I’m not sure who needs to hear this but it’s normal and okay to be DISABLED by your DISABILITY.

Sometimes it is going to stop you from doing things, and that’s okay. Sometimes it’s going to get in your way or make you struggle or cause problems in your life. But that’s okay, that’s why it’s called a disability.

You don’t need to fight yourself or “not let it hold you back” because a lot of times it will, but that’s the point.

it’s crazy how i don’t know what any of you do for school/uni/work? who are you guys outside of tumblr? what do you work as?? 

Destroy the myth that libraries are no longer relevant. If you use your library, please reblog.

Dentist prescribed extra high fluoride toothpaste

Was very excited! Came in bubblegum! Don’t have to have mint!

Pharmacy changed prescription. Didn’t have bubblegum and didn’t care that don’t like mint. Gave mint against wishes.

Had hopes for self dental care improving crushed

(Am still going to try but. Mint :( )

Thinking about how as a kid I was called a spoiled needy brat for wanting my basic needs met…

Thanks (/sarcastic) mom and dad for making me feel guilty for having needs by telling me I was too much for having sensory issues and meltdowns, wanting to eat, and needing help with things like showering

I’ve spent the last several months realizing never eating or doing any hygiene at all and hardly ever sleeping or doing anything for myself is not living and that I was actively literally dying trying to live alone and thought it was fine because that’s where my standards were set

My partners special interest is psychology and they will pathologize people with hard medical terms to a point where sometimes people get uncomfortable and if I’m struggling with speech processing it has sent me into meltdowns. They know it affects people and cannot control it enough to not. This has severely impacted their ability to make and maintain friends

And I obsess over Pokémon go so hard that I will open it between every task I do and have to get the executive function to get up and stop playing and do whatever I need to over and over every time. Sometimes boring schoolwork will seem so extra boring because it’s not pokemon that I physically can’t process what is going on. I will play it during conversations I don’t think are interesting to try to keep myself engaged and people think it’s rude and it impacts my relationships

I especially love the last part of this- it has to be disabling to be a diagnosis

I think that special interests are actually a disabling part of autism

I'm tired of people (allistic and autistic) saying that it's bad that special interests are 'pathologised' because passions are good. This is because that comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of what a special interest is. Special interests are not just things you like a lot, they are 'highly fixated interests abnormal in intensity or focus'. For me (and pretty much everyone with autism I've asked about it), this means that special interests are basically your whole life. For me, my special interest is ASD. I think about autism all the time. It's the only thing I find interesting, and every thought I have can be linked to autism in some way. This is pretty disabling to me because it makes it way harder to talk about and do stuff that isn't related to my special interest.

It makes making friends really hard because, on top of my social challenges, I also don't know how to talk about anything other than my special interest, and I will bring the conversation back to my special interest if I feel comfortable around someone, and just not talk to someone if I don't feel comfortable around them. It also makes doing the things I need to do in life (such as doing work for uni, taking care of myself, cleaning my living space, etc) so much harder because my brain doesn't think it's interesting in the slightest and therefore I have absolutely no motivation to do them.

Maybe my special interests are more extreme than other people's. I wasn't diagnosed with a level, I just got a diagnosis of ASD, but I'm probably on the higher end of level 1, possibly on the lower end of level 2 but I can't really figure that out for myself. However, the ASD diagnostic criteria in both the ICD-11 and DSM-V state that your traits of autism must be causing 'clinically significant impairment' (i.e. they must be disabling) for you to qualify for an ASD diagnosis.

Feel out of place is disabled spaces but also feel massively out of place is non disabled spaces and it’s frustrating

Went to a resource fair at a library yesterday looking for support in my area and everyone assumed was there for a disabled dependent, not that I am disabled

and I know invisibility gives me a lot of advantages but it does hurt to know as much as a lot of these community supports could genuinely help me a lot, a lot of them will see that I can mask half decently for a 20 minute disability fair with my partner there to talk for me and that I didn’t have accommodations in school and think I don’t need help

Skill regression is kicking my butt and am physically incapable of living alone but I feel out of place asking for help and that sucks

(love you. hope your day is gentle.)

one of the most confusing things about " autism is not a disability because its only disabling because society " is probably the fact that. even if that *was* true. We still live in this society????

refusing to call it a disability because in a perfect world it wouldn't be is so senseless. we don't live in that perfect world. we still live in the world where we are disabled even if it's just by society.

" that store isn't bankrupt because if people kept going there it would be fine " cool but people didn't keep going there? so?

" autism isn't a disability because if everything was accessible it would be fine " cool but not everything is accessible? so?

*don't believe autism is only disabling because society , that's just what's annoying currently

quick reminder that delusions are strongly held, fixed beliefs not based in reality that cannot be changed even in the face of evidence against them. a delusional person's conviction in these beliefs is just as strong as your conviction that the sky is blue. some delusional folks have the ability to double book-keep (understand that what they're experiencing is a delusion), but this does not make the belief any less sincerely held and the ability to do so varies from person to person and from delusion to delusion.

you cannot choose delusions, delusions are involuntary. (note that for some folks already prone to delusions, however, hearing about certain delusions will lead to them developing those same delusions)

someones ability (or lack thereof) to double book-keep does not make them a "better" or "worse" delusional person. and--speaking from experience--some folks can technically double book-keep, but doing so is incredibly distressing and can make things worse. (for us, some of our beliefs help us maintain our hold on reality in other areas, and attempting to double book-keep and acknowledge them as delusions (even if (if) they might make that specific belief more manageable to deal with) would make it significantly harder to keep our hold on any aspect of reality as a whole; we call these load-bearing beliefs/delusions, depending on how far removed from it we are [whether or not we've stabilized enough to be able to acknowledge it as a delusion, or even not believing the delusion anymore, without it unstabilizing everything else])

being delusional is morally neutral, but they are often also incredibly difficult to manage and can make life incredibly worse (note that for some folks, certain delusions may be pleasurable or comforting; the feeling associated with delusions. however, this does not make it not a delusion, and that does not mean they are any more voluntary. finding pleasure/comfort in them also does not exclude them from making general life harder; many delusions may also influence and exacerbate other delusions)

delusions are not your funny silly buzzword to use when you're feeling quirky, it's not another way to say "vividly daydream and get emotionally attached to the daydream" or "get extremely attached to a piece of fiction to an unusually intense degree" (which for some reason i've been seeing more and more of lately), and "delusional" is not an insult or a derogatory term. "delulu" is demeaning and only serves to show that you don't care about delusional people.

stop throwing delusional people under the bus.

(and while you're at it, start tagging your unreality shit, too.)

i think the idea of verbalpunk is quite cool to me beacuse so much of the current “activism” or specifically mainstream “activism” for nonverbal people is focused on the idea that our nonverbalness is a separate thing from our humanity.

I mean this in the sense most people try to convince others we deserve basic rights and respect by saying “even though they are nonverbal they CAN do xyz” the problem with this is that it inevitably fails everyone who can not do xyz. Its why there was such a big push from people to use the word Nonspeaking instead of nonverbal. And why there ends up with an inevitable rift between nonverbal people with lower support needs and nonverbal people with higher support needs. i love punk subcultures cause they dont fuck with that. Punk, to me at least, is about community, its is inherently anti individualism and inherently antiestablishment. Verbalpunk, to me, is about coming back together and advocating for everyone.

i am not deserving of respect even though i am nonverbal. I am not deserving of respect because i am capable of doing other things. I am deserving of respect because i am a human being.

no one should have to pay to communicate.

A problem of mine probably related to autism and being unaware of the people around me.

I want friends, but people can’t catch or keep my interest long enough to become my friend. I’m stuck in my own little world and they can’t break me out of it.

I want to socialize but only on my topics in my time. If not, they mean nothing to me. At times I forget I even can socialize with them. I forget that they have thought and feelings and even a life. I forget their intractable.

I also forget that their not like me, especially online. I forget their not female, a minor, poc. I forget they have their own identity and that they life lives outside apps like instagram and tumblr. At times it’s shocking to remember that because view most people as female and forget they can be male or nonbinary or intersex or bigender or nonhuman or whatever.

A big problem is that I forget nonhumans exist when am nonhuman self! Forget that not everyone feels like a human when I feel like an alien.

It’s confusing, and if being honest, quite painful. But it’s the truth and it’s because I forget about the world around me.

“use mobility aids if they would make life easier” and “people need to be more informed about the damage mobility aids can do to your body” can and should coexist btw

This is actually so helpful

Been struggling to understand where exactly I fall but looking at lists of bADLs and iADLs I definitely have a couple bADLs (mostly basic personal hygiene) that I need someone to walk me through most of the time, or at least be there for as moral support

And like most of the iADLs I can find are a massive struggle to me, I'm just fairly good with finances and can drive which combine to mean I can work and live (chaotically and non-functionally) independently, I just need my partner or someone else to help if I want to actually brush my teeth or shower or take my meds or if I ever have to make a phone call, and my roommates to keep up on cleaning in shared spaces

I'm looking forward to being somewhere with more support (should be moving in with my partner sometime next year)

hello, friend! do you know how to know which support level you are or what resources to go to to find out?

if not, that's ofc fine, I just wonder about whether I'm low or mid, since I don't need support in a lot but when I need support I need a lot of it, and often immediately or else meltdowns could ensue

anyway, love your blog and I hope to continue learning from your content

Hello! I do actually. Support needs are based on what support you need in everyday life.

Here’s a simple explanation of the support needs!

Low support needs = may need help with IADLs

Medium support needs = May need help with IADLs and some bADLs

High support needs = Needs help IADLs and bADLs across the board.

If you google “IADLs and bADLs” and bring up images then it’ll show you some examples.

Hope this helps you figure it out! It is a bit complicated so if you have anymore questions then feel free to ask. Have a nice day! Thank you for your support

Listen y’all, I understand that assisted living facilities and group homes are notorious for being bad and sometimes even abusive, however when I reach out to the community and ask for advice relating to me possibly going into assisted living or a group home, your automatic response shouldn’t be to attack me.

To automatically assume that it’s my parents who are pressuring me into it. To assume that I don’t need it. To say that I’m a horrible person for even suggesting it. Some of us can’t live on our own and don’t have the best home life. I HAVE to look at other options and I honestly don’t think having support care come to a house or apartment I own is for me. (Not to mention I probably will never be able to work enough or at all to be able to afford my own place)

It’s very…demeaning. I understand completely why some people are on the fence about it and have had bad experiences because I know there’s more bad then good experiences, but please don’t assume. Please don’t attack me for just asking questions.

It’s really annoying and I will start blocking people who do it.