Autistic females often get blamed for being ‘too much’. I understand this as being dramatic, emotional and overthinking. I do understand it can be difficult for the environment to deal with this and I also wonder what can we do to minimise negative impact of those behaviours on others. I believe this is all due to the fact that we often don’t really know what is happening to us on social level and, as we are trying to understand it, we have to do the overthinking, but it makes us really stressed in the process. We can’t not overthink and just relax, because if we do that, we won’t make any progress.

It does seem to me that autistic males don’t react this way and I wonder why? I’d like to know a bit more about it but I don’t really have anyone to ask. John is not someone who’s eager to talk about his thought process, although I did notice he gets stressed a lot when he’s unable to buy new trousers or shoes and he can get into ‘too much’ mode because of that. But then, that is not really social situation, is it?

By social situation I mean things like being on a radio show, when I try to control my impulses, talk normally, and then leave and constantly analyse whether I did well enough. Things don’t add up because I kind of did ok, but even the idea that I had to control my impulses made me think that I did badly. It seems to me that if I was meant to be on the radio then my impulses would be supporting me, that my instinct would be suggesting all the right answers and behaviours to me. So as I leave an internal battle starts: did I do well or was I hopeless? Or possibly I did well enough but deep in my soul I wanted it all to be different?

Blogging is a therapeutic activity. And I noticed something really strange lately: whenever I am going through a certain mental state posting about it is what allows me to move on. Sometimes within a very short time, like a several minutes after publishing a post I realise that the thinking process I described in that post was incorrect and I move on to another hypothesis.

Being on a radio show was a lot to take in and I’m really tired now. But I guess it’s good that at least I know that being in a public eye (or ear) may be difficult for me. Which is strange, really: I did say on the blog a few times that I find it difficult to imagine at times that people have any thoughts about me at all, I almost believe at times other people don’t exist. And yet, I’m worried about how I did on the radio show, what impression I made.