Cat parents will hear a very specific “mrrrp” and instantly translate it into full instructions like “Oh, okay, you want the heating pad on, understood.”
ptsd: something terrible happened to you.
complex ptsd: something terrible WAS your entire environment and you had to just live in it. there was no escape.
Autistic people get accused of catastrophizing, but a lot of the time we’re not imagining worst case scenarios out of nowhere. We notice patterns early, connect the dots fast, and end up predicting things people would rather ignore until they become impossible to hide.