Actually Austistic - Tumblr Posts

Welcome back to everyone’s favorite game show!

Which one of my many disorders is this a symptom of!?

I’ve noticed this every time I try to Google advice for meltdowns. It’s “dealing with autistic kids/coworkers/classmates/teens.” It makes me feel like so much more of a burden because people feel like they have to “deal with” me. Like my existence is just a chore for them.

Then when I do get “dealing with autistic meltdowns” typed in, it’s all resources for allistic people, again, “dealing with” us.

Google when I look for advice for my autism: "How to deal with Your CHILD WITH AUTISM."

Google when I look at advice for cane user stuff: "Canes for old people. What to do when you're 80 and your joints hit the shitter.

I am screaming and hitting the wall just give me advice I can actually use.

Nothing makes me realize how much of a know-it-all I am more than verbal shutdowns.

Like, people will say blatantly wrong shit and I just have to sit there silently unable to correct them.

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.

As a neurodivergent individual, the worst piece of advice anybody can give when you're nervous is "just be yourself" -_-

.... Like ma'am.... how am I supposed to (sanely) explain to you that I physically cannot 'just be myself' because the self you are referring to is a carefully constructed facade tailored specifically to you and is in fact made up of an amalgamation of personality traits cherry picked from other people/fictional characters to suit your preference and personality?!!

Being autistic is weird because I think I'd be entirely entirely immune to the maddening effects of witnessing an Elder God but learning that barnacles are arthropods rather than molluscs nearly gave me an existential crisis

When I talk about visible autism on my blog, I’m usually not talking about those who are clocked as quirky and weird. Although that’s completely valid, I’m not talking about them. I’m talking about those of us who are VISIBLY autistic. Those of us who are clocked as those autistics. Who are clocked immediately as having something wrong with them. Those of us who are named as slurs. Who are yelled at. Who are attacked. Who are glared at, pointed at, stared at, pitied. Those of us who are automatically assumed to be with caregivers. Those of us you see talked about in medical journals and on the news as “inspiration” when we graduate or get invited to prom.

This is us. This is who we’re marked as. This is who we are seen as. We are seen as less than, as animals, as objects, as “inspirations”. When we accomplish something it’s usually not seen as our accomplishments but as the accomplishments of our caregivers and support staff.

I get so mad when someone comes onto my blog, MY blog. Me. A visibly autistic, nonverbal person, and doesn’t even look at my tags or pinned post and says “Omg me too, I’m seen as quirky and awkward, I’m visibly autistic 🥰” and like…go you but I’m not talking about you. I’m not talking about “low masking”. Im talking about LOW masking. No masking or very very low masking. Those of us who are immediately seen as autistic.

And it’s frustrating. It’s frustrating when people come into my blog and say this because, you DON’T get it. You just don’t. You don’t get what my life is like, what my experiences are. What it’s like to be LOW masking or no masking. You don’t get that. And yet you try and squeeze yourself in. And that hurts. It hurts to have people who won’t ever understand this squeeze themselves in. Stop doing this.

On today’s episode of “Is this normal or do I need to speak to a professional?”

Does anyone else get the tinglies when a piece of media gets REALLY good? Like, when the hyperfixation gets so aughaigh and you have to move and stim and physically tear yourself away and then you suffer withdrawals because holy shit that was good—

Like, when all the clues start coming together in your show? Or when your book has a twist that just AHH, you know? And then you just have to—like—you just have to autism? And you can physically feel how fucking good this just got? The hyperfixation is running through your veins?

I wish more people understood this. Autism affects everyone differently. And this means every single individual.

I CAN Network Ltd

hi-res download available on Ko-fi

hi-res download available on Ko-fi

hi-res download available on Ko-fi

hi-res download available on Ko-fi

hi-res download available on Ko-fi