#[ we love a sensory seeking weirdo.]

[sevenmerrymagpies]

🪱Wiggly Worm Wednesday!🪱

@soaringornithopter tagged me back in July for one of these and I finally had something I want to share. If people are interested I would happily talk more about the alt season one I've imagined for this autistic Steve - all from Barb's POV.

I usually don't headcanon Steve as autistic. I like that idea for many other Stranger Things characters, and I have written Robin as explicitly autistic in a few of my fics, but for Steve, if I'm gonna make him neurodivergent, I usually don't pick autism. That doesn't mean I haven't read a lot of good fics where he is autistic, and of course, that got stuck in my head. How could Steve be autistic and be close to the character we see on screen?

Key canon characteristics that I think Steve has to have and would have to be addressed somehow would be: his popularity, his reputation with the ladies, his reputation as an asshole/bully, his athleticism, and his friendships with Tommy and Carol. 

His popularity could be explained by absent parents, good looks, and a lot of money at his disposal. To give an autistic flare, he could be naïve, a common trait. To the student body at large, that would make him either a lovable himbo or a usable idiot.

Steve was a weirdo in elementary school and probably a lot of middle school. My idea would be that he got hot early for a boy, so seventh or eighth grade. Carol probably realized he was impressionable and naïve, and she could use him as leverage on her own climb of the social ladder. Steve is not an idiot; he realizes that Carol is helping him not be a weirdo anymore. It also might explain why he is dismissive of Jonathan in the first few episodes. He was that kind of person, and he did not want to go back to that by any means necessary.

That would also explain his reputation as an asshole or even a bully. Even if he doesn't explicitly bully, if he is autistic, there's a good chance he misses a lot of the social cues of more subtle bullying done around him because he's either spacing out (thanks to the overstimulating school environment) or he is straight up missing the cue. It would also explain why he doesn't stop Tommy most of the time, but when Nancy complains, he does stop Tommy. She's giving him a cue he can understand that Tommy is overstepping. I also think hanging around Tommy and Carol would skew the cues that Steve has learned. He is meaner than he would otherwise be because he learned by watching them.

If I had to choose between hyper or hypo-sensitive to most stimuli, I would make Steve hypo-sensitive and sensory-seeking. That would potentially explain part of his love of athleticism because he's getting a lot of proprioceptive feedback through roughhousing, training, and playing in games. It also might be why he seeks out sex as much as he does in canon. Especially if you add handsome, naïve, and sensory seeking together, you get somebody who might seek out sex and get sex on the regular (caveat regular sex for a high schooler). I think someone who was hypersensitive to stimuli would not seek those experiences out as much.

Finally, I love making Steve's athleticism part of his special interests. I love that Steve was obsessed with baseball stats as a kid. That is almost cool and gets him a modicum of respect from his peers. He's not bad at sports in elementary school during PE, and maybe even talented at some things, but he doesn't have the attention span for it because he doesn't care about it at first. After he gets into the stats and they start playing baseball in PE, he discovers a love for the memorization and collection of statistics and the actual game itself. It also gets him a modicum of social approval, which he desperately desires. He got into more sports as time went on, and his special interest expanded because he learned that baseball was both fun to collect and fun to play. He expands his play as well. Because he is sensory-seeking, he also gets a lot of self-regulation from playing sports, and that helps reinforce his love for them.

In canon, he also has a reputation for being vain. I'd love to give him another special interest in his appearance. This is a guy who goes out of his way to buy fashion magazines when he goes to Chicago with his parents because that's the only place he can buy Vogue Men Italia.

I like the idea of those two special interests helping him pass.

Finally, I'd love to give him a big special interest that he keeps secret because he learned in elementary school that no one cared, and in fact, it made him weirder. Something benign but also that he could dive deep into. I kind of like astronomy, with a subsection of Greek mythology as a logical extension of learning astronomy when you are a child. He learned about the constellations and deep-dived into Greek mythology to learn what the constellations meant. But he doesn't even share this stuff with his parents because it's too weird.

Finally, it's very important to this version of Steve that he would not meet the criteria to be diagnosed as autistic in the late 60s and into the 70s. So he would have no idea why he was different, just that he was very different, and always had to keep it under wraps.

[nightmarecountry-a]

"So --- do you brush all of your teeth?"

"I don't need to. Flossing 'em all can be satisfying, though."

[kryshka0908]

The ONLY introduction to MBTI that you ever have to read!

I’m Kryshka0908 aka MBTI edgelord. I am NOT a certified MBTI practicactioner, but that doesn’t mean I don’t know my stuff. There are a lot of theories out there and yeah they are great and beautiful and all, but you DO NOT need to waste your time studying studying all of them and being confused ‘cause I’m gonna teach you everything you need to know about MBTI! Yes, it’s literally EVERYTHING you need to understand so LISTEN to every single thing I say and I guarantee you WILL be smarter than the majority of people in MBTI community that are spewing bullshit that doesn’t make any sense whatsoever! So grab your drink or whatever that keeps you focused and let’s get into it!!

“What is MBTI in simple words?”

Many morons assume that MBTI types are their identities.

“Oh yay! I’m an ENFP, so I’m a quirky weirdo unicorn girl that’s always dreamy! I’m basically the same person as Anna from Frozen!”

“Yeah ;) I’m an ESTP now. I’m so manly and cool. I love sports man! And I wanna smash hot chicks every single day of my frickin g life”

“I’m a calculative, evil genius INTJ! I hate everyone and everything in the world.. I love world domination, and I have not heart”

These stereotypes make me SICK!! They literally wanna make me throw the shit up okay??? People need to understand that the only thing that your MBTI types can tell you is your natural cognive processes. It does NOT who you are, not how good/unique of a person you are, what you like and dislike, your traits or statuses.

You can be an ENFP, and absolutely hate unicorns and people.

You can be an ESTP, and doesn’t have any interests in sports and sex.

You can be an INTJ, and be a humanitarian. And feel love towards someone deeply.

You know what? I’m an INTJ myself and I love Disney movies, and working out!!!

Some of you may think...

“But, but.. then MBTI edgelord must be INFP because he likes Disney. Oh wait but also he likes working out, he’s ESFP. But he’s also super annoying.. ESTJ?”

SHUT UP!! JUST SHUT THE F*CK UP!!! MY MBTI type can’t tell me who I am as a person!

“What do Congnitive Processes mean in MBTI?”

The kind of ���cognive processes” that MBTI is describing is our attentional manners, which is our ways of paying attention.

We, humans, all pay attention.

When we listen to someone talking, we pay attention to what they are saying.

When we read newspapers, we pay attention to the articles in the newspapers.

MBTI categorizes our various ways of paying attention into into 8 basic modes. They are

Introverted Intuition(Ni),

Extraverted Intuition(Ne),

Introverted Sensing(Si),

Extraverted Sensing(Se),

Introverted Feeling(Fi),

Extraverted Feeling(Fe),

Introverted Thinking(Ti),

and

Extraverted Thinking(Te).

* Definitions of each functions are right below here. For some of them, I directly copied from my Reddit posts.

The difference between Ne and Ni

Ne seeks to look at things from different perspectives and generates/discusses possibilities that are previously unthought of for the sake of novelty. Ne is an abstract function that focuses on metaphysical actions, rather than physical ones, meaning Ne users prefer to “think” about the possible things that they could do in their head or by talking over actually doing stuff in reality. For example, an Ne user may enjoy exploring the possibilities of them being a doctor, a chef and a CEO, but they are less inclined to decide which one is a most likely possiblity and start working on it.

Ni is the opposite of Ne in a way that it likes to make a conclusion on what is the best path. Ni seeks to see linear patterns and connections that lead to one thing in the future. It prefers knowing singular truths over ideation basically. Ni users typically want their life to be aligned with a singular purpose. To simplify, they are more inclined to say “I WILL become a doctor!” than Ne users.

The difference between Se and Si

Se is focused on external sensory information, such as “that car looks cool.”, “This scenery is beautiful” a and so on. As opposed to Si, which is focused on one’s subjective sensory experience, which includes how comfortable your surroundings make you feel internally, and their past experiences. Si things to say would be “This blanket makes me feel warm”, and “This must be true because it already happened to me before”. Because Se is more directly engaged in the outside physical world, people with high Se are very good at making actions in reality. Despite the stereotype that Se doms are party animals, a lot of them can be quite successful because they excel in seizing opportunities in the present moment.

Fi vs.Fe + Ti vs. Te

Fi is about your internal feelings and values. People with high Fi tend to have a sense of what/who they like and dislike. They tend to form judgments about things based on their own ethical values. Fi users seek to be their “authentic selves” in social environments.

•“I love you”,

•“Killing animals feels wrong/immoral”

•��You’re not my friend if you don’t understand the real me”

These statements are all Fi related

Fe, in contrast, is focused on reading and affecting external emotional atmosphere. Fe users observe social cues, such as face expressions and tones of voice, to notice emotional states of others. And they affect the emotional states by words or actions, if they deem it to be necessary. Fe is not about internal/introverted values, but it is about external emotions basically.

• “Are you feeling okay? You seem quite tonight.”

•“You look amazing! Where’d you get that dress!?”

•“That sucks” as opposed to “I don’t like it”(Fi)

Ti is very similar to Fi in a way that it also makes decisions based on your internal judgement. Instead of your feelings, or values though, Ti seeks to make decisions based on what makes sense and what doesn’t make sense to you internally. Ti is about internal understanding of logic. Ti users form logical models that can help them understand why things are the way they are basically. MBTI is also pretty Ti-ish since it models human personality in a way that is logically sound.

Ti statements include

•”You’re contradicting yourself in your own argument. What you say makes no sense”

•”If all humans are mortal, and this individual is immortal, it is impossible that the individual is a human”

•”I don’t want to use math formulas, unless I fully understand why the formulas work”

Te is like Fe because it also sees external data and affect things in the external world. However, unlike Fe, Te pays attention to shared logical facts, instead of shared emotions. Te users like to look at objective statistics and data, and use them to maximize efficiency in order to get from point A to B. Te is not concerned with internal understanding of logic, but it only sees facts as they are, their focus is on how useful or beneficial something is.

Te statements are..

•”If I leave home at 10am, and take the bus that comes at 10:10am, I should be able to get to school by 11:00pm.”

•”I first need to enter my email address, and then my password to log in. Once I log into my account, all I need to do is to put the items I want to buy in my cart and purchase them!”

•”According to this study conducted by Scientist A, it is best to have, at least, 8 hours of sleep for adults to be most active during the day. So I’m going to start doing that!”

To summarize, Fi is about “internal feelings/values”, Fe is about “external emotions and application of them”, Ti is about “internal logical understanding”, and Te is about “external factual accuracy and application”

So now that you know how each function pays attention, let’s look at how the functions manifest in a type!

I use ISFJ as an example. ISFJ’s “function stack”, which describes the order of a type’s preference of cognitive functions, goes..

Si(1st/Dominant)-Fe(2nd/Auxillary)-Ti(3rd/Tertiary)-Ne(4th/Inferior)-Se(5th/Ignoring)-Fi (6th/Demonstrative)-Te(7th/PoLR)-Ni(8th/Balanced)

Look at this table I made that explains definitions of each slot..

This is the description of ISFJ I wrote..

These are the function stacks of other personality types...

Congratulations! Now you should be able to understand how each type uses the 8 cognitive functions. You basically know about how MBTI works more than most people.

[lulusoblue]

Headcanon: Casey Jones being on the Autistic Spectrum

I see plenty of neurodivergent headcanons for the turtles galore, but never for any of the human characters. In all honestly, saying one of the turtles is on the autistic spectrum is iffy and uncomfortable to me at least because it’s sorta implying that said autism would be the result of a mutation caused by an external element. Because it’s not like we’ve had shit over some dickhead portraying autism as a side effect of vaccination rather than it being a mental disorder that’s as embedded in our genes and beings as internal organs and a massive part of who we are as people. also fuck you wakefield

And so thinking about it more, it just clicked that Casey could fit an autistic headcanon. So here’s a list of things about his character I believe fit such a headcanon based on personal experience and from other autistic people I’ve known:

• Apparently the writers put him at around 17 years old, a year older than April, with some intent that he might have been held back during his education (probably to tie into him seeking April for tutoring). I don’t have any knowledge of American education beyond secondhand information I may see on the internet or pop up on my dash, so my only knowledge of being autistic in a learning system built around neurotypical students is from brief personal experience. Neurotypical education sucks when there isn’t enough awareness of learning difficulties or the teachers don’t have enough training to know how to handle it. Casey might have trouble with his education because he may have difficulties trying to pay attention and absorb information without the tools or support to help him focus. This can get you labelled as just bad behaviour or being dumb/stupid. I sure as hell wasn’t able to follow lessons in school until I finally had someone who listened to why I didn’t like lessons and found them hard to understand. We don’t have any clue as to when Casey was held back if this concept still applies in canon, but being held back might not mean he just didn’t care to study or doesn’t have the smarts to pass. Granted it gets harder to care about learning when you have trouble understanding and your educators don’t bother to help you so much as call you lazy. Which brings me to my next point.

• Casey’s interests and knowledge in gadgets, vehicles, and metalwork. The boy knows his stuff when it comes to Mad Max-looking makeshift weaponry and devices, which is clear from his decked out bike and the crude taser that he’s managed to strap to his arm without frying himself. He worked with Donnie to rig up a supercar as a hobby and helped pimp up the Party Wagon. And he’s still flunking trig. (so’s April but shhhhh that was just a Season 1 thing) Casey seems like a very visual learner in this case: he picks up on things through observation and is self-taught on what interests him. For all we know he figured out cars while being cooped up on a farm with nothing better to do while one of his terrapin friends was in a coma. I’ve ended up doing that with some programs I use or with life stuff in general. Manuals are boring and slow and easy to lose focus on. Maybe look up a couple of video tutorials for something but most of building skills and interests is self-teaching and trial-and-error. (my experience of video editing and art programs is “what’s this do and can i figure out what makes it tick without looking it up”, which is an approach to new interests I think also fits Casey). Likely not something specific or common in autistic people, but figuring things out in such a way has been a thing that popped up for me and a couple of old friends. What I’m saying is Casey made that new mask after half-watching a couple of cosplay tutorials and winging it with some scrap.

• Casey wears those gloves and that headband all the damn time. Even when he’s eating pizza, he’s eating it wearing gloves that have probably been worn working on his bike, wielding a hockey stick/baseball bat that’s likely bashed sweaty heads in rain two weeks ago without being washed, and just the day-to-day things that would get those gloves sweaty or grimey or icky. He wears that headband at all times, even when he’s wearing a mask thank would probably fit better if he took that band of material off of his head. What do his headband and gloves also have in common? They’re articles of clothing that usually have elastic to stay in place. Sure canonically they’re just there to fit his grungy look (get to that hoodie in a second), but digging myself deeper into this headcanon i got to thinking they might also serve sensory/stimming purposes. If there’s something that I think is one thing autistic people have in common or a feeling they share, it’s fiddling/fidgeting and certain sensory things to some level: e.g. I usually wear loose tops because i like fiddling with the hems and corners of my clothing. Some people wear tight or loose clothing based on how they process the sensation of skin against different type of clothing. Casey never taking off his damn gloves or headband could be seen as him liking the sensation of the elastic in them around his wrists and forehead. He probably pings the elastic as well because that’s fun too when you’re bored and need to fiddle.

I refuse to believe that he has never washed that hoodie. I mean yeah the turtles have smelt worse living in a sewer but Casey is a Human who has spent most of his life around Humans and his Human father would probably have burnt his clothes by now if Casey never washed the stink out of them. That and Casey is a hockey player, and I imagine stinking clothes is an annoyance that comes from most sports. Those paint stains on his hoodie I think he’s leaving there on purpose, like he’ll wash his clothes but no dad his clothes get washed separate because he can’t wash his clothes with your clothes because you use stuff that lifts stains and that’ll get rid of the paint splats that he likes on his clothes and why does he want paint splats because he does and they look nice and he probably won’t get the same splatter pattern again if he tried and shush dad this hoodie stays the same because it has to because shut up. We don’t really see Casey tagging anything regularly so unless it’s because they don’t change the texture on animated models because what’s the point it’s not a cgi blockbuster we’re making here Casey probably keeps his paint splattered hoodie like that because it looks nice and it’ll stay nice dad. It’s a Thing.

• Casey constantly refers to a love of heavy metal music. Too much sound for an autistic person can end up in sensory overload and that fucking sucks. And in general just the world around you can suck and you wanna shut it out because ugh. You know what helps? Headphones and really loud music. What genre has really loud music? Yup.

Casey having a social battery. He just pops in and out of the show all the time because the writers dunno what do with him shrug so yeah. Autism likes to play up the variance of a person’s social needs and wants and limits. You want to be friends but you just can’t be asked to be with people right now. You get this surge of wanting to hang out with friends and be loud for a bit, and then you have this mood where you just want to not exist or just not do things. Basically like this:

“raph great to see you i love your face” “whatever weirdo”

[dude where are you] [home] [you’ve been at home for three days] [i’m waiting until i stop hating faces to talk in person again]

If anyone has any other things to add to this headcanon, please do share/add onto this post. Now if you’ll excuse me i’m gonna dig myself further into this headcanon.

EDIT: I forgot another point I wanted to put in and also @a-specforest added some cool addon tags so broski if you don’t mind imma put them here too

• #okay so one symptom of autism is speaking in ’pre learned phrases’ #and casey has a ton of catchphrases • #sometimes speaking in a tone that doesn’t match the conversation? #casey does that a lot too • #he seems to have a few hyperfixations #in season 2 he’s practicing hockey late by himself #and the working on cars that you mentioned

1) how else would he come up with Goongala of COURSE!!! That and pre-learned phrases are great to have when spontaneous speech is a bitch and you trip over words and stammer. not that i would know anything about that nooo We’ve already heard him muddle up words in the moment (I think he said jumbled up “racism” later in S4)

2) Tone control is something I’ve dealt with, too. Apparently I have resting bitch voice so I’ll say something and get asked if i’m in a bad mood or snapped at for “being rude”. Also knew other autistic people who would have ranges of tones in certain convos too, e.g. one always sounded happy and chipper and laughed a lot even when something wasn’t particularly funny, one person’s tone of voice went everywhere it was hard to tell what their feelings were even with the context of conversation. Casey’s attitude and tone in conversation, even serious ones, might be an indication of that, I agree.

3) Oh yeah, he definitely fits hyperfixation. There’s his hobbies, and also there’s how he sees his future. When he and April are in the park for their first study session, he’s got two clear ideas for what to do with his life; Hockey Star or Bounty Hunter. With him immediately trying to play hero when confronted with a walking talking tank of organs his bounty hunter fantasy may have something to do with it. He’s reckless and headstrong, but it also lends to his fixation on one of his dream careers; if fighting a monster that he’s confronted with something he sees as a step to bounty hunting, he’ll likely put up his dukes and get melted because ACID HANDS I have definitely known people who were determined on doing something because it was what they wanted. It might’ve come across as stubbornness or rigidness depending on what it (even something as simple as just doing something like a chore a certain way), but in context of ambitions and their future they were pumped as hell to take the steps they needed to take to do what they liked and what they wanted for themselves. They didn’t care about what people thought of them even if they didn’t pass as neurotypical and would get stares on the street. Not sure how they would react if say culinary career path involved fighting mutated food, but considering the show itself is an action-adventure cartoon with mutant turtles I think we can give Casey a pass on that lack of realism there. we begrudgingly give the writers passes all the time so why stop now

Aaaand the point i forgot to put in my original post:

• Casey’s less-than appropo reactions or attitudes in situations possibly links to difficulty reading people, being empathetic or understanding social cues/priorities. Reading and understanding facial expressions and body language can be a bitch if you’re autistic. There’s even a learning software program a couple of students from my school would use in one-to-one sessions that specifically addresses this for those who find it THAT hard to tell what another person is expressing. It’s especially troublesome because empathy can be a confusing thing too, because it can go from you not really having any empathy to you having so much that you think you’re hurting the feelings of a pair of shoes because you chose to wear something else that day which totally isn’t the extreme i experience at all hahaha help i’m mentally apologising to a boot Casey doesn’t appear to take things seriously in dangerous circumstances the majority of the time, nor does he appear considerate of others at other times. It’s a lot of confidence and certainty that things will turn out OK (with a heaping spoonful of “self preservation instinct what self preservation instinct”). It’s not always an appropriate attitude to make jokes and quips and tease and make jabs at people, but he HAS taken things seriously and shown worry/sadness at appropriate times. He’s really quiet and almost numb when the subject of his family’s fate comes up in Invasion, and he was surprisingly the only one to be most affected after watching someone get mOLECULARLY RIPPED APART. From experience, both personal and through observation, figuring out how to react and respond to things when you don’t really know how to is a pain in the ass and often distressing because you feel bad for not knowing. Sometimes you resort to humour to lighten things and try to ease tensions, sometimes you have an internal screaming match with yourself and panic and go through an archive of potential reactions because what the fuck would apply here, or sometimes you just shut down or just don’t react like it’s not really a big deal or even happening. Or you end up going through verbal barfing and dig yourself deeper into a hole of instant regret because you’re making yourself look like an ass when you don’t want to why is this so hARD. I think Casey would fall into the “address things with confidence and cockiness” kind of reaction pool, because it’s an attitude he’s comfortable with and how he better deals and processes things. It’s not to say he doesn’t have some empathy or disregard for other people’s feelings (hello Buried Secrets), it could be that it’s not comfortable territory for him even when he wants to be serious/emotionally supportive. did any of that come out right fffffffffU

• Casey’s small social circle and it possibly being by choice. His best friends are the girl who he met through tutoring in a subject she was failing before and four giant turtles who are trained in ninjutsu. He only mentions having one friend before, a friend with whom he had a falling out, and he didn’t seem to like Irma all that much (you can say it’s because “she’s a third wheel on dates” but even outside of that he didn’t seem to get along with her much). With things like hyperfixation and the like making a vast group of friends is tricky. Being autistic might mean the friends you choose to make have lots of interest in common with you rather than just being someone you get along with. Not to say being autistic means you are limited to a few friends. I’m no expert on autistic social lives, I can only draw from firsthand experience. I found trying to maintain a number of friendships difficult and often overwhelming so at some point in school I stopped trying to make friends, with the exception of a couple of people I liked and had common interests with. I chose to keep my social circle small because the thought of making lots of friends and keeping in touch with them all and remembering who likes who and what overwhelmed me and made me nervous as a child. Still kinda leaks into adulthood because I don't have many friends outside of the company I keep on tumblr. In this autistic headcanon, Casey’s very small social circle could be by choice. He doesn’t mention having any other friends besides one previously, fixates on April (and yes I am knocking the romantic aspect out the window for this) after approaching her for tutoring because he found her cool and likes hanging out with her (and probably saw kicking a mutant’s ass as common ground/bonding too), hung out with her even when a person he wasn’t keen on (Irma) was also there, and even when he’s introduced to the turtles and befriends them he still appears to be platonically closest to April arguably, depends on how the writers want to write him that week. Considering how the love triangle bullhockey has been given little to no reference as of late, his concern for April in Tokka vs the World and his annoyance at Leo’s teamup picks in Tale of Tiger Claw might be more because he can’t be with his favourite person. (and yes that can be a Thing too) He might also fixate on having April’s company because she isn’t much of a social butterfly herself outside of the friendly neighbourhood mutants living in the sewer. Compare how many times we see him hanging out with the turtles minus April versus when April is present.

[pet-diary]

How was it like growing up as an autistic child? When were you diagnosed? C:

I was diagnosed later in life (mid-twenties) after seeking out the diagnosis on my own. I never really knew I was autistic as a child or as I was growing up, I just knew there was something “different” about me. It was hard to put two and two together for a number of reasons…

(adding a read more cut because this ended up being a long answer, sorry!)

I was home schooled by my mom with only my brother and sister as company until I reached the 7th grade. The only real social interaction I had was with a few family friends (most of whom trickled out of our life after a couple of yrs of knowing them, for various reasons) and kids I got to know at church. I went to church every Sunday and Wednesday until I was in jr high and had a few friendships that lasted a few yrs, but all of them ended over time (kind of badly in some cases, some of them bullied me in the end). I hung out with my cousin for several yrs until she also became too “cool” for me. Needless to say, everyone just thought I was weird because I was home schooled, isolated, and friendless through most of my little kid yrs.

Despite having a somewhat isolated childhood I was really happy I think. I didn’t really get why people didn’t want to be my friend back then. I was a pretty happy kid. I didn’t think it was all that weird to be as hyper-focused on small details of things as I was, to notice the things I did, or to have the special interests I had. Also I was really really shy and didn’t talk very much at all. I had fewer sensory issues back then because I was more in control of my environment (spent almost every minute at home!) but they tended to get worse on long trips in the car or in situations where I couldn’t get away.

I grew up in a very small town in Texas. There was no practical or helpful interventions in place for kids who didn’t “look” like they had a disability, but still did have one. None of my issues ever got singled out on an institutional level (like recognizing a learning disability or whatever, my issues were mostly intrapersonal and interpersonal, everyone thought my educational issues were bc of home school). My parents thought I had a behavioral attitude problem and threatened to send me to boot camp a lot (my dad is ex marine). I got in trouble at home a lot because I was argumentative. The one time i spoke up about having anxiety and depression I got a couple of months worth of Lexapo from my GP, and never got it refilled. I was a freshman in high school at the time I think. Mental health wasn’t talked about or taken seriously where I grew up. If you had real problems you were supposed to work them out in church (no offense to ppl who believe in that, but I don’t think it should take the place of practical interventions that can help improve ppl’s lives). I mostly just started “working them out” through self injury (bad coping mechanism), and later through art.

From jr high to high school I kind of found my niche. I had groups of friends eventually, really good friends. Mostly outcast types, but we didn’t care, we were the weirdos and we liked that. I also took on the role as the artsy eccentric one in the group who said weird stuff that people thought was funny or amusing. I actually really liked this part of me, but the other issues in my life at the time made this a less happy point in my life. It was a mixed bag.At this point (basically from 7th grade on) I was dealing with a lot of depression, anxiety, self injury, etc. I started looking into psychology as a way to describe what I was going through, why I had such intense emotions, meltdowns, sensory issues, depression, headaches, stress, etc. That time period was the birth of my lifelong interest in psychology. I bought every book I could, watched every movie. There was a lot of confusing info out there (movies probably didn’t help since they don’t portray mental illness very accurately usually, lol). But autism was never really brought to my attention because of the obvious reasons (stereotypically a young boy’s disorder, mute stereotype), but also because of the divide between the medical field and the psychological field. I was looking in the wrong places, apparently. I think this divide is a major issue that will eventually need to be addressed, by the way.

To answer your actual question… Growing up undiagnosed autistic was confusing as all hell. Often sad. Very very lonely. I didn’t really get what I was doing “wrong” most of the time? For a large portion of my life I had a lot of magical thinking. I thought I was “special” and could like, control certain things in my life (kind of like in a serendipitous way? idk it’s hard to describe). I used to think I had schizotypal pd but that might have just been a result of trying to make a confusing life make sense. Maybe I do though who knows really.

I might have had these issues with or without a diagnosis, but I definitely have always felt “broken” bc I didn’t have an explanation for why I was different.I have a lot of self-loathing, lack of confidence issues that I’m still working through as an adult. To be honest with you (and I don’t consider this tmi because this is my blog lol)… I was really at my wit’s end when I decided to seek out a diagnosis. I felt broken, like a burden, like garbage parts that would never do any good in the world or mean anything to anyone. I had a lot of suicidal thoughts all the time, I was in a really dark place for many years and the only thing keeping me going was my husband (then boyfriend) and my pets. When it got bad enough that I was scared for my safety I decided I needed to demand help from myself and my family and friends.

Things completely changed when I got my diagnosis. Something in me shifted, and I felt I understood the universe more clearly. Kind of like when you learn something new in school or whatever and everything takes on new meaning somehow. It was like that. Since then, I’ve had a lot more self acceptance. I still have a lot of issues sometimes when I’m having a really bad meltdown or depression (okay it happens way more than it should, I really need to go to therapy I know, lol), but things have improved so drastically by knowing I’m autistic, I can’t even tell you. It’s also improved my relationship with my husband, (side bonus).

It hasn’t been all good, I mean, my family and irl friends have barely acknowledged it which just makes me doubt myself all over again… But then I remember ���oh yeah other people don’t have to deal with this kind of shit!!!! This isn’t typical!!! This isn’t the “normal” everyone else is experiencing!! Fuck you I’m autistic or whatever else you wanna call it, come at me!!!! I’m done feeling like I’m broken so just accept it already and start to know me as me and not as this bullshit image you’ve created in your mind to represent me!!” :D

Besides, acceptance or not, I’m always going to have the issues I have. I’ll always have a hard time understanding what people are saying when there’s too much going on, I’ll always get overwhelmed and burned out, I’ll always have meltdowns (something that is very hard to accept about myself), I’ll always make social blunders and misunderstand people, I’ll always be misunderstood, I’ll always struggle with things that come more easily for others. But I’ll also always see the world from a totally different perspective from everyone else, which I think really helps me in my art and ideas. And I have a lot of fun in life when things are going well, I’m really super passionate about so much and I think that’s because of my strong emotions and connectiveness to things. I have a fun childlike view of everything when I’m in a healthy place and I love that about myself. There’s a lot of really cool things about it, and some bad things too.

Sorry this is such a long answer. I’m clearly avoiding my school work…………. It’s been a long stressful weekend and venting a little felt good so thank you for this question that I have taken way far off track, heh heh.

I should probably be more “professional” in my answers to these types of questions since this is the field I want to specialize in eventually, but whatever. This is real life and real life is messy and sometimes you get mad about your baggage and curse a little. It helps to curse a little. ;)

Also I’m an oversharer, sorry! Autism is a big interest of mine and so is human behavior. So it’s hard to hold back…

[rewindstuff]

Moneyed Blankness

“a sensory reality that comes from pushing into the margins of this teeming urban morass and looking for a place between the cracks where if you’re lucky the pressure erupts into something magical. these days its harder to find the cracks. the city is in one of its moments of moneyed blankness.”

-lizzy goodman

nashville is a city rife with allure. its that allure that brought me to the city in the first place. but its not the same city now as it once was. the draw for me was the opportunity to be surrounded by other ambitious, eager, zealous, poor, and equally as creative weirdos like me. i feel as though that wave of people along with myself, created an underground that shined brightly in the depth of its core and was shielded, sheathed in a thick crust of mystery and an understanding that what we were experiencing was sacred. it was an extension of us. this is what we came here for. and now, that shell is cracked and the light inside is bursting into a realm of possibilities beyond our creative community. moneyed blankness is a description of nyc that i recently stumbled across whilst soaring high above the swiss alps. a good yin to the yang of my extreme desire to see and experience as much of the world as my feet can deliver me. perhaps its my gluttony for punishment or my mortons toe, but i can’t and won’t stop exploring. its why for the last decade, nashville has been such a haven for travelers and wanderers like me. its rare to feel home from a skyline, and for a few magical years, it was. now its a different place. the fuse has burned down to the money bomb and boy, has it blown up. we lit the match. and theres no stopping the flow now that the levy has broken. the allure of opportunities to make art and move people, to stir emotions and to tell stories has been seized by the ones who seek to profit from the culture we fought so hard to sanctuary. nashville has been branded and packaged. marketed and sold. exported and tariffed. and the rich keep getting richer. because thats their objective: to profit from an opportunity. perhaps thats the difference between the two of us art minded folks and business minded folks: how we see and seize opportunity. the motivation for me has rarely been money and has predominantly been opportunity. opportunity to insert my message, passion, and agenda every time i work, regardless of the return. that has taken great trust and relinquish from my collaborators, colleagues, and partners. for a true entrepreneur, if the return isn’t greater than the investment, its a mute play and they’ll go the other way because its all about the return. for a true artist, the return is immaterial and irrelevant, because it’s only about the investment.

i’ll love nashville again one day. perhaps when its on the other side of the country and on the other side of my consciousness. behind me, not around me. grounded underneath me, not hovering above me.