u/PeonofthePen

Recently, I've found it helpful to think of my autism as an iceberg. Hear me out:

I've considered my talents and challenges, and I think it's become a reflex to use my talents in order to compensate for my challenges where possible. The challenges that are cancelled out by talents are the part of the iceberg that are bebeath the water. Masking strategies fall under this descriptor, but they are not the whole picture.

Scripting is an example of a masking strategy in this regard: when you are bad at reacting to situations as they happen because information takes longer to proces, but you are good at predicting situations and memorizing lines for every possible outcome. An example of a non-masking strategy that can balance out autistic challenges would be your hyperfocus: temporarily blocking out impulses like hunger and exhaustion to limit the amount of data your brain has to proces in the moment.

But then, there's challenges that you may not have the right talents to cancel out/compensate for. This is the tip of the iceberg. It sticks out above the water, and warns you about the danger beneath the surface. It's easy to recognise this on a daily basis because it is my dysfunction.

Then I've considered that using a talent costs extra energy. It's like an ability in a videogame: you have to wait for it to charge, so you can't use it all the time. This means that during my down-time, away from people and information, I have to make choices about how to recharge. If I choose to practice a hobby that requires me to use one of my talents, I'm still not truly recharging. Certain hobbies improve my mental health, but still drain me as well. So now, I use two types of down time; activities that make me happy, and activities that recharge "talent energy."

I keep track of the time I spend on both, and try to balance them out for the best outcome. It's made an enormous difference in my functioning over the past year. I am able to play with my kids more often and take over some of my wife's half of the chores around the house. I think it has helped me dodge autistic burn out.

It's far from perfect, but the visual representation plus practical application if this theory has replaced a lot of my unstructered thinking about how to handle daily life. Does anyone else have an analysis like this? I would love to hear suggestions on how to further refine my crude model.