Transfem

This is how neurodivergent people often operate. We're required most of our lives to pretend to be something we're not to appease neurotypical people. The only way to do that is to learn scripts so we don't express our real thoughts and feelings. And we have to pretend not to be exhausted by all of that. Just like someone with MS might have to physically keep up with friends pretend they aren't exhausted by that.

That's what disability is. It's not that there's anything "wrong" with us, but pretending to be the way society expects takes a ton more effort than a neurotypical person. For example, I don't have the ability to form habits, at all. So doing tedious tasks for a neurotypical person might take no thought or effort, itself just "muscle memory". But think of the first time doing that task. It took a lot of effort, right. For me and people like me, every time is that hard. I have to explicitly think about every step. Nothing comes from habit. Also, social conditioning doesn't work on me, so I'm not conditioned to react to a question or situation a certain way without explicitly thinking about it. And I never learned how to act by instinctively mimicking others. So again, I have to think about how I've seen others act that made me comfortable and then try to mimic it in the moment, thus notes about crossing arms or smiling, etc.

So, sometimes for us, having a detailed playbook to fallback on is really helpful. And add to that the trans issue that a lot of people who were raised male never are taught the issues that women have to deal with when socializing in order to stay safe. So I figured this would be helpful since these are the things on my mind when I go out.

My neurodivergence has a ton of advantages, though, as well, like true multitasking, conceptual thinking, detailed visualization, etc. But the biggest disadvantage for a majority is socializing with neurotypical people without that built in understanding and reactions that come with habits and social conditioning.

i disagree. its super helpful to me to have a social script to fall back on. its like bowling for the first time with bumpers. yeah its way more fun to bowl without them, but its also really fucking hard to learn how to throw when you get a gutter ball every time and never even hit a pin. gotta learn the basics first.