when your heart gets broken and your brain ages on double time from doing the work for both 💜
.
@autistics #AuDHD #ND #ActuallyAutistic
actuallyautistic
Diary of an AuDHD Squirrel. Day 1107 , Sunday 08/11/2026
Sunday has been quiet, even by normal Sunday standards!
Final Thoughts.
Temps are due to drop next week - yay.
Thank you to all those who are helping me on this journey, in a myriad different ways. I am thankful to each & every one of you! 🫂 🫶🐿️🖖
@autistics
#TimsASDjourney #ActuallyAutistic #Neurospicy #TheMammutMoves
Diary of an AuDHD Squirrel. Day 1108 , Monday 09/11/2026
Monday started so early even the sparrows rolled over & pulled the duvet over their heads!
Down to the gym & then back in time for breakfast & chores.
Very nearly forgot to go for a blood test, thankfully Mrs S has a much better memory!
The phlebotomist was not the usual one & 3 attempts later managed to get the sample!
Thankfully the rest of the day involved zero people stabbing me in the arm with a needle!
Final Thoughts.
I wish my veins were not as shy & people averse as the rest of me!!
Thank you to all those who are helping me on this journey, in a myriad different ways. I am thankful to each & every one of you! 🫂 🫶🐿️🖖
@autistics
#TimsASDjourney #ActuallyAutistic #Neurospicy #TheMammutMoves
✊@autistics The overlap and differences between depression and Autistic burnout are, at least in my corner of the Fediverse, not discussed at all.
They can look incredibly similar:
- Overwhelming physical exhaustion
- Difficulty maintaining focus
- Restless sleep
- No longer finding enjoyment in things you once enjoyed
- Feeling disconnected from yourself or others
These traits are often used to describe burnout in online Autistic communities, usually combined with strategies for burnout recovery.
Indeed, Autistic burnout is sometimes described, in medical terms, as "medication-resistant depression."
The issue with depression being missing from the burnout conversation is that it can lead people to misdiagnose themselves. It's easy to simply think "I'm just burned out; I just need to rest and avoid triggers".
For those that struggle to find rest and avoid triggers and implement other recovery strategies, it seems like recovery from burnout is impossible. But what if some of those folks are actually experiencing depression and not burnout? Or both?
I'm not saying Autistic burnout isn't a thing. It absolutely is. What I'm saying is that we're doing the community a disservice by omitting depression from the conversation.
Maybe I'm the only one who spent years thinking I was burned out, and deploying all the burnout strategies, and not seeing any difference, only to discover that I was actually depressed that whole time. But if there's even a single person who reads this who has the same experience, I hope it helps.
#ActuallyAutistic #AuDHD #ADHD #Neurodivergent #BurnoutRecovery #AutisticBurnout #Depression
Just read a short article on Autistic Fawning and now I think I need to go have a long hard think about that one. Just reading it made me want to cry. I…don’t like looking at that.
I am surprised and happy to report that there is a new season of #TheAssembly going on, one last week - kid from Heated Rivalry - and it’s on tonight, new one, I think. 😀
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#ActuallyAutistic #ND #AuDHD #IWatchTooMuchTV @autistics
Diary of an AuDHD Squirrel. Day 1075 , Wednesday 07/10/2026
Wednesday being gym day saw me out of the house & exercising just after 7am.
Just chores & a few odd jobs around the house broke the day up.
Final Thoughts.
It was really autumnal this morning, cold,wet & misty.
The sun rallied late this afternoon & warmed the place up a little bit.
Thank you to all those who are helping me on this journey, in a myriad different ways. I am thankful to each & every one of you! 🫂 🫶🐿️🖖
@autistics
#TimsASDjourney #ActuallyAutistic #Neurospicy #TheMammutMoves
@autistics #ActuallyAutistic been hitting the snooze on this for two decades…
Some years ago I was hired for a project and came to work really close with one person. She and I got along and we would spend long days together focusing on our work but also connecting as people.
After a few months she asked me if I was autistic. I said no, which I thought was an honest answer.
I knew I am different but I am different in many ways. I knew I struggled in social situations but there was always another plausible reason (too). I knew I kept having to fight for things that no one else seemed bothered with.
For everything I could come up with an explanation that was not related to being neurodivergent. I had just never put the puzzle together and see the bigger picture.
I tried to let her question go but it wouldn’t let me. Why would she think this about me? Eventually I started looking things up online and it was eye opening. I recognised so much and pretty much self-diagnosed right there and then. She saw something I didn’t and whether or not others may have no one had ever voiced it.
Later I was formally diagnosed in two out of three countries (long story), but the one that didn’t is my home country where I lived at the time these questions arose. It was difficult to handle because they also couldn’t offer an alternative suggestion of what might be going on. It was all just my problem and for me to sort out on my own. That failure in support has caused some serious harm.
There’s a reason why I write about this today but I’m not sure I’m ready to share that yet, so instead here’s a question for anyone who wants to answer:
How did you discover you were autistic and how difficult has it been to find recognition and acknowledgement?
This question particularly applies to those of us who recognised their neurodivergence in adulthood but I welcome everyone’s thoughts.
Human evolution thread:
.
I typed a bunch of this as replies to someone, but there’s no reason they have to answer any of it, they didn’t say anything everybody doesn’t say.
.
And this far beyond the context of what they were saying.
.
Where to start? I’ll try to preface those replies with something to set the scene, then I’ll add those replies, but don’t anybody answer right away, I’ll be editing them after initially posting them.
.
So the idea is that every enlightened person knows that, “survival of the fittest,” suggesting, “the strongest,” isn’t the correct take of evolution, that there is more to life than strength. People have made great cases for the functional evolution of cooperation and sharing over competition and fighting.
.
But somehow, the brutal version is still the only version there is in the world, simply say “human evolution,” and everyone reacts to the brutal version, no-one thinks, “maybe this is the good kind of evo talk,” ever.
.
What seems to exist for the majority is a kind of a false binary where human evolution must be either the rough sort with the perfect soldier at its pinnacle - or humans stopped evolving during the Palaeolithic - so we still have “Palaeolithic emotions,” right, isn’t that what they say?
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They seem to make evolution something the bad guys talk about - and so the good guys, when they are in charge of things, cannot manage or improve anything either, because they don’t see evolution - the effect of the environment of an evolving Human Nature - at all.
.
OK, the replies:
.
/1
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#ActuallyAutistic #AuDHD #NTPsychology #Autism #Evolution #AutisticScience @autistics
"Proof Autistic People Face Brutal Life Outcomes":
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/JVyap1P4slA
I think the very first recipients of UBI should be the #ActuallyAutistic , if only to try to offset/alleviate this brutally shorter statistical lifespan.
@autistics
Diary of an AuDHD Squirrel. Day 1076 , Thursday 08/10/2026
Thursday was another quiet day, I finished NMS Exp 23 - yay!
I started work on converting a radiator shelf we saved from my MiL’s place - the brackets need changing so it will fit our radiator.
As will all ‘simple’ tasks it’s proving more complicated than at first thought, not least because the nuts & bolts I need are somewhere in one of the boxes we have yet to sort out!
Final Thoughts.
Today had lots of potential, sadly I failed to make the most of it.
Thank you to all those who are helping me on this journey, in a myriad different ways. I am thankful to each & every one of you! 🫂 🫶🐿️🖖
@autistics
#TimsASDjourney #ActuallyAutistic #Neurospicy #TheMammutMoves
you know, my arguments about the popular ideas about human evolution can’t ever be settled with facts, it’s a matter of neurology, of type, what is a fact, and honestly, even the very context of the whole conversation can’t be agreed upon, everything misses, like the DEP, two ships passing in the night. Our objections cannot find each other, none of the arguments are even sane, in the logical sense, and while your mind apparently reinterprets my questions, your answers find no connection to the question in mine.
.
It seems that it must surely be possible to create a technical and specific enough conversation to get there, but the deeper I get into that question the less likely it really seems to be. Neurotypes have premises and rules, rather they are sets of premises and rules, I don’t think we can suspend our own or include others.
.
I mean, I’m not having any luck. Everyone would have to be extremely self aware and conscious, that’s for sure. And committed.
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#Neurodiversity #ActuallyAutistic #AuDHD #Evolution
Autistic people have a different way of understanding and engaging with the world.
The DSM describes our interests as 'abnormal in intensity or focus'.
And studies have described a 'weak central coherence' (meaning a tendency to focus on details, rather than the bigger picture - which puzzles me as how, then, are we such good pattern-spotters? Surely that requires ‘seeing the bigger picture’?).
But… what if our 'different ways' in these areas have been chronically misobserved and misread?
A short 🧵
⬇️
#Autism #ActuallyAutistic #Neurodiversity #Neurodivergent #AutismResearch #DoubleEmpathy #Monotropism
Edited 1d ago
For anyone who's been told to "just pick up the phone": many autistic adults prefer email for contact with people they don't know, and research backs that up. Written options are an access need, not a quirk.
RE: https://mastodon.social/@digitalcortex/117591621052397670
🗣 LOUDER FOR THE PEOPLE IN THE BACK ⚟
#ActuallyAutistic #misophonia
RE: https://mastodon.social/@sundogplanets/117592988048840746
this thread 🚨 🚨 🚨, especially applicable for us #ADHD #ActuallyAutistic insomniacs
"Who needs labels anyway?" sounds progressive, but isn't.
A 'label' can give people language for their experiences, a basis for organising, and access to a community.
The interesting question - I think - isn't whether we have categories or not (we do. Ask any librarian or linguist).
It's who gets to make and use the categories... and for what purpose.
💟
#Autism #ActuallyAutistic #ADHD #AuDHD #Neurodivergent #SocialJustice #EpistemicInjustice
Diary of an AuDHD Squirrel. Day 1077 , Friday 09/10/2026
Friday - last gym day of the week!
Not a bad gym session, partially because I actually remembered to take my water bottle for the first time this week!
Sorted thru a couple of the (numerous) boxes of miscellaneous DIY bits in search of some nuts & bolts I thought would suit the radiator shelf, finally found the bolts but they are too big, worst luck! Have ordered a box of mixed nuts & bolts that should hopefully fit the bill!
Spent the afternoon chasing baddies across the galaxy.
Pizza accompanied the end of Babylon 5 season 3 … enjoyed both.
Final Thoughts.
I made the mistake of doom scrolling this evening, the orange oaf is not only trying to cripple the ICC but is also forbidding international observers to the forthcoming elections!
Not that we in the UK are faring much better - Anti-terrorism arrests have risen more than a 1000% since 2020 & the vast majority of those arrested were protesting against a recognised genocide.
My thoughts are very dark & the black dog is howling in the distance but getting nearer!
Thank you to all those who are helping me on this journey, in a myriad different ways. I am thankful to each & every one of you! 🫂 🫶🐿️🖖
@autistics
#TimsASDjourney #ActuallyAutistic #Neurospicy #TheMammutMoves
Diary of an AuDHD Squirrel. Day 1109 , Tuesday 10/11/2026
Tuesday started around 7am.
The morning was spent doing chores & clearing out the plughole in the bathroom sink, which got blocked.
A relaxing afternoon though.
Final Thoughts.
Well winter seems to have arrived - highs appear to be mostly lurking around 7ºC for the foreseeable future with lows hitting zero at least once!
Thank you to all those who are helping me on this journey, in a myriad different ways. I am thankful to each & every one of you! 🫂 🫶🐿️🖖
@autistics
#TimsASDjourney #ActuallyAutistic #Neurospicy #TheMammutMoves
oh ffs, wow
I always thought
“Once there was a way
to get back homeward,”
was the greatest
lyric ever written,
that Murphy’s Law,
you can’t
but you could have
and you blew it
double whammy
but of course
that was before
I found out
there never was a way
not for me
💜
.
@autistics #ActuallyAutistic #AuDHD #ND
Diary of an AuDHD Squirrel. Day 1079 , Sunday 11/10/2026
Sunday started late at around 08:30, not sure why I have slept so late the last couple of days … must be getting old!
It’s been a mostly quiet day, I managed to fit the brackets to the radiator shelf, the theory is good but the spacing is off - I went for the brackets at a ⅓rd of the way in but that has left the ends a bit wobbly so I will move them to ¼ next week & hopefully that will help.
Spent a couple of hours sorting more DIY miscellany this afternoon, a job that I will be doing for a while I think.
Still have a load of boxes of stuff from my late MiL’s house to sort thru - it seems that now the house is on the market & the end is in sight on that front that Mrs S has lost interest in this task - once again yours truly is left to sort it out. Yay.
Final Thoughts.
Heck this weekend went quick, back to the gym in the morning - joy!
Thank you to all those who are helping me on this journey, in a myriad different ways. I am thankful to each & every one of you! 🫂 🫶🐿️🖖
@autistics
#TimsASDjourney #ActuallyAutistic #Neurospicy #TheMammutMoves
Diary of an AuDHD Squirrel. Day 1080 , Monday 12/10/2026
Monday turned out to be a cold damp day, classic British autumn weather to be honest!
Gym was a bit of a MH disaster with my schedule being utterly wrecked by folks walking mini marathons & a lass who thought that holding onto the handle of the weights frame while she was telling her mates how badly done by she was a work was the equivalent of actual exercise! I toyed with the idea of suggesting that she be more considerate of other gym members but I played the conversation thru in my mind - I tend not to back down, especially if in the right, & also tend not to know when to stop - this leads to all kinds of negative outcomes & so I kept quiet!
The rest of the day was essentially calming down from this morning.
Final Thoughts.
I am actually quite pleased that I still did all the exercises in my normal routine, because I toyed with just giving up at least 3 times as each attempt at getting back on track was stymied.
Less pleased that it took much of the rest of the day to get my equilibrium back!
Thank you to all those who are helping me on this journey, in a myriad different ways. I am thankful to each & every one of you! 🫂 🫶🐿️🖖
@autistics
#TimsASDjourney #ActuallyAutistic #Neurospicy #TheMammutMoves
"Watching a DVD of the French film Amélie alone in my room, I saw for the first time a character who moved through the world like I do."
https://www.theguardian.com/culture/2026/oct/10/my-cultural-awakening-amelie-autism-neurodivergence
#autism #actuallyautistic #neurodivergent #coolmovies #cinema