I spent over 50 years of my life thinking Everybody is the Same. I didn’t experience any difficulties in life that seemed unique to me. I was successful in my career. I was married and had children.

My condition may be somewhat unique in that I couldn’t see any problems but other people had problems with me – in particular I had category A autism social communication and interaction markers but could not see them myself because of my lack of Social Salience (which I did not know about yet). I would argue with my wife about why people would “make things up about me and then believe them” (Theory of Mind emotional signaling gone wrong). That didn’t make any sense so I discarded it or perhaps because I had no social salience I simply labeled it as zero value – in any event it wasn’t a thing for me.

The first hint I had was when my therapist asked me if I had been diagnosed with autism. I was surprised but not offended. My mental model was built on a narrow dataset of media tropes and high-support needs—I hadn’t yet realized the spectrum included different processing styles rather than just “deficits.” In fact I had read an article written by an autistic person and was surprised by how clear it was. To say I was misinformed is an understatement.

I went home and started reading. It turned out I had huge Overlaps with autism. This was an insightful question from somebody who is trained and has a ton of experience talking to people with autism. As I read further I found the DSM-5 and went through the checklist. It seemed like I had something but it wasn’t autism. For the next several months the best label I had was “autism adjacent”.

This is the transition from Stage 1 to Stage 2.

Stage 1

Before summer 2025 I had no knowledge of neurotypical vs neurodivergent. I had heard the words and NT was “normal” and ND was … not? I had heard of autism and even heard that people with Asperger’s might be common in the software industry. I had met children with autism and communication difficulties, but really knew nothing about it.

My view of myself:

• I am “normal” but maybe a little bit weird – Everybody is the Same
• Socially inept, black & white view of things, literal and logical, insensitive, introverted
• Fact: sometimes I would say or do the wrong things and upset people
  • When people told me I would know that I upset them but not why
  • At best they might say “well, it wouldn’t upset you”
• Fact: sometimes I caused NT discomfort. Observed as “made up something about me then believed it was true and acted on it”
  • My wife pointed this out to me – I never observed it
  • Without understand of the mechanism this sounds like other people are far stranger than me
  • Accepted as unreliable observation – who cares!
• Some friction between me and my wife
  • I was cold and distant but this didn’t make sense – I was right there
  • Some stress that I caused harm in others without intent. Am I a jerk?

Looking back on this from Stage 3 I can see:

• not everybody is the same, some are quite different!
• in arguments with my wife
  • I would apologize and promise to do better
  • the apologies were for things I didn’t understand
    • but I recognized a system error and wanted to end the “yelling” state
  • the promises had good intent but were not possible for me to carry out
  • her experience
    • Gaslighting or passive aggression
    • Promise, did it again, infer intent
  • The apologies were honest in intent but fraudulent in execution because they promised a capability that did not exist
• the pain my wife felt is probably greater than I can imagine
  • I still don’t understand what being NT is like but I see there is a big gap between what they expect and what I can do
• other people were not just “making stuff up”
  • well, kind of they were, but Theory of Mind – it make sense

I didn’t know that then of course.

Stage 2

Summer 2025.

As mentioned in History my therapist asked me if I had been diagnosed as autistic. Upon further investigation I discovered I am certainly neurodivergent but Not Autistic. Maybe “autism adjacent” since I shared quite a few traits with autistic people.

Now at least I have an explanation for my experience. I am not a jerk, I only look like one.

I am in my 50s when I find out I am ND.

My new perception of myself:

• Fact: sometimes I would say or do the wrong things and upset people
  • I am different, there is a reason
  • Less regret, maybe overreaction the other way – if you want me to accept you, then you need to accept me
  • Some feeling of “I can’t help it, nothing can be done” – not comfortable with this, feels like an excuse but I can’t resolve
  • Provided absolution (removal of blame) but not agency (ability to change & effect)
• Fact: sometimes I caused NT discomfort. Observed as “made up something about me then believed it was true and acted on it”
  • Still not sure what this is, it is an NT thing

The Autism Couple’s Workbook was useful in exploring this. I would read a chapter and be nodding – yeah, that is me, that is me. And then I would hit something like meltdowns and I had no experience with that. The explanations for what was going on helped in many cases.

My background is in software. I don’t like lingering bugs like “everything works except these couple of major things that don’t match”. It isn’t a solved problem until you understand the root cause. In this case I felt like knowing the mechanism for my neurodiversity would help.

During this time I found out about Hypophantasia – did you know that people have different mental experiences for imagination?

Stage 3

Stage 3 started in January 2026. In chapter 11 of the workbook it talked about types of Empathy and lack of empathy. It talked about Saying The Wrong Thing. It talked about various other things, but these two it linked to Theory of Mind. I had previously read about ToM and decided I had it, I was fine. Specifically “I understand other people have minds”. I could do the online versions of the tests – they were just logic puzzles really.

I discussed this with my therapist and she explained automatic ToM. This idea that a person could be aware of the thoughts and emotions of the people around them. This wasn’t just “figuring it out”, it was automatic and effort free. You didn’t think somebody was sad, you knew they were sad. This was the key to the breakthrough.

I went home and started reading more about Theory of Mind and how it worked: Simulation Theory and Theory-Theory. I read about the NT Experience and the Autism Experience (note: these descriptions are written from the point of view of knowing about Social Salience). I read about social salience, well specifically I read about this abstract idea of social signals.

I eventually tried some things with LLMs – they are good at pattern matching and I had used them successfully to give names to vague things that I could describe, like low absorption. I collected all my know symptoms and behaviors and asked various things. The prompt that unlocked the next step was something like “Is there something that ties all of these together and could be the mechanism?”

The first round, which lasted a few days, pointed me at “effortful, explicit theory of mind”. It was along the right track, but I kept running into inconsistencies. I kept asking questions about the mechanism. What would cause me to be missing the social signals. The one that stuck was having no Social Salience combined with Hypophantasia. That was everything – it was the root cause.

I was about to build a mental model and suddenly everything started to unlock.

• I discovered how fundamentally different I am from NT people
  • from Ethics to Functional Cognitive Architecture
  • and all the things tied directly to social salience like Shame and Empathy
• I finally understood why I am not autistic
  • and why I share some traits and not others
  • the mechanism is different
• I have a better idea about how NT Theory of Mind works
  • I understand conceptually how they think
  • I understand how I am different
• I am able to reflect back on Stage 1 and see how hard it was for some people, my wife especially

Now that I understand the mechanism I can start to think about Mitigation. I can’t fix any of this – I simply don’t have the capability to “learn empathy” or anything like that. I can’t even mimic it with effort. Perhaps there are things I can do to detect when things are headed off the rails. We will see, that is ongoing work.

I continue to probe and discover new things. System exploration is exciting.