#i just dont want to be diagnosed lol

[kawaii-koimi]

i think i need to get back to translating so i could keep my emotions and my thoughts in check. get my mind off things. or else i'd really break down one of these days.

[deoidesign]

I’m a trans man that recently got diagnosed with hyper mobile eds, so now seeing Steve makes me extra happy, because cool disabled ftm rep. Thanks for making the radical dude bro, he’s funky.

same disability (waving hand emoji)

Always extremely fulfilling to know my work makes people happy in some small way, it means a lot. Thank you for sharing with me

[minnieposting]

Uugghhhhhhhhhhhh why do autism evaluations have to be so complicated

[bonetrousledbones]

ngl i've been dealing with burnout for nearly this entire year and the goddamn hurricane Did Not Help but by now it's shifted to this very weird flavor where i'm like constantly rotating drawing ideas & full fics i want to write in my brain & Really Wanting to work on them but then once i get as far as opening sai or google docs i just go "hm. dont wanna"

[daily-neurodivergent-character]

Daily Neuro-Divergent Character #27

Rae!

Aka one of my irl besties!

She canonically has autism, depression, and anxiety!

Happy birthday to her! @matcopii!

[opens-up-4-nobody]

...

[orcelito]

Remembering that a 4 hour psychological test means 4 hours under the examiner's microscope. I hope they let me listen to music during a written test, but idk if that would defeat the purpose or not. I... really don't know what to expect tomorrow, and it's kind of making me a bit nervous. Lol.

[lesbiansanemi]

I have started to accept I am a bit more (re a lot more) psychologically unstable than I thought for a long time and man…. I’m tired of it

[kil9]

re: the taemin thing (sorry im so annoying about this but i feel you wanna talk about it as much as me!). i wanted to mention his blinking habit too, but as someone who is not autistic myself (not diagnosticated at least lmao) i was afraid it was just me making assumption but you noticed it to so!!! cool. anyway i could say many more things but the line between being just a strange little dude and being a strange little autistic dude is so thin!!! (like the fact that he eats random stuff at unlikely times of the day or that he's so forgetful). ANYWAY!!!!!! i just really love him and how shinee adapts their behaviour around him to make sure hes comfortable

YES ur never annoying i absolutely wanna talk abt it forever 🥺🥺

(this got kinda long so im putting it in the readmore lol)

but yeah the blinking habit for real !!! ur definitely not wrong to pick up on that ! (i even sponged it from him sometimes lol x_x) its cool that non autistic ppl have an interest in this stuff tbh :3 i think that more ppl understanding autism and all the weird specifics of it is rly the key to our happiness ykno 🤔because most non autistic ppl know literally. jack shit.

also the eating thing YEAH 😭😭 thats also so autism to me. shinee is so good to him !!!! u can tell that even if they dont know WHY he is the way he is, that theyve figured out how he works and how to treat him....

there was such a moment in the 15m thing when key was asking taemin to "prepare" the veggies... and taemin got such a look of dread where hes like "what...... wdym.. ?" & kibum has to be like "CUT THEM taemin" lol 💀💀 its such a silly moment but its SOO quintessential to me for both what its like to be autistic (ie: what the fuck are u saying to me "prepare" this. as if im supposed to know what that means), and what its like to be close with an autistic person (kibum having to kinda remember to "translate" what hes saying for taemin so he knows what hes talking about, it reminds me of how my partner is with me sometimes 🥺)

also back to when im saying they probably dont know why he is the way he is, even if they know all his ins and outs, i think this is probably the same for taemin 🤔 he strikes me as someone who prob doesnt know hes autistic, just knows hes "weird" and "different" and has figured out how to live like that despite. reminds me of myself kind of, cos i wasnt "diagnosed" (used loosely) until maybe 19 ? which is still young but at that point i had already been thru school and everything not knowing x_x its definitely possible to figure your life out & how you work without a diagnosis, and i think it happens all the time, but its also really really hard. i think having a name for it and something u can actually research & learn about is rly helpful. so even tho hes like 30 now im still kinda always hoping he realises 🤔 if it makes his life that much easier ykno ?

this is also why it pisses me off so much that ppl get THAT up in arms when this is brought up. ppl act like falsely "accusing" someone of being autistic will ruin their life, when really its basically harmless (obviously unless ur directly using it as an insult). even the opposite might be true 🤷‍♂️ someone can rly benefit from realising about themselves. also why im so pro self dx !!! even if everyone is "misdiagnosing" themselves these days (🙄 which prob isnt true anyway) like. whats the worst that could happen ? why does it matter if someone is wrong... they might still find some info that will help them 🤷‍♂️ theres not really any autism "resources" that are in scarcity so i dont rly care if someone thinks they are even if theyre not ?

[letthebookbegin]

.

[miunala]

i feel like every time ive hurt someone or got someone upset with me its cuz i do or say something due to a misinterpretation on both our parts. but mostly mine. my brain just isnt what it should be

[redriverstyx]

turns out i have fasd (fabulous amazing silly disorder) 👍

[midwestgender]

sometimes i feel like when i criticize people on the internet who over generalize autism/adhd symptoms and lead to mass self-dxing among teenagers i look like such a massive hypocrite bc i am a self-dxed autistic and so are all my close friends. but idk i feel like actually the main culprit is the adults who post misinformation and act like very innocuous symptoms are 'red flags' for needing clinical evaluation. understanding myself as autistic is just how i navigate the world and tbh because of the sense of shame over not having a clinical dx i don't tell anyone im autistic besides other autistics that i know well.

[britneyshakespeare]

Another Thing Wrong With The Former Gifted Kid Discourse, Since I Can't Stop Thinking About It:

people have such an unhelpful tendency to universalize their own experience when talking about the plights and struggles about Gifted Kids™—and what they are talking about is not necessarily invalid, but they're more often talking about their individual responses to their particular schools' policies. This Is Not A Systemic Analysis. it's helpful; i sympathize with you. But You Are Not Dismantling The Inequities by saying this or that happened At Your School when you were a child, and it affected you this or that way because of Who You Are.

example. i always see people talking about neurodivergence in this conversation, which is actually helpful in spotlighting how the Gifted Kid discourse often glosses over such complex intersectional issues. you can talk about how you were Gifted & Neurodivergent and how those experiences lead you to future disappointment. this is, i must stress, valid. but your analysis of your own life Is Not A Systemic Analysis. your experience alone will never speak for how the educational system and trends in policy among schools across the united states affect ALL neurodivergent people negatively because there are neurodivergent people who are Different From You. not to mention that when people point out that very often "Gifted Kid" usually correlates with some degrees of privilege, people push back and go nooooo I'm neurodivergent. people across all other marginalized identities who are systemically disadvantaged by the educational system can be neurodivergent. this does not make you, initially, when you were as a young Kid determined to be Gifted, NOT also in fact privileged.

if you are not ready to discuss experiences that were different from your own growing up, you aren't really engaging in the discourse of how to improve public education in the united states. it's a diiii-verse country we live in. not only in the ways we traditionally think of. when we think of "marginalized" or "oppressed" people, some specific and historically significant groups come to mind. when it comes to advantages that set up a child for future educational success, these broad categories often leave gaps because they lead people to generalizations, and ultimately, fatalism.

but there's really so much hope in early childhood education if we were to make things more equitable, ie like i always say UNIVERSAL PRE-K. these kids who are determined as "gifted" more often than not were just from more enriched home environments that prepared them for learning how to read, write, and do math. it's often not special innate abilities that leads to differences in outcomes for different students, but That's How The Kids Interpret It When Some of Them Are Called "Gifted." they're more often than not, not doing something that's truly exceptional or precocious for their age. they're displaying signs of age-appropriate development, when often, the kids who may be lagging behind them skill-wise just Haven't Practiced Those Skills As Much.

so yes, that's why there's a correlation in things like upper- and middle-class white kids being seemingly more successful in school (and more commonly deemed "gifted") at a young age. it's from privilege. it's not even just the implicit biases of their educators already working in their favor for their race and class. it's the fact that being more privileged, generally, means their family and parents had all of their basic needs provided for. they had more time to read with you. they could buy more development-promoting toys. they probably had better mental health to cope with the demands of child-rearing. if they suffered chronic or sudden physical health issues, they were insured. privileged children are usually less exposed at a younger age to the harshnesses of this world, as every child should be. ALL of these little advantages build up, in terms of what a child can be provided with before they go to school. anything that's going wrong in a child's family system can negatively impact them without them even being old enough to understand it.

you may not think of yourself as Privileged. you might prefer to think of yourself as Gifted. Gifted is so nice, even if it's demoted to Former Gifted. at one point you were told you were superior and it felt really good. and You, reader, i do not know You. i'm not calling You privileged, even if you are! hell, everyone's privileged in some way. i am at the point in the post where for transparency's sake i think i should say I Could Be What Some People Call "Former Gifted". i was called smart as a kid and given special homework sometimes etc. i'm not calling any Former Gifted people stupid for not realizing this either. what i mean is that this kids Are Not Usually Actually Gifted. this is a compliment given overwhelmingly to children who were just simply not deprived. when people say they were once Gifted, they're more often than not saying I Had The Early Opportunities To Learn Everyone Should Have, But Doesn't. this doesn't make you an outlier. It Might Just Be A Sign of Privilege.

[juupitrr]

suitcases man / vent

my sister came back from uni and moved back into her and i's room - which for the past 4-ish years has been mostly just /my/ room with her bed still in it for when she came over on holidays or moving between the uni years - and that meant she brought all her stuff with her and I had to move my stuff to make space.

I didn't realize it also meant moving my clothes and where i put them; like the suitcase I keep under her bed specifically at the far left end of it placed so I can pull it out, zip it open and take out the only 3 items that are in that suitcase, my black skater skirt, those black ankle socks I brought to kosov and never wore so keep there just incase, and that one corset top that came a day late than when I needed it.

When my dad helped her put her suitcases under her bed, they initially had to take out /my/ suitcase to make space for it then when they realized they had extra space, put my suitcase back in. In the far right side of the bed.

When my dad left I immediately went to it and fixed it and corrected it and my sister was looking at me weirdly "you're acting kinda ocd" "this is very ocd of you" and it annoyed me a lot because it was only recently that I've been comfortable with saying I have ADHD and she knew this and I thought the suitcase thing was another me or ADHD or both thing, so her naming it as something else just. it annoyed me. because I thought I finally had a kind of guide as to what certain things were and why. then in comes this whole new term id never considered that i now have to give a guest room in my head cuz now its circling in my thoughts a little in the back of my mind.

idk man just like, knowing what kind of neurodivergent u are is so fucking tough sometimes man, like why cant it be like the sorting hat or smn and it just tells u

[opens-up-4-nobody]

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