I masked for years but recently (possibly linked to some bereavements in the family, who knows what the actual trigger was if there even was one single trigger) the constant effort required just burned me out. Anxiety spiked, depression symptoms loomed, and I just felt exhausted all of the time.
I've spoken to many people in the past 10 years or so who were in a crisis/burnout/depression or however they personally labelled their situation with varying degrees of bad mood, depressed affect, and reduced energy. Every single one of them had a mask they had been wearing for a very long time, and which was hugely mentally draining on them. Most of them wore the mask especially when interacting with themselves, interestingly.
Some of them self-identified as neuro-atypical (with or without professional diagnosis), others didn't. Some of them identified their situation as a co-morbidity of being atypical, others as a result of it, or as a pure coincidence. It's not clear to me whether the masks themselves and/or the current inability to wear them were a reason, a symptom, or just a coincidence of said situations and/or the subjective or objective atypicalliness. But whenever I hear that masking has such a huge drain on people with ADHD/autism I wonder about the questions of cause and effect, the question of correlation and causation, and the question of (self-)selection bias. It's really a mess and it's very difficult to make sense of any of that. But mostly, I feel that discussing ways how society could reduce the pressure to mask might be more beneficial to everyone than finding the perfect definitions for groups of people who have an accepted reason to be drained by their masking, while others must still endure because their masking is not socially or medically recognized as unnecessary suffering.
Masking is defined by being a maladaptive strategy, so I don't think that it being in general mentally draining is disputed. The issue is that sometimes there is a tendency to call any coping strategy as masking. There are coping strategies that can be successful, and there are reasons to adopt them other than to hide not being neurotypical or to make neurotypicals happy.
> Not the OP, but after a couple of decades of people pointedly talking about eye contact, small talk, and body language, you learn “coping mechanisms” to deal with neurotypicals and make them more comfortable.
> I find all these conversation around neuro-divergence extremely weird, for the simple reason that I have a never seen a proper definition of what a "normal" person actually is, and for good and obvious reasons:
The problem is that no-one can easily understand how their brain works compared to other people. People on both sides don't talk about it enough or openly enough. If you look at the science it quickly descends in to endless confusing/impenetrable psychiatric terminology.
You can study things like anaemia as you can objectively measure the red blood cell count of a patient's blood. You can't objectively measure a patient's "focus" or "motivation". It's really hard to even get a good subjective measure of those things.
For example, it's just one aspect, but prior to diagnosis and taking methylphenidate (Ritalin/Concerta) I thought everyone had hundreds of competing thoughts running through their head all the time. I thought everyone just had better ways of dealing with it than I did. I had no idea that's not the case. I'd got to 50+ years old, got several degrees, married and had a family, had a successful career, not quite FAANG but earning more than 6 figures, all in spite of how my brain works. Surely there can't be anything "wrong" with me.
But when the medication first kicked in I was simply astounded how quiet my brain became and how clearly I could think about just one thing (it may not be the thing I actually wanted to focus on at that time but that's another facet of the fun). How the hell did I manage to get by all this time without this? It's only then in speaking to other people do I find out that, no, most other people don't have hundreds of competing thoughts running through their head all the time snapping at their focus.
> On that premise, the whole idea of neuro-divergence and the idea that you can classify people in arbitrary categories such as ADHD, Autism, etc ... and that this classification will lead to a way to "fix them" is complete and utter BS.
I agree with point about broad classifications, but medicine is far from the exact science that people believe it is. Got these symptoms? Does medication A improve them? Can you live with the side effects of medication A? Does medication B help with the side effects of medication A and not interfere with the improvements given my medication A? etc...
> The problem is that no-one can easily understand how their brain works compared to other people. People on both sides don't talk about it enough or openly enough. If you look at the science it quickly descends in to endless confusing/impenetrable psychiatric terminology.
It's not just how the "science" is conducted, or limited to a fixed number of sides. Everyone doesn't quite know what anyone else experiences. We all just throw around symbols, hoping someone gets what we mean by what we say, and assuming that we know what others mean by what they say. The meat of what we know and experience never gets transmitted faithfully to anyone.
To be certain, many people do have conditions that, say, I will never have. But that doesn't make me "normal" or those people "abnormal". The definition of a disorder by showing harm to living one's life is a good start, but fraught with the complexity of analyzing things in an implicit social context. If it seems that someone has a problem, I'll consider it a problem, not only if it seems sufficiently and officially abnormal.
Also the NHS ADHD/ASD services are completely overrun. Waiting lists for children can be more than 5 years long.
In order to cope with this the NHS has spun out much of the ADHD/ASD assessments through the Right To Choose program (well, in England at least, Scotland/Wales/NI are on their own), which means that private companies are being paid by the NHS to make up the shortfall. Ref: https://adhduk.co.uk/right-to-choose/
Some people say some of the private companies are too lenient with their diagnoses. Some people say that the NHS is too strict with their diagnoses. I'm sure the real answer is somewhere in the middle.
As you say, the sharp rise in diagnoses is probably more due to people become more aware, with less stigma attached, and having better access to assessment.
Shit like _Rain Man_ almost 30 years ago or, more recently stuff like _The Good Doctor_ really don't help though, as those just reinforce the negative stereotypes of Autism.
ADHD also has a strong genetic component with heritability around 75% according to various studies. My parents (undiagnosed but one definitely ADD+ASD) have 1/4 children diagnosed (and another 2/4 almost certainly undiagnosed, one neurotypical), and 6/10 grandchildren diagnosed (the other 4 are neurotypical).
Who knows, in 20 years time mainstream schools could have switched from 20% SEND and 80% neurotypical to 80% SEND and 20% neurotypical.
In my family it's been difficult for some to accept my sister's autism diagnosis because Rain Man is the prototype of autism they have in their heads. Younger family members who have been exposed to classmates who are on the Autism spectrum have been accepting of the diagnosis as their image of autism is very different than the one older family members have. Good thing is despite some not believing in the accuracy of the label, they're still supportive of her.
> The day-to-day impact of being diagnosed is practically non-existant for me.
Yeah, as the old adage goes: with an ADH?D diagnosis you get to try drugs like lisdex or methylphenidate (or the non-stim options if those aren't suitable), but with an Autism/ASD diagnosis you get some pamphlets, coffee morning invites and a reading list.
I don't have a formal diagnosis but my child does and that made me read lots on the subject. Authors like Eliza Fricker, Ellie Middleton, Pete Wharmby amongst others.
It's opened my eyes to many other related aspects, specifically Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria (RSD) and Pathalogical Demand Avoidance (PDA) and how those play into both ADH?D and ASD. In reading about them I've worked out just how much they apply to my-undiagnosed-self and how understanding the triggers and recognising the early behaviour has allowed me to adapt to minimise their impact.
I know someone who needs Meds A because of $SERIOUS_CONDITION (medical, not psych.)
They're on Meds B to deal with some side effects of Meds A.
They're on Meds C to deal with a side effect of Meds B.
They would like to be on Meds D to deal with a side effect of Meds C but Meds D are absolutely contraindicative with one of the other meds.
Out of the various combinations (no meds, Meds A, Meds A+B, Meds A+B+C, Meds A+B+C+D) they've chosen the one that is most bearable (Meds A+B+C) and they can live with the remaining side effects. The other options are worse. 'no meds' and 'Meds A+B+C+D' would mean death in the very near term, whilst 'Meds A' and 'Meds A+B' have some quite annoying and restricting side effects. 'Meds A+B+C' is the least worst option.
"Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria" is not medically recognized and is literally just something a guy with a blog made up.
(Note, the guy with the blog is a doctor, but he specifically recommends certain medications for this that I don't think anyone else who discusses RSD online would agree with if they knew this.)
Personally, I think it just sounds like a description of anxiety.
> Once you can you really start to appreciate the work that folks like your friend do.
That can be a real double edged sword.
When you realise how good things can be it means many of the everyday/average things can become intolerable.
I'm happy that I've got slightly dodgy eyesight in that I don't really care whether something is in HD or 4K (I can still tell if my wife has selected the SD version of a TV channel, and I'm still way above the minimum standard to be able to drive).
I'm also happy I didn't inherit my father's audiophile hearing. I can do blind listening tests of different bits of audio equipment and barely hear the difference between them whilst my father (even in his 80's) can provide a whole list of things that are wrong/better/different about each of them (and he's not just making stuff up).
The biggest test is that I can also drink most supermarket instant coffee without complaint. I've got some friends that walk 25 minutes each way to their favourite coffee vendor multiple times a day as "everything closer is awful", but then that's more about them having a nice routine to get them away from their desk.
> The biggest test is that I can also drink most supermarket instant coffee without complaint.
I was the same way for years and appreciated it but unfortunately I did start to treat myself more and it's hard to go back, but my financial situation is also much better. I think it's valuable to stick with the lowest sufferable quality of something until you have the ability to meaningfully upgrade or improve upon it.
Gutted about this. I use Zipcars 4-5 times a month specifically to get to things that are unreachable by public transport within reasonable timeframes.
What can be 45 minutes in a Zipcar can sometimes be more than 2 hours by public transport, and sometimes impossible given some time constraints and rail engineering works.
Local car rental companies do rent cars by the day, and can sometimes be cheaper, but they come with more complications: admin faff, parking problems, and inflexible 8am to 8am rentals mean that a simple 3 hour Zipcar rental from 6am to 9am becomes a 2 day car rental, or needing a car on a Sunday means a 2 day rental from Saturday to Monday as none of the local car rental companies seem to open on a Sunday. Some of the major ones (Hertz/Avis/Budget/Enterprise/Thrifty) do but then I'm travelling an hour to pick up the car.
If Zipcar does shut down in the UK, and no-one jumps in to fill the void, then I may have to buy (more likely lease) a cheap car and add to the clutter on my local street with something that is only used 4-5 times a month. More convenient for me, costs about the same year on year, but terrible use of resources.
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Why did the number of days per event change? It takes a ton of my free time every year to run Advent of Code, and building the puzzles accounts for the majority of that time. After keeping a consistent schedule for ten years(!), I needed a change. The puzzles still start on December 1st so that the day numbers make sense (Day 1 = Dec 1), and puzzles come out every day (ending mid-December).
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Either Russia (8am) or West Coast US (9pm) would be my preferred options.
Sadly it's 5am for me as I'm in the UK.
In 8 years I can say I've never once tried to be awake at 5am in order to do the puzzle. The one time I happened to still be awake at 5am during AoC I was quite spectacularly drunk so looking at AoC would have been utterly pointless.
Anything before 6.45am and I'm hopefully asleep. 7am isn't great as 7am-8am I'm usually trying to get my kid up, fed and out the door to go to school. Weekends are for not waking up at 7am if I don't need to.
9am or later and it messes with the working day too much.
Looking back at my submission times from 2017 onwards (I only found AoC in 2017 so did 2015/2016 retrospectively) I've only got two submissions under 02:xx:xx (e.g. 7am for me). Both were around 6.42am so I guess I was up a bit earlier that day (6.30am) and was waiting for my kid to wake up and managed to get part 1 done quickly.
My usual plan was to get my kid out of the door sometime between 7.30am and 8am and then work on AoC until I started work around 9am. If I hadn't finished it then I'd get a bit more time during my lunch hour and, if still not finished, find some time in the evening after work and family time.
Out of the 400 submissions from 2017-2024 inclusive I've only got 20 that are marked as ">24h" and many of these were days where I was out for the entire day with my wife/kid so I didn't get to even look at the problem until the next day. Only 4 of them are where I submitted part 1 within 24h but part 2 slipped beyond 24h.
Enormous understatement: I were unencumbered by wife/kids then my life would be quite a bit different.
The actual number is going to be higher as more people will have finished the puzzles since then, and many people may have finished all of the puzzles but split across more than one account.
Then again, I'm sure there's a reasonable number of people who have only completed certain puzzles because they found someone else's code on the AoC subreddit and ran that against their input, or got a huge hint from there without which they'd never solve it on their own. (To be clear, I don't mind the latter as it's just a trigger for someone to learn something they didn't know before, but just running someone else's code is not helping them if they don't dig into it further and understand how/why it works.)
There's definitely a certain specific set of knowledge areas that really helps solve AoC puzzles. It's a combination of classic Comp Sci theory (A*/SAT solvers, Dijkstra's algorithm, breadth/depth first searches, parsing, regex, string processing, data structures, dynamic programming, memoization, etc) and Mathematics (finite fields and modular arithmetic, Chinese Remainder Theorem, geometry, combinatorics, grids and coordinates, graph theory, etc).
Not many people have all those skills to the required level to find the majority of AoC "easy". There's no obvious common path to accruing this particular knowledge set. A traditional Comp Sci background may not provide all of the Mathematics required. A Mathematics background may leave you short on the Comp Sci theory front.
My own experience is unusual. I've got two separate bachelors degrees; one in Comp Sci and one in Mathematics with a 7 year gap between them, those degrees and 25+ years of doing software development as a job means I do find the vast majority of AoC quite easy, but not all of it, there are still some stinkers.
Being able to look at an AoC problem and think "There's some algorithm behind this, what is it?" is hugely helpful.
The "Slam Shuffle" problem (2019 day 22) was a classic example of this that sticks in my mind. The magnitude of the numbers involved in part 2 of that problem made it clear that a naive iteration approach was out of the question, so there had to be a more direct path to the answer.
As I write the code for part 1 of any problem I tend to think "What is the twist for part 2 going to be? How is Eric going to make it orders of magnitude harder?" Sometimes I even guess right, sometimes it's just plain evil.
Sorry to focus on just one aspect of your (excellent) post, but do you have recommendations for reading up on A*/SAT beyond wikipedia? I'm mostly self-taught (did about a minor's worth of post-bacc comp sci after getting a chemistry degree) and those just hasn't come up much, e.g. I don't see A* mentioned at a first glance through CLRS and only in passing in Skiena's algorithms book. Thank you!
Not sure. I covered them during my Comp Sci degree in the mid/late 90s. I'm probably not even implementing them properly but whatever I do implement tends to work.
Just checked my copy of TAOCP (Vol 3 - Sorting and Searching) and it doesn't mention A* or SAT.
Yeah, getting 250 or so stars is going to be straightforward, something most programmers with a couple of years of experience can probably manage. Then another 200 or so require some more specialized know-how (maybe some basic experience with parsers or making a simple virtual machine or recognizing a topology sort situation). Then probably the last 50 require something a bit more unusual. For me, I definitely have some trouble with any of the problems where modular inverses show up.
I masked for years but recently (possibly linked to some bereavements in the family, who knows what the actual trigger was if there even was one single trigger) the constant effort required just burned me out. Anxiety spiked, depression symptoms loomed, and I just felt exhausted all of the time.
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