"disrupted cortical development and disordered neural circuitry"
Please, for the love of God, researchers, can you just get to know a few #autistic people personally before you do research on us? I think that might cut down on the horribly normative language that you invariably use when describing us. If our cortical development is "disrupted" and our neural circuitry is "disordered", why is it that so many of us have above average IQs or otherwise can do things that people with blandly normal brains cannot? Normal doesn't mean best. Normal doesn't even mean good. Just take the value judgments out of your language and be done with it. There are both normal and autistic people who can or can't do all kinds of things. None of us is broken because of those differences. Mere variation should never be labeled as broken or inferior. If you so desperately need to label something as broken, ask people what they'd like "fixed". You'll be surprised by the answers.
Does anyone know a good #discord server related to #autism? I am #struggling to make #friends. I don’t have any and really need #support, someone to #talk to…and have trouble making friends. I’m #lonely and not sure if this would #help or not. I’m wondering if finding a #community would make finding #friendship easier. Thank you in advance.
An American friend of mine, Alex (not their real name), just got accepted into an OT Master's program in England. Alex is #Deaf and #ActuallyAutistic. Alex has an extremely large number of barriers being multiply disabled, living in poverty, etc. This university has even arranged for interpreters to be provided for them.
However, the UK is refusing Alex a visa on the grounds that Alex's passport gender marker says X. That is the whole reason.
Alex was homeless in the US for 15 years, until very recently. There are very few options to survive in America for disabled people, especially those who need language access. This is the best opportunity they've had since I've known them.
Can anyone help or suggest places that can? Alex's only recourse right now is to try to defer a year and change their passport to a binary gender option at great cost. This is such a trivial, transphobic reason to lose such an amazing opportunity and chance at safety.
Let’s talk tags on clothing. I hate them and they annoy me to no end. And even if I cut them off, the tiny bit remaining always manages to touch me and I hate it. 😩
There is a whole community of Autistics out there struggling with burnout, exhaustion, social interactions, exclusion, lack of accommodations, sensory overwhelm, and more.
YOU ARE NOT ALONE.
And these things are not intrinsic to Autism. They are part of how society is designed to exclude differences to try to get us to conform.
They can be changed and we will all be better off for it.
“The Autism Books by Autistic Authors Project is an (ongoing) attempt to catalogue all books — non-fiction and fiction — written about and related to autism by Autistic authors.”
There are over 1,000 books catalogued! Including mine and other authors I see in my #actuallyautistic feed here on Mastodon.
This is what happens when you ask your library about representation in #autism books. You get #ActuallyAutistic authors who are singers, actors, comedians & more. I've not read these but I'm really looking forward to. Talk to your library today.
I've always been interested in technology & design ever since my teen years, so having the opportunity to work for a company in that field would be an honor.
Since I have an official autism diagnosis under my belt, I'm willing to work through obtaining any necessary accommodations with future bosses & managers to ensure that I can be a highly productive employee.
NOTE: My resume is currently a bit out of date, but I will make it available for anyone to read as soon as it's fully updated.
If anyone has any questions and/or would like to offer me an interview, my DMs are always open for recruiters.
P.S. Any boosts on this toot are greatly appreciated! 💜
Inside you there are two wolves
Autistic wolf: Will you stop and get back to the routine?!
ADHD wolf: Make him say bees again!!
Me, echolalia: BEEEEEEEES!!
ADHD wolf: AHAHAHAHAHAHAH
Autistic wolf: Alright that was funny but seriously can you please stop
"Les recherches montrent que les employés neurodivergents ont des compétences exceptionnelles en matière de reconnaissance des formes, de mémoire et de mathématiques, ce qui peut s’avérer très bénéfique pour les entreprises."
Encore le mythe du petit génie des maths. (Les femmes sont sous diagnostiquées, y aurait pas un biais, hmmm?)
"certaines estimations suggèrent que les employés autistes peuvent être jusqu’à 140 % plus productifs que leurs homologues neurotypiques"
Oui on est des candidat'es privilégié'es du burn out, est ce vraiment une bonne nouvelle ?
Neurodiversity is probably beneficial for groups of humans as it brings different behaviours from the fore, which are different from the Neurotypical crowd.
This leads to new opportunities for everyone.
#ADHD & autism aren't disorders, they are syndromes or variances.
If you think someone is sealioning in your replies, check if they might be autistic before tearing them a new one.
For those of us for whom asking questions is not just necessary, but a sign of genuine engagement, getting rebuked is a lifelong trauma. Schoolteachers thinking you’re a little shit, peers thinking you’re obnoxious or dumb, bosses and bureaucrats thinking you’re insolent.
All we do is ask “why?” because that’s maybe the most beautiful question there is.
I was going to post this as a response to someone else’s post, but realised it wasn’t really relevant to their point.
Years ago, when doing my teacher training, we had a guest speaker come & talk to us about our role as teacher when dealing with sexual diversity etc. He was a very conventional looking young white man.
It was a seminar type presentation, with discussion along the way. As time went on, he slowly removed his “straight” mask, to show how many students can & do present as heteronormative until if & when they’re ready to come out.
I wonder how this would work for autistic advocates who can mask effectively, in small group presentations? Masking as in making eye contact, smiling, a self effacing introduction etc. And then, “This is how I can present when I feel the need. This is how I present when I feel safe or give up caring.” Followed by an explanation of the impact that masking has, the fact that many autistic people can’t mask, the fact that we shouldn’t need to mask etc as well as general autism education.
Of course this shouldn’t be necessary & it wouldn’t be in an ideal world.
We could make comparisons with women who have to play by the men’s rules in business & politics, the people of colour &/or members of other different ethnic/religious groups who try to “assimilate” to get ahead, & how many struggle to do so, feel like traitors to themselves & their peers, get sick of &/or struggle with pretending to be someone other than they really are. Masking autism is not the same, & this would need to be explained, but I think many people would relate to some of the similarities & the feelings involved.
There will always be some people who refuse to learn, who insist on a negative approach as part of their strategy to prop up their own ego. And it’s not them whom I would bother trying to convince. It’s the more reasonable but ignorant people who are open to learning that I think would be worth targeting.
This is how I attempted to describe being autistic to neurotypical coworkers:
Imagine that every conversation you had, you had to spend the entire time double checking that your facial expression, vocal tone, and eye contact fall within the range of a ruleset that you do not intuitively understand and which can be physically uncomfortable for you to enact. Oh, and if you slip up for a second, people think you're rude. Now don't forget to actually hear what the heck people are saying to you while doing that. And remember to filter your response through a complicated reverse-engineered lying machine in your head, so as not to offend.
And don't forget that you can't trust the words that people are saying to you, either. You need to also be manually observing and analyzing THEIR facial expression, tone, and eye contact and adding that information to what they say in order to determine what they actually mean.
And no one explained ANY of the rules to you.
And you had to literally work out the rules of this game WHILE PLAYING IT.
Now imagine you spend decades painstakingly improving your ability to juggle all of these things at once, and people still complain that you're being inconsiderate, when in reality, it's effectively impossible for you to put MORE consideration into every detail of your interaction with those people.
All of this while they appear to you to be absurdly condescending, rude, and WRONG about all kinds of shit.
Bonjour le fedivers!
Je cherche des ressources concernant le TSA, pour en parler avec une patiente de 16 ans chez qui j'ai une grosse suspicion. Tu aurais des vidéos/articles pour l'aborder en douceur? Merci! #ActuallyAutistic#autisme
After a professional diagnosis of autism some autistic people can doubt their diagnosis. Years of internalized ableism and doubts from others can contribute to a feeling of being an imposter.
Imposter syndrome isn’t discussed as much in the community but is something many struggle with.
"Because there is comfort in knowing you are a normal zebra, not a strange horse. Because you can't find community with other zebras if you don't know you belong. And because it is impossible for a zebra to be happy or healthy spending its life feeling like a failed horse.”
q: @omgimautisticaf
Learning the “why” didn’t change me, but finding a community of others like me who I can share things with and learn from has been helpful.
"Nah, I don't stim!"
"Is THIS stimming?"
"I stim, therefore I am"
-from "Initiation Rites for the Late-Identified #ActuallyAutistic "-
I really thought I don't stim. I don't rock or flap my hands or jump or chew things or make stimmy sounds.
Of course, I do softly grind my teeth (sometimes I may wear night guard during daytime too), wiggle my toes or legs, enjoy knitting simple patterns (= the same repetitive motion), fidget like there's no tomorrow with any small object I can get my hands on and may start picking my nails if I can't find anything else, doodle, I might undo my hair and braid it while watching TV, or braid tassels of my throw blanket...
Stimming is healthy and good for you. Do it.
If -as is the case with many late-identified autists- you have suppressed your stims or been pressured to stop and feel like you have forgotten how to stim, then try to start again. Learn about different stims and just try different ones until you find something that does the trick for you.