#asperger's problems

[autistic-misery]

[theautisticdoctor]

Entry #007

Sensory System

In autism the sensory system is a funny part of the body, it can be hypersensitive or hyposensitive. It can be a kind of a superpower and a disability at the same time. When people think about the senses, they often think about the five senses that do the seeing (visual), hearing (auditory), smelling (olfactory), tasting (gustatory), and feeling (tactile), but there are three more systems in the body that take in information for the brain to process and acts on it. It are the balancing and coordination (vestibular), the positioning (proprioception), and the information from inside the body (interoception).

I won't be explaining the visual, auditory, olfactory, gustatory and tactile senses separately. I think they are pretty self-explanatory, in contrary to the vestibular, proprioception and interoception senses. Generally there are three categories in how people can perceive the information through their senses, they can be normosensitive, hypersensitive and / or hyposensitive. It is not one fits all, you can be hyposensitive and be stimulating it yourself, but then suddenly get overstimulated after all. It is a journey to find out how you react and how to balance your systems. But know that all the systems work together, for example your visual system works together with your auditory and vestibular system. I have drawn out the links I have found up until now how my systems work together, so that if one system gets overstimulated it could have some effect on another system for me.

Vestibular

The vestibular sense is the sense of stability, balance, movements and position of the head on the body. It works together with the visual system to make sure your eyes look in the right direction while moving your head and to correlate movements registered with what's being seen.

Proprioception

Proprioception is the possibility to perceive the position of your extremities. It gets registered by the mechanoreceptors in the tendons of your muscles and together with the visual and vestibular system it makes sure someone can coordinate movements with correct force. It is partly conscious and partly unconscious regulated, and is responsible for body position, reflexes, movement coordination, correct tone of muscles and stability. People with autism can often have trouble with correctly positioning their body, stability and coordination of movements. This is partly because of the two other senses as well, but also because of a hyposensitivity to the mechanoreceptors in the tendons.

Interoception

Interoception includes the thermoception (possibility to perceive temperature and regulates body temperature) and the nociception (possibility to perceive pain), as well as all the other bodily sensations like hunger, thirst, pain, toilet urge, flatulence, intra-abdominal gas, nausea, etc. Notice that pain is listed twice, as 'nociception' and as 'other bodily sensation'. This is because nociception is a complex thing. Nociception is pain through a stimulus within a tissue by either thermal, chemical or mechanical. But pain can also derive from other sources, for example pain from nerves is called neuropathic pain. It's a separate study on its own, but the distinction could be relevant, because for example, I'm hyposensitive to nociception and hypersensitive to neuropathic pain stimuli. Meaning, I won't feel I'm overstretching my muscles and creating an inflammation around or even doing a little damage to a nerve. Ending up with a neurogenic inflammation pain and sensory loss across an entire nerve branch for weeks, which is excruciating for me. But hey, I was able to bend my arm backwards and get that paper from behind the cupboard without moving it.

Integration

It's useful to make an inventory in what categories one is hypo- or hypersensitive for certain stimuli and what practical problems it creates for you. Beneath this sensory system inventory worksheet I have included mine too, so you have an example as well.

Mine looks something like this:

It's probably not finished yet, but I thought I might already share it. How I think my sensory system works together or influences each other for me, that I found out up until now (the faint and bolder green lines are both interactions):

[equiteesorg]

We donate $15 to S4ND.org (an organization committed to improving the lives of neurodivergent individuals) for every ‘Be Kind To All Minds’ Sweatshirt purchased.

[martian-mellow1]

Job application: do you have a reliable mode of transportation?

Me: *flashbacks to when I walked through a blizzard to the bus stop to get to my college class* yes :)

Tbh i don’t really understand what that question means? Like if you’re asking if I have a car the answer is no because I can’t drive (and even if I could drive owning a car is too expensive). And honestly I’ve walked through horrible weather to my current job (a mile from my house) and ended up being the only one who’s shown up because “the weather is too bad to drive in”. This question should be eliminated from job applications because it makes no sense.(plus I’m sick of having to hide from potential employers that I don’t have a car because the bus is “not a reliable source of transportation”). 😑

[the-boxy-journals]

Context:

For the first part of my life, I was a “shy, quiet girl” with intense social anxiety. Sometimes the world was confusing, but my strategy was to say nothing and pretend like I understood what was happening. But that could result in doing something ridiculous, or avoiding the task that confused me.

When I was 17, I was finally diagnosed with Asperger’s and put on anti-anxiety medication. Now I am mostly free from social anxiety (though my body sometimes betrays me and starts to shake). I’m learning to ask lots of questions when I feel stuck on a task, instead of avoiding the task. But I feel like it’s unmasking, outing myself, and worry about annoying people with trivial questions, or sounding stupid with obvious ones.

I imagine a neurotypical person, without a disability, would be better at filtering important and trivial questions.

[greeneyebrunettebambi]

Having autism and adhd is hard to navigate ! I have no friends , I’ve always struggled with friendships ! I want to start a girls group )18+) for adhd / or autistic girlies <3

[supergraphicultramoderngirl]

u ever hear a friend say something that they think is like this highly political and progressive thing and ur just kind of sitting there like. oh you haven’t gotten the new update yet

[autismswagsummit]

Do we submit through the asks? Because I'd like to humbly submit Bruno from Encanto if he isn't already on there.

There is a submission form, I'll reblog it in a minute so people new to the posts can submit characters. I will caution you about nominating Bruno though, as if I remember correctly he is not canonically autistic and the daily posts are specifically for canon representation in media. I know it can be hard to determine which is which when so many characters exist in the realm of "vaguely coded or implied to be" but I know there's gotta be enough characters out there to at least fill the month

[adult-female-with-aspergers]

[autistic-misery]

[thekimspoblog]

Demon trying to feed on my insecurities: "You're a bad driver"

Me: "Of course I am. I hate driving. Going 80 mph surrounded by tons of metal is nerve-wrecking. I try to do it as little as possible. Of course I'm bad at it"

Demon: "You're a bad writer"

Me: "Well that part's simply not true. I never claimed I was the greatest author of my generation, but when I put pen to paper I know what I want to communicate and I usually do it well. If someone isn't impressed with my work, that's unfortunate but they're entitled to their opinion"

Demon: "You're a bad leader"

Me: "Well I don't know about that! I mean there was that one time when... Ok look just because people don't see me as an authority figure doesn't mean... 😠 You know you can be a real asshole, demon!"

[scherzokinn]

Bruh can we talk more about how having "hyperfixations" sometimes fucking sucks like today I was gonna draw at like 3 pm maybe but then grave mistake I just thought of looking up that one thing I keep thinking about then tried to find images about this super obscure topic I don't think I plan on sharing to anyone soon because no one would care or even know about it and then keep searching images and searching images and searching the source of these images and searching for the details behind images and then searching images again and searching images and searching these images in HD then searching other images and searching images and search-

Had to snack later than I wanted to and it's late right now and I'm tired and I wanna cry~~

[that-strange-artist]

Fuuuuuuuuuuckkkkk

I was chatting with my ex (we're trying to stay friends)

The conversation started flowing until I made a comment about his birthday on Sunday.....

Turns out its today.

I got my dates mixed up. Plus its been a messy time lately.

I feel terrible as a person 🫥

Even the way I worded it.

I'm not sure I could have done it worse.....

[depressedv0id]

Im really not a sociable person. Yet I hate that I have no friends.....

[antleramnesia]

someone do my homework for me i do not have the energy to do any of this crap /hj

[2outta3aintbad]

I can’t believe I still have to say this. If your dr tries to diagnose you with “aspergers” they are either obscenely ignorant or openly antisemitic and ableist (all terrifying things for a doctor to be btw...disgustingly under-qualified either way) anyway no you do not have that, no one does. Change doctors.