#I have both autism and severe anxiety. The anxiety makes everything a lot worse because I'm terrified of so many small things all at once.

[1o1percentmilk]

hi! regarding your social queues post

i feel like i'm experiencing a thing that's a bit similar to what you are dealing with down to the "I'm not autistic but this shit isn't neurotypical" thoughts (and if not, I'm really sorry for an impromptu vent just ignore all of this please and have a kitty ฅ/⁠ᐠ•⁠ﻌ⁠•⁠ᐟ⁠\ฅ)

several of my prev psychologists link it to general anxiety and social awkwardness and yeah, that sounds reasonable, but what bothers me is that idk how to improve

i tend to overthink everything I say to the point where, even though I know what a normal response should look like I can't convince myself that what I said/wrote is articulated in a way that doesn't sound dumb/conveys literally the opposite of what I'm trying to deliver. answering a message after days of silence, which actively worsens my relationships, while I fear that answering with a 'stupid' message would be even worse or agonising over a comment I'm trying to leave on someone's work because, well, I think it's neat and cool and I want the artist/author to know it, but when I start typing my words look wrong and not genuine is a constant thing and I'm tired

and yeah, the worst is comforting people. my friend feels terrible, I can clearly see that and my heart is breaking for them, but I can never find a good thing th say. irl you at least can physically be there((maybe)) but online it's a nightmare

I was always told that words should come from the heart and I never got a feeling that was the case for me which just. i dunno what to do with this

hi hello! no, you're good, I have my ask box open for a reason and that includes venting n stuff like that, i don't mind at all!

yeah this is exactly what i'm talking about... like i have no problem picking up on things between the lines... but i always take too long to respond and by the time i think of something i am either too nervous or the window has passed. in my case, I know its because i have a "slower processing speed" than other people, which i've had since I was little, it's easier to think when i can type on a screen and be able to check if im making sense, but i don't do verbal stuff very well.

i've been in therapy as well, a long time ago, and i've been told i might be on the autism spectrum, and/or have add, but i'm pretty resistant to getting a formal diagnosis or even self diagnosing for some reason.

i think for me, and i don't know if this will help for you, i want to 1) get rid of the... mental block? filter? that my thoughts have to get through before I say something... because sometimes i come up with the thought, but don't say anything due to nerves. that'll help me get more thoughts out there and 2) get more practice with people... which is hard! i tried out both improv and drama club in high school because this is an issue i've been working on for a long time... it didn't really work, but i've learned that there are a lot of... scripts! that i can just use in a pinch. even if its just like, small talk and stuff, or if i don't have anything, i just turn the question on the other person and just listen!

i've been trying to make peace with the fact that i will probably never be as good of a talker as other people, but you and me brother we are probably just meant to be listeners... and nothing wrong with that... there IS stuff we can do to get better at talking, which i encourage. but don't get down out of reason for being quiet.

SORRY that got really long despite me not having alot of good advice but im struggling with it with you, good luck with finding something that works.. if u want to talk u are always welcome here, i enjoyed reading your ask!

#sorry im very bad at respondin g to things LOL #but i mean all of this genuinely #its tough not feeling like u are as alive.. or have as much of a heart... personality.. genuine... as other people #like ur a lowly npc... #but npc or not.. your feelings are still real right? your pain is real and what you feel when people talk to you is real #i believe you're real #but yeah it sucks and i hope we can find a way to live with it #cathugs \(•u•)/ #ask #anon

[tales-from-nocturnaliss]

30 Days of Autism Acceptance 2023 - catching up!

Figured it'd be a fun thing to do this year, since, y'know: this is the year that marked my official diagnosis as autistic. I'll answer several questions at once since I missed the previous days from not knowing this existed (social mishaps ftw!)

If you wanna participate, check out @birdofmay's blog or click through this link!

1 April: The typical introduction question! Tell us something about yourself.

I'm a 42-yo Belgian writer of Dark Fantasy who was diagnosed autistic this past January after a few years of absolute hell trying to figure out wtf was wrong with me. Turns out: likely intense autistic burnout!

On a more positive note though, I also likely have symptoms of ADHD - which is positive because it makes me able to function in the world on a more NT level I'd say, like doing things on a whim, enjoying change and exploring and, in a way, balancing the autism out. Mostly. The conflictual needs and wants have caused me a lot of mental and physical stress that I'm still trying to recover from.

On a fun note now: I have two cats I adore, a husband who's sometimes just as dysfunctional as I am (likely why he sniffed me out when we were still teens << but we only really met when I was 29; he remembered me from seeing me at school though!), currently unemployed because health, love to fangirl my characters (and anime dudes <<), somehow have a wide circle of friends of all nationalities and personalities because individuals are awesome and fascinating (I'm obsessed with psychology and emotions), and... Yeah. If you'd like to know anything else, do simply ask :D I love answering questions.

2 April: When were you diagnosed and when did you know that you're autistic? If you're self-diagnosed, when did you first suspect that you're autistic and when were you sure?

So it's both, actually. Last year, a good friend of mine talked to me about how she thought she was autistic, and shared a lot of info on women-specific autism... and that's when I saw that everything I thought I knew about autism was but a tiny fraction of a very wide spectrum. I recognized myself in what I read. I was on a quest for self-understanding to finally know what ailed me. I needed to know (which, let it be said, seems to be an autistic trait unto its own <<)

That was August. In October, I decided I had to be tested. November through December, five tests. Result in January. Diagnosis confirmed. I was ELATED. Because, finally, my whole life made sense. I am still so immensely relieved and happy to know.

3 April: How good or bad is your memory for things people say? For example verbal instructions.

My memory's gotten worse over time, likely from years of over-stress. I tend to let a lot of things leave my memory - including things people say. Verbal instructions... Because I know I have a tendency to forget, I prefer them written so I can read them over if/when needed. It's why I do everything official via email, put in appointments in my phone's calendar immediately, etc.

Funnily enough, I still remember a few words from one autism test I did back in November. So there's some logic to what's retained and what not. Repetition of words seems to be key.

4 April: Were/are you in special education? Regular school? Home schooled? A private school? Did it change over time? Did/do you like it?

I was in regular school. I'm 42. When I was a teen, depression wasn't even recognized as a real disease. Autism? Never heard of that. I was just an anxiety-ridden, fragile, naturally heavily bullied young girl who suffered ten years of depression afterwards and intense social anxiety. ... Damn I hated school so much. XD (and myself for just not fitting in :3; )

5 April: Did/do you have accommodations at school/IEP? If not, do you think it would help/have helped you?

I imagine it would have, had we known I was autistic.

6 April: Can you understand what people say when they talk fast, or do you lose track after a while? Was it different when you were younger?

Good question, with 'younger' feeling so far away... I did notice my speech recignition declined these past years, like when watching movies. However, since trying ginkgo and ginseng supplements to alleviate ADHD symptoms, and how magically they also alleviated anxieties and stress overall, I notice my speech recognition improved again.

So, to answer: in general I understand people who talk really fast, best of all in french (my native language). However, I do lose track if people talk in monotones. I think my brain gets bored and nopes out of there.

7 April: Do you have other diagnoses? What are they? Do you think that some could be incorrect?

I don't. Which I think is a mistake in itself, because I relate too intensely and completely to AuDHD perceptions. I was told it might be my higher IQ (officially 119, but I couldn't do the language tests as my brain demanded: in all three languages I know. So it's a bit higher) causing conflicts with the autism. Like, I was told a normal person thinks in a fast, straight line; autistics think in zigzags to get to the same point. They said I take the zigzags like they are a fast, straight line. And I'm like: okay sure I feel your point, but what about my mind always feeling torn in different directions and my inability to focus and how sometimes I adore change and other times not etc etc?

I'm not diagnosed AuDHD, but live that way anyway. Because that's what feels right. And trying to treat a possible ADHD has helped me. So instinct >>> NT experts, tyvm.

---

Aaaand tomorrow I'll continue these day by day :D woot to catching up and focussing and getting something done!

#30daysofautismacceptance #2023 #actually autistic #likely audhd

[seeingteacupsindragons]

YuuMori has a lot of villains (it’s, y’know, about the villains). YuuMori has a lot of characters with mental illnesses and neurodivergences.

Most of the time when you see this combo, well. Mental health issues have a pretty strong stigma.  Usually the reason they’re evil. Something’s just wrong with them, and their mental health and inability to fit into society is another sign and symptom of it.

And yet, in YuuMori, we have these characters who call themselves demons, who are actively, intentionally, the villains of their story­—and their mental health issues are not one of their sins. They do not add to their villainy.

So Albert is obsessive-compulsive. Whether it’s OCD or OCPD can be argued, maybe (although I lean toward OCPD, myself), but he is in fact seriously mentally ill, desperate enough because of it to commit murder. Personality disorders especially are hard to treat, in part because they’re so ingrained into a person. Someone with generalized anxiety might see their anxiety as separate from themselves, but personality disorders are harder to distinguish that way—and it’s part of what makes them so easy to demonize, even more than most others.

But Albert’s? Instead of making his mind looked warped and twisted, his very soul seeming wrong, his reasoning makes more sense now than it ever did before. This was a boy desperate for relief from constant discomfort, from the dissonance between how he knew this should be, how he’d been taught things were meant to be, and how they so obviously were. And it’s very obvious that he is suffering from something outside himself. He is not suffering because he is evil and his soul is wrong. He was suffering before he’d done anything wrong at all.

His discomfort was one of the most rawly emotional moments he’s ever had: Albert is usually quite cool and collected, sometimes angry, sometimes smug, but he has typically felt quite distant, even on the rare moments his internal thoughts are shown. His mental health issues, his suicidal ideation, his OCD? Those were not villainous, not cool, not collected, not careful. Those were human and desperate and fragile.

And while autism is not a mental illness, in this case it performs a similar function for William. He and Albert both have brains screaming at them constantly because that’s not right. That’s not Just. That’s not the way things should be. That doesn’t follow the rules. This can bring people with obsessive-compulsion disorder to their knees and claw their own skin open. It can bring autistic people to wordless shutdowns. It brought Albert the brink of suicide and William to murder.

They are in agony. Unless they fix the wrongness. And they have tried, so many ways, to fix it, and so many of those ways have fail.

William’s guilt may also be agony, but he’s choosing between two different forms of torment. And he thinks one helps others. Not much of a decision, that, not for someone with a soul and a heart, someone who burns so hot with love and hate that he has to turn it into something.

William’s depression, his mental illness, the way his brain doesn’t conform to society, his guilt, his understanding of his own misdeeds is so deep and his self-image so wholly negative, compared how virtually every other character in this series, even John, who barely knows him sees him, and especially compared to how the audience who adores him so much they overwhelmingly voted him their favorite character sees him.

We know he knows what he did was horrible. We are confronted with it constantly. And we are inclined to forgive him even when he might not, because we know despite it all, he has a solid moral center, a good core, the moral understanding of right from wrong. His depression is so all-consuming how could he not? Those things cause his depression.

Albert and William are the focal point of the villainy of the story in many ways: the two who started everything. The two who birthed James Moriarty, Lord of Crime. But while Albert and William may have started everything, they are not the only two with mental health issues.

Louis has always been quite stable. Anxious, to be sure, type A, very high strung. But not really mentally ill—everything he was ever anxious about was entirely reasonable (of course, I have an anxiety disorder myself, so my evaluation of that might be off—but still, worried Sherlock might ruin William’s plan, might lead to his death, might ruin something, worrying about William’s death, worrying about Milverton? All entirely reasonable, thank you). Informed by trauma, surely, but not necessarily mentally ill.

Moran, though? Louis’s behavior is informed by trauma, but Moran’s is poisoned by it.  That double-dose PTSD not only from the war, but from his actions in The Final Problem tore him apart, and we saw it tear him apart. His PTSD pushed him into crime the same way William and Albert’s mental health did.

When Moran first gets his character focus, when his personality and character is delved into properly, it’s to show his trauma and mental health issues. His character is deepened, given structure and reasoning and understand, by showing us his mental illness, the way Albert just was in chapter 62. The way William’s has been for several arcs now with his depression.

I find Moran particularly interesting, because he’s not the only character with Shell Shock: John is also a veteran, and has a psychogenic illness from his time at war. When you take those two, loyal bosom friends of William and Sherlock, who are also set to contrast and parallel each other, down to their mental health issues and neurodivergencies, it becomes very apparent how differently the two teams have portrayals of their illness. Of course, John’s not a villain. Sherlock, for all that he can commit horrible acts, is not a villain.

But Sherlock suffers from bouts of listlessness and gloom just as William does—and he hides it even less. He doesn’t quite manifest as traditional depression the way William does—it really reads more like manic depression—but Moran and John’s PTSD doesn’t manifest the same way either. And Moran’s physical disability rooted in something more concretely physical than John’s and his struggle much more debilitating. The way he suffered pushed him to do worse things than John ever felt pushed into.

But suffering, like it did with Albert and William, makes us feel closer to him. It makes them these powerful men who call themselves devils vulnerable.

Human.

#Yuukoku no Moriarty #Moriarty the Patriot #this could use more editing probably but I'm sick of looking at it right now #maybe I'll poke at it later #I also still have l like 300 words of notes that didn't make it in here to deal with later

[painted-crow]

Secondary Toast Revolving Door, Part 1

I guess I should start with a little about me, since that’s easier than making you pick through previous asks for information and some of you guys are new here. This one’s going to be heavily personal, so you can skip it if you want.

I’m a double Bird. My Bird primary system is heavily Badger influenced, and I also use Lion to support it by telling me when I should investigate something more closely. If we can dip into primary territory for a moment, I guess you can say I understand the world through systems that model things around me. But not all of those systems are things I’ve consciously examined, or fully investigated.

My understanding of how historical people dressed is pretty limited, for example, because I haven’t studied it in depth to get all the information—but I consciously understand what I do know about it. You could say this system piece is tiny but clear; I could expand it if I chose to find out more.

My understanding of how someone I’m not close to thinks might have more data to work with, but I haven’t consciously processed it; that’s the kind of thing where my Lion primary model will tell me to look closer if that person starts acting weird. This system piece might be described as huge but fuzzy; I could clarify it if I sat down and thought about it. I probably have more of these than I realize, but Lion basically takes care of monitoring those. I don’t have to investigate everything.

But some of my systems are both large and fairly clear, because I’ve taken the time both to gather data on them and to examine it. My understanding of myself is… well, I won’t say it’s terribly clear, because I’m in my early twenties and I’m still constantly getting new information, plus someone keeps changing the environment and mucking with my data (that would be me). But I have to examine it, because my brain is like a notoriously buggy piece of software and I’m the poor schmuck saddled with tech support duties.

Basically, the reason I’m good at playing therapist with other people is that I’m constantly doing exactly that thing with myself. (This probably makes me a very annoying patient for actual therapists.)

About that buggy brain, then.

I have major depression. That was professionally diagnosed when I was a teenager and it’s probably genetic. I take medication for it, when I remember to. It especially flares up in the winter or when I’m under stress. I probably have some kind of anxiety disorder too.

I’m almost certainly autistic, which I’ve never brought up with a professional—the first person to figure it out was the system I’m now best friends with, because they’re autistic and they knew I was within two weeks of talking to me. It took me two years to catch up with them and figure it out myself.

In my defense, I thought executive dysfunction, sensory overwhelm, dissociation, and hyperempathy were like… secret menu items for depression, because those only really bug me during depressive episodes. My current theory is that they’re related to autistic burnout instead.

I mask a lot, subconsciously—it’s actually really hard to turn that off normally—and I just can’t do that as much when depressed. If I do, my tolerance for everything else goes way down and I’ll go into overwhelm and start having shutdowns and dissociating. I recover pretty quickly (hours, not days), but if you’ve never spent 15 minutes standing in a Walmart aisle trying to decide whether you want a jar of peanut butter, but you can’t make decisions because you can’t access your emotions and you don’t really feel like you’re “here” but you kind of just want to go home… well, be glad I guess.

Of course, I have other autistic traits that show up when I’m not under stress, but they’re seldom associated with autism because most people don’t know what autis are like when we’re actually happy. Like, hyperlexia? That’s not even an “official” word, the auti community just uses it because “official” literature hasn’t caught up. I taught myself to read at age three (according to my mom; she says I was reading news headlines and stuff, not just books I’d memorized) and wrote a 35k word novella when I was ten, with no external prompting. My audio processing used to be terrible, but I routinely tested at college age reading levels as a kid.

I also might have ADHD? If so, it’s also mostly just noticeable if I’m under stress, and then it’s hard to tell if that’s the issue or if it’s just autism/depression again.

You might be getting a clearer picture of how my secondary and its model end up burnt so often!

(Resisting a very strong urge to cut stuff from this post.)

In short, I was a Gifted Kid. I spent a lot of my teen years biting off more than I could chew, honestly. I felt that I should be able to do more, and I wanted to be taken seriously, but I had basically no idea how to take care of myself because my needs are different from everyone else’s. I’m still figuring those out.

I’m kind of like an orchid plant: incredibly picky about conditions, wants a different “soil” and watering schedule, gets stressed if stuff changes too quickly, but when everything is just right and it does bloom, it goes all out.

I’m not kidding when I say that I have odd needs. One of them is the need for creative work, which seems to be hardwired into me. When I say that art or writing keeps me sane, I often hear back “oh yeah! I’ve heard that can be very therapeutic,” which is an innocuous reply, but it’s always bugged me, and I think I’ve figured out why.

First, because that’s not the reason I make things… I just… have to. Second, I can’t “make up” not doing creative work with some other kind of therapy. Third and most importantly, I’d much rather think of “artist” as my ground state, and depression as a condition that happens when my needs aren’t being met, rather than thinking of depression as the default that I’m just using art to escape from. That seems to me a healthier way of thinking, and probably a more accurate one, but I’m probably the only one who can see that distinction.

If life gets in the way and I can’t make space for creative work, it will actively make my depression worse. I know this because, multiple times, I’ve been unable to pinpoint why I’m feeling shitty, and then I go back to my easel or my writing or (ukulele, cooking, even just taking care of houseplants) and realize I haven’t done anything creative in like a month and thaaaat’s the problem.

I crack open a bottle of gesso to prep some canvases and it smells like… well, I don’t think you can get high off gesso? But it’s not like when you’re out of it on painkillers or cold medicine or whatever. It’s incredibly grounding, like the world snaps back into focus but it’s also oddly euphoric. Or I write ten thousand words in a couple days and it just… I don’t know what that does. I’ve never run across a word for it.

The writer of Smile at Strangers (a really good memoir centered around women, anxiety, and karate) describes a similar feeling in relation to her martial arts practice.

It’s also a bit like when all the snow melts after winter and you step outside and there’s the smell of wet soil under sunlight and I’m not sure if this fully translates for people who don’t have seasonal depression. Sorry.

Dammit, I want to paint… I haven’t had space to set up for like eight months. I’ve been nose-deep in writing projects since last summer for a reason, but right now my friggin Ravenclaw secondary is off angsting about something because of Life Stress Bullshit, and I don’t have the focus to work on any of my writing projects. Apart from this one. But it’s not really what I want in terms of creative work.

*velociraptor screech*

Oh, yeah. I guess I could mention this is why my nickname is Paint. Not sure if that was obvious before. The header image (which is more visible in the app for some reason) is one of my paintings. It’s a tiny one and it’s not one of my favorites, but I had the photo on my phone and the colors work well enough for what I needed.

(restrains self from negging my own painting ability)

This is starting to get into spoiler territory for what burned Ravenclaw secondary looks like, huh? It’s peaced out for a couple weeks at this point. I’m trying to write about what made it take off, but my ability to think of words and form a coherent sentence kinda flew out the window when I approached it directly.

Let’s just say that around the start of the month, someone I was talking to online (if you’re reading this, it’s definitely not you) kindaaaa hit a nasty depression trigger of mine. Not their fault—it’s very specific to me, and I struggle to explain why I can’t really talk about it. Basically, I spent years studying programming and web design, and due to several different but related issues during that experience, it’s now a trigger for me. I very much want it not to be, but trying to train that out of myself has induced more than one panic attack and I’m stuck between giving up on it or figuring out a way to go back to it that doesn’t totally shut my brain down.

That paragraph took forever to write, by the way.

I think I have to end this here. I… am going to go take out the trash, and water my plants, and make my bed, and file some paperwork, and maybe I’ll even mix up some bread dough or do some laundry. Spoiler alert for what it looks like when my Hufflepuff model takes over, I guess.

Oh. And I should maybe probably eat something. I almost forgot about that... again.

#sortinghatchats #time to overshare on the internet i guess #secondary toast revolving door #mental health #burned ravenclaw secondary #hufflepuff secondary model #ravenclaw primary #paint speaks

[jakey-beefed-it]

Today was... almost completely unproductive, even for me, due to various mental Crises that arose in the like... Venn diagram overlap of my sundry issues. Mental health talk below the cut so you can avoid it if you’ve got your own shit to deal with/might be triggered by that kind of thing.

Kinda did almost a checklist of disorders being problems. ADHD brain? Represented. Autism? Probably! Depression? You betcha. Anxiety? Hoo boy and then some. Mania? Maybe! Self-loathing? Energy levels off the charts, cap’n. Basically my brain was the equivalent of blaring alarms from all quarters and spinning out of control.

Anyhow I eventually managed to... not be doing that ...and in the process kinda realized that maaaaybe I haven’t been Handling My Shit as well as I thought. Like I’m medicated... for depression. Which is good! I haven’t thought seriously about literally killing myself for several years now. That’s a big improvement! Not to be sneezed at. But it’s hardly a panacea for the rest of my bullshit.

Anyhow anyhow I’ve internalized a loooot of really horrible shit I’m always speaking out against as an anti-capitalist pro-mutual-aid aspiring feminist; basing my self-worth on lots of unattainable things that I don’t even believe in but that somehow equate to me being a Failure as a Man(TM) for being a hot mess disability soup. Some of it is also no doubt related to the whole ‘Gifted’ Kid Burnout phenomenon as well. I was ‘a pleasure to have in class’ and always sought approval and validation because I had anxiety, not because I was gifted, sheesh. Whole childhood equating my value with being ‘smart’ and then having my entire ego collapse under the inevitable weight of not being able to hack it in my first attempt at college because my brain was actively trying to kill me with self-hatred that only got worse the more I failed to live up to my ‘potential’.

I’m much less of an elitist shitbag these days regarding myself as no different from any other h. sapiens sapiens in that we are all fundamentally dumb, panicky apes who sometimes need a minute to remember the whole tool-use or reason things. But while I’m really good at not holding it against other people for being dumb panicky apes, even though I don’t regard myself as better than anyone (far from it) I still somehow hold myself to these standards I long since dismissed as unreasonable to expect of anyone, much less a guy with a grab-bag of mental illnesses that makes his spongy thinkmeat even less effective than biology normally dictates. And inevitably fail to live up to them, of course. And then feel worse about myself. Forever. Well, ok, not forever, even if I do continue to manage the no-self-murder streak (which seems likely) I’m still definitely going to kick off at some point. But for my whole damn existence, which sucks plenty.

Anyhow anyhow anyhow here goes the first of hopefully many simple admissions of imperfections and forgiveness of that.

I am not a digital artist. I could spend lots of time and effort to develop those skills, but frankly I don’t... wanna. Instead of feeling guilty at having abandoned pursuit of the lovely art tablet my family got me many years ago that they ‘wasted’ their gift, I can just admit that I’d much rather continue drawing in pencil, inking in pigment liners, and scanning into a digital format for sharing on the internet. I like tactile hobbies; it’s why I get so much out of painting miniatures. And digital art is still tactile in that you’re holding a stylus and/or tablet, but it’s not the same, and I prefer physical art on physical paper. And that’s okay.

I am not a fantastic dungeon master. I’m aight. I am, in the words of the best mug ever (a gift from my sister), the “World’s Okayest Dungeon Master.” I can put together a campaign, it will mostly hang together, my combat encounters will vary from ‘pretty good’ to ‘super boring’ but my plots are generally interesting and my players keep coming back so I must be doing something right.

This one’s kind of cheating because I’ve acknowledged it before both publicly and internally for like... fifteen years ...but I am not, and never will be, a world-class miniature painter. I don’t have the manual dexterity, the patience for producing and executing many many layers of very fine glazes, or a strong enough desire to devote more effort to improvement than befits a hobby I mostly do to relax. And that’s okay. I paint pretty good, and I slowly get better. Sometimes I’m the best painter in my local store! And that’s good the hell enough to satisfy my external competitiveness, while my internal competitiveness of striving to do better than I myself have done before gets all the real attention. I do want to improve! And so I do, but at a steady pace that doesn’t stress me out.

I’m not a diligent writer at all. I like writing, and I love coming up with plots and characters, but I’m terrible at sticking to a daily writing habit. I’d like to get better at that, and I can, with effort. Honestly giving myself permission to write more fannish bullshit (Warhammer stories, SW:tOR stories, D&D stories) might help clear some of the roadblock. I don’t shit on other fan writers; I long ago admitted that it’s valid and cool when other people do it, but to this day I have still only written a handful of Warhammer bullshit and one (1) Mass Effect fanfic. All the while my idea for a novel has grown and evolved and never really gotten past a very rough first draft that is now almost completely useless due to rethinking everything because I’m not in the habit of actually writing. I can do something about that!

I desperately want everyone to like me and think well of me and never be mad at me but you know what, that’s not... remotely achievable much less healthy. I have various tendencies toward ‘people pleasing’ that tend to end up with my own boundaries trodden upon and far more people taking advantage than real friends. I am very fortunate in that I DO have some real friends, many of them online, but yeah. It’s okay if not everyone likes me. Even if they somehow did, it wouldn’t make up for the all-consuming singularity-like wound of self-loathing that the people-pleasing urge is probably trying to fill.

I can be unreliable due to my many, many issues. Most of them are mental, but some of them are physical. I can’t always do things that should be ‘easy’, whether it’s my brain saying no, or my body. Instead of making too many promises for fear of ‘looking’ disabled and/or trying to make everyone happy... sometimes I need to admit that there are things I do not have the capacity for. Preferably ahead of time, rather than bailing at the last minute or just.... not showing up. This probably would’ve been good to know about myself before I nearly failed out of college in my first attempt but hey, hindsight and all that.

I might be about as cis and straight as a guy can get, but I am not and will never be anything remotely like an Idealized Man due to my weight, disabilities, general body type (even at my thinnest I had a belly pooch and flabby chest), shit, right down to my hair but that’s got some big overlap with the Idealized Man being a straight-haired white boy when I’m merely a wavy/curly-haired white-passing boy. And shit, if I had some gender fuckery that’d be a whole other animal, but even though I kinda got assigned male and went ‘Yeah that’s about right’ I still deserve to not have to live up to some unattainable ideal.

There’s... a lot more, obviously (hoo boy is there a lot more) but that’ll do for a start.

#rengh #Jake is a big fat crazypants

[blakelywintersfield]

I’m gonna rant for a moment, because I think there’s something that needs to be said on this subject.

One thing that tumblr (and other social media sites) and gotten better at is replacing self-deprecation and hopeless cynicism with self-care and self-help guides. And I’m really happy to see that; the last thing people with disabilities or neurodivergency need is to feel worse about the conditions they have, and finding ways to make their lives easier and better is fantastic. But in this, I think a lot of people have forgotten one very critical thing: Your disabilities and neurodivergency will never be “fixed” or “cured”. No therapy, medication, self-help, self-care, and adaptation in the world will ever fix your disability or neurodivergency. It will never go away.

I see this extremely harmful thought process in a lot of people who are fighting to make their lives better or easier -- in particular those with disabilities, both physical, emotional, and mental, but I’ve also seen it with people with neurodivergency, in particular people with ADHD and OCD. I won’t comment on those with autism very much because (1) I am not autistic and don’t want to speak on something I don’t experience, and (2) there has, thankfully, been a lot of progression on self-advocacy and self-acceptance for autistic folks. Obviously that doesn’t mean they don’t face ableism (they do, and a lot of it is aggressive and abusive af), but I’m mainly leaning on the first reason for this. As an allistic person I don’t want to speak over people with autism, especially since this is going to come from my own perspective.

Your disabilities are never going to go away. They will forever be with you. They won’t just become unnoticeable or disappear one day. Even with the perfect medication, therapy, and coping skills, you will always have that disability. If you have schizophrenia, you will always risk having a day where you fall into psychosis. If you have depression, there will always be a possibility you’ll fall into a depressive bout. If you have anxiety, there will be days that everything will be too overwhelming. If you have bipolar, you still have times of emotional instability. If you have arthritis, there will still be days you’ll feel tired and fatigued. If you have ADHD, there will still be times you won’t be able to focus on the world around you. No disorder will go symptom free if you have it forever. The frequency and severity may be controlled, but it will never be gone.

This is extremely important to understand and accept. It’s not a pessimistic view. It’s a realistic one. And it’s okay! That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t strive to get help, because even with the points where the medicine and therapy doesn’t work 100%, it still makes life easier and better. I could be bedridden and unable to feel my limbs thanks to RA, but my medication helps (not very much at this point as the fatigue is extreme and I’ve been losing feeling in my hands again, but that’s beside the point). I could be at the point I was 10 years ago and actively wishing not to wake up the next morning, but my antidepressants help. I might not be happy and awake all day, but I’m still in a better place than I was 10 years ago, or 5 years, or even 6 months ago. Medications and therapy are fucking amazing and help a lot. But they will not “cure” any of this.

It’s called chronic or life-long for a reason. And both people with these conditions and people without need to understand this, to be a better ally to those with disabilities and neurodivergency. If your friend with a physical disability has a period where they can’t move as easily, or have more pain, or are more fatigued, it’s not that they “aren’t trying” -- some times a disorder breaks through the treatment. The same goes for someone with an emotional disorder; if they seem more down than usual, it’s not that they aren’t trying to be better, sometimes those symptoms still come through. And your reaction to these breakthrough symptoms matter.

The best thing you can do for someone having breakthrough symptoms is to be supportive. Talk to them. Ask them if they’ve noticed their symptoms breaking through, and if they have, give them the opportunity to talk about their struggles. Sometimes just talking about it can really help. Offer suggestions to help if they ask for it. Be there for them. No one is purposely trying to make their lives harder; no one wants their life to be harder.

The worst thing you can do is tell them they’re not trying hard enough. It doesn’t matter how well you know someone, you never know what they’re going through down to the last detail. Especially since these conditions can be exhausting, you don’t know every single detail because they don’t always remember every single detail. The neurotypical “tough love” treatment does nothing and doesn’t actually show someone you love them; it shows them that you think their condition is a burden to you. It’s selfish, self-serving, and more abusive than not. It is not your place to determine if someone has been trying their hardest or not, regardless of your status in their life.

Both abled and disabled people need to accept that the mass majority of disability is lifelong and will never fully go away. Disabled folks will always have their disabilities present. There will never be a day a disabled person wakes up and never has to deal with their disability again. This needs to be normalized and accepted. It’s okay to have bad days, weeks, months, even years. It’s okay to struggle. It’s okay if your medications stop working for a bit. If you’re trying, that’s enough. And everyone needs to understand and actively defend this. Chronic and lifelong disabilities will stay there for life (DUH) and disabled people deserve to be treated kindly regardless of how their illness is in the moment.

#long post #mental illness #disability #chronic illness #mental health

[jeanjauthor]

Do you have any tip for recognize what your love language for giving and receiving please ? I have no clue due to being autistic / being from an abusive household / being the eldest daughter ( trained to pick up after others / serve since childhood ) . I don’t know what they are and it’s driving me crazy.

This is an excellent, important question to ask. You recognize that what you’ve been *taught* to do isn’t necessarily *your* love language.  With the background you’ve described, knowing this about yourself is super-important for *reclaiming* yourself.  (Also, I am very proud of you for facing these things.)

Now, I’m no expert, but I have observed a lot over the years, and thought a lot about the Love Languages, too.  So here are my thoughts: 

First, the big Caveat:  Your love language may actually be Acts of Service, but it’ll have been warped by the abusive constraints you grew up under.  This is actually worse than most people would assume--you’ve been forced to give what you would’ve given for free if you’d had a choice, but you didn’t have much of a choice.

Whether or not Acts of Service is your love language in the end...that alone makes it a consent violation.  Emotional consent violations are more insidiously, subtly traumatizing--not necessarily worse, but definitely more difficult to observe, confirm, confront, & recover from.  So finding out that your primary love language has been manipulated and used against you may be...disturbing...to learn.  (If you can afford competent counseling, I strongly recommend it--and yes, don’t hesitate to try different counselors if the first or second or however many don’t feel like a good match.)

It could be something else--with five major categories to choose from, you got four other possibilities.  You may have need to receive love in a different language from AoS, but have been taught (polite euphemism) to give love only in the one way you were demanded most often to express.

You could also have multiple love languages, and that multitude can express itself in different ways with different people. I myself am bilingual, Acts of Service and Physical Touch. I’m lucky in that I was never forced to give AoS, but it makes it a little more difficult at times to know which of the two I need at any given moment, because it’s not always easy to tell.  Plus, there are just some people I will never be comfortable receiving PT from, though AoS is fine.

I even know of one couple who expressed & received love in all 5 categories, and both felt satisfied with each kind, making it difficult to tell if they had a primary...until I asked them how they liked giving & receiving with others. They had actually ended up unconsciously tailoring how they expressed love to specific other people (children, grandchildren) according to that other person’s needs.  Now, I’m not saying this couple is perfect (they’re drama hounds in some ways, and if things are going too smoothly, they’ll stir the pot a bit). They’re just an example of how you can receive in one language (or several) and give in other languages.

With that said, the best way to figure it out is to take the 5 Love Languages tests:  https://www.5lovelanguages.com/quizzes/

These are comparative tests, always pairing up two different Love Language ways to express oneself and asking you to pick the one that more suits you.

There are no wrong answers.

As someone who is also on the spectrum colorwheel (I love the analogy a tumblr user came up for describing it!), I want you to know that it is not only okay to be unsure about your answers, but that you can actually get a better idea of your Love Languages by taking the test multiple times, and swapping out the answers you weren’t sure about.  Keep track of your scores, and whenever you run across a quiz that gives you point totals for each category, compare the point totals.

Why? Because not all those bilingual in Love Languages will be equally bilingual 100% of the time (or 50-50, lol).  More importantly, as you become more self-aware of your past habits and work to release yourself from their chains, the more your Love Languages may change.  It is also important to realize that you can become fluent in a language not normally your own, if you are emotionally invested in the person you are expressing that language to, and are aware of how they receive it & react to it--in other words, this is a very real case of “learning to taking pleasure from other people’s happiness.”

Also, as we grow and learn and change (which life makes us do simply by existing & interacting with the world), sometimes our Love Language(s) may shift a bit.  Again, this is perfectly natural and normal.  There are no wrong answers.

One of the ways that our Love Languages can shift is--after trauma and/or abuse--our ability to give & receive love can actually weaken, and even wither.  A lot of that has to do with being protective, defensive, in an emotionally hostile environment.  Some of that, however--as many of us have learned over the last handful of months--may have come about as a result of quarantine isolation. 

For those of us who already have difficulty with social interactions (autism spectrum, ADHD, anxiety, depression, etc), isolation worsens our ability to pick up on social cues, even to the point of having difficulty noticing social cues, which includes noticing LL interactions. And as with physical starvation, love starvation can get us reduced to the point where we no longer notice how hungry we are for loving interactions.

But most importantly, not everyone will have the same dialect, or sub-dialect, of Love Language.  For example, your LL may be Physical Touch, but if those who abused you constantly put a heavy hand on your shoulder, gripping it with bruising strength, being touched on your shoulder will automatically give you a negative reaction by association.

I personally don’t like holding hands. It doesn’t come naturally to me. But I am definitely an elbows-interlocked person, because that feels much more natural to me.  Or if you’re trying to give someone a Gift with that LL, the type of gift you give may or may not make them feel loved.

It’s like the stereotypical joke of the husband giving the wife a new vacuum cleaner for their birthday.  Even if Gifts are her main LL, the gift of a vacuum cleaner comes with a burden of expectations...and if her secondary Love Language is Acts of Service...?  Unless she asked for it as a gift choice (or spoke about getting a new one positively in some way)...that’s really not gonna be a good gift.

(Even then, offering to use it yourself to tidy the house so the burden isn’t 100% on her shoulders is going to be received positively by most folks...unless they have house-cleaning-based OCD, in which case, ask first, and work with them to accommodate what you can, to reduce stress in your partner. Also, some people might genuinely like things like a new vacuum cleaner if they know that the giver is aware their Love Language is Acts of Service, or bilingually AoS and Gifts...but again, if you aren’t completely sure...ask.)

With all of that said and carefully considered, you probably have a long road ahead of you, untangling your past from your present, and untangling your burdensome expectations from your actual desires.  But that’s okay.

Again, there are no wrong answers.

This isn’t a math equation. Your answers do not have to match each time you take a Love Language test.  Not even if you turn around and take it again five minutes after your first run-through.  And don’t hesitate to re-take it once a week or once a month, and ask yourself if your feelings about each question or suggestion has changed.  Just be in the moment, in that moment, and consider your answers in that particular moment.

It may even be helpful to keep a little journal, a .doc file or something, with your thoughts on the questions and answers on a given date.  Write down or otherwise make a note of any questions that seemed particularly important to you, or particularly ambivalent (in which case, write down both suggestions for later review).

Definitely don’t be afraid to go back over your previous results.

There are no wrong answers.

You are a living, growing being, constantly changing as you encounter new thoughts, new ideas, new situations.  When we look at this situation in that light...how could there possibly be any “right answer” without it being solely a “right now” answer?

Again, you have a lot to unpack, a lot to decompress, a lot to escape, a lot to re-explore once you can shed more of the burdens of your past.  These things will take time...which sucks when you want to know now...but that’s alright.  Again, there are no wrong answers, since what you learn today only applies to today.  Come back in a week, re-examine everything, and see how you feel then.

Whatever your Love Language(s) might be, I’m genuinely proud of you for being aware of the impositions of your past, and wanting to know what’s ahead of you for your future.  Just one last thought to consider:  Don’t feel you have to only ever give-and-receive in one specific Love Language, if you discover a particular one.

Bilingualism can help you and an important person in your life bond together that much more, if you know or or at least can guess fairly readily what their own LL might be.  My mother’s LL is Quality Time, and I interconnect with her through Acts of Service by choosing to do things with her, while being mindful to chat with her, joke & laugh with her, etc.  We could do chores together, we could go traveling together...the important thing is that we connect together.  And no, it doesn’t have to be applied to your own mother; your own family relationships are your own, and probably won’t be solved by so simple an answer.

Me, I’m retaking the Singles Quiz from the above linked website right now, because I just realized it’s been over a year since I took it, and I’ve been through a lot, emotionally & mentally, over the last year-plus...and that’s without adding the decade-long year-from-hell that has been 2020 so far.

Remember, you’re a living, growing, and thus potentially ever-changing being.  Sometimes that growth & change is to become more of something.  Sometimes it’s a change away from one thing and more toward another, or more toward a state of neutrality/equilibrium...and again there are no wrong answers.  Sometimes you may need to return to neutral equilibrium, so you can recover from the burdens of your past, regain the room to resume your true shape...and regain the room to figure out what that true inner shape (or Love Language) truly is.

*piles prepackaged hugs by your front door*

You are worthy of love, you are worthy of giving love, and you are most definitely worthy of receiving love.  Ideally in all the ways that satisfy your need to be loved fully.  Good luck with the tests--and I say that solely because you’re going to be ambiguous about some of the choices.  We all feel that way, on certain subjects on certain days.  Remember...

There are no wrong answers.

#hrmm...looks like I've picked up Quality Time as well as the other two #more or less one third each with a smidge in the last two categories

[lollians]

This is going to be moderately incoherent but if you’ll just bear with me: I think the thing that I love the most about the Good Omens miniseries is how Aziraphale and Crowley’s relationship is played, but in the context of how Crowley reacts to traits or behaviours exhibited by Aziraphale that can be interpreted as neurodivergence?

Aziraphale is. Anxious. He’s very anxious, and he needs reassurance, even if the reassurance isn’t always something that makes Rational Sense.  And Crowley gives him that. “Oh, you’re an Angel, I don’t think you can do the wrong thing” is a fucking absurd thing to say, coming from a fallen angel, but it’s exactly what Aziraphale needs to hear just then and the way his face just dissolves in relief when Crawley says it and the way he says “Oh, oh, oh THANK you” just. Resonated with me, very much.

Similarly, during the scene where they get hit by paintballs Aziraphale gets all upset because his coat has paint on it but he can’t fix it himself because “He would always know the stain was there, underneath,” but then Crowley blows the paint out of the coat and it’s somehow suddenly All Better?

That whole sequence, speaking as someone with what is considered ““clinically severe”” Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, was absolutely PEAK OCD logic. “I am upset by this thing and yes, I could “fix” it in a way that looks like I’ve fixed it from the outside looking in but it WON’T be fixed and it won’t FEEL right and I’ll still know something’s WRONG and I need someone to HELP me fix it” is an absolutely ENORMOUS OCD mood and here’s where, here’s where this series fuckin’ kills me:

Crowley doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t argue. Doesn’t question further. Doesn’t even say another word. He just fixes the problem. That’s not, in my experience, that just isn’t what happens in real life. In real life it turns into an interrogation scene, “Why can’t you just do it yourself? You’re being ridiculous. What the FUCK is wrong with you?” 

or worse 

“What exactly about this bothers you so much? Tell me why. Let me inside your brain and tell me where all the anxiety buttons are so that I know how to push them. This is for therapy. It’s to make you better. What do you mean you’re uncomfortable telling me every single secret fear you’ve ever known and all the most effective ways to hurt you? Don’t you want to get BETTER?”

Another thing, in that same scene, in contrast to other moments from throughout the series:

When Aziraphale is realizing-out-loud to Crowley that the gun is, in fact, a paintball gun, like it’s some big revelation, Crowley doesn’t call him stupid for it. He just nods along.

So many times throughout the series Aziraphale gets written off by the other characters as stupid, or as irrelevant, or not saying anything of value. Shadwell, the Nazis in the church, even the other Angels dismiss him. (“We’ve got better things to do than listen to your hypotheticals.”)

Crowley does it too, from time to time “What else am I going to be, an aardvark?” “Excuse me, ma’am, were you by any chance a nun here eleven years ago?” But in this particular moment, when Aziraphale is trying to reassert himself with a contribution to the conversation that is Normal and Useful after that extremely vulnerable moment of “I am mentally ill and having A Moment and I need your help in this time of irrational distress,” Crowley just. Lets him have it. Lets him explain the obvious thing, without mockery.

Here’s another thing, and this time it goes both ways:

Crowley and Aziraphale both tend to ramble on, babbling and meandering their respective ways to their eventual Point in ways that their professional colleagues have little patience for. Both are shown being cut off mid sentence by the denizens of Heaven or Hell at least once (perhaps most notably with Gabriel’s “Shut the FUCK up and DIE already!)

But when they’re together, they don’t. They don’t cut each other off. They may talk over one another in their excitement, but never once does either of them indicate that that other’s rambling is unwelcome. They wait for each other to get All The Words Out, no matter how long that takes, no matter how many detours. 

And if you’re a person with ADHD or who’s on the Autism spectrum or both who has spent your whole life watching people lose interest in what you are saying and then knowing the extremely rare, pure, undiluted joy of finding fellow neuroatypical friends who will listen and engage with you about anything and everything for seven fucking hours?? Fuck that onscreen relationship hits hard.

All this plus that VERY good post going ‘round about conditioned autistic behaviour versus comfortable autistic behaviour in the context of What Aziraphale Does With His Hands and, oof.

TL;DR I’m very mentally ill and I have a lot of feelings about seeing characters who seem to be operating the way my brain operates not being rebuked for it and being supportive of one another.

#Good Omens #Aziraphale #Crowley #How do I even tag this? #Ok to reblog!

[elizawright]

Other Experiences

Interviews with other women with Aspergers

Source: Aspergers Uk Facebook Community

I noticed while being on the group most of the participants were men backing up the statistics that majority of the Aspergers community are male. This backs up my own theory that women find it harder to get diagnosed as majority of what doctors associate as “Aspergers Characteristics” come from male representatives. A good point from somewhen else in the group suggested that it also comes from the fact women are better at masking.

First Interview

Below is an interview I conducted with a lovely lady called Lauren, it was a very interesting read and supported what I already believed to be true through my own experiences. Women with autism are rarely represented in the media and struggle to get diagnosis or support from others as they show different characteristics to the majority of the Aspergers community:

Q. When were you diagnosed with Aspergers?

A. Feb 2009 age 13 nearly 14

Q. Did you find it difficult to get the diagnosis?

(Quite often women with Aspergers are refused diagnosis as they don’t show what doctors perceive as “characteristics”)

A. it was difficult and took about 8 appointments to get a diagnosis as lot of signs/traits were interlinked with other conditions I already had diagnosed

Q. Name 3 things positive about your Aspergers

(Eg, it makes me more creative)

A. I'm strict with time (not been late once), very well organised and creative

Q. Do you feel there is enough positive female autism Representation in the media? If no, how do you think we can improve? If yes, please provide an example?

A. No I was diagnosed with mental health before I had my diagnosis and a lot of people say to women because you can do eye contact or you have empathy/show emotions that they are not autistic when they are. People need to remember women are naturally brought up to be more mature/grown up then men so we learn things sooner than men would.

Q. List 3 things you struggle with? What could nurotypical people do to help change this?

A. Going out to busy/crowded places, meeting new people/socialising with new people and changes especially to routine. Neurotypical people should be taught about autism in school so less bullying happens and more support can happen even simple things like structured routine or explaining something in a different way or putting it into a real life prospect.

Q. Is there anything else you would like to add?

A.People need to realise that autism is a invisible disability and there isn't a certain look like down syndrome. People also need to remember that autism is different in every person so just because one person with autism is aggressive it doesn't mean everyone is going to be aggressive. Finally to remember autism comes in different levels and severities so one person with autism could live independently with a little bit of support while another person with the same diagnosis might need 24 hour care and support

Second Interview

Another lovely lady called Sophie bravely answered two of the questions for me:

Q. Is there anything else you would like to add?

A. I feel autism is based more around men. The way this could be improved is if people were more aware that autism can affect both males and females

Q. Did you find it difficult to get the diagnosis?

A. I didnt actually get diagnosed until I was 19 but I went to John Parkes when I was younger as ny mum thought I was different but they only said I am left handed but use ny right hand so it was left at that until I was 19 and my mum started working in a school and realised that I did a lot of the things that an autistic child at the school did

Third Interview

Lastly was a very helpful interview by a lovely lady called Ebony. I felt the most connection with Ebonys answers, pretty much everything she said I could relate to, specifically the struggle our mothers had to get a diagnosis, the miss belief in diagnosis of you don’t fit the stereotypes and the frustration with the lack of positive female representation.

Q. When were you diagnosed with Aspergers?

A. I was diagnosed at 8/9 years old

Q. Did you find it difficult to get the diagnosis?

(Quite often women with Aspergers are refused diagnosis as they don’t show what doctors perceive as “characteristics”)

A. My mother found it difficult to get me an assessment to get diagnosed because I have a genetic condition which they wanted to overshadow autism under. Even though they’re totally unrelated. She fought in court for two years before I was granted a full assessment

Name 3 things positive about your Aspergers

(Eg, it makes me more creative)

3. Aspergers makes me more observant. Aspergers allows me to focus specifically on and learn things really easily with things which I am really interested in, in detail, which is really useful for my degree. And Aspergers makes it easy for me to process visual information

Q. Do you feel there is enough positive female autism Representation in the media? If no, how do you think we can improve? If yes, please provide an example?

A. Absolutely not. Autism seems to be very much represented by men with the very typical characteristics (Big bang theory and atypical prime examples). I think there needs to be more female influencers who are on the spectrum speaking about it and also in movies, using autistic female characters as the main character instead of male

Q. List 3 things you struggle with? What could nurotypical people do to help change this?

A. Change. I guess just not changing things would be helpful but I think that’s just the way of the world.

People thinking I’m not on the spectrum because I’m not good at maths or science and I don’t have a breakdown every two minutes. Not assuming the stereotypes are true in everyone. My very black and white way of thinking. Sometimes this gets in the way of being able to think perceptively, as hard as I try, it can be very hard to understand why something is the way it is.

Interview 4

Interview with a lady who would like to stay anonymous. She has a very interesting story and in the past has done lots of work studying Aspergers in women.

Q. When were you diagnosed with Aspergers?

A. 2007

Q. Did you find it difficult to get the diagnosis?

(Quite often women with Aspergers are refused diagnosis as they don’t show what doctors perceive as “characteristics”)

A. I had anxiety n depression off n on for years. Worked as a advocate an had an abusive partner and it became worse. I went to a gp after reading about the condition and was dismissed by the gp. I took anti depressants n they made me feel so bad. Weight gain, hailing beginning to fall out n head felt like a racing feeling. Went back n was referred for cbt n refused to take meds as suicidal thoughts listed as side affect, which was happening. Went for cbt the lady had an autistic son. She picked up on traits n did n assessment n referred me to psychologist. I think I was quite lucky in my journey, in terms of a diagnosis. My mum said she always knew but she was always on meds. I’m not a fan on medication - personally

Q. Name 3 things positive about your Aspergers

(Eg, it makes me more creative)

A.1. I stopped hating or comparing myself to neuro typical people and what they do so easily.

2. It was ok to be different and I wasn’t stupid

3. I started to see myself and my traits and enjoy being me. If that makes sense

Q. Do you feel there is enough positive female autism Representation in the media? If no, how do you think we can improve? If yes, please provide an example?

A. I think when people are shown autism they are often shown the extreme. I watched a programme on the bbc about people with asperges and I couldn’t c myself in any of them. People always think of Chris Packham but we too are all v different as are NTs. The only other female I know of is Susan Boyle who was exploited in some way. But I believe she’s had support now and on the up bless her

Q. List 3 things you struggle with? What could nurotypical people do to help change this?

A. Too many people

Eating around strangers

Bright lights

In terms of how Nts could help is tough. I’m used to not having help so can be hard saying I’ve got a disability n then dealing with people’s preconceptions or struggling without help. Mentor ship in terms of study n maybe work place could be good.

Interview 5

This interview is another who would like to be kept anonymous, their family is very judgmental of their diagnosis therefor they don’t openly disclose their name.

Q.When were you diagnosed with Aspergers?

A. I was diagnosed in 2013, aged 36

Q. Did you find it difficult to get the diagnosis?

(Quite often women with Aspergers are refused diagnosis as they don’t show what doctors perceive as “characteristics”)

A. I was fortunate in that the clinical psychologist who diagnosed me was a specialist in the female autustic phenotype, which made the diagnostic process easier.

Q. Name 3 things positive about your Aspergers

A. Three positive things about Asperger's:

I stand in solidarity with my autistic kids, and understand them better

The way I think makes me good at writing essays

I think autistic people find greater joy in small things than neurotypicals.

Q. Do you feel there is enough positive female autism Representation in the media? If no, how do you think we can improve? If yes, please provide an example?

A. Autism in the media is usually male, which influences women's ability to get diagnosed and get help. There is a small but persistent push my autustic women to make autistic women and girls more visible, and we need to keep building on that

Q. List 3 things you struggle with? What could nurotypical people do to help change this?

A. I struggle with practical things, like maintaining a routine, using public transport, and following directions. Neurotypicals can help by recognising female autism, and simply being kind

[my-autistic-things]

hey! omg i'm so happy I found your post / responce on your diagnosis for autism. i've thought i'm on the spectrum for a while now, i'm diagnosed with ADHD and have always had 'compulsions' that don't fit the criteria of OCD but that dr's have always put under that category UNTIL I read your post. okay I have NEVER had someone mention needing to feel stimuli on both sides of ur body ... "the gotta do the same thing on each side thing that’s super common apparently"as you put it ... (pt 1)

but when I read that today, idek how to describe it. ive honestly never met someone who has that urge and never been able to explain or understand why I do. thnk u so much for sharing that, it seriously did so much for me and connected a lot of dots in my head that I should connect with a dr to get 'tested'. idk if any of this makes proper sense. I did want to ask though if you know what that urge / compulsion is called or if u know of anywhere I can read up about it?! thanks so much (pt 2).

Super sorry this has been sitting in my inbox for so long!  I’m glad my post was so relatable!  I felt the same way until I read others talking about it vaguely and I was like...hEY!  I don’t know what that urge/compulsion is called, but I really wish I knew!  I haven’t come across any documents/research about this specifically, BUT I have read some articles about diagnosing autism that alluded to it.  It’s typically coded as “repetitive behaviors” which for me, means that I touch the side of each finger with my thumb at the same spot over and over again, or do things 8 times.  I don’t have the energy to look more at the DSM rn to find the specific language that it uses when describing essentially what the autistic community refers to as stimming, but that is generally what the DSM is referring to in various ways in that section of the criteria.

I’m going to discuss some stuff here just in case others want to know more/can relate!

On the show Atypical, the character does some things 3 times and it’s never mentioned that he has OCD, just autism, so it seems as though there is fairly wide recognition of having a compulsion to do something X amount of times. When I first watched the show I had an amazing moment of “I do that too!” because I never saw it before outside the context of OCD. After doing whatever fidget/stim thing I do with my right hand, I feel like things are super uneven and desperately need to do it on my left hand.  My brain is just like “gotta do it” and there’s no reason for it.  This got very bad when I was 12-14, which just so happened to be when I was under the most stress; I had just started going to school, I was fairly socially outcast, I realized I was transgender, I came out to my mom and I wasn’t allowed to start my transition, and I was severely depressed.  When I was 14 I started transitioning, changed schools, was super stressed about suddenly having friends and wanting to keep them, and I actually started medication for depression and OCD (which did NOT work and made everything worse and scared my mom into stopping all medication). Anyways, soon after that I started research autism, started college, got my drivers license and had a lot more freedom, fully transitioned, and got diagnosed with autism as well. Learning about sitmming and being under so much less stress allowed me to...not be as stressed lol. 

One of the ways OCD was explained to me (as in, me at 13 telling my therapist I have OCD and him telling me I don’t until I explained how distressing it is I have to do things 8 times), was that you feel like you have to do a specific ritual otherwise something bad will happen. Like there is an actual consequence you can explain.  He asked me what I was scared of happening if I didn’t touch my fingers 8 times and I didn’t have an answer.  For a random example, you need to flick your light switch on and off before leaving it on to scare away a monster under your bed otherwise it might attack you. Or, you’re scared your family is going to die and your brain tells you that if you do a specific ritual they will be safe.

Stimming is more like “this feels good and I will continue to do it until I am satisfied.”  This can be very confusing when it feels compulsory, but I noticed that it only feels compulsory when I actually need to stim and prevent a meltdown/shutdown/in sensory overload. Once I started using stim toys, carrying a tangle around, using a necklace of fidget rings, and being aware I’m autistic and need to stim, my “OCD” started going away.  Still got plenty of social anxiety, but the daily struggles I thought were due to OCD got so so so much better.

I’d just like to note, the main posts I’ve seen talking about needing to do things until it “feels right” or organizing things in a particular way that doesn’t make explainable sense but more until it “looks right” have all been about ADHD. ADHD and autism are so close, I don’t mean to mislead anyone to think about this OCD/stim compulsion whatever this is, is an exclusive autism thing. I was able to identify this as an “autism thing” by looking at the DSM criteria and interpreting the traits related to stimming and finding them directly corresponding with my “OCD” symptoms. But, the “feels right” aspect I have identified as an “ADHD thing” by reading posts made by others with ADHD talking about the same feeling.  So, I’m guessing this is a neurodivergent thing in general that some people experience! Probably more commonly found in autistic people, but I wouldn’t say it’s only an autistic thing.

Feel free to comment if you can relate to this! Or have any more information/want to share your experience!

[liongoatsnake]

For the DID ask - 🖤,💀,💋? ~Rani @a-dragons-journal

🖤 - How many alters do you have? Can you tell me about them? Honestly, it's hard to give an exact number. Not because we don't know how many headmates are in our system currently but because we have a lot of people in our system of whom we don't know if they are alters or spirits. Most of these people are those who we know have been around since our body was little and back then we didn't keep track of how someone came to be here. We know for certain that at least 30 or so of us are formed by direct trauma, but there is at least that many who we have zero certainty into their exact origins. We keep trying to work out who originated how, but our trauma is so confusing to us we can't still quite make good since of it. It doesn't help that we can't decide where the headmates we know are or suspect were created by our issues with maladaptive daydreaming. (They're a lot like involuntary tulpas in how they came about, but the maladaptive daydreaming they spawned from was caused by dissociation due to trauma. So... mind scrabble and brain is weird.) Maybe one day we will make since of our past but for now it is still a work-in-progress of getting over denial, piecing together memories, accepting things happened, and organizing our own thoughts.   We treat our known or suspected alters the same level of respect and voice as we do any other headmate. Of course, given their connection to our body's trauma they have certain needs and require certain accommodations. Many of the known spirits in our system tend to try to help out as much possible though they are not as strongly connected to traumatic memories in our body because they weren't there and aren't as connected to our body due to their origins.  💀 - Have any of your alters ever integrated or disappeared? Integrated? Yes though only once. Kardegray is the merger of two alters. One was a persecutor by the name of Demon (how original /sarcasm) and another alter who had no name. It occurred when our body was only 14 so a lot of the details of the circumstances are lot to us. We do remember that Demon was tormenting others in our system both internally and via things he did while fronting. He and the other alter got into a fight, words were said, and somehow out of all of that mess Kardegray resulted. Kardegray himself early on still was kind of a persecutor but over time he has calmed down into more of a devil's advocate and now he is more of an older protective brother to most of the younger alters but still a bit of an loveable asshole/devil's advocate to everyone else.    As for disappeared sadly yes, though we have been correcting that. Long, long story short when we were in our late teens (circa 16-18) we first learned of multiplicity which sent us into a tail-spin of denial. Everyone tried to suppress everyone else as an 'imaginary friend" our amnesia issues hit its worst ever in our life, our depression got worse, our anxiety got worse - basically everything went to hell for several months. When the dust settled all but Earth Listener and Cavern-Risen had went into finding/suppression to get away from the self-destruction. Realizing how badly we messed up in trying to deny our multiplicity, Earth Listener and Cavern-Risen began to try to patch things up. They began to work on sharing memories, working together, building trust, started seeing our first therapist. Slowly people started coming back out of the woodwork. It took nearly a decade but we think we finally found everyone, but given how disorganized we're not positive. Either way, that event in our lives stands as a constant reminder how badly our life could turn if we were to ever turn on each other again and remind us why we have to work together.

💋 - How does your DID affect your relationships?

Our multiplicity hasn’t effected our relationships so much as our trauma itself has. Our relationship with our mother (a person who accidentally, but still did abuse us when we were a child) has improved though we still have a lot of trust and social intimacy issues with her. (But we have extreme social intimacy with basically everyone.) She knows about our multiplicity but doesn’t like us to bring our existence up. She also knows well about our gender dysphoria but won’t acknowledge it (which probably hurts worse because part of our childhood trauma was her punishing us for “claiming to be a boy”), which makes it feel like she still hasn’t truly changed. Friendship was always going to be difficult for us as it is because of our our autism but our trauma really messed up our comfort levels in sharing anything person. And a solid part of friendship is being personal and socially intimate with other people. We do have friends, one of them we’ve been friends with for over 20 years, but we find it hard to make new friends or have a lot of friends.  We’re getting better at trusting people again with therapy and time, but it is a struggle. Wishing people to accept and be okay with our multiplicity as part of a friendship is a hurtle, however.  Sexual/romantic relationships are out of the question to us. Our trauma is tied to sexual matters on at least 2 if not possible 3 different men/instances. We’re just not comfortable with the idea of sexual and romantic intimacy even after over a decade of therapy. We also don’t have any skills on how to socially interact in that way due to a combination our our autism and our childhood trauma that caused us to be socially shunned and stunted. We mostly just consider ourselves too “broken” to be in a sexual/romantic relationship outside of our own system and leave it at that. 

Extra: --I miss saw the emoji and answered the wrong question so have a freebee question answered--:  👄 - How does your DID affect your communication? We used to have the usual issues with communication between alters. Amnesic barriers between people for those who fronted and inside everyone mistrusted just about everyone else so there was no sharing of anything. Not too long after accepting our multiplicity we began to really eat away at our amnesic barriers and internally we got better at sharing information. Sharing information internally came rather quickly due to the fact there were so few of us actively around and as people slowly came back we were able to gain their trust and work though feelings of betrayal and fear at a gentle pace. By about age 21 is about when we started to achieve some level of co-consciousness and by about age 24 we attained near perfect constant co-consciousness. (This progress was greatly helped by Lacunae, the librarian of the library that represent our memories in our innerworld reappearing and starting to maintain our memories once again.) More or less nowadays every memory someone has is available to everyone else in the system without much if any issue. We still occasionally have hick-ups, but thanks to our level of internal communication we easily smooth out the occasional fumbles. It isn't perfect but we're a work in progress in so many ways and we're proud of how much we have improved ourselves.- Miushra

#mental health #dissociation #actuallydissociative #dissociative identity disorder #ddnos #osdd #did ask game

[vesperione]

Please Read This Before Commenting

So, as you can tell, already, this post will not mention TGWDLM until the very end. If some of you are unaware, I headcanon Paul as having Autism. Yes, autism, a very “scary illness caused by vaccinations.” Well, a couple of days ago I got someone commenting “HOW CAN YOU ROLEPLAY SOMEONE NOT ORIGINALLY AUTISTIC, LIKE HOW?” And it really hurt me!  So I posted it on my instagram story (y’all on tumblr its @robertstanion) and I got an overwhelming amount of support. Except one person, who claimed the question was valid. So I told this person that the title of the post clearly includes the word HEADCANON in it, needless to say they are both blocked (to see this post, it’s TGWDLM Headcanons Part 2 and it’s the very first headcanon mentioned that has driven me to write this post) Now. As I’ve already mentioned autism is “a scary illness that is caused by vaccinations.” Well here’s something for you. I’m happily vaccinated and autistic. That’s fucking right, I’m autistic! More specifically, I have Aspergers/Asperger Syndrome. Now here’s the reason I’ve written this post. I would like my currently 351 fans on insta and my 21 fans on tumblr to see how I truly feel. So welcome, here’s an insight of my life. Also, if you want to take this to my dms, feel free, I’ve got over 300 fans I won’t mind losing a few. I’m also writing from experience. 

-

Aspergers! What the fuck is that? Well, it’s one of the most common types of autism. Essentially, autism is a disability and a collective term. My type of autism falls underneath that umbrella term. So, Aspergers. What is that? yes I’ve repeated myself, and that is something common with me. I repeat myself and I stutter, I stumble and I slur. I am one of the gobbiest people you will ever meet with a high profanity and if you couldn’t tell, pretty much every single one of these posts on here and insta have a curse/swear word in it. INCLUDING THIS ONE! Common symptoms are that we have trouble filtering jokes from insults, filtering sarcasm and we take it the wrong way a hella lot. Um, we’re also sensitive to loud sounds and bright lights. And the big one, CHANGE IN ROUTINE! This was when I had to move to high school I was so scared because I am now the only person from that asshole school at my current high school which is brilliant by the way. So yeah, back to primary, this isn’t an exaggeration, I was bullied and I had no friends. Not even joking. Also year 1 (age 5-6) y’all are talking to the lass who threw not 1, not 2 but SEVERAL chairs at the head of the school when I W A S 5. that was also when my mom worked at the school. So anyways, this event occurred a few months after I was diagnosed with Aspergers. I was 4 and like 3/4 when I was diagnosed, And I’ve had this condition for 9 years so I’m pretty experienced. I’ve had it all my life. Wanna know where the signs started? When I was a baby. Common forms of autism also include late development and toilet training. My first word was triangle (i’m a part of the illuminati shhhh) or dad, but I have an ok relationship with my dad, but I prefer to have it known as triangle. Throughout first school I struggled, every day I would have a meltdown. I flat out refused to do the work! These meltdowns consisted of my folding my arms, putting my head down on the table and I just cried. Can’t remember why but I did. And when it was the end of the lesson, I would get up and go to break. I wasn’t punished! Year 7, I refused to do something in drama (I was very self conscious and still am and hate performing in front of groups of people) and I just froze on the spot. Wouldn’t move. So my then-drama teacher took me out and I wouldn’t talk to her. And then we went to student services and they sat me down in Miss Q.s office (Miss Q is such a lad, her and miss BE have been with me since day 1.) Luckily, the only TA i could talk to at my previous school moved up with me and I told her everything. Year 8 I only had 1 meltdown. Year 9,  I’VE HAD NONE MOTHERFUCKERS! Well I kind of did in Maths a week ago becauseIstillfeellikeeveryonehatesme- BUT ANYWAYS i’m ok now. So, me, what comes with Aspergers, here’s what!

-

It is extremely common for people with autism to have depression and anxiety. In fact aspergers is actually an anxiety disorder. This prevents me from being in large crowds for large periods of time because of the noISE and I’m claustraphobic. So, anxiety. It’s common. Now imagine having a panic attack before you go to sleep. Literally as you shut your eyes. If you can’t here’s what it feels like. The room is dark, the only light is usually from the streetlights and occasionally car headlights, but it’s just gone midnight and the streetlights have turned off. The only light now is from your phone. Your eyelids are about to shut so you put your meditation music on to sleep with. You put your phone behind your third pillow exactly and shut your eyes. Suddenly, your breathe gets shallow and your heartrate goes up. A familiar feeling of nausea creeps around the corner immediately making you reach for your water bottle. That’s how it is for me, every night. Now, nausea. I’m emetephobic. Having emetephobia ruins my life. Emetephobia is the phobia for vomit. I can barely even say it out loud so me typing that certain “v” word is huge. This prevents me from watching TV shows and films, even certain music videos, because in case somebody just happens to throw up. Now the last time I threw up was my 8th birthday and I live in fear every day. Just a few weeks ago, this bug had spread to my school and someone legit ONLY HAD TO WALK 4 MORE STEPS TO THE BATHROOM but threw up OUTSIDE THE BATHROOM i mean dude. logic. and as soon as we were told, I was not the same for the last half hour of last period. I probably ingested more perfume that week than I ever have. So. On the topic of phobias, here are some I have:

Emetephobia: vomit Lepidopterophobia: Butterflies & moths (as long as I’m at a distance I’m fine) Arachnophobia: spiders excluding tarantulas they’re cool. 

They’re the main ones. 

-

Now, this part is digusting, feel free to skip. This is something that I’ve only told 6 people. I have a condition called Paralysed Bowel Syndrome. I’ve only met 2 other people with it. PBS legit makes this person SHIT THEMSELF. I was really ill before Christmas and early Jan. Christmas, I couldn’t move I was in agony (i almost threw up thrice that week I was so scared) and in Jan my body just kept trying to make me shit but my brain didn’t want me to. I have these things called ‘Moments’ where my brain literally stops me from shitting and this usually results in me wearing pads I didn’t have a period in February because my stomach’s so messed up. What happens in the end is I legit shit out this massive lump of...welll....shit. And my mum weighs it evERY FUCKING TIME! The day I got better this year was 07.02, my sister’s birthday. To put in  comparison what happened, I got half a bag of sugar lighter that day. But no, this condition sounds stupid but it makes me really ill and I have to take this disgusting medicine when I get bad. There is no cure. 

-

So, that’s me and why those two people really hurt me. But did you know these people also had aspergers?: Obama has a very mild case Albert Einstein Anne Hegerty (was on 2018 I’m A Celeb, British, google her) Chris Packham (ONE OF MY IDOLS-) Susan Boyle Tim Burton (who is born 6 days after me-) -

But also, people with Aspergers need something to live for. In my case, there are several things including Brooklyn Nine Nine, Musicals (specifically TGWDLM) Panic! At The Disco, Starkid, The Vamps, Backstreet Boys, Stephanie Beatriz, Fanfiction, Instagram and memes. This is why people with autism, when they love something, NEVER SHUT UP ABOUT IT (lowkey one of my best friends and exs is obsessed with sonic the hedgehog and he’s on the spectrum. May or may not have succeeded in getting said friend into Hamilton-) SO yeah! This is why you shouldn’t come to my page and start spreading your shit about this condition I’ve grown to love, hate and understand. Any negative comment makes me feel even worse about myself than I already do, that’s why I took a 3 month break from ao3 because one of my books got so much criticism that I had to take it down and it really upset me. So I beg you, give me advice, tell me if there are certain mistakes but do NOT insult me or aspergers syndrome. Thankyou, J

#consjderthecoconut #Aspergers syndrome #asperger syndrome #autism #rant

[autistickitten]

Hi. I have had quite severe depression for about 7 years that has never been officially diagnosed. Up until now, segregating my academic life and everything else as well as anxiety has kept me just about alive and functioning. However, I am really struggling with that academic/rest of life partition and recently my school work has suffered. Seeing as seven years of untreated depression mounts up a bit, and even after four years of therapy I am not getting better. Finally after three weeks of (1)

being really bad to the point where my school had to be notified, I was experiencing frequent memory lapses and have been suicidal pretty much the whole time, when my parents and I went for the review session we basically said, this can’t go on.

Both my parents and me want me on medication and to have an actual diagnosis of at least depression, if not everything else.

My trouble arises in 1) the only psychiatrist in my area did my ASD assessment and I sent her a four page PDF document which basically told her to shove it because she’s clearly incompetent and can’t properly do her job if she can’t spot clear autism outside a four year old white cis boy.

The other is I really struggle to fully communicate how everything inside my head affects me. One, I am very worried about the effect truthfulness would have (I’m nearly 18, so hopefully no sectioning type repercussions can occur anymore), so I have spent about four years lying and also, words are hard.

No matter what I say, I can never properly impress upon someone how dire my situation is and how much I am struggling. I barely function (don’t shower, brush my teeth, eat regularly, exercise, etc), am passively suicidal constantly, have a history of direct and indirect self harming behaviour (which I have not mentioned) and don’t experience joy or anything just numbness and a lot of depersonalisation.

This is only the depression part. Using long words does not convince doctors I am struggling.

How can I make them understand how hard it is so I can get the help I need? I am going to fail out of high School if I don’t manage this if I don’t end up seriously harming myself first. Thank you.

I see one major upside here and that is that both you and your parents are on the same page about what you want.

How much of this do they know ? In an ideal world (and yeah, I am aware that this is not an ideal world), a struggling child can open up to their parents and have them do the “make the professionnals trust the child” part.

I understand why you’re scared of being 100% honest with a professionnal, but the more your parents know about your situation the better they can advocate for you. Be open with them about your communication difficulties, at least, and tell them that they NEED to support you if the doctor doubts you.

As for your other problem, yikes ! I’m sorry your previous therapist didn’t help you adequately. Would you/your parents be open to travelling a bit in order to seek a different professionnal’s help ? I don’t know where you live, but the nearest big city should have more options than a single therapist. I read somewhere that training hospitals might be able to provide help (and sometimes even diagnoses) because doctors in training need to see real patients the more they advance in their studies, so that might be an option.

I hope this helped a little bit !

- Sister Cat

Two things I’d suggest: One, as an effort to get through how much you’re being affected by this, I think you should take this ask and either print it or write it out. It’s very candid, and it might be useful to be able to pull it out when words or thoughts fail you in the moment.

Two, drop using Big Words when talking to professionals. Because professionals aren’t very professional, and when a patient knows Too Much about their own problems and experiences, they see it as threatening, and often chalk it up to hypochondria and WebMD and other stuff like that. It’s total BS but it’s still a prevailing thought, especially in the psychiatric community, that sick people Aren’t Supposed To Know that they’re sick.

Worse comes to worst, primary care physicians can prescribe antidepressants. So if you have a regular family doctor, and your search for a competent psychiatrist fails, try talking to you PCP. They might be able to help you get on a medication that works for you.

-Brother Cat

#Anonymous #self-harm cw #suicide mention cw

[queertisticmummy]

Fertility Treatment: Day 7

I woke up very tired, listening to random podcasts to try and get a bit more sleep in the early hours of the morning. Today was the day of scan number 2, to check how well my body is responding to the medication. I was very nervous on my way to the scan again, which always makes it really difficult to concentrate on anything else.

My wife rang up in the morning to double check she could come into the scan with me. She was driving me in anyway, but we had a few questions and I didn’t feel able to discuss these with the nurse, because of my anxiety and autism. The receptionist assured us that we could both go into the appointment. However, when we got there, they apologised and said it would not be possible for my wife to come in with me, because of Covid restrictions. They didn’t seem to understand why I would need to have the extra support, and kept saying that it ‘wouldn’t be fair’ on other couples if they let her come in. It was frustrating not being listened to, and not being able to get across the idea of equity (allowing everyone to start at the same point) rather than equality (treating everyone the same regardless of background). I became quite flustered and found it difficult to speak in the appointment, and there wasn’t any space for me to bring up the questions and concerns we had, despite the fact we had explicitly told them we needed to.

The scan itself was fine, and the nurse showed me that my uterine lining was building nicely, and she showed me the three lines they look for at this stage. Looking at my left ovary, she said there were some small follicles developing, but not much to report. When we looked at the right ovary, she could see several good follicles, with one being perfect. She told me again that this was a textbook scan and that everything was working really well. We were told to carry on as we had been, and booked in for another scan next Tuesday. At that scan we will know whether we are ready to book the IUI or whether we will need one last scan next Friday.

I got my wife in to ask the questions, and we ended up going into the scan room anyway for confidentiality reasons, which was pretty frustrating. Hopefully this made them realise why we had asked for this in the first place. We talked about the dizziness I had been experiencing, which the nurse said was one of the side effects. She said to keep drinking lots of water and make sure to get enough protein, but that she didn’t want to do anything about the dosage because it was working well. We also asked about needle tips for one of our injections, as we will only have enough for 10 total injections, but the nurse assured us she would give us some more if we needed to do more injections. She also showed us quickly how to do the trigger shot injection.

After getting home I felt completely overloaded, and sat in a dark, quiet room for about 40 minutes until I had to give an online session at work. The session made my sensory overload and overwhelm even worse which made it difficult for me to be productive at work. I managed to get the most important things done, eat lunch and keep hydrated, all staying in a dark room with relaxing Disney films on in the background.

When I finished work for the day, I lay in the dark with a cool flannel on my face which helped the bad headache I had started to get. The evening was nice and relaxing, and we are now looking forward to a whole 3-day bank holiday weekend without anything urgent to do. I feel very much in need of a rest.

Songs:

Cherry in Tacoma, Benjamin Francis Leftwich

In a Manner of Speaking, Nouvelle Vague

The First Thing To Go, Hayley Williams

Cleopatra, The Lumineers

[cakemagemaeve]

Color me pleasantly surprised.

I showed up for my hearing an hour early just as my lawyer asked me to, and we sat in his car and went over the issues we didn't cover yesterday on the phone. I was still a panicky, stammering mess, but at least I had thought to write down the stuff I couldn't remember yesterday. He told me at several points that my chances weren't good at all, so my expectations at the start of the hearing were even lower than they were before I left the house this morning. However, the judge I got was a good deal more sympathetic than the one from my 2012 hearing, who was visibly annoyed with me throughout the whole session. It turns out that that judge didn't file some things properly, and this judge had to do a lot of digging to find the records of that hearing. My lawyer and I had thought that we were blocked from making any claims based on disabilities I had prior to 2012 (I'm still not entirely sure what it all means; it's a SUPER confusing and frustrating process), but because the judge back then didn't file everything properly, I can claim autism as something that affected me during childhood and get compensated for that. I need to provide medical records from prior to 2007 and proof that being autistic (even though I wasn't diagnosed until age 24) had a debilitating effect on me growing up. One or both of my parents may end up having to testify, which they would be glad to do, as they've both been extremely supportive of me throughout this whole frustrating process. Basically, the judge said that she had no problem approving me for SSI, but she wanted to postpone the hearing until I could provide that info to her, because it may end up getting me even more financial assistance. Yeah, I honestly did not expect that outcome. Despite my being a quivering pile of nerves the whole time, it all went far better than I ever could have hoped. My parents and I are going to be doing a lot of digging through my old medical records (of which there are MANY) this weekend 'cause I have to get back in touch with my lawyer on Monday. The judge wants to reschedule the hearing as soon as possible, so we're going to need all the proof we can find as quickly as we can find it. It's funny, though the hearing was cut short and postponed, it still went so well that all of a sudden I have a lot more hope of getting the assistance I need...and having that hope scares me almost as much as not having any at all, because rejections and failures hurt so much worse when you were confident of success. Oh, the joys of anxiety disorder.

#disability #lol anxiety #optimism makes me itchy #hope #my thanks to everyone who wished me luck #clearly it helped

[gordonwilliamsweb]

Kids Already Coping With Mental Disorders Spiral as Pandemic Topples Vital Support Systems

This story is part of a reporting partnership that includes NPR, Illinois Public Media and KHN. It can be republished for free.

A bag of Doritos, that’s all Princess wanted.

Her mom calls her Princess, but her real name is Lindsey. She’s 17 and lives with her mom, Sandra, a nurse, outside Atlanta. On May 17, 2020, a Sunday, Lindsey decided she didn’t want breakfast; she wanted Doritos. So she left home and walked to Family Dollar, taking her pants off on the way, while her mom followed on foot, talking to the police on her phone as they went.

Lindsey has autism. It can be hard for her to communicate and navigate social situations. She thrives on routine and gets special help at school. Or got help, before the coronavirus pandemic closed schools and forced tens of millions of children to stay home. Sandra said that’s when their living hell started.

“It’s like her brain was wired,” she said. “She’d just put on her jacket, and she’s out the door. And I’m chasing her.”

On May 17, Sandra chased her all the way to Family Dollar. Hours later, Lindsey was in jail, charged with assaulting her mom. (KHN and NPR are not using the family’s last name.)

Lindsey is one of almost 3 million children in the U.S. who have a serious emotional or behavioral health condition. When the pandemic forced schools and doctors’ offices to close last spring, it also cut children off from the trained teachers and therapists who understand their needs.

As a result, many, like Lindsey, spiraled into emergency rooms and even police custody. Federal data shows a nationwide surge of kids in mental health crisis during the pandemic — a surge that’s further taxing an already overstretched safety net.

‘Take Her’

Even after schools closed, Lindsey continued to wake up early, get dressed and wait for the bus. When she realized it had stopped coming, Sandra said, her daughter just started walking out of the house, wandering, a few times a week.

In those situations, Sandra did what many families in crisis report they’ve had to do since the pandemic began: race through the short list of places she could call for help.

First, her state’s mental health crisis hotline. But they often put Sandra on hold.

“This is ridiculous,” she said of the wait. “It’s supposed to be a crisis team. But I’m on hold for 40, 50 minutes. And by the time you get on the phone, [the crisis] is done!”

Then there’s the local hospital’s emergency room, but Sandra said she had taken Lindsey there for previous crises and been told there isn’t much they can do.

That’s why, on May 17, when Lindsey walked to Family Dollar in just a red T-shirt and underwear to get that bag of Doritos, Sandra called the last option on her list: the police.

Sandra arrived at the store before the police and paid for the chips. According to Sandra and police records, when an officer approached, Lindsey grew agitated and hit her mom on the back, hard.

Sandra said she explained to the officer: “‘She’s autistic. You know, I’m OK. I’m a nurse. I just need to take her home and give her her medication.'”

Lindsey takes a mood stabilizer, but because she left home before breakfast, she hadn’t taken it that morning. The officer asked if Sandra wanted to take her to the nearest hospital.

The hospital wouldn’t be able to help Lindsey, Sandra said. It hadn’t before. “They already told me, ‘Ma’am, there’s nothing we can do.’ They just check her labs, it’s fine, and they ship her back home. There’s nothing [the hospital] can do,” she recalled telling the officer.

Sandra asked if the police could drive her daughter home so the teen could take her medication, but the officer said no, they couldn’t. The only other thing they could do, the officer said, was take Lindsey to jail for hitting her mom.

“I’ve tried everything,” Sandra said, exasperated. She paced the parking lot, feeling hopeless, sad and out of options. Finally, in tears, she told the officers, “Take her.”

Lindsey does not like to be touched and fought back when authorities tried to handcuff her. Several officers wrestled her to the ground. At that point, Sandra protested and said an officer threatened to arrest her, too, if she didn’t back away. Lindsey was taken to jail, where she spent much of the night until Sandra was able to post bail.

Clayton County Solicitor-General Charles Brooks denied that Sandra was threatened with arrest and said that while Lindsey’s case is still pending, his office “is working to ensure that the resolution in this matter involves a plan for medication compliance and not punitive action.”

Sandra isn’t alone in her experience. Multiple families interviewed for this story reported similar experiences of calling in the police when a child was in crisis because caretakers didn’t feel they had any other option.

‘The Whole System Is Really Grinding to a Halt’

Roughly 6% of U.S. children ages 6 through 17 are living with serious emotional or behavioral difficulties, including children with autism, severe anxiety, depression and trauma-related mental health conditions.

Many of these children depend on schools for access to vital therapies. When schools and doctors’ offices stopped providing in-person services last spring, kids were untethered from the people and supports they rely on.

“The lack of in-person services is really detrimental,” said Dr. Susan Duffy, a pediatrician and professor of emergency medicine at Brown University.

Marjorie, a mother in Florida, said her 15-year-old son has suffered during these disruptions. He has attention deficit hyperactivity disorder and oppositional defiant disorder, a condition marked by frequent and persistent hostility. Little things — like being asked to do schoolwork — can send him into a rage, leading to holes punched in walls, broken doors and violent threats. (Marjorie asked that we not use the family’s last name or her son’s first name to protect her son’s privacy and future prospects.)

The pandemic has shifted both school and her son’s therapy sessions online. But Marjorie said virtual therapy isn’t working because her son doesn’t focus well during sessions and tries to watch TV instead. Lately, she has simply been canceling them.

“I was paying for appointments and there was no therapeutic value,” Marjorie said.

The issues cut across socioeconomic lines — affecting families with private insurance, like Marjorie, as well as those who receive coverage through Medicaid, a federal-state program that provides health insurance to low-income people and those with disabilities.

In the first few months of the pandemic, between March and May, children on Medicaid received 44% fewer outpatient mental health services — including therapy and in-home support — compared to the same time period in 2019, according to the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services. That’s even after accounting for increased telehealth appointments.

And while the nation’s ERs have seen a decline in overall visits, there was a relative increase in mental health visits for kids in 2020 compared with 2019.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that, from April to October last year, hospitals across the U.S. saw a 24% increase in the proportion of mental health emergency visits for children ages 5 to 11, and a 31% increase for children ages 12 to 17.

“Proportionally, the number of mental health visits is far more significant than it has been in the past,” said Duffy. “Not only are we seeing more children, more children are being admitted” to inpatient care.

That’s because there are fewer outpatient services now available to children, she said, and because the conditions of the children showing up at ERs “are more serious.”

This crisis is not only making life harder for these kids and their families, but it’s also stressing the entire health care system.

Child and adolescent psychiatrists working in hospitals around the country said children are increasingly “boarding” in emergency departments for days, waiting for inpatient admission to a regular hospital or psychiatric hospital.

Before the pandemic, there was already a shortage of inpatient psychiatric beds for children, said Dr. Christopher Bellonci, a child psychiatrist at Judge Baker Children’s Center in Boston. That shortage has only gotten worse as hospitals cut capacity to allow for more physical distancing within psychiatric units.

“The whole system is really grinding to a halt at a time when we have unprecedented need,” Bellonci said.

‘A Signal That the Rest of Your System Doesn’t Work’

Psychiatrists on the front lines share the frustrations of parents struggling to find help for their children.

Part of the problem is there have never been enough psychiatrists and therapists trained to work with children, intervening in the early stages of their illness, said Dr. Jennifer Havens, a child psychiatrist at New York University.

“Tons of people showing up in emergency rooms in bad shape is a signal that the rest of your system doesn’t work,” she said.

Too often, Havens said, services aren’t available until children are older — and in crisis. “Often for people who don’t have access to services, we wait until they’re too big to be managed.”

While the pandemic has made life harder for Marjorie and her son in Florida, she said it has always been difficult to find the support and care he needs. Last fall, he needed a psychiatric evaluation, but the nearest specialist who would accept her commercial insurance was 100 miles away, in Alabama.

“Even when you have the money or you have the insurance, it is still a travesty,” Marjorie said. “You cannot get help for these kids.”

Parents are frustrated, and so are psychiatrists on the front lines. Dr. C.J. Glawe, who leads the psychiatric crisis department at Nationwide Children’s Hospital in Columbus, Ohio, said that once a child is stabilized after a crisis it can be hard to explain to parents that they may not be able to find follow-up care anywhere near their home.

“Especially when I can clearly tell you I know exactly what you need, I just can’t give it to you,” Glawe said. “It’s demoralizing.”

When states and communities fail to provide children the services they need to live at home, kids can deteriorate and even wind up in jail, like Lindsey. At that point, Glawe said, the cost and level of care required will be even higher, whether that’s hospitalization or long stays in residential treatment facilities.

That’s exactly the scenario Sandra, Lindsey’s mom, is hoping to avoid for her Princess.

“For me, as a nurse and as a provider, that will be the last thing for my daughter,” she said. “It’s like [state and local leaders] leave it to the school and the parent to deal with, and they don’t care. And that’s the problem. It’s sad because, if I’m not here …”

Her voice trailed off as tears welled.

“She didn’t ask to have autism.”

To help families like Sandra’s and Marjorie’s, advocates said, all levels of government need to invest in creating a mental health system that’s accessible to anyone who needs it.

But given that many states have seen their revenues drop due to the pandemic, there’s a concern services will instead be cut — at a time when the need has never been greater.

This story is part of a reporting partnership that includes NPR, Illinois Public Media and Kaiser Health News.

Kaiser Health News (KHN) is a national health policy news service. It is an editorially independent program of the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation which is not affiliated with Kaiser Permanente.

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