#autism acceptance 2020

[autiebiographical]

Flashback Friday: Originally posted April 8, 2020

It's scary that this kit exists. It compares autism to cancer, tells parents to not accept their child's autism, tells them to mourn their VERY LIVING child because they're not neurotypical, and on and on. It's so disturbing.

#autiebiographical #autie-biographical #tw autism speaks #flashback friday

[gold-snek-hoe]

Hello and welcome to Opinions from an Internet Nobody. Today's essay:

"Ger therapy" is the new "You need Jesus": One Weirdo's Navigation through Cultural Shame

This is a supposedly well-meaning sentiment that is often weaponized against people who are behaving outside of perceived cultural norms. It's a favorite of homophobes who see queerness/transness as a mental illness, but I've been seeing it used to demonize kink (which historically is often linked to queerness), and more generally any "weird" behavior that makes people uncomfortable.

For example, otherkin, systems (especially those with fictives), and people who take fictional characters as partners. Y'know, "weirdos" who "can't separate reality from fiction." And, sure, sometimes there can be a problem with that distinction, but I know as well as you that most internet strangers saying "get therapy" don't actually give a shit about the mental health of those they target. It's code for "your behavior makes me uncomfortable, stop it."

Same sentiment as "you need Jesus."

This has actually taken me a long time to figure out. I've been in therapy for my entire adult life, working through various traumas, severe depression, anxiety, all that. Those were the biggest problems as they negatively impacted, and often endangered, my life. It was only after my hospitalization in 2020, where I was finally put on much needed medication, that I could start to grow into myself.

I changed my name. I top surgery. I came out as polyamorous. I finally got my official autism diagnosis. Now I'm fuckin' married! But... there are still things I'm working through in therapy. Mainly, shame over my "weirder" behaviors. My current therapist has been a huge blessing in helping me accept the things I was too ashamed to admit.

Now, I feel comfortable enough to share.

I'm otherkin. Always have been. My connection to my humanity is tenuous, and I'm sure that's connected to my autism. When mad, I feel phantom horns sprouting from my forehead. I have a tail that swishes back and forth at the base of my spine. In my soul, I am monstrous, and years of therapy has not erased that.

I feel like I'm only half in the physical world most of the time. This doesn't hinder my real-world success (I graduated college Summa Cum Laude, have an IMDB page, and am on my third book), but informs the way I look at the world. There's a whole other universe in my head that hums along with me in my day-to-day. That's part of why I'm so skilled as a writer. To ask me to divorce from that is to tell me to stop existing. Sorry, it's how I've always operated.

Lastly, and this is the one I'm really anxious about, I have a fictional husband. Now, looking at my blog, you might say "yeah, no shit," but I don't just ship myself with him. I mean I practice pop-culture Witchcraft, and the Goblin King is my patron. I mean I have a Labyrinth-themed tarot deck that I talk to him with. I mean I held a ritual to spiritually marry him. Basically, I Snape-wived myself.

And guess what? My therapist isn't concerned. It's not hurting my ability to live my life. I have other interests, hobbies, and goals outside of him, which he actively encourages in all our tarot sessions! I wouldn't be doing this if he didn't support me. My IRL spouse is usually there for whatever magical shit I'm doing, and supports me! Some of my closest friends know, and the only complaint I've gotten is "this guy seems important to you, I wish you told me sooner." Hell, my MOTHER knows and supports me, which is huge, because our relationship was pretty damaged after I came out as trans.

If you have a problem with the way I live my life, when literally nobody else does, take a good long look at why. You don't give a fuck about my mental health. You just don't like that I'm weird.

Tl;dr: My mental health is better than it's ever been since embracing the weird, so leave me and my imaginary husband Marak Sixfinger alone.

#essay #in this essay i will #and then i did #the hollow kingdom #goblin king #marak sixfinger #actually autistic #pop culture witchcraft #otherkin #fictional husband #snape wives #this is my life #therapy language #bullying #mental health #discourse #tw suicide mention #fictives #y'all just hate weirdos #just say you hate neurodivergent people and go #neurodivergent #vivid imagination

[artificialpocky]

huge fan of this guy the autism❤️ (they’re from jnj 2020 autism acceptance tweet)

#bfdi #bfdi fanart #xfohv

[my-autism-adhd-blog]

Why Temple Grandin is NOT my Hero

Hello everyone,

As the title says, I wanted to talk about Temple Grandin. I got to meet her when I was 12. She seemed very standoffish (which isn’t surprising). I did some research on her for some time and I’ve come to realize that she isn’t the best autism advocate. According to this article:

As a believer in functioning labels, Temple Grandin believes in preserving “high functioning” autistic traits while eliminating “low functioning” traits through Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) and cures and even special diets for autism, such as wheat free and dairy free. ABA is a harmful early intervention that causes PTSD in autistic adults and attempts to eliminate autistic behaviors and replace them with neurotypical behaviors, which causes distress and emotional and psychological harm in autistic children and adults who undergo ABA. The Association for Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABAI) even endorsed electric shock therapy at the Judge Rotenberg Center, the only care facility in the United States to use this horrific form of “treatment.” The fact that Temple Grandin divides autistic people into those that should be “preserved” and those that should be “cured” is a very harmful and ableist belief, and this view is damaging to the pro-acceptance and neurodiversity movement.

Article will be below:

Clearly she supports ABA therapy, which is harmful to autistic people. Plus she also mentions how she thinks autism can improve in time. Which…isn’t how it works. You can manage your traits and symptoms, but you can’t necessarily “improve”. Your autism is your autism. It’s not going to change.

While she did do some good work for the world, I cannot bring myself to support her advocacy. If you aren’t advocating for all autistic people, higher needs included, then you aren’t advocating for us at all.

Some autistic people have high support needs. And she doesn’t seem to understand that, and thinks it can magically improve is the gist I’m getting here. That’s not how it works. You don’t “improve” an autistic individual. You “support” them. No matter where they are on the spectrum.

According to another article I found:

Temple Grandin believes that "high-functioning" autistics are talented, intelligent, and necessary to human survival, while "low-functioning" autistics cannot function or live independently, and thus should be cured in the present and prevented from existing in the future. Both I and others have thoroughly deconstructed the false dichotomy of high and low functioning, but suffice it to say that such claims not only reinforce ableist hegemony, but also reinforce a capitalist notion of success and value in that only people who can produce are worthy of inclusion in society; all others are burdens.

That’s all I wanted to share. I will leave the source below if anyone wants to read it. I find this very disappointing because I looked up to her when I was younger.

#autism #actually autistic #temple grandin #tw aba therapy #tw aba mention #why I can’t support her #autism advocacy #feel free to share/reblog

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

Would I be the Asshole for not buying my brother a Christmas gift?

I’m not comfortable sharing my or anyone else’s ages (or any other identifiable information) online so I’m keeping this as vague as possible in that regard.

The context: My family consists of my dad (60s), my mam (late 50s), my sister (late 20s), my brother (late 20s), me (18-21), and my younger sibling (late teens). My dad and Mam split up around the beginning of covid and he has been moved out since the end of summer that first year. My sister also moved out around that time. The only people left in the house are me, my mam, my brother and my sibling.

The situation:

Sibling and I came out 2020/21 to our family. I came out first, testing the waters for them, and then helped them come out. So far our family has been... supportive? The best way to describe it is that dad is performing how accepting he is so he can garner brownie points, sister is trying and even correcting people, sibling and I have had no problem whatsoever, and Mam has kinda just been hoping it’s a phase but otherwise tries to use the right terms.

Brother, however has been nothing but passive aggressive about it. He won’t call us by our chosen names, he won’t use our pronouns, and even when he accidentally uses the right name and pronouns, he corrects himself to the wrong ones. He also just generally sucks as a person. I’ve never even had a full conversation with him. My mam keeps making excuses for him (she claims it’s autism, which he was diagnosed with, but I was also diagnosed with it and I don’t throw away Christmas gifts people got me in front of them. He’s just an asshole).

Anyway, this year I had planned to just not get him a present. My own little way of saying “you suck”. I figured no one would even notice, and if they did they probably wouldn’t say anything. If they did say something, though, I had a whole teary-eyed speech prepared about how awful brother has been treating me and sibling and how deeply it’s been affecting us and how I just can’t tolerate it anymore.

Then my mam told me that this year would be the last family Christmas. It would’ve stopped years ago were it not for sibling, who my mam wants to have one last Christmas before the entire family crumbles apart.

I’m now kind of conflicted. As of writing this it’s Christmas week. There’s still time to get him a present and not ruin sibling’s last Christmas, though by the time this is posted, Christmas will likely have already come and gone. I just can’t stand him though, and the only thing he asked anyone for was black socks, which he will be getting plenty of anyway. Sibling also knows about the plan. I told them ahead of time when my Mam informed me about this being the last Christmas. But I also know that they hate conflict.

I just wanna know, I guess, whether I’m an asshole if I follow through.

What are these acronyms?

#aita #am i the asshole

[autistpride]

The history of ABA and the unfortunate reality of current therapy options

ABA was founded on a basis of hatred and ignorance about autistic people.

Ole Ivar Lovaas created ABA and saw autistic individuals inhuman. He later went on to create a gay conversation therapy.

"In any case, what one usually sees when first meeting an autistic child who is 2, 3, or even 10 years of age is a child who has all the external physical characteristics of a normal child—that is, he has hair, and he has eyes and he has a nose, and he may be dressed in a shirt and trousers—but who really has no behaviors that one can single out as distinctively ‘human’. The major job then, for a therapist—whether he's behaviorally oriented or not—would seem to be a very intriguing and significant one, namely, the creation or construction of a truly human behavioral repertoire where none exists."

"You see, you start pretty much from scratch when you work with an autistic child. You have a person in the physical sense—they have hair, a nose and a mouth—but they are not people in the psychological sense. One way to look at the job of helping autistic kids is to see it as a matter of constructing a person. You have the raw materials, but you have to build the person."

The purpose of the therapy is that autistic people are broken, and should not be allowed to be themselves. That they should be subjected to treatment until “molded” into something deemed more acceptable to society and their parents.

ABA doesn’t actually change the subject into what the program and their parents want. An autistic kid does not become allistic.

What it does accomplish is to essentially force the subjects into acting more like the type of person desired by the program (masking).

After enough bullying, shaming, coercion, and general breaking down of a child’s personality and defenses, that child learns to pretend to be allistic as much as possible, to please authority figures and avoid negative consequences (beatings, denial of food, denial of affection, denial of water, denial of washroom breaks, denial of preferred items etc).

It’s intensive “training” using aversive and coercive methods, to force change in a child’s behaviour. A lot of the time, this is about changing harmless self-sooothing or coping behaviours in autistic children.

ABA is an intensive therapy, usually 35-40 hours a week, of compliance training. Children are often pulled out of school for a good chunk of these hours, missing out on actual education, for what is essentially a full time job.

In these sessions the RBT (who only had to do a few weeks training) has the child do tasks repetitively earning a small prize like a candy or a token to gain a privileges to their favourite items and activities. The consequence is their favourite things and activities are removed, including the encouragement of the removal of their parents attention, until the child complies.

When subjected to compliance training for 35-40 hours a week, autistic children are taught that they lack autonomy. They are taught that they do not have the right to say “no” to something that they do not want to experience.

That’s incredibly harmful and dangerous. This leaves autistic survivors of ABA to be highly susceptible to various forms of abuse both as a child, and later on in life.

Also “pretending to not be autistic” thing is extremely problematic. I'll talk about that in another post.

A study in 2007 found that nearly half of all ABA survivors met the diagnostic threshold for PTSD. Other studies referenced put the number closer to 85%, and also include C-PTSD.

In 2016, Congress funded a report to examine whether the ABA services they have been effective

With 3,794 participants, this is the largest study ever conducted on ABA. The 31-page report entitled, “The Department of Defense Comprehensive Autism Care Demonstration Annual Report 2020” concluded that “ABA services are not working.”

“… these findings demonstrate that … the delivery of ABA services, is not working for most TRICARE beneficiaries in the ACD.”

“ … the Department remains very concerned about these results, and whether the current design of this demonstration, as well as ABA services specifically, is providing the most appropriate and/or effective services to our beneficiaries diagnosed with ASD.”

In last year’s report of over 709 individuals with autism, 76% showed no improvement after one year of treatment, 16% had improved, but that 9% were worse after a year of treatment.

ABA “therapists” - BCBA stand to lose a TON of money if ABA is considered bad. Parents or insurances are paying around $25,000 for 3 months of ABA.

As a society, we realize that gay conversion therapy is inhumane. We look at the type of dog training that most closely resembles ABA to be animal abuse. We look at residential schools - an idea that bares striking resemblance to the concept and execution of ABA - as a dark spot on our country’s history, and one that we are trying to make reparations for now, after the fact.

Unfortunately, ABA is oftentimes the ONLY resource now available to families with autistic individuals.

When given the diagnosis, the professionals hand out pamphlets and print outs of ABA companies. Some have even resorted to fear mongering or threatening families who refuse to use ABA.

Many doctors are not even taught about ABA or therapy options. They are simply told ABA is for autistic people, push it, and they do.

For families that trust their medical providers and have no other knowledge on autism or ABA, they think their provider is looking out for their best interest.

Many parents are just sadly uninformed and think they are doing the best thing for their child.

This is not helped by the fact that there are even facilities that are basically ABA in name only in order to be covered by insurances that will only pay for this therapy and none others.

These facilities are often floor time or play therapy in disguise which confuses people even more due to the fact that they claim to be ABA but are not. This has caused much discourse between people who think that all ABA must be like this when in fact they just got extremely lucky.

For BIPOC families, who are targeted by authorities already, any therapy they can get can be a potential life line that may help keep their children alive.

This leaves these families in a terrible situation of having to choose between one or potentially the other.

I'll share some amazing BIPOC voices in another post as I am not qualified to speak on their story due to me being white.

And for some families, it has become a last resort choice before having to move to a more institutionalized setting or in some cases threatened with child services.

A good hard look at ABA should be done with funding and encouraging alternatives like more access to floortime, speech, ot, or pt.

Those therapies are provided for some families but given very few hours in comparison, there are no facilities near them and they cannot afford the travel to them, and for some families, they aren't provided at all.

Some individuals qualify for no therapy options outside of ABA and this leaves some families without any resources or help and left to navigate everything alone as best as they are able to.

Which has been our experience and why it is important to me to get information out there, for those who have no other resources.

And sadly understanding that until acceptance and other resources are available to all families EQUITABLY, some may have to choose between one heartbreaking choice or another.

Either way, there is potential risk in ANY therapy you choose to utilize and it should be something to be aware of. So be aware of any red flags.

#autism acceptence month #autism #asd #autistic pride #autistic #actually audhd #autistic adult #audhd

[c-midori]

TW: Su/cide, NS/FW mentionings

I fear there’s a small chance for this community to recover from this, but I think it’s time I finally explain what happened.

I know it’s something of no laughing matter. And I know it’s something that’s NEVER okay.

Yes. I attempted to off myself.

From what I remembered, I had cut my right arm, not too deep but still enough to draw some blood, and had fallen asleep on the living room couch.

Needless to say, my family was upset with me.

Whilst they HAVE forgiven me for the attempt, I’m still quite ashamed. This kind of thing is something you don’t recover from quickly, it turns out. I can’t believe I wanted to do this at all.

Now, me? I definitely had quite a bunch of problems BEFORE the July 30 incident. Things like realizing the true struggles of autism, these family issues we keep having (especially with my dad mind you), having to go back to school, which I had HUGE problems with, the Russia thing, and KOSA. All this formed a bubble, with me wanting to do this horrendous thing. I had considered it LONG before all those reasons too, especially just after the peak of the COVID-19 pandemic in December 2020.

But finally, on July 30, 2023, that bubble popped. And you wanna know why it happened?

I posted NSFW in a friend's Discord server, which went against its rules. By ACCIDENT.

And that? That kind of thing broke me beyond repair. Leading us to where we are now. I assume I’m about to get the worst backlash in all my life. Which I DO deserve, honestly. To lose a close friend is HORRIBLE. I myself have never experienced it, but I know there are people here who HAVE.

Sadly, for some, my attempt could’ve been the first time they dealt with this. And that’s NOT OKAY. That’s NEVER OKAY.

I should’ve just listened to the community. I should’ve just accepted that I made a mistake and moved on.

But no, I chickened out and now I must face the consequences.

I wish to say sorry for what I’ve done, even if I can’t be forgiven. I do not expect to be forgiven, and that’s okay.

So, this is my apology.

I want to apologize for wanting to end my life and ACTUALLY trying to.

I want to apologize for hurting the people of the Octonauts community with my wishes to do such.

I want to apologize for ever saying goodbye to this world, only to reemerge just days later.

I apologize for EVERYTHING.

I can’t believe that I did THIS over a mere joke, that I was THIS stupid, that THIS is who I am.

I’d like for everyone to know that this is NOT their fault. You shouldn’t blame yourself for this. Moreso, I should be sorry for myself. I did this because I NEVER considered anything.

But from now on, I promise I will never do this again.

I promise I will move on.

I promise I will become better.

But now, I must calm down, and take a break.

Thank you.

- Clover

#octonauts #serious #apology

[madqueenalanna]

sorry (lie) to defend hate crimes md but. i think a lot of 2020s discourse misses the context within which the show originally operated. and this is NOT to say "well racist jokes were funny back then" cause that is NOT my point. my point is all the stuff that isn't the racist jokes

like, house md started airing one year before supernatural and bones, two other shows i'm deeply familiar with. supernatural is rife with casual homophobia, racism, misogyny, you name it. bones is so deeply entrenched in boot-sucking post-9/11 government that it's almost unwatchable these days. house... isn't very topical. he makes a lot of 80s references, or older. there are maybe two troop episodes? but let's be real we've been in the middle east so long that hardly dates it. and like, what does the show house md have to say beyond house's personal bad actions?

prisoners on death row deserve respect. homeless people deserve the same treatment as anyone else. mental health conditions like schizophrenia (presumed or otherwise) or munchausens don't disqualify people from actually being sick. being fat is sometimes a symptom instead of a cause, and people overlook genuine health concerns in favor of blaming obesity for everything. orthodox jewish beliefs deserve respect, while christian grifting should be mocked. there is significant, murky overlap between chronic pain and opioid addiction and there is no easy middle ground (the show itself muddles this point repeatedly, to be fair). autism is more akin to another language than anything else, and autistic people deserve to be met where they're at. abortion UP UNTIL BIRTH is acceptable, even desirable given circumstances. it is acceptable, even preferable, to repeatedly defraud insurance companies and bureaucracies if it's in the best interest of the patient. eating disorders are dangerous/fatal and should be treated as such

like, i get it. a lot of aspects of this show have not aged well, particularly the main sell of "edgy epic atheist" house, which WAS a very mid-00s type of character. and i'm as guilty as anyone as doing pepe silvia on this show to make it sound epic (like here) but i do genuinely believe i'm not wrong. even if you don't read house/wilson as romantic, and you don't need to, their relationship is so intense that it eclipses either of their various romantic entanglements. wilson went through 3 ex-wives and an ex-fiancee, house gave up on at least 3 significant relationships. house gave up his vicodin, his medical license, his entire life so that wilson didn't have to die alone. how can that not be poignant, even now? how can anyone deny the emotional impact of that? fuck your destiel, fuck your good omens. you didn't earn eight years of THIS

rambling as usual but i'm right. this show can be a really difficult watch at times for cringe reasons but it can also be so unusually astute that it takes the breath away. what other show, especially in 2005, was giving the circle speech from "lines in the sand"? that episode aired the same year as supernatural's racist truck or bones' "troops did friendly fire but iraq was still justified" penultimate ep. can i say house was a GOOD show? idk. but it raised a lot of interesting points and had a lot of against-the-grain compassion that i still find sorely lacking even now, 20 years later

#House #And what I really respect is that through Good Doctor. David Shore is still learning and growing #Like he fucked up on intersex supermodel and fucked up again (but lessser) on intersex basketball kid #So he tried AGAIN on trans people in GD and it's better! At least in the ep I saw I'm not caught up #It's not often you get a creator so openly willing to adjust their beliefs to the current era so. Thank you David #And I've said it before and will say it again. I think it matters that David Shore is Jewish cause the show just makes more sense #Than it would from a Christian context. Esp the orthodex ep and House vs God but even casually? #Life is worth preserving? Protect the existing pregnant woman over her fetus? That is NOT a Christian belief generally #I'm not Jewish so I don't want to speak too much BUT I'm deeply familiar w Christian-led media and it sucks worse. Sorry. Not

[wafflehousegothic]

putting this to a vote. partially.

i got accepted to the university of [redacted] and need to decide on housing options. SO

further information: a) i am RETURNING to school after dropping out in 2020. b) before dropping out i dormed in a suite with private bedrooms and it was delightful to be able to close a door c) i have autism & chronic migraines

#mine #the gang goes back to college

[annie-manga]

OC infodump: Forest

So Forest is an OC I created fairly recently; I first came up with him back in April 2020.

He had only a few specific characteristics at that point(green hair & freckles, trans & gender non-conforming) and those stayed consistent as I ended up developing him more as the years went by.

Around 2021, I made an AU of with him & other OCs, and that gave me the chance to flesh him out a bit more.

I made him Black & Iranian(his dad is Afro-Latino & his mom is Iranian), I gave him more curlier hair & let his roots show a bit, and I expanded more on his interpersonal traits to try & expand his backstory a bit.

Short backstory summary: he was someone who had struggled with his identity growing up & had a hard time making friends(in part due to undiagnosed autism), so he ended up keeping to himself at times. In 7th grade, he met Liana, who instantly befriended him & she was his first best friend. Over time, his friend group grew & so did his confidence in himself. During high school, he started to dress in a more alternative/punk-ish fashion, since he didn't feel comfortable wearing "typical" feminine clothes; this was also when he started dying his hair.

After high school & entering college, he realized a couple things about himself:

He's transgender(once he became aware of that, he felt a bit more comfortable dressing femininely, now that he understands the distinction between gender identity & gender presentation)

He's demisexual; he's had a few FWBs in college, but only with people he's felt comfortable with & close to(prior to this, he thought he was just bisexual, but biromantic is more fitting for him now)

He's in love with Liana; this one was a bit difficult to accept cause some of his insecurities about relationships & himself made him feel unsure about taking his relationship with her to that level. Eventually he does tell her how he feels....about a year or two after graduating college.

Forest has become a very precious OC for me since I first made him; I got to explore some of my thoughts & feelings on sexuality, gender identity & presentation through him.

I also feel more confident with his design over the years, I like how I've given him some of my own personal traits & have that reflected within him. And I've made a bunch of AUs with him to for fun & I've got so many already!

He's been a big creative inspiration for me for my art & writing, and I'm really glad this character I made on a whim became very important to my craft & my life!!

I hope to create more stuff with him soon!!

Thanks for reading!!

#oc: forest #anniemanga #annie-manga #property of anniemanga #oc infodump

[zhong-leigh]

Another one for Autism Acceptance Month, but your activism, advocacy etc can NOT exclude autistic people of colour and/or autistics with moderate to high support needs.

(tw: ableism , police brutality)

I had someone on tiktok literally telling me that "autistic masking wasn't a thing until 2020" and that before that autistic people were just visibly autistic. This was said to me by someone who's apparently an autistic psych major... So I'd like to remind everyone who thinks like that, that autistic people of colour constantly have to hide their autism in order to stay safe. They're more prone to face police brutality than their white autistic counterparts (I'm not saying that the police won't/can't be hostile against white autistics don't get me wrong). So saying that masking wasn't a thing before tiktok is not true, and is just fucking harmful.

Also regardless of whether people are diagnosed early or not, many autistic people have to mask their autism due to abuse, harassment, ableism, loads of reasons.

Autistic masking is a real thing. If you advocate for the autistic community, it has to involve people of colour, AFAB people, queer people, higher support needs people too. People who can't speak. People with or without co-occuring conditions. Let's not leave anyone behind.

#autism #actually autistic #autistic #neurodiversity #neurodivergent #asd

[dhaaruni]

Dhaaruni, I’m gonna need you to read the New York Times opinion piece about autism cause it has a line about hysteria being aesthetically pleasing and I can’t suffer through this alone

[SCREAMS INTERNALLY AND EXTERNALLY]

What even is this shit?

White women have long been vulnerable to aesthetically acceptable mental illness, from 19th-century teenage “hysteria” to the “pro-anorexia” web forums of the early aughts. Mental health aestheticization is yet another version of this predilection, now rooted in 2020s intersectional identity politics.

Sorry for almost dying from severe anorexia and psychosis I guess??? Am I white now?? I'd love that privilege but alas.

I actually do think that people ARE medicalizing perfectly normal emotions way more than before due to like, TikTok and the way society works lately, but are they kidding with this???? There has to be a way to address legitimate issues with how mental health is discussed and addressed without resorting to this brand of dismissal and outright dehumanization of mentally ill women and girls!!

#anonymous #answered #~crazy girl blogging #links

[lucysweatslove]

Health recap, I guess? 2019 to present, because I'm so frustrated with my health atm.

Early 2019, I started with wrist pain whenever I used my hand to push on something. Nobody could figure it out. Did OT without much help. Was told it is "probably functional" but lost ability to do things I love, including lift weights and do yoga.

End of 2019, I got sick with an upper respiratory infection. I get colds periodically like everybody else. Nothing new.

URI did the whole "got better, then it got worse" thing and turned into a sinus infection and then my First Ever Ear Infection.

Went into urgent care; was given... some... antibiotic. I don't even remember the class. When this helped but didn't resolve, and the URI progressed to a cough and lower respiratory stuff, I was put on another antibiotic of a different class.

Eventually that antibiotic cleared it up, but I had a terrible cough for a few months. Also. Finally see a new psychiatrist who puts me on Wellbutrin and I feel so much better emotionally. Not physically.

Enter in COVID! I was working in a derm clinic and had to take my temp multiple times a day. We found I was persistently having fevers! Yay! I also was tremulous, nauseous, and lost weight unintentionally. This was on top of a couple year history of significant whole-body pruritis. Concern is something cancer.

Provider I worked for ordered labs while I waited to get into my PCP. My TSH was marginally high, which was unexpected. My PCP called and was like "let's put you on levo!" to which I said no, let's not, because I'm not presenting with any hypothyroid symptoms. I requested repeat TSH plus additional thyroid tests eg T3/T4.

Those came back normal, PCP was all "its a good thing I didn't start you on meds" like ma'am no, it's a good thing I had some medical knowledge and thusly refused and pushed for repeat studies. My PCP did not additional workup and took my temp via forehead scanner and was all "you're perfectly healthy."

Moved, and thus I needed a new PCP. New PCP did more extensive workup.

Start grad school fall of 2020. Can't focus well, suspect ADHD because my sister has ADHD and my historical depression, which I've blamed all my previous focus issues, is well-treated with Wellbutrin. PCP agrees but because of fevers doesn't think it's a good idea to start a new med yet.

Everything negative/clear/normal, including peripheral blood smear, blood culture, and chest and abdominal CT.

"Well, the next step would be a bone marrow biopsy..."

That sounds painful, no thanks. If it's something insidious, it'll eventually show up on routine labs and then we can do the biopsy. I continue to have fever and ear pain (even when my ears look "clear") and recurrent ear infections. I notice my hair is thinning too, and I keep getting recurrent scalp infections, but oh well. School goes fine even if I can't focus well, so I ignore that, too.

I figure out that my wrist pain is a ganglion cyst that nobody noticed because it didn't grow "up" but snaked its way through bones so it took 2 years for a "bump" to present. Had surgery to remove it in early-Mid 2021.

Constant stuffy nose starts in 2021, but my husband's hips died in mid 2021 and I focused more on him initially. I still can't focus and my nose is so stuffy it interferes with sleep.

Enter into a long discussion with my PCP where she refuses to acknowledge that I might have ADHD and thinks it's from my nose + inability to sleep. We try to treat it. Nothing works. Still. Stuffy.

Apply to medical school. Worried about ADHD and being able to focus and learn. Therapist who I've been working with since Husband's hips agrees it is ADHD but can't medically treat. Referred to testing because maybe if I have an actual diagnosis, my PCP would treat.

Diagnosed with ADHD + autism. Clinician assessor told me that my PCP's office doesn't usually "accept" his diagnoses.

Go to a PMHNP instead who won't prescribe stimulants without assessment from a specific neuropsych.

Placed on Strattera while I wait for neuropsych results. It's terrible. Fevers spike, I'm shaking all the time, can't sleep, like no change in focus. 0/10.

Do assessment with neuropsych. Only did some self-rating scales + the WAIS. WAIS test is voided because I've done it too recently. I still have to pay.

PMHNP finally says she won't make me go through any more hoops and we try Vyvanse. Vyvanse is amazing. I barely have any exacerbation of anything physical even.

Start medical school, things are OK and stable.

A few weeks into school (probably like, 6 weeks after starting the vyvanse, if it matters). I start feeling unwell and dizzy and like my eyes can't focus well, and I can't bring myself to eat. I figure I just need more hydration + electrolytes. Eat more salt, do better.

Two months into med school, everything flares. My scalp flares, I end up with a staph aureus infection not just on my scalp but by both of my ears, neck, and even a small abscess on my arm.

Treated for the staph but two weeks later develop widespread myalgias. Start taking daily Aleve to manage.

Fever is flaring without any particular pattern during this process.

Losing so much hair in the shower and in clumps. Husband can't find discrete lesions of baldness. I look at the hair and they are all telogen stage. Decide it's probably telogen effluvium from the stress of school.

Myalgias get progressively worse until I am in so much pain just sitting in class that if I forget Aleve for just one day, I'm almost crying and can only focus on the pain.

Finally decide to get another appoint with my PCP. It's in 2 weeks.

Why did I wait so long to see my PCP again? Because I am fat with a history of a restrictive eating disorder and I am absolutely petrified I will be labeled once again as the Overly Anxious Fat Woman that "just needs to meditate and lose some weight," and that when I bring up my new diagnoses and meds, I'll be told I "can't possibly be autistic" because I'm in med school and "present myself well" nor can I have ADHD because clearly I'm just an overly anxious fat woman.

#personal

[xpc-web-dev]

I'm feeling like a failure so I want to share this.

(24/05/2023)

Here in my country we have a free program that trains women in programming.

In 2020 I tried and failed and due to my anxiety I avoid anything that puts me in a position of having to talk to be accepted into the process (apart from work obviously).I thought they would just ask me what I study and I just prepared for that.(My error)

So this year I saw their volunteer position and I thought "I think it would be cool to connect and help other women" I even commented on this blog and the network we have here (if you're from the organization and reading this here, hello)

And so today I had an interview. And I wasn't prepared and I'm feeling like crap for the answers I gave. Because I didn't prepare myself to talk about the social issues of why I care about organizations that help other minority people on the net and the impacts that these inequalities cause on me and on others, even more so here in Brazil

Be it by race, gender or sexuality. I am a person who needs to prepare, reflect, analyze and then give an answer that makes me feel happy and that demonstrates 100% my essence.

But that doesn't work with live conversations with people I've never seen in my life. With acquaintances, it even happens, because we already talk about it one way or another.

And sometimes I even have to stop and talk to myself, think about the issue and then go back to talking about it with the person and it's okay, because I'll have another chance.

So I'm not happy, I hate the feeling of failure. BUT as I said yesterday failures do not exist, what exist are mistakes that become case studies.

So what am I going to do about it?

Always remind myself that I hate this kind of feeling and try to prepare myself (even though I don't have access to what it will be by asking) AND TRAINING TO FEEL COMFORTABLE.

And I don't know if this is social anxiety (because if I prepare myself mentally for what can be talked about, good or bad, I know how to deal) or maybe one more characteristic of a possible autism. But we will only know when I have $ for reports. Anyway, I wish that you can persist in your dreams, HAVE COURAGE and PIETY with your own mistakes. Stay safe.

#womanintech #software development #woman in stem #codeblr #studyblog #coding #studyblr #software engineering #code #algorithms #failure #expectations #responsibility

[1863-project-art]

[Image ID: Ingo and Emmet from Pokemon Black and White are drawn somewhat neutrally from the chest up. Emmet is slightly in front of Ingo and leaning a bit foward to make Ingo more visible in the back. Below them, the text “thank you” reads in blue and green, and below the text is a drawing of the artist herself, a light-skinned woman wearing a sailor dress and tam hat with short wavy hair. Her eyes are closed with a tear running down her cheek, and her hand is clenched into a fist and held close to her chest. End image ID.]

Considering day seven’s themes were pride and solidarity, I made this one a bit more personal.

I got my autism diagnosis amidst an OCD-induced mental breakdown in 2009. It gave me answers I’d sought for most of my life, but the narrative back then was still heavily dominated by organizations like Autism Speaks, which preached that I was a blight on society, a burden to my parents, something that needed to be “cured” (i.e. eradicated). I actually started hiding my autistic traits at first, trying to compensate for what the world thought were my deficits. I had a name for why I was like this, but I also knew I wouldn’t be accepted like this, so I ironically started masking harder.

That changed when I found the self-advocacy community and started to blog about my own experiences as an autistic woman diagnosed in adulthood. By hearing other people’s experiences and feeling safe enough to share my own, I began to embrace my autistic traits and allowed myself to be open about my diagnosis and how it affected my life. But there was a part of me that I still felt I had to hide. Sometimes it broke through for short periods, but ultimately it was an autism stereotype and I felt like I needed to bury it deep.

I’ve liked trains since I was a little kid. But that little kid learned early on that this was an interest that people made fun of, so she kept that part of herself extremely private. It was a hobby she could only share with her family - indeed, she shared it with her dad - and friends didn’t even know she had it until adulthood. I ended up suppressing it further after my diagnosis at age 20 because I didn’t want to be an autism stereotype. People found out in 2014 briefly, but I went back into the train closet not long afterwards, and friends only knew I had a near-encyclopedic knowledge of the NYC Subway system because they traveled around the city with me.

In 2020, though, I found Submas, and it was like looking into a mirror.

They were both so much like me that it was unreal. I noticed people loving them as they were, just allowing them to be themselves, and it awakened something in me. Bit by bit, I began allowing myself to be more and more open about my interests again, and I started leaning into the train stuff intentionally and allowing myself to unapologetically enjoy it. I don’t think I’d have gotten to this point without Ingo and Emmet, but they were there when I needed them to be, and now I’m the adult version of the little girl who loved trains so much and so joyfully. I wrote an essay about it here, but the jist of it...is that I’m allowed to be me again, and these two helped me get there. I’ve finally achieved a childhood dream and driven a steam locomotive now, and I wouldn’t have gone for it if it weren’t for these two giving me myself back.

Drawn for day seven of @submas-autistic-joy, an event all about allowing Ingo and Emmet to be…well, themselves, without angst or ableism. For more on the event specifically, you can check the post out here!

#artists on Tumblr #Pokemon #Submas #Submas Autistic Joy 2022

[languageshead]

The day I found out about death

CW: pet loss, loss, death, grief

I got my dog when I was 6 years old. Doctors told my parents it would help my autism. At that age I was fully nonverbal learning how to use AAC. My beautiful Lhasa Apso was 5 months old when she came home and we bonded instantanously. I felt to her as I had never felt with anyone else. I learned so much from her, my speech improved, my social skills, motor skills. We were so perfect together my parents decided to get her pregnant after two years. My neighbor had a Lhasa around the same age and that's how I got another baby Lhasa.

In 2020 we found out the older one had heart disease. At first, I couldn't understand how bad it was, but after her heart stopped for the first time I felt like my world was falling apart. We knew she was going to die when she did. Doctors had told us. On that day, dad took me to the mountains. We stayed there the whole day. When we returned home everything was still there, her daughter, her bed, her clothes, everything but her. I didn't cry much, but I dreamt about her for months straight.

Two months later, on New Years Eve I was woken up by my mom screaming. I couldn't understand it at first, but as my brain made sense of the world around me, I realized that my mom was screaming ''my mom died, my mom died''. I had no idea what to do, I walk, not knowing exactly where my feet were taking me. I said nothing and I hugged my mom. I hugged her knowing our lives would never be the same. I hugged her trying to put her broken pieces together but I knew nothing could solve this. I didn't speak for the rest of the day. We returned home that day at 11PM and my grandma wasn't around anymore.

A few weeks later, my dog starts feeling sick. She hadn't been feeling well since her mom died, diagosis was depression. So we didn't think much of it. Vet sends us home with meds and a few days later she is not my baby anymore. She isn't there. She doesn't move, she doesn't ask for my food, she doesn't want to go outside. I knew what was coming. She didn't make it.

I went back to dreaming about them all. Every single night.

My parents thought I wasn't doing well, I wasn't speaking a lot, I wasn't eating well. But I felt fine. I started to look for alternatives, what kind of pet could I have that was low maintaince (mom and dad work and I was starting University) but that could be my friend. Mom was against it, dad said it was fine. A few months later I got a hamster, I named him Moshe but later found out he was a girl. I loved her immediately, she was so friendly and sweet. I worked very hard to make her home perfect for a hamster, I modelled with clay by myself her sand bath and her bathroom, though she didn't use it very well.

When Moshe was just 3 months old she got sick. Vet said her illness was unsual: it could be a one time thing or it could be genetic. Maybe bad breeder, maybe unlucky hamster. The second time she had the same issue I knew it wasn't gonna go away. I took care of her, I took her to the vet, we had an X-Ray on a tiny russian dwarf hamster. We gave her meds. But one day I woke up and found her laying outside, I knew she wasn't gonna make it, there was nothing we could do. My mom insisted on driving me to Uni and while I watched my classes my mom took her to the hospital. My tiny girl was the whole day there, admitted. We took her home for the night and I watched as she took her last breath.

My mom and I walked to a park near our house and while digging up a whole smaller than my hands I felt the world crash around me. I cried like I had never cried before. I buried my baby hamster, but after 6 months I was also buring my two dogs and my grandma. I was crying for all of them, I was crying for all the moments my dogs would miss, I was crying because my grandma didn't see me get accepted into University, I was crying because I had lost half of my family and only in that moment I realized they were truly gone. That day I found out what death was.

I saw people taking their night walks and I couldn't understand that they weren't grieving like I was. I couldn't understand they didn't lose their grandma and I couldn't understand why they weren't crying because I lost my grandma and my two best friends.

All I could see was this tiny hamster on my hand, knowing she would never play with me again and knowing my dogs would never greet me again. I don't quite remember anything that day. I don't know how I got home, I just remember hugging my mom and feeling that I don't understand this world and I don't know how I could go on from that moment.

Grieving as a level 2 autistic person is something I have yet to understand. It's been a year since all of this happened. I have a new dog, I have a new hamster who is doing well and healthy. My grandpa also died a few months ago. And I still dream about them all.

I still don't understand this world.

#autism #autism level 2 #autism spectrum disorder #pet loss #loss #cw grief #autistic #tw death