#and my mom is already kind of (very) ableist especially when it comes to autism so this should be fun

[the-kestrels-feather]

My parents are watching Atypical and it is... Infuriating

[narcissisticpdcultureis]

Hi there! So I'm gonna start off with the fact that a lot of people say that I come off as blunt and ask rude/insensitive questions, so I do apologize if I do that, as it is not my intention! Just trying to learn more about stuff. *Sorry if anything is offensive, not the intention!*

Oh, also, secondly. Love your blog, it's absolutely amazing and it's great reading it.

Ok, so questions!

Question 1 (and this is kind of personal, so feel free to not answer. Actually, feel free to not answer any if you don't want to.): Did you recognize that you had NPD or did someone tell you? If someone else told you, is there anyway that you would've liked them to phrase it better or be more sensitive (or anything else)?

Question 2 (less personal? Maybe?): Are there any organizations that you know of that act like they're for NPD, but are actually really harmful (like Autism Speaks, but for peeps with NPD).

Question 3: OK, so this one needs a bit of ✨️backstory✨️. Again, feel free not to answer.

Question 3 Backstory: So, recently I've been looking up the symptoms of narcissism/NPD and I've realized that my mom displays a lot of these symptoms and could probably get an official diagnosis if she went to get one. I'm trying to bring it up to her, but I'm not exactly sure how to bring that up in conversation.

Ok, question 3: How do I tell her that she has a disorder in the most kindest and respectful way. I'm super forward and blunt and suck at "adding fluff" so I feel like if I just tell her that I think she has NPD that she'll take it badly cause she's super stigmatized about it (not sure if that's a good adjective, but it's the one I'm using. I guess I'm trying to say that she views it negatively)

Again, apologies if anything is offensive or anything like that!

Also, thanks for making this blog! It's awesome and super informational!

heyo! don't worry, honestly a lot of people tell me i come off the same and it's because i'm autistic so i get it 🥲

1. fair warning, my memory is a bit hazy because it was over a year ago and it was also a stressful time in my life.

i figured out about my NPD on my own.

from what i remember, i found out about my HPD first. it's a long story for any day, but long story short, i ended up having a huge breakdown because i was forced to confront a lot of symptoms and feelings i had been experiencing that i deemed inherently shameful my entire life. when i recovered from that a bit, i started interacting more with cluster b spaces and communities.

i already knew i was most likely cluster b even before i found out about my HPD (i wasn't exactly diagnosed with BPD in 2020 but my psychologist at the time was understably concerned about the fact that i said yes to every single question on the assessment he gave me) but i had gone into heavy denial about it and figured it wasn't true for a mixture of reasons.

interacting with spaces and researching PDs in general more made me realize i met a lot of the criteria for NPD (among other things. honestly this time in my life has made me confront that i am extremely disordered in the personality department in general!). sorta went back and forth on wether it was just HPD or just NPD, but turns out it is very much both!

2. i don't know of any organizations that are specifically about NPD at all tbh, especially not one as large scale as something like autism speaks, but what i will say is on a more general level, a lot of organizations that strive to help people with trauma will still use ableist language like narcissistic abuse, calling abusers narcissists/narcissistic or psychopaths/psychopathic, ect or just straight up demonize NPD itself. so while, fortunately, pwNPD don't have something like autism speaks to stand up against (as far as i know! i may be wrong!), we're not exactly very welcomed by trauma survivor organizations in general.

3. see, that one is definitely tricky. i've definitely been the one to break the news to people at times, but they were people around my age who already had an understanding of mental health/psychology and weren't perpetuating stigma.

i might suggest starting out with a more detached approach, trying to break down her biases and internalized stigma by educating her on the topic before bringing up her connection to it? like if the topic somehow comes up or she does something like call someone a narcissist, maybe use it as an opportunity to subtly educate her wether that be in the moment or maybe later on in the case that she's upset.

i do also want to emphasize to only do this if you if you feel it'll be safe to do so. obviously i'm not saying that because your mother exhibits NPD symptoms, i'm saying that because i don't know much about your relationship with your mother and i know not everyone has a relationship with their parents where they can talk to them about certain things safely. i have an incredibly abusive relationship with my mother but i believe i'm in a better position than most where i can talk to her about her mental illness and the possibility of her having BPD without it being guaranteed to immiedately flip into a dangerous situation.

if you feel like you can safely educate her and then safely bring up the possibility so she can get help, i welcome you to do so. it all depends on your specific situation. if she doesn't show any signs of backing down on her stigmatized views, i more than encourage you to prioritize your mental health and safety.

i also want to emphasize as her child, you are not responsible for her mental health and her refusal to accept possibly having a disorder would have nothing to do with you.

in all honesty, i'm not super sure about how to "add fluff" to that sort of conversation either. i'm also usually super blunt and don't exactly remember how i brought up the possibility of people having NPD to them or specifically how i brought up the possibility of my mother having BPD to her. if anyone wants to add on with some advice on that, that'd be cool, but i think i've done as much as i can for now myself </3

[mellometal]

Hi, everyone.

I have something extremely important to talk about that is NOT fandom related. I really do hope this can reach everyone on here, especially since it's still Autism Acceptance Month.

A few quick questions for anyone who happens to see this before I dive right into this: Have you ever heard of Dhar Mann? If so, have you ever seen his videos? What do you think about them?

If you don't know who Dhar Mann is, he's a content creator whose main platforms are Instagram and YouTube. He makes these videos about various scenarios from a couple on the brink of divorce, to kids bullying one of their peers, even about Autism Spectrum Disorder. All of his videos have some kind of message at the end that really drives the point home. One of his most recent videos is about ASD, which is what I'm going to discuss today.

Personally, I think some of his videos are interesting, despite the concepts being reused and recycled over and over; however, how I feel about the video he made about ASD is the complete opposite. I'll summarize the video he made so you don't have to watch it. (If you really want to watch it to see exactly what I'm talking about, I'm not gonna stop you. Do what you need to do in order to form your own opinion.)

The video Dhar Mann made about ASD is about this boy who excludes his autistic brother from participating in activities with his friends at school. The boy bullies his autistic brother and does pretty much everything to make his brother's life Hell, even going as far as to pretend that he doesn't know his own brother. The boy "instantly regrets his decision" when their mom is called into the school to discipline her son for bullying his autistic brother. What his mother says is what REALLY upsets me. The message of this video in particular is this, WORD FOR FUCKING WORD. I wish I was kidding. But here's the message below:

How the video concludes is the boy reluctantly includes his autistic brother in every single activity, the boy sees his brother's potential, and they live happily ever after. Whoop-dee-fucking-doo.

As an autistic woman who works with disabled people for a living, that message Dhar Mann put in this video specifically is not only extremely ableist, but is also spreading misinformation about ASD.

News flash to all the people who still spread misinformation about ASD: Not every single autistic person is a little white boy in elementary school, nor is every single autistic person a young white man who's a Super Genius™️. (I could go on all day long about how the media stereotypes autistic characters and autistic people in general, but that's a whole other topic.) No autistic person is the same, meaning we all fall on the spectrum in different places and all that jazz. There's no "look" to autistic people either because no autistic person looks the same.

Autistic women exist.

Autistic girls exist.

Autistic nonbinary people exist.

Autistic BIPOC and AAPI exist.

Autistic people who are completely nonverbal exist.

Autistic people who are completely verbal exist.

Autistic people who are in the middle of being nonverbal and verbal exist.

Autistic people who require minimal to no support exist.

Autistic people who require moderate support exist.

Autistic people who require full support exist.

Autistic LGBT people exist. (Reason why I bring this one up is because the media almost always shows cishet autistic men and I don't see autistic LGBT representation very often, if ever.)

Autism isn't something you can "catch". People have this same mentality about ADHD and Tourette's Syndrome too, which, by the way, you can't "catch" either.

Autism doesn't "go away" when you reach adolescence or adulthood. Why? BECAUSE AUTISTIC TEENAGERS AND AUTISTIC ADULTS EXIST. Autistic kids grow into autistic teenagers, then into autistic adults.

You can't "cure" it either. Unless you can build a time machine and a device to go back in time to change how a person's brain develops, there is no cure. ABA therapy is a fucking shit show in itself that does more harm than good.

The title of the video is a real squick for me too. It's mostly because I don't particularly enjoy people using person first language (the "boy with autism" part). I've seen many other autistic people on multiple other platforms sharing that same sentiment and preferring identity first language (autistic person). There are also others who prefer using person first language and those who don't have a preference. That's all perfectly valid. Whatever you prefer people using when referring to you, or whatever you refer to yourself as, in this case, is totally valid and I love you. This goes for disabilities in general, not just Autism Spectrum Disorder.

Regarding the message in this video, here's my response to it! A quick heads-up, my response is VERY long and VERY passionate. I was VERY close to making a response video where I tear that video apart AND tear Dhar Mann a new asshole. Unfortunately, it worked me up so much that I was really struggling with what I wanted to say and I had to stop multiple times because I kept stumbling on my words. That's how angry this message made me. I'll try my best to explain whatever parts you have questions about. I put my response in the nicest way I possibly could, despite me seething with rage, wanting to go OFF on him.

(The first part of my response are the first three screenshots, and the second part are the last three screenshots.)

The first part of my response, I did forget to add that the message is offensive and disrespectful to autistic people as a whole. I apologize. My initial comment got way too long. I pretty much covered that when I told him the message is ableist. I wanted to clear that up before anyone asks about it.

The second part of my response is me opening up about my experience with being diagnosed with ASD, formerly known as As//per//ger's Syn//dro//me, at sixteen years old. I also went into how not calling ASD what it truly is (which is a disability) and calling it a "different ability" instead is extremely harmful and is treating being disabled like it's a bad thing.

By the way, saying that a disabled person is disabled isn't a bad thing. I'm disabled. It is what it is. Does it have its challenges? You bet. Does it help me with certain things? Hell yeah. I can really absorb information about my favorite bands, characters, shows, books, etc., and tell you a lot about those things. For example, I can tell you that Su can't ride a bike or read manga and she's okay with that. I can also tell you she can't tie her shoes very well, which is why her boots don't have laces and are slip-on and/or zip-up. But that doesn't mean my struggles are nonexistent or that I never struggle. I do, and it makes my life Hell at times.

The narrative that autism is a bad thing to have, every autistic person is somehow broken and they all need to be "fixed" is also super fucked up and not true. That's the narrative that I received when I was diagnosed by a therapist I had. I'm gonna be real here, I cried when I was first told that I was diagnosed with ASD. I felt like I was broken. I already felt like a total outcast. Being told about my diagnosis made me feel even more broken than I already felt. I was so ashamed of myself, despite me not doing anything wrong whatsoever, that I masked for SEVEN YEARS of my life. I masked for so long that I forgot I was even diagnosed with ASD in the first place. I wasn't taught how to really put my special interests into good use. I kinda had to figure that out on my own. I was pretty much under the assumption that me being interested in anime, cartoons, music, comics, theatre, writing, etc., to the point of obsession, was somehow weird and hurting people around me. You know, despite those things being harmless. Despite me being able to separate those things from other things that are important (like work, for example). Despite my only surviving parent, other family members, and the woman he was dating at the time completely overreacting and not bothering to see exactly what makes these things so special to me.

(By the way, having a disability does not completely make who a person is. There are a lot more things that make who a person is than that.)

It's kinda shocking that I wasn't able to come to terms with my diagnosis until this year. Considering that I masked for so long due to being ashamed of myself, plus being treated like a burden for being disabled, it's probably not very surprising. I initially thought at the time that it was the worst thing to have, as I was already struggling with enough shit back then, but came to realize it's not a bad thing. It doesn't change who I am. But I'm glad I came to terms with it finally nonetheless.

This is getting way too long, so I'm gonna wrap things up here. If you've read this far, thank you so much. I'm sorry this got so long!

If you watched the video, what are your thoughts on it? If this is your first time hearing about Dhar Mann, how do you feel about him? If you're a Dhar Mann fan, did this change your opinion on him in any way? Feel free to sound off in the comments!

Have a great day, everyone!

[snowgloberoundandround]

This trend of telling people to “wear a d*mn mask” or calling people selfish for choosing not wearing a mask in public needs to stop. It is a callously cruel thing to say, and extremely damaging to hear every single day. People have their reasons for not wearing a mask, just as much as you have your reasons for wearing yours.

Here are just a few reasons people don’t wear a mask:

Assorted medical reasons - most places are making exceptions for medical reasons in the fine print, but most medical reasons a stranger on the street won’t be able to see, they’ll just see the lack of a mask. People with legitimate medical exceptions are harassed every day by people, both strangers and employees, who assume they are just being apathetic and flippant. They are berated by social media’s inflammatory hashtags and posts that demand you wear a mask. It’s not okay to assume why someone is not wearing a mask, it’s not okay to judge someone for not wearing a mask, and it’s not legal to ask what the medical condition is. You’re not a doctor, you’re not their doctor.

Asthma/respiratory fatigue - for oxygenation we measure what is called your Sp02 levels. A normal, resting level should be in the 98-100 range. Under anesthesia if it gets in the low 90’s we’re mildly concerned and trying to restore it, we never want to see it in the 80’s. Some studies with the masks have shown Sp02 levels in healthy, fit individuals wearing masks while walking briskly for several minutes dropping into the 70’s. That’s very, very bad. One of my friends has bad asthma, she wore her mask for a quick 5-minute trip into the store yesterday. It took her TWO HOURS to recover. If you have a pre-existing respiratory condition, wearing a mask can be extremely harmful. You shouldn’t have to be told you’re a bad person because someone doesn’t get that you’re just trying to breathe.

Skin conditions - Masks trap moisture close to your face. If you have severe acne, eczema, psoriasis, are prone to infection, etc. having a mask on your face repeatedly for long periods of time can result in bad infections and be a painful irritant. Along with all the other points on this thread, employers also have little care for the health and well-being of their employees in this regard, especially corporate employers, who rather cover their risk of being sued rather than allow their employees to not wear a mask for the sake of their health. There have also been cases of young and healthy individuals getting lung infections from wearing a mask 40+ hours a week. Constantly breathing in moisture and carbon dioxide was not something that the human body was meant to do.

Anxiety/panic attacks - I have anxiety, and most the time I can handle it. But I’ve had anxiety about going to the store by myself LONG before this all started, so if I have the mask on for more than five minutes at the store I start feeling like I can’t breathe well. And my anxiety isn’t anywhere near as bad as some. We’ve had to call 911 for my mom at least half a dozen times in the span of my life, and those are just the really bad panic attacks, not all the little after shocks. Now think about if you’re having an anxiety attack, and had to take your mask off, and it’s not that severe but you’re teetering on the edge, and some rando comes by and says “HEY PUT A MASK ON” or “It’s not doing anything if it’s not on your face.” Imagine how much worse that makes it because you’re already struggling to keep it together and now you’re met with confrontation.

Physical/sexual abuse victims - imagine having to live through someone trying to actually suffocate you, and then you’re told you have to wear a mask at all times. All you feel is that hand over your face, all you feel is the inability to escape, being constricted and restrained. THEN imagine everyone telling you you’re being selfish for not wearing a mask, simply because they don’t know what horrors you’ve been through. Further more, the governor of my state said anxiety is not a good enough excuse not to wear a mask, so you’re branded a criminal for not wanting to relive the worst moment of your life in memory.

PTSD - this is basically the same principle as the two afore mentioned, as PTSD comes in many shapes and sizes. However it bears stating the lasting emotional trauma masks will have on many children in schools. For a nervous little third grader, telling her for eight hours a day she can’t sit with her friends, can’t play with them on the playground, can’t interact with anyone, has to be screened every day, and in some schools are required to stay in little solitary cubicles... that ABSOLUTELY can give a child PTSD while also inhibiting their development.

Autism - some autistic people have severe texture adversities. For any child having a mask over their face is a difficult thing to tolerate, but especially for an autistic child who can only tolerate a select few materials when it comes to normal clothes. This is a good post that goes into more detail on how the current hostility toward anyone who doesn’t where a mask promotes an ableist outlook

In protest - Because they believe that the deaths and emotional trauma from mask culture is more detrimental than the initial virus, such depression, the medical treatment that was denied and people died from because it was not deemed “essential”, the families that go hungry because of jobs lost, the resulting crime and lawlessness that hurts people, the panic/anxiety and emotional scarring it will have on children in schools, etc. Many people will call it selfish to not wear a mask out of protest, but in reality it is BECAUSE you care about people that you protest by not wearing a mask. If you believe it is doing more harm than good for the population as a whole, the most selfless thing you can do is risk being ridiculed and punished for standing up.

Science and statistics - Many people simply believe that the science doesn’t prove that masks are unequivocally beneficial and that the statistics don’t validate their efficacy. The ideology has become “the masks are better than nothing” but as the above points listed have countered, sometimes a mask is WORSE than nothing. Furthermore, instituting mandatory masks on the basis of it may or may not help is extremely poor leadership. You don’t collapse a society, cause lasting economic and emotional crisis for something you don’t know for certain if it will work. You don’t create laws on a maybe. That is a detrimental way of thinking because it is destroying our society, producing casualties of all kinds, for something you don’t even know if it really helps. People have lost their lives, their food, their jobs, their businesses they built from the ground up because of the astronomical fines and closures if they do not enforce masks that may or may not be effective. Masks are not necessarily a “temporary inconvenience”, there are lasting effects. Most people who don’t wear masks, don’t do so because they are short-sighted and selfish, but they do so because they believe it is in the best interest of everyone to make masks optional, because of their great care for others and how it impacts everyone involved.

But the bottom line is this:

The simple reason that I believe it’s better for my health not to wear a mask is reason enough to not have to wear one. I have the right to decide what is best for my health and act accordingly, and I should not be attacked for that.

[againstshame]

Anonymous request for advice: “My brother is autistic and unemployed and I’m worried about his future."

Topics include: employment, hygiene, stimming that is disruptive and physically dangerous to others, “overeating”, family dynamics.

“Hello. I really hope I don’t come off as ableist. I just need some advice about my autistic  brother. He is currently 26 years old but has no goal or ambitions for his future ( everyone has a different pace I know) His special interest is in cartoons, and and researching about them (which I think is neat ) but it’s the only thing he does besides eat (this has resulted in obesity). He has had one job before, but disliked it, so my mom let him quit.

He is perfectly content just eating and watching tv, I am very worried about his future. I imagine he will stay with my mom until she passes, doing what he is doing now. What about after? We try to talk to him but I think he doesn’t really listen, he just waits for the conversation to be over. For example he only showers on Sunday, and we ask him why and suggest that maybe he can just use a wash cloth but he refuses, so we just have to deal with the odor every week

Like I said he is very large so when he stims (he stomps and spins) it shakes the house and the floorboards make a lot of noise and my teachers ask me what it is  cause it can be heard through my mic even when I’m in the basement ( online school). I ask him to be quieter but he ignores me ( I am younger) also I can’t get it attention because he is swinging his arms and I don’t want to get hit like when we were younger.

I don’t know if there’s much to be done about that tho. Is there any way to motivate my brother, how can tell my brother to think about his future. How can I talk to him in a way that he can hear me.   I am sorry if I used ableist language or phrases, if someone who is autistic or has autistic siblings can lend some advice, it would be appreciated   I want him to be able to live his life even without my mom.  Thank you.”

--

Thank you for writing in. This is a difficult situation to be in, and I hope I can offer at least some encouragement and some clarity, if not a solution.

I am autistic, and so is my brother. My brother is a little bit like yours, in that he doesn’t work and lives with my parents, while I’ve moved away. I’m older than him, though, and he may not care about my opinion about some things, but he doesn’t totally ignore me and he doesn’t physically intimidate me.

I have no idea if your brother’s life has been anything like mine, but I can tell you about the time I spent as an unemployed autistic young adult, living on my parents’ money. The main thing I can tell you is that all pressure from others to get a job or "think about my future" did was make me feel overwhelming panic. It may have seemed like I was living a carefree life but I was constantly aware that I wasn't living up to what a Good Normal Person was supposed to do, and the shame and anxiety that I felt about that were so severe that they prevented me from taking action to get a job or continue school. I tried, but most of the time, applying for jobs was so panic-inducing that I couldn’t force myself to do it.

I had no context for what work would be like, no framework to imagine what kind of job I would like or be good at. It was just a complete blank in my mind. I could not actually *want* a job, because I had no idea what it would be like- I couldn't even really imagine what having my own income would be like- which made it difficult cognitively to plan for getting one.

But also, in particular I had no conception of what a supervisor or coworker could be like other than someone who would judge me and hate me for not being normal. Looking at job postings all I could think about was how terrified I was of being judged and found inadequate. And whenever my parents or others tried to encourage me to apply for jobs, all I felt was that they were angry and disappointed with me for being a failure.

This was because most of my experience of interacting with people outside my family consisted of being bullied and socially isolated by my peers, and being mistreated by teachers. I was not able to get a job until I began to understand just how much I hated myself, why I felt that way, and how my ways of coping with (/hiding from) that feeling were limiting me. And even so, I'm certain I wouldn't have managed to apply for the first "real job" I did get except that I knew there wouldn't be an in-person interview.

I needed: 1. Self-knowledge, analysis of how I was feeling, where it came from and ways to cope with it 2. Concrete information, so that I could say "I could be good at this job" and actually believe it 3. And even with all that, I needed accommodations around the things that were most difficult and fraught for me (interviews).

Thinking back on my own experiences after I graduated from college, I'm really not sure there's anything my friends or family could have done to help me get a job sooner. There was a lot of internal work that I had to do just to be able to interact with people without being incapacitated by anxiety.

My path to getting a "real job" started with volunteer work, in which I learned skills that I was later able to get paid for, and became familiar with organizations that would hire me to do those things. That worked for me because 1. it was online, so it avoided some of the issues I had about meeting new people and talking to people in real time, and 2. I could essentially try out what it was like to have that job by volunteering, with no barrier to entry and no consequences if I decided to back out. That's the best advice I have for your brother- to sort of move laterally towards a paying job through volunteer work, topics he's already interested in, communities he's already connected to.

--

Finally, a word of caution. In your message you mention several different issues with your brother, and I think it's important to be clear about the distinctions between these different issues and why you're concerned about them.

Some of them are problems *for your brother* that don't directly affect you, but you're concerned on his behalf (his future financial security) Some of them *do* directly affect you (noisy stimming while you're trying to focus on school) Some of them aren't really direct, immediate problems for either of you, but they seem like bad things on general principle (being fat)

Our feelings about other people are naturally a mixture of reactions to many different things about them, but please be careful.

It may seem better or more justifiable to say that your brother needs to change for his own good, for the sake of his future, than to ask him to change because he's bothering you, but it's not better. Covering the one thing with the other minimizes your own needs and feelings, which deserve to be listened to and respected, and it makes your comfort and safety depend on controlling your brother's life to a degree that is beyond your right *or your ability* to control.

If he were a significantly different version of himself who had a full-time job and showered regularly and wasn't in your house all the time making you feel like you have no space to yourself, that would sure solve all your problems, but nothing you can do will make him become that person. You especially can’t fix him if you don't trust each other, like each other or listen to each other. Even if you could make him change somehow, it wouldn’t be your responsibility to fix his life for him. That’s a big burden to take on! What you can do, though, is recognize your own needs and find ways to stand up for them.

I don't think I have any really useful insight about getting your brother to take you seriously when you say he's making too much noise. I don't think that's an autism-specific problem. When people have been doing something a certain way for a long time, and it's always seemed to be okay, it can take some repetition to get them to understand that something is actually not okay and they need to change their behavior in the long term.

My advice is what I've heard general advice bloggers say about general interpersonal conflicts: talk to him about it *not* "in the moment" when he's being noisy and you're in class, but at a time when neither of you is stressed and you have time to discuss it. Bringing in other people (your mother?) to confirm that this is a significant problem may help. Still, you may have to repeat yourself a lot.

If your mother *won't* take your side, even for a very reasonable compromise like "do that stim somewhere else" or "at this specific time while I'm on a zoom call, do a different stim," then... that’s not fair to you, and maybe you should think about getting *yourself* out of this house instead of your brother.

The bottom line, I think, is that none of this should have to be your responsibility. You haven’t said your exact age, but you’re still in school. You deserve to be able to make setting *yourself* up for a good life your top priority. It’s good that you want to help your brother, but there may not be much that you can do- especially if he doesn’t *want* to listen to you. I think you should focus on taking care of yourself, and if that incidentally helps your brother or improves your relationship with him, that’s a bonus.

[echidna-auxiliatrix]

Autistic Headcanon: Roxy Lalonde

Special Interests: Wizards, Video Games, Ectobiology, and Cats.

Roxy Lalonde exhibits a number of autistic traits throughout the course of Homestuck. Those being: misreading of social cues and the intentions of others, a reliance on routine, and the aforementioned special interests.

Before we get into those, let’s talk about Mom Lalonde.

Mom Lalonde’s relationship with her daughter, Rose, was certainly not the best. Her alcoholism put a large strain on the already icy relationship. Mom Lalonde was almost certainly aware of this and tried to remedy it by giving Rose a plethora of fancy gifts and life experiences. She lived in a Mansion, Jaspers was buried in a Mausoleum with a tailor-fitted suit, and Rose was gifted a Pony which she did not even ask for. These were well-intentioned on Mom Lalonde’s part¹, but were not well received by Rose. This can be connected to Roxy and by that extension Mom Lalonde being autistic in that it is very common for autistic people to have difficulty expressing affection. Of course Roxy is very frank in how she feels towards others (at least in comparison to some other characters in Homestuck), and I theorize this is because Roxy did not grow up in mainstream allistic society and never had to learn to pass as allistic like Mom Lalonde did.

Roxy Lalonde misses standards of what’s acceptable behavior around others, perhaps most notably (or the first example to come to mind) are the times when she engaged in flirtlarping with Dirk’s Auto Responder². Dirk was at least somewhat uncomfortable with this, though I cannot recall whether or not he expressed this to Roxy. Even if he did not, she was aware that he was gay, and that brings up some ethical problems with her, a girl, flirting with a copy of the 13 year old mind of a gay man. But for the sake of argument: if she wasn’t aware of him being gay, it’s still kind of creepy.

One of the most significant instances of Roxy misreading the intentions of others is when she states that she felt like her mom (alpha Rose) left a stash of alcohol for her as a challenge. Of course we as the audience know that Rose would not wish an addiction onto any child of hers, but Roxy interpreted it in a similar way to how Rose interpreted the numerous gifts from Mom Lalonde: as a passive aggressive challenge or insult. Now it’s time address the elephant in the room. Unfortunately, autistic people are more likely to develop an addiction (Source, tw for ableist language: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/archive/2017/03/autism-and-addiction/518289/). Due to how routine minded autistics are, and given how much down time there was in the Carapacian colony, it would’ve been surprising if she didn’t make a routine around, and therefore an addiction, to the alcohol that was left for her. Later on in the story, Roxy overcomes alcoholism and this is a great feat of inner strength and willpower, especially considering how difficult it can be for a lot of autistics to break a routine. 

Roxy’s special interests were already mentioned in this post, but I’m going to touch on them again. Roxy’s fascination with cats manifests in her other special interests, suggesting that this is her primary special interest. She wears a shirt with a cat’s face on it, some of her wizard plushies have cat heads and tails, and even her ectobiology projects consist of mostly cats. 

¹ I am NOT trying to defend Mom Lalonde’s alcoholism here. I have an alcoholic father who abused my mother for years and continues to abuse the women he dates to this day. I am no stranger to alcoholism and how it effects families and the relationship between a parent and their child.

² I am NOT trying to start discourse about Roxy (Roxcourse?). Nor am I saying that she’s #problematic or anything of that sort. I am merely providing an example which supports my thesis.

[stimmywombat]

Hey, so I’m about to start therapy and I’ve kind of tried to do this a couple of times in my last semester at school. So far my experiences with therapy have been brief and unhelpful. 

The first time I tried therapy was last summer (this was before I thought autism was a possibility)  and that was really unsuccessful and I went away crying. The first red flag was that the therapist literally diagnosed my mom with ocd after I literally just said that she as neat and I am a human embodiment of chaos so that causes friction when we live together the exact phrasing she used was “so she has some ocd tendencies” and that one sentence was the only description I had given her and she had never met my mom, so as a medical professional she should know that you can’t diagnose someone on that little information and even if she wasn’t being literal or serious it’s still shitty to throw around that kind of terminology lightly. So that was shitty and ableist. And then she just recommended like visualization exercises (which can work but which can also be found on google very easily for free, not for a hundred and fifty dollars, and don’t work for me that’s why I was going to a therapist in the first place) and some weird hypnosis like thing which had you look at flashing pictures while recounting traumatic memories which I looked up later and I found some studies that  said it had some efficacy but it was basically on par with talk therapy and any efficacy it had was probably due to the talking about the traumatic memories not the flashing pictures which is some placebo effect pseudoscience bullshit. (Also I didn’t feel like my problems could be linked to any specific traumatic events or anything and the fact that I could do more quality research than her was a bit concerning ).So I didn’t go to a second session.

  The second therapist I went to was ok but it was at one of those free university counseling programs. So she wasn’t qualified to diagnose me with anything and I was like I know that I’ve got something going on so it might be a good idea to try to identify what that is before the therapizing and I got the impression that she was used to dealing with neurotypicals who were just anxious about school and stuff not people who had actual serious mental health problems. She was a lot better than the first lady because she would mostly sit and listen and she would ask me questions about like how I coped with stuff though she didn’t really give me any helpful techniques she tried a few things but none of them were that helpful or anything but there is value in just sitting and listening, so she had the first lady who talked for half the session beat by a mile. I also brought up the autism being a possibility with her but she just kind of ignored it. Going there was kind of like going to career counseling and a few months in I decided that I needed to go see a real therapist because it was like I think I’m autistic and also I’ve been low key suicidal since I was 12 I need someone who’s qualified and able to not just give me value neutral answers even if I have to spend some money.

The third therapist I went to was also through the university. She was the only halfway decent one and the only helpful one but I only got to see her for a couple of months. In the first session I told her that I thought I might be autistic (and I had a lot of things prepared to back me up) and she agreed well she said that I have some autistic traits which is therapy hedging but oh well take what you can get. And she would let you go on walks while doing the therapy which was super helpful and she actually did this thing when I was anxious like one time I told her that I was anxious about a paper and that I wanted to talk to my professor about it and she actually like helped me script out what I would say to him an like helped me come up with a concrete plan to get the paper done and I was like yes, this is actually helpful to me in a way that all this vague touchy feely mindfulness and stuff wasn’t at all. (specifically the second therapist introduced mindfulness as like focusing on individual sensory things, like focus on how you feel in your chair or focus on the sounds in the room which just wrecked havoc with my sensory issues and just kind of made my skin crawl. I think she didn’t realize that I don’t have any problem noticing sensations like that my problem is that I can’t tune them out and in fact I’m constantly trying to tune them out.) And I think it’s because she took my autism into account and realized that concrete was the way to go. But then I graduated and moved back home and I couldn’t go to her anymore. 

So now I have to go see a new therapist and trying to find a therapist just through insurance is exhausting. Like on the list that I got from my insurance literally the first 3 pages were not valid in that they had moved or they didn’t accept my insurance anymore or they were part of a big institution that had set up a fake address for some reason or they just did children or they did aromatherapy or some other pseudoscientific bullshit . And there’s no way to like filter through this giant list so to be honest trying to find a therapist who accepts my insurance  and does autism would be a million times harder (especially one that I can get to without a car) and also there’s the danger of running into aba people and the difficulty of finding someone who does adults (also I’m undiagnosed soooo there’s that). And I live in the middle of a pretty big city right next to six different hospitals. It still took me 3 days of intense searching to find a therapist who would even do anxiety and depression (aka the most common mental illnesses), I eventually found one through one of the ones who didn’t take my insurance calling me back and giving me some recommendations. 

 I have my first appointment on Monday. And my dilemma is a. how does one approach therapy so that it is successful and b. how to successfully bring up the autism since I did it twice and the results were mixed (like I got some ableism from 3rd somewhat decent therapy lady too). I mean I could not but I feel like I would be just talking around it and I think bringing it up could provide context to my issues that I’m trying to solve. I’m also not really looking to get a professional diagnosis because they can cost up to 3,000$ and I feel that therapy would be more helpful to me and with insurance that 3000$ equals 100 therapy sessions also I do not have that much money in general also it could be a disadvantage especially with you know who in office (though I’m already screwed preexisting condition wise since I’ve had asthma since I was 3). I’m worried that a. I could get some ableist bullshit from this therapist that I’ve worked so hard to find and b. she could decide that shes not qualified to treat me and I will be left in the lurch. And when I brought it up to the other 2 therapists I didn’t really do it in a calculating way I just kind of babble when I’m nervous and it slipped out. So idk, any thoughts?

[stimmywombat]

Day 12: Ableism

To be honest I haven’t experienced a ton of ableism because I can pass pretty well and I’m very selective about who I’m out to. And I can be pretty non perceptive when it comes to social stuff so I’m sure there’s a few times where I’ve experienced it but didn’t realize it. It’s hard to know if your actually being discriminated against or if it’s just luck but I’m pretty sure the part of the reason why I haven’t been able to get a job through an interview (the last 3 I got because either, they knew me already, there wasn’t an interview process they just hired based on resumes, or they were only interviewing 2 people and the other person didn’t show up) is autism. When I first came out to my ex girlfriend and she told her mom (who then told the rest of her family) and I visited them shortly afterwards. It was really a weird visit because her mom and her grandma (who lived with her) were nice but they kept on talking to me in like the tone of voice that you would use when talking to a child (which is an experience that I never really had had before as an adult) and her grandma especially kept on explaining really simple things to me and I realized it was because my ex had told her Mom (I’m not sure how her grandma found out she might’ve just overheard) about the autism. At the time I dismissed it because I already had reservations about her family and I figured I just had to tolerate them and also because my ex’s brother was autistic and intellectually disabled (I know mental age is kind of ableist but I don’t know how else to convey this he was 16 and he seemed like he was 8) so I figured that their reactions were informed by that. Though looking back I realised that they also had my ex in their family, and she was autistic and out to them, and she was whip smart and super ambitious. So idk. That was fucking weird.