Autistic/neurodivergent/"just stubborn" members: how did you [happily] learn to do something you couldn't just instantly do?
I know each person is different and if there's one autistic person's experience that's one person's experience. I'm aiming to spread a wide net here and gather stories to see the diverse range. What I'm looking for is something beyond the "well, you just do it / you start with small steps" experience: assume one can't.
Second hand accounts welcome if you know someone who has difficulties they were able to overcome.
I was talking to someone who could visualize something with microscopic clarity in their mind and that's why they couldn't draw, because any approximation, no matter how close, is not 100%, and that produces enough internal suffering that the task can't be done.
That the sentence "if it's good enough it's good enough" is nearly offensive and also nonsensical: there is the perfect and then there is failure which causes suffering, nothing exists in the middle.
So I'm curious: as an individual, do you have difficulty with .....
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breaking down a complex task into smaller achievable tasks?
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competing very simple tasks that have been broken down for you that leads to that complex task, whether because it's trivial or because now you're being told or some other hurdle?
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mentally being okay with practice / rudimentary exercises because it's not the whole completed perfect thing?
How did you learn to do something that requires practice [from you] to become good at? Do you tend to over rely then on skills that came "for free" to you? If you can see yourself getting better with practice doing that free talent, and you have a hard time learning a new thing that you couldn't also instantly do, why does the experience of improvement from one area doesn't translate into feelings of possibility that it could apply to another?
This feels like it could be a big topic, and I feel my internal editor spinning up, so I'm going to go fairly off the cuff here and edit it as minimally as possible or I won't get through it.
For me, with ADHD diagnosed but un-medicated since childhood, I've had to learn to let go of perfectionism and that starts with addressing my core issues:
ADHD comes with having a hard time accepting rejection, which from the outside can look an awful lot like being a spoiled brat who whines when they don't get their way. I got into even worse problems as a kid and young adult when I had trouble regulating my emotions in many low-stakes situations. I noticed people would become brittle around me, or that they would avoid me and cut me out of things that I would otherwise have been invited to do.
What I ended up having to do was drastically and repeatedly (special emphasis on repeatedly is necessary, this was not one and done) recalibrate my expectations of not only myself but others. Disappointment in others went away when I expected them to let me down and planned around that. Disappointment in myself went away when I expected that outside forces and factors would kick over my carefully laid plans. No plan survives contact with the enemy. I could either let myself be completely swamped any time my plans went awry, or I could learn to be like water and flow around my obstacles.
For me, a lot of it made more sense when I let go of expectations, especially those of myself. I treat it like a slot machine now. I put in my coin (effort), I pull the lever, and I see what comes up. I rarely hit the jackpot, but it's gambling so that's to be expected.
I had to learn to accept the imperfect, work past defeat, and live with disappointing outcomes, and that takes being far less critical of myself and of others. And I had to learn that regardless of the perfect outcomes that I could imagine, no plan survives contact with the enemy; life is the enemy of all plans but it doesn't have to be the enemy of happiness.
That's it, really. I guess if you're religious you really do have to "let go and let god" as they say. If you're an atheist, then I suppose an equal analogy would be "it's all chaos, just be kind."
Can you help me understand what you mean by this? Maybe I'm reading it wrong. I'm trying to apply it to myself, but I'm not sure I can.
I suppose while growing up, I always felt different than the people around me. Because of that, I stopped paying attention to what they thought of me. It sounds depressing, but I dunno - I feel fine. I have a handful of friends I talk to, but otherwise am to myself or my wife.
Since I work doing tech support, I've had to learn how to interact with all kinds of people. On occasion, I find someone that I really enjoy talking to. I have a sneaking suspicion that fellow autismos have a secret way of talking. Sometimes I feel like I can immediately understand them.
ADHD in childhood is very often paired with a type of emotional dysregulation usually called Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria.
Basically, getting a "no" hurts a hell of a lot more for someone with ADHD than without, so we often have to learn to flatten our moods. No big ups, but no big downs. And because the highs don't really feel all that high and the lows feel really low, it's better to develop that even keel in emotional personality for many of us.
I've certainly had to do it as I work in customer support for a consumer electronics company. I had to basically develop a very thick armor, which means that for all intents and purposes I don't allow myself to care what others think of me. I know I'm not everyone's cup of tea, so they can move along to the next drink rather than me trying to adjust my flavor.
And yeah, spectrum folk do seem to pick up on one another. I don't do it intentionally, but I've noticed it's when someone stays with me on a logic leap that would've shaken off most other people. I don't have a good example off the top of my head, but there's a certain way of thinking that I only experience from other people with similar brains.
That is an excellent observation. It reminds me of how sharing information or correcting people can be perceived as rude.
I was at a TCG show recently, and started talking to one of the vendors about their 3d printer. It stood out to me, because we were just ping ponging about our frustrations with that printer model, methods of printing, types of filament, etc. I was genuinely curious about it, but I've noticed people can clam up when I ask questions. It's almost like they think I'm quizzing them?
Or more annoyingly, when people feel like they have to give me the correct answer. I would much prefer "I don't know" as opposed to stating a guess as fact. If you say "I don't know", that's an opportunity for both of us to learn!
People need to get more comfortable with not knowing things and saying so, for sure. I'll tell people when I don't know things, why is everyone else so afraid of admitting it?
It feels like the stakes are higher recently. Now when you don't know something, in the middle of an internet argument, there's that chance that whoever it is will remain unconvinced and continue to vote for people like Trump. Lately the world seems so much smaller and we're all corralled in here with people in which their wrongness directly affects our lives.
Not an excuse but just an observation.
I feel like I encounter a lot of people who have massive egos and zero self-esteem. In fact, I would say that it’s probable that the people who have the biggest ego have the least self-esteem. Once you kinda like yourself, you’re able to appreciate knowing that you don’t know everything, and that it’s okay to admit it to others because anyone that sees you as lesser for not knowing usually isn’t somebody worth impressing.
Possibly it is because most of people's growing up happens in school and "I don't know" is not a very welcome phrase in that sort of environment. If a person gives the correct answer, they are able to exit that social interaction. If they give a "good enough guess" then it may do the same thing. If they give an "I don't know" then they are likely pushed to provide a different response even when a different response requires an exercise of creative fantasy.
I'm not wanting to imply that schools are a bad environment. Pushing a person to provide an answer may be the right call for that person if they do know the answer and just need to be encouraged to dismiss their timid nature. However, should that person be judged incorrectly, pushing them to provide an answer they truly don't have can be a bit traumatic.
I don't have as much of an answer as you're looking for, especially because for me it's rarely a "happily" thing. I'm stubborn as hell and I will not let some stupid little craft defeat me. Just like I won't let
Mitch McconnellTed Cruz or JD Vance to outlive me."Spite" is far more effective for follow through from me than affirmations. So I guess I harness the stubborn into "fuck you I'll get it right."
Ooooh spite!! It's like the dark cousin of happy skill acquisition!! >:D I love this
I guess I was wary of those kinds of autism training things that try to force someone to becoming "not autistic anymore" but yes absolutely, self motivating "I'll show 'em!" School of learning
Oh absolutely! I do not consider this to be something that should be pressed on someone from the outside nor will I pretend it is always the healthiest option from the inside. But it is the way that I have found to get over those particularly difficult. Humps when my focus is no longer on the new task. However, I do have to use it somewhat sparingly as there is only so much spite to go around in this economy.
Diagnosed ASD, high fonctionning thankfully.
I mostly brute force it, inputing way too much effort to get some results.
I have absolutely no inate script for socialising properly for exemple, which sucks as I actually enjoy being accepted by peers, so I had to read explanation,and trial and error so much shit until I could semi reliably appear not too weird (I know everyone has a teen phase sort of similar to this, trust me I'm not exagerating when I say that wasn't it ). But what amounts to basically manually overriding my default behavior is draining even if it does works.
I don't think there is much I cannot do, the cognitive load of each action is just different than for most other people, sometime in my favor, sometime not. Some action are so expensive as to be near impossible, so i either don't do it, or go at it like a marathon chipping away at it until results come out.
I know this is similar to masking, which is somehow unpopular, but how do you draw the line between regular prosocial self-sacrifice and masking?
I don't allow myself too much slack for being ASD as I've met too many people using it as an excuse to be an asshole, and I'm allready one often enough as is.
Mmh, I may have drifted off topic...
I'm slowly ruminating over all the responses here but I just wanted to jump in yours quickly to say, nope what you said makes perfect sense and on topic, and how to balance "apply push" vs letting things drift is the tricky space I'm trying to navigate.
100%
This is the hard truth. It's possible to, under enough pressure, to do a thing that costs so much it breaks a person. That's not the same as "being able to".
From the perspective of a "stubborn" individual, I do love learning new things, and I get the most enjoyment out of building on existing knowledge. This does make it difficult to learn new things though, as if there isn't a distant or favourable (?) link between a skill or interest I already have and this new thing, I feel completely out of my depth and uninterested.
The best example of this is me learning how to create array formula on a spreadsheet that scans the cells around it to know whether or not to paste text in the cell or not. I spent hours reading about different functions and ways of doing it, using specifically formula in each cell, because I already had the knowledge of how to build them. Someone suggested using VBA and macros, and I just couldn't understand it after looking into it. Would it have been a cleaner and more stable method? Absolutely. Did i learn it? Nope. Did I bash my head against the wall for hours to make the exact array formula I needed in one cell and then paste it across thousands? You bet.
Another example would be that I love deep diving into lore and backgrounds of media, like movies and games. But its very specific; Halo, Destiny 2, Call of Duty Zombies, the movies "Split", "Limitless" or "Jumper" , and even lore relating to smaller/obscure titles like Hotline Miami and Jet Set Radio Future- ill sit and watch content and read posts about them infinitely. The usual suspects though like Harry Potter, LoTR, GoT, WoW, Diablo etc, and im likely to be asleep before I get through to any major plot points or interesting bits that are the usual off ramp to lore hunting or additional reading.
I take the perspective of stubborn because I'm neurotypical as far as I know, but some neurodiverse friends have remarked I display traits sometimes.
Edit; I guess the "happily learn to do something i couldn't" point is just that I recognise outright if something is within my remit or not, based on whether I'm interested in it directly or tangentially. If its not, then I don't bother with it.
I, myself, definitely suffer from the on/off switch problem of interest ---> ability. Wouldn't it be great if we could harness it in a direction of our choosing? :) thanks for sharing your perspective
Very broadly:
-the smallest unit of measure is the "things that come free" tier, so typically I start there.
-go until I hit a wall (things are no longer free or free-adjacent, I notice I'm spinning my wheels, getting frustrated, am more and more prone to mistakes and am more sensitive to them when they happen), so then I
-PUT IT THE FUCK DOWN. At this point in the process I'm usually literally wandering around audibly telling myself to put it the fuck down. Go do something free-er that needs doing, read, whatever. Because (and this is the most important part)
-I've learned that my brain will keep cooking without me. It's actually really good at that, and if I force the process into the background it'll almost always work itself out. Answers will come, problems will (almost magically) resolve, if I trust that they will and PUT IT THE FUCK DOWN.
-It may not happen instantly, but trusting myself to go back to it later has been huge. I also have to accept that I may not, in fact, go back because that's always a possibility.... But the older I get, the fewer things there are left in that category. Sometimes it just takes a while.
Background: I'm not diagnosed, but strongly suspect I'm on the spectrum. I am formally diagnosed with ADHD.
I find stimulants really help with the overwhelming "I know there's 20 different things required before doing this one thing, so I choose to do nothing" mindset. If I don't take my medicine, I will lay in bed on my phone because I just don't feel like moving. I'm not depressed or anxious, I literally just don't want to move because I know moving is the first step of 20.
I will say, I simply love learning. For example, with cooking, learning was a lot of fun. It's really easy to start small - maybe a grilled cheese or cereal. Practicing and leveling up to making really delicious and healthy meals. You learn to experiment and try new foods that you never would've tried before. That being said, my brain values novelty. Because I feel like I know how to cook, I never want to do it.
Programming scratches a similar itch. It's constantly solving one puzzle after another. Analyzing better ways of doing something as you're falling asleep. There's basically an unbound limit of improvement, and there is no perfect way.
Similar to you, I struggle a lot with perfectionism. I don't have an answer, but I wish I did. I hope what I described is relatable to some, so I am curious to read other replies.
Autistic, not ADHD, in my case. Habit formation during my hyper-obsession period is the only reliable trick I have to commit to things.
For example, learning a language. I usually wouldn't want to try anything new, and forcing myself to do so is an exercise in futility. But, there will be times in my life when literally the only thing I want to do is learn that language at the expense of everything else. Because I'm aware that that feeling is temporary (might last a week, a month, half a year) I spend that time doing all the boring prep work; breaking down the tasks, and most importantly, setting up the habits. If I can turn my plan into a habit for this obsession period, it has a pretty high chance of surviving once I inevitably get bored and more on to my next hyper-obsession.
Everyone's different though. I'm not a perfectionist. I know ahead of time that one more kana or one more kanji is more knowledge than I had before, and so therefore my efforts will never be pointless, because no matter what happens, I will end up a better person.
It's always hard. The times when I have had success are times when either:
Some things that come for free for me that I've seen work out in this space are curiosity, technical skill, and a desire to be seen as cool/hot/interesting.
Curiosity makes the barrier for entry for most new things somewhat lower for me from a knowledge standpoint because I'm naturally consuming all kinds of information about all kinds of domains. I had a rudimentary understanding of how a home is built, so I wasn't completely starting from ground zero when I bought my home and started DIYing. It might have felt like I knew nothing, and I absolutely came across new pieces of "basic" information constantly, but the background knowledge I had made a lot of learning more like review than fresh learning.
Technical skill is something that mostly grew out of my curiosity and the kinds of things I was around. Namely, computers. These days I'm a pretty accomplished security specialist and moderately competent developer, and the only reason I'm any of those things is because the technical part was never really a challenge exactly. I mean, sometimes it was... Honestly maybe on reflection this one is less something that came for free, but is more something that is now free because I consistently - almost pathologically - put myself in situations where I felt under skilled. I wouldn't say it was always healthy, and definitely caused me a good deal of stress, but that stress was also the only thing that got me to care enough to just buckle down and do my best. The more often I did that in more and more challenging situations, the more skilled I became. Older me has less interest in doing that, but maybe that's because I feel more actually competent and less like I'm pretending.
And both of those really tie in to a desire to be seen as a valuable, desirable person. Cool, hot, funny, smart, whatever the thing my brain is telling me people are looking for. Don't get me wrong. This one is hazardous. Maybe even outright toxic - jury is still out on that. But it definitely is a strong motivator for me to do things that are uncomfortable or whatever. It's part of what made me continue to put myself in more challenging situations professionally. It's a big reason I continue to lift weights. It's not the only reason I do anything, but sometimes, for a given task on a given day, it is today's reason.
As for short term commitments and embracing the suck: the most direct example that came to mind for me with this is when I started running. My wife has always been a runner, and at one point, I started thinking about "what if I did that?" It's a slow process for me. I could see how it can be fun sometimes. The energy of a big race is really unmatched, and I had attended a few as a spectator in support of her. So I could see some of the positives. But it still just had this concept of "I am not a runner" in my brain. But, one day, I just decided.... Fine. I'll try it. I will go out with you and do a run for the next four Saturdays. I know I'm not going to want to. But maybe I'll find enough about it that I do like that I will keep doing it.
So, that's it. That's what I decided. I'm doing a run the next four Saturdays. For me, it's honestly not that hard to do something if I just decide that I'm going to do it. There's no more fear of opportunity cost, because there's no alternatives. I'm doing the thing. One or two of those runs was in the rain. Oh well, I said four Saturdays, and it's Saturday, so I guess I'm getting rained on. People have endured worse.
Anyway I ran my first half marathon like a year later lol. I'm still not sure if I'm "a runner", at least not right now, but I know that I could be if I chose to.
I take my focus away from the output (in your example, the drawing) and instead find a way to practice and improve that's enjoyable whether or not the output is any good. I've seen people call this "romanticising your process". This can take many forms. There might be kinds of 'games' that drill fundamental skills that are fun or satisfying. Hobbyist clubs can turn practice sessions into social gatherings if those are a motivator for you. You could set up a workspace with a certain enjoyable atmosphere or work at a certain time in your weekly schedule that your practice becomes an escape or decompressing time. You can use practice to procrastinate from something else.
Honestly, playing Runescape as a teenager solved this issue for me.
Just something about the gameplay that made 15 year old me flex those "break it down into steps and then stick with it for juicy dopamine reward" 100% fixed my inability to start and finish projects.
I still struggle with so many other things related to autism, but this isn't one of them.
I'm not diagnosed with anything but my son has ADHD and looking at him is often like looking into a mirror that shifts time by 40 years. That and a whole lot of other aha moments over the last few years and I'm going to claim my right to comment.
The two hacks I (inadvertently) landed on are external time pressure and pure anxiety. Most of my professional work, what I've been able to remain sane in anyway, has been things like theatre, events and big productions of things where a lot of people and a deadline keep me engaged even when I don't quite know what I'm doing yet or it's boring. It's not a coincidence that those environments are full of non neurotypical people.
Without that external push I either need to accept a lot of anxiety or I disengage. I don't recommend this.
In more recent years I have found mindfulness practices and a bit of engagement with buddhism in general to be revolutionary. The ability to kind of watch myself from a distance and change my actions based on what I observe has let me get a lot more done and lowered anxiety to the lowest level I can recall as an adult. I'm a lot more genuine to be around too.
This comment might not help, but I'll post anyway. I've been diagnosed with ADHD and I'm trying mediciation now.
The medication helps with starting and finishing stuff I WANT to do, but you've hit a sore spot with the "stuff I DON'T want to do"
Even now, if I have something that I need to learn, but don't want to, it's a nightmare. Learning a language is a nightmare because I am just not that interested, it doesn't come to me naturally and it annoys me deeply that language is so unstructured and natural, I like the structure and logic in technical/science like a lot of the neurospicy folk.
So uh, I kinda have bursts of progress? It's slow going but I'm learning. I'll go a couple of weeks where I don't make much progress at all, then I'll buckle down and think "I need to actually learn something dammit" and I'll go a couple of weeks of learning.
If I was consistent, I'd be fluent by now lol, but I'm trying to be kind to myself and think about the positives, it's going in the right direction and I'll get there EVENTUALLY.
FWIW the same advice never worked for me either for stuff I didn't really enjoy or was good at. I could break learning down into small steps then just never do it lol.
I think it depends on what the thing is. If it's a work thing, particularly something I'm not excited to do, that takes one form. If it's a fun thing, that's a pleasure all it's own.
For work I create mental buckets. Right now I have 3 "initiatives" under my care and any task I have goes into one of those buckets. I'm really clear with everyone that "I have not had this thing in my professional remit before and will defer to their expertise but continue to push things forward." Usually this, plus being nice and non-combative with them, gives me a ton of lee way to fuck things up. And as long as I own them, reiterate that this is all new territory for me, and mostly fix it on the next go it's gone pretty well. I get to learn with the freedom to mess things up along the way.
For fun things, I find it much easier. I think of things in iterations or versions. I started taking pottery classes about two years ago. My first stuff was pretty basic but fun. The things I made were basic but I really loved them. So the next time I'd take the concept and expand on it: the 2D head became a 2D whole body, and then the 2D body became a 3D body in a very rigid pose, then 3D body in rigid pose with more interesting glazing, then the 3D body is an interesting pose, then 3D body in a difficult to balance 3D pose, the a 3D body in a weird position to pose with other features like crabs pinching their nose and fingers, then all of that colored with underglazes/glazes/glass additions.
I was excited about all of it at the time because it was the best thing I'd ever made - and when the next version didn't turn out it was fine because I was just learning for the next version of it. I realize this is a pattern for me in any new thing I try: linocut, wine making, mountain biking, swimming. If you just view it as a learning oppotunity to make it better or as one step on a pathway to the thing you really want to make it feels so much better. I messed up version or a crash isn't a failure, it's just a learning moment. I never think of it as "doing the more basic thing to get to a more complex place", more like as far as I'm comfortable pushing the boat out for now.
I will also say I'm very comfortable being worse at things than people who learned them being a child. I think there is a level you get to if you did an activity or a sport as a kid that is unachievable starting an activity as an adult. I have a friend who swims 2-6 miles a day, every single day, who inevitably gets smoked by our other out of shape friend who swims like 10 times a year but was a D1 swimmer.
Last last last thing. Sometimes I think it has to do with expectations and inner voice. My partner is very type A and succeeded at all the things you were supposed to growing up: played varsity soccer and track, went to Berkeley, etc. I on the other hand was a pot head with wild undiagnosed ADHD and got kicked out of college after freshman year. Today I'm very happy to be bad at things and fail, I'm very adept at it :). And my expectations for myself a very middling. On the other hand, my partner has a hard time with anything she isn't immediately gifted at and expects all of her outputs to be perfect. It makes for frustrating situations when I'm more adept at something quickly, she'll quit and take her ball home. I also grew up with a dad who would repeat "Bs are good" when report cards were coming out, where as my partners were disappointed at anything other than an A. I think her parents are now her internal voice and anything that isn't perfect is a shameful thing. Whereas for me, the Bs are good mentality gives me a really kind internal voice that is just kind of happy with how things went as long as I enjoyed it.