ASDKings.com

The Brick. I have this problem. An affliction. An addiction. No matter what, I always see myself as the underdog. I often see people with more than me as people who cheated or privileged nepo babies.

Autistic people bring problem-solving, obsessive focus, deep expertise, creativity, and the ability to see patterns others miss. The problem is that most work environments fail us.   Survival in these places depends less on how good we are at the job, and more on whether the system is willing to bend even a little.

My Story I am a late-diagnosed Autistic man with ADHD and Persistent Demand Avoidance. Before I knew this truth, I assumed I was “weird”. I didn’t need to assume it, people let me know.  Every time I didn’t understand an unwritten social rule, or didn’t get other people’s weird hints because they were scared to say what was on their mind, or any time I expected total honesty from dishonest people, I realised they were running on a different operating system.  This first understanding led me to believe my life would be pain after pain the longer I lived by “be yourself” and “Treat others how you want to be treated”, because that advice always backfired. So I stopped being real…  People didn’t want to be treated how I did and they didn’t want me to be myself because I was “too much”, “too intense”, ““too random” and told “Can you please just act normal for ten minutes?” when I wanted to talk about things that were actually important or interesting.  As a teenager, I bl...

I was 20 years old, waiting alone in a government-funded room filled with kid’s toys and stickers on the wall. My eyes looked through the window blinds, across the field at the city skyline, wondering what my true potential really was. The family trauma specialist came in to empower me in this damaged state with one-liner truisms and canned pop psychology. Any deep thoughts I had were quickly steered by her back into the conversational shallow water where she felt comfortable.  She looked like Harleen Quinzel, too hot to be a therapist, but I took the work seriously and never held back the cringe if I thought it was necessary for growth. I told her I felt like a loser, like I’m behind, and I’m not becoming who I’m meant to be, and that I don’t blame it on the family tragedy that brought me here, I blame it squarely on myself because I believe I control my life. She discouraged me from building agency and asked me to open up about my pain. I did and she rearranged words and phrases...

What is “Vibe" and "Aura”? Every NT knows the answer to this but can’t explain it to save their life so I will try. Simple version: Vibe has 2 meanings: 1. An externalised, comparative emotion or gut feeling you project onto something/someone. 2. The internal emotion or gut feeling you experience. The term is attached to its source, like an adjective. If someone is dependable and this makes you relaxed, they  have a solid vibe and you have a chill vibe, not the other way around. Aura  = How cool a person is. Negative Aura  = cringe Aura Farming  = Showing off Counterfeit Aura  = Masking It’s giving XYZ = XYZ is the vibe I’m getting. Vibing  = chill and relaxed. Full Version: Vibes  are the emotional effect you have on other people through your demeanour, energy, appearance, speaking style and the emotional energy you project by leaking your feelings through your body movements and voice. Keanu Reeves, as himself, can be said to have a ‘Zen’ vibe. Grah...

My brain has always wanted rules. That’s how it survives. If I can boil the chaos of people down to patterns and categories, maybe I won’t drown in it. But those rules turn into prisons. They teach me lies. One of the worst was that women are all the same. That if I could just crack the code once, I’d have the script forever. Black and white thinking did that to me. Autism did that to me. I walked into dating like it was a puzzle I could solve if I stared hard enough. But every time a woman didn’t fit the archetype in my head, I felt betrayed. I thought there was something wrong with her, or worse… something even more wrong with me. The mindset killed my shot at connection before it could begin. It stripped her individuality staring me in the face. It made me blind to the real her(s). Guess what happens when you operate with inaccurate data… The scripts failed me and I crashed, overthought things, shut down… I started resenting the world for not bending to my rules. I’ve sabotaged conn...

  Integrating the darkness was a pop psychology trend a decade ago, pushed by Psychologist Jordan Peterson, and former Navy Seals David Goggins and Jocko Willink. These were my chosen role models at the time, in a world that was stripping away the value of masculine strength, just as I was at the age where I was developing mine. When they said:  “Harness the dark matter in the calluses on your soul” “Use Emotion when Logic fails. Use Logic when Emotion Fails”  “Now that I know how dark it can get, I truly appreciate the light” and  “ A good man is not a harmless man. A good man is a dangerous man who chooses to do no harm.” My Autistic mind took it beyond face value and took it all the way to my unconscious core values. ‘Okay then, let’s go.’ was my response. In it’s deeper levels, what it entails is embracing the dark, corrupted, toxic, hateful, spiteful, greedy, jealous, aggressive and otherwise “bad” parts of the normal human experience and finding “Good” ways of ...

If you try to take my freedom, I will do anything to keep it, even if it costs me safety, relationships, jobs, or stability. I’ve exchanged all of these once or twice for freedom at some point, and I’ve been ready to give my life. Freedom is non negotiable for me. Why? Is it Irish blood? I have rebel ancestors but I don’t believe in genetic memories. Was I born with a flaming 1776 American spirit of independence?  Unlikely. In a European country born to European parents with European values it s eems far fetched. Or is it Pathological Demand Avoidance, a theoretical profile within Autism which resists undue influence on principle? I don’t know. It’s just a theory not yet recognised in the DSM. One way or another, I don’t care why I’m allergic to bullshit, oppression, suppression and tyranny. I just am. Sovereignty and Freedom are so fragile and so valuable, they say the grass and the trees in free countries were fertilised with the blood of millions. I don’t mean to glorify war, I’...

Burning out the Autistic Mask I discovered this method at my sales job one day by accident. For years I had masked using the old method of basically having an alt personality for the setting I was in. It was extremely taxing and I burnt out regularly.  But the brain is built for efficiency and survival, and one day my brain was on ‘Critically Low power mode’ after 20 sales calls with NT’s. My mask did not have the fuel to keep going but I kept pushing myself to do my job and what happened was phenomenal.

I’ll never be one of them. I’ll never be normal. I can wear the skin of normal, talk normal, walk normal and even… in short bursts… think normal (I assume) but in my bones I will always be who I am. And when I look towards the people who are what I am, I still don’t get the feeling I’m really allowed to feel like one of them.