Marcus Unmasked
This site exists to allow me to work through my thoughts, by writing them down and clarifying them. All of these writings are my thoughts, and when I explain something, I may be simplifying the explanation, or explaining my understanding of something. If you want to explore any of these topics further, please refer to people working in the field, or people in the community.
I’ve made a conscious effort to not mask on these pages. Masking is when neurodiverse people try to suppress their tendencies to fit in with a neurotypical society.
Blog posts
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This sounds like a you problem
As usual, these opinions are mine, and while I will use terms like “we”, and “us”, and I do know people who have similar views or experiences, I also know I am not speaking for all autistics, because we are all different.
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What do I mean when I talk about energy, anyway?
While this article was written as part of my employer’s development day, all opinions are mine alone.
Before I begin, Autism and ADHD is different for everyone. I make some general statements here, but remember they don’t apply to everyone. This was written in one session, without planning where it would go. The style of writing changes as my emotions grew stronger throughout writing; I could edit it, but that is just as important to convey.
As someone who was diagnosed with Autism and ADHD (abbreviated to AuDHD) in my mid 40s, I’m still learning to understand what being AuDHD means on a practical day-to-day level. Over the last six months, or so, I’ve been starting to understand my energy levels, and my resilience.
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They just go round and round, how exciting!
This weekend was the 24 Hours of Le Mans motor race. For the past decade, I’ve tried to stay up to watch the full race live, including the practice and qualifying sessions. Living in Australia, the practice and qualifying sessions run from about 10 PM to 7 AM on Wednesday and Thursday night, with the race running 24 continuous hours from midnight on Saturday evening. Do I go full ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder) for Le Mans? Your bet your arse I do.
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Executive Dysfunction: an example
Executive functions are the “set of cognitive processes that support goal-directed behaviour”. One of the symptoms of both ADHD and Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is executive dysfunction, which is an impairment of your executive functioning, which disrupts planning and goal setting behaviours. Executive dysfunction is believed to be the underlying issue that leads to ADHD paralysis, which is where “simple tasks” can be seen as disproportionately massive tasks, and impossible to start.
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A litany of incomplete projects
One of the characteristics of ADHD is that people who have ADHD have lower levels of dopamine. As a result, we don’t get a dopamine hit for completing a task. One of the ways this has shown up in my life is leaving things to the last minute. I don’t get the good feeling of completing something, but I do get the adrenaline rush when I have a big task to complete in a short amount of time. It appears that I have managed to train my brain to seek that adrenaline rush by leaving things to the last minute, to the degree that I can find it almost impossible to start tasks early.
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I will get there when I get there
At work, our team has started a discussion about accomodations for disability. This discussion has me considering the nature of accomodations, and I was reminded of an experience I recently had. Accomodations are was of doing things, or tools that support people with disabilities. People usually think of accomodations in terms of physical disabilities, such as captions to help people with hearing impairments, ramps to assist people with mobility impairments, or audible pedestrian buttons. People with cognitive impairments also require accomodations, and I’ve been very lucky that I work with an amazing team who have given me accomodations as needed.
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Infinite Diversity in Infinite Combinations
I started writing this on USS Enterprise day (17/01). While I published it after midnight in my time zone, I consider it a win that it was still 17/01 somewhere in the world.
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The blame game
Before I start, I just want to say that I make blanket statements below. I want to acknowledge up-front that I know that despite how it comes across, I do not think it applies to all interactions between neurotypical people and neurodiverse people, or even most. Of course, given that research has shown that neurotypical people make very quick negative snap judgements about autistics, I can only assume that in our interactions people have not had those thoughts.
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Hello World!
I’ve recently felt the need to express my thoughts, especially on neurodiversity, and how I see and interact with the world, and how the world sees me, and my actions.