u/Inevitable-Level-687

I don't mean "too scared to advocate for yourself". I mean "literally cannot even THINK". I don't know if it's my autism but it's like my brain goes offline when someone is in any way adversarial to me - doesn't matter if they're polite and warm about it or if they're completely losing their shit. My brain just turns the fuck off.

This drives me insane. I just had a conversation with one of my housemates; he'd left his laundry in the wash so I moved it into the basket he left right next to the machine. He was pissed because it was his dirty laundry basket and said I should have knocked on his door first. I was like oh yeah fair enough, my bad.

Wasn't until afterwards that I realised, hang on, how was I supposed to know whose laundry it was and why did he leave the basket there, empty, if he wasn't okay with people putting his stuff in it? Like yeah sure, it wouldn't have hurt for me to knock on doors so that's fair enough, but why did he leave the basket there?

And this shit happens all. the. fucking. time. With stuff that's way more important than laundry. I just cannot think, my mind goes blank, in the moment it never even genuinely occurs to me that I could be in the right, I just immediately go "yeah fair enough my bad" only to sometimes later realise that the other person was completely fucking unreasonable. Even if I DO have some gut instinct that I'm in the right I just can't think fast enough to advocate for myself, it happens too quickly and it's over. I have lost every argument I have had because the SECOND someone says something I don't have a planned retort for, that's it, it's over.

And if I go up to the person afterwards, they'll either say "but you said everything was fine!" or they'll argue and the pattern will repeat again because they'll say another thing I didn't expect.

Like, maybe this is just autism but it's exhausting and I'm so tired of it. People I've talked to act like it's a problem with my spine. I did used to have a floppy spine, but that's not the bottleneck any more, the bottleneck is being able to think fast and clearly enough to improvise. I just can't do that. My spine could be made out of adamantium and it wouldn't make a difference because I can't think on my feet. The ONLY times I've ever managed to keep on top of arguments is when I've had the exact same argument before and came up with my arguments in advance.

To be clear, the point I'm making isn't that I feel I should win all my arguments. The point is that I lose by default because I can't think clearly on the spot. I can't even work collaboratively with the other person to come up with a solution where both people win because I just can't think clearly enough during a conversation with someone else to be able to do that. I have always had to go off and think about it. I've had actual arguments with (very patient) friends that took weeks because I always had to go off and think about what they said and figure out if I thought they were right or not because I can't do it at the time. Having a partner who wants to work everything out immediately is my worst nightmare.

Does anyone else relate? How did you get past this? ​

EDIT: To make it clear how bad this problem is, I'm an adult in her thirties.

Every now and then my Australian friends and I might be chatting in Discord late in the arvo or something, and someone will start complaining about the noisy miners outside their window screaming their bloody heads off. Someone else will then start grumbling about how a noisy miner outside THEIR house chased down a bird and killed it with their buddies. I've had to rescue things from the miners before so I always chip in with my stories.

Whenever the subject of noisy miners and their violence/disruption comes up we're always just mildly annoyed. This alarms the non Australians, and inevitably someone will be like "why aren't you calling the cops for this shit???"

And then we realise.

Oh.

Right.

They don't know what noisy miners are.

So we have to tell them - oh, it's fine, a noisy miner is a kind of bird. ​A very violent bird, but still a bird.

The non Aussies then relax, happy in their newfound knowledge that we don't have an epidemic of loud people from a specific blue collar profession running around outside people's houses screaming at them and abusing the wildlife.

(Petrol/gas stations for non Aussies)

I'm talking about the air filling machines at the servo. My dad once took me to one to fill my bicycle tyres and I didn't see any option to abort the process so my bike tyre exploded before my dad could yank it.

Well, car tyres are way more expensive and one of my tyres is visibly low. How do I use the machine so that doesn't happen with the car tyre?