Autistic infodump vs mansplaining - what's the difference?
audhd
Hey #ADHD and #AuDHD friends, as I sit down to finish a project I wanted to share that "brown noise" has really helped me focus when it comes to doing college tasks/homework.
I tend to listen to this one most of all:
Had some outing with colleagues.
“You - autistic? No way, you’re so talkative!”
Spent first half(the one outside) of the event wandering away from the group taking photos of nature and when insisted on talking and interacting by others - repeatedly trying to show them the place with colchicums or brambleberries, or blackthorns, or pointing out a booted eagle(?) in the skies and making jokes over its name.
Spend the second half(the one in a tavern) talking to everyone more or less willing to interact, almost not shutting up, ending up oversharing(and instantly regretting that A LOT) and letting go a few tears because of not being able to fully control the emotions.
Now at home fully exhausted, drained out, feeling physically bad, not wanting to see people for a week, horrified by a sheer thought of the need to go to work on Monday and regretting agreeing to go on that outing and promising myself to never go at any event again and not interact with people again
That’s what #AuDHD is like.
Reading about task initiation strategies and as someone who uses them (to do lists, breaking down larger tasks into smaller ones, pomodoro/time limits) feels like there are no options for someone like me who is really struggling with task initiation and executive function due to autistic burnout.
Are there any other tips out there? And DO NOT tell me to rest/do nothing because I am a sole caretaker and in a precarious financial situation. Thank you.
@actuallyautistic #ActuallyAutistic #AuDHD
Just spent a couple hours in a coworking call with friends and managed to get my whole big desk tidied and big chunks of my office organized. Whoah.
I'm IN AWE of the power of body doubling. No matter how many times it happens, every time it still feels incredible, like why aren't all us neurodivergent people doing this more.
Today is not going according to my wishes or vague plans. Trying not to stress out over it & I'm losing myself in thoughts over how to simplify & organise next year's bullet journal.
This spiralled into, how can I get back on the, dealing with housework & cleaning wagon, as at some point I completely fell off. So, major paralysis on how or where to start.
Toying with the idea of introducing a, do one small thing everyday either before or immediately after breakfast, so that it's done.
Just small things like, clean the bathroom sink or pick up some random crap that I never tidied up.
If I can persuade myself to write down that I did it & when & then do the same for the following times that things get done, I might eventually have a realistic roster of things. Just need to remember to keep it flexible. If the day the floor need vacuuming I'm not up to it, swap it for something else or just shunt everything along a day.
As long as I don't fall into the trap of shunting things along indefinitely, I might be okay.
#AuDHD #Autistic #ADHD #ActuallyADHD #ActuallyAutistic #Life #TidyUp #CleanUp #Burnout #Spoons #NoSpoons
I wanted to make explicit why I am so deeply opposed to even someone as incompetent and unscientific as RFK Jr' investigating autism for its "cause".
It is because in my reading of history, no one has ever looked for a "cause" of some human condition without at least considering the possibility of finding an off switch.
Now when we're talking cancer, that's good and appropriate. It kills people. Greed, too, should be carefully fought. It kills way more people.
But autism doesn't generally kill. Not directtly, certainly. It's just a different way of thinking and perceiving and being present in the world. It's not a disease, and autistic people don't need to be "cured".
And more importantly, humanity needs not to look for, let alone find or develop, that off switch.
It's flat out eugenics. The elimination of undesirables. Doing it before we're born doesn't make it okay. Doesn't make it morally right. We contribute to the world in many ways. To society. Even if we don't always understand it.
But we uphold the social contract. Well, unless someone figures out that it's all based on BS, then it gets trickier, but as a rule, we do uphold the social contract.
So yes. If someone says they're looking for the "cause" of something that doesn't actually harm anyone, like transgender identity, or nonbinaryness, or asexuality, or autism, or anything else that's frankly harming almost no one, start asking them *why* they want to find that cause. What do they want to do once they find it?
Cause you turn over enough rocks, sometimes you get the bugs with the swastikas on them.
Maybe it is actually #alexithymia speaking, but I am pretty sure I can’t feel hate.
Like, I can feel despise, disgust, loathe, horror, fear etc - but hate? Hate assumes certain amount of passion, strength - it’s something too big to bother to maintain for someone you don’t like.
Maybe it’s just my #autistic negation to use definitive labels - like the hesitancy to consider what I can feel ‘love’ or to call someone a friend.
In that discussion about learning languages, I asked the opponent why wouldn’t the approach with throwing into the language one is learning not work for most people if that’s the exact way the kids learn to talk: kids don’t have any language to translate to - and they told me that we’re not kids and that adults learn differently.
And I was thinking: do we really? Maybe that’s exactly why #autism and #ADHD are considered neurodevelopment disorders: we just partially stay kids forever? Like, a lot of things which are symptoms are considered normal for kids of certain age. Like, most of what makes others consider my behavior weird in my forties is something that would have been seen as totally natural to a seven-years-old, no?
#neurodivergent
#AuDHD
@autistics
Was talking with someone recently about learning languages, and they were complaining how in a new country the language classes for the newcomers who supposedly don’t know the language or know very little(A0) are made in a language which they are learning. The person complaining was saying that this shouldn’t be the case because it’s impossible to learn this way.
I was very surprised to hear that, because I also passed through the similar classes - and this actually is THE MOST efficient way to learn a language for me. I need to be thrown into it and don’t have any way to slack, don’t have any way to express myself in another language. Giving me vocabulary and rules per se is not going to help me talk. But having no other way to interact does help me understand the language kinda intuitively, to feel the grammar - and to learn all that vocabulary in a much more efficient way. I do need to learn the rules - absolutely, but I need to learn them along the way.
And as for making me talk - oh my! - it’s easier to me to talk here in Spanish to a person I don’t know than it was in my own country in my own language: somehow it becomes more a linguistic quest than a social interaction, and the linguistic quests I was taught to solve in these classes.
I wonder if this need to not have other options has something to do with being #neurodivergent and #AuDHD in particular.
What proportion of your classic autistic symptoms do you think are due to you being autistic, and what proportion may be due to trauma you've suffered?
List of trauma symptoms here, for those not familiar: https://www.neurofabulous.org.uk/trauma-symptoms.html
List of classic autistic symptoms, as listed in the DSM, here: https://www.autismspeaks.org/autism-diagnostic-criteria-dsm-5
#Autism #ASD #Autistic #AuDHD #Neurodivergent #Neurodiversity #Trauma #CPTSD #ActuallyAutistic
Options: (choose one)
Some autistic people find making phone calls extremely stressful and unpleasant and will avoid them at all costs.
Please don’t try and force your communication preferences on others.
image: anon
#ActuallyAutistic #AuDHD @actuallyautistic
I'm getting a lot out of the Neurodivergent Insights newsletter by Dr. Megan Anna Neff. For example, this post about the overlap of ADHD and autism:
https://neurodivergentinsights.com/misdiagnosis-monday/adhd-vs-autism/
Dr. Neff is herself AuDHD who turned her hyperfocus on her neurotype into a PhD in psychology. She's also raising a neurodivergent kid with strong PDA (Pathological Demand Avoidance, which she calls Pervasive Drive for Autonomy):
https://neurodivergentinsights.com/blog/pda-or-demand-avoidance/
![Avatar for Emily Moran Barwick [archived]](/proxy/identity_icon/280779823553852866/0ce5ffc456.png){kind=icon}
My brain's been serving up some real darkness lately.
(And when an #ActuallyAutistic brain latches onto something, it COMMITS 🙃)
So I'm reminding myself that in this world (especially at this time) ✨#Autistic Joy✨ is an act of defiant resistance.
And I'll be damned if I don't remember to stand in awe of all I've weathered, and of our #neurodivergent culture as a whole.
@actuallyautistic
Last post of the week!
How recent World Of Warcraft changes have made the game more AuDHD and Disability friendly.