#autistic question

does anyone else have a love/hate relationship with popsicles or anything else on a wooden stick?

I cannot stand the feel of a wooden stick in my mouth. From a very early age I have had an irrational fear of getting splinters in my tongue.

So any other autistic folks have words or sounds that they can’t say or it makes their mouth feel bad

so overstimulation isn’t always a feeling, but sometimes it’s just my body’s reaction to too much stimuli, separate from myself.

i’m gonna discuss this afternoon in particular under the cut. i’ll be talking ab overstimulation in relative detail, including feeling sick, so cw for that! but i wanna hear other ppls thoughts and exps!

so i tend to have a lot of fun during social interactions, to me it’s like a video game where there’s a set amount (approximated) of time you have to chose the best dialogue options for a character or that interaction, i also l o v e monologing. when i feel like i did good on an interaction, i feel very proud of myself and excited and always brag to my family and partner haha.

but at the same time, it’s a video game i can never turn off. no matter if i’ve run out of energy, interest, “sensory stamina”, “emotional flexibility”, anything. and lots of times i use up all that energy at the beginning of an interaction and completely excel at it, but then i quickly run out and can no longer chose the right options or act the right way. it becomes a job. a never ending job. and then there’s other things to worry about in the video game as well, the task at hand, sensory stuff, etc. and all that takes more energy and focus away from the interaction, making it harder. and then in depends on how expressive the person is, my family is very expressive for example and therefore easier to read but strangers might not be and i haven’t learned their pattern of behavior yet so it’s really hard. it’s a lot of learning the patterns and using them to my advantage(?) i guess. and if there’s a character (person) i really like or i get time to rest or something, it can become fun again. but it’s mostly fun when i get a chance to monologue or feel like i get a chance to show off my “amazing social skills” to my partner(most of which i’ve learned from group therapy and having to get an understanding of how people feel and how that makes them act, so it’s mostly just trying to make other people and myself feel good, which i’ve gotten really good at!).

edit to add on: i realize i learn social interactions in a p formulaic way, from therapy/group therapy i learned what causes emotions and how they cause ppl to react, and how to handle them and got rlly good at that and apply that to social interactions, and that’s how my version of the game gets its “rules” i guess. anyone else?