https://autisticandme.com/2022/03/24/other-people-have-the-same-experience-as-me/

Ok, I said in the morning I may have a break from blogging, but I just realised something extraordinary! I was just reading a blog by an autistic influencer on Instagram (I’m not really sure Instagram is a good platform for blogging, but this is irrelevant) and I found a post about how autistics always feel they are different than other people and I was absolutely shocked to realise that this common statement doesn’t describe me any more! I really feel like I’m the same like others – I mean not identical of course, but everyone is different, even two identical twins will not have the same thoughts.

I think this must be linked to the situation from a few weeks ago, when I was doing my first recording in the radio and then, on the same day later on a Facebook friend made a post with a photo mentioning she was preparing university project in the studio of our Polish radio called PRS24. I remember I was shocked thinking that ‘I had microphones and she had microphones, I had acoustic panels and she had acoustic panels’ and that happened on the same day so that meant our experience was similar.

It’s strange I suppose for a neurotypical to realise that, but it was also strange for me – it was not even about the fact that she was making a recording on the same day (the post didn’t indicate what the university project was about, maybe she wasn’t even recording and only needed the space to sit quietly for a bit) it was about the fact that she was in an area with similar but unusual features. Not the same, because the microphones and acoustic panels were in both studios but she had a laptop and I only had a mobile – so our experiences were similar but a bit different.

After that, however, I was able to allocate my state of mind to Boris Johnson, so I was able to transfer that experience to imagine someone’s else mental state, and it felt so natural. Perhaps I was wrong about Boris, but then how can we know what people are really thinking? We can ask them but then, as we all know, they may not want to tell the truth for various reasons.

So possibly we shouldn’t be focusing on the fact whether we’re getting other people correctly or not or rather on the fact that we’re trying? Life is so complicated sometimes, even if neurotypicals are only interacting between themselves: they are all different, that’s why.

So I am also different, but the same. Does that make sense?

It feels really liberating, I’m telling you! I do hope this is going to help me to relate to other people more. I am having the idea now that my inability to imagine what others are thinking and feeling may be caused partly by the fact that I just used to assume their experience and reaction is totally different than mine. So possibly my lack of theory of mind is not as bad as I previously assumed.