#my autism is diagnosed!

[scorndotexe]

i feel like i should give some of my characters glasses but thinking about it i don't think any of them would wear glasses. some of them might need them though

[foldingfittedsheets]

I think something a lot of other people can relate to is the way that you get so conditioned to discomfort that you stop registering it.

I remember sitting at the table with my family, eating dinner as a child. I’d try to eat, because of course I was hungry. But sometimes the flavor or texture was so repugnant that it moved into a category of Not Food.

“Two more bites before you can leave the table.”

“I can’t,” I’d say, trying to explain the impossibility.

But because I was a child they heard, “I won’t,” and made me sit at the table. I’d sit in dull agonized silence, bored and hungry for hours until bedtime when they’d give up. I’d hate myself for not eating and my parents for forcing me to sit there. The few forcefeeding moments ended in vomit.

They’d say, “If you don’t eat this you can’t eat a snack later,” and I moved past trying to communicate my discomfort into accepting that I’d just be hungry.

That state of affairs didn’t last, because my parents realized nothing could force me to eat so they catered to my palate, worrying they’d starve me. But the message stuck. If you can’t do anything about a situation, just accept the suffering.

A few years later my mother called me off the playground to ask, “Are you limping?”

I shrugged. My feet had hurt for a long time, but that was just the way things were now. My mom pulled my socks and shoes off and gasped. The soles of my feet were covered in huge painful planters warts.

“Why didn’t you say anything?!” She demanded but I could only shrug at her. I’d learned a long time ago that saying things about my discomfort didn’t matter, so now I had no words. Sometimes things hurt and sometimes they don’t. I simply accepted and did my best.

Now as an adult trying to learn to improve my own conditions can be hard. If I make food that I can’t eat I’ll force myself to sit at the counter still, full of guilt and self loathing, trying to will myself to eat it.

At first I needed my betrothed to gently take it away to present me with something I could eat. Now on my own I can usually admit that it’s not happening before too long and get something else, but I still feel guilty.

Laying in bed at night waiting for my betrothed to finish getting ready I let out a huge sigh of relief when they turned the lights off.

“Why didn’t you turn them off if they bothered you?” they asked the first time it happened.

“I didn’t even know it was bothering me until it was gone.”

Assessing my physical state now to see if I can improve it is something I’m still relearning but I’m relieved to finally have the space and support to do it.

[dimpletheheck]

Wait!

Take it.

TAKE IT.

((And a transparent version for you gays <3))

[youdontlookautistic]

Auctober: Individualism.

This one is late, and I was gonna do the whole month, but let me explain.

This comic is what made me survive October. About a week ago I was forced to go no contact with my entire family, for 2 years, because they couldn’t respect me or my boundaries. I held on to this, my truth, as I struggled to deal with their abuse. Abuse I hadn’t been able to truly recognise until the past 6 months, that all came to a head now.

It has been a… revelation, let’s use that word. It’s been a revelation to realise I’ve grown up in a family I specifically wasn’t allowed to be disabled in. The ableism was so hard core it arcs into ego and narcissism.

I wasn’t allowed to have needs or wants, I was expected to be independent even though it was obvious to everyone outside my family that I needed support, and help. And if I wasn’t, I was shamed, controlled, ignored, dismissed, invalidated.

And while the pain of going no contact with those I truly, honestly believed supported me the most has threatened to bury me, I now hold onto my self. I hope and trust that there’s something in me that can help others. It’s my self that is my oxygen mask, in the darkest night.

I’ve never had that before.

AND IT’S AMAZING.

Also as a 2nd year art student this is my first comic.

@autiebiographical ran the month of Auctober! Thank you.

[cryingscreamingpuking]

It really makes me so damn angry how many autistic/ADHD people treat the neurodivergent label as the autism+adhd label. Neurodivergent includes ANYONE who's brain doesn't work the way it's supposed to. This includes people that have learning disabilities. People with down's syndrome. People with cluster A, B and C disorders. That includes systems/people with DID, that includes schizophrenics, that includes people with PTSD. If you have a group that is labeled for neurodivergent people, you cannot act surprised or offended if people that don't have autism or ADHD but DO have other disorders join that group. Because neurodivergent is an umbrella term. And everyone under that umbrella term deserves to be able to find community in groups named with that umbrella term.

[matcha-goblin]

Neurodivergent people are never undiagnosed. We are misdiagnosed. Our symptoms don't go unnoticed, and people will always attribute them to some sort of cause. They'll just attribute them to personality and blame the individual for their symptoms.

For example. My autism is not undiagnosed, it's been misdiagnosed as "too sensitive," "awkward," "rude," "obsessive," and "too intense." My brother's adhd wasn't undiagnosed, it was misdiagnosed as "lazy," "impulsive," "annoying," and "can't seem to get any work done."

Growing up without a diagnosis is growing up believing that you are to blame for your differentness. Your symptoms are a personality flaw. You are diagnosed by everyone around you as "weird."

Edit: Some people have pointed out that I'm using the word misdiagnosis here rather loosely. I'm aware that it isn't quite correct definitionally, and I don't mean to say that medical misdiagnosis and the type of social misattribution I'm talking about are identical--just that they are related phenomena, and neurodivergent people are often victims of one or both. There isn't an exact term for what I'm talking about here, so I used the closest one I knew of. Terminology is important and some words need to be used with precision to retain their influence. At the same time, sometimes meanings change, and bending words to fit new circumstances is a natural way that language evolves. I'm not sure which situation this falls under, so while I don't want to change my post (not even sure what to change it to), I thought I'd edit and add clarification. Additional feedback on this is welcome.

[redfishdeadfish]

does anyone ever feel that they’re like. too neurodivergent to fit into normal society but not neurodivergent enough to relate to other neurodivergent people or is that just me

[toomuchdivergentformyneuro]

me: *reads over symptoms of autism once again* “see but i don’t get upset over changes in routine, we change the routine all the time and i’m totally okay with it!”

also me since i was a kid: *gets irritated, stressed, angry, aggravated, and depressed for the rest of the day after something is switched to another day* *gets angry, stressed, and depressed, and has a breakdown when i find out we have to cancel plans, even if i didn’t really wanna go to wherever we were planning to go* *gets aggravated and is easily upset and is depressed the whole day after i get to cancel something that i had been planning for but also are relieved that i don’t have to go since i really didn’t want to* *is depressed, angry, irritated, and stressed after we cancel plans that i had zero feelings for up until that point* etc.

[citricacidprince]

Everyone’s always like “Me and the Bad Bitch I pulled by being autistic”

Where’s MY bad bitch I pulled by being autistic???? Where are you finding these bad bitches who like your silly whimsy and inability to answer the phone???? Please????

[jasperthejester]

me: finally accepting theres a good chance im autistic and starting to work up the courage to ask my parents to see if i could get a diagnoses but being scared to

my mom: do you ever think you have adhd? if you want to do a screening for add next time your at the doctors you can

me:

[wilcze-kudly]

People who claim that Aang was a terrible, abusive father to Bumi and Kya and that he never cared about them are so odd to me because like... did you guys not have like parents who work? Or siblings who connect with one parent more due to common interests?

Like kids interpret situations that are not about them as about them. Like when my dad had brain surgery and memory issues due to it and kept forgetting who I am, I thought he genuinely hated me. And I still talk about it in therapy lol. Cause that shit sticks with you, even though my father was always a kind man.

Or when my sister and my dad both obsess over their fave football team and I don't really have that much of an interest in sports but I still feela bit left out.(my father's West Ham obsession is tearing this family apart.)

Like. Loving, amazing parents make mistakes or accidentally hurt their children's feelings. Usually because they're dealing with their own shit. Flawed parents doesn't automatically equal abusive parents.

[runawayfuture]

i've never seen the show

[hermitcraft-alignment-charts]

i have been resurrected from the dead by the pure energy of absentmindedly scrolling through rendogs channel and being forcefully YANKED back into my hermitcraft phase by the sound of his voice

[sweeneydino]

Spikeangelo, Reference sheet... again, I think

Yes, this is a hint...maybe

[inkyrainstorms]

The Sammy Lawrence Art I mentioned in another post!

I literally can't stop drawing him guys, send help 😭 😭 He's such a fascinating character to me, like I need to stick this guy under a microscope and write a 10 page dissertation him. The ink got to him guys. It called to him.

Like, he's an asshole but a lot of it wasn't his fault. He deserved better.

(Design of Sammy heavily based on the Escape AU by @inkdemonapologist!!) (I hope you don't mind the ping, or me taking inspiration from your designs. He's so fun to draw, I love it)

[mintbees]

being raised by two parents who both had at the time undiagnosed autism was very nice as an autistic child but on a social front it was an absolute disaster because if i went up to my parents and asked "hey someone at school said doing [x] is weird, is that true?" about something i did that was Autistic as all hell they'd go "no thats normal we do that too" and that would be it. No dude we're both weird as hell!!