myautisticpov
My Autistic Point of View
Autistic author. Any/all pronouns. I usually blog about about autism/ADHD and whatever else I feel like. But mostly autism/ADHD. Follow lcmawson for stuff I like.
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"Late-diagnosed autistic" is a useful term for describing the experience of not being able to figure out/articulate your needs or access the autistic community
But way too often, it's used to mean "always neurotypical passing" or "autistic person who never interacted with special education" or "autistic person who never interacted with medical institutions in relation to their autistic traits"
Which ignores the fact that "late-diagnosed autistic" includes people who never got a specific diagnosis, but were recognised by doctors/schools to have something going on, and people who were diagnosed with specific learning difficulties, intellectual/learning disabilities, and/or other developmental disabilities, but not specifically "autism" until adulthood
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yeah, people do lie on the internet, however i am so passionate about things that if i lie it will feel like i committed an autistic sin
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Local PSA: invisible disability does NOT mean you can live your life like a "normal person" invisible disability meant that if a stranger looks at you in public they wouldn't know what's going on.
Like if a wheelchair user were to decide to run into a corner store to grab a candy bar because they know that their legs can last that long without, the cashier wouldn't know.
Or someone with "mild" scoliosis walking upright through their shoulder leans slightly to the left. Maybe they just have bad posture. The lady in the next isle thinks to herself.
The person with EDS or POTS or whatever sort of condition wearing compression gloves out and about. Perhaps it's a fashion statement?
Or what about the people with intestinal issues? They can look like "normal people" too.
You never know what someone is going through.
You never know what they might need to survive or if they're on the edge of a flare up or even if they are currently going through one just by one look.
I think both disabled and non disabled need to realize this. You're not "no longer disabled" because you can "live without" disability aids. They're there to help you. To make your life easier. If living without a cane is going to make it more likely you'll fall over and hurt yourself, use the cane.
If you need to sit down to do dishes or cut vegetables because you need to save your legs for taking out the trash, sit down.
If you need a shower chair because you don't know if you'll pass out, use the shower chair.
People are going to judge you regardless for multiple reasons out of your control.
I'd rather they judge you while you're being safe.
You don't need to struggle to be "normal."
You can just be you.
However that looks for you.
Use your disability aids.
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because sometimes there are invisible tests and invisible rules and you're just supposed to ... know the rule. someone you thought of as a friend asks you for book recommendations, so you give her a list of like 30 books, each with a brief blurb and why you like it. later, you find out she screenshotted the list and send it out to a group chat with the note: what an absolute freak can you believe this. you saw the responses: emojis where people are rolling over laughing. too much and obsessive and actually kind of creepy in the comments. you thought you'd been doing the right thing. she'd asked, right? an invisible rule: this is what happens when you get too excited.
you aren't supposed to laugh at your own jokes, so you don't, but then you're too serious. you're not supposed to be too loud, but then people say you're too quiet. you aren't supposed to get passionate about things, but then you're shy, boring. you aren't supposed to talk too much, but then people are mad when you're not good at replying.
you fold yourself into a prettier paper crane. since you never know what is "selfish" and what is "charity," you give yourself over, fully. you'd rather be empty and over-generous - you'd rather eat your own boundaries than have even one person believe that you're mean. since you don't know what the thing is that will make them hate you, you simply scrub yourself clean of any form of roughness. if you are perfect and smiling and funny, they can love you. if you are always there for them and never admit what's happening and never mention your past and never make them uncomfortable - you can make up for it. you can earn it.
don't fuck up. they're all testing you, always. they're tolerating you. whatever secret club happened, over a summer somewhere - during some activity you didn't get to attend - everyone else just... figured it out. like they got some kind of award or examination that allowed them to know how-to-be-normal. how to fit. and for the rest of your life, you've been playing catch-up. you've been trying to prove that - haha! you get it! that the joke they're telling, the people they are, the manual they got- yeah, you've totally read it.
if you can just divide yourself in two - the lovable one, and the one that is you - you can do this. you can walk the line. they can laugh and accept you. if you are always-balanced, never burdensome, a delight to have in class, champagne and glittering and never gawky or florescent or god-forbid cringe: you can get away with it.
you stare at your therapist, whom you can make jokes with, and who laughs at your jokes, because you are so fucking good at people-pleasing. you smile at her, and she asks you how you're doing, and you automatically say i'm good, thanks, how are you? while the answer swims somewhere in your little lizard brain:
how long have you been doing this now? mastering the art of your body and mind like you're piloting a puppet. has it worked? what do you mean that all you feel is... just exhausted. pick yourself up, the tightrope has no net. after all, you're cheating, somehow, but nobody seems to know you actually flunked the test. it's working!
aren't you happy yet?
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there is a huge difference between criticizing an institution and criticizing individual behavior. i can criticize the makeup industry without criticizing the 14 year old girl who uses concealer because she’s self-conscious about her acne; i can criticize the plastic surgery industry without vilifying the woman who decided to get a nose job after two decades of pointed comments and bullying. it is intellectually dishonest to respond to an institutional criticism as if it were a personal attack; on the flip side, it is cruel and unnecessary to leverage personal attacks in the name of institutional criticism
if i see one (1) more person respond to a perfectly reasonable beauty-industry-critical sentiment with “but i personally enjoy eyeshadow. why are you attacking people who like eyeshadow :(” or “exactly, all women who wear makeup are miserable and brainwashed” i am going to climb a tree and bite the top of it
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“You shouldn’t self-ID as ADHD/autistic, you’re turning a very real mental condition into a trend” Ok then stop saying delulu. Stop speculating on which cluster C personality disorder the criminals you hear about on the news have. Stop saying “schizoposting” and “acoustic” and “is it restarted?” Stop using “psycopath” and “sociopath” as catch-all ways of calling someone a bad person. Stop saying “the intrusive thoughts won” when you bleach your hair and then turn your nose up at people who suffer from very real, very scary urges of physical/sexual violence. Stop saying “I’m so OCD” as a way of calling yourself neat. Stop treating BPD/ASPD/Bipolar as inherently abusive. Stop saying “OP I am living in your walls” without tagging for unreality. Stop diagnosing complete strangers you’ve never met on r/AITA with NPD.
You first. If you don’t want our disabilities to be treated like trends then stop belittling and minimising them. I’ll NEVER judge a person for trying find labels for their symptoms when an apathetic, racist, sexist, ableist healthcare system refuses to. But I will absolutely judge a hypocrite. Which a lot of you are
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I talk to many people who say things like "oh I have trauma but I don't have PTSD", but then when I talk to them a little more I realize that they most likely do, they just can't recognize it as such due to how lacking PTSD awareness is, even beyond the whole "it's not just a veteran's disorder" thing.
The main reason they think they don't have PTSD usually has to do with flashbacks and nightmares, either they have one but not the other or have neither. But here's the thing, those are only two symptoms out of the 23-odd recognized symptoms. Flashbacks and nightmares are two of the five symptoms under Criterion B (Intrusion), which you only need one of for a diagnosis. The other three symptoms are unwanted upsetting memories, emotional distress after being reminded of trauma and physical reactivity after being reminded of trauma (i.e. shaking, sweating, heart racing, feeling sick, nauseous or faint, etc). Therefore you can have both flashbacks and nightmares, one but not the other, or neither and still have PTSD.
In fact, a lot of the reasons people give me for why they don't think they have PTSD are literally a part of the diagnostic criteria.
"Oh, I can barely remember most parts of my trauma anyway." Criterion D (Negative Alterations in Cognition and Mood) includes inability to recall key features of the trauma.
"Oh but I don't get upset about my trauma that often because I avoid thinking of it or being around things that remind me of it most of the time." Criterion C (Avoidance) includes avoiding trauma-related thoughts or feelings and avoiding trauma-related external reminders, and you literally cannot get diagnosed if you don't have at least one of those two symptoms.
"Oh I just have trouble getting to sleep or staying asleep, but I don't have nightmares." Criterion E (Alterations in Arousal and Reactivity) includes difficulting sleeping outside of nightmares.
"But I didn't have many/any trauma symptoms until a long time after the trauma happened." There's literally an entire specification for that.
Really it just shows how despite being one of the most well-known mental illnesses, people really don't know much about PTSD. If you have trauma, I ask you to at least look at the criteria before you decide you don't have PTSD. Hell, even if you don't have trauma, look at the criteria anyway because there are so many symptoms in there that just are not talked about.
PTSD awareness is not just about flashbacks and nightmares.
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There's a script that adds a "comment kudos" button next to the kudos button on Ao3, and it adds a random nice comment to a fic from a short list that you can add to or edit.
It's perfect for people that aren't good at commenting or don't know what they want to say.
*poke* @feedthefandomfest
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Yeah, I think Daggerheart does suit the intended purpose of giving CR (and possibly other similar actual play series) a way to disengage from D&D (and by extension, Wizards and Hasbro), by building a game that's suited to exactly how they play
But if you're not playing with a larger group of players who are all good friends and/or are going to be on their best behaviour because they're literally on camera and who all want to lean heavily into the role-play side of the game, with an experienced GM with both good improv and table-wrangling skills?
Then yeah, it might not work
I always hate whenever I start a new hobby and all of the instruction spends so much time assuring you that you don't really need to do any maths
While I'm like, I hate to be a walking stereotype, but I specifically chose this hobby for the maths
Why won't anybody let me have fun with maths now that I don't have to take exams about it???
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Hey btw, here's a piece of life advice:
If you know what you'd have to do to solve a problem, but you just don't want to do it, your main problem isn't the problem itself. Your problem is figuring out how to get yourself to do the solution.
If your problem is not eating enough vegetables, the problem you should be solving is "how do I make vegetables stop being yucky". If your problem is not getting enough exercise, the problem you should be solving is "how do I make exercise stop sucking ass". You're not supposed to just be doing things that are awful and suck all the time forever, you're supposed to figure out how to make it stop being so awful all the time.
I used to hate wearing sunscreen because it's sticky and slimy and disgusting and it feels bad and it smells bad, so I neglected to wear it even if I needed to. Then I found one that isn't like that, and doesn't smell and feel gross. Problem solved.
There is no correct way to live that's just supposed to suck and feel bad all the time. You're allowed to figure out how to make it not suck so bad.
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Yeah, like, TTRPGs are a hobby with a lot of accessibility hurdles, but maths isn't treated as an accessibility problem, just a blanket bad
Like, you'll get people in one breath failing the "criticise D&D Beyond without slipping into ableism" challenge and then in the next being like "Daggerheart is bad because it has too much maths"
I always hate whenever I start a new hobby and all of the instruction spends so much time assuring you that you don't really need to do any maths
While I'm like, I hate to be a walking stereotype, but I specifically chose this hobby for the maths
Why won't anybody let me have fun with maths now that I don't have to take exams about it???
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a while ago i attended this lecture on autism. guy in the audience said he had many of the symptoms that were presented and asked what should he do to get treatment and possibly a diagnosis. instead of answering his question the psychologist went on a tangent about how “the clinic reigns all powerful over guesswork”, and how actually it has become a trend amongst little children on the internet to claim that they are autistic for cool points, and that this hurts real autistic people. no she didn’t tell him how to get his symptoms looked into, she just made it very clear that to her, aknowledging your own symptoms is bad and evil and hurts the poor real mentally ill people.
an ex-friend of mine, then a psychology major and by now probably a full psychologist, once lectured me on how horrible and bad it was that i told her “i probably have some sort of neurodivergency”, and that if i were her patient she would never give me a diagnosis because “you aren’t like this now, but i know that if you get a diagnosis you’ll use it as an excuse to start treating people badly. that’s just how mentally ill people are.”
same ex-friend was extremely disgusted when she found out that fans sometimes make neurodivergency headcanons for characters that have the same symptoms as they do, and that authors sometimes write books with neurodivergent protagonists in stories that don’t focus on that (ex: she seemed horrified that percy jackson has adhd?)
multiple psychologists i’ve seen on facebook agree that they should refuse to treat patients that say “i’m here because i have symptoms of a disorder and wonder if i have it”, and that a patient should arrive to a psychologist as a blank slate.
school psychologist asked me how i was feeling about my trauma situation and i told him i thought my friends would leave me. instead of addressing the issue he said that that no i didn’t, that i was lying, that i had searched “bpd symptoms” online and now i was faking symptoms because i wanted to have bpd, that he shouldn’t have told me he suspected i had a personality disorder because now look what was happening. no, i didn’t search bpd symptoms online. yes, my friends left me, it was a completely founded belief and not a symptom, let alone a faked symptom.
so the next time you hear someone saying they’re “anti self-diagnosis” i want you to understand what they’re saying. what they’re saying is:
- i don’t want people to be aware of their own symptoms
- i don’t think my patients should have access to any information that doesn’t come from me
- i don’t think neurodivergent people should learn how to cope with their symptoms and live “normal” lives
- i think neurodivergent people should be denied a diagnosis because the moment they get one they will become evil and dangerous
- i don’t think people who don’t look like a stereotype could possibly be neurodivergent, even if they have all the symptoms, so i think they are faking it for attention and should be denied treatment
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"why do I feel so terrible?"
-person who forgot to take their not-feeling-terrible medication
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Having autism as a visible minority is so fun.* Because like. I understand the theories behind racism and how the stereotypes applied to how I look effect me. I could write an entire essay about my experience as a visible minority and how racism meant I didn’t get an official diagnosis until I was almost 18 despite all the glaring signs of autism I exhibited.
So I understand racism and how racism is used against me and others like me and can spot it very easy when watching how white people interact with people of color.
However.
I am my own blind spot. My lack of social awareness in the present means that I don’t realize someone is being racist to me until later. I have gone through several interactions with passive aggressive white people and did not realize I was being discriminated against until later. I have approached people following in the store and asked them for directions. It did not occur to me until later that they were following me because I’m visibly not white and that maybe I shouldn’t have asked them for directions. I have smiled cheerfully at people being subtly racist to me and continued to talk about the tea pot I was buying and how pretty it was.
Like. Outside of the situation I can recognize racism directed toward me. In the situation I am unaware of it.
I wonder if that pissed any of the people I talked to off.
*this is sarcasm
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I always hate whenever I start a new hobby and all of the instruction spends so much time assuring you that you don't really need to do any maths
While I'm like, I hate to be a walking stereotype, but I specifically chose this hobby for the maths
Why won't anybody let me have fun with maths now that I don't have to take exams about it???
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