If you grow up in a family where you don’t always feel wanted, you learn to suppress certain parts of yourself.

The difficult part is that when you later develop physical problems, it can be very hard to see that this is the underlying issue.

It’s as if you’re a cake, and only one slice of you is ever visible. Other slices — such as certain emotions like fear, or aspects related to sexuality — you push down.

When you then go to a psychiatrist, even more focus can be placed on just one part of you. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, as long as you don’t forget that every patient has infinitely many other sides as well. Sometimes it helps to focus on those instead. What does someone enjoy doing? Does that person have a fighter’s mentality? A creative side? That’s how you remind yourself that you are many things at once.

For me, it helped enormously to allow those “lost” parts to come back to the surface again — it was such a relief.

We Have a Lot of Autism Running in the Family

I have the diagnosis too.

I don’t take psychiatry particularly seriously, so I developed some of my own tactics. I obviously don’t know if this works for others too.

The Brain Is Very Flexible

You can train things. What is hard when you have autistic traits is that when you are in an overstimulated state, communication is no longer possible and it feels like it’s the end of the world.

So before that, you have to communicate about what autism is and what’s going to happen.

Autism is a traffic jam in your brain. You are lagging behind a bit because you have pushed very hard prior to this moment. You are lagging behind in reflecting on input. It’s really like a traffic jam.

Luckily, you can make the roads in your mind bigger by practicing increasing the amount of thoughts until you have a traffic jam.

I over- and understimulate myself multiple times a day. For instance, with complete silence or by stacking music and activities until I can no longer talk anymore. All I want to do when overstimulated is bounce my head against the wall.

What Probably Helped Me Most Is Kickboxing

It took away my shyness, and I felt like I was fixing things the way I was supposed to fix them. Kickboxing is a sport with a lot of different stimulation.

Two Things Are Very Important

You are not a guinea pig. And most important is that you take the fear out of the equation. If you get used to the traffic jam, then it’s just a traffic jam.

Measure Health Per Second Alive: How Do You Feel?

We often think in terms of extremes. We think we are healthier now than 10 thousand years ago because we have healthcare and dentists. Because we grow older.

It doesn’t work like that at all. It’s better to see it like this: every second you are alive, how many of those seconds do you feel good—perfect? There is a decent chance people felt better per second, and they accepted the extremes, which is a valid strategy.

AI is costing money because, in contrast to humans, it is extremely energy-intensive. Every capable human almost always spares some energy to explain something to a kid who happens to have a question. It’s remarkable how energy-efficient that whole process is, since explaining also costs energy. It’s like a shared token of trust.

Kennis maakt de afstand tussen dingen korter.

Het probleem met veel dingen is dat er te veel tijd zit tussen A en B.

Bijvoorbeeld: tussen roken en longkanker. Tussen gezond eten en je goed voelen. Omdat dat dingen zijn die pas op lange termijn werken, heb je uitleg nodig. Anders weet je niet wat het einddoel is.

Het einddoel van religie is vrijheid. Het duurt lang om daar te komen. Om vrij te leven, moet je een aantal stappen zetten. Doe je die, dan voel je je vrij en dans je door de woonkamer.

Maar misschien heb jij een ander doel.