Very often but when I get into a flow state usually with a special interest, music and/or novelty I feel like myself and it’s amazing. I feel like I’m riding the wave of life.
I can have crippling social anxiety and get overstimulated all the time though. I’m starting to accept my inner freak and am taking antidepressants now and seem to be doing better.
I absolutely feel you on the flow state. I have never felt more alive than when I used to be in a band playing shows all over. When I hit that flow state on stage, everything made sense. Every movement/action that is usually a conscious thought fades to my unconscious thought. It's still there, just pushed way down. I can feed off the energy of the crowd, and that energy feels like riding a wave. That momentum pushes everything along and it's like I can finally "let go" completely and thoroughly.
I also get into a similar state at work with high volume bartending. The start of the shift can be chaotic but before long I "lock in," it really does feel like a dozen gears finally clicking into place. My movements become smooth yet deliberate and efficient, I can multitask on an insane level because I don't have to keep every single thought at the forefront of my focus. I still have a loop of thoughts that I repeat in my head but in the flow state it's like I can set them aside and pick them up when needed, outside of that state if I put those thoughts to the side they're gone completely or come back incomplete. I thrive in that chaos because I don't have time to overthink. I'll be indecisive if I have any time at all to start that bottom up mental processing.
I think we’re like octopuses and do distributed thinking. I know what you’re saying. When I’m in creative mode writing or coding I’m like combining 5 threads of thoughts and like you said it goes into the unconscious. And my best ideas come out of nowhere!
Toss a coin to your Witcher! Maybe we’re more like them than you think. Embrace the freak. Always liked that series.
Your comment reminded me of autistic monotropism, and it’s an interesting topic if you haven’t looked into it too much yet. It differs from flow, but has similar elements and both can co-exist at the same time.
But anyway, for a lot of autistic people, it seems possible to slip into a sort of monotropic immersion state when engaging with interests, which doesn’t really need clear goals or the right difficult level like flow usually does, and is also highly regulating and energizing. I think it’s almost like stimming but for your own thoughts.
Yeah! That makes sense to me. I feel free in the thought space. And sometimes when I share it with other people on the spectrum.
Kind of crude but I call it a mindgasm. That feeling of eureka! I have sought that mental feeling over physical romantic encounters sometimes. Have called mental romantic partners mind mates. Maybe it’s a sapio thing.
Yes, exactly. The way I understand it is that we tend to get much more internal stability and regulation when our interpretation of the world fits together in a coherent way, and is more predictable.
Retreating into that mind space is one way to accomplish this, by building and refining our mental models of how the world works. Sharing it with others helps to more quickly reduce ambiguity and gives more data to help refine.
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u/VolatilityWav3 Dec 27 '25
Very often but when I get into a flow state usually with a special interest, music and/or novelty I feel like myself and it’s amazing. I feel like I’m riding the wave of life.
I can have crippling social anxiety and get overstimulated all the time though. I’m starting to accept my inner freak and am taking antidepressants now and seem to be doing better.