this is how i see other sysadmins when they explain their 30yr old bash script that does everything.

I’ve only ever found two real studies on topic of tactile processing issues. reading the descriptions of tactile defensiveness made me feel less crazy.

The neurological process of light touch and movement being miss communicated to include a fight or flight response. The stress to muscles and joints that goes with constantly supressing a low level fight or flight response.

I’ve found it helpful when explaining to people hoe it is for me at least. To ask them to describe their physical response to something like a jump scare, someone startles you from behind kinda thing. then i ask if lightly moving their own hand over their arm causes the same feeling at like 1/3 the intensisty. Sure they usually say something along “thats not real”. But damnit i was at least able to explain the experiance.

these links shouldnt have paywalls. i can poke around for new links if they do.

https://www.jneurosci.org/content/37/27/6475

https://www.readcube.com/articles/10.1186%2F2040-2392-3-6

First let me welcome you to the “hey wait that was autism!?” phase. It’s a trip.

As this thread as a whole states, it depends on what value that diagnosis brings to your life. Weight against how much that diagnosis will cost you. Research autism for yourself and your kid, review your own history and talk with people who know you.

In my region of the US there is one licensed human doing adult diagnosis, on an 18 month waiting list for about $2k. He would also require a 4hr interview with at least one parent in addition to the 8hrs with me. At a time when my family was still angrily listing all the reasons my son’s diagnosis was wrong. So my son has a diagnosis, i likely will never bother.

When i started asking close friends for thier opinion, most responded with “duh”. I was not infact, as good at masking as i’d assumed. Though it’s not an uncommon experiance to find a few people extremely attached to their own image of you. Those relationships tend to end poorly when you open up about your actual lived experiance. So be aware of that cost while you’re exploring this. You’ll likely be better for their absence but the process can still hurt. The end of one of my oldest and closes friendships resulted in me paying $600 for a full genome sequencing, followed by months of learning how to read the raw files from that. So i could understand the one genetic study thats been done on tactile defensiveness. Having the report put me in the 80th perentile for autism was kinda meh at that point, so i don’t believe an offical diagnosis would do much for my piece of mind either. Finding the GABRB3 mutations identified in that tactile defensiveness study also in my genome though. Having that specific answer was worth the time and expense.

Like most people here, i’m a lot kinder to myself now that i have some understanding of how my brain proceses things. I let most of my masking fall away. And was shocked to discover most people don’t go through life with every muscle in their body tensed up like they’re constantly hearing nails on a chalk board.