Austic people need flow to emotionally regulate
About a new paper that identifies the flow state as a key technique for autistic people to regulate themselves. If autistic people don't experience flow often enough, they become highly irritable. Blindboy suggests that the neurotypical mind's need for company is replaced by the autistic mind's need for flow.
The double empathy problem frames autistic social struggles as both the neurotypical and autistic people struggling to understand each other, rather than stating that only the autistic person struggles to empathise; it de-centres neurotypical empathy as the default or "right" way to empathise. This also implies that autistic people are able to empathise very well between each other, which resonates with my lived experience of connecting strongly with certain autistic people (appreciating the tangents, distractions and fixations of conversation).
I would #recommend this to anyone to better understand what it's like to have autism.