Autism - Blog Posts
being autistic as a kid without knowing it be like: *taps foot on the floor* *gets told to stop because the tapping is annoying* *stims in the school bathroom* *stims at home* *stims when reading whatever book you attached yourself to* *gets called a good reader* *attaches self to a group of people who don’t really wanna be your friends but they tolerate you* *gets placed with random people for group projects* *stims in the school bathroom* *gets called a picky eater at home* *gets put into the gifted program but is also really bad at some topics* *draws in class* *stims in class* *gets ignored* *stims in class* *stims in class* *stims in c
Does anyone else really like to wear headphones / noise cancellers? I’ve found that I always wear my headphones, even if they’re not plugged into anything or there’s nothing playing.
me: so being autistic effects every part of me...
allistic: ok
me: it even changes my perception of gender...
allistic: that makes sense
me: i identify as autigender because my experience of gender is intertwined with my autistic experience
allistic: AuTisM IsN’T A GENDer?!!!!
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autigender doesn’t necessarily mean autism is a gender, it is simply a term autistics can use to describe the way their gender and autism interact (hope that helps explain it!)
relationships are so weird sometimes cause like, my friends were discussing how girls are hot and im just over here like “anyone wanna hear me recite stay calm from memory?”
Made a meme about my experience with autism, and it seemed to resonate with people on Reddit so... here ya go.
Psychosis is 3x more common in autistic people than in the general population. Why?
This is a question that scientists are trying to answer. There’s not enough research on the comorbidity of autism and psychosis to be sure exactly what all of the reasons are for this overlap, but there are some interesting facts about it that I’ll outline here.
Psychosis is a symptom, which is composed of a constellation of smaller symptoms. Psychosis can be caused by schizophrenia spectrum disorders, but it can also be caused by mood disorders, stress, illness, and substance abuse. And research seems to be showing that autism might be a factor in developing psychosis as well.
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I have always been interested in the connection between psychosis and autism. One of my uncles has a schizophrenia spectrum disorder, which was diagnosed after he went to a psychiatrist to be evaluated for autism- the reason he went in being that he saw himself in me, and wondered if he might be autistic, too. Turns out, he has psychosis.
Within the past few years, I have also been experiencing symptoms associated with psychosis. It would be very difficult for me to accurately identify any “negative” symptoms of psychosis, given that I already experience executive dysfunction, fatigue, sleep & appetite changes, etc. due to my ADHD and physical health problems. However, what I have been noticing are “positive” symptoms of psychosis. Namely: hallucinations, delusions, and paranoia.
My most frequent auditory hallucinations are of my alarm clock, and the cricket alarm on my iPhone. I hear them clearly, as if they’re coming from outside my head, at random periods throughout the day and in different locations, when the actual alarms aren’t going off. Around two years ago, I hallucinated a stranger’s voice calling me into another room. I was extremely confused and disoriented by this, as I got up to look around but nobody was there. I haven’t heard any voices since then, which is good.
I often hallucinate scents associated with significant people, places, and memories, even when those people aren’t present and I’m not in a location where the smell would naturally occur. At first I thought this could be chalked up to migraine aura or something like that, but I don’t get migraines.
I’ve also had extreme “sensed presence” hallucinations where I feel like someone is watching me even though there’s nobody else in the room. At times, this hallucination has fed into paranoid thoughts that there are cameras in my shower drain, etc.
My main delusion in episodes I’ve had in the past has involved the extreme significance of certain numbers and symbols. At the time, I didn’t think anything was wrong. In fact, I was convinced that I was on track to uncover the pattern that organizes everything in the universe, and all of my interpersonal relationships. As part of this delusion I would vocally repeat certain numbers (as a strategy to figure out what they meant), and spend copious amounts of time writing down all of my “findings” in Google documents and notebooks. At one point, I ended up writing down a bunch of dates in a row and adding up all of the digits to discover how they were connected to the numbers 4, 5, and 7, which I had decided were the most important numbers in my life. Looking back on the Google document I stored the data in, I have absolutely no clue what my thought process was at the time.
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So, I’ve been wondering what all of this means.
When I start putting the pieces together to examine my own life, things start to make some sense.
First, as I mentioned earlier, autistic people are 3x more likely to develop psychosis than the general population. Obviously, that statistic is relevant to my situation, since I’m autistic.
But I’m not just autistic. I also have a decent handful of mental illnesses, each of which overlap and carry their own risk factors for psychosis. The main ones I’ll be talking about here are severe generalized anxiety/panic disorder, OCD, and BPD (Borderline Personality Disorder). I consider my OCD and BPD to be ~spicy spinoffs~ of anxiety, because they have the same root cause: my anxious, socially traumatized brain. We’ll get to that in a bit.
For now, here are some statistics:
A study conducted in 2012 found that psychotic symptoms were present in 27% of people with anxiety and/or depression.
A study conducted in 2014 found that people with OCD are around 5x more likely to develop schizophrenia than the general population.
A study conducted in 2017 found that 43% of people with BPD experience hallucinations, and stated that other studies have found prevalence rates of hallucinations in BPD ranging from 26% to 54%.
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So alright, great, I’ve got a lot of risk factors. But what caused me to have those risk factors/mental illnesses in the first place? Let’s look at this specifically from an autistic lens. I’ve already talked about a lot of this in my “Autism and Mental Health” post on our Instagram, but these statistics are worth repeating in this context:
Around 40% of autistic people meet criteria for one or more anxiety disorders at any given time, compared to only 15% of the general population.
Autistic people are 4x more likely than neurotypicals to be clinically depressed at some point in their lives.
Autistic people are 4x more likely than the general population to experience severe loneliness.
Autistic people are 3x more likely than the general population to experience maltreatment (a catch-all term for various forms of abuse).
A study conducted in 2012 found that 63% of autistic children had been bullied, and were 3x more likely to be bullied than their neurotypical siblings.
And what does the research say about the long-term effects of bullying and abuse?
According to a 2012 study, children who are bullied by their peers are at an increased risk of developing Borderline Personality Disorder. And BPD is, as previously established, a risk factor for developing psychosis.
According to a 2014 study, people who were bullied in childhood are 11x more likely to develop anxiety disorders in adulthood, but especially OCD. And, as previously mentioned, people with OCD are 5x more likely to develop schizophrenia.
But the link between bullying and psychosis gets even more explicit than that.
A 2013 study found that children who had been bullied were 2x more likely to experience psychosis symptoms than typical controls, and that children experiencing first-time psychotic episodes were 2x more likely than typical controls to report having been bullied in the past.
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This is not to say that being bullied and abused is the only reason why autistic people sometimes develop psychosis. There are obviously a great deal of different factors, some genetic & biological, that lead to the development of mental illness. But the role of trauma and other social/environmental factors can’t be discounted.
If two people are exposed to the same negative experience, it’s possible that one will become traumatized and one won’t. That’s because one person may have been genetically/biologically predisposed to have heightened fear responses to environmental stimuli, while the other person didn’t have the same predisposition. Yet, the genetically predisposed person would not have been traumatized if they had not experienced the negative event.
I was bullied as a child. I was also abused. Both of those things deeply affected me, because I’m autistic and therefore hypersensitive. The trauma caused me to develop BPD and severe abandonment anxiety, which often feeds into paranoia. My generalized anxiety also morphed into OCD, which caused me to have disturbing intrusive thoughts, and compulsions. All of this predisposed me to develop psychosis. And in the past few years, *surprise*, I’ve started having psychotic symptoms.
When I look back on my life experiences and how they interacted with my autistic brain & positive family history of psychosis, none of this is surprising. It actually makes perfect sense. And because it makes perfect sense, in a way I’m reassured. My hallucinations and delusions fit the pattern, so there’s no need for me to be scared. I know why this is happening. The trajectory is predictable. And if I keep taking care of myself and monitoring symptoms, I know I’ll be alright.
~Eden🐢
has anyone else noticed their sensory issues getting worse during quarantine? particularly my sensitivity to sound has worsened. I feel like I’ve had the ability to control my surroundings so much that going out in public now is a real struggle cause it’s just so loud and chaotic.
Autiswyrm pride!!
If you like my art and would like a piece for yourself, I’ll draw you a dragon if you donate any amount to Crips For E-Sims For Gaza! 🍉
Tone tags are not your punchline.
Tone tags like “/j” “/srs” etc are accessibility tools. They help neurodivergent people understand the explicit tone of written text that would otherwise be only implicit and therefore difficult for us to understand. If you use tone tags in a joking or disingenuous manner, you’re not only going to end up confusing a lot of people, but it’s also just plain ableist to make a joke out of an accessibility tool, something that a lot of us rely on to understand and communicate with people online.
Especially considering the whole point of tone tags is for them to be used in the most genuine, accurate manner possible, someone knowingly misusing them just means they’re doubling down on their ableist disregard for neurodivergent people who might read it.
If you post something somewhere as a joke but end it with a “/srs,” fix it. Delete it. Don’t do it again. Tone tags are not your punchline.
This disability pride month message brought to you by an autistic ADHDer
Seeing the very obvious Autistic trait Tech experiences was such a gamechanger for me, I was absolutely ecstatic to see how perfectly well it was worded in the new episode. Im so happy I got to see some of myself in star wars🫶
One of my things is to wear something I think my favorite characters would wear to give myself a semblance of comfort
My sensory stones arrived :D
Ear defenders came!!! The world is so quiet sgkshdjdg yes
Eeh.... yeah
served my duty as an autistic artist and made a bunch of autism creature reaction images
I cannot be the only one who feels they need to do this
I feel like half my body needs to be soaked in ice while the other half covered in heating pads…just the issues of chronic pain ⋋_⋌
Am I ill?
Sometimes I start to wonder if I really am chronically ill. Do I really wake up every day with pain or am I just faking it all the time? I know other people actually have these issues and they are very much real, but to me, I don't know what is real for myself anymore. I try so hard to be normal, yet the pain comes back. It always will come back. I wake in the mornings with a killing pain surging through my jaw. I know that last night I must have been fighting monsters, swinging swords that allow me to defeat these dragons lingering in the mountains. Yet, today as I wake up the pain isn't from a dragon or those monsters I fought, it's from my trying to dislocate once more. The throbbing pain in my head isn't from being flung against the wall of a dragon's den, that pain is from my chronic migraines that linger in me causing it almost impossible to eat and hold my food down. That surging sensation that spirals in my belly, drifting up towards my heart and seeping through my veins isn't the poison of my enemy trying to defeat me at last, this is the anxiety that causes me to isolate myself until everything is fine again. The anxiety that holds me back from chasing these wild imaginations because I'm not okay. I don't think I ever will be okay, but am I really ill?
Overload...
One of the best things about college to me is just showing up early to get a good seat away from people and pick where I sit. I love being able to sit away from the flickering bright white lights that loom over the students, yet being able to sit away from windows and distractions that might interfere with my studies. With all these great things soon comes misery though...the seat I pick always ends up having someone trying to sit near me so I have to set my backpack on the chair next to me and sit in the corner if possible. I fear people might think I'm rude, but the noises of others clicking away on computers, talking to their neighbors, smells, and any small noises or motions they make just tend to bother my sensory issues. I have severe sensory issues due to my autism and sensory processing disorder so I go into a meltdown almost every time I show up to class. I love school and learning as it's my special interest and always has been. The ability for me to expand my knowledge in any way possible makes me happy and want to flap my hands around. I just wish people were more considerate and I didn't have to wear headphones just to exist in normal environments. School is great, yet extremely hard and I always miss classes sometimes. I tried online school, but it's hard for me to focus and stay attentive in class. I'd rather sleep through it instead which is a huge issue. I don't know, I just feel as if I need to let out some of my issues and get them off my chest in order to sit through this next class. Sorry if I come off as rude, I don't mean to. I just am struggling so much lately to just exist. I want to curl up in a ball and hide away from society until people acknowledge that those with disabilities can and will be in professional settings too so we need to make things to accommodate them.
I don’t know if it’s my autism that makes me this way or what, but I have been having a strong feeling of injustice lately. My brain won’t stop thinking about how the world treats certain people as lower than most just because of their disabilities, sexuality, race, economic standpoint, and much more. I can’t get over how unfair it is. I know that’s how life is just going to be especially in the world we live in today, but I wish I could do something about it. I just want everyone to be treated fairly and seen as a human being, not some creature that is lower than anyone else. I’m so sorry to everyone who faces this discrimination and please know that there are people who are here for you. I’ll always be there to support you as well. You are loved and cared for beyond your wildest imagination. Also, I’m sorry if this doesn’t make sense, I struggle with communication but I’m trying.
meltdown diaries #1
why is finding friends so hard i don't understand. I don't think I've had a friend irl or even really talked to someone my age in 2 years. I dont know what's so wrong with me. I'm 17, I'm supposed to have sorted this out by now. I don't know how to fix myself, I swear I've grown in these two years. don't know if it's my autism again but i just need friends. I like friends. I like talking. I have autistic peers at college and they have friends, but they all have their own groups and I feel like I don't fit. i just need something, someone. theres no clubs where I live so I don't even know where to find friends. the only thing I have is work college and my bed, and I can't go on like this. I just need the world to be gentle, just for once. I just want to laugh with someone who isn't my 15 year old sister who has to talk to me because we live in the same house. Im just tired, so tired. feel like I'll be alone forever, and I swear I'm a better person. I'm just shy. I wish I was normal, but it's always been this way, and it always will
A lot of folks in the notes are saying how this is social anxiety. Lol whatever op was describing is not social anxiety.
They don't like being perceived. Idk how hard that is to understand.
For me, social anxiety is about freaking out over social interactions. Of course, being perceived and judged is a part of it but it isn't the main thing ykwim?
But its different for everyone let's all remember that.
Omg omg omg. It all makes so much more sense when you realise it's not social anxiety but a fear of being perceived.
Why do you feel more comfortable with a long coat and a mask as opposed to summer clothes?
Why do you DESPISE taking pictures? Especially if it's someone else and not you taking them.
Why do you feel like you have to stop doing whatever it was you were doing when someone passes by?
Why don't you want to tell anyone how leisurely you go about your day, taking a nap, going for a snack, sitting on your phone playing games etc. because you know they will comment on it and even though it's not negative or mockery it's still feels like you've been perceived?
Why can't you make eye contact? Why can you do it only if the other person is looking away but the second when they look at you you stop listening and when you're the one speaking you can't bear to look at them because you know their eyes are on you and they are perceiving you?
Why don't you want to dress excessively or wear nicer clothes? Because you will stand out
People mistake you for shy because you don't speak often, but it's really the fear of drawing attention to yourself more than it is the things you actually say, isn't it?
Why do you hate overpopulated areas even when no one is speaking? BUT you still feel more comfortable when more than one person is in the room (but not too many!) so that the burden of being perceived is directed on someone else and you can safely lay back just observing the scene.
It's all a defence mechanism