#these disclaimers are so not a big deal but I’m autistic and always afraid of being misjudged for the smallest things

[toxicxsugarxart]

Commissioned by @greenvillainredemption once again to draw their lovely miss Claudia, this time with fem!Bruno. I haven’t drawn a genderbend character since middle school, and never with an older character, so this was really new and fun to do! I love their fem!Bruno design and headcanons given to me for reference, and the colors used in their own art. Thanks again for commissioning me!

[salted-snailz]

Fear Of Bugs With Loki

Loki comforting an autistic reader who has a huge fear of bugs

gender neutral reader

sfw

requested by anon

disclaimer: autism is different in everyone and I am writing with my experiences. but always remember that you are valid and I will always support you❤️

Bugs are terrifying, disgusting, truly vile creatures. You’re convinced they were created in the deepest depths of Hell. Sure most of them are small enough to step on but that doesn’t mean they aren’t fast enough to escape.

Living in New York meant you were guaranteed to see rats and other small critters nearly every day, and that is something you could deal with. But bugs were something on a whole other level.

You currently live in a small two bedroom, one bathroom apartment that you share with your partner, the god of mischief himself, Loki. You even turned the second bedroom into your own personal art studio. To be honest, it’s a pretty nice apartment. You never really had any complaints though you’ve only lived there for a little under a year.

Well, no complaints until today, that is.

You were in your studio, painting a commission you had got recently, when you heard something moving around near the curtains.

‘It’s probably just a draft.��� You thought to yourself, ‘Nothing to worry about.’

So you continued to paint, stopping every few minutes to look over your creation. But you heard that strange noise again. You were getting to distracted by the noise and it was starting to annoy you.

Curious and aggravated, you walk over to the curtains to find out where the noise was coming from. Big mistake on your part.

When you moved the curtain aside, you spotted a large thousand-legged beast, waiting for your demise.

Out of pure fear, you dropped your paint pallet to the floor and let out a shrill scream, running to the opposite side of the room. Not even a second later, Loki ran into the studio in a panic and came to your side.

“What is it? Are you alright?” He kneeled beside you as you sat curled up on the ground. “Love, please tell me what’s wrong.”

“There’s a centipede behind the curtains! Get rid of it! Burn it to hell!” You yelled as you pointed to the where the bug was. “Make it go away!”

Loki let out a sigh of relief, glad that it was only this and there was no real danger.

“I’ll get rid of the bug, my dear.” He told you with a small grin. “It won’t bother you anymore.”

Loki walked over to the curtains and used his telekinetic abilities to pick up the nasty insect. He opened the window and flicked it out onto the busy streets, knowing a bird would most likely eat it.

He walked back over to you and put out his hands for you to grab, “Come on, let’s clean up this pain that you spilled.” He offered to help. “And don’t worry, I’ll search the entire apartment to make sure no more creepy crawlers bug you again.”

You couldn’t help but snort at the ridiculous pun, “Thank you, Loki. I’m sorry I overreacted.” 

Loki placed his hands on either side of your face and placed a light kiss on your forehead, “There is no need to apologize, love, you can’t control what you’re afraid of.” He told you, “And remember, I’ll always be here to protect you, no matter how big or how small.”

~

I hope this was good enough, sorry if it was too short. I’ve been kinda lazy lately because my body refuses to function properly, but I’m trying my best.

Here’s the request!

[panreivonreyes]

Hi! I'm sorry if this is an inappropriate question, but you're someone who I look up to and I'd like your input. I've been learning about autism and how it presents itself in women and I think I might be on the spectrum. In your opinion what are the benefits of being professionally evaluated? I think it might help me feel more ok with who I am, but I'm also afraid that it could cause a lot of stress because of the stories I've read about professionals who don't think adult women can be autistic.

First off, not inappropriate at all! I’m always open to talking about this kind of stuff, especially if there’s a chance that sharing my experiences can help other people! Also, thank you very much for your kind words, It means a lot to me, truly.

This is going to be on the long side, so under a cut it goes!

I’ll start off with a disclaimer that my situation was a bit different from yours, and so there will be things that applied to my situation and not to yours, and vice versa, but I’ll do my best to give you as complete an overview as I can, and one that will hopefully be useful to other people in similar situations who might stumble across this?

First off, the big thing, as you mentioned, is the impact on how you feel about yourself. For me, it was interesting because neither me or my parents had ever considered the possibility I might be autistic until we were sat down by the team at the outpatient mental health centre I was attending at the time, who told us that they suspected I might be autistic, and gave us some reading material to look at, along with some assessments I’d done for them, and we all sat there and went through it and then they asked us if we thought they were right.

So, for me, the diagnosis was unexpected, and came with a lot of information that made a lot of my life experiences suddenly make a lot more sense in hindsight. You probably already have all that, now that you have a tentative self-diagnosis. Things you used to blame yourself for might be feeling less like your fault, and you might be starting to gain a clearer understanding of why some things played out the way they did. This is a really great and valuable thing, and can be incredibly helpful in learning to be kinder to yourself.

From that perspective, the value of a professional diagnosis really lies in the confirmation and validation of what you already know. It makes it harder for you to doubt yourself, because it’s proof that someone else sees it too, that you didn’t make it up, that you’re not just making excuses for yourself. If you’re someone who doesn’t tend to struggle with those kinds of thoughts, you won’t get as much value from that, but I know for myself, having a professional diagnosis has been excellent evidence to present to myself any time I get a bit imposter syndrome-y about it. 

On a related note, it can also serve a similar purpose with any family or friends you might want to share this information about yourself with. Some people (like my dad, for example), really struggle to accept this kind of information unless it’s been ‘verified’ by a ‘professional’. A professional diagnosis can in that way be a helpful tool for gaining better support and understanding from the people around you. Having your difficulties accepted as valid by the people around you can really make such a difference to your day to day life.

Another big thing, of course, is that if you’re currently in (or were ever to return to) education, a professional diagnosis can make it so much easier to access supports and accommodations from your educational institution. It may even be able to help you get into the course you want, as depending on where you live and where you want to study, there may be a disability access track (eg: Ireland’s DARE program) or other scheme to even out the playing field.

Depending on local laws, a professional diagnosis may be able to give you certain workplace protections, such as providing an entitlement to accommodations, or protection from harassment and unfair dismissal.

Depending on your location and personal situation, a professional diagnosis can make it possible to get government assistance (without it I wouldn’t have my weekly Disability Allowance payments, or my Free Travel Pass, or Medical Card. Without those, I’d have no chance at all of moving out of my parents’ house. With them, it’s within the realm of possibility).

So, as you can see, there’s a lot to potentially gain, depending on your particular circumstances. There are, however, also some potential downsides.

These are all very location dependent, and most of these examples are probably from America, but it will hopefully give you some ideas of things you might want to research local laws on, to see how they might affect you.

Privacy. If you have a diagnosis, you may be required to share that information with people whether you want to or not (eg: employers)

If you ever wanted to move to another country, it is possible they might use your diagnosis as grounds to refuse to grant you a visa (the only example that comes to mind is a case where a family was refused a Canadian visa because their autistic child was judged to be too big a drain on Canadian resources, but it’s worth mentioning.)

In the US, many disabled people are subject to a significantly lower minimum wage than the general population. I don’t know a whole lot about the details, but you may want to look into this if you think it could affect you.

Given the current uncertain situation regarding healthcare in the US, you may want to consider that Trumpcare proposals listed autism as a pre-existing condition, and therefore a professional diagnosis could affect the availability and price of health insurance.

If you’ve ever considered fostering or adopting children in the future, you may want to check if an autism diagnosis could interfere with those plans.

I know that probably feels like a lot of stuff to research and consider and weigh up, so please, take your time with it, be gentle with yourself, there’s no rush.

If, after all that, you’re leaning towards a professional evaluation, here’s some things you might want to consider.

It is possible that the evaluation experience might be stressful or unpleasant. (It might not be. Mine wasn’t at all, though, as I mentioned, I wasn’t aware I was being evaluated for anything in particular at the time). For more details about that, you might want to check out the posts linked here. It includes a bunch of autistic people talking about their experiences being tested, particularly what parts they found stressful or difficult and why, some tips on ways to reframe the experience to help make it less stressful or unpleasant, and some commentary I wrote about the potentially triggering aspects of the report that will be produced, intended to help people decide if they want to read their own report, and to prepare them for what they might find if they do so. If you’re not familiar with that blog, you might like to read through more of their posts. They have some really great content and discussions on a variety of topics, a very inclusive and non-presumptuous attitude, and everything is very comprehensively tagged. It’s a fantastic resource. 

You are absolutely right that many doctors who deal with autism are...shall we say “less than open-minded”? I have dealt with such doctors in the past, and it is absolutely a very stressful and frustrating experience. In such situations, I believe it is best to know exactly what you want from them, stay focused on that, come prepared with any materials or research you have that may support your case, and stand your ground for as long as you can bear to. If it gets to be too much, move on and find another doctor. It may be frustrating, it may be exhausting, it may be disheartening, but if you truly believe you are autistic, and you truly believe you want a professional diagnosis, then I urge you to not let some ignorant asshole doctors stand in your way. Try to remember that you will not have to deal with them forever, that this is a temporary situation, that you’re just using them to get a diagnosis and as soon as you have that you can walk away and never have to deal with them again! It may be painful in the short term, but that won’t last forever, and if you’ve decided that the benefits of a professional diagnosis are worth having, then you’ll be benefiting from those for the entire rest of your life, and you deserve to have that!

Looking back over this, at times it may sound like I’m trying to discourage you from getting a professional evaluation. To be clear, I’m not. In my personal experience, having an official diagnosis has been very helpful, both in personal/mental/emotional terms and in practical ones, and I very much believe that people should have one, if it is at all possible and isn’t likely to result in negative consequences. I just want to do my best to provide you with as much potentially relevant information as possible, so that you have the ability to make an informed decision about what’s right for you.

Whatever you choose, I hope it works out well for you, and thank you for trusting me with this and giving me the opportunity to try and help! Hopefully this was helpful and not too overwhelming, and if you’ve any more questions or anything, you are absolutely welcome to send them to me!