Tag: double empathy problem

Brain, brain, go away….

Posted on April 16, 2026 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

Yes, I’m writing more about my brain and how I’ve thought it was broken for most of my life. When I was talking to my autistic friend (endless gratitude to her for making me realize that I miiiiiight be on the spectrum) about my childhood, I used the phrase, “felt like an alien”. She said that was exactly how she felt as a child and so many autistic people felt the same way. I also said that I always felt as if I was never given the manual for humanning. I really thought everyone else got some kind of instruction on how to be a human being.

“Turn to page 54 for complete instructions as to how to interact with humans at a party.” “And here on page 90, we see how to make small talk when you’re picking up your medicine.”

What I really wanted was David Attenborough to guide me through human life as if he was watching a rare species of, say, wild cat and describing their daily life to people who have never seen them before. I could have really used someone telling me how to be human before I was released into the general public. I used to joke that I was raised by wolves, but it was not really a joke. What I mean is that my parents had no idea what life in America was like, so they weren’t able to guide me. More to the point, they had no desire to integrate themselves into American culture, so they had no interest in teaching me about it.

It was the perfect storm of several negative things that made it so my entry into American society (school) scarred me. 1. I wsa a weirdo. I just was. Now I know there’s a reason for it, but back then, I just thought I was a sad and broken human being who should not have been born. And I was deeply depressed by the time I was seven. 2. My parents had no interest in American society and passed that down to me. We did not watch TV or go to movies or listen to the radio. I like to the apocryphal story of how the first pop song I heard was Electric Avenue by Eddy Grant in 1983 when I was 12. That’s pretty late in life, but it was indicative of how little my family cared about such things.

My parents were very conservative/traditional, which meant I was raised with a lot of restrictive ideas. I’m talking religious rather than politically, but I would not be surprised if the latter was true as well.

Accepting my brain as it is

Posted on April 15, 2026 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

I’m fifty-five years old.

Waits and thinks.

Yes, that’s right. I tend to add a year to my age on January 1st every year so by the time I make it to my actual birthday, I’m confused as to hold old I am. I think it’s because it’s an Asian thing? I’m not sure, but I’m sticking to it as my reason for doing it. I don’t care about my actual age because it’s always seem so random to me to celebrate one day for being a year older.

I mean, I get it on the basic level of it’s the day you were born, so yay for you! And then the next year on the same day, you add a year to that number. In reality, though, we’re aging every day. It’s not like aging is put on hold for 364 days and then you suddenly get a year older on one day. Oh, by the way, here’s my post from yesterday.

I know I’m thinking too literally about it, but that’s how my brain works. I am very literal in most ways and then I’ll be theoretical in some random sudden circumstance. I am terrible with people who are deadpan jokers beacuse I can’t read their tone properly. This is ten times worse over text/email because I can’t get any verbal/visual cues as to how I should react.

Here is how I react to any comment.

Other person (OP): Comments on something happening in their life.

Neurotypical person: Immediately responds.

More about my brain and if it’s broken

Posted on April 14, 2026 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

Let’s talk more about my brain. In the last post, I talked about how a friend helped me realize that maybe my brain wasn’t broken–rather, that I had autism. When she suggested it to me, it was as if a fog cleared up in my head. I have mentioned that I was the one who clued my brother in about his autism a few months before I ended up in the hospital.

About eigt months ago, I was talking to a friend of mine. She’s very frank about herself, so I knew she was autistic. What’s more, she has no problem with talking about it. She will answer any questions I have about it, just as I will answer any questions she has about anything about me. We met in a Discord for a content creator we both watch, but oun friendship quickly progressed past that.

We’re both queer (bisexual for lack of a better term), genderqueer, poly/ENM, and, apparently, autistic. She’s also ADHD, which I may have as well. Neither of us are religious, either. She’s a math person whereas I am not, but that’s probably the biggest difference between us. I like math and I’m good at it, but it’s not a passion for me as it is for her.

We bonded over the fact that we were both magicks-based in Elden Ring (FromSoft), though she was a sorceress, andI was into faith-based magicks. We laughed over having 18 Vigor for the first 100 hours of the game (which means getting one-shot). To put it in perspective, it’s suggested that you have 60 Vigor as soon as you can. I had 38 by the end of the game.

We quickly took our friendship offline (as it were. We took it to DMs), and we sent long messages back and forth. It has been a delight getting to know her, and I would call her a true friend now. I really appreciate that she brought up the possibility that I might have autism because I never would have thought of it myself.

I took an online test, and it was borderline. My friend told me to try to take off the mask, as it were, as I took the test. In other words, she wanted me to ansnwer on impulse rather than think about it at all. Because if I thought about it, then I got trapped. Why? Because I have been heavily masking since I was a young kid. My mother made me her emotional support person when I was eleven, but she had trained me for the job for several years prior.

Trying to be gentle with myself

Posted on April 13, 2026 by Minna Hong • 0 Comments

For most of my life, I’ve thought that my brain was broken. I’ve referred to it as such for quite some time. I would say it jokingly, but I actually meant it. I didn’t think like other people, and I always assumed it was my fault. It wasn’t until a friend of mine pointed out gently that maybe I was autistic that I really dug deep into it. Here’s my post from yesterday which is about how I’ve struggeld with my brain all my life.

Before that, I had thought a while ago that maybe I had ADHD. I knew that the most well-known symptoms were more male-coded than female-coded/non-gendered coded. I could see some of the symptoms fitting me, but not others. The big one, though, hyperactivity, most emphatically did not describe me. When I found out that it wasn’t an essential part of having ADHD, I did not know what to do with that. I mean, it’s in the name. I did not know then that you can have ADD rather than ADHD.

I knew I had the hyperfocus part down pat. When I am into something, you cannot tear me away from it. It might be weeks or months or in rare cases years, but I’m 100% into it. Some of them are just meaningless hobbies such as jigsaw puzzles or black cubic zirconia rings. I would say Taiji didn’t start as an obsession, but once I got into weapons, it became a long-term obsession. It’s an interesting exception to my all-or-nothing mentality, and I’ll get back to that in a bit.

FromSoft games are also one of my obsessions that consumes me, but also in a weird way. I’ll talk about this one right now. When I have a new FromSoft game that is the game in my life at the moment, it’s all-consuming. I can play it for hours every day until I finish it. That’s what happened with Elden Ring. I played it for hours every day until I finished my first playthrough (well over 200 hours). That continued as I went for the platinum (about another 125 hours). Once I was done with that, I still played it every day, but not with anything close to the same intensity.

I play a From game nearly every day–or at least I did up until about three or four months ago. I can tell you why. I found another obsession to fill my time, yes, but also, I feel FromSoft games moving away from me. I did not get along at all with the last two games (Elden Ring: Nightreign and Armored Core VI Fires of the Rubicon. I did not expect to like/be able to play either game, but I’m sad I was not wrong.

Tag Archives: double empathy problem