The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:
-
Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.
-
Updates to let us know how you are doing. This provides valuable feedback on past advice / encouragement and will hopefully make people feel a little more motivated to follow through. If you want to be reminded to post your update, see the post titled 'update reminders', below.
-
Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.
-
Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Thanks, this is all very good clarification. I do wish you luck with this!
I'd definitely look for an SSC meetup, or start one next time Scott posts a signup calendar at Astral Codex Ten. Or maybe that's a rolling thing, now? I don't know.
Where I suspect you are most likely to fail, here, is that there's no such thing as "normal" autistic behavior. Normies gonna norm, normies gonna conform: that's what makes them normies. My own experience is that autism is not "a different way of thinking/communicating," but a diverse array of ways of failing to communicate. Other autists may well be more accommodating of that, but usually this will not actually improve their ability to communicate with one another. There will still be annoyances and slights and failures to communicate, they're just even less tractable than when it happens with normies.
If I may be forgiven a maybe-clumsy metaphor, consider sexual reproduction at the cellular level as a model of communication. Two gametes meeting is an "exchange" of information. If one is mutated too far outside the norm, the information exchange is likely to fail. If both are mutated too far outside the norm, the information exchange is astronomically likely to fail. Likewise, with patience and care normies are often able to complement aspies in the communication process, but between aspies communication compatibility will generally depend on them having compatible gaps in ability. I have seen this most crisply in romantic pairings (where perhaps all interpersonal quirks are seen most crisply), with for example aspies who struggle with displays of affection still wanting displays of affection from their partner, but being unable to communicate that in productive ways (either on the transmitting or receiving end!).
That is, in my experience, "high functioning autism" doesn't mean "bad at interacting with normies in the following particular ways," it means "bad at interacting with everyone in the following particular ways." Other autists are better positioned to empathize, but that doesn't make them good at empathizing!
Consequently I still think the closest thing to what you want would be group therapy for aspies. A trained and experienced therapist serving as a facilitator to a small group of similarly-afflicted individuals is often better than generic "mental health" support circles.
But based on some of the other things you've expressed here, I expect that in the end you'd be better off showing up at nerdy community events often enough to organically develop some accommodating friendships, of whatever neurotype. I do understand the reasons why you might consider this an undesirable alternative to the crafting of an exclusively aspie "safe space," though.
More options
Context Copy link