I love watching these because they’re so validating and insightful. I never had realized that most people have very different experiences. I’m here like, “You mean to tell me this is not your experience‽” to my imaginary audience that includes NTs.
So apparently, when NTs walk down the street, their experience is like that of a movie: only experience what they want to focus on. They don’t hear everything like in this video or get hit hard with the light intensity changes. Can someone, autistic or NT, confirm that?
Personal note:
Let’s imagine I’m somewhere loud and busy, so I shut down to limit being overwhelmed, while everyone else is having a nice time. It’s so nice, they prefer it to being somewhere more quiet and calm. Then, when we get home, I just want to lay down in peace or with something calm and distracting on video, while they’re ready to go. WTF. So like my entire life, I’ve thought that I was too sensitive or immature because I couldn’t handle the regular experiences that everyone else could, so I insisted on enduring that to stop being ridiculed and to be included in social groups, but what I was really doing was placing myself in hurtful situations and learning to dissociate. Waowwww, wa-waowwwww 😮
“So apparently, when NTs walk down the street, their experience is like that of a movie: only experience what they want to focus on. They don’t hear everything like in this video or get hit hard with the light intensity changes. Can someone, autistic or NT, confirm that?”
I guess I’m NT: the answer is no. We do experience everything but it’s much more varied than in this video. Distance separates sounds significantly and the brightness changes aren’t so dramatic. If we try REALLY hard, we can supress general environment factors, but they’re still there. It’s just not overwhelming in any sense.
