Autistic Regrets - Delayed Audio Processing
It's a regular Saturday, and I'm sat here thinking of everything past, future, present. One of the most autistic things we all do is ruminate continually on events which have already passed, and they can be from any period in life. I try to stop this, often with abject failure and an intensification of rumination, it's just what happens!
Post diagnosis this introspection is sometimes horrible, looking through the 'tism lens backwards in time. This is a singular example which I feel blighted a lot of my life - the "what?" problem? If you're autistic, diagnosed or not, you'll have experienced this little gem.
Audio processing delay is a thing for autistics, even when we're engaged in a conversation. We have no volume control, little or no ability to filter sounds, and it's painful, yup painful. A ticking clock three rooms away is treated with the same priority as the person you're speaking to. Used to drive my wife nuts, she'd start talking to me, and I'd be like "what?" continually, then she's start repeating herself, and I'd begin answering - this was the best case scenario, a slight delay in processing. Very annoying for anyone involved. I hated asking her to repeat everything - keep in mind this was before I even suspected I was autistic.
She became frequently frustrated, and as time got on, and I aged and the masking ability declined, it got worse. It was a blight on my marriage, and I so regret not looking into why a lot sooner. Post diagnosis I can warn people, everything is smoother.
Worse still is the lack of response I sometimes give people when they've said something to me. I'm so busy trying to decode everything that by the time I have, the conversation has moved on some, so I don't end up answering, don't know how to get the reply in without sounding weird... and then, then the other person will repeat it, and then again, and again I don't have the right timing, so I end up being a twat in any reasonable neurotypical sense. π€
Honestly when people start speaking, it feels like an age before the brain will start decoding their random sounds into words and begin to work through them.
The singular situation where this seems to turn off is those periods of absolute hyper-focus, and then nothing will get through, every alarm clock, every car alarm in 10 miles could be going off and mentally I'll be on the focus. It's all or nothing, a sardonic twist of a highly tuned brain doing the 40%+ extra thing 24*7, like a chipmunk on speed when everything is on fire πΏοΈ ποΈ π