Monotropism

Commenter Earl Wajenberg sent along a video about the Monotropism theory of Autism.

She is not quite the presenter I would prefer, but she is pleasant enough.

I think the theory has considerable explanatory power, as she attempts to connect this basic "tunnel vision" idea to the varied aspects of Autism. Playing this one, I also was introduced to the idea of Pathological Demand Avoidance in the youTube sidebar, which I had never heard of. I'm with her that if you want people to accept the idea of having a particular condition, you shouldn't be putting "pathological" in the name. That diagnosis is less general, only applying to a percentage of those with autism.  I thought of a couple of people this fits quite well, but found myself getting upset at these people from my past all over again, and decided there is something unhealthy about pursuing this - for me, anyway.  If I had to because of someone in my life now, I could manage it, but the emotional energy doesn't seem worth it to me. I'm no longer that curious about why they were they way they were.

And once the idea occurred to me, I realised that this was also true of learning about autism in general. There are streaks of it in my family still, perhaps including me more than any of the others.  But I no longer need to explain these behaviors to myself or anyone else.  The videos describe people having life-altering experiences of finally understanding themselves or a spouse or a child. It's hard to know what to make of these sometimes.  I have a series of successive explanations of myself, each one an improvement on the one before it, but very little is going to affect many decisions at age 70. 

So I am revisiting memories of people I would rather forget, frankly. I'm actively looking for nostalgia destruction at this point.

Thus this is mostly without comment, and the PDA videos are definitely without comment.  There may be holes in these that I have missed, but I'm not going to put in the time to find out.