Processing

processing

So I have a short memory and slow processing*; most people have a longer memory and faster processing.

This means I tend to forget things faster than others. I blurt them out thinking they’re funny while other people are still processing things ‘normally’. Then I go away and process. And regret.

But now I have a bit more of a framework for understanding this.

In the short term it might mean that I blurt shit out and upset people (actually a way I process things due to low ram I think; external memory) but in the long term… it’s maybe me who suffers. Things only sink in for me once everyone else has moved on, sometimes. Who knows. Same amount of suffering, differently distributed.

They’ve processed, while I’ve forgotten. But not totally; it just couldn’t be held in working memory long enough to ‘work it out’. It’s still raw and popping up occasionally, and when it does, polishing knives helps to knead out the tension. Polish the memory. Things are still being worked out, you see; they're likely to come out of my mouth / memory in unfinished form.

So people come to make up, thinking I’ve also processed, and open a wound which was still raw. The processing isn’t done. I say something dumb.

And then there are two types of processing: personal and social. Or rather, two types of regulation. You have to process to regulate and…

Give me a sec. I’m 3 weeks autistic and was high as a kite for 2 of them. I’m also 4 months adhd and.. you get the picture.

So anyway most people are social creatures and process emotions socially, apparently. They talk and they hug and they look in each others eyes and share the pain and gradually it diminishes and they move closer and then they have one last conversation to put it to rest and…

Imagine that the ram is shit and the processor still working. Ram is full of this processing in the background. It’s overloaded. And then you see a crying face full of happy/sad/relief emotions because they’re over it but you’re not and the wound is prodded and…

This all sounds very far fetched as someone who lived their entire life a slave to rsd and acting normal. It’s amazing really. I’m not ‘robot mode’ any more but I still don’t have rsd. And I’m pretty sure this is right.

I think the way I will regulate my emotions is using this new thing I’ve found - knives. I need to figure out how to regulate my own emotions properly before I can participate in the group-regulation everyone else relies on. I can maybe never participate, and pretending to all these years is what caused me to become a hermit and burn out time and again. And that would be ok if I know why.

So sometimes when I’m asked to have the make-up chat I’m just not ready to make up. Or maybe I'm already made up. Because brain. And when I’m cracking my jokes it's not because I lack empathy. It's also because brain.

Now to find the middle ground.

20250611 1000

* but super fast thinking when I’m on a thread; so slow processing for complex things like emotions and fast for simple things like rocket science or catastrophising.

Processing differences.

People tend to get back to baseline faster than me, but I tend to forget very quickly.

I also have spurts where I remember something intensely and need to process it by outputting. My emotions will be stronger than most because the processing was paused.

This is the time to either talk it through (if the topic is raw, just plant a seed) or let me be. If talking it through, I might need time to process, rinse, and repeat. This is so I don't wind up overwhelmed and miscommunicating.

I think everyone is like this on some level; just their leapfrogging happens mid-conversation and mine doesn't.

So this can cause issues because of how I need to process the complex things. Simple things are single thread and done fast. Complex things like motivations and emotions take time, and a lot of memory. One way I see to deal with memory limitations is by exporting thigs: saying them aloud, writing them down, etc.

So in a conversation this can play out quite insensitively. I can be at step 2 and trying to fact-find while someone else is at step 5 and processing the hard stuff. I am trying to process, but by talking about it I am touching a wound that is raw. And later, when they've finished with the emotions, it will be raw for me.

You can see it here in how I keep coming back and saying the same thing in different words. This is all processing.

20250614 1720

Yeah this makes sense. And combined with the single-thread thing it means my mind is hopping between processes, and absorbing an event might be priority C. While others maybe process it in the background, I apparently need to carve out time to do so. Weeklong bike rides. Knives. etc. But with rsd that was impossible.

So my mind hops back into a raw process and tries to play catch-up. This can make people think that 1 - I'm insensitive at the outset because I'm racing ahead and 2 - holding onto things longer than necessary because my processing hasn't finished.

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