Possible to make an NT feel what having Autism is like?

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I just joined this club at my college called the Phoenix club. It's a disability advocacy/awareness club. They do such things as plan trips, fundraisers, etc. and they mentioned doing discussion panels where you can describe how your disability effects you in college/in general and simulations of your disability. I was considering doing this (its not for awhile I don't think they picked a date yet). But I am not sure if simulating autism (from my point of view) is possible? I can describe my symptoms & take on things pretty well (I think). But simulating (making something like an activity) so NT's can understand what having this condition is like for me...I don't know? It's not hard for me to figure out how to simulate a physical condition (make them use crutches, etc.). Though my symptoms are kind of spread out & I think listing them will give you a better idea of why I'm confused, I'll list my few ideas afterwards.

Symptoms/take on things/my environment:
1. I'm mostly Hyposensitive w/ a few hypersensitive tendencies (that can really show very easily)
a. Hypo- Tend to not feel pain easily (can bang myself up against walls & not know 'til afterwards b/c I was jumping/find bruises later, delayed reactions to pain/won't feel pain 1st time w/ new experience but will next time b/c of burn creating a memory (do I simulate pain later?) Worried I would end up feeding old stereotypes.
b. Hyper- Sensitive to many sounds (can openers, door bells as a kid, still to fire alarms, screeching alarms/fall over, screaming, etc.). Hate fluorescent/bright/sun light (wear glasses when needed, Though I've learned to deal w/ some fluorescents. Panic attacks due to being touched (I feel extreme pain/panic than go numb.can't move, crying etc.) (unless I brace myself beforehand).
2. How can you simulate wanting solitude, and why I want solitude/why people=stress/undesirability? (suggestions welcome)
3. How do you make someone understand a panic attack/losing sensation physically?

Ideas:

1. Have them bounce on my exercise ball to simulate how I feed/re-regulate my nervous system when stressed (and avoid jumping so much that I could break the ceiling/walls ).
2. Playing with slinkies to again see what re-regulating the nervous system can be like/see how you can easily be hypnotized/distracted by inane things. I could also use my eternal supply of poppy paper my brother gave me (a plastic toy w/ buttons like rubber buttons to press inanely) with the same goal in mind.
3. Play some kind of really annoying/painful music or make a painful noise (like an alarm screeching) and apply that to other items/with side effects. (My case need to hold ears shut or else I fall over/may pass out Never know...)
4. Stick them in a giant box so they're completely alone (I don't know)
5. Create a ton of commotion (simulate it) & try to get them to talk to someone on a phone (in an environment where there is no way they'll hear the phone conversation.
Ideas welcome
6. Stick them under blinding light (I'm light sensitive again)
7. Apply heat or some other material in such a way that they feel extreme pain when being hugged. (I get this weird panic/burning thing when I'm touched & not expecting it).

Goal would be to show them what having my condition from my point of view is l[b]ike[/b]/not torture them. Suggestions/comments [i]PLEASE![/i]

p.s. Congrats if you read this whole dang thing & comment!

May be I am just confused about what you are saying, but I am not sure how you can make someone know what it feels to have legs broken if you simply put them on crunches? I mean, their legs won't be hurting simply because they wear crunches. In order to trully simulate it, you have to make them WANT to put on crunches, or better yet: simulate the need to put on crunches without having any crunches around to put. I don't think that is possible.

Likewise, in order to simulate the stim, you have to simulate the NEED to stim as opposed to simulate the stim itself. I mean, anyone who watches someoen stim can mimic everything they do and thus see what it feels like *FOR NT*. But that misses a point: the point is to show how it feels like for an aspie, and in order to do it you have to simulate underlying neurology.

It's hard to nearly impossible to explain exact feelings since there are no words for it.

I mean a smoking addict can't explain his cravings in terms of food although you will get the overall picture but still you won't be able to do anything useful with it.
it actually is possible if you write an extremely long description using additive and substractive metaphors ... hell somepeople call it poetry.

anyway most people would just get bored doing to movements they see if they tried to "stim"

Any of us can attempt to explain the details and nuances of how we experience the world, but the listener can ultimately only either relate our descriptions to their own experiences, or imagine what we are describing. What they imagine will almost certainly differ from what we are actually experiencing. Have two artists read the same part of a book where they describe a person or place, and then draw/paint/whatever what they heard described. The pictures will have similarities but will be fundamentally different, even though they are based on the exact same words. People can understand some of our difficulties, and even perhaps simulate the basic effects of them, but if you are not autistic (for example), I submit that you can never really fully feel what it is like to be autistic. Even many spectrum folks will have difficulty relating to other autistic people.

I think the question you are posing is really interesting, but I was totally mislead by your thread title; we get a lot of titles just like that from activists making claims that other activists are not really autistic. I can change the title for you (I do have mod tools), and hopefully increase interest in the thread, but I don't know what title you might approve of; it is your thread, and I'm only making a suggestion. I may not be on the forum much in the next few days but if you pm me I'll know.

Maybe, "Can you make a NT feel what its like to be autistic?"

On your topic, I think ideas 3, 5 and 6 might have the most traction. You won't be able to get someone else to feel what you feel sitting on a ball, for instance, because NT's simply don't experience that effect; motion doesn't work on my center like it does for someone on the spectrum. But to turn up the volume and ask them to try to complete various tasks - that could be interesting. Nails on a chalkboard would be a good noise for that; everyone finds that upsetting. Or blinding them to all non-verbal social cues, including voice tone, and seeing if they are comfortable assessing the other's intentions.

Have them try to do math problems in a room lit only by a strobe light and with Lou Reed's "Metal Machine Music" playing loudly. (Just the name of that album gives you an idea what it sounds like).

That's do-able. My other suggestion isn't do-able because it's out of budget, but it's a fun thought experiment. Send them to a rural area of a country very different from where they are from. That simulates not getting social cues pretty well because social cues and rules vary from one place to the next. I think rural works better than urban because the isolation makes people create social cues and rules that are unique to their area. In urban areas around the world, the fact that every big city has people from around the world means that urban people wherever you go have worked out a sort of international social cue/rule system that makes it easier to understand other city people no matter what the city. But rural people will have their own social cues and codes that an NT person won't be able to decipher. I've traveled around the woprld and really experienced this. In every major city, there was a certain yrban rule book that seemed to apply no matter the country. But when I went into rural areas, I couldn't make any sense of people at all and felt very much at sea until I got back into the city.

How about having a room with sound effects, for example, a tap dripping very very loudly, loud clock ticking, as a previous poster suggested, have a flickering strobe light in there. And perhaps hire some actors to play "NT"s ... give them a task to do, then have the "NTs" talking loudly (perhaps with the odd string of gobbledygook thrown in to confuse) getting in too close, and making comments that seem as though they should make sense, but don't.

You could have the "NTs" asking the individual to do something, in such a way that they really have to work hard at understanding it... at the same time the task has to be completed, with all this confusion going on.

You can probably tell my sensory issues are light and sound.

No NT can ever understand let alone simulate. Thats why they are doing research like we are lab rats, just to help them find out about what makes us tick.

I know this because, the tester told me this. The tests gave me headaches. >_<

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