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Asd - Blog Posts
hey so 21-92% of autistic people who menstruate also have pmdd, and I think more people need to know of that (coming from an autistic transguy who also has pmdd, and had no idea of this until their then undiagnosed pmdd drove them to a breaking point)
Anti-vaxxer extremist RFK Jr, the US Health Secretary, is now actively trying to collect medical records of folks on the autism spectrum. First, he used dehumanizing and infantilizating language to insist people with autism won't 'pay taxes and live a 'normal life' which we all know is ableist bullshit and is literally a precursor to genocide. This man is a monster.
I think the autism spectrum should look like a spider web that way everyone has their own little individual spot on it
I don't like the line because I see it and think it's the autismometer
I HATE BEING AUTISTIC Σヽ(ﾟДﾟ; )ﾉ
the neurodivergent experience:
20% of the time: wowwieee!!! i love my passions and interests!!!!! they make me so happy i want to jump up and down!!!!! weee!!!!!!! :3333333333
80% of the time: this mind is a prison
Reblogging because the changeling post is what originally inspired me character design-wise for creating one of my fancharacters with Asperger’s syndrome and I’m just happy I finally found it again.
“If autism isn’t caused by environmental factors and is natural why didn’t we ever see it in the past?”
We did, except it wasn’t called autism it was called “Little Jonathan is a r*tarded halfwit who bangs his head on things and can’t speak so we’re taking him into the middle of the cold dark forest and leaving him there to die.”
I just got diagnosed with (evil) autism yall
I have the egocentric type apparently
this is how i analyse the one piece cast
As an autistic, same. All us neurodivergents should travel in packs to relieve this societal tension. Let people be weird and/or nontypical! We’re not hurting anyone by being different from the average. <3
half of my time spent in public spaces consists of me wondering if i’m acting normal enough
For REAL.
While high-functioning may appear more “normal” to neurotypical people, in my experience, it takes a lot of hard work to appear that way. Hence the term “masking.” You’re essentially wearing a mask to appear more neurotypical to the people around you, but there’s a lot of work going on behind the scenes to help keep the facade up, and it is super tiring for the people doing it. I may be able to keep a bubbly and open presence at a party, but I know for dang sure I’m going to lock myself in a quiet room when I return home so I can decompress and process.
Oh yes, this is a really helpful guide. It can also be helpful to non-autistics as well! Some symptoms of ASD can also cross over to other conditions like PTSD and ADHD. It’s important to recognize your limits and know when you need to step away!
Some things that tip me off when I’m getting overloaded are on this list, but disassociation and the freeze response can also be reactions of overload too. So can becoming mono-syllabic or non-verbal.
Another important thing: don’t belittle yourself for needing a break! Everyone needs one from time to time, even neurotypicals. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. If anything, knowing how to take time for yourself in stressful situations is a sign of good boundaries and good mental health! I wish more parents taught this stuff to their kids; so many meltdowns could have been avoided.
Clues to help you figure out if an autistic friend or loved one is in overload
Overload is basically the point where our Autistic brains can no longer handle input. It's not a meltdown or shutdown, but more of a mental checkout. Frequent overloads, however, can lead to meltdowns or shutdowns.
It's important not to assume that we will have overload only in loud or busy environments. Autistic brains often process information at a much slower pace than a NT brain, so even quiet environments can cause overload if something triggers it.
Note: not every autistic experience is the same and these are general guidelines only.
Common signs of overload:
Loss of facial expression or difficulties in making facial expressions. May start to exaggerate facial expressions, too, as they are struggling to mask.
Staring off into space, easily distracted, struggling to pay attention etc.
Increased stimming.
Difficulties in speaking such as stuttering, forgetting words, mixing up sounds, or difficulty speaking at all.
May try to cover their ears, eyes etc to sensory input.
Increased sensitivities and may include new or unique sensitivities.
Headaches or feeling physically sick such as sweating, stomach ache etc.
Fellow Autistics: what signs would you like for others to know?
Oh yeah, for sure. Especially with conditions like Autism.
It’s often hereditary—and chances are that if you have it, a family member has it too. High-functioning ASD can often slip under the radar, and a lot of people get diagnosed later in life because of that.
The funny thing about figuring out youre neurodivergent is looking through your family and starting to notice youre definitely not the only one
Personally, I prefer not to use labels. But I'm fine with others using it for themselves and stuff.
Edit: Yk after some thinking I feel like yeah things like support labels are deffo useful when they are not being used to put some people's needs below others - that was the main reason why I didn't like it, but I think if used well instead of as "well you're low-support so you should be able to do that", they are actually good tools.
just a reminder that your stims don’t have to be small, discreet, or “normal!” no matter how you stim, it’s perfectly alright. you don’t have to water them down for neurotypical approval.
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?!!!!
———————————————————————
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?”
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.
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.
Autistic Inertia is an autism experience that makes it hard to start, stop, and switch tasks.
It somehow doesn't get talked about enough - so I made this comic!
YouTube • Instagram • Twitter
Also, if you want to read the research study I based this comic on, it’s right here!
My therapist kept asking me about my emotions and sorta how they feel and I was saying how sometimes it’s hard to understand how I’m feeling and how to express what I’m feeling. That sometimes it takes me a while to register what’s going on. That I mimic people around me to fit in with them more. That when a friend is expressing a lot of emotions I don’t really know how to react. That I often mask how I’m feeling.
AND GUESS WHAT
She said she I showed a lot of symptoms of autism and that if it’s okay with me she was gonna keep evaluating me over time.
ITS HAPPENING GUYS
I MIGHT FINALLY GET THE DIAGNOSIS IVE BEEN WANTING FOR YEARS
My Autistic ass would not fucking survive in prison, I’d be sitting there eating the raw ass meat, and go to the guard and ask for ketchup and then they’d beat the shit out of me.
I can actually relate to most of this list, though I don’t call myself semiverbal (this is not to say that others who relate to this aren’t allowed to call themselves semiverbal) (if that makes sense) (I’m just not sure if I can consider myself semiverbal)
(I’m not sure where I fall on the verbal? scale?)
what semiverbal looks like for me:
going entire days without talking except for a few words and not noticing
going entire days saying maybe one word answers
communicating primarily through text and typing the majority of the time if i can get away with it
forgetting how to physically speak sometimes. i will know what words to say but mouth won't be able to do it
words getting mashed up and slurred together for no reason
communicating in scripts and preplanned words
if no script prepared, it's extremely difficult to come up with coherent words on the spot
constantly saying the wrong words and nothing like what i meant to say
always having to have somebody else go with places in case of needing to speak, so they can talk for me
blanking out on words and just not responding to people, sometimes walking away because too much pressure to speak
having to have someone else make phone calls for me, anything that involves a phone call i can't do
keeping like 3-4 aac methods on me at all times but still being scared to use them because that means communicating, why not just point at stuff instead
echolalia
stealthy echolalia
Sleeping under the mattress?
Did any other neurodivergent kids do this? I can’t be the only one.