no explanation for those not on the spectrum, so it takes no translation on my part. MANY, MANY heartfelt thanks, Paul ❤
Again, you are describing me 😊 Especially the paralyzed state. I use my Alexa for reminders, alarms, and routines. My phone has alarms for eating, starting my evening routine, and every appointment has an alarm 30 minutes before it starts with three 10-minute snoozes. Every alarm talks to me and tells me what is coming up. I think 'hyper-vigilance' is an excellent label for this.
Attacked! 🤣🤣 This is me to a T and it is so exhausting. I have been towing the line with burnout and am realizing that this is one of the main reasons why. Personally, I like the term you already coined, "Responsibility-hypervigilance", as it's concise. Thank you for talking about this!
I'm a senior software engineer, so I am responsible for extremely complex interacting systems. Projects that add features or fix problems in these systems also tend towards hypercomplexity. I find that this video's topic describes how ASD helps me. I have to organize and document and delegate. If I do those things I don't get stuck checking the same details over and over. I give myself checkboxes to check.
This is the first time I've seen someone articulate anything close to my own experience - I've spent so much time over the years thinking about and trying to find anything remotely related to this, so I'm grateful that I'm not alone. For the reasons you describe, I've always found it frustrating when perfectionism or related concepts come up in relation to me and my behaviour. The best ways I've attempted to describe my experience have been 'imagine that every task you did felt like heart surgery or launching a rocket' or an analogy to codes/expectations that knights and samurai used to have. I've been so focused on the negative connotations that I hadn't realised how connected this was to my strengths. I had always thought that if I could just turn it down a bit, I'd be the right level of awareness and conscious thought to achieve things more normally. However, hearing you describe this, it really is the same reason that I easily find ways to improve systems, do quality detail-oriented work quickly despite having ADHD, and get complimented by people for being extremely thoughtful and considerate for others when it just seems like normal to me. At the same time, being able to turn it off sometimes would be nice - I'm really sick of being fixated on how to optimise the spacing and distribution of my washing so that it dries faster.... I currently don't have any better ideas about a name, but you can bet it'll be constantly on my mind now haha
superattention as for the perfectionism I sometimes say to myself things like 'good is good enough' or 'f*ck perfect' - I am reminded of a saying when screwing in screws that goes like 'after to tight comes lose' meaning to much pressure can break the screw. as for the person who told you a trait of burning bright, it is just one person judging one trait, so others might disagree with them or they might just see one angle. thx for sharing.
Definitely resonates...Its like My Body knows i need to relax and just calm down...But my Brain is Always Looking for SOMETHING To Do! IM SO Hypervigilant its out of this world
Holy cow, you've hit the nail on the head. This is why I can only successfully handle one graduate class at a time. I can't set any one ball down long enough to deeply focus on any of them if I've got multiple classes to work on. Absolutely paralyzing. While most students do their thesis project during their last semester of coursework, I couldn't focus on the thesis enough to even choose a topic until all of my coursework was done. Now that it's the only requirement left, I can fully focus on it and enjoy it. It's so freeing to be able to focus on just this one thing! It's a dream!
@@MathStatsMe congratulations on being able to do it I didn’t end up completing honours because I knew I couldn’t write a thesis even though I was invited to do it 20 years ago
Monotropic Demand Attentiveness: If I'm getting the idea right, it seems like the hyperfocus acompanying monotropism and the knowledge that said hyperfocus will lead to failure to meet responsibilities leads to a fixation on the tasks that demand your attention. I wonder if it may be a result of the same trait that leads to Pathological Demand Avoidance, but the other side of the spectrum? Tasks that need to be completed can be seen as Demands by many, and rather than doing anything to avoid them or being unable to begin them, you are instead driven to do them immediately for fear of forgetting them? In other words it is the opposite of Pathological Demand Avoidance, and it is driven by awareness of monotropic focus and anxiety that hyperfocus on one task might lead to failing to meet other responsibilities. It would be useful for the opposite side of PDA to have similar letters, and people are often not a fan of the word Pathological, so I would suggest: Monotropic Demand Attentiveness Then when discussing autism and the way it relates to demands we would be discussing PDA and MDA, with the former being a compulsion to avoid tasks that are seen as demands and the latter being a compulsion to fixate on tasks that are seen as demands until they are completed.
I think you're really on to something here, but when I was watching this video, a 'light bulb went off in my head' (sorry for the cliché-d phrasing), because what Paul's talking about here is _the_actual_reason_for_ my PDA. What's happening with me is that - because there are all these daily tasks I need to get done asap (things that allistics can get done quickly but which consume nearly my entire day each day) - I can't even get started on the MOST IMPORTANT but slightly less immediate tasks that need to be completed, because these latter tasks will require a LOT of attention and time. The fact is, if I switch focus to a MOST IMPORTANT task, then all the immediate things that need to get done each day (like showering, eating, watering the plants), won't get done at all for (say) 2.5 weeks, which would spell immediate disaster. But, sadly, not getting the MOST IMPORTANT task done will spell doom a few months from now (and is the whole reason I will get engrossed in doing it right, but I can't even begin it, because I need to keep getting the daily things done which will also be disastrous if not completed). The reason, though, that I call it the "MOST IMPORTANT" is that (in my case) it's finance-related stuff, so if not tended to, it's extremely disastrous.
This resonates with my autistic experiences. It is so very rare that I can feel anything is actually done/complete... so badly now I almost sabotage my efforts to reach completeness just so I don't have to commit to it being complete. I can't pick out minor failings if I've pre-staged and acknowledged glaring incompleteness. I never have to accept that it isn't perfect if I accept that it is incomplete.
I can so relate to this! Putting my to-dos on my calendar instead of on a list, along with estimates of how long each task will take, and calendaring rest breaks between, is the strategy that has saved me from stress overwhelm.
I've had to stop this sort of hypervigelence in the workplace. I was seeing all the holes left open by others and trying to fill them. Now, I must let others fail, even if I have to get involved AFTER the fact. It's crazy to go either way really. It's sheer madness, and it gets me worked up!
It's not madness, it's sticking to the job you're paid for. As a young guy I would have that same problem. But that's why supervisors have their jobs. They are the ones supposed to keep an eye on everyone's mess and step in if things get out of hand. And don't think they are not aware of things not going perfectly. But they are generally aware what their minions are capable of, and they also know how good is good enough.
@@Volkbrecht That's why I am letting them manage, and let these thing happen. If they see it, as you suggest, then the ship will sink on their watch and not mine. On a separate point. In my particular circumstance, the company will fold like a deck of cards when I depart. Laziness has befallen them, not me. I've busted my butt for 26 year and I've made them allot of money. They are older and I see them failing as effective leaders. As for what they are paying me, I earn every penny. And it's not my job to save them from themselves. I've made recommendations, and they go unheeded. It will be interesting to see it all fall apart when I do leave in a few years. In my field there are no replacements in the local population. We are a niche service provider. When I go, it all goes.
I don't know how my neurotypical coworkers get through the day. No consistency whatsoever, abysmal attention to detail, seemingly unable to remember anything they're told...and I'M the "handicapped" one?
I can completely relate to what you've described. The constant pressure of focusing on everything is exhausting. Thank you for sharing your experience. It's reassuring to know that someone else feels this way too.
Whoah, the whole "can't turn off brain from thinking about future commitments" thing is so true for me, I just have to think about the next task in front of my or the rest will keep me from getting stuff done, though it's always stressful. I actually just demoted myself from a management position due to not being able to handle the stress of so many future commitments that I just didn't care about.
Packing. Packing for trips create this paralysis of many days - even weeks of 'have I got everything' and overpacking and unpacking etc. And I totally get the dread or desire to keep some task many weeks in advance in my brain so I don't drop the ball, this causes a lot of stress, i dread certain times of year because they have things that come around and I know I'll get like this.
This is extremely relatable. It can be stressful, so I appreciate that you spoke about the benefits of this trait. I may come across as very high strung, but my family and coworkers seem to appreciate that I am thorough and good at keeping track of all the things that need to be done. Thanks for the perspective!
This is great. Yes, I can relate. It also reminds me of a story my art teacher once told the class. It happened in the Louvre, in Paris. One day, a man was discovered sitting in front of a painting that was hanging on the wall. No big deal, except that he was painting on it! Security was called and he was "escorted" out of there. Turns out he was the artist of the painting and claimed that he felt it needed some more work! The lesson, my art teacher said, is we have to know when a piece is finished. And let it be! 😊
My art teacher told us the same thing. A piece of art is never "finished". There is no such point in the making process where it is "finished". It belongs to being an artist that you have to DECIDE when to stop doing it and call it finished.
Omg!!! This is the video that has most resonated with me in my search for answers. 64 and recently diagnosed ADHD, but not autism (yet). It perfectly describes my work struggles, my house clutter, life disorganization. So many things to do, where do i start? But when I do tackle something, I do it very well. I recently wrote most of a student handbook for our program because once I got started, there was no stopping. And it was thorough. I drive my daughter nuts with this when she tells me about ideas for her business. I ask her, but what about this or that, until she gets frustrated to the point she doesn't really bounce ideas off me much anymore. She'll say " you're doing that thing again."
On a couple of the well-known "autism" channels I've voiced a theory and it has gotten some very positive response, even approaching passionate response. It's something that has made sense of tons for me. It really does strike me as something approaching (at least approaching perhaps?) an autism "Theory of Everything." I want to give voice to it here, to test it on the complex of traits that you're justifiably seeing as parts of some elusive whole. First, all the manifestations you're describing seem to have this in common: they are all attempts, scrambling, often desperate attempts, to achieve definition. WHAT is going on here, HOW is it done, WHAT is my role, WHAT are the pitfalls, threats, needs, WHAT have I still left undone, WHAT will happen if I miss something, etc. It's all about the perpetual struggle and scramble after DEFINITION. This is why I think--at least I THINK--my "Theory of Everything" might come in useful here. So here it is: I'm feeling fairly convinced that at the heart of autism is the relative absence of a fixed cognitive matrix. The absence is relative, sometimes more, sometimes less (the degree of "high functioning" possibly corresponds to this), but I'm strongly convinced that a certain "matrixlessness" is at the heart of all autism. I also call it Matrix Autism. Incidental illustrations: hyper-vigilance is a crisis-mode state of readiness to respond radically in settings where you have no confident basis to anticipate what might happen...even in settings (like a supermarket) where you've been ten thousand times already. Hyper-sensitivity to sensory input: same crisis-mode alertness. You're in a church social hall with a hundred conversations all buzzing around you. You're attuned, maddeningly, to every single one of them, because every single one of them contains info that might impinge on or threaten you. And an infant suddenly shrieks and you nearly jump out of your skin, even though an infant has shrieked at every such gathering the last hundred times you've been at one, but it's like every time is the first time all over again. Matrix amnesia. You know intellectually but there's another part of your psyche that viscerally forgets. When I was in elementary school arithmetic was torture to me. I couldn't understand why 8x7 being 56 today meant it would be 56 tomorrow. There was no matrix of meaning, no all-encompassing schema to plug that into. Masking, especially the most destructive kind of all that I call "Private Masking" (or "Visceral Masking") seems hugely obviously to be a compensation for matrixlessness. It's a scramble to mirror the immediate presentations coming at you socially, what seems to be working in the given situation, just to survive it, not because those patterns are meaningful to you. They're not, because the matrix they emerge from is a closed book to you, finds no psychic echo in you. Private masking is the continued internalization, viscerally, self-conceptually, of the external inputs, the patterns, the social values and priorities, the "advice" and "peer pressure" exerted on you, even when you're all alone, while you're struggling to shove and wrench and contort your inner state into the form that "the world out there" told you it should look like: how you should feel, what you should love, why you should get out of bed in the morning. This is masking at its most pernicious, wreaking unfathomable psychic and, yes, physical damage. And at the root of it all is a matrixlessness intrinsic to autism. A matrixlessness that means no amount of masking, either social or private, external or visceral, will ever EVER work because it CAN'T undo the matrixlessness. The efforts, both visible and inwardly emotional, to turn into what that matrix out there seems to require are doomed, can't work, precisely because you will never really understand, never be part of, the thing you're trying to imitate and be part of. That's what so god-awful destructive about masking. That even when you're doing it, it isn't what you think it is. Well, Paul, that's my theory, for what's it worth: Matrixlessnes, or Matrix Amnesia, as the fundamental trait of autism and its whole range of manifestations.
many thnx for putting thoughts out into such thorough ‚grand draft‘ to relate to. as indeed, we haven’t been, and won’t be belonging, to that matrix, nor have (had) it, ultimately.
I’ve been thinking of something similar for a while now. I lack a certain ‘base’, what you call a matrix, and because of that, experiences just don’t stick. I have taken to consciously preparing myself for events (yes, the baby will probably scream, they will ask X or Y), because it will take me off guard every time otherwise. Ugh! This can also be a nice trait, because sometimes experiencing the same things as if they were new (emotionally, physically) can be beautiful! With for example movies or games.
This resonates a lot. I find it’s hard to explain that when I look like I’m doing nothing my brain is furiously busy thinking about things I need to do, going through them in detail, considering the best approach - and then when I do them I check everything multiple times. I don’t really understand how people just ‘do’. I think of it as ‘thought intensity’ - and kind of related to things like hating small talk and struggling with unknown situations. It’s like my brain hates ‘surface thinking’ and runs on ‘deep, intense thinking’ but then applies it to inappropriate things like a fairly basic email or what to eat for dinner. But when it’s applied to solving complex problems it’s great, and useful for things like writing. Multitasking hugely stresses me out because I want to go deep on everything and take ages. My coping strategy is to pretend I’m someone else for say, an hour, and ‘step into’ being this kind of breezy, busy, surface person who can just type jolly answers and get things done. Then I reward myself with a nice deep dive into something interesting!
Hi Lucy, I find 'Thought Intensity' a very appropriate term to describe how our minds are overthinking or underthinking. It allows for a scale. So if I may, I'd like to call it Hyperattentive Thought Intensity
The perfectionism part I call "getting stuck." I've learned the types of things where I am most prone to this (like hanging pictures or putting on screen protectors), and I've learned to ask someone else to do it. Otherwise, I know I will "get stuck" and end up with fifteen holes in the wall or a non-sticky screen protector from too much repositioning.
16:55 "Yeah, but when you burn, you burn very, very brightly." Yes, that's an amazing way to describe it! 🥰👍 What a cool and understanding, compassionate friend! 💕
I can totally relate to this. I manage a web service for a cloud provider, and there is no question this “hyper-vigilance” affects me. It is nearly impossible for me to not think about the state of the service. I’m fairly sure a couple of my engineers are autistic, too, but not ADHD. I don’t see the same behavior in them, which is interesting.
All of the traits you mentioned at 100% relatable to me and caused me to reach the depressed/burnout state that started me on my journey to getting diagnosed with inattentive ADHD in my mid thirties. I honestly felt like I hadn't had a single proper day of rest in decades, while at the some time not accomplishing anything of importance. On top of that I am an INTJ mbti type which is naturally predisposed to planning for future events (predicted or prescribed), perfectionism and decision paralysis. The combination of my natural ability and giftedness allowed me to push myself too hard for too long as an undiagnosed ADHDer without prioritizing rest, and all the while making myself too exhausted to maintain my home or social life. Lately I have been trying to prioritize my needs. My need for rest IS IMPORTIANT.
![BLACK BAG - Official Trailer [HD] - Only in Theaters March 14](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/Du0Xp8WX_7I/mqdefault.jpg)
Yes, this is my life. You described it very well. I always wondered what was wrong with other folks. Why were they not attentive? Why did they shirk responsibility? But at 70, I am beginning to understand my attention to detail and sense of responsibility was most likely hardwired and not a willful choice. When folks ask why I care about the details, I get confused by the question. I want to ask, what do you mean details? I’m surrounded by the things you call details. As a kid, I just thought my peers were lazy. I realize now that was just bad judgement on my part. They truly see the world very differently. I’m happy for the new vocabulary associated with autism. I’m still finding it weird to think of myself as autistic, but the language helps both me and others. Better late than never.
I'm only slowly beginning to understand why I don't necessarily consider myself detail-oriented. It seems to be that exact phenomenon, where I don't have the same conception of what others consider "details."
I grew up being the same way and it would really frustrate me that other kids, and later, adults did not notice the details or seem to give the same level of attention and responsibility to a task.
@@melvamelendez9817that's why no house cleaner can do it right! 😅
But, most people ARE lazy.
😂 @@galloping3265
I have never had someone so accurately explain my internal experience as you have in this video. I feel seen and heard 😭
Same and I’m not even a diagnosed autistic.
Hyper conscientious vigilance
Best ParaSocial relationship I’ve ever had.
Another thing I was doing in conversations on phone afterwards I was fully waiting outconversation answers there was that many sheets of paper I'd got blavk bin bags of letters I krpt never throw then when it came to moving we got a cleaning gitm yo dirt the cubby hole out
Me too. He described my life in this video.
for me these traits seem to be an adaptation to unsafe childhood where i was parentified and expected to make sure everyone (including narcissistic adults) was okay so nobody would get screamed at. of course as a child, with autism, this was neither feasible nor my responsibility. inversion of parent child dynamic can leave the child feeling like everything is their responsibility and like what they've done is never enough. it's related to fawn response and an overwhelming urge to make sure everything is okay and predictable, when the home was unsafe and unpredictable and the child's needs were invalidated and they were punished for their inherent sensitivities. at least in my case. :3
I didn't have this problem as a child at all. But I face exactly the same issues (always controlling everything, huge difficulties with multitasking, etc...)
It's like you decribed my life.
I always assumed this was why I am like this too! More and more, I’m learning how I exist at the nexus of Autism, ADHD, and C-PTSD. It’s a wild experience but also not the singular one as I always assumed.
I’ve noticed with over 30 years as a nanny and teacher, emotionally sensitive parents are more likely to create kids on the spectrum. Deeply sensitive people tend to be great at noticing “the bear smell in the cave” so they are/were very important in keeping a family alive. Sensitives also tend to be detailed oriented and often are introverted; character traits that are enhanced within people with ASD, anxiety, and somewhat in ADHD. I’m sorry the above poster’s parents were horrible! Their caring sensitivities clearly helped them be resilient in a terrible situation and helped their siblings survive too!
@@megb9700 autism is genetic. It’s likely that the “emotionally sensitive parents” you have met are also autistic and that’s why their kids are.
This goes well with the convo around "monotropism". The idea being the autistic brain prefers to focus on one thing at a time, as in depth as possible. Pulling your attention away once you're hyper focused is really difficult. It's a big change in your mental state to go from intense, all-consuming focus on one thing to switching to more dispersed focus on the environment, upcoming tasks, all other priorities and figuring out how to choose and initiate your next task or action. Cue task paralysis! A single focus is much more comfortable.
But switching focus to another single topic is often hard too. Your mind keeps jumping back to what you had been doing intensely for so long, until enough time's gone by and you get deep enough into the next thing. Thoughts and trends in thinking become neurologically reinforced by use. The more time you spend thinking about something or thinking a certain way, the harder it is to transition your thoughts to something else.
Monotropic trending brains also make it difficult to multitask and keep track of ongoing simultaneous priorities of daily life. Like focusing on a task but also remembering to eat or drink water, for some people. Or keeping track of the time and steps to be ready to do something when you know you have it coming up later. "Waiting mode" I've heard that one called. We have to be "hyper vigilant" about those other priorities otherwise we get too focused on what we're doing and forget about them.
As far as the obsessive perfectionism, looking for every possible little thing you can do or improve about something...I think that's a feature of monotropism too, to continue by default to keep focusing more and more in depth on this thing you think is important until you've fully understood and analyzed and predicted everything possible about it and done everything you can to make it better
I think it boils down to this. Allistic people can more comfortably experience and think about a wider variety of things at once. And Allistic people don't tend to HYPERfocus on one thing to the point where they forget everything else, so they have an easier time shifting their focus away when needed. But they also might not come up with the same good ideas and predictions that can be born of extended hyperfocus. Monotropic trending brains can be extremely effective at certain jobs that align with their strengths and essentially become their hyperfocus. Or they can be really shitty at a job because they're constantly hyper focusing on the wrong things, not able to multitask or shift focus when necessary due to the nature of their job duties.
Thanks for reading my poorly edited novel 😂 I'm a pediatric occupational therapist, self diagnosed Autistic/ADHD and I have a lot of thoughts on this clearly.
Yes, this really resonates with me! I also thought about the connection with monotropism.
Nailed it
I agree, I recently burned out after six weeks of hot desking and a change in my responsibilities that entailed trying to spread surface level attention across multiple demands. That led me to reading about monotropism and to Tanya Adkin's description of monotropic split (the idea that we can't regulate the amount of attention we give to different demands, so when we mask by trying to mimic polytropic focus, the best we can manage is giving hyper detailed, hyper focused attention to multiple demands). That isn't sustainable and I think it explains my nervous system overload. I also relate to Tanya Adkin's descriptions of Meerkat Mode and Atypical Burnout. In workplaces that value efficient switching between tasks and acceptance of the way things are as the keys to profitable production of widgets, monotropic processors are likely to be seen as ''not a good fit'' and singled out for constructive dismissal (where the employer makes the workplace a living hell in an effort to force the employee to quit). For autistics with marketable special interests, jobs designed for monotropic minds are ideal, and I think guaranteed livable basic income, income tested and provided to those who need it regardless of work status, would go a long way to mitigating the 85 per cent un- and under-employment rate among autistic college graduates.
In addition to your insight, thank you for writing clearly and using that increasingly-absent invention known as paragraphs… Makes it much easier to read than a single, massive block of text.
Also you might not finish projects on time. This ruined my college career.
I finished writing my dissertation, it took me a year to finally send it to be revised. For me everything was wrong. Had to go to therapy. I received an award for my thesis. I was diagnosed with autism.
This is such a great comment.
This comment made me laugh out loudly for being so on point and relatable.
I was praised by my piano teachers when I was a kid, even though I thought I was mediocre. I played percussion in high school, and my teacher bragged about me to other students and teachers. friends always talked about my ability to dominate some video games. I was supposed to choose from my high school senior photoshoot for graudation. I submitted the selection almost 4 years after high school, and I was about to graduate college. I have a kid now, and she was recently diagnosed with mild autism. I suspected I had ADHD.
Ahhh congrats!!! Wish me luck. Need to complete mine possibly in less than 6 months to complete my doctorate. Only now learning of autism potential, realizing I have been hampered by entire doctoral education without dx or any assistance or formal accommodations.
Wanted to share in the experience of torture…. It must have been a slog for you! Cheers to your success. Now it is time to rest your brain and recover before next steps!
i absolutely love this for some reason..
I’ve always felt like neurotypical people were just lazy or innattentive about a lot of things. This explains perfectly why I felt that way!
There’s certain things that I find very important and almost can’t understand how a lot of people don’t seem to care about them. This helps me understand 😊
💯
I feel ya. I've been really meditating on the double empathy problem lately in this context.
Let's face it... They ARE lazy 🤷🏻♂️
"I've always felt like neurotypical people were just lazy or innattentive about a lot of things." I know, right!? Turns out they're relaxed and more easy going on themselves. They care less, in a good way?
Unless it is important, then it's just maddening and no excuse for it, Ha ha ha.
exactly! For example, how easily neurotypicals forget their promises and little details that were discussed, and then they tell you that they are "busy" as an excuse. Everyone is busy! I can't explain to myself how are they so careless.
This resonates so much with me. As a freelancer, I have trouble with it at work, where it takes me forever to get even the smallest jobs done because I check and re-check and re-work details until the amount of effort I put in is far beyond the amount of work I'm being paid for. But it's also part of the reason I have such difficulty maintaining friendships: by the time I've made sure I'm saying *exactly* what I wanted to say, have described whatever news I'm sharing coherently, not made any spelling or grammar errors, not left anything out, am not accidently being rude, not rambling, not forgetting to respond to anything specific in their message... writing a "quick" e-mail will take me hours and just isn't something I often have the energy for. And so people don't hear from me for weeks or months and (understandably) think I don't care...
Yes, the concept of a "quick" e-mail is foreign to me. Even attempting a half page email will take me most of a day... as I will write, and repeatedly re-write and re-arrange sentences and paragraphs and add/remove punctuation marks, in my attempts to ensure that what I am saying will be understood correctly.
All of this! I'm a freelancer and it's gotten worse over the years. I have trouble starting anything (I am diagnosed ADHD but have most autistic traits as well, and as a child probably fit the "classic" autistic spectrum more than the ADHD stereotype, but still was overlooked...) because I know how long it will take me to be as thorough as I prefer to be. I know if I start an edit, for example, it will be ALL that I do for the next 5 solid days in a row, early morning to late night, because I have trouble stopping anything once I've started it. It's a dread I wouldn't wish on anyone. But I'm back in school and changing careers to hopefully be in a role that is easier to manage day to day than a creative, freelancing role. I always did really well at jobs where I went in in person and had very specific, black and white tasks to do. Such as creating spreadsheets or counting drawers and cleaning. Creative work is just too open ended and broad, and unless I"m working strictly for my own projects, it's just too overwhelming. I can finally admit that.
@@melvamelendez9817 I also have a History course this summer (ugh...gen eds are the worst at my age lol) that has 8 "essay" assignments per week. The professor calls 6 of those assignments "quick journal entries" and expects them to take 5-15 minutes max to complete, but each one has taken me 3-6 hours! It's a self-paced course and I actually failed it last semester because I didn't complete it in time (my school is best grade standing, so it was worth it to not have a mental breakdown to just let it all go and not cram in 24 essays into the last week and pull multiple all-nighters lol) but now I am getting dangerously close to the deadline once again. I just need to half-a$$ it, but I've never been able to do that for anything! Even emails and texts, which is why texting is so stressful to me too :-(
I love that you wrote a really long sentence without even finishing it. I get what you're implying with the "..." but I did have to think for a second and the Irony was not lost on me.
But also I really agree with you on all this
The first time I heard the term "hypervigilance", my therapist at the time had used it to describe my extreme awareness of my immediate and broader environment, and talked about it as something to be treated, since it would often overwhelm me into anxiety/panic attacks as I grew older. But while I liked having a term for it, I recoiled from her treatment of it as a symptom, because I greatly valued my ability to use the information gained from sorting through that noise, as I am someone who would always rather know than remain ignorant.
It turns out that there's a unseen (and often unspoken) separation of two features there: the hypervigilance part itself was greatly amplified as a result of severe childhood abuse I suffered (often brought upon me as punishment for my autistic-presenting traits) and was a defense mechanism, but those same traits of extreme analysis and curiosity are what helped me navigate that information and made good of it. This is why it felt like... in addressing my "hypervigilance" as a whole, my therapist was leaning toward sort of 'throwing the baby out with the bathwater'.
I share this story to caution others from using the term "hypervigilance" to describe this feature as a whole, as it has strong mental health connotations already, and could result in grave miscommunication. The question for me became a matter of learning better methods to filter the influx of sensory information and to understand my limits and what environments I could move between to self-regulate for those times where the information overloaded my processing power and resulted in that mental/emotional break point.
I didn’t have any childhood abuse. These traits seem to run in my family.
WOW YES!!!! I'm a 31 year old autistic woman and this is ABSOLUTELY my experience and is very much why I feel I was originally diagnosed with an anxiety disorder, and also a large reason I find myself burning out pretty frequently. Over the last year I've been on my journey to understand myself, and thanks to you and other autism educators, I've learned that I absolutely must budget my energy. But even though I try to schedule rest for myself now, I have a very very hard time actually having restful rest. I just spend my down time worrying about my responsibilities because of a big fear of forgetting, dropping an important ball, and amassing so many to do items that I can never catch up.
I also very much agree with your assessment of the experience of making sure everything is done completely thoroughly to the highest standard before being able to switch tasks looking like perfectionism on the outside, but that the internal experience with these behaviors don't line up with other explanations of what perfectionism feels like. It's not that I'm worried about criticism. It's just that it feels important to do things the right way with no errors. I'm curious to know if there is any correlation between this and prior high achievers that ended up burning out in older age.... where we're maybe still trying to chase the normalcy and perfection and high standards we once effortlessly produced, but are now worried we're "slipping" and we don't want to accept any additional feelings of being disabled. I think that might possibly be the root of my behaviors, at least in part. I used to be so "high functioning" and, by other people's assessments, brilliant. And now.....everything feels so much more difficult, especially cognition and memory.
Finally, I actually quite like the term responsibility hypervigilance myself. It is indeed a mouthful, but it seems to perfectly encapsulate this feeling.
Sorry for being so verbose, but thank you so much for yet another wonderful video. Your content has played a large role in helping me understand myself and improve my life. And with discourse like this, you're not just helping us as individuals, but as a community. This kind of advocacy and taking part in giving clinicians and researchers such detailed descriptions of the adult autistic experience is just amazing. I'm so grateful for you and your ability to put words to such complex experiences and feelings. I feel seen and understood here on your channel
Great comment
Completely relate, and my Saturn Return was brutal. You’re just finishing yours.
I was also diagnosed with generalized anxiety disorder. Now I am wondering if this is just a normal neudivergent trait.
@@AutismAlways Yes, me too.
Don't be easily fooled. These apply to people woth out asd as well.
This really resonates with me. It's taken me a long time to realise that my "good enough", when doing something I'm good at, it actually extremely good in other people's eyes. I still get really trapped in a cycle of trying to do several things all at the same time and trying to make them perfect.
Like when my art work is admired, I diss the praise. 😢
Paul, this is one of the best videos you've made. I absolutely 100% identify with everything you've said here, and I think this phenomenon is simultaneously one of my greatest strengths and greatest weaknesses.
Totally agree - I am autistic and ADHD, and things like the extraordinary quality of my work and relentless pursuit of excellence in tasks have lead me to be very successful. However, good lord are they exhausting, and juggling all the things and ensuring top quality and figuring out how to actually rest have been a huge struggle. I also struggle with the concept of "good enough."
Here, here!
Definitely one of your best, Paul!!
@@BenjaminPlaysRustI feel ya! Struthless has this video about 70% that changed my life - even if I'm still figuring out how to put it into practice...
What was the name of that video, again........🤔
[Edit]
😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂😂
It's:
The 70% Rule
Or more specifically:
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Advice for Perfectionists &
Procrastinators: The 70% Rule
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Yes, I have always said if I ever got "healed" of my Asperger's, I wouldn't be able to deliver the exceptional quality of work I do for my bookkeeping clients. Asperger's isn't just a condition, it's who I am. If that changed, I wouldn't be me anymore.
Yeah, that's called the barnum effect.
I'm feeling like I have already made this comment, but it's worth it: you have an incredible talent in finding words to describe the autistic experience of life. I resonate so much with this. And the way you talk about it is full of acceptance, quite different from the "don't worry that much" or "take time to rest" we get from people. It's definitely not that easy, and people relate these behaviours to things and feelings they know (anxiety) and can't believe or understand what it actually is. Thank you so much again.
I experience this too. For example when we went to Chicago we visited Chinatown. The other girls were chatting and not paying attention to the dude that was circling us. I kept my eye on him for like twenty minutes and eventually he buggered off. The other girls had been completely oblivious. I had no idea what the girls were talking about, but I made sure the guy couldn't get away with theft or whatever he had on his mind.
Then when working at children's day care camp, I was always so vigilant over all the kids, I knew where they all were. I knew how to build a day program to such an extent that there were moments of high energy games and then moments of rest before lunch (so they wouldn't throw up) and before they went home (so that, once they saw the parents, they were not hyper little squirrels). There were no big accidents during my shifts. I kept an eye on all of them and their safety.
Then as an adult I started leading the photobooth crew at a convention, and we had plans for every freaking scenario. Actors absent, late, rude, too talkative, whatever. Every crew member knew what to do in each position they could be in. The only thing that could throw us off were massive technical difficulties (which sometimes happened) but even then I knew what to say to keep folks focused on the job and calm and to deflate them if they were stressed afterwards.
It also came from overanalyzing everything that could go wrong weeks to months in advance. To having every possible conversation in my head, to seeing every disaster scenario before it happened, and I'd make sure to ask the tough questions to those managing the convention so I knew what to do in case something like that happened. But then during the convention, if something went wrong, they only needed to look at me in a specific way for me to know exactly what to do to get the situation under control.
It has a great deal to do with "control", maybe a term like "ultimate control" or something rings true to some people? It's about having the ultimate control in situations.
I do also wish to stress I am not like this in all situations. When I go on holiday alone, I am NOT in control. Far from it. I went to Amsterdam with no plan and was more like "guess I'll walk around!". But then again, I was only responsible for myself. Not for fellow girls I was on holiday with. Not for children. Not for actors visiting a convention. Not for visitors of the convention.
But the moment I am responsible for other people, the "control brain" kicks in and I gotta be ready for anything that could go wrong and make sure everybody is SAFE and everybody is HAPPY.
Needless to say it is a very exhausting way of being. I stopped my job at the convention because I found my time of recuperation too much.
I relate completely with my past experiences working at restaurants and bars and then teaching. Different situations, same brain pattern!
And it makes it very difficult to enjoy an outing or vacation with other people, because you don't get to just enjoy the experience. You *always* end up in charge, or managing things, for the others.
I didn't start understanding this until like 20 years ago. I see how I put myself in these positions now, but I still forget about it in the heat of the moment. It's like a boundary thing for me - I need to be aware when I'm slipping into it, so I can assert the boundary by saying "no, I don't want to take on that job". Because it IS a job. A huge job. Every time. And I have fibromyalgia, so I have to be very realistic about where I'm spending my time.
It does bother me, though, that so many of the "professionals" who are supposed to do things for you, fall way short unless you manage them to some extent. Like your doctors and other important supports. Too many of them do not pay enough attention to detail, so if you are depending on a letter from them, you often have to give them all the key data yourself. Otherwise they refer to their shit notes and they drop in some mistaken thing that can be practically the opposite of reality, and get you denied for the very thing you need. It's incredibly disappointing how often that kind of thing happens. So, it's almost like there is also a societal neurotypical trend not to care about getting the details right. 🤦♀️
Ah, I can so relate to overanalyzing things and making sure I've thought about every possible way it could go horribly wrong. People have told me to just not overthink it and that the most horrible scenarios only have a very tiny chance to happen, but it feels like I NEED to think about them in advance, to basically... prepare myself I guess. I don't panic in actual emergencies, I panic for weeks/months/years beforehand instead.
This resonates with me too. I think part of the problem is lack of trust in my ability to do things, because historically I've proven i cant trust myself to do things well without intensely focusing on one thing.
That's also an ADHD experience learned due to "careless mistakes". The transition away from a specific task seems more like an autistic thing, but a more global constant scan for what i forgot. Literal nightmares about missing meetings or social engagements. I've always attributed to ADHD. You are right that it is exhausting. Also if i see the email on a Saturday, i can't wait till Monday. I think "doing it now will save time Monday, and also if i wait, i might forget."... I never relax when i host events. This is a lot to think about.
I relate to that a lot! I'm AuDHD and had the same thoughts watching this. Always assumed it was entirely the ADHD side of things.
@@Fittiboy Same!
Sounds like me too
Yes! AuDHD means you want to call up hypervigilence to protect yourself from the endless screwups but if it gets out of control, particularly in an anxiety-inducing situation, it's a nightmare.
You can have both concurrently I have a dual diagnosis
This is trauma response, typical for Complex-PTSD and lack of safety. Which is common in neurodivergent people, since our differences are easily pointed out since very early childhood and punished, especially in no friendly or no child-safe enviroments.
Is this why I got diagnosed with cyclothemia coz I thought but I do PTSD trauma
YES! You’ve got it nailed! It encompasses all descriptions that you comprehensively described such as ‘perfectionism, compulsive behaviour, looking for (&finding)errors, inertia/inability to transition, over diligence in many ways, etc. For me, an added impact of responsibility-hyper vigilance, was due to poor self-confidence, not knowing that I could be good at tasks. Also remaining committed to a task, a job or cause, going beyond duty, being stuck only by your own determination to the point of exhaustion. Not realising when your efforts cannot improve when you are part of collateral damage due to other’s decisions or poor management.
A certain amount of Sunk Cost in there too, maybe.
Fear of failure is a huge one too
@@Dancestar1981Well, that's usually part of the classic perfectionism, I'd say. For me it's rather the feeling of responsibility for successful execution of a task. While the results don't have to be perfect, they need to be/should reach the best outcome that can be managed.
Ah. I like your name. It works well. I call mine Juggler's Overdiligence. All day, every day. Combing through text, combing again, then again...tweak the work, tweak again, tweak thrice. A list full of urgencies equally important, none ever not on the brain, all fretted on, nothing not needing my fullest energy to come out correctly. I live on sticky notes. Everything gets one. None are dismissed until the happy red pen gets it all checked off and even then? Well, let us just say that the thought train is ever rolling with questions of how I might have bettered something and recrafting it in my mind if I find time has passed to fix it otherwise.And if I still have time? Well, then, it's back to the edits. Must not drop even a single ball. The fear of such is excrutiating, to say the least.
( By the way, not going to disclose the exact number of times I read, re-read, and adjusted even this comment nor how many times I will revisit it even following posting it. 😏 Let us just say the number will be high and if it later says "edited" in parentheses, that will clearly be why 😏)
Neuro typical people seem to have a filter, it's very functional, they filter out anything that registers as irrelevant to them.
Douglas Adams called it a "SEP field", a field that makes anything that seems to be "Somebody else's problem" effectively invisible. I was born immune to these SEP fields. Now I realise that it's because I'm autistic.
It's not my favourite autistic trait. It's exhausting.
I learned to say,
"Not my dog, not my fight".
Oh, I like "SEP Field". It's such a tidy, scientific-sounding term. 😁 It also correlates well to my feeling of needing to identify the boundaries of it for myself.
@@creatuitiveguru Douglas Adams was a clever guy, for sure. The reference might be a bit dated now though... Showing my age. 😆
Well now I gotta share this with my therapist. XD
Great comment and so true! (Love those books :-) )
"conscientiousness" sort of combines the ideas of responsibility and vigilance. So maybe "hyper-conscientiousness" would be an apt term for this trait. I know I've used this word to describe myself and other autistics in my life.
Since Conscientiousness is one of the Big 5 traits, could it perhaps be a combination of that & another one of those traits?
I don’t mean this to sound rude, so believe me when I say this is a legitimate question- Could Hypervigilance fall under the trait of Neuroticism? So you end up with a combination of both Conscientiousness & Neuroticism?
@@leogrrrl5876I could see it as a combo of conscientiousness and neuroticism, for sure.
Ditto!
And without us -the muppets would break everything into tiny pieces so honestly -God bless us for our balancing out all the nonsense.
@@leogrrrl5876I was thinking along these same lines while listening to a lecture by Jordan Peterson. Highly conscientious people tend to out perform the vast majority of people in American culture; the kind of people that want to work 14 hrs a day in an incredibly demanding line of work, like Elon Musk. I consider myself to be highly conscientious; in the way that I will spend ten+ hours a day many weeks in a row focusing on one task or project, but to the point that I don’t fit in with, nor am I looked up to by most people, and I’m not in an incredibly demanding line of work, nor am I financially successful… Neuroticism is indicative of the creative spirit and being highly neurotic almost guarantees that this person will be an artist of some sort, but also one the leading factors of negative life outcomes. I am an artist. I draw and paint, but I create few works… for many reasons, but a major reason is my dedication to quality. When I set out to create a painting, I intend to fully emulate what it is that inspired me ( the mountains or scenery that literally drove me to sob uncontrollably, taking my breath away ) to create it. The only way I know that a work is finished is when I see absolutely no more mistakes. I will spend more time than I did while actually painting, combing through every single detail, to find the mistakes. While listening to Jordan Peterson and considering the information for a long time, I could not reconcile how I could be both highly conscientious and neurotic at the same time, the two are at opposite ends; like Schrödinger’s cat, how can it be dead and alive at the same time!? Disclosure: ADD diagnosis from the 90’s, no ASD yet.
Coming up with a new term for this trait, or at least a more succinct way of explaining it, is an interesting thought experiment. I don’t know if the terms hyper vigilance or highly conscientious + neurotic is enough to convey the experience. Perhaps it’s just another one of those ‘walking paradoxes’ or something you have to experience to really understand…
I can absolutely relate. I was just talking with my therapist about this a couple of hours ago and did no know how to explain it. The paralyzed state, the impossibility to multi-function, and the fact that my sister can do an incredible amount of things in a day and I do not. Creating short, prioritized lists can help, when I remember to do it...
After years of questioning, if I am on the spectrum without a diagnosis, this video really makes me think, yes. The description resonates; you ask me what the "problem" I identified with the most when a child it was how slow I worked compared to others. Accuracy and attention to detail have turned out to be a superpower, but you are right that it is nearly impossible to define and stick by an end time to the neverending to do list. Breaks unless forced do not happen, you do good for a while (I have been described in those moments as highly driven), and then the crash happens and I need to rebalance/regulate again.
I hear exactly what you're saying. As an autistic software engineer with over three decades of experience I've managed these same feelings daily.
One thing that helps is to know the ocean never stops pressing against the shore. There will always be one more item demanding attention. There will never be a time when all is clear.
That sounds very stressful, and it is, if one's goal is to clear the board of all to-dos. I've changed my goal of doing all the things, and doing everything perfectly in alignment, and that's granted me so much freedom. Now I do more than I did when I started, and am happy to improve even if the end result isn't perfect.
I still have high standards. But "high" is not "perfect".
Also I learned about the law of diminishing returns. When the cost of tuning that process costs me more time than starting (and completing) a more valuable task, I let the nearly perfect task go, knowing I'm adding more value overall with great (but not perfect) results.
This allows me to chase those other opportunities that my hyper vigilant sense of responsibility keeps pressing upon me, like the ocean upon the shore.
Responsibility-hypervigilance to my brain seems like a perfect wording for this phenomenon. Or at least extremely helpful. Thank you!
Resonates muchly. I always figured it's less about perfectionism and more about making things predictable. If I miss some detail, it throws a wrench into what I was expecting. So constantly being on the look-out for things to 'fix' not only satisfies the desire to improve things but also makes sure everything goes as expected. No surprises.
This sounds perfectly normal to me; transitioning is difficult, relaxing is nearly impossible, focusing is tough and requires a lot of energy…. I can totally relate. I call this part my ‘driver’
I'm 64, and self diagnosed about two months ago. I knew I was a "loner" since I was a small boy. My rigid thinking, neuro-typical, family and extended family simply can't understand me, rejected and ignored me for my best qualities, so I've moved on without them. They struggle in their daily lives with denial, face-saving, and cognitive dissonances that I as an autistic person am not burdened with.
Thanks for all your great videos - informative and re-assuring !!! :)
That makes a lot of sense.
On self-diagnosis, that seems very common, even among those who were professionally diagnosed. A lot of content creators talk about how they found out they were autistic and then went to the professionals for confirmation.Sometimes they bring in a whole notebook of surveys and symptoms so they can fight the therapist to make them consider autism.
I worked in an operations department of a bank in the retirement account section. I learned the literal legal code that applied at the time. Far more in depth than was required for my job role at that time. But once i knew that the framework existed, i could not do the simple tasks within the framework without knowing the big picture. Once i learned it, i started trying to explain to my supervisor's and other's their misunderstandings of the legal foundations of what we were doing when small mistakes were being made. And that of course, did not go well. That's been a pattern throughout my work life.
Jayabee ~ omg SAME 😵💫 Not just the big picture... it's The. Entire. Picture & Frame. It's draining & has left a not so favorable path, but cannot be different from who we are 🙆🏻♀️🤸🏻
@@joan.nao1246 that's true. And not for lack of trying. Thanks for saying so.
This! I always need to understand the big picture because only worrying about my part of the job feels too much like freefall. If I don't have an understanding of how all the parts and jobs move together, it's terrifying, and I feel very nervous and insecure. Once I master a skill set and try to help others so that we are all on the same page, often there is pushback. Often, people tell me to "stay in my lane" and disregard my input. It's frustrating, but they will at some point always come back to me once something goes wrong and I am happy to be able to fix the issue because I have a strong understanding of "how" things work, not just how to do one aspect of my role. Sounds like you might experience this sort of situation as well. Wonder if this is a common experience for those of us who are considered nerodiverse.
@@Smoore-bv2wb omg yes!! Ssooo frustrating!! Like, wth didn't they listen to us the 1st f'n time?! Instead of blowing us off 😤😡
Each of my attorneys in my divorces wanted me to take up doing legal research for them. It was so weird to me...I felt like I was just looking all this up for the first time. Yet, these people who do this day in and day out find it to be NEW?? Blows my mind.
Your description “responsibility hyper-vigilance” very adequately describes and needs no adjustment.
I recognise I do this too, and people always complain that I take too long; they never seem to appreciate my efforts to do the best that I can, and it can be frustrating, fatiguing, and yes, leading to burnout and stress from trying to hurry up and then hating myself for half-assed work.
I too have been nagged to "hurry up'. I could never do any task as quickly as others. 😢
This is why I'm tired when I drive or when I'm around young kids. I don't trust other drivers and I don't trust kids' survival instinct so I make it my responsibility. Your version of perfectionism is also one of my biggest struggle, I never know when to stop double/triple/quadruple checking everything and it takes me a while to start something, thinking I missed something important.
@@ApocApocrypha I had another idiot run into me right my car off and then do a runner from the scene I had to have refresher driving trainer to rebuild my confidence I was so traumatised by the experience. I have had my license for nearly 20 years
I'm commenting at 5:10, but I just have to jump in before it is finished because this is resonating so strongly with me. This trait is the bane of my existence and why I can't write. My internal editor just cannot let it go. And it's not just while I'm working on it - I'll wake up in the middle of the night thinking I need to add this or clarify that more. I hate this about myself. It has hurt me at work before ("we just need to get it out" and "haven't you ever heard the phrase 'good enough for government work?'" are phrases bosses have said to me.
My husband just keeps reminding me that I shouldn't "let perfect be the enemy of good." It helps for emails and shorter tasks, but reports and longer projects, this is the WORST! I'm so glad you are talking about this.
“I don’t have a medium setting” …I feel so seen. ❤
Hi @Autism from the Inside. A lot of what you say in this video is really well articulated, and something to resonates with me.
I personally have a bit of an obsessive goal to finish tasks. I don’t feel comfortable if things aren’t done right, I constantly need reassurance. I’ll double and triple and quadruple check my work, even if I know it’s right. I’ll even do that thing that you mentioned about emails where I’ll analyse the email to make sure everything is correct, and then do it again after it’s sent!
It’s quite an exhausting condition and way of being, but I don’t feel at ease if I don’t do this.
I think it’s great that you’re bringing attention to this so that more people can understand us.
I'm 30 and recently diagnosed ADHD and Autistic and THIS VIDEO EXPLAINS MY DAILY EXPERIENCE SO MUCH. A lot of people in my life (past and present) praise me for my attention to detail, being so productive/always getting things done, giving 110% all the time, and I've always struggled to respond to these "compliments" because it's always felt like... well... why are you praising me for running myself into the ground? I've never found a way to articulate "stop acting like this is such a good thing about me" and I am so glad to have watched this video to get the words to explain it! I think daily "I'm exhausted, why can't I just rest?" and genuinely have had no answers for myself as I continue to be unable to "just stop". When I try to relax, it feels more stressful just knowing all the things I "should" be doing than if I were to just be doing the things!
Anyway, this video and all your work is so appreciated! Thank you for everything you do :)
I absolutely resonate with this. I've been calling myself unnecessarily hyper-responsible for a while now. Good to see I'm not alone.
This hits home really hard. There's also a sense of inherent responsibility even if I'm not officially in a position of responsibility in a particular situation or can feel like I should take responsibility because I notice aspects lacking in the organization that no-one else is paying attention to.
It often links to empathy as well, when I notice for instance that there's a lapse of attention to the needs of some participants in an event for example, I feel an urge to step in and take responsibility even if I'm just a participant myself.
Ditto. I ran across the High School gym during a basketball to tell the scorekeepers they failed to show it right.
I was an 8 y.o. girl 😮
@@galloping3265 😅 I'm sure it was appreciated 😆
I recognize this. For me, it’s fear of failure, and to us, a single mistake feels like total failure, especially if someone else notices. I think it comes from a fear of being put under the spotlight/being noticed/scrutinized. I do this primarily at work, and am too worn out to do it anywhere else. I’m obsessed with creating a perfect product, which takes far longer than my peers, but it’s top notch, and I’m always proud of my work. Also, the clients never complain about my product, they prefer it. (I basically create digital maps, and do all of the drafting, in the field. Engineers use my data to design the world) It has to be immaculate, and show minute details. My ability to hyper focus helps, while distractions derail me. I don’t take any breaks, and just work for hours. Also, every aspect of my work is numbers, and I have dyscalculia, so I double check everything. For me, being in a hurry only results in duds, and rejects. I never hurry. My work is terribly complex, a job can take weeks-months, so I’ve learned to eat the elephant, one bite at a time. It’s both mentally, and physically taxing, so I work four days, and recover for three. I’ve been in a state of burnout for several years, long before I learned that I had AuDHD. Your name for it is fine. It’s some type of perfectionism, driven by a fear of rejection.
Omg Paul, I have so much "Yes!" to say about this. I've been doing Parts Therapy for a year now, and only recently did we unearth this backbone, operating-system part. It's my internal OS system, with a tendril and draw of energy in every single thing to "keep it in mind" so I never drop a ball. It's certainly hypervigilance but it's not external.
I can only describe it as a hyper-accountable operating system.
It definitely plays into the "want to do all the things so do none" but have spent more time getting into the crux of it.
I also believe it's a maladapted part (I have trauma crossover) from getting in trouble for 'dropping the ball' as a kid. Anything from manners to homework etc.
This has absolutely boggled my therapist, so it has truly brightened my day to not be alone.
And in explaining it to my allistic therapist, explained that we know autistic brains prune less neural pathways and have a higher baseline of brain activity. So it stands to reason I can hold all of these things "in mind" with all their connections triggering back and forth.
When juggling all the balls you have to keep in the air it helps to know which are glass and which are rubber. I think I classify too many as glass so they cannot be ever dropped, as they will shatter, not bounce.
Parts work has been so helpful for me too!! I definitely have likened this experience to an internal OS as well and ended up forming a “Completionist” part because of the times I have dropped the ball - and how that wouldn’t have happened if I had fully taken the job to its end point instead of calling it good too soon, even though others said the project or the effort or whatever was done. I’m learning to trust my own intuition, my own Confidence and Clarity around my intuition, but also not let that Completionist lead so much so that I never feel like I can rest.
@@WandaO.Wilson I absolutely love the glass and plastic analogy, I use it a lot ❤️ My problem is that I was punished as a kid due to someone else deciding what was plastic and what was glass, even if it wasn't mine to juggle.
@@smileart37 I can 💯 understand the Completionist part. I believe I've identified that my OS has developed FROM a fear of punishment wounded part, and keeps a tab on everything as the manager in order to be ready to hand it to a firefighter.
I appreciate the contrast with other discussions about perfectionism. I feel like need for "pattern completion" describes a lot of my apparent compulsions to "fix things", whether or not its really my responsibility. If a brick is out of place or there's some litter on the ground its easier for me to just fix it and avoid the cognitive dissonance of something being out of place. Trouble is, the world is soooo full of things that are "out of place"...
IRCV (Inclusively Responsible Continous Vigilance)
I know it is a bit long but abbreviation sounds professional.
you can quickly make it a verb too, Inclusively responsible continuously vigilant, and you don't even need to change the abbreviation :P :D
„Better done than perfect“ is my current mantra. 😊 I can relate to everything, but don’t have a better name.
This phrase has been very helpful to me. Also "done is good."
I call the waiting for the future event, being on hold. It's not quite disassociation. it's just ..... on hold.
Yeah, hyperviligant standby of sorts.
Not enough time to do something else; at the same time waiting until you can do the thing that you want to do or are supposed to be doing; all while trying not to get sidetracked at the same time as you might miss the right moment for the task you're in standby for.
This really really resonates with me. I think what you're describing is also connected the "perfectionst" attribute that resides in many of us. I realise now that the masking and acceptance we seek in NT circles is often entered by being good at something. By excelling with our autisitc talent, we can gain greater acceptance, and therefore we become hyper vigilant in making sure "we get it right..." After working nearly 30 years in my career, and reaching upper management roles, I walked away after suffering massive burnout. Great content - keep it up, it's greatly appreciated.
This resonated with me 100%. I am that role in the group that scans for "gaps" in team work. I've succesfully improved workflow in many of the jobs i've held throughout the years, and this makes sense as to why! I am always paying attention to minute details and cant ever turn off my "problem solving" switch.
For me, it's constant. The optimal place to put a foot, the better way to hold something, the required effort to travel between two rooms, etc. I think it's a cause of some visible peculiarities, for example the stereotypical "t-rex hands" can be seen as a result of only moving the required arm muscles and letting the hands hang, thereby minimising the effort required.
Really relatable. Made me think of the feeling I get when work go over the top praising me on something that anyone could do & that takes very little effort vs not noticing the subtle things that improve systems/processes for all but take a lot of (probably unnecessary) effort. It always makes the praise feel wrong/jarring - it feels patronising like they're praising me for chewing and swallowing a mouthful of food, but not noticing the effort I put in to planning/creating the meal. But I am constantly driven to do the things that don't get praise/notice
This definitely resonates with me!! I don't know what to call it but it definitely helps to know that it's not just me 💜💜
I can’t tell you how much this resonates with me! I’ve always seen it as a compensatory mechanism for poor prospective memory and implicit forms of learning. I have strong fluent intelligence and problem solving skills so I apply them in all situations to compensate for the skills I lack. How lovely would it be not to worry about forgetting about up and coming tasks! I would see it as the task based version of masking. Cognitive decoding rather than relying on more implicit skills. Thanks for sharing this, lots to think about 😊
"need for completion" or "need-to-finish" is the umbrella terms which describes what I do, until I am okay, it has to feel complete (precision, accuracy, relevance, thoroughness, depth, easy of use/understandability if someone totally new has to take on the information, clarity and relevance of the context/history). It involves thinking a few steps ahead covering possible scenari and unasked questions and their responses, being satisfied enough for my Self so I won't think about it once submitted/sent/done.
Very hard for people to grasp I NEED to do this like this to be able to move on when done. Half done will cause anxiety, restlessness (rumination); back and forth conversations, which could have been prevented, exhausts me even more so the cost (the consequence I will pay/suffer from) of not giving the best the first time is high. In short, same level of quality no matter how important or non important is the task, the question, the opinion, the email, the drawing, the text message. Completion (the need) = Relief (the sensation) >> I could have not done it better, I can now rest. I am satisfied/proud of the achievement and its quality.
Thank you for the video, I shared it!
YES!!!! I have struggled with the same problem especially at work. When given a new tasks from my boss my brain immediately goes back to every single instance I have done in the past and if all of those instances varied in some way I can't come to a conclusion as to which example to use. I get into paralysis from analysis.
Yes! I am a MD and engineer, developing products for infection prevention and test them in clinical studies. So many tasks at the same time. I can confirm and rely on that! Its never perfect and often i am exhausted ...For certain tasks i have to wait, maybe for days, until my brain is in a state to perform the task. Usually able to hyperfocus with no effort. Beside of that, i have another trait: i react like an exited dog if somebody tells me about a problem. Like a dog expecting a thrown stick, i want to deliver a solution to the problem ASAP and be totally hyperfocused. Usually neurotypicals are not used or expecting that, overwhelmed and do not appreciate it.
This! I’ve never really thought about other people not getting so excited about being given a problem to solve, but my brain feasts on it - the juicier and more complex the problem the better!
I read a really great article about what it feels like to be an autistic engineer, that said solving a problem is better than sex. (Unless of course the problem is a relationship issue)
I'm totally with you there! I get totally hyper and charge into it single-mindedly at times leaving chaos in my wake. I worked in clinical research and got all the messy projects to sort out.
This very strongly resonates. I feel like you just described my ordinary way of being in the world (and I have wondered for the last ~20 years why so many people seemed to operate completely differently and somehow stayed employed and relatively anxiety-free). I have developed some mitigating strategies or behaviors over the years in an attempt to temper this and 'balance' out, but so many of the patterns seem hard-wired or baked-in. I think 'responsibility hyper-vigilance' is a good start for a description. If I think of anything better while dwelling on this later I will post again.
For myself I'd call that sort of thing being monotropic, detail-oriented, and driven to collaborate ...but going a bit unbalanced with executive function differences particularly inertia, and some perfectionism from childhood trauma. (I am a classic perfectionist though). I associate hyper-vigilance with higher sympathetic nervous system activation and trauma.
I've actively softened a whole lot of my perfectionism - mostly through trauma work, but also practicing doing things in a less detailed way, taking half steps, letting some of the balls drop and just seeing that it is actually safe to do that. It's about trusting myself, but also those around me. And recognising the people around me are a lot more supportive and accepting than what I grew up with. For me struggling to prioritise is a sign I'm overloaded and needed to step back as it is not my baseline. With the right pacing I can juggle quite a lot. (I'm autistic but not ADHD).
I like the crow's nest analogy as I often imagine some of my autistic ancestors as on solitary watch or exploration either guarding or searching and learning for the good of the collective.
I don't have a single term to suggest sorry :D monotropism+inertia+detail-oriented+perfectionism+executive-function-overload is not so catchy
Paul, thank you for describing me perfectly. I believe you are describing what, in business, is called operations management or logistics. It can be applied to everything from customizing a shipment for export, to your local library's children's programming, to planning an adhd/asd family outing for children and adults. You are correct when you say this isn't perfectionism, something I have been accused of many times - perhaps why I never could connect with Brene Brown, who I don't think was familiar with neurodivergence when I tried listening to her Ted Talks and reading her books.
I haven't come up with a better term than hypervigilance/responsibility - although that immediately caught my attention! - but other key words are maximum, efficiency, quality, outcome, results, and communication.
Get out of my head! 😂 Seriously though this is absolutely spot on, and I think "responsibility hyper-vigilance" as a working term fits very neatly. As a side note, being AuDHD, throwing ADHD into the mix with it's own executive functioning challenges - combined also with autistic inertia, I think - really takes all of this up a notch. Plus the RSD-based fear and resultant rejection avoidance is a challenging tension to live with.
@@mattfieldy oh absolutely dual diagnosis means the struggles are ramped up 1000%
You have described my life. It's so hard to explain to other people what is going on...I don't think I understood it all until your video. Well done articulating, maybe we can grant ourselves some grace knowing, "It's not just me!"
Resonating!!! I think you have a pretty good handle on this. We have a superpower, lazer-focus. So, how to turn it off and on? I have kept a day planner since I was a kid. If I write stuff down, it helps me to set it aside so I don't worry that I will forget. I organize tasks by deadline and importance, and I can carry them over to the next day or next week, depending on how every day goes. Organized flexibility. I still work super hard and thoroughly, but more and more, I also embrace the idea that rest is productive and a priority. So now I rest every day, and I am always finding new ways to improve my quality of rest. I am really trying to be mindful of how I am feeling. Am I tired? That is ok. I am human. Take a little break, even for a minute. I try to make sacred time not to have to worry about time. A day to wake up and not look at a clock all day. This is a comfort to me as I go through my week, knowing I have a timeless day scheduled once a week or even once a month. Seems like I magically get stuff done on those days. My mind sees what is missing and how to solve problems. I see solutions and doors open. I de-clutter my mind and slow down into my body again. The concept that rest is productive!!! So what do we call this? It's not a problem... it's a superpower. Lazer-mind... learn to focus the lazer-mind so we don't burn ourselves down... avoiding lazer-mind-burnout. Finding ways to organize what we focus on and make sure self-care is right up at the top of the list. ❤
Thank you so much for the good work you do. It amazes me every day how understanding how my brain is different helps me to love myself and to live a more beautiful, peaceful, and whole life. You make a difference to me.
When studying zen meditation there's a quote that goes something like, "There is a time to do and a time to do naught." Sounds like you've really managed to strike a balance in your life!! 😁👍
I call it hyper-responsibility or excessive attention. For example, I wrote a blog post yesterday and I have spent all day going back and re-reading, editing, and making slight changes.
I think this phenomenon is related to pattern seeking behaviour. Like when I’m walking outdoors, I am always scanning for four leaf clovers and can sometimes find several on one walk.
Whatever I’m doing, I’m pattern seeking, looking for even the smallest deviance. Great video.
Damn, that definitely rings a bell for me.
In the beginning of my career I would link this type of behavior with perfectionism though, especially because I was indeed sensitive to criticism.
But at the same time, I've always thought of it as an internal urge to fully utilize all my knowledge, skills and all contextual information available to me to do the tasks. I've thought of it almost as a personal challenge I couldn't refuse, not necessarily for fear of criticism, but for personal satisfaction. It's hard to describe.
I work as a designer and it's common and expected to have people such as clients, other designers and everybody else in the team critisizing the work and sharing perspectives I haven't thought about. So as time went by I've "learned" to force myself to finish the tasks before feeling like I'm done with them. I try to remember myself that no matter how much time I spend on a task, I will always miss something and there will always be ways to improve, so I try to finish things earlier and incorporate other people's feedback as a "subtask" to get the main task done. Once I got feedback and I finished the modifications in the work I did based on the feedback, I feel more comfortable to decide the task is done. So working with other people helps.
However, there's a negative side, which is I can't even remember the last time I felt a true sense of safisfaction by getting the work done in my job. Sometimes I feel demotivated, like l'm just delivering low-quality work, even if all the feedback is positive and the business outcome of the work is good. Maybe that's because, internally, I know I forced myself to stop the task earlier than I would naturally stop, so I didn't fully utilized all resources I had to get it done.
It's like I'm studying on a weeking for an exam because I personally like studying and like the satisfaction of getting A's, but my teachers, colleagues and parents are all like "hey, don't try so hard, you don't have to be studying the whole weekend, B's and C's are perfectly fine, go do something else, OK?"
This feels exactly like an aspect of me, which is called either high standards or perfectionism depending on the speaker and the day. It often feels like there's no point doing a protect when I know I'll be required to do it poorly.
"Perfection is the enemy of done!"
It's something that I've been repeating to myself for the last few years and that little reminder really helps.
This is also a trauma response: And most of us autistics have a history of trauma from being misunderstood and treated poorly as a result or being unable to understand others and have higher sensitivities to this and are unable to cope- Possibly why there is such a high co-diagnosis with Anxiety and Trauma with Autism. Often when we should not be in situations necessary of coping, but finding ones of more compatibility- unfortunately, that is not easily achieved for us.
Yes! Why is it that I don’t like to hang out with allistic people? Because I don’t have a whole lot of positive experiences with them.
I’ve been diagnosed with adult ADD and general anxiety disorder and not autism. This video is more useful, accurate, and actionable than any diagnosis or advice I’ve had on my condition. I love how practical it is and that you haven’t given it a name.
Amazing insight, and this distinction from perfectionism is really resonant. I’m non-stop thinking about how things can be better or more ideal. It’s exhausting, and it does feel very different from my perfectionism. Thank you so much for exploring/highlighting this! ✨🙏✨
Thank you for this video. I am diagnosed with ADHD and my assessment for this mentions that I have autistic traits and an assessment was advised, although I haven’t sought this as yet.
I feel that this responsibility hypervigilance (can’t think of a better name as this sums it up) dominates my life to the point that it prevents me from doing many things, or at least the few things that I do (work, household/family responsibilities, and studying) take up so much of my time that I don’t have the time or energy for other things, like other people seem to be able to do.
I’m always scanning; a room, an email or text I’ve written, my brain…looking for things i may have missed. In my studies I spend too much time writing assignments and I’m never really truly happy with them, but I receive scores of 90% or more.
In social situations I’m always aware of everything that is going on around me to the point that I am not participating (I also struggle to participate in group conversations for other reasons).
It’s tiring, and has really had an impact on my life to the point that I feel stuck in a cycle where maintenance is preventing improvement.
I want to change my career but there is so much preventing this. After watching this video though, I realise that this may be a big factor. I’d love to learn more about this, but for now I’m going to watch this video again, and probably again and again.
Wow, this resonates a lot with me (officially non-autistic but still feeling like it software developer), especially regarding the work environment. I would love a follow-up video with a focus on how to clear your mind and find rest in this situation.
I have found autistic therapists. Some anyway. In UK, Steph Jones is autistic therapist and in US on RUclips are some like Dr Neff (sp?)
I found myself nodding along and agreeing the entire time, I instantly know the feeling you are talking about. I just spent the last week applying that in a positive way in a hobby and have been praised for my attention to detail, but then that's just how I interact with everything so when I'm doing things that I'm not as good at, I'm still burning all that energy and coming away with results that aren't worth the expenditure. End result being burn out because it turns out there are a lot of tasks that need doing, and giving 100% to every task that comes along leaves you with nothing
So true. I find emotional regulation has brought more bandwidth but I still agree that we burn brightly and have to be mindful of our own window of tolerance
for school projects I was always the kid who overdid the assignment, did extra, and went above and beyond, ppl called me too intense and asked why I put in so much effort. I relate to this a lot
It's like perfectionism analysis. it goes further than just wanting to do everything perfect, it's the amount of energy used to analyse everything constantly, every minute, about everything around you. I find it draining and satisfying at the same time. Sometimes I consider it a super power, other times I wish i could just shut it off for a few days.
This is super-relatable. I don't necessarily have a better name for it, but it resonates so hard. Incidentally, as a tip for the email thing, "schedule send" has saved my life. It means that I can clear out my inbox at a time when I'm not "supposed to" be working, but no one knows that I was checking my email at, say, 9 pm on Sunday. I can prep a reply when I'm home and relaxed and not being interrupted, but it only sends out at 9:30 am on Monday morning.
The buddhist concept of "single minded focus" really helps me with this, and wearing a casino (because it has a timer mode). I don't pay attention to what time it is, but when I start a task I start the timer and it helps me know how long I've been "in it" for. It works like a tether for me.
You mean wearing a "Casio" watch?
It resonates here too. Thank you so much from Belgium. I tidy up my mess, I sort out things while hearing you in a loop.
This was funny to watch because I always just chalked this up to "my work ethic". It makes sense as an autistic thing. Through that lens, I can see it being the limbic system looking for what animal might come out of the bushes next. The "animal" in a work environment might be what ball I may have dropped or what problematic person may approach with some issue.
I totally related to the role you like on a team. I always say I don't want to be the one in charge, but I like somewhat of an elevated position so I can get an overview of processes, anticipate my supervisor's next move or need, and be on it immediately with what information or things they may need. I also like being at that level to get a broad overview of the operation to optimize processes.
Sounds like the duties of what an "assistant manager" does.
@@melvamelendez9817 That seems about right
I'm a 28-year-old woman with autism. I knew something was "different" about me but I couldn't put a name on it until I discovered this channel. After some videos on here, I have reached out to my psychologist to ask "I might be on the spectrum" and explained my reasons and my way of seeing things like tasks, relationships, social codes, etc. And then I'm diagnosed with autism. Now the things I couldn't put a nome on make sense and I feel relieved after having an explanation and not just being weird.
I can relate a lot to the concept of this video. When I write a report I do it like no one else and my office starts to use it as a base after that. That happened a lot. But also I get totally lost when I need to answer multiple emails and do "small" tasks. My manager asks why aren't they completed yet but I'm correcting the font at the moment. The worst part is I can't just send it "not good enough" and be at ease in my mind. I can't scratch out that task from my mind. I keep thinking about that mail with the wrong font all day and get uneasy with the thought that they will send me an answer about my mistake. All in all "small" tasks put me under great stress while detailed tasks make me happy because I can customize and improve them as much as I want.
And finally unfortunately, no I don't have a better name for it.
I definitely experience this and for me it’s part of my experience of the world as chaotic and confusing. I’m trying desperately to get things to make sense.
youll get there Katharine, you got this.
I love that when I'm struggling w/ "labeling" my own experiences that you're already 10 steps ahead of me and can describe it perfectly . I always feel so VALIDATED here!!! I love the current label as it needs no explanation for those not on the spectrum, so it takes no translation on my part. MANY, MANY heartfelt thanks, Paul ❤
Again, you are describing me 😊 Especially the paralyzed state. I use my Alexa for reminders, alarms, and routines. My phone has alarms for eating, starting my evening routine, and every appointment has an alarm 30 minutes before it starts with three 10-minute snoozes. Every alarm talks to me and tells me what is coming up. I think 'hyper-vigilance' is an excellent label for this.
Attacked! 🤣🤣 This is me to a T and it is so exhausting. I have been towing the line with burnout and am realizing that this is one of the main reasons why. Personally, I like the term you already coined, "Responsibility-hypervigilance", as it's concise. Thank you for talking about this!
I'm a senior software engineer, so I am responsible for extremely complex interacting systems. Projects that add features or fix problems in these systems also tend towards hypercomplexity. I find that this video's topic describes how ASD helps me. I have to organize and document and delegate. If I do those things I don't get stuck checking the same details over and over. I give myself checkboxes to check.
Lol 7:11
@ned_frankly just thinking something very similar. You have to be like this, to be good at what you do.
This is the first time I've seen someone articulate anything close to my own experience - I've spent so much time over the years thinking about and trying to find anything remotely related to this, so I'm grateful that I'm not alone.
For the reasons you describe, I've always found it frustrating when perfectionism or related concepts come up in relation to me and my behaviour. The best ways I've attempted to describe my experience have been 'imagine that every task you did felt like heart surgery or launching a rocket' or an analogy to codes/expectations that knights and samurai used to have. I've been so focused on the negative connotations that I hadn't realised how connected this was to my strengths.
I had always thought that if I could just turn it down a bit, I'd be the right level of awareness and conscious thought to achieve things more normally. However, hearing you describe this, it really is the same reason that I easily find ways to improve systems, do quality detail-oriented work quickly despite having ADHD, and get complimented by people for being extremely thoughtful and considerate for others when it just seems like normal to me. At the same time, being able to turn it off sometimes would be nice - I'm really sick of being fixated on how to optimise the spacing and distribution of my washing so that it dries faster....
I currently don't have any better ideas about a name, but you can bet it'll be constantly on my mind now haha
superattention
as for the perfectionism I sometimes say to myself things like 'good is good enough' or 'f*ck perfect' - I am reminded of a saying when screwing in screws that goes like 'after to tight comes lose' meaning to much pressure can break the screw. as for the person who told you a trait of burning bright, it is just one person judging one trait, so others might disagree with them or they might just see one angle.
thx for sharing.
Thank you for describing so many things that I really struggle with and have never been able to properly explain to other people!!
Definitely resonates...Its like My Body knows i need to relax and just calm down...But my Brain is Always Looking for SOMETHING To Do! IM SO Hypervigilant its out of this world
I call it my squirrel brain! 😅
Holy cow, you've hit the nail on the head. This is why I can only successfully handle one graduate class at a time. I can't set any one ball down long enough to deeply focus on any of them if I've got multiple classes to work on. Absolutely paralyzing.
While most students do their thesis project during their last semester of coursework, I couldn't focus on the thesis enough to even choose a topic until all of my coursework was done. Now that it's the only requirement left, I can fully focus on it and enjoy it. It's so freeing to be able to focus on just this one thing! It's a dream!
@@MathStatsMe congratulations on being able to do it I didn’t end up completing honours because I knew I couldn’t write a thesis even though I was invited to do it 20 years ago
Monotropic Demand Attentiveness:
If I'm getting the idea right, it seems like the hyperfocus acompanying monotropism and the knowledge that said hyperfocus will lead to failure to meet responsibilities leads to a fixation on the tasks that demand your attention. I wonder if it may be a result of the same trait that leads to Pathological Demand Avoidance, but the other side of the spectrum? Tasks that need to be completed can be seen as Demands by many, and rather than doing anything to avoid them or being unable to begin them, you are instead driven to do them immediately for fear of forgetting them?
In other words it is the opposite of Pathological Demand Avoidance, and it is driven by awareness of monotropic focus and anxiety that hyperfocus on one task might lead to failing to meet other responsibilities.
It would be useful for the opposite side of PDA to have similar letters, and people are often not a fan of the word Pathological, so I would suggest:
Monotropic Demand Attentiveness
Then when discussing autism and the way it relates to demands we would be discussing PDA and MDA, with the former being a compulsion to avoid tasks that are seen as demands and the latter being a compulsion to fixate on tasks that are seen as demands until they are completed.
I think you're really on to something here, but when I was watching this video, a 'light bulb went off in my head' (sorry for the cliché-d phrasing), because what Paul's talking about here is _the_actual_reason_for_ my PDA.
What's happening with me is that - because there are all these daily tasks I need to get done asap (things that allistics can get done quickly but which consume nearly my entire day each day) - I can't even get started on the MOST IMPORTANT but slightly less immediate tasks that need to be completed, because these latter tasks will require a LOT of attention and time.
The fact is, if I switch focus to a MOST IMPORTANT task, then all the immediate things that need to get done each day (like showering, eating, watering the plants), won't get done at all for (say) 2.5 weeks, which would spell immediate disaster.
But, sadly, not getting the MOST IMPORTANT task done will spell doom a few months from now (and is the whole reason I will get engrossed in doing it right, but I can't even begin it, because I need to keep getting the daily things done which will also be disastrous if not completed). The reason, though, that I call it the "MOST IMPORTANT" is that (in my case) it's finance-related stuff, so if not tended to, it's extremely disastrous.
Yes! I resonate strongly with all of this. Thanks for putting it into words!
This resonates with my autistic experiences. It is so very rare that I can feel anything is actually done/complete... so badly now I almost sabotage my efforts to reach completeness just so I don't have to commit to it being complete. I can't pick out minor failings if I've pre-staged and acknowledged glaring incompleteness. I never have to accept that it isn't perfect if I accept that it is incomplete.
WOW! Good point! 😮
I can so relate to this! Putting my to-dos on my calendar instead of on a list, along with estimates of how long each task will take, and calendaring rest breaks between, is the strategy that has saved me from stress overwhelm.
I've had to stop this sort of hypervigelence in the workplace. I was seeing all the holes left open by others and trying to fill them. Now, I must let others fail, even if I have to get involved AFTER the fact. It's crazy to go either way really. It's sheer madness, and it gets me worked up!
Yeah, I am there too.
It helps when you have got the ear of the the process manager and then realizes you have got their back.
It's not madness, it's sticking to the job you're paid for. As a young guy I would have that same problem. But that's why supervisors have their jobs. They are the ones supposed to keep an eye on everyone's mess and step in if things get out of hand. And don't think they are not aware of things not going perfectly. But they are generally aware what their minions are capable of, and they also know how good is good enough.
@@Volkbrecht That's why I am letting them manage, and let these thing happen. If they see it, as you suggest, then the ship will sink on their watch and not mine. On a separate point. In my particular circumstance, the company will fold like a deck of cards when I depart. Laziness has befallen them, not me. I've busted my butt for 26 year and I've made them allot of money. They are older and I see them failing as effective leaders. As for what they are paying me, I earn every penny. And it's not my job to save them from themselves. I've made recommendations, and they go unheeded. It will be interesting to see it all fall apart when I do leave in a few years. In my field there are no replacements in the local population. We are a niche service provider. When I go, it all goes.
I don't know how my neurotypical coworkers get through the day. No consistency whatsoever, abysmal attention to detail, seemingly unable to remember anything they're told...and I'M the "handicapped" one?
I can completely relate to what you've described. The constant pressure of focusing on everything is exhausting. Thank you for sharing your experience. It's reassuring to know that someone else feels this way too.
Whoah, the whole "can't turn off brain from thinking about future commitments" thing is so true for me, I just have to think about the next task in front of my or the rest will keep me from getting stuff done, though it's always stressful. I actually just demoted myself from a management position due to not being able to handle the stress of so many future commitments that I just didn't care about.
Thanks for the nice and easy understandable wording of the issue at hand. Dear original video creator, please take note.
My head exploded when I saw the title. Amazing man!
Packing. Packing for trips create this paralysis of many days - even weeks of 'have I got everything' and overpacking and unpacking etc. And I totally get the dread or desire to keep some task many weeks in advance in my brain so I don't drop the ball, this causes a lot of stress, i dread certain times of year because they have things that come around and I know I'll get like this.
I make a bunch of lists to cross off when packing, or I would panic
THIS 😂
This is extremely relatable. It can be stressful, so I appreciate that you spoke about the benefits of this trait. I may come across as very high strung, but my family and coworkers seem to appreciate that I am thorough and good at keeping track of all the things that need to be done. Thanks for the perspective!
This is great. Yes, I can relate. It also reminds me of a story my art teacher once told the class. It happened in the Louvre, in Paris. One day, a man was discovered sitting in front of a painting that was hanging on the wall. No big deal, except that he was painting on it! Security was called and he was "escorted" out of there. Turns out he was the artist of the painting and claimed that he felt it needed some more work! The lesson, my art teacher said, is we have to know when a piece is finished. And let it be! 😊
An art work is never finished, it's only abandoned. Don't tell anyone buying it. I have unfinished art all over my house. No one else seems to notice
My art teacher told us the same thing. A piece of art is never "finished". There is no such point in the making process where it is "finished". It belongs to being an artist that you have to DECIDE when to stop doing it and call it finished.
Omg!!! This is the video that has most resonated with me in my search for answers. 64 and recently diagnosed ADHD, but not autism (yet).
It perfectly describes my work struggles, my house clutter, life disorganization. So many things to do, where do i start? But when I do tackle something, I do it very well. I recently wrote most of a student handbook for our program because once I got started, there was no stopping. And it was thorough.
I drive my daughter nuts with this when she tells me about ideas for her business. I ask her, but what about this or that, until she gets frustrated to the point she doesn't really bounce ideas off me much anymore. She'll say " you're doing that thing again."
On a couple of the well-known "autism" channels I've voiced a theory and it has gotten some very positive response, even approaching passionate response. It's something that has made sense of tons for me. It really does strike me as something approaching (at least approaching perhaps?) an autism "Theory of Everything." I want to give voice to it here, to test it on the complex of traits that you're justifiably seeing as parts of some elusive whole.
First, all the manifestations you're describing seem to have this in common: they are all attempts, scrambling, often desperate attempts, to achieve definition. WHAT is going on here, HOW is it done, WHAT is my role, WHAT are the pitfalls, threats, needs, WHAT have I still left undone, WHAT will happen if I miss something, etc. It's all about the perpetual struggle and scramble after DEFINITION.
This is why I think--at least I THINK--my "Theory of Everything" might come in useful here.
So here it is: I'm feeling fairly convinced that at the heart of autism is the relative absence of a fixed cognitive matrix.
The absence is relative, sometimes more, sometimes less (the degree of "high functioning" possibly corresponds to this), but I'm strongly convinced that a certain "matrixlessness" is at the heart of all autism.
I also call it Matrix Autism. Incidental illustrations: hyper-vigilance is a crisis-mode state of readiness to respond radically in settings where you have no confident basis to anticipate what might happen...even in settings (like a supermarket) where you've been ten thousand times already.
Hyper-sensitivity to sensory input: same crisis-mode alertness. You're in a church social hall with a hundred conversations all buzzing around you. You're attuned, maddeningly, to every single one of them, because every single one of them contains info that might impinge on or threaten you. And an infant suddenly shrieks and you nearly jump out of your skin, even though an infant has shrieked at every such gathering the last hundred times you've been at one, but it's like every time is the first time all over again. Matrix amnesia. You know intellectually but there's another part of your psyche that viscerally forgets.
When I was in elementary school arithmetic was torture to me. I couldn't understand why 8x7 being 56 today meant it would be 56 tomorrow. There was no matrix of meaning, no all-encompassing schema to plug that into.
Masking, especially the most destructive kind of all that I call "Private Masking" (or "Visceral Masking") seems hugely obviously to be a compensation for matrixlessness. It's a scramble to mirror the immediate presentations coming at you socially, what seems to be working in the given situation, just to survive it, not because those patterns are meaningful to you. They're not, because the matrix they emerge from is a closed book to you, finds no psychic echo in you. Private masking is the continued internalization, viscerally, self-conceptually, of the external inputs, the patterns, the social values and priorities, the "advice" and "peer pressure" exerted on you, even when you're all alone, while you're struggling to shove and wrench and contort your inner state into the form that "the world out there" told you it should look like: how you should feel, what you should love, why you should get out of bed in the morning. This is masking at its most pernicious, wreaking unfathomable psychic and, yes, physical damage.
And at the root of it all is a matrixlessness intrinsic to autism. A matrixlessness that means no amount of masking, either social or private, external or visceral, will ever EVER work because it CAN'T undo the matrixlessness. The efforts, both visible and inwardly emotional, to turn into what that matrix out there seems to require are doomed, can't work, precisely because you will never really understand, never be part of, the thing you're trying to imitate and be part of. That's what so god-awful destructive about masking. That even when you're doing it, it isn't what you think it is.
Well, Paul, that's my theory, for what's it worth: Matrixlessnes, or Matrix Amnesia, as the fundamental trait of autism and its whole range of manifestations.
+
many thnx for putting thoughts out into such thorough ‚grand draft‘ to relate to. as indeed, we haven’t been, and won’t be belonging, to that matrix, nor have (had) it, ultimately.
This is very interesting! I hope you get the opportunity to expand and share this more!
Wow thank you. 🙏 I am going to process this but so much of it resonated.
I’ve been thinking of something similar for a while now. I lack a certain ‘base’, what you call a matrix, and because of that, experiences just don’t stick. I have taken to consciously preparing myself for events (yes, the baby will probably scream, they will ask X or Y), because it will take me off guard every time otherwise. Ugh!
This can also be a nice trait, because sometimes experiencing the same things as if they were new (emotionally, physically) can be beautiful! With for example movies or games.
This resonates a lot. I find it’s hard to explain that when I look like I’m doing nothing my brain is furiously busy thinking about things I need to do, going through them in detail, considering the best approach - and then when I do them I check everything multiple times. I don’t really understand how people just ‘do’. I think of it as ‘thought intensity’ - and kind of related to things like hating small talk and struggling with unknown situations. It’s like my brain hates ‘surface thinking’ and runs on ‘deep, intense thinking’ but then applies it to inappropriate things like a fairly basic email or what to eat for dinner. But when it’s applied to solving complex problems it’s great, and useful for things like writing. Multitasking hugely stresses me out because I want to go deep on everything and take ages. My coping strategy is to pretend I’m someone else for say, an hour, and ‘step into’ being this kind of breezy, busy, surface person who can just type jolly answers and get things done. Then I reward myself with a nice deep dive into something interesting!
Hi Lucy, I find 'Thought Intensity' a very appropriate term to describe how our minds are overthinking or underthinking. It allows for a scale. So if I may, I'd like to call it Hyperattentive Thought Intensity
The perfectionism part I call "getting stuck." I've learned the types of things where I am most prone to this (like hanging pictures or putting on screen protectors), and I've learned to ask someone else to do it. Otherwise, I know I will "get stuck" and end up with fifteen holes in the wall or a non-sticky screen protector from too much repositioning.
16:55 "Yeah, but when you burn, you burn very, very brightly." Yes, that's an amazing way to describe it! 🥰👍 What a cool and understanding, compassionate friend! 💕
I can totally relate to this. I manage a web service for a cloud provider, and there is no question this “hyper-vigilance” affects me. It is nearly impossible for me to not think about the state of the service.
I’m fairly sure a couple of my engineers are autistic, too, but not ADHD. I don’t see the same behavior in them, which is interesting.
Engineers often are the field attracts them like magnets
All of the traits you mentioned at 100% relatable to me and caused me to reach the depressed/burnout state that started me on my journey to getting diagnosed with inattentive ADHD in my mid thirties. I honestly felt like I hadn't had a single proper day of rest in decades, while at the some time not accomplishing anything of importance. On top of that I am an INTJ mbti type which is naturally predisposed to planning for future events (predicted or prescribed), perfectionism and decision paralysis. The combination of my natural ability and giftedness allowed me to push myself too hard for too long as an undiagnosed ADHDer without prioritizing rest, and all the while making myself too exhausted to maintain my home or social life. Lately I have been trying to prioritize my needs. My need for rest IS IMPORTIANT.