#another point when someone says diagnosing adults is hard

[thelastschnitzel]

So, I thought about what to get my nephews for Christmas and opened etsy to get inspired or whatever

And I was confused why I had a new message

And then I looked at it and it was a note that my package was delivered.

I have completely forgotten I purchased 2 shirts.

It was totally gone from my memory

Thankfully it fit in my mail box

[vanessagillings]

I’m posting the ever-so-rare photo of myself alongside one of my characters based on my childhood because today is World Autism Acceptance Day, and I wanted to show my little corner of the internet who this particular autistic person is:  

I was officially diagnosed in February, at age 38 (I’m now 39). A lot of people thought I couldn’t be autistic.  Some people who know me in real life still don’t.  And until around 10 years ago, I didn’t think I could be either, because I was nothing like the stereotype media portrays. I was told that autistics lacked empathy (untrue), and never played make-believe (also often untrue) and only enjoyed STEM.  I was — and am — an empathetic artist -- and make believe?  I can spend days sketching finely bedecked bears brewing tea or carefully choosing the right words to weave tapestries of fiction — though perhaps my hyper focus was a bit of a red flag.  Even so, how could autism describe me?  I was a good student.  I got straight A's. I didn’t act out in class.  I can make eye contact…if I must.  And lots of girls hate having their hair brushed with an unholy passion, right?  Clearly I swim in sarcasm like a fish, so autism couldn't be why I was so anxious all the time, could it?

If someone had told me when I was younger what autism ACTUALLY is — instead of the nonsense I’d seen on screens — I would have seen myself in it.  I didn’t hear that autistics have sensory issues until I was in my mid-twenties, which is when I first began to really research autism symptoms, and I had almost all of them:  sensitivity to light, smells, fabrics, temperatures, textures, and certain touches, all of which make me feel anxious, I fidget (stim), I never know what the hell to do with my hands or where to look, I talk too little or too much, I have special interests, I have entire animated movies memorized shot-by-shot and can remember the first time and place I saw every movie I've ever seen but I often forget what I'm trying to say mid-sentence, I echo movies and tv shows (my husband and I have a whole repertoire of shared echolalias, making up about 20% of our conversations), I was in speech therapy as a kid, I have issues with dysnomia and verbal fluency, I toe-walk, I can't multitask to save my life, I like things just-so, I’m deeply introverted but not shy, I need to recover from all social interaction — even social interaction I enjoy — and I find stupid, every day things like grocery shopping, driving and making appointments overwhelming and intensely stressful, sometimes to the point where I struggle to speak.  It turns out, I am definitely autistic. My results weren't borderline. Not even close. And while these aren’t all of my challenges, and not everyone with these symptoms is autistic, it’s definitely something to look into if you present with all of these things at once. 

So why did it take me so long to get diagnosed? The same bias that exists in media threads through the medical community as well, and because I'm a woman who can discuss the weather while smiling on cue, few people thought I was worth looking into. Even after I was fairly certain I was autistic, receiving an official diagnosis in the US is unnecessarily difficult and expensive, and in my case, completely uncovered by my insurance.  It cost me over $4000, and I could only afford it because my husband makes more money than I do as a freelance illustrator — a job I fell into largely because it didn’t require in-person work; like many autists, I have been chronically underemployed and underpaid, in part due to physical illness in my twenties, which is a topic for another day.  But it shouldn’t be like this.  It shouldn’t be so hard for adults to receive diagnoses and it shouldn’t be so hard for people to see themselves in this condition to begin with due to misinformation and stereotypes. Like many issues in America, these barriers are even higher for marginalized groups with multiple intersectionalities. 

It’s commonly said that if you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person.  This is why it’s called a spectrum, not because there’s a linear progression of severity (someone who appears to have low support needs like myself might need more than it seems, and vice versa), but because every autistic person has their own strengths and weaknesses, challenges and experiences, opinions and needs.  No two people on the spectrum present in the same way.  And that’s a good thing!  No way of being autistic is inherently any better than any other, and even if someone on the spectrum struggles with things I don’t — or can do things I can’t — doesn’t make them more or less deserving of respect and human dignity.

But speaking solely for myself, the more I learn about autism, the happier I am to be autistic.  I struggle to find words and exert fine motor control, but my deep passion and fixation has made me good at art and storytelling anyway.  I find more joy watching dogs and studying leaf shapes on my walks than most people do in an entire day.  More often than not, the barriers I’ve faced weren’t due to my autism directly, but due to society being overly rigid about what it considers a valid way of existing.  My hope in writing this today is that maybe one person will realize that autism isn’t what they thought — and that being different is not the same as being less than. My hope with my fiction is to give autistic children mirrors with which to see themselves, and everyone else windows through which to see us as we actually are.

If you’re interested in learning more about autism or think you might be autistic, too, I recommend the Autism Self Advocacy Network  autisticadvocacy.org and the following books:

What I Mean When I Say I’m Autistic by Annie Kotowicz

We're Not Broken by Eric Garcia

Knowing Why edited by Elizabeth Bartmess

Unmasking Autism by Devon Price, PhD

Loud Hands edited by Julia Bascom

Neurotribes by Steve Silberman

(trigger warning: the last two contain quite a lot of upsetting material involving institutionalized child abuse, but I think it’s important for people to know how often autistic children were — and are — abused simply for being neurodivergent).

Thanks for reading 💛

[roguesnezblog]

Trigger warning - Vent stuff (Suicide, bullying etc.) I am not feeling great. And I'm going to censor everything below if you don't want to read. But this post I wanted to make, one, for my own benefit. mentally, but I also feel like people who are in the same position as me could use an understanding ear. So...

Feeling real horrible. Like I shouldn't exist. To put it bluntly. Making the rounds of depression again. I want to type this out here and will most likely delete this later because being vunerable on the internet is not exactly, sometimes, met with anything good.

I won't go into detail on as to why either, since opening up about things you've done is usually weaponized online too. But lets say this: I have been made to feel, in some online spaces, that, My existance and presense should be eradicated.

I have been treated this way by these people for years. Over 5 years now. I had been bullied, and called horrible things, been witch hunted all the works that online crap can bring. And most people are in agreement, I should get over it by now. Who scares if a few people don't like you, don't want you around them? They have a right to believe that, and it's not like I didn't deserve it.

And I suppose in truth a part of me agrees. I dont expect approval, nor do I expect to be liked, a part of me rationally knows this. Not everyone online is going to be on a sympathetic understanding side of things.

But another part of me creeps back. You see, during this time, when people turned on me violently, for mistakes I've made and regret, I got low. Real low. Suicide low. I figured I was diplorable. Unforgivable. Disgusting. I felt like I should be punished. I did. Yanno. Self harm. A lot.

I figured the world would be better. Easier, if I wasn't in it. They made me believe this.

But I was always in conflict with reality. You see online isn't really half of my life. I have good parents, not perfect, but good. And a family who cares about me, and deep down, I knew if I was gone, if anyone, they would suffer for it.

So ...Suicide wasn't really an option. Not properly.

I had no choice but to endure lots of inflammatory comments, being excluded, distanced, the community (not this one) I wanted to feel a part of, and enjoy a love of drawing was...cruel.

I could rant more about what they did. How much they alienated and hurted me, broke down my character and warped me into this...percieved monster. But theres no point. And yanno I don't want to get into details like I said.

But a part of me still thinks that Im not a victim here. That I deserve it.

It's the rest that feels inconsolable. I don't want to die. I don't want to feel like thats the only option for me. To be erased. And think how much easier it would be for everyone else that I didn't exist.

But I want to be a kind person. I don't want to make people uncomfortable with my presense, or existance.

I shouldn't spare mercy to people who don't care. I know...But it's hard not to think when for your entire life you've been messed up.

Im pretty sure being some kinda autistic or at least neurodivergant doesn't help...(I haven't got diagnosed yet. Being a part of british NHS sucks. It would take me 5 years to get someone to see me. So they told me, and I'm considering private, but that costs 2,000 pounds and...Im scared honestly)

Anyway.

This feeling is often met with apathy, or "just don't think about it" by friends and family, who know somewhat about all this.

But it's hard.

It's heavy.

I just wish forgiveness could be an option. The mistakes I made, I learned from, and have never done again. But it's not enough.

It feels like this unending maw, gaping and cavernous. Swallowing me whole until it leaves nothing but that mistake left. They make it me. It's all I am. My identity. I am a literal monster to them. Something to fear like a boogeyman.

Not a dumb young adult who had no idea what they were doing.

I am nearly 30 now. I regret being stupid. Not knowing things, being ignorant and not just....being more calm at the time, but when people jump on you, you panic.

I have dug this hole. I know that... but it feels like I was forced to.

And the prolonged suffering, it's just....

I was happy for a time. You know? The fear and guilt lifted about a year ago for a while. When I found people who appriecate me, who care and want me around in that community, My confidence for a while was up. And I felt like I COULD exist. Live again, and be in spaces without feeling like I was a leech. I was happy and even talked to people in calls. I didn't have nightmares and I didn't feel like I needed to quit my freelance work.

There was...a couple of incidents, where I let my confidence blind me, approached people who haven't forgiven me, and told me to fuck off.

Which I did, to be fair...like I say: I don't have to be friends with everyone.

But...recently, the community pool has gotten thin. Drama happened (not to do with me, thank fuck, I couldn't deal with that stress I feel terrible for the people who have to endure it.) and spaces that were safe have been deleted. And the people who scorn me are now making a new space for them to pool into.

I've been excluded from that space.

That doesn't bother me, I have friends who will remain by my side. And this kinda happens everyone 6 months or so that people move spaces. But-

It's gut wrenching, to feel safe and forgiven. And then to be reminded that no, infact; You can't escape.

My friends will stay in spaces I feel safe in. And I know really- I'm not gonna loose much. But to be reminded that your existance would rather be purged? It's...not a fun feeling. Not to feel especially due to the struggles I've been facing and facing hard these past few months.

I suppose by writing all this, and saying all this, I just can't help but wonder in this mind space...Is it me? My fault? My brain is the one doing this...I am jumping from: Oh people I don't even like don't want me around? Better go die.

I made the mistake in the end....And this is my punishment. My torment for making a mistake.

It's ridiculous really...I shouldn't be feeling this way. But yet I am....I feel hopeless, empty. Sullen. Like theres no point, like all I feel and have been doing to grow, and move on....it doesn't matter. Because nothing changes.

I'm not sure exactly why Im writing this, or why Im even sharing these feelings, perhaps I just want people to talk to. Much as I love my friends, they get uncomfy talking like this... They can be dismissive and they don't really want to find a solution or confront it. I am just told to "forget it" and such. As I said before. But it doesn't help you know?

Putting this out there, it may make it worse...Which honestly; I fear. People online can look at something like this and use it to try make you worse, or kill yourself. Like....some people really just...get a kick out of making you feel like crap.

Im sure this is a sentiment that a lot of people, a lot of you, understand. It's cruel. Bullying and....I wish it would go away, not just for me, but for all of us....But I also hope a part of this can....maybe help someone?

That...something like this, isn't unusual....(unfortunately) and that some of you out there have been through the same thing...or are currently going through the same thing. And if thats the case...As someone who is feeling it at the current moment I want to say this to you:

You matter. You deserve to exist. You CAN live. And ...so long as you learn from your mistakes...That doesn't make you an evil, or even just a bad, person. You're a good person. You're a good person if you want to be better.

And....for you. I will keep this in mind for myself too. I fucked up. Maybe you did too...But we can be fuck ups together.

--------------------------------------------------------

I am not ok, but I think I will be. Admittedly, I could just not post this, but I think theres some value somewhere in this rant. I think it should be heard by some.

[languageshead]

Special interests are not always good

My goal on this website is not to say that autism is all bad or the worst thing in the world. My goal is to: 

1. Share my experiences and listen to people with higher support needs because we are mostly left out and unheard;

2. Spread awareness. A lot of autism traits are human traits, but in order to be diagnosed with autism your traits must cause you impairment. If they don’t, it’s not autism. 

Now, I have already made a post about one of my special interests (Katy Perry) and how it affects me:

https://www.tumblr.com/languageshead/713712598521118720/about-my-last-post-and-the-severity-of-my-autism?source=share

But I want to get a little bit more into that subject. 

A special interest for me is the only way I can connect with the world. I feel like I live on another planet and the only thing that connects me with the rest of the world are special interests. 

But a special interest isn’t always good. I can only and will only speak about my special interest in conversations. I cannot have a conversation with someone who does not understand Linguistics or Katy Perry. I simply don’t know what to say, don’t know how to contribute to the conversation and will not be interested enough to pay attention to it. Often times I am not interested in learning about any other things that is not related to Linguistics and Katy Perry and some other subjects I enjoy. 

Often times, I am unable to have relationships with people that don’t want to hear about my special interest or with people who know nothing about it. Because 90% of my conversations are about my SIs, if you cannot teach me anything about it, I will often lose interest in having any kind of relationship with you. I am genuinely not interested in you if you cannot give me any more information about my SI. That is one of the reasons why I can have better relationships with adults/professors/teachers than with people my age. I like it when people tell me more about my SI. 

When I engage in talking about my SI, I get so excited that I will spend my whole energy talking about it. It comes to a point where I am so excited that my heart is racing and my palms are sweating and I can barely breathe because I am so excited. It drives me to absolute exhaustion and if someone doesn’t stop me, it’s likely that I go into shutdown because of it. This also happens when I am researching or watching videos, I get so excited that I need to stop whatever I am doing to regulate myself from all the emotions I am feelings. Autistics can get overwhelmed by good and bad emotions, which means that even happy feelings can drive me into a meltdown because I feel things so strongly that I can’t control or properly regulate my emotions. 

As some of you might know, I am in Uni in a special program for people with disabilities and sometimes I really need to focus about something I am learning but I can’t. This has gotten me taken out of class because I get so excited I start stimming, breathing hard so I bother other students. A lot of times I need to stop studying for my classes because I get so excited that I simply cannot stay still and continue learning. This really affects my performance as I need to regulate my emotions before going back to my projects and assignments. 

Besides that, specially when special interests occur in people or fictional characters this can cause a lot of suffering to the person. When I was on my early teens, I was obsessed with Lexa from the tv show The 100 and as most of you know she dies. When she died, I had a full blown meltdown in the middle of the night because the show in my country streamed at around 1AM. I mourned the death of a character as if she were a member of my family and I’ve had members of my family die that I definitely did not mourn anywhere near as I mourned for that character. 

As I have already mentioned before, Katy Perry has been my strongest and longest special interest along with Linguistics. And if you read my other post you might understand this better, but I absolutely cannot comprehend Katy Perry is a famous person that simply can’t text me back. My therapist believes this inability has to do with both my autism and language impairment. I am 21 years old now, I understand this better, but not really. When I was on my teens my mom would have to explain to me multiple times a week that Katy wasn’t ignoring me or our letters. She was just famous. This causes suffering to me. This is hard. It’s like trying to make your brain understand a foreign language.

I know there are many other bad experiences about special interest, specially because some people might engage in stalking, difficulties with boundaries and unhealthy behaviors. But I can’t talk about this because this is not my experience. 

I also know there are many good sides to special interests. The joy we feel is really important to me. Small things can make me really happy, like being able to make a small correct sentence in Hebrew. But I am tired of hearing about this because this is always talked about. There is another side to having a SI that people don’t talk about. This is the side I want to show. 

EDIT: forgot to add that not every interest is a special interest. Special interest is usually something that lasts for a long time that helps you cope and understand the world. Autistics can have interests that are not special interests.

[unwelcome-ozian]

Hi, hope you’re doing well. This is hard to talk about for me, so apologies if this doesn’t make a lot of sense.

I have diagnosed DID, specifically polyfragmented, with a very large inner world that we have very little access to from the surface, and when we have, it’s been clear that there are a lot more layers to our DID and trauma than we’re aware of now, or that parts of our brain will let us be aware of, despite being aware of around 90 different alters now. From what we do remember about our childhood trauma it doesn’t make sense for our DID to be this complex. But even before we were aware of the DID we’ve felt like there was something outright sinister that happened to us when we were a baby/toddler, every time the thought resurfaces we try to dismiss it as paranoia but it always comes back. I know we’ve spent hours reading about RAMCOA and TBMC, but the actual information we read always gets blocked out almost entirely. Reading about it makes me feel like I’m going to have a panic attack and I don’t understand why- reading about it just now I started shaking uncontrollably and having heart palpitations, then tearing up- obviously it’s an upsetting topic and should be to most people, but it feels triggering in a way that is personal, and I don’t know why. I vaguely remember that almost every time we’ve read about it, after initially panicking, we intensely age regress and/or it brings out a shell alter, both of which usually only happen after we are either extremely badly triggered or have just experienced something actively traumatic. I forgot about this for years, but typing this just now made me remember that the breaking point of my mental health that caused me to spiral so bad I dropped out of high school wasn’t getting diagnosed with DID in itself, although that was a factor- i think the biggest factor that made me spiral so bad that it brought out highly unstable alters and alters so heavily age regressed that we were unable to function for months and started failing school, was reading about RAMCOA and TBMC for the first time. I don’t know why I keep coming back to reading about it, panicking and then forgetting later. I feel like I’m being irrational for being afraid that something like this happened to me, because it’s not like there’s any evidence. I don’t remember spending a lot of time away from my parents as a very young kid outside of preschool and church, but my memories of both of those things are very hazy, and I feel like there’s probably a lot I don’t remember. When I try to think about any of this now, in the background of my mind I hear sobbing, screaming, thoughts of SH. And the feeling that someone else (idk who) will hurt me. If I try to access memories of my early childhood that feel like they could be related to this, I get someone in my brain saying “stop” repeatedly and then I can’t even remember what I was thinking about (or trying to) at all, just that it was there. It makes me feel like I’m crazy because I want to believe that it’s highly unlikely that anything like this could have happened to me, I don’t have enough reason to believe that it did. But if nothing like that happened to me, why the hell am I so badly triggered by reading about it? I’ve experienced a lot of SA as an older kid, teen, adult that I do at least somewhat remember, but not even hearing someone graphically recount an experience of SA with details similar to my own experiences has this much of an immensely triggering and destabilizing effect on me. Iirc whenever this comes back up I try to convince myself it’s just psychosis, I’m just delusional and I want my trauma to be worse than it is. But that doesn’t make sense- if I just wanted my trauma to be worse than it actually was, I probably wouldn’t be so desperate to come up with another explanation for why I’m so triggered by these topics? I think in saying all this I’m really hoping that you might have other potential explanations, but I’m open to whatever your thoughts are.

Sorry that this kind of just turned into a long rant, I don’t remember where I was originally going with this or what the point of all this was. I’m not really sure what I’m asking for, I guess I just haven’t felt like I’ve been able to talk about this to anyone who would actually take my concerns remotely seriously.

Only you can sort out what occurred. 

Being triggered is a symptom of trauma. Responses to trauma are very individualised. Reading things about trauma/abuse can lead to the responses you described. 

Here's a link to a document that may help when you're triggered.

Managing Your Triggers Tool Kit

Take Care,

Oz

[compassionatereminders]

im sorry if this won't make sense, but eng is not my 1st lang and i really need to vent to someone

well, i have a brother that's 2 years older than me, but im a minor and he is already a young adult, i guess. not an adult, but not a teenager either.

anyways, our relationship was never bad, but it was never good either. like, we used to have good terms, yk? but since our dad passed away, we got more distant from each other and i totally get it, i really do, we never share too much about our lives in the past, and we share even less now. nevertheless, it still hurts for some reason.

he is always angry, he has angry rooted in his body since he started to know the world by himself and i truly believe that the main reason is me. i believe that he hates me since i was born, everyone talks about how he got jealous when he was little bc the attention was all over me and i really understand him, really, i understand that.

when we grew up, he was diagnosed with ADHD and dyslexia, and people got worried about him. i didn't have the age to realize what that meant, but i knew that he had a condition that was not very gentle with the way he sees the world bc people would not understand him, so i started to take care of myself alone, being more independent, while he had attention for him. i was okay with that, alone, but okay, i have always been a introvert and shy person, it doesn't bother me so much... not at that time, at least.

he failed two years of school, while i didn't, and a "bad" part of my family used to joke around with that bc he is not the only one in my family that failed.

with that, the expectations for me started to begin, even if i had a very young age. they just don't care at all, just threw his frustrations on me and that's it, i need to be what they want me to be.

since then, i've been a submissive person. i do what they tell me to do and shut up every time i need to speak.

since the expectations for me are higher than it's for him, he just started hating me openly. idk, it's a teenager thing? since our dad passed away he just became another person, he likes attention and always makes me cry over the simple things bc he victimizes himself so much that people believe in him, he is a compulsive liar and a manipulative person. i hate being with him outside our house, he always screams at me, even on school. i just get so ashamed, i really don't understand why he do all that.

it gets to the point where i just can't focus on anything. my grades got worse and I don't know how to take care of this, not anymore.

i really tried, for a long time, but now nothing works anymore. we live together, just us two (it's a long history btw), and i do everything alone. i clean alone, i do the dishes, i do everything, just everything and it's tiring, very tiring, very hard, i just wanna cry all day and don't get out of my room, but if i do this, the house will be a mess and i really get anxious with mess, but the fact that he doesn't help with simple things kills me slowly

i really can't take it anymore, he is the main reason for all the problems that i have, and it's not even a joke. he makes me hate myself saying horrible things about my body, about how i look, about how i talk, about myself in general and i feel so disgusted being me that i don't like to get out of the house, even the school is a place that i don't like bc he's there and he always lie on school, about me, about our family, about our life, about everything

i'm really exhausted, idk what to do anymore. i just can't do the things that i love without being ashamed bc he can and WILL talk about how strange (sometimes) or how someone is better than me at it

Your brothers personal issues aren't a personal attack on you BUT that doesn't mean they justify him mistreating you. He isn't abusive because he has ADHD and you don't, but neither does his diagnoses justify abuse of any kind. And you can't and shouldn't continue to sacrifice your own needs and boundaries to "be there" for a person who doesn't treat you right

[squarejaww]

Chronic Pain Is Such A Trip

A little background - I was diagnosed with scoliosis in the 5th grade, but was not treated for it until I was a sophomore in high school. This saw me going to the nearest Shriner's hospital, where I was fitted for a wretched plaster-cast back brace that was fitted from under the armpits to over my hips at sweet 16. It was horrible. And, from pressing insistently on my right hip, so fully killed the nerves there that I can't feel it to this day.

I moved through my teen years and into my adult life trying to manage this condition as best as I could on my own. According to the Shriner's doctor when I was a teen, any attempt at corrective surgery would be considered not medically necessary and purely cosmetic. So I should be able to live a fully happy life, yeah? No issues.

Except that the curvature progressed into the severe category, until I eventually got updated xrays in my late 20s that revealed the full extent of my situation, which was an S curve with a twist, a result of degenerative disc disease, spina bifida, and scoliosis. As someone who had been managing on my own with a strict pain medication management plan with my doctor, it was recommended that I pursue surgery. It took years, but eventually, I was able to have the surgery and Harrington Rods were installed in my back.

The surgery was traumatic. The healing process was traumatic. But, eventually, I recovered. That was four years ago.

The pain has returned in a whole new way. I've been going to the gym, eating better, managing with ibuprofen, and trying to do everything that my physical therapist has instructed me to do over the years. But some days, it's so bad that I physically cannot get myself out of bed. I tried urgent care and went to see a doctor, who referred me to a pain clinic. Guess what they did?

They photocopied some book covers, told me I was basically imagining the pain, and said I should get on antidepressants before shoving me, sobbing hysterically, out of the door. It was traumatizing and I refused to go to another doctor again.

That was two years ago. When it was bad enough again that I had to go home from work a coupla weeks ago, I finally scheduled an appointment with a new doctor. With updated xrays. Guess what they informed me?

There's degenerative tearing in my neck.

Holy shit, I'm not crazy. I was over the moon. Even if there was nothing to be done about the pain, at least it was good to know that I wasn't imagining the whole ordeal. I had them forward the report to my physical therapist, so that he could go over the documents with me.

He reported to me that nothing was wrong. According to the report, I was perfectly fine. In fact, his degenerative tearing was probably worse than mine, according to him.

To say that hearing this was devastating is... an understatement. He looked at me like I was imagining the whole thing. And so now I'm more confused and angry than ever. I don't know what to do with this information, especially considering I'm in between doctor's appointments while we try and figure out what is wrong with me, which I hurt constantly, and how we can fix it. (Cherry on top was phys therapist pointing out all my shitty posture and the like as I walked away. It was really hard not to cry)

I'm so tired of being in pain all the time.

[tashrex]

I am disabled. I have chronic pain caused by a genetic mutation. I wasn’t diagnosed until I was pregnant and that only happened because the healthcare system (specifically the obstetrics variety) was playing hot potato with who had to have miss “probably a bad outcome” on their service.

Being shunted from specialty to specialty is nothing new to me. My whole life doctors would play a fun game of “not it” with my file. One doctor I was asking for help with arthritis between my vertebrae that made it painful every time I took a breath for 2 years told me it would hurt less if I journaled and patted me on the head.

But I digress. I give all this background to say I have been vomiting for months and my body has finally given up and elected to nap my way out of this bile filled river I have been rafting down. So my darling husband has been picking up more and more slack as I burp like a lightweight sailor trying to drink their way through stormy seas. The way this tired man keeps stepping up for our child makes me very attracted to him.

This is a problem as 2 days ago I threw up from sneezing too hard. I seduced my husband with the promise of the least exciting ride of his life after which I forbade him from touching me with his too warm hands. It was too late and my sweet furnace of a man had to listen to me fumble for my trusty bucket in the dark. Between heaves I muttered “worth it” to myself and he giggled. He offered to take care of me but I sent his exothermic behind as far from me as possible so I could revert to an unmoving lump in a cold dark cave until this too passes. He sweetly whispers that he loves me as he leaves so of course I reply in kind, gagging after the L of love. He made a sort of wheeze on the other side of the door.

I’m really happy I have the husband I have. Before we got married I was undiagnosed and as we left another doctor who refused to help me I sobbed and told him he didn’t have to marry me. I told him I couldn’t promise I would get better. And today I just made him laugh so hard he made a new sound. I don’t suppose there is a point to this story other than I’m happier than I ever could have hoped but I would also like to stop vomiting.

Chronic illness is such an isolating and exhausting experience so when I have little rays of magic in my days I feel like I need to catch it in a jar to light my darker nights. Perhaps shouting into this void will help me jar today.

I just need to stop avoiding journaling out of spite for that head patting doctor. May the seams of her socks never line up where she wants so they are always a teeny bit uncomfortable. And if she complains I hope someone pats her head like she isn’t a grown ass adult with a legitimate complaint.

[imhellaboss]

God, just saw a tiktok of people applauding Brandon Rogers for not saying the R slur in that one scene but stretching it out to ‘Really.’ Like oh thank god he didn’t say a slur!

Some of my ‘favorite’ comments are:

“character development.”

“That line is hilarious”

“another way around it just start speaking French and call someone slow can't do much when its another language”

“THAT WAS HILARIOUS I LAUGHED SO HARD”

“ngl was disapointed they censored slurs like it's the whole point of the show”

“This is the best line in the whole show cuz it used to be socially acceptable now it’s not 😭😭”

“context: it used to be a diagnoses before people stared taking offence”

“Feels weird to make a joke about considering Blitz is in hell.” (Cont. “Ok and? I’m just saying it feels out of character for blitz to care what he can and can’t say to people he’s insulting. But it doesn’t matter ig”)

“It’s cause he keeps getting cancelled ong. I love Blitzø so much”

“I get it bc of YouTube but it's hell I don't think anyone would care if he said it 💀”

“chronically online” (To someone saying “ I was really about to comment a paragraph and unsub but he didn’t say it😌👍”)

“okay snowflake i'm sure they would listen to one sad little sensitive person. i like the r slur jokes” (Reply to the same person from above)

“Brother they live in hell” (My personal favorite)

“People on the internet when an adult show has offensive content: 🤯”

“Snowflake”

“the r word gets you canceled :3”

“I don't get why he had to do that. I don't the word is that bad unless is has some bigger, worse meaning like the N word”

“He was going to say (r slur) right?”

“bruh it's just a word”

“As a autistic person I'm sad he doesn't say it no more. Since ya know. Demon and all lol 😂”

If Character Development equals not saying the R slur to you then you need to look in and find out what’s wrong with you.

[fionacle]

someone please help me shorten my college essay oh my god

it needs to be 650 words, max, but it’s 897 right now, and that’s after editing.

i don’t want to take anything out, but I have to.

a teacher told me to take out every “I’m not normal” but i will absolutely fucking not

Pasting it below the cut, CW for ableism (my topic is how people will refer to people with autism and stuff as “special”)

Also if I wrote anything offensive lmk because the only people I’ve shown it to are neurotypical adults

At some point, almost every child is told that they are special. It’s a great feeling. Human nature is to strive for the top, and children especially enjoy having their inflated self-importance validated. But I quickly learned the downside to that word.

I couldn’t tell you the first time it happened, most things before high school are a blur, but I’ve often heard others called special. The meaning of this is nothing like the way special is supposed to mean. Special things are supposed to be important and unique, they matter a lot for one reason or another, it’s a very high compliment if you say it genuinely. But here it’s condescending. Like this is the core of the person being spoken about, and that core is a taboo. Like it’s pity for an illness, or warning of danger. They say the word as though they’re describing a creature, some animal of lesser mind. I still hear this often.

To speak with one of ‘them’ is seen as a great act rather than basic human decency toward a human.

“I’m proud of you for being friends with him.” “Why?” “Oh, you know, he’s special.”

I love being praised. More than anything else in the world. I need to know I matter. I need to feel skilled and important, the good kind of special. But when I’m praised for something like this I feel dirty. I can’t help but try to be the white knight when a friend is upset, I love being a hero even when it’s unneeded or undeserved, but not here. If I accept this praise it means I agree that I had to do something significant and difficult. It means that my friend is just a challenge that I beat. So, not only would I be lying, I’d also be insulting my friend, even if he wouldn’t be in earshot.

I want nothing more in life than to be special. The good kind.

I want to finish writing a good book and become famous for it. I want adoring fans, and to make a difference in their lives. I want to be talked about by people as someone cool and worthy of awe and respect, maybe even envy. I want to know that my friends consider me significant and wonderful. I want everyone I meet to be so earnest about their care for me that it forces out any thought that tells me I’m not worth their time. I want to carry around the good special for everyone.

But honestly, the word isn’t really that important to me. I don’t hold any affection for it. I’m upset that it dehumanizes others, but mostly I’m upset that it dehumanizes me.

I’m not clinically diagnosed with autism. I’m clinically diagnosed with ADHD, and that’s it. But I am sure I do not exclusively have ADHD.

When I go into testing rooms, I’ve been to quite a few since childhood, they present games to test my brain functions. This is an awful way for me to show my symptoms. I do the best I can on the tests because they’re fun and I want to show off. I tend not to have “off” days when I visit them, especially because I’m rarely around triggers. They don’t see me cry because the lunch man took my apple juice cap. They don’t see me flail around because I hear someone chewing gum. They don’t hear my autistic friends explain to me how my experiences match theirs to an alarming degree. I’m horribly emotional and sensitive and find it incredibly hard to not hate every kid outside my friend group. I need them to see my tears in action. I need them to see. I need to take my memories out of my brain and show them. They need to know everything I’ve done and they need to put a word to it and let me tell people.

Then, maybe, they won’t tell me to stop. To stop being too weird. To stop being too emotional. To stop being afraid of things no one else cares about. To stop “misidentifying” emotions. To stop all of it. To just be normal. Because no matter how much they want it to be true it’s not. It’s not. It never will be. I cannot be. I’m not normal.

There’s something both cathartic and terrifying in saying that.

I’m not normal.

“Stop doing that or they’ll think you’re special.”

I am. I am special. You’ve known me your whole life. People I’ve known for a year can see it. Why can’t you? Why can’t you see that a fundamental part of me is that my brain is not normal. Why can’t you stop making that face when I bring this stuff up. Don’t tell me I’m copying my friends. Don’t tell me my friends are weak. They are not weak. I am not weak when I act like them. When I am true to myself I am strong. Don’t tell me that strength isn’t the real me. You need to re-learn who I am before you get to tell me who that is.

I am not some normal girl, what makes me different is a bigger part of me than my loved ones would like to admit. I think they ought to know me as “bad” special, as much as I hate the word.

[goldeneyedgirl]

flattering ask time: baby-verse is an obssession. i love how you put these two totally non-parents weirdos as such a childcare team. like, jasper is fucking frozen because his son - who he feeds, baths, put in bed, play with and cuddles - called him...daddy. i just know parenthood hit him hard with that one.

damage alice is another obssession. as a neurodivergent person myself, it's so funny to me that we both have very similar "episodes".

now the questions about both of these fics: would you say that jasper is more of a warm/soft parent or the emotional distant parent who, at the same time, is always there for his son (since you already told here he is, in fact, a good dad). and, for damage alice, are you going with opportunist cullens who see alice as an experiment or something to be saved because they need to prove to god that they are good people and stuff, or with nice cullens who just want to take care of this little girl and give her a home?

(now, english isn't my first language, so excuse me if there are any mistakes ❤)

I am SO flattered that baby-verse seems to be so loved because Alice and Jasper are, like, the most pro-choice of the Cullens (as a side note, I think Emmett is also pro-choice because he saw first-hand what large families stuck in poverty went through.) So the idea of them juggling a dependent life is kind of insanity. But Alice is a perfectionist, and Jasper is both devoted to Alice and hugely overprotective, so they would figure out something that worked.

For Jasper's parenting style, it's different depending on the angle you look at it from. Jasper is very, very quietly involved. He is incredibly warm with Oliver, and very emotionally available for him throughout his life, but as Oliver gets older (especially once he's in his teens and young adult years), he realizes just how little he knows about his father. Alice also knows that Jasper is an equal parent to her - he knows Oliver's teachers' names, his favourite movie, allergies, crush etc. But to anyone on the outside, it would very much look like Alice was the primary caregiver - even Emmett gives him some hell for letting Alice do a lot of the heavy lifting. Jasper does this intentionally, as a protective thing, as a way to conceal his own vulnerabilities. It also helps when Oliver is just too old to convincingly look like their kid and becomes a cousin or a younger sibling to outsiders. As an adult, Oliver would say that his father is very mysterious to everyone but Alice, but that Jasper was a very good father (much to Jasper's relief. He has a LOT of anxiety over the idea of a 'good' father.)

I started Damaged Alice years ago before I realized and was diagnosed as neurodivergent and it's eye-opening how many behaviours I incorporated that imply Alice is ND. I hate the way that the transformation makes vampires 'perfect' - it's so boring and ableist. Give me Esme with OCD and anxiety, and Emmett with bear-attack scars, and Rosalie who has to wait for her physical wounds to heal and ugh. There is nothing thrilling about straight, white, Mormon neurotypical people.

In Damaged Alice, the Cullens kind of fall in between both categories. There was a plot point that Alice was sent to find the Cullens by the Groundskeeper (who heard about them from Alice and her visions), because they would protect her. There is a letter to explain the situation - I don't know whether I will keep that, honestly, because I like the idea of Alice being a mysterious figure.

But when Alice does arrive and is clearly not NT, the Cullens take her in for protection because they genuinely care about this poor girl's welfare (you can argue that their sentiment is apart of their Good Christian Family act but Carlisle's faith has shaped so much of who he is and how he approaches his family and vampirism, that it's impossible to split the two). At that point, she definitely functions as someone much younger and her newborn state has left her with a lot of feral behaviours and impulse control (there's a temper tantrum in a shopping mall because she wants a pet rabbit).

As time moves on, it's more and more clear that the Cullens have put her in a box because they don't expect her condition to change, when the venom is healing the damage to her brain - it's just a very, very slow process. Even after Jasper arrives and Alice latches onto him and improvement is made, the Cullens still resist letting her evolve and mature. They really expect her to stay childlike and dependent on them. Carlisle has an invested interest in her mental state, being a doctor, and Esme likes having someone she can dote on like a child.

And a lot of Alice's ND behaviours - lack of eye-contact, going non-verbal, meltdowns - are things that the Cullens try to cure her of; and they never really understand that Alice is dealing with excess sensory input because of her visions. A lot of her meltdowns are because of visions (especially when she sees Jasper fighting in the South). And her family really don't understand that. But no family is perfect (especially not families with ND individuals), and Alice and Jasper understand each other here (and in all my fics, lets be real).

Thank you so much for your ask, and your English is perfect <3

[serenova]

Hi I read your rant about ADHD being a disability and I’m like, I need to follow this person! I’m 36 and just got diagnosed about 18ish months ago. I just lost my job partly due to my ADHD and it’s slapping me in the face that I’m different. I’ve always known that but this recent job loss dropped the bricks on me all over again. It’s hard to accept that I have limits and that’s not a bad thing because society wants someone who can do everything.

Hey there!

Glad you appreciated the rant 😅

I am "lucky" in that I was diagnosed while still in elementary school. But it still took me many many years to come to terms with it, and even now I have bad days, where I blame myself and think I'm not good enough. my husband has been witness to a few of my "I'm not good enough" spirals (he's a fucking SAINT)

the best thing you can get is a support network. it doesn't even need to be IRL, it can definitely be virtual if that's what you can manage

there's also some good discord servers out there for neurodivergent people, and a lot of them offer body double hang out voice channels.

if you aren't familiar with body doubling that's definitely something that's helped me! it's where you just.... have someone else on the computer (it has to be a real person, fake doesn't trick the brain), and you just.... each do your own thing, but KNOWING there's another person there, even if you're not communicating, somehow really helps

You have the advantage of being an adult and there's a whole lot more resources out there than there was 25 years ago!

Something that's helped me at least figure out when I'm struggling is something called "metacognition" which is basically thinking about how you think.

it's paying attention to your own thoughts... not in a stopping thoughts way but in a "I had this thought, where did it come from" kind of way if that makes any sense

it's helped me recognize when I was having a bad day, or starting a spiral... it's not a cure all but it can definitely help identify behavior patterns

also.... I embraced the "good enough" mentality... which took me YEARS to do, but basically if you can half-ass something then that's better than not doing it at all. I think being a fiber crafter really drilled it home, because no sewing or knitting or weaving or crochet project is ever perfect and sometimes you just gotta keep going. (a functional zipper still works, even if it's a little wonky, or who cares if you missed a stitch in the lace, no one's gonna notice, just keep going - but it can apply to other things in life too)

All of this to say.... You're not lesser for having it, but it IS a disability. And there are plenty of resources available these days that can help if you know where to look. I can point you to specific resources or discord servers if you want!

Also..... fuck planners 🤣

PS: if you wanna chat you can DM me!

[selfindulgenttiger]

Childhood Clues

I was discussing with someone today the fact that, to be diagnosed with autism as an adult, you have to have shown signs in early childhood. Depending who you ask, that's before age 6, age 8, age 11, or age 18. With so many people (women most often) being diagnosed as adults, some people are questioning the frequency of diagnosis. (Untreated C-PTSD and PTSD symptoms can manifest very similarly to autism.) That started me reflecting on my own childhood behavior and what clues were missed or dismissed. I wanted to catalogue them (because I'm autistic and that's what we do with information). This is stuff from early childhood to pre-teen years. Category A: Deficits in social communication and social interaction

This area of the diagnostic criteria is the hardest for me to judge, because you don't really see your own deficits in this area. If you don't understand what the social rules are, you don't see how you are breaking them. What I can say is that I never made friends easily, and I wasn't particularly bothered by that until I was old enough to realize I was perceived as weird because of it. From second through fourth grade, I don't remember having a friend. I typically spent recess walking in a circle around my favorite tree, which I enjoyed. I was the outsider everywhere. I didn't make friends in Brownies, I didn't make friends in my performing arts classes, I was even "the weird kid" among the gifted kids. Another part of this is your nonverbal communication. There are literally dozens of photos of me with a flat affect from early childhood. Smiling never came naturally to my face. And I assume there was something off about my eye contact and general manners, because I remember my dad explicitly teaching me to make eye contact, smile, use people's names, and express warmth. (He had read it in a book, so obviously this was novel information to Dad, too, that he felt compelled to share.)

Category B: Repetitive behaviors and restricted interests.

This? Not so hard to spot. I knew I was different in this way. I just didn't understand that it meant something. The first point is basically stimming. Where to begin? Lifelong constant knuckle-cracking. Nail, cuticle, and lip biting till I'd bleed. Knee-bouncing. Echolalia in the form of this high-pitched screech sound I enjoyed making, and singing the same songs again and again and again and again. (I still sing them when I'm really stressed.) My interests were definitely what they mean by "restricted interests" which is basically what we'd call "obsessed" in the lay vernacular. Like I became obsessed with mice from around 7-12. I accumulated 41 mouse stuffed toys that I did not play with but arranged in a tableau. I wanted pet mice, even though they're very short-lived compared to other pets and I'd have total meltdowns when one died. I would talk my parents into getting me another and tell them I'd be able to handle it this time, but I never could. (I also collected Weebles, Barbies, Smurfs, and Cabbage Patch Kids, but no other stuffed animals. Most kids have a mixture of different stuffed animals, but I only wanted mice. I didn't actually really play with the other toys either. I just liked having collections and creating tableaux.) Star Trek was such a fixation from elementary school on. Every year they'd have a 3-day Labor Day weekend marathon on one of our local stations. I would try to stay up for all three days. One year, on day three, I yanked the phone out of the wall for having the temerity to keep ringing during a favorite episode. I had all 79 episode titles and descriptions memorized. I sneakily studied my uncle's copy of the technical manual for the Enterprise, even though he didn't want me touching it because it was collectible. One of the greatest disappointments of my young life was not convincing my parents to take me to the convention. I never played soccer or particularly liked soccer, but I went to all the Strikers games with my dad. He would buy me a program and I would memorize the roster of every team. Then when he'd say "great play by number 12" I would tell him all that person's stats. I didn't love the game, but boy, did I love the stats.

Another thing that falls under this category is sensory sensitivities. I had the stereotypical autistic girl hypersensitivity issues (which for the record are screaming when your hair gets brushed, rejecting blue jeans and socks because of the seams, and complaining about the sound of electricity in the walls or bugs walking). But I also have my own oddball ones, like rejecting shoes. I had to have the tips of three toes reattached before age 10 because I wouldn't even wear shoes when riding a bike or walking outdoors. My poor parents had to take me to the ER so many times. (I still cannot bring myself to keep my shoes on any more than is strictly necessary.)

I also rejected any clothing that was textured (so no corduroy in the 70s) or had heavy seams (no jeans even at the height of the Gloria Vanderbilt trend). I would steal my dad's work shirts because they were smooth. For several years, I went to school in scrubs I got at a yard sale. (Scrubs. In middle school. You can guess how that went.) And finally, of course, the overstimulation issue. I had a meltdown and ended up fighting with my mom or crying at every holiday gathering ever. I ran away from my own 10th birthday party and hid for half an hour because my grandmother was going to give me a kiss. My mother loathed taking me on vacation because I invariably got super excited and then overstimulated and then had a meltdown. By the time I was a teenager, she swore she'd never take me again.

When I look back, yeah, it was very clearly there but no one knew what it was. I just seemed like an unruly, melodramatic, weird kid. (And maybe not all the weird in my family.)

[celestialautifutch]

I debated commenting on this because I don't want the person to feel like I was attacking them (same reason I cut the username out) but this mindset is also a problem. As stated above, some men do expect their partners to do all the housework, but this comment points out another issue men face, which is the assumption that men either cannot be neurodivergent or, if they are, it shouldn't impact them in the way it does for most of us. Couple that with the above issues of men not getting support that they need, even from the people who claim to love them most, and you've got a guy who's struggling and has no idea how to get help.

Some of the things people point to as "signs of weaponized incompetence" are very common traits of different neurodivergences.

Struggles to start tasks? Doesn't know where to start? Doesn't know how to do it unless told how someone wants it done? Doesn't see mess or clutter? Struggles to regulate emotions? Losing track of time? Getting fixated on one "unimportant" thing he enjoys for hours on end while not doing things that need to get done around the house? Struggles with decision-making? Poor memory? Doesn't know how to ask for help? Doesn't even know what kind of help to ask for? These are all things that fit into multiple neurodivergences, but you could pull these right off a "common signs of adult adhd" list. (And I'll be focusing my input on adhd specifically, but I see them in my autism as well)

I'm in an ADHD group on fb that is primarily women, and I can't tell you how often women talk about their internal struggles with all of these things, how awful they feel, how their partner doesn't understand and makes them feel worse, but always always there are hundreds of women responding with "I'm sorry your husband wasn't more understanding and didn't take the time to learn about how ADHD impacts you."

Now don't get me wrong, there are plenty of people in this world who don't give a fuck about adhd, especially when it comes to adults, people of color, and women, but we want people to learn and be understanding and try to find the person some support for themself, their relationship, managing tasks, etc. I've never once seen a man get the same treatment. Hell, I've seen women in this group talk about issues with their husband, clarify that he also has adhd, and commenters still saying that he needs to "just get his shit together, you aren't his mother."

We act like (white) men get so much help with adhd, particularly if they were diagnosed as a kid, when really all most of them got was a prescription that their parents refused to give them and "just try/focus harder" from parents and teaches. I met a lot of boys/men with adhd in my life, and moving into adulthood they struggle just as much with it as the rest of us, but it gets completely written off. My 32 year old brother went to therapy for the first time, got diagnosed with adhd shortly after (I've been telling him for years he should get assessed, but his wonder wife kept telling him that he was just lazy and stupid - oh btw she's a grad student for special ed 🙃) and finally realized why things that everyone seemed to have no problem with were so hard for him. How many more men are in this exact situation? How many of them are getting understanding and support from their partners? How many of them are just getting slapped with the lazy, useless label? How many of them are treated like children? Like burdens?

Contrary to what a lot of people (including medical professions, big yikes) believe, adhd doesn't go away with time. Adhd boys become adhd men and still need support. And considering the point of this post, most neurodivergent men aren't going to disclose that (if they're aware of it) right off the bat unless they trust the women in their lives. Those women need to first show that his emotions and struggles are safe with her, just as he needs to do with hers.

And yeah, sometimes he is just being a shit, but going into it with that mindset, that every man having these issues is just lazy, doesn't help anyone.

Not to get personal, but these tags are exactly what I heard in my household growing up and it's a mindset that traumatizes ND folks. Let's drop the 'one time should be enough' mindset.

is he “trauma dumping” on you or have you just not unpacked what the patriarchy has taught you outside of “woman bad” and you think men expressing any kind of emotion or vulnerability is bad actually.

[stranger-rants]

I am dealing with a student from last year who has ODD (oppositional defiant disorder) and PTSD, and I will be honest with you I have fully gotten into arguments with them in the past. They are very difficult to be around sometimes, especially when their behavior triggers my own anxiety. They have their own prejudices and they can be violent when they are triggered, too.

However, I have also had really positive interactions with them and I have been able to work with them if I approach things a certain way. For example, if I explain what their choices are in a certain situation and what the consequence of each choice will be then they are better prepared to make decisions. I also start every day like a fresh start.

Unfortunately, I do not teach them this year. This student's new teacher has kicked them out every day because of their behavior, and I get that every person has a threshold but this has also involved their teacher saying they "do it on purpose" and whenever the student asks "what did I do?" the response is always "You know what you did!"

It's so frustrating because my team and I have to explain to another adult that the student's diagnoses actually do matter and the student oftentimes does not know or understand what they said or did wrong, which is often met with well we're just being too politically correct now and being diagnosed with x, y, or z doesn't excuse the student. Yes, it does! It means they need a different approach!

When you use the word "excuse" to talk about abuse survivors, you are often using it in ableist ways that prevent a person from functioning the way you want them to. No, you cannot make a person change but you greatly reduce their ability to do so if you don't acknowledge the reasons why they aren't behaving the way you want them to.

At the end of the day, I don't like being mistreated by my students and I don't tolerate it when they do. I certainly do not tolerate it when it comes to verbal or physical abuse towards other students. However, I am also trying really hard to not be the person who shuts down any opportunity those developing humans have at a better life.

If all you can think of is to call it an "excuse" when someone discusses the context of someone's behavior, then you're not actually helping people the way you're thinking you're helping people. You are pushing people further and further away from any chance of coping healthily with their traumas and you are putting violent people out into the world.

Case in point. ODD is used as a precursor to ASPD (antisocial personality disorder). Minors do not get diagnosed with ASPD, so they use ODD. However, ODD and ASPD usually stem from trauma. It does not happen by accident. It is also not permanent and a person with ODD or ASPD could learn to function in society with proper supports.

The media you engage with and how you engage with it can do so much damage to real people, and some of you really do not care.

[my-darling-boy]

Genuinely asking, isn't self-diagnose with a condition kind of dangerous? Because legitimizing self-diagnosing opens a door to many malicious people who would want to exploit the fact they can self-diagnose? And in turn, make the space of autistic people worse?

Was going to skip this, but I’m writing a LONG response because I’m VERY exhausted with the amount of misinformation I see on this “self dx is dangerous” take, so buckle up and allow me to info dump.

Recently, authentic_autism_advocacy, an Instagram account run by a supposed medically diagnosed autistic woman was discovered to be a non-autistic woman, Connie Manning, posing as a medically diagnosed autistic person to spread hate and anti-self diagnosing speech. In reality, she is a neurotypical mother who regularly uses her autistic son for clout; she also turned out to have a hand behind CalmWear, a brand of sensory compression products designed for disabled people. Not only had she been spewing hatred towards other autistic people, she had been accusing well known AFAB autistic tiktokers like beckspectrum of faking being autistic and threatening self diagnosed autistics and saying they are a danger to the community, and engaging in other incredibly discriminating behaviour. Yes, she herself was a neurotypical person posing as a medically diagnosed autistic to perpetuate hateful rhetoric about self diagnosed people and used her voice to speak OVER autistic folk for financial gain and exploitation of autistic people, including her own son. If you want to read this roller coaster of a story, an autistic person wrote an entire article on it with tons of screenshots and sources.

So let me make one thing clear to you.

The purpose of actually, genuinely self diagnosing is not done to attract attention or to parade around and exploit other autistic people. Self diagnosed autistic individuals have recognised due to difficult life circumstances, financial hardship, bigotry and stigma within the medical/legal world, being a minor, lack of insurance, lack of proper access to safe care facilities, being denied assessment due to incompetent or biased practitioners, and/or any other obstacle that they may temporarily or permanently be barred from diagnosis. Self diagnosis does NOT instantly mean a person is posing for clout, nor does it indicate a person is trying to wring money from assistance services or exploit other autistics. And nts who use self diagnose with intentions of harming the community? That’s NOT self diagnosis, that’s abuse of something meant to aid people blocked from medical care or financial means to that care. All we can do for autistic people, no matter who we perceive them to be, is treat them the same way we would any other autistic person. Because the moment you start deciding by your own book who deserves respect and who doesn’t, you’ll be on a slippery slope to locking out thousands of autistic people from the community. If it’s discovered a person like Connie is literally abusing the system of self dx to intentionally mislead the community, by all means, we must hold them accountable. But you cannot simply go about granting and revoking access from people just because someone lacks a diagnosis or doesn’t fit your idea of what being autistic looks like, especially if it’s based on stereotypes.

Moral of the story? Isn’t it ironic how anti-self dx people will 100% believe a user who claims to be medically diagnosed but shows no “written proof” of it, yet always demand written proof from a self dx person? It’s almost like even anti-self dx people can’t tell the difference between someone who is medically diagnosed autistic and someone who isn’t. Well, that’s because they can’t. While there might be common traits, autism has no set model, it is a spectrum, no autistic person is alike; Policing self diagnosed people about their self diagnosis isn’t a form of protecting the community. It’s a form of gatekeeping. If you find yourself granting instant acceptance, without asking for proof, to a person insisting they are medically diagnosed like this neurotyical mother, but then prohibit self dx people from entry entirely on the grounds of not showing proof of medical assessment, you are upholding a double standard. This is why policing autistic people’s diagnosis, self or not, is inherently useless.

So here’s the thing... instead of asking people to stop self diagnosing, what you should instead be asking yourself is, “Why do people self diagnose? What kind of medical system could possibly be in place where people feel they need to resort to self diagnosis rather than get an actual diagnosis?”

Well, it’s mainly common knowledge among most of the autistic community that diagnosis is NOT easy to come by.

One of the main reasons why people cannot get a diagnosis is due to financial/insurance reasons. It’s reasonable to estimate that by the end of 2020 almost 30 million Americans alone were without health insurance. I’ve heard costs out of pocket for an autism diagnosis are between $500-$6000. If a person or a family cannot afford health insurance—which by the way on average is around $5,400 a year for a single person and $13,800 for a family here—where are they supposed to pull out $6,000 to get screened?

You might be asking, “Well aren’t insurances supposed to cover disability?” Sure, there are options for disability care through health insurance—not even going to get into that—but like a lot of things in the US, this is a severely flawed system. A lot of private health insurance will stop or limit coverage for an autism diagnosis or assistance services once a person reaches 18 to 21 years old. In most states, coverage has a higher chance of being denied to autistic adults coming with the added age cap or ONLY covering ABA, an abusive, manipulative “therapy” used to force social compliance and trait suppression on autistic people. The fact that ABA, a conversion therapy, is covered, but little else, shows exactly what insurance companies think of autistic people: they’ll only cover us if we want to learn to be “normal”. This can leave many undiagnosed autistic adults who cannot afford analysis, insurance, or safe assistance services with nowhere to turn. If I was not on my parents’ insurance, there is NO WAY I would EVER be able to afford a diagnosis. I don’t have $2,000 lying around. The MONEY ALONE would prohibit me from getting a diagnosis, no matter how many autistic traits I presented.

When I was going through this system years ago to start a diagnosis, I was shocked to find no therapist within three hours of me was accepting adult patients. “Up to 18 only” their websites would say. And in the event I had found one (1) that accepted me as a then 20 year old with X insurance, and that person refused me diagnosis, I would be out of options unless I planned a 5 hour drive which may have also led me to another biased screener. A person seeking self financed assessment can waste thousands of dollars therapist hopping.

People will say, “Well I live in X place, and where I come from, it’s covered!” Well the reality is that everyone in the world does not live where you live. It’s not realistic to assume everyone is in the same position as you or your family to afford care or access the same resources as you. When you say, “Just go out and get a diagnosis! It’s not that hard!”, understand you are speaking from your personal vantage point where screening may be easily accessed or easily covered/is free OR you have no personal knowledge of what that process is like yourself.

The second thing that bars a ton of people from being diagnosed is the fact that when autism was first discovered, its research was HEAVILY centered on white, cis, heterosexual men. The idea that autistic people are ONLY cis, white, heterosexual men carries on to this day. If you are an outlier to this stereotype, your chances of being misdiagnosed with something else or refused diagnosis skyrocket because so-called “professionals” don’t know how to observe traits in any other person besides a cis, white, heterosexual man, and refuse/fail to recognise the endless ways in which a person can be autistic. ALL the time I hear how AFAB people will go in to get screened only to find out their screener does not believe AFAB people can be autistic, because yes, sexism and anti-lgbtq+ ideas play a huge role in the incredibly outdated diagnostic process, because autism is still believed to be an “AMAB only” thing. People report going into a therapists office and being asked questions like, “Do you like going outside? Do you like having friends?” and being told that if you agree with either of these, you cannot be autistic because criteria at some places is so backwards, you can’t even say you enjoy conversation without failing the test. Other things commonly heard during the analysis are screeners telling someone they are too smart/articulate to be autistic, gas lighting them by saying they are mistaking their symptoms for something else/making them up, telling a person they seem normal, dismissing clear autistic traits by saying they’re unique “superpowers”, or intentionally misdiagnosing a person as ADHD INSTEAD of autistic. People on social media have also pointed out what influences racism has on the diagnostic process as well and how lack of research and understanding of autistic POC contributes to under-diagnosis and stigma has only contributed to refusal of care and under-representation of POC in the disabled community, as one autistic Black woman points out on Instagram, “I found excellent articles that support and validate my feelings and experiences, but I could find no research on autistic Black people.” Additionally, because research has primarily been done on young men, this means anyone who is not a cis man and is over the age of 18 and is seeking a diagnosis has a much higher chance of not receiving one because screeners don’t understand how autistic traits may present differently in adults, especially since adults are very likely to mask. Some autism screeners are so against autism they have told clients they would only diagnosis a person autistic if it was their last resort to avoid “placing a burden on their shoulders”. These reasons are largely responsible for why autism is incredibly mis/under-diagnosed. This ask would be the length of a novel if I included every single type of discrimination and mistreatment during the evaluation process alone, but understand it can be incredibly biased, sexist, transphobic, racist, or just flat out ableist. And guess what? Though this process can take as little as a month to get sorted, that is rare. The assessment SHOULD be very short. But a lot of autistic people have reported their diagnosis took more than 2-4 years because of having to waste time, energy, and money hopping from therapist to therapist looking for someone to take them seriously, as many autistic people compiled on the actuallyautistictiktoks page on Instagram point out.

The last thing I want to touch on is this idea that people have that self diagnosing is dangerous. “What if someone self diagnoses and they take advantage of services that are meant for autistic people?” ...The Big Things you think I am going to take advantage of as a self diagnosed autistic person, like scholarship money for instance or SSDI, I do not have legal access to without a formal diagnosis. I cannot waltz into a law firm and ask for a $5,000 scholarship for autistic people without a diagnosis, because they WILL NOT give it to me!

Let me tell you some of things I’ve “cruelly taken advantage of” as a self diagnosed autistic person. I bought glasses with blue light protection, because screen and fluorescent lighting at work and even natural blue toned light from the sky lowers my threshold for some sensory input like noise and social interaction; wearing them to work everyday has improved my sensory thresholds incredibly. I’ve talked to my manager and told him I’m autistic and that I have a hard time understanding vague direction and may need to step away briefly on occasion to tend to a shutdown before a meltdown comes on at work; he had no problem with this. I use subtitles; sometimes I have trouble processing audio or reading facial expressions and tone, and being able to see the words displayed on the screen gives me a significantly better understanding of what I watch. All my life, I have been having meltdowns which I had mistaken for mental breakdowns or panic attacks and having access to resources that walked me through preventative methods and tips on what to do if I have one has been ENORMOUSLY helpful to me. All my life, I was trying to deal with them thinking they were something else; becoming aware of this and accepting that they are in fact autistic meltdowns has helped me not only go through them, but has helped me redirect stims which at their worst previously had me hitting and clawing my arms, slapping my face, and even hitting my head. I don’t know about you, but I don’t want to wait 4 years for a diagnosis to use resources I could be using to make my life more accessible right now!

People will say, “Oh well yeah, I don’t mean You are one of Those Types of self diagnosed autistic people, you clearly sound/look autistic, I’m talking about other people.” The thing is, there is no broad “sounding/looking autistic”, that’s stereotyping, and you can’t demand everyone who interacts with you show you their Autistic Card, because again, not everyone is able to be diagnosed, especially given the mistreatment and stigma present towards autistic people in the medical field! And what made you ask for their diagnosis? Because they “don’t seem autistic” to you? Why didn’t you ask for their diagnosis? Because they “seemed autistic” to you? By denying anyone who doesn’t have a diagnosis resources they may very well need, you are denying assistance to thousands of people who are without means to be diagnosed. And I am SO tired of seeing comments online on self diagnosis posts that “people don’t know what they’re taking about” as if they know us personally, like are you me? Are you my doctor I’ve consulted? Did you watch me academically research and consult with other autistic people about being autistic for over 3 years? I’m tired of “well, one time a self diagnosed person laughed at my actually autistic diagnosed friend...so all self dx people are evil” because there is ZERO correlation between a person being self assessed and their behavior towards a non self assessed person. The fact both those arguments are in use whenever self dx comes up is yet another form of gatekeeping.

Self diagnosing autism is not begging for attention or Evil Criminal Money Funneling Schemes. It is a result of a deeply flawed medical and insurance system that has failed to give proper attention and care to those who need it, it is a result of resources not made available, of safe support systems not there for kids and adults alike. You want to talk about what’s truly dangerous? How the hate group Autism Speaks has been parading itself around since 2005 as an advocacy group for autistic people and has been misusing millions of dollars worth of donation money and promoting stigma and hatred around autistic people; no autistic members are present on their board. How Sia and her new film Music was nominated for 2 Golden Globes despite it replacing the original autistic actor with a neurotypical actor, using offensive stereotypes, and using the main autistic character as a prop, and featured an extremely dangerous bodily restraint scene on an autistic person having a meltdown in public and featured very insensitive content due to Sia’s lack of consulting with autistic people to make the film (spoilers in that article).

Instead of policing autistic people, whether they fit your idea of what an autistic person is or not, redirect your efforts and your energy to dismantling systems and holding others accountable for perpetuating harmful stereotypes about autistic people that are legitimately dangerous on such a scale that they have created insurmountable damage to the autistic community. But I guarantee you, worrying over whether your classmate is “faking it” will not do any justice to the decades worth of discrimination autistic people face still today.

I understand. You care about the community, you don’t want autistic people to be exploited or taken advantage of. I don’t want to be exploited and taken advantage of as an autistic person, and I don’t want that for others! But I also understand that when we self proclaim ourselves as judges of random autistic strangers on the internet or start accusing people of faking or demanding to see medical paperwork from people when the basis of our suspicions is “this person doesn’t look like my stereotyped view on how I think an autistic person should act”, THAT is when you really run into trouble. Because if you are allowed to deny self dx people entrance into the autistic community, what’s stopping you from thinking you have the power to deny ANYONE entrance into that community?

And there is power in self diagnosis for many autistic people. When the evaluation system is literally rigged to set you up for failure and put you through unnecessary hardship, self dx is a self affirming, empowering tool to take back control from a process designed to gaslight and crush you. The evaluation process was NOT formulated by an autistic person, nor was it made to be inclusive of all autistic people. Until the evaluation system in place for autistic people is safe, accessible, and free to ALL, you have EVERY right to self diagnose.