actuallyautistic

Diary of an AuDHD Squirrel. Day 981 , Sunday 05/07/2026

Sunday started much later than expected with me sleeping thru until 08:30!

Its been a quiet day mostly. The highlight was me cleaning a load of fancy glasses that came from my late MiL’s house & finding homes for them.

Salad & chicken kievs for tea with strawgogs & ice cream for pud!

Final Thoughts.

Not a bad day although I seem to spend an inordinate amount of time cleaning stuff theat my wife brings back from her late mother’s!

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

From my favourite place by and for late diagnosed/realized autists.

It’s a very long piece, and be aware that you are probably going to see yourself in some parts of it. If yes I feel you, and it is so weird to read a big part/component of my reality so well described!

Some advice at the end of the text on how to try to learn to unlearn. I tried with a few health professionals in my life forced by the reality of my rare genetic mutation and thankfully it works.

#ActuallyAutistic #autism

Please add the @ autistics group in the comments, I can’t from my new instance.
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Learned Helplessness in Autism: Why You Stopped Asking for What You Need
You are not low maintenance. You are someone who learned, early and repeatedly, that asking did not work, so you stopped asking and called it independence.

https://www.heyasd.com/blogs/autism/learned-helplessness-in-autism

In a dog world run by mutts as a standard, all dogs are equal, but purebreds are defined by their deficits rather than their specializations.

#actuallyautistic @autistics

It might have been my previous life, but certainly in my next life I want to come back as a border collie.

#actuallyautistic @autistics

Diary of an AuDHD Squirrel. Day 982 , Monday 06/07/2026

Monday is a gym day so up early, down the gym by 7am & then stumble home 45 minutes later telling myself that it’s all in a good cause!

I seem to have done something to my knee, my left kneecap keeps complaining when I come downstairs! Hopefully a day of rest will get it back into working order!

Not much else to report for today. It’s been a somewhat overcast day but quite warm so not too bad - looks like we are in for a hot few days again later this week & for the foreseeable future (temps in the high 20s (C).

Final Thoughts.

Gonna put Kubuntu back on the MBP since windoze failed miserably. Starfield is scratching my spacefaring itch nicely so the need for a working version of Elite has faded. The need for a working laptop though is more pressing.

I also need to get the shelf & the blind sorted in my room some time soon!

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

Autism Analogy Time

RE: Changing plans

For example, when I've made plans with someone/people, planned things out and around them, made preparations, and then they cancel on me last minute. Or instead me just having a normal day, and friends call me up to go out with them, *right now* (or soon enough anyway). This is what it's like for me:

It's like being in a car on the highway. You're coasting along, things are fine, but then suddenly you have to go back. You have to slow all the way down, avoid the traffic behind you, turn around, probably go off-road to do it, all slow and bumpy, maybe going back and forth some too. It's a big hassle that leaves me exhausted by the time I have changed course but before I've actually started the new thing.

Because moving for me isn't like a car in an action movie where I can just do a bootlegger-reverse and speed away in another direction. It's more like modern interplanetary space travel, where energy conservation is your prime concern, because if you run out of fuel before you get to your destination, you likely won't make it, or make it back. You have to plan your course ahead of time, charting all the gravitational influences, calculating the least energy intensive path. The course corrections you make you want to be small and infrequent, gently nudging you over the long-haul, not a huge burn all at once that leaves you drained. Certainly not the space equivalent of a bootlegger-reverse.

Of course, how much of this is due to being autistic and how much is due to burnout I don't know. Probably some of both. I didn't have as much of a problem with it when I was younger, but then I wasn't aware of how things worked for me, so it was probably mortgaging the future-me for the sake of then-me. Even now I can push myself past my "limits" if I have to, as our society often demands, but that takes a toll on you in the future, leaving you with out energy you'd normally have, or worse, like getting sick because your immune system has been run down.

#ActuallyAutistic @autistics

A few years ago, I realized my wife's condition had something in common with #autism and I thought I'd make a comic strip about it, to help understand both.

She has demyelination: her nervous system doesn't automatically coordinate her movements the way most people's does. Every step is conscious, planned. And some signals still arrive too late, no matter how much practice.

With autism, social and emotional signals don't get pre-filtered before reaching conscious awareness. What most people process automatically, we process deliberately, with a similar risk of arriving too late.

🧵

👉 raphink.info/autism

#actuallyautistic #neurodiversity

@autistics

ALT

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Anyone have an XMPP -based community for #actuallyAutistic adults you might consider inviting me to?
@actuallyautistic

you can’t understand Autism or divergence if you keep understanding everything you already do as an NT person. If it doesn’t completely rewrite your understanding of “human nature,” if you try to fit it within your existing understanding of “human nature,” you’re not getting the concept.
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@autistics #ActuallyAutistic #NTPsychogy #ND #AuDHD

You are not “needy”. It’s much more likely that you are seeking deep connections with people and offer them an availability, that became rare nowadays.

Don’t fall for the ableist narratives of late stage capitalism.

#ActuallyAutistic #AuDHD #neurodivergent

Coming Fall 2026.

Excerpts free...
https://AutisticAF.me/the-book

@autistics @ActuallyAutistic

#ActuallyAutistic #ADHD #MentalHealth #neurodivergant

ALT

Instead of, "What do I need," how about, "What would I benefit from," or "What would be helpful."

Because (autistic trauma here) literally, what is a need. If I'm not going to suffocate without a thing, or jump off a bridge, do I really "need" it? Taking it out of the language of need sidesteps this whole self-diminishing line of thought and skips straight to the point: you matter, you deserve care, you can ask for what would nourish you or alleviate hurt.

#actuallyAutistic

Diary of an AuDHD Squirrel. Day 990 , Tuesday 14/07/2026

Up at just after 06:30 but that was ok because I fell asleep before 10pm last night so a more or less solid 8 hours.

Mrs S was in the office to a nice quiet day once I had done my chores!
I officially finished NMS exp 22 & got all the goodies I wanted to take back to my main save - & a trendy new multi-tool to boot!

Chicken kievs & salad for tea with strawberries for dessert - yum!

Final Thoughts.

A much needed quiet day to start to de-stress & relax, there will be a repeat performance tomorrow!

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

https://mas.to/@skeletor/116920235391316116

ALT

we fidget because what the Hell
else is your brain supposed to do in this stupid, stupid world where they just, “don’t believe,” whatever the fuck they like
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@autistics #AuDHD #ND #ActuallyAutistic

Diary of an AuDHD Squirrel. Day 1016 , Sunday 09/08/2026

Sunday started at around 07:30.

Had a busy morning at my late MiL’s collecting the final bits & bobs.

Got back for a late lunch & then a binge fest of ‘The Capture’ season 2.

Final Thoughts.

Tomorrow will see us at the end of clearing out my late MiL’s house - it’s been an excruciatingly log road but the end is now clearly in sight!

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

The #actuallyAutistic anxiety of

a) Being misunderstood
b) In attempting to explain the misunderstanding, having that be misunderstood
c) Being so entangled in "No, that's not what I was trying to say either" layers that the original communication is completely lost
d) Walking away wishing you just hadn't bothered in the first place

@autistics

As so many of us struggle with what the angry weather Gods are throwing at us. With the greed of a few threatening us all, with their empty dreams and blind visions of the future. And most of all with the greed and power-hunger of our so-called leaders and the spineless betrayal of those who should be holding them in check. It is perhaps worth remembering something.

Being born autistic, or adhd or both, means that this life has always been against us. We walk through it with incredible gifts. Such as sensory perception capable of seeing truly profound beauty, pattern recognition that lets us see the writing on the wall, long before others can even see the wall, the ability to concentrate and produce over extraordinary periods of time and character traits of truth and honour and honesty, logic and loyalty and steadfast courage. And so much more.

All gifts, I would argue, in the right circumstances, when they are not being abused by the systems we have to try and survive in, or the world created for others. Because then they can be turned into our curse and from them can be spawned other darknesses that we end up wearing like cloaks as we crawl though live, attempting merely to survive, anxiety, stress, depression, illness and despair.

This is the story of so many of our lives. Of our gifts also being our curses, of all that we have to carry that so few want to see or recognise. And do you know what that has made us? Stronger than we know. Give the average allistic even an hour walking in our shoes and they would give up, or break. Yet we endure, we have always endured. It is part of what makes us, us.

#Autism
#ActuallyAutistic

The majority thinks that people are generally the same, except for some individual differences, of course it’s more complicated than that, there seems to be a majority who are generally the same, but they’re one type, humanity is divided into neurotypes, there are other types that are mostly the same among themselves, so that’s a third layer of complexity, and still there are individual differences both within types and also individual differences that transcend types.
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It’s another layer of complexity but it’s a better theory, explains more than the other one.
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That’s why I’m all in on neurodiversity theory, if it explains more, I don’t see that ignoring it is an option.
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@autistics #AuDHD #ND #Psychology #NTPsychology #ActuallyAutistic

RE: https://mastodon.social/@filmfreak75/116964762665951438

@autistics #ActuallyAutistic in a second, more triggering performative meeting, and the cloud9 stress ball ain't cutting it right now…

#NormalizeCameraOffMeetings

♾️Ten reasons why I like being autistic♾️

Maybe surprisingly to some, being autistic isn't all bad.

Here are some things that may get missed when autism is defined *only* through our difficulties & struggles.

#Autism #ActuallyAutistic #Neurodivergent #AuDHD

A thread 🧵

1/11

Wow, I hadn't checked my Mastodon notifications in two months. (In case you wondered how long my #ActuallyAutistic burnout lasted.)

@autistics

I want to aplogize to my NT wife and kids for spending my time talking about, trying to live according to principles they can never understand.
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It’s still impossible to wrap your head around, I suppose the same way they never understand us. My kid is mad at me for judging them about something, and they think it was what the bad guys judge for, gender, sexuality, but it was this, wasn’t it, that I, never having heard of neurotype, was judging them every time I talked about No Spanking and expecting them to understand that.
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They’re convinced my lifelong obsession about it is some kind of a lie, because No Spanking just isn’t a thing, does not compute. I never spanked them, I tried to stop the ex from spanking them, so I SAID, “No Spanking,” and I never spanked - my words and my real history are one - still somehow a lie, and that just means it simply does not compute for them, they don’t, they can’t get it.
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It’s an actuarial matter, they simply cannot see the causality.
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I’m sorry, in hindsight, knowing what I know now about neurodiversity, now I guess I can sort of understand y’all’s reaction to me. Knowing what I do now, I wouldn’t ever try again. For all of our sakes, I wish had known what I was, failing that, I wish I had never met your mother.
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@autistics #AuDHD #ND #ActuallyAutistic