No worries!

And so many people like myself, and perhaps yourself, may have a lot of symptoms but have managed to fly under the radar because we were able to get good enough grades in school for example, and have good enough social skills to make and maintain friendships, and get and keep jobs, all to varying extents. But inside, unbeknownst to those around us, we have been expending 10 times, 100 times the energy that most people use in order to meet those expectations put on us. And we just assumed everyone was struggling this hard with everything. But it turns out it’s not supposed to be this hard.

This makes so much sense. I do find myself struggling at times to keep certain relationships going with people I meet or sometimes even with just my friends. For example, sometimes when I get a message from a friend I end up not reading it, and saying to myself, “I’ll look at it later”, then that later becomes later and later… until it just constantly starts eating away at me every day and maybe two weeks later I might finally respond… I’m glad my friends that I do have don’t take it that I’m being rude 😅

Anxiety because we learn to be on high alert for when we are not behaving in the socially acceptable way so we are constantly in fight or flight mode in order to stay on top of those expectations.

I definitely feel this. Sometimes I have to process in my head how to respond a certain away when I’m around people in a social setting, and when I actually say it out loud, I just think to myself how stupid that must have sounded and the people around me probably think that I’m weird.

Thanks for the videos! I know what I’ll be watching tonight, and if I do run into any videos regarding Black men diagnosed with autism I’ll send them your way :)