#is it undiagnosed autism or is it addictive tendencies

[nocturnalsleuth]

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#is it undiagnosed autism or is it addictive tendencies #personal introspection

[divinelyjude]

Things I wish I could say to 16 year old me

- don’t let dad make you feel like you’re not even good enough to try keeping up with your hygiene. Even if it’s not to his impossible standards, anything is better than nothing.

- stop trying to convince mom. She won’t understand until she Wants to understand. She doesn’t like being wrong, so the PowerPoint will have the opposite effect and make her stand her ground.

- you are not a bad person for having acne. But I know you still wish you didn’t have it, so let me tell you a secret. Less product is more, and you have dry skin not oily. Switch up your products every 2 years. Avoid micro beads like they’re going to Jill you in your sleep. Wash your face at least once a day.

- Brush Your Teeth or you’ll be down a molar. Also, they’re not going to schedule your follow up dentist appointment for the permanent cap so you might want to try to do it yourself. It sucks, I know, they’re supposed to care enough to do it. You’ll have to have your own back.

- use lotion dummy.

- for the love of gods don’t let mom find your witchcraft books. She’ll threaten to send you back to the psych ward.

- could you maybe hyperfixate on saving money? Instead of shoplifting AND spending?

- hold Gabe and Clark close. Buy them fancy cat food and treats. Tell them you love them.

- bitch you’ve got undiagnosed adhd atm and probably autism too so. When you think you’re being helpful. Say it in your head first. Think about it. It’ll save you from feeling like an asshole later on, I promise.

- DO NOT FUCK THE TACO BELL BOSS. D O N O T. Or do. It did snowball into you moving to a new town and finally making friends.

- but also. Weed is great, yeah. But dude, watch out. Mom was right about addiction running in the family.

- stay away from her as much as possible, even if you’re sharing a room. Thank me later.

- someone having the opposite name of you Is Not a sign they’re you’re soulmate. Running away in the middle of the night across the country does not work out like you think it would.

- take more walks. By yourself. Don’t tell anyone, aside for safety. Sit under a tree or by a stream.

- there’s an occult shop literally down the road from you but you never leave the house so. Again. Take more walks. Also take vitamin d you’re deficient of it enough without taking into account your hermit tendencies.

- if you’re in the backseat of a car outside a party and a guy starts walking towards the drivers door. Lock the doors. They didn’t lock them when they left you there.

- your tattoos are absolutely sick and you’re going to have so many, just like you wanted.

#.me #txt

[buncompass]

I guess I’m gonna blog about it now. This turned way longer than I thought it was going to, so it’s going under a read more.

A few months ago I was filling my time by researching depression. My depression is chronic, and though it fluctuates in intensity, it’s always there. I was debating getting back into therapy or finding alternative options when I stumbled upon an article about how women with undiagnosed autism are more likely to have chronic or persistent depression. I read through it and all of a sudden something clicked.

As a preschooler I was incredibly intelligent. I could read, write, and speak well. I had an endearing (that became annoying) quirk of mouthing my sentences again after I’d spoken them. Despite being friendly, I didn’t like being touched. I hated hugs and cuddles unless I initiated them. I was very aware of my personal space and didn’t like it when people got too close to me. I liked being by myself, and only had one friend until around third grade. My isolationist tendencies were favorable because they made me the “good one,” and I was never alone in a house with two brothers and my mom’s daycare. My parents divorced when I was 7, right after my favorite cousin had died. My family put me in therapy and patted themselves on the back for being proactive while also assuming that any problems I had would be addressed.

As I grew up, I learned that people like eye contact, so I trained myself to look at the point in between their eyes to give the appearance of it without actually looking into their eyes. At school, I was the queen of over-sharing. I was obsessed with my family’s heritage and talked endlessly about being half Indonesian. Without ever having to study, I aced every class except for math. I hated math because I couldn’t do it automatically. I got irrationally stressed over it, and would panic and forget everything I learned. I counted with my fingers, and if someone made fun of me for it, found ways to be discreet. I excelled in English, and fell in love with characters who didn’t tease and stories that made sense.

I had a vivid imagination and used toys to practice talking to people, and notoriously carried some sort of security item around with me until I was much older. I saw Toy Story and then Chuckie not too long after, which gave me a pervasive feeling that my toys were alive and could communicate and could also get upset with me. I worried endlessly about accidentally hurting my toys’ feelings and never gave them away, amassing an insane amount of stuffies on my bed and in a hammock on my wall. It annoyed my mother, which scared me. She was an alcoholic with a lot of feelings, and I felt every person’s emotions as deeply as my own. It overwhelmed me.

Middle school was a tricky transitional time. Puberty was rough. My stepmom got me an American Girl book called “The Care and Keeping of You” which I treated like my how-to guide for both puberty and socialization. There were sections on how to talk to friends and sections on how to brush your hair; it was a goldmine of tips for me. I referenced it every day. I memorized it as the Way To Do Things, and when my stepmom teased me about it, I found ways to adapt so it wasn’t so obvious.

I had spent my life up until that point wearing clothes that were comfortable. People started mocking me for wearing sports bras and men’s clothing. I hated the feeling of denim, the tightness of women’s clothing, and the overall feeling of exposure regular bras gave me. When I started wearing women’s clothing, I made sure to have at least one day a week where I wore baggy clothes, but made sure that they looked good; baggy jeans or sweatpants with tight t-shirts, tank tops layered under zip-ups, and various other combinations. I learned that my appearance mattered more than my comfort, and I resented it. My parents accused me of being dramatic, but the feeling of a bra strap digging into my shoulder was not one I could ignore; I was aware of my clothes at all times, and I hated it.

My friends started expressing interest in sex and I was always uncomfortable during those conversations; I never had sexual thoughts. While my friends fantasized about their crushes being their ‘first time’, I fantasized about my crush and I going on heists and adventures. I went along with what others wanted from me, and had a few not okay experiences because of it. When everyone started flirting by hugging and tickling, I was always a target. My friends would hug me and laugh when I stimmed and pushed them away, imitating the way I moved and calling me “twitch”. I started cracking my knuckles or wiggling my toes in my shoes instead of flapping my hands. I trained myself to hug, even though I hated it.

People knew that I misunderstood blunt statements. Sarcasm had already been a defense mechanism at that point for me; if I said something stupid people thought I was joking and it helped me learn. Boys at school would ask me out and then laugh at my confusion. If they weren’t mocking me through fake flirting, they made do with the fact that bluntness threw me off. They’d see me in my comfy boy clothes and asked me how much I could bench or challenge me to races. If I agreed to their challenges, they’d laugh the entire time and I wouldn’t understand why until later. At home, it wasn’t much better. My stepmom would buy my birthday present in front of me, tell me it was for my cousin, and then laugh when I would open it and be surprised. She’d tell people how naive and gullible I was. 

High school made things easier for me. I had solid friends at that point, though I was caught between two cliques, which made the popular kids unsure of me. I coasted through the social side by being nice and smart. I learned to hide parts of my personality away depending on which group I was with, and learned to read body language to avoid being seen as weird. I repressed my need to stim, though I cracked my knuckles whenever I got anxious and played with my jewelry often. At that point, people understood that liking to read wasn’t bad, so anytime I got overwhelmed in public I’d pull out a book and people left me alone. My isolationist tendencies came back, but being a teenage girl gave me some leeway in regards to hiding in my room and being emotional over nothing. I found ways to balance things that set off my sensory overload; I only read under lamps and never used overhead lights; I wore comfortable clothing that didn’t set off any tactile issues; I learned what volume setting I could handle on various TVs and computers. I began using self-deprecating humor to beat people to the punch, and was known for my jokes as a result. I was already dealing with depression, so I feigned happiness every day to make sure that no one would ever find out about all the things that I kept hidden and locked away.

I am autistic. As a child my traits were favorable compared to my rambunctious peers, so no one questioned me. When I started going through the more difficult parts of life, my family and therapists attributed my feelings and actions to the divorce, my cousin’s death, and my mother’s addictions. By the time I got to high school I had developed coping mechanisms based off of the treatment I received from my classmates and family that kept me under the radar. I’ve always obsessed over my special interests, I’ve always been on the edge of socially acceptable, I’ve always found ways to deflect and mask.

I lived for 25 years without understanding a piece of who I am. I read that post a few months ago and the world fell into place. I took questionnaires and read studies and got lost in finding myself. I researched how doctors formally diagnose and found out that I have Asperger’s, which is now referred to as Autism Spectrum Disorder. It doesn’t change anything, but it helps me understand. I am autistic, and that’s okay.

#actuallyautistic #autism #long post #personal #journaling #just a casual timeline #i've been thinking about this stuff forever #so many of the things i was teased for were traits of my autism

[nirah10]

From dangerouscloudmentality,

I am really sorry about your siblings dismissing your autism, that is really fustrating.

I know it is very different, but I am a recovering alcoholic, and being a young man, people can be quite sceptical of that. They picture am alcoholic as either an old lonely man or a withering middle aged man. A dude in his early twenties does not fit the bill. I turn into a completely different person when I drink. It slips a switch in my head, and I lose total control and act on impulse. Two years I got completely smashed and jumped off a bridge. I can barely remember in. Expect for waking up in the hospital with my leg broken in three places. Jumped into shallow water apparently, shallow enough to break my leg. I then apparently faceplanted in the water and was pulled out by two onlookers. They most definitely prevented me from drowning.

Most nights weren’t as dramatic at that. Few punch ups in the pub with other drunks, once I got on I ended up in a different state, two over from the state I live, on the beach with two dollars in my pocket.

My wake up call was my father threatening to contact my partner, who was overseas and completly unaware of all of this. My dad isn’t the type to threaten stuff like that, so I knew he was serious. I hadn’t even told my parnter about the bridge incident. I had kept everything out of the letters I sent him.

I didn’t want to tell him this over the phone. But my dad’s threats of telling me for me made me think he needed to know.

So I wrote him a letter. A long letter detailing all the stupid things I had done while drinking and telling him my father thought I had a drinking problem. I felt awful and selfish writing this letter. He was dealing with so much, he didn’t need to worry about me back home. Writing that letter was so hard.

Two weeks later, he shows up on our door step. He took emergency family leave.

How fucking selfish am I? The fact he read my letter and decided he needed emergency family leave, which can be very hard to get when serving internationally. I’m still not sure how he managed it.

We talked for hours and hours and spent a whole weekend doing nothing. We agreed I needed rehab. He was the one who found the Rehabilitation Centre. We checked me in together, for a six week program.

He had to go back to work, but I completed the program.

I still go to meetings, I have a sponsor and that was about a year and a half ago.

Some people manage to have one or two drinks, I need to stay completely sober though. And so far I have.

But sometimes friends don’t realise. I’m working full time again, am physically fit and healthy and am quite young. I don’t fit the profile of an alcoholic. People assume when I say I’m an alcoholic and mean it in the same way of people who say they have OCD when they are just a tidy person. They think I just mean I just drink too much. Nope. Once I start drinking I can’t stop. I was using it to fill a hole in me, an anger at my mother, an anger at my absuive childhood, an anger about homophobia still very present where I still. A deep seated loneliness and fear I will never be good enough. I don’t drink for fun. Those things are why I drink.

Difference to your experience, but the scepticism does burn. And I get what you mean about people not realising how much it truly affects your life, like by living in the same town and staying in the same job and not being sure if you will be able children. Those are real, very painful struggles. And having a diagnosis helps, you can see the patterns more clearly, connect to a whole community of people with the same struggles and consult experts and people facing similar situations. I am sorry your siblings struggle to understand why an autism diagnosis as an adult is important.

Sorry, this is a personal question and you don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to. Do any of your siblings or nieces and nephews have any traits?

As surprisingly often autism is linked to genetics. Not always, but often.

Dear dangerouscloudmentality,

Thanks for your support and for sharing your story. I’m sorry that you’ve had to face so much and that you still struggle, but I’m really proud of you for the strength you’ve shown and for how much you’ve achieved. It sounds like you have an amazing partner who really cares about you and I really wish the two of you the best. Please know that if you ever need someone to talk to, you can always message me. I don’t have any experience with addiction but, at the very least, I can listen and you can know that you have someone who cares and supports you.

I do have some family members with autism. Two of my cousins and two of my nephews are diagnosed. I also have a niece and three nephews that I strongly suspect have autism but have not been/are too young to be properly assessed. I have some suspicions about some of my siblings too (one of them suspects for herself as well, though I don’t think she’s spoken to the others about it), but none of them have been assessed and I think most of them wouldn’t agree to be assessed anyway. Being diagnosed meant I learned a lot about how differently autism can present, especially in women. Women tend to go undiagnosed because most people’s idea of how autism presents is actually how autistic men present. They can be similar in lots of ways, but quite different in others. One of the biggest differences is that women are far more likely to learn to adapt to their environment and fake being neurotypical, so they come across as just being a bit rude, picky, weird, or impatient because the outward signs tend to be a lot more subtle. Having learned more, I now notice little signs in lots of people that I never would have noticed before and I think it’s a lot more common in my family than we know. I’m not as sure about my biological father’s side of the family as I don’t really know them.

The genetic tendency is actually one of the reasons why I’m hesitant about having biological children. My partner has severe ADHD and we both have had persistent depression for our entire lives, so my autism on top of that suggests that any biological kids we have are probably going to really struggle with mental health. My partner was also born with a hearing disability that has severely impacted his life that he is really nervous about passing on. We’ve both always liked the idea of adopting and talked about it long before either of had any diagnoses (why make more kids when there are so many who need homes?), and now that we do know these things about ourselves it just makes way more sense. If we do choose to be parents, we will most likely adopt.

#hello friend #this time it's personal #submission