Autistic - Blog Posts
Starscream from Transformers: G1 is autistic!
I want to be with a guy who is little autistic, but kinky. Who has a lot of nerdy hobbies and gets over simulated with noise, but still wants me to morn in his ear. You love's me so he start learning my love languages and I his. Who will buy me flowers because I like it. Sometimes even explaining me importance of different flower and there cultural significance. Just cute little nerdy boy.
yes lets build more walls between disabled people and completely forget that mental illness is also disabling
you're either disabled or not there's nothing called "able bodied", the brain is part of the body too
seriously why do yall fall for this crap
(allistics may vote in this poll !!)
this poll was requested a while ago by an anonymous ask.
disabled people shouldn't have to sacrifice their privacy for your ableist ass to prove their age when joining an adult-only space, especially if it's centered around disability support
in fact, nobody owes you their personal info. go fuck yourself, cop
like i want creatures to interact with me, i want to have friends, i want to speak and to listen to others. especially with other trans ppl or things who understand me who have the same experiences, but my low self esteem tells me that i don't deserve that and my traumas tell me that everyone hates me and wants to hurt me. how in conditions like this am i supposed to socialise, to have friends, to be something for someone other than my small chosen family.
anyways this is me announcing that i will try and put effort into pushing my inner boundaries and being more active on this social media platform. please interact i guess? i hope someone or something on here will be more kind to me than everyone in my awful life so far. thanks
am afraid of everything and everyone
“Autism doesn’t cause low empathy! In fact we’re all just hyperempathetic we’re not bad peo-“
SHUT UP. SHUT UP. SHUT UP.
There’s a few things going on with this statement.
1. Assuming that low empathy makes someone a bad person. It does not. Actions are what matter, not empathy levels.
2. Demonizing autistic people whose low/no empathy they attribute to their autism. Autism fundamentally impacts the way you interact with the world, others, and yourself. That includes empathy.
Anyway I love you people with low/no empathy this is a safe space for you <3
Signed,
A very pissed off autistic person with fluctuating empathy levels
I get to do a personality analysis for school (it's instead of a test) and I'm stuck between two characters. Can y'all please help me decide?
Emma from the total drama reboot (not RR Emma) is autistic
Wayne and Raj from total drama Island reboot are autistic
I know the finale has left us feeling things (and I one day might share my thoughts on them, but honestly staying off of most social media platforms around this time has been really good for my mental), so let's go back to an episode many of us loved: The Crossing. Here's an excellent analysis of the episode looking at it through the 'Tech is autistic' lens.
Being a lesbian and nonhuman at the same time feels.. strange.
Because, like, human girls are these absolutely stunning, almost unreal beings. They're beautiful beyond words, the kind of beauty that can only ever be conveyed through the careful plucking of guitar strings, or through a vibrant splash of paint against barren canvases. They hold the stars in their eyes and flecks of gold in their hair, as if the forces of the cosmos themselves hand crafted their forms. They're soft and gentle and warm, but also strong and fierce and an unbelievable force to be reckoned with. Once when I was young, I got caught outside during a tropical hurricane and was almost lifted into the air by the winds; that is the closest thing I can compare to the feeling of falling for a girl. They are everything that a human being should be and more.
And then, there I am. A beast. This.. thing that stalks the woods in the darkest hours of the night, with dirt coated matted fur and piercing amber gaze, unseen and uncomprehended by man. Constant yearning, hunger. For flesh, for bloodlust, for isolation and freedom, to be feared, to be whispered about in hushed tales around a withering campfire. The creature in the forest, didn't you hear? If it catches you alone on a full moon it will peel your skin away from your body with fangs the size of your palms. Stay close. Your measly pocket knife won't do much in its wake I fear. A wild, snarling thing that flinches beneath humanity's touch and rejects their "civility" in favor of the murmuring creek that sings old and long forgotten hymns to the ancient mountains above.
I know when they look at me they see one of them, a human with soft skin and kind eyes, a human who smiles at them and perhaps offers a passing compliment, a human who always tries to coax the timid street cat and watchfully steps around sidewalk slugs. A human. But that is not what I am, at least not in the way that they are. And when I look back at them, with my green eyes that I wished glowed amber, I can't help but wonder "How could someone so divinely human find companionship with something so desperately unhuman as me? How long until you realize the humanoid body you see before you is merely a flawed disguise? Will you still grasp my hand with fond affection when it warps into a mangled paw?"
This coyote is going to the Seattle Pride Parade for the first time this weekend and I'm so crazy excited >w< ☆.°✧🏳️⚧️
Catch me around wearing some of my pins that I made :3
what neurotypicals think autistics want:
what autistics actually want:
god gives his most niche fandoms to his most autistic warriors
the cool thing about working with animals is that I have one singular neurotypical colleague (as far as I know). and it’s become super obvious to me that the way autistic people relate to animals is fundamentally different to how allistics relate to animals. and the way people with ADHD relate to animals is fundamentally different to those without.
(only one of my colleagues has Tourette’s and only two of us have OCD, so I don’t think that’s enough to make any grand sweeping statements).
anyway. a real interaction between two of my colleagues today.
ADHD: Maggie won’t stop barking at me. I think she’s upset.
autistic: let me go talk to her. I can fix this.
and that’s not uncommon? my autistic colleagues and I seem to talk to the animals to a much greater extent than anyone else. my ADHD colleagues and I seem to be the best at associating the correct name and breed and dietary requirements to the correct dog, which is weird, because I can’t do the same when it comes to humans.
I know that most people communicate with their animals but… it’s different in a way I can’t quite explain. the communication and connection seems so much deeper… I don’t know, it’s just wonderful. also, the fact that so many ND people work with me… that alone… indicates something.
being both autistic and having adhd is just unstoppable force: *need to brush teeth because teeth feel bad™️* vs immovable object: *intense hyperfocus and horrible executive functioning*
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.
...
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.
...
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%.
...
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.
...
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.
As someone who has lied to themselves about "it's okay, I'm okay", I can say this. Your personality will never satisfy all the people on this planet and you don't have to please everyone. Pretending to blend in with the gray mass is the easiest path you can take, but be prepared that you, like most of the gray mass, will devalue yourself.
You don't have to pretend, even with your relatives. Yes, it takes strength, but every person has the strength to say: "I don't want this"; "I think about this"; "I like this".
People just need to accept the fact that there will always be those who will dislike them, and there will always be those who will accept us as we are. And to do that, you don't have to change yourself and your personality, adjusting it to fit others.
You are you, and you are an individual among many, but your personality can shine like a flame of fire, or go out in a sea of grayness. The choice is yours.
Anyone ever get tired of acting and playing a role all the time? Acting like you're gonna find a partner of the opposite gender one day and marry? Acting like you want to do some 9 to 5 job for the rest of your life? Coming up with excuses for why you don't drink, why you don't go to parties, why you don't want children? Tiptoeing through conversations, careful not to upset anyone and their invisible preferences they believe are universal? Pretending you're fine, pretending you never have experienced trauma or mental illness, pretending your apartment is always clean and you always have everything together. Pretending you have "normal" interests. Lying to people. Every day, wherever you go. Lying to your colleagues, to your parents, to your family. Knowing that telling the truth would be even worse, if anyone would even believe you. I'm tired of this bullshit.
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.
