#actually helping anything. i was considering seeking a diagnosis (and maybe one for autism as well) but am so afraid that im faking it or | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

destroyyourbinder · 4 years

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Unriddling the Sphinx: Autism & the Magnetism of Gender Transition

When people note that "trans children" tend to have autistic traits and that children with an autism diagnosis (particularly natal girls, but also boys) are massively overrepresented in the population that is referred to assessment and treatment for gender dysphoria, many trans people's (and allies') response is that it is a kind of dehumanization and denial of agency to claim that autistic people cannot be transgender, do not have the right to seek gender transition, or that they may be vulnerable to being exploited by the transgender healthcare system. Most recently, this claim has come up again with regards to a recent piece by Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling, where among many other things she notes the enormous increase in child referrals to gender clinics, including a disproportionate number of autistic children, to explain her reticence to endorse the political stances of modern transgender movements.

This is my response as an autistic woman, who was once an autistic child, who is a lesbian with experiences of gender dysphoria and who once wanted to transition to male.

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Recognizing our vulnerability to social predation and to cultural systems that we do not understand because they were not made for us is not offensive. As autistic people, it is key to claiming our autonomy as a particular kind of disabled person. We often do not recognize our limitations in reference to greater social systems not because we are "too stupid" (i.e. cognitively or intellectually limited) but because we have different value systems than neurotypical people and hierarchical institutions built for their benefit. Autism is a pervasive developmental disability, and it is a way of being. It is not merely being a "regular person" minus various clinically defined psychological capacities or skills. It is a difference across all domains of life, and as a disability that causes differences in our social and sensory perception it is also a disability that causes differences in what we want and what we care about. Both those who exhibit condescending "concern" for autistic people and those people who naively defend our right to do whatever we see fit miss this component of being autistic. It is not that we are merely vulnerable because we are missing parts of our decision-making or social skills apparatus. It is not that we are merely being unfairly denied what we want to do, and our autism is immaterial, just some excuse for the denial.

It's that we aren't recognized as having wants, only "special needs". It's that we aren't given the skills to know what it is that we want, or that it might be different from those around us. It's that we are never told how to get what we want in safe and healthy ways, or that there is even a potentially safe and healthy way to get it. It's that we are deemed automatically pathological and empty of internal experiences as autistic people. It's that we're not given any help on how to navigate our deep differences from others and how to navigate being deprived of social resources and networking in a way that doesn't tell us to just cover it up and deal with it. It's that most people who dedicate their lives to "helping" us do not care about any of these things, merely that we can be trained to act in a way that doesn't disrupt the lives of neurotypical people. Given this context, it is far more insulting to me to insist that having autonomy renders us somehow invulnerable to exploitation than to correctly perceive that we are in fact an intensely vulnerable people. By nature of our disability, we are always on the margins of social resources and social networks, and exercising our autonomy unfortunately often puts us even further outside social acceptability and social protection rather than somehow shielding us materially from the consequences of living a self-actualized autistic life. Few autistic people are prepared for this when they begin trying to make decisions "true to self" in adolescence.

I believe nearly every autistic person is traumatized from the consequences of living in this world and what others do to us. Clinicians do not usually recognize that autistic children and adults can be traumatized, that there is even anything there to traumatize. (Why else could they feel so comfortable shocking us, shackling us, or feeding us bleach?)

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I think because we are not neurotypical we often struggle to understand just why a neurotypical person would feel ok excluding us, or maybe even anyone. Many of us autistic people have little impulse to do such things, and if we do, we rarely have the social power to make someone that we've cut out of our lives unemployable, unable to access medical care, food, housing, and so on. But neurotypical institutions are set up, from top to bottom, to create hierarchies of value with extreme material difference between the top and bottom. They are set up to stratify the "worthy" people from "unworthy" people.

Autistic people are almost universally considered "unworthy" in these systems, and to the extent that we can curry favor from them we must consent to our exploitation: to entering into a transaction on neurotypical terms, where we can get some sort of worth through providing a "benefit" to this hierarchical resource system which is not made according to our value system or for us whatsoever. This is common to all marginalized people. But it is often particularly poignant to autistic people, who struggle to find community with any social group of human beings. There is no "elsewhere" for us, there is no "home". We are stuck, as they say, on the "wrong planet", and the spaceship was destroyed.

The idea that exercising our autonomy would protect us from this world rather than render us more vulnerable because we are refusing to transact correctly or refusing to provide a benefit is utterly absurd. Our autonomy is perfectly compatible with our continued social ostracization and exploitation. It usually coexists with our continued social ostracization and exploitation.

In social skills classes-- or just the wild, wild world-- you are not taught how to deal with the fact that everyone will hate you for being you. You are taught to be someone else. You are not taught about your native autonomy. You are taught about how to put your hands here or here, how to choose between actions that are condescendingly and ridiculously normal. You are not taught how to take responsibility in a way you understand, that is harmonious to your own values and others'. You are taught to hold yourself accountable for your abnormality.

So forgive me if I do not believe for one second that impersonal, well-funded medical systems that were built off of medically experimenting on intersex children and adults (the nightmares wreaked by John Money at Johns Hopkins) or psychologically experimenting on behaviorally aberrant children (UCLA, where behaviorist torturer of autistic children Ivan Lovaas tinkered with gender nonconforming children alongside conversion therapist George Rekers) have autistic people's self-defined well being in mind.

And forgive me if I do not think informed consent clinics have autistic people's self-defined well-being in mind when they're more interested in rubber stamping hormones while shielding themselves from legal liability than assisting autistic adolescents and adults, who have an intrinsically different way of understanding gendered social norms, navigate the enormous complexity of how to interface with the single most fundamental social fixation of the neurotypical world as someone who will always and automatically fail.

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I do not think most gender clinicians even have the first understanding of what it means to be autistic and what this does in and of itself to your understanding of gender and sexuality. What J.K. Rowling said in her piece-- a straightforward accounting of facts-- is far, far less insulting to me than what Diane Ehrensaft-- one of the premier "experts" in the United States on pediatric transgender cases-- published in a peer-reviewed journal on autism. In a 2018 letter to the editor reading remarkably like new-age material on Indigo Children, she writes that she likes to call autistic transgender children "Double Helix Rainbow Kids" and declares us "freed" from the restrictions of gender as "more creative" individuals. This article ends with an anecdote about an eight year old autistic female child with limited language use who begins speaking, making eye contact, and relating more appropriately with clinic staff after she is socially transitioned by her family. Ehrensaft muses, "“Could gender be an alleviator for the stressors of autism?”

She is not the only one to pontificate about the magical changes a gender transition brings on autistic children. Norman Spack (the first clinician in the US to use GnRH agonists on gender dysphoric children as puberty-suppressing drugs) claims in a coauthored, peer-reviewed 2012 paper (insults upon insults, in the Journal of Homosexuality) that in his clinical experience the symptoms of comorbid diagnoses--including "problems with social competence"-- "decrease and even disappear" with gender treatment. In the same paper, this passage appears:

Although the question of whether gender dysphoria is simply a symptom of an autism spectrum disorder has been raised by mental health clinicians in the field, we feel it is equally worth questioning the validity of an autism diagnosis among transgender youth, particularly of those diagnosed with Asperger’s disorder. Perhaps the social awkwardness and lack of peer relationships common among GID-Asperger’s patients is a result of a lifetime of feeling isolated and rejected; and maybe the unusual behavior patterns are simply a coping method for dealing with the anxiety and depression created from living in an “alien body,” as one patient described it.

Do autistic trans people-- who rightfully protest against mainstream autism organizations focusing on a "cure" for autism rather than respectful accommodations for our differences and medical needs-- know that very well-connected, very respected, and very powerful gender doctors are claiming that gender transition cures the symptoms of autism? Do autistic trans people-- who rightfully discuss the implications of denying that someone can both be autistic and hold a meaningful gender variant identity-- know that it is an active clinical debate as to whether or not their disability and all its struggles is "just" a result of somehow ending up in the "wrong body"?

If they do not, they should know that this is how doctors are perceiving the pervasive issues that the children in their care are having: not as the result of a life-long, stigmatized, but eminently livable disability, but as the result of a mystical gender failure that can be medically corrected. That essentially, the disability "goes away" so long as outsiders no longer perceive a problem with a child's conformity to gender norms. That either an autistic girl somehow is transfigured into a non-autistic child through transition, or more likely, an autistic girl's autistic behavior is unfitting for her as a girl but not for her as a boy. That the "proof" of pediatric transition's effectiveness and standard of an autistic child's happiness is how much the child wishes to participate in neurotypical society on neurotypical society's terms.

I cannot pretend that this isn't ludicrously disrespectful to autistic people, or that it isn't a total erasure of our experience as human beings. To these gender doctors, the fact that a girl might see the world in a different way and care about different things and thereby struggle in a world not made for her does not matter whatsoever, except maybe as a tokenistic "journey" she can go on alongside her wonderfully progressive and affirming doctors. What "autism" is for them is a particularly severe and inconvenient social adjustment problem which can be forcibly corrected through body modifications, should an autistic child or adult rightly note that they can't do gender right and this is causing problems for them. They are more interested-- like in a long history of abusive and even deadly "treatments" for autism-- in correcting the problem for them than for the autistic person. How convenient for neurotypical people both the gender incongruous behavior and the social noncompliance goes away once you medically modify a child to look like the other sex.

I cannot be anything but sick that "increased eye contact" is a sign an autistic child needed medical meddling in the intimate process of navigating and negotiating their sexual and gender development. I cannot trust that these doctors aren't missing enormous parts of their autistic patients' experiences, if this is what they are so gleeful to report as a positive transformation and their justification for disrupting and surveilling children's bodies. What do they think of autistic people and those who are gender non-conforming if they are so willing to believe that existing as a person with a stigmatized disability is actually just a misdiagnosis for the pseudoscientific condition of being a man in a woman's body, or vice versa?

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It takes many, many years and quite a bit of luck and support for most autistic people to fully understand and come to terms with how their autism affects them and sets them apart from both individual neurotypical people and neurotypical society at large. It takes years-- often far, far into adulthood, especially for those abused under a medical model or for those who went decades undiagnosed-- to understand the differences between social and non-social aspects of this disability.

It takes years to not resort to chalking up all of your own distress and difficulties to being a "retard".

I have not met an autistic woman yet who did not have extreme difficulty integrating her autistic differences in values with a broader sense of self that includes whatever version of herself she uses to navigate a world in which women's values are simultaneously invisible (since she has no right to determine them herself) and nitpicked to death (since it is important she complies).

In a world like this why would it not be difficult for autistic people to know when it is they are being fooled or exploited while participating in transgender communities or while seeking transgender health care? Autistic people-- especially those who are dependent on caregivers or health systems for basic care, as well as those who depend on the goodwill of their families, employers, or welfare benefit institutions to remain as independent as they can-- have to make continual compromises just to maintain enough acceptability to communicate with the outside world nonetheless do things like "make a friend", "go to the doctor", "find a job".

I do not think neurotypical people understand or care that when I speak or write it is always with a similar effort as with a second language. Language-- whether it is verbal or nonverbal, with all the extensive symbology of the neurotypical world-- does not ever get to be something other than "translation" for me. As someone with an Asperger's-profile of abilities who has studied the neurotypical world intensely for years, I have the opportunity to translate in a way that allows others to understand me at least some of the time. Many autistic people who are more affected live in the world which gives "autism" its name, where nobody cares to do the translation for us and we are left totally and utterly alone.

The 20th century philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (who, perhaps not coincidentally, was likely autistic) was fixated on questions about the meaning of communication. About whether a language of one could make any sense, about what it would mean to speak about something hidden from everyone else or perhaps even ourselves. In a famous passage debated vociferously, he wrote, "If a lion could speak, we would not be able to understand him."

Many have resolved the question posed by this statement by claiming that for fuck's sake, a lion is a lion, and has nothing to say.

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Gender transition appealed to me because it was cloaked in the farcical notion that there was some version of me and my body that could finally speak directly. I never quite understood the whole Adam and Eve story as an autistic child-- just don't eat it!-- but if there truly were a serpent's apple for autistic folks it would consist of this promise: that there was a world where the glass and the fog would dissolve, that we weren't covered in a repulsive and bumbling slime made of our own desires to understand, that instead of our words and hands glancing off the skin of everyone around us we could do that magic everyone else could and hold someone's heart in our hands. I was fooled because like many struggling autistic people, I wanted the problem to be me. Because then it was fixable. I would let them take my only body (which was such a sensory drag) to convert me into one of these blessed transponders that normal people were, receiving and sending all these messages like shooting stars blazing through the unimpeded vacuum of space. Without my femaleness and without the Difficulties That Should Not Be Named, I could send whatever message I wanted to whoever I wanted and it would be received, I could be gregarious, important, sexually compelling; my will and autonomy wouldn't be stifled by 140 pounds of dumpy, itchy flesh with an overbite and slack hands.

When I imagined myself as a man I didn't imagine myself like most of the childhood boys I managed to ingratiate myself with, who lisped, repeated themselves, and tripped over their own shoes. I imagined myself as a musician who was absolutely magnetic, I imagined myself as a writer with a legacy, I imagined myself telling other guys they were stupid shits and they could fuck off. I imagined being able to hold onto a football without dropping it, being able to smoke weed without getting a migraine, being able to talk without squeaking or letting out a little drool.

I thought I would finally be a human being with no embarrassments and nothing that could get me bullied in the bathroom between class. I thought when I would say "no", other people would listen. I would enter whatever mystical world it is that Ehrensaft names, made of messages and meanings, where every twist of word and piece of clothing said something, connected by a fine filament back to that Necronomicon filled with the runes of social symbology. And it would make sense.

I would become a lion, not a house cat. And the lion would speak. And we would understand him.

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It is a neurotypical narrative that this is what transition can do for you, because it is what someone else's transition does for neurotypical people. A gender transition is magical because it decodes the lion. It unriddles the sphinx. The autistic person must be happier now, because the neurotypical person is happier now. (And who has an empathy deficit?)

But if I have learned to be afraid of anything as an autistic person it is not my own neuroticism and fixations, but those of the so-called "normal people". Forget double helix rainbows: being an autistic person is like your DNA is a converted school bus trundling through the world in spray-painted glory and the whole world has an HOA. I understand why autistic people who see themselves as transgender see "concern" as the busybody stupidity of the neurotypical world. They aren't wrong. But it exists alongside other mundane and brutal busybody stupidities, such as grant funding, progressive saviorism, and psychiatric god-complexes.

To understand and resist what the neurotypical world communicates to us about our worth is not to protest back to them in their own language. I am an autistic woman and like many other autistic women I am tired of not only making myself more palatable but translating my existence into something intelligible to outsiders, who are both men and the non-autistic. Radical feminists miss one of these; trans activists and allies miss the other. But I am irrevocably othered from both.

When you are autistic you are taught only one symbolic structure. It is not your own, but it is the only medium you will ever have to communicate with any complexity. More sinisterly, it becomes the only medium we have to communicate to ourselves, the only medium we can use to work around the silent and jumbled parts of our bodies and minds. Am I hungry? It is not always obvious. To ask the question I find myself translating, even when alone.

My fantasy about lions and men was that whatever world a lion lived in and whatever he had to say, he did not need to translate, and especially never to himself. When a lion says something he does not stop to ask if he means what he says or who is saying it. When a lion looks into the water hole and sees his own reflection, he does not need to reconcile anything. The lion does not need to speak to understand himself. A lion is made of teeth and blood and claws and the lion just does.

I do not use the symbolism of transgenderism to explain the little gaps and incongruities that are my problems with gender, with my sexed body, with sexuality. It is not only a language born of neurotypical neuroses and regulation, but it is always and forever fundamentally a translation. As an autistic woman I have spent my whole life avoiding these dual facts, through both my time thinking of myself as trans and while trying to understand this whole thing afterwards: I am my body and I am not my body. Because I speak, but I do not understand. Because I understand, but I do not speak.

I will, unavoidably, always have to translate to speak and understand. But my autonomy requires that at bottom I must respect the native communication of my own body and mind. I refuse to use force or coercion to get it to talk, to interrupt its silence, to confabulate stories on its behalf, to speak for it using assumptions it cannot confirm or deny. I have to make peace with the fact that sometimes the blanks of my body or the redacted corners of my mind will say nothing. I have to make peace with the fact that translation is always inaccurate, that something is always beyond that constellation of symbols and words. The autistic body and the autistic mind have their own boundaries, and I refuse to believe that exercising my autonomy requires breaking them.

I do not know if J.K. Rowling knows this. I hope you do.

#writings #autism #detransition #reidentifying

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petewentzisblack1312 · 3 years

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Hi… I wanted to ask this on anon so I didn’t ask on your personal, idk if this is too personal or anything to ask but

Do you have a problem with people saying they have a mental disorder if they don’t have a diagnosis? Like for me so… I have been diagnosed with anxiety but I am like 99% sure I have bipolar disorder. And like I know you can’t diagnose me so I’m not going to go into depth with my symptoms but ever since I was like, 11, I used to get very depressed to the point where I contemplated ending it but then i would snap out of it and I think for me my manic phase are hypomanic bc ive never experienced like the full range of those symptoms but my depressive phases get very rough esp if I have external stressors but it will go through what I assume to be these phases like sometimes within the day esp if I have a stressor.

I am in nursing school and I work at a psych hospital so like this isn’t coming out of nowhere, I am very familiar with all mental disorders and it was actually during my psych nursing class and learning about bipolar disorder that I was like… hm… why does this feel like a mirror right now. I am aware I should get to a therapist and get an actual diagnosis (if I had money I would lol) but like idk. Idk if it’s worth going to my doctor at my physical and being like “hey I think I have this” I am lucky enough now that I am in a good place and can manage my symptoms but I am terrified I will go through a stressor again and lose it so idk. I mean I feel like I already know the answer but I wanted to ask anyway to see your take :/

Anyway idk as a future medical professional I think self diagnosis got a bad rep and it’s like idk I think for mental disorders esp you can tell if you have anxiety and it’s a persistent problem. You can tell if you have depression. I know bipolar disorder is harder to diagnose but idk I think since I’m in the field it’s easier? Idk I felt like a sense of relief with learning about it and finding similarities and being like “well maybe that’s why I’m like that”. But idk now I’m feeling uneasy bc I don’t have a diagnosis and I don’t want to be like, stepping over people who were diagnosed. Thank you in advance if you read all this and yeah I’m sorry I know it’s a lot and this is controversial

ok this is a long post so im putting it under a cut but tldr, no i dont have a problem with it. it doesnt matter if you actually have an illness, it matters if you find a solution to your problem. if treating yourself like you have a certain condition makes it easier to go through life, then keep doing what works for you, you are doing nothing wrong. this all goes for physical and mental illnesses.

im a firm proponent of self diagnosis. i wouldnt be here if i didnt have the confidence to research mental illnesses and advocate for myself. as someone who is extremely familiar with the medical profession on account of being the daughter of a doctor and a nurse and spending my childhood running around a hospital, im extremely privileged to even have the knowledge and ability to do so, and i try to bear in mind the understandable hesitancy of people without this advantage. i know that you are well within your right to refuse medication that makes you sick, i know that you can complain about a doctor that isnt listening to you, i know that you are allowed and encouraged to be adamant about things you are told dont matter, and in addition to that, i have a VERY well known doctor and a nurse in my corner, and i am STILL treated as though i do not understand my own experiences enough to have any authority more often than i am not.

the reason self diagnosis gets a bad rep imo is because people have constructed this boogeyman of the worst case scenario, people collecting mental illnesses they dont have for attention as opposed to what it is, people doing research into their experiences and making theories on what they have so they can manage it. youll often see the take of "i dont hate self dxd i just hate people who do it for attention" and i think thats very irresponsible considering a symptom of many mental illnesses is thinking youre faking it and doing it for attention, nevermind the fact that attention seeking behaviour is literally a symptom of many mental illnesses people often dont want to empathize with. gatekeeping whos illness is real just keeps people who need help out. i could go into an anarchist screed about democratizing health, but basically, as someone whos life has been saved by my insistence on self diagnosis, and whos life has been made significantly easier by treating myself as though i have the conditions that i theorize i have, self diagnosis saves lives, and i, as an advocate for disabled people of all kinds on my island, will never put any conditionals on self diagnosis. it doesnt matter if you find the right name for your problem, it matters if you find a solution that works. i have yet to meet any of these fabled people who never try to receive a professional opinion, only people who literally cant.

as for feeling guilty, ill repeat how i opened this answer: it does not matter what exactly your problem is, it matters that you find a solution that works. in medicine generally, there will be a wide spectrum of problems with overlapping treatments, things which are similar but distinct, things which look identical but are completely different and at different levels of concern. it doesnt really matter which grab bag of bullshit your brain is reaching from, it matters that you know how to deal with what it throws at you, whatever that may be. dont worry about getting it right, worry about getting it working. okay?

for advice on how to deal with doctors, its helpful to pose it as a hypothetical as opposed to an absolute. when i bring up things im dealing with that i have a theory about i say "i think i have x" or "i think i might have x" or "i have a lot of symptoms of x". doctors are often egotistical and are easily challenged so it helps to pose it at a problem they can solve as opposed to one youve solved for them otherwise they get spooked. in my experience posing it this way leads them to actually interrogate this line of symptoms, and theyll ask you why you think that, and you can bring up symptoms that led you to that conclusion, and ones that give you trouble especially. for example, ive said "i think i may have autism or adhd? or both" to several doctors, and they either agree with me (i believe its been put in my file as a possibility now although i cant get an official test done due to financial and resource restrictions) or they ask why i think so, and i detail what i believe is due to my autism. its small, but this reframing helps a lot.

i think this covers all you said but my head is empty as hell.

#dils declares #mental health //#hospitals //#i hope i hit everything!!

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the-flowers-never-bloom · 3 years

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*Raises hand* Hello, person not diagnosed with autism OR adhd, what if like, you're into a piece of media to the point where you cant even sleep without thinking about it, and you can't move onto/get into different content cause the thing you're into has a stranglehold on your entire thinking, and you're like "Oh! This is an interesting show i really wanna watch," but the other media is like "Lol that cool i guess, but don't you wanna read me for the 7th time, that'd be cool right :)?" And the main character goes through something awful and you're like "Wow I know I shouldn't be in actual distress over a fictional character," but you CAN'T HELP IT. Is it then called a hyperfixation? Because I feel like that's the only word I can use that makes me feel normal, but it also feel disrespectful because i actually haven't been diagnosed -Cow anon

hello anon!!! (long answer srry being concise isn’t my strength)

i'm going to take this from my perspective hoping maybe i can help you out, but if i miss completely the shot, feel free to tell me.

Because of the family I come from and the years I was born and raised in, I never ever got a diagnosis for any mental illness or neurodivergence despite not being the most normal kid. My family (although they are lovely ppl) and the people around me had a very specific idea of what "normal" was, and sticking out back then wasn't considered acceptable.

In adolescence, I bottled up and repressed all the things that made me "weird", trying not to let other people notice, making it seem like I'd left that in childhood, where being "weird" is a little more acceptable.

I'm going to assume you come from a similar-ish background, I'm assuming you feel somewhat alienated from "normal" people, but not different enough for an external person to have sought out diagnosis in your place. (or you learned to hide your differences)

I know that when I did go see a school counselor in HS, they were like "I can't officially diagnose you but you very very very likely have generalized anxiety" and I only mentionned like. one "issue" to them.

Now, I'm not a therapist, I'm not a professional of any sort, I can't tell you for sure, but if you have reasonable doubt that you may not be NT and it affects your ability to function/your happiness, maybe it'd be in your favor to seek diagnosis! But in the end, all our brains work in different ways, and trying to pretend like there's only one "normal" way to exist mostly relies on capitalism's need for productivity.

I think using a word that's specific to a disability or a condition, etc. without having the proper diagnosis takes away from the people who actually know they have it, because as far as you know, it's like 50/50. However, there should not be any shame in seeking information about yourself, especially if it helps you in the long run be happy and function. Sometimes, just knowing you have something is helpful, even if you don't actively do anything about it!

(also if you look up synonyms for obsession you’ll find quite a few!! i think passion is the least stigmatizing/weird one. obsession feels kind of creepy, but passion conveys, imo, just the right thing.)

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undiagnosedautismfeels · 5 years

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Not A Feel / Questions

- Is it possible to be autistic and borderline at the same time? I'm officially diagnosed with bpd but I'm also sure that I'm autistic (after months of looking into it) and I just feel like the two mentioned diagnoses can't coexist while also being pretty sure that the only reason I haven't been diagnosed with bpd sooner because of my autism

While having both can complicate the diagnostic process, it is possible. I personally have both, and have multiple friends who also have both. Autism is a neurodevelopmental disorder, whereas BPD is a personality disorder and about 75% of people with BPD develop it as a form of PTSD. The rates of PTSD within the autism community is also incredibly high, so it would actually be a pretty common combination. I’m pretty sure I actually did a paper on that particular combination when I was studying.

- iiaat to just completely skip over the subject of a sentence as youre writing or saying it? like "honestly i love having even just for the pure comedic factor" sorta sentences. im not sure if it would be more of an autistic or adhd thing and i wanna know if its. relatable

Hm. I would think it’s maybe an adhd thing? I’m not entirely sure though.

- Can you have face blindness like, with only TV shows and books? Because I remember most people I meet, but never for picture books/tv shows

I would assume so, I have difficulty with photos.

- is it an autistic thing to get easily possessive and annoyed? like today my sister stole my pot noodle and i just got so pissed off because it was MINE?? and no one is allowed to touch my stuff???

Yep that’s very much a thing.

- Can I be autistic and hypersexual? Can sex be considered an SpIn because I think about it too often and I like all the touching your partner thing? I heard that autistics are always into the ace spec and me loving sex and being hypersexual makes me feel a bit odd (also I do not know how to differentiate sex as a SpIn from hypersexuality)

Basically anything can be a special interest. The idea that autism=asexual is wrong and is based on ableist & infantilizing ideas of what autism is. Though I will say that the term ‘hypersexuality’ tends to be related to sexual trauma, rather than just being a regular sexual identity.

- Am I allowed to ask if something happens to autistic people here? I've been reading and I believe there's a chance I could have ASD. Sometimes when I get too excited/ anxious I have to tense up my whole body and face and everything and shake it or like, vibrate, for a couple of seconds, a couple of times, because there's just so much energy inside and I don't know how to release it. I only do it when I'm alone because it probably looks strange from the outside. Can that be considered stimming?

Yeah that sounds like stimming.

- What's the 1st thing you recommend I do if I think I'm a aspie, but I am not sure. I took the autism quotient test when I first started to wonder. Also, is there anything you recommend doing before you seek diagnosis so that you don't walk into a doctor's office looking like an idiot?

Have a look through the diagnostic criteria and highlight any symptoms you have. Adding examples of how you experience those symptoms would probably help too.

#not a feel #mod dylan #comorbid #faceblindness #ableism #special interest #stimming #diagnosis

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thenonehater · 7 years

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I Saw Someone I Knew at the Therapist Office.

I hope you like it @sweet-and-salted! I worked very hard on it, it was actually very fun too, I might write some more in the future! Happy Secret Santa!

Histrionic personality disorder:(HPD) is defined by the American Psychiatric Association as a personality disorder characterized by a pattern of excessive attention-seeking emotions, usually beginning in early adulthood, including inappropriately seductive behavior and an excessive need for approval.

Asperger Syndrome:Asperger syndrome (AS), also known as Asperger’s, is a developmental disorder characterized by significant difficulties in social interaction and nonverbal communication, along with restricted and repetitive patterns of behavior and interests. As a milder autism spectrum disorder (ASD), it differs from other ASDs by relatively normal language and intelligence. Although not required for diagnosis, physical clumsiness and unusual use of language are common.Signs usually begin before two years old and typically last for a person’s entire life.

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It wasn’t like Bradley didn’t like the therapist per say, just the atmosphere of the whole office, really. Sure he always tries to get out of the appointments, ( Funny how the one time all eyes are on him, it makes him feel pressured ? No, uncomfortable.) but that lady always made it about him, which bad wasn’t bad, what was bad, was she only wanted to listen to his problems. He didn’t know how he felt about that.

But of course, the one time he showed up late, he had six other people in front of him waiting to go in. The people themselves weren’t in any way extraordinary(Well, maybe except for the pharmacist guy?) But beside that no one really caught his eye. But, he still couldn’t ignore the feeling in his stomach that something wasn’t going to be normal appointment, besides being late, and he could tell why as soon as he walked out.

Bradley had to take a double take, not just because the vase on the receptionist desk broke, because the Milo Murphy walked out. With his head down and Bradley could vaguely make out the wet streaks on his face. The Milo Murphy, who always had a smile, optimistic attitude, a solution for everything despite the extreme Murphy’s Law. Was here in therapy with tears and was sniffling.

Bradley’s lips moved before his mind could make head or tails of this.

“Milo ?” Bradley could slap himself right there and then.

Milo’s head lifted and his eyes met Bradley’s, and quickly wiped away his tears and replaced them with smile.

“Oh! Hey Bradley, you talk with Ms. Wilson too?” Milo then decided, it was his and Bradley’s interest to sit the chair next to him.

Bradley had suppressed the urge to cringe, he had no idea why Milo had to do these things.

“Yes, if you must know, I see her because I have-” Bradley stopped abruptly, was he really going to tell Milo he had HPD? He wasn’t even his friend.

Milo gave him wide eyed stare and blinked a couple of times, before he spoke “Well, if it helps, I can tell you what I have before you tell me what you have.If you want of course” he quickly added.

Bradley huffed, rolled his eyes and sunk deeper into his chair, “Sure, why not ? it’s not like I have anything else to do in this place.”

Milo ignoring Bradley’s sarcasm continued “Well, I have Aspergers! That’s means I have high functioning autism. I basically do things differently than you and regular people. I mean I try and be normal but you know Murphy’s Law,” He rubbed his arms at that Bradley noted “I also have depression, but I try not to let that bother me, honestly! That’s all!”

Bradley could only stare at him,depression? But he was always so happy and, and it made sense now to him. He treated Milo so bad and he had depression, now he just felt like a plain jerk.

“I, well have HPD.” Bradley said it barely above a whisper that he was sure Milo didn’t hear him.

But of course, he did.

“HPD? Huh, small world. I ,think, my great,great,great Aunt Milinda had that!” MIlo said beaming.

Bradley’s eyebrows rose at that “Really ?” He said with a bit of disbelief

Milo just looked at him and smiled, “Well yeah! With Murphy’s Law, the girls in our family tend to get well, over looked. So,” He made and arm in an circular movement “It just makes sense to me. Because, we take so much time to make sure the boys are okay, but never the girls. So, they unfortunately get less attention. But! Mom and dad aren’t doing that with Sarah, they always make sure she always, feels included.”

Bradley could only stare at Milo, his arms were on the edge of his seat now with legs swinging and smiling. And made him, feel fuzzy? Is this what making a friend feels like-

Wait, when did start consider himself making friends with Milo, he ha-

“Hey Bradley?”

Bradley snapped his attention back at Milo, for a second, he forgot Milo was there, “Yes,Milo?”

Bradley noticed how Milo was now twisting with his backpack, what was he nervous about?

Milo looked at him smiling nervously, “Would you be my friend?”

What.

“Well, it’s just Ms.Wilson said I should try to make new friends!”

Blinking a few times, trying to process the whole thing(Including he said what he thought out-loud) before he could even say anything, he hugged Milo. Forgetting everyone one in the room even teared up a little. To his surprise, Milo actually hugged back.

He mumbled back into Milo’s shirt “Yeah, that would be nice.”

Just like that, Bradley barely even noticed how much time passed before he was called back. Even then, Bradley and Milo both made sure to meet up to hang out the next day.

Maybe things will start to look up for him now.

#milo murphy's law #mml #mmlsecretsanta #bradley

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askanautistic · 7 years

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Hey! I've been wanting to get my autism + adhd combo but when they tested me they said I didn't have adhd (therefore don't have autism?) because my teacher said I was very well behaved and /seemed/ to be focused or on task... but I work very hard to hide all of my autistic and adhd symptoms at school and other professional places for safety from bullying... idk what I can do, because my family sees it but I can't get a diagnosis and I feel like I can't talk about either anymore... Any advice?

You’ve said that your family see it. If they’re in agreement with you, then explain that you feel the assessor was wrong and ask them to help you by either arranging an assessment or querying your/their concerns with the assessor who already assessed you. If you’ve been supplied with a report, check it. Figure out whether they’ve actually taken all of the information and evidence on board, and if so (and it has resulted in them not being able to diagnose you because there’s not enough evidence or information) figure out whether there’s anything else you could provide as evidence. If you haven’t been provided with a report, either wait for it or request one. Having the decision and information in writing will mean you can more easily see exactly what the findings were, will make it easier for you to use that information to query things, and might give you a better idea of whether it’s worth seeking a second opinion or challenging the decision.You might also want to double check specifically what you were assessed for. If you were being assessed for autism by someone who specialises in that, then it might be that they’ve assumed that if you’re not hyperactive you can’t have ADHD. If they didn’t mention autism at all then perhaps they didn’t even consider it because they were only assessing you for ADHD. If the assessor was assessing you for the purposes of working out what support you need at school, they might be making a decision based purely on that (some people are told that they fit the criteria but the assessor has decided that don’t need any support and so don’t need a diagnosis - knowing whether your assessor has said you fit the criteria or not, and what kind of assessment it is, etc. might help you decide on what to do next). If the assessor was assessing you based on the criteria for one specific condition then they might have decided you didn’t fit the criteria, but haven’t considered whether there might be other reasons for your difficulties/traits. If you feel that the assessor did a thorough assessment, that there’s no more information you could provide, etc., then you could also ask them whether they have any recommendations for what to do next. Presumably you’ve explained what areas you have difficulty in, and even if the assessor’s opinions is that you’re not autistic/ADHD, maybe they do have some recommendations for things that would help, or other conditions you could look into.If they said that you don’t have ADHD and therefore don’t have autism, that’s complete nonsense and they shouldn’t be assessing people if their knowledge is that poor so it would be worth seeking a second opinion in that case.

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cassolotl · 8 years

Text

Self-diagnosis in relation to doctors, Tumblr, and the disability community generally

In which I continue to be baffled by people who are against self-diagnosis, complete with descent into a frustrated “get over yourself” rant at the end.

So a few weeks back I wrote a thing about doctors failing a lot of autistic people, and celebrating that autistic people are diagnosing themselves and finding community.

I’d like to add that getting formally diagnosed was really helpful to me, on a personal level and also on a practical one - having a bit of paper from a doctor saying I’m autistic has allowed me to have access to various services much more easily, and it’s also taken away any doubt that I am autistic and I do experience various legitimate difficulties as a result of that. It’s helped me to accept myself, and even though it shouldn’t it has helped other people accept me as I am too.

So yeah, I am accepting of people who self-diagnose but alongside that I do also encourage people to get formally diagnosed if they think it might help them. It’s not like you can’t accept and appreciate both methods of self-discovery, you know?

But the reason I’m here is to talk about the reality of seeking diagnosis and how that fits with self-diagnosis.

My story starts sometime last year. I’d been unable to work for about 10 years due to, basically, tiredness - since I was 20-21ish. (So by the time I started to feel my life was severely negatively impacted by this condition I was probably older than most people who get hassle for self-diagnosing on Tumblr, right?) I couldn’t keep a job or even volunteer work because I kept calling in sick for tiredness. In the end I gave up. The GP tested my blood and told me that I wasn’t anaemic and didn’t have a thyroid condition, so they slapped on me the label of chronic fatigue syndrome (CFS). There was no known cause or cure, and the treatment was graded exercise and CBT. She told me that with no other symptoms it’s considered by the NHS a psychological condition, and I supposed at the time that that meant it was psychosomatic, or like being unable to get out of bed due to depression. I was in my early 20s and not very familiar with the medical system, and I had no idea was autistic, and I just accepted the diagnosis. I was never really satisfied, because it felt like a cop-out, but I accepted it as best I could and moved on. I know now that CFS is usually not a condition on its own but probably a symptom with an underlying cause.

Fast-forward a few years, and I’d been diagnosed with autism and after some fighting the system I was getting support in my day-to-day life. I was around people who loved and accepted me, and I was getting therapy that was helping with, among other things, my autistic difficulties.

One day I noticed that my lower left leg felt weird. It was lighter and it felt kind of nice actually. It took me a few minutes to work out that this weird feeling was the feeling of a healthy, pain-free muscle. It felt weird, in other words, because it didn’t hurt. I had forgotten the feeling of no pain in my lower left leg. But the entire rest of my body felt this other thing - heavy, tired, unpleasant. You know, like normal, the way it feels every day from when I wake up in the morning to when I go to sleep at night. The thing that gets worse every time I walk around or up and down the stairs. I was so accustomed to pain that I thought pain was normal and how everyone felt, and a lack of pain wasn’t just a shock, it was difficult to recognise.

I realised that maybe my tendency to feel less tired and sleepy after taking painkillers might be a bit weird. I thought I was having a strange reaction to painkillers, in a caffeine way somehow, and I felt I shouldn’t take painkillers if I’m not in pain because that would be an unhealthy dependency.

But what if...

Everything is different when you’re autistic. I came to terms with the idea that my entire body is in pain all the time, and my brain has just stopped processing it as such. Even when I am paying attention and listening to my body and really feeling everything as best I can, I can detect no pain whatsoever. When it gets bad I feel like I have to go to bed and maybe nap, but when I get to bed I can’t sleep - and it’s because I’m not sleepy. I’m in pain, and I feel better for lying down in a nice comfortable bed in a safe place. And when I take painkillers, I magically feel better again.

Going to the GP about this wasn’t going to work. It could be anything. All-over pain could be a neurological problem, it could be cancer, it could be anything. I knew from experience that going to the GP with no other information wouldn’t work, because the fact that I hadn’t even been feeling the daily full-body pain I was in meant that unexpected diagnostic questions would confuse me and I would probably answer “I don’t think I have that” to everything. Yay autistic masking! \o/ She would say, as GPs have been saying to me for a long time, something like “I can write you a sick note and diagnose you with chronic pain but unless we have more symptoms to go on I can’t refer you to a specialist.”

However, for a while now I had been somehow connecting with people who had EDS. I followed people on Twitter who had it and even though I didn’t on a conscious level realise that we had things in common because they had pain and I thought I didn’t, I felt a kinship. I remembered the kinship I felt with autistic people before I realised I might be autistic too, and I made the connection.

For several months I self-diagnosed with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (EDS). It’s a rare genetic condition that affects your collagen, which in some people is very serious. Wikipedia told me that the classical type is experienced by 1 in 20,000-50,000 people. Surely it is really weird to leap to the conclusion, out of the blue, that I have this one very specific and rare condition? It seems so improbable. But when I looked at people with EDS, their lives were so much like mine. Their coping mechanisms and management strategies that they’d come up with deliberately to deal with their EDS were so similar to the stuff I was doing by accident just to get from day to day. If I had the same symptoms and therefore the same diagnosis it would explain everything that isn’t covered by autism and being trans.

So I went into research mode. It took months. That’s how it is when you’re autistic, alexithymic, and are very bad at self-reporting. The Beighton Score part was easy because they’re bodily tests you can do yourself at home with clear results - but for the rest, sufferers of chronic illness will remember the feeling of discovery that goes, “wow, I thought everyone had that?” It was much more difficult than that for me. For every symptom, I had to fight through layers of “but I don’t have that” and “okay maybe I have that but surely not more than most people” and “but if I had this surely my mum would have done something about it when I was a kid” and “I have this but I don’t dislike it so surely that can’t be a symptom.” Because when you’re alexithymic, sometimes you kinda lack the feeling that is like, this is unpleasant, I’d rather this was better, and actually maybe that’s possible. Sometimes things that cause other people great discomfort don’t even register to you as unpleasant. Yay alexithymia.

I had to trick myself into acknowledging my symptoms. I had to compare myself to other people in a way that wasn’t dismissing my own experience, which was a very new thing for me. “I experience this, yes, but have I ever actually heard anyone else complaining about experiencing it themselves? If not, it is probably safe to assume that my experience is unusual and causing me problems, therefore relevant to a doctor.”

I had a Google Document bookmarked in my browser, with headings for each symptom of EDS. I mulled the symptoms over in the back of my head for a long time, writing down symptoms as I became sure of them. Such is my symptom-normalisation that it took months to add these to my list:

Joints dislocating (or partially dislocating) without trauma such as a fall on a regular basis;

Dizziness and passing out from movement or exercise that shouldn’t normally cause dizziness and passing out;

Stomach aches pretty much every day.

During this process, the company who provide my support decided that my care plans didn’t fit their company policy of involving the service user in their care as much as possible. They rewrote my care plans to include constant references to me doing at least part of every activity, with a view to me eventually becoming self-sufficient and no longer needing their care. I explained to them that I was discovering that I had EDS, and could they acknowledge that sometimes I just need people to do things for me so that I had more energy to be independent on my own later. They refused. They said that they would not provide support for EDS until I was diagnosed. They said, in fakey neurotypical language, that they didn’t think I had EDS. They ended our contract over it, a couple of weeks before I was due to attend my rheumatology appointment, and all of this while constantly saying that their service was person-centred. Not that I’m bitter.

A lot of people would doubt their self-diagnosis and stop trying to see a specialist at this point. But I went through similar stuff when I worked out I was autistic and people with power over me didn’t believe me, so I kept going anyway. If I saw a specialist and they told me I didn’t have EDS, at least I’d know.

I started to say openly online that I had EDS. People with EDS accepted me immediately, completely, and without question. But I knew that there were people out there who would tell me that they wouldn’t take me seriously until I was formally diagnosed, and would assume (since I blog on Tumblr) that I was just doing it to get disability points or whatever. “They say they’re nonbinary, autistic, asexual, aromantic, and now they’ve decided they have a rare genetic condition. Yeah, right. I guess their oppression points aren’t getting them enough attention. What a special snowflake.” For serious, the frequency with which I am assumed to be a teenage girl will not be at all surprising to a lot of people reading this. My reluctance to disclose my age and gender online gets me accused of teenage girlhood by TERFs and Tumblr-haters all around, especially if they know I’m on Tumblr. In reality I’m 30, mostly post-transition as openly nonbinary with the kind assistance of the NHS, and formally diagnosed with everything I say online that I have. (I do have some things that I’m not formally diagnosed with, and those are MH things that I don’t trust the NHS with for many legit reasons and I don’t talk about them online much.)

I learned that the type of specialist professional who can diagnose me is a rheumatologist. Eventually I made an appointment with my GP and printed out my symptom list document for her. It began, “if you’re reading this I think you can help me get diagnosed with and treated for Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome.” For each symptom I described the severity and how often I experience it. From my 10+ years of GP dismissal for bad periods that turned out to be endometriosis requiring a hysterectomy, I remembered the magic words: “I’d like a referral to a [specialist] please.”

My GP happily referred me to a rheumatologist at my request, and I was on their waiting list for a few months. When I eventually arrived my document of symptoms was even longer; I’d managed to clarify a few more while I was on the waiting list.

I have told you this story to show you how long I prepared for my diagnosis appointment, how much effort I put into diagnosing myself and how much I had to know to even see a specialist who could diagnose me - and to emphasise how anticlimactic getting a diagnosis actually is.

The rheumatologist was very kind. He read through my document, which took a few minutes. And then he said to me, in neurotypical language so I’m hugely paraphrasing and he did not sound this rude in real life:

“I don’t know why you’re here. You know you have EDS, you don’t need me to confirm it. You know there’s not much I can do to treat you, and you’ve had it all your life so at 30 years old you have come to terms with the symptoms and you have lots of coping mechanisms and self-management techniques.”

He was kind and listened to my concerns. Here they are in bold, along with the rheumatologist’s response.

I’m not a doctor, I can’t ever be really sure, I wanted to talk to a doctor to confirm it because maybe I have something else kinda similar or I’m just wrong. “You have most of the symptoms, and you’re well-informed. You seem to be a pretty clear case to me. What can I do to help?”

Perhaps there are treatments or services that you can help me access? “It’s mostly a case of managing it all yourself at home on your own. Try to go out for a walk every day, and don’t rely on your knee braces because your knees need to get strong enough to support themselves and knee braces won’t help with that. But you will probably always experience this cycle of crashing and having to build up your strength again very very slowly. No one else can really help you with that.”

I’d like a bit of paper to show to people who want proof of my EDS, like the DWP (who provide income for disabled people in the UK) and support companies. “The DWP don’t care about bits of paper. They ask you to do a series of exercises like lifting your arms and moving your head around.”

This last one was difficult to hear, because the DWP would indeed declare me fit for work based on their usual tests, and the only thing that gets me out of that situation is letters from medical specialists describing my symptoms. Me describing my own symptoms is not proof enough. To put it another way, me saying “I experience daily pain all over my body” is not proof to the DWP, but a doctor saying “Cassian tells me they experience daily pain all over their body” is totally strong evidence.

The fact is that the support company who ditched me should not have needed a piece of paper saying I have EDS to provide me with support that suits my needs. They were happily providing me with support for autistic difficulties despite never having seen a diagnosis letter. They should have listened to me stating my needs, and then written care plans that suit those needs. But like the DWP, a piece of paper from a doctor saying “Cassian has these symptoms” carries more weight than me saying “I have these symptoms.” It’s kinda twisted, and my diagnosing doctor didn’t know it, but that’s how it is.

So basically, this is all to tell you that people on the internet totally trash self-diagnosed people on the internet, and say “I’m not gonna believe you unless you get a formal diagnosis, you’re making people who really have these conditions look bad, please stop” - but when you actually do get to see a doctor they have no problem whatsoever with self-diagnosis and they don’t understand why anyone would seek diagnosis for a condition that they already know they have. Doctors, they know, are for working out what’s wrong with you. If you already know the name of your condition, you don’t need to talk to them. If you are successfully self-managing and don’t need treatment, you don’t need to talk to them. And as far as they are concerned, you shouldn’t need to have a diagnosis letter to have your needs recognised and respected by companies and local authorities when seeking support.

“But Cassian,” some people will say, “you are quite a special case. You’re older and more experienced than most self-dxers on Tumblr, you did a lot of research for a long time, you did everything right. It’s a spectrum, you know? Your self-diagnosis was valid, but there’s a lot of blatant fakers out there on Tumblr.” NO SHUT UP. You cannot judge people on the internet like that! You know nothing about them and their life! And even if you feel doubtful of their self-diagnosis because of the way they talk about it or whatever else superficial reason, that doesn’t mean that they are making it up! You deciding that I am legit and they are not is PURE PREJUDICE and you can take your backhanded compliments elsewhere!

So like, let’s just go over that in very clear words so you know where I stand. I understand that diagnosis and disability and mental illness are complex and nuanced issues, BUT. Self-diagnosis doesn’t magically become invalid just because you say it does, and holy crap even if teenagers on Tumblr were giving everyone else a bad name no one would know because doctors and the DWP and local authorities and anyone who has any power over us at all DON’T H*CKING USE TUMBLR and have no idea that you think teenagers are making it up for attention. All of this tug of war between “self-diagnosis is valid (✿◡‿◡)~” and “self-dxers are attention-seeking Tumblrinas that give legit sufferers a bad name” happens in a little internet bubble that the VAST MAJORITY of people are blissfully unaware of, Jeeeesus Christ on a bicycle.

Okay, thanks for listening, I’m glad to get that out of my system.

[Also posted to Medium.]

#original posts #my words #actuallyautistic #actually autistic #ehlers-danlos syndrome #EDS #EDS things #self-diagnosis

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pet-diary · 8 years

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How was it like growing up as an autistic child? When were you diagnosed? C:

I was diagnosed later in life (mid-twenties) after seeking out the diagnosis on my own. I never really knew I was autistic as a child or as I was growing up, I just knew there was something “different” about me. It was hard to put two and two together for a number of reasons…

(adding a read more cut because this ended up being a long answer, sorry!)

I was home schooled by my mom with only my brother and sister as company until I reached the 7th grade. The only real social interaction I had was with a few family friends (most of whom trickled out of our life after a couple of yrs of knowing them, for various reasons) and kids I got to know at church. I went to church every Sunday and Wednesday until I was in jr high and had a few friendships that lasted a few yrs, but all of them ended over time (kind of badly in some cases, some of them bullied me in the end). I hung out with my cousin for several yrs until she also became too “cool” for me. Needless to say, everyone just thought I was weird because I was home schooled, isolated, and friendless through most of my little kid yrs.

Despite having a somewhat isolated childhood I was really happy I think. I didn’t really get why people didn’t want to be my friend back then. I was a pretty happy kid. I didn’t think it was all that weird to be as hyper-focused on small details of things as I was, to notice the things I did, or to have the special interests I had. Also I was really really shy and didn’t talk very much at all. I had fewer sensory issues back then because I was more in control of my environment (spent almost every minute at home!) but they tended to get worse on long trips in the car or in situations where I couldn’t get away.

I grew up in a very small town in Texas. There was no practical or helpful interventions in place for kids who didn’t “look” like they had a disability, but still did have one. None of my issues ever got singled out on an institutional level (like recognizing a learning disability or whatever, my issues were mostly intrapersonal and interpersonal, everyone thought my educational issues were bc of home school). My parents thought I had a behavioral attitude problem and threatened to send me to boot camp a lot (my dad is ex marine). I got in trouble at home a lot because I was argumentative. The one time i spoke up about having anxiety and depression I got a couple of months worth of Lexapo from my GP, and never got it refilled. I was a freshman in high school at the time I think. Mental health wasn’t talked about or taken seriously where I grew up. If you had real problems you were supposed to work them out in church (no offense to ppl who believe in that, but I don’t think it should take the place of practical interventions that can help improve ppl’s lives). I mostly just started “working them out” through self injury (bad coping mechanism), and later through art.

From jr high to high school I kind of found my niche. I had groups of friends eventually, really good friends. Mostly outcast types, but we didn’t care, we were the weirdos and we liked that. I also took on the role as the artsy eccentric one in the group who said weird stuff that people thought was funny or amusing. I actually really liked this part of me, but the other issues in my life at the time made this a less happy point in my life. It was a mixed bag.At this point (basically from 7th grade on) I was dealing with a lot of depression, anxiety, self injury, etc. I started looking into psychology as a way to describe what I was going through, why I had such intense emotions, meltdowns, sensory issues, depression, headaches, stress, etc. That time period was the birth of my lifelong interest in psychology. I bought every book I could, watched every movie. There was a lot of confusing info out there (movies probably didn’t help since they don’t portray mental illness very accurately usually, lol). But autism was never really brought to my attention because of the obvious reasons (stereotypically a young boy’s disorder, mute stereotype), but also because of the divide between the medical field and the psychological field. I was looking in the wrong places, apparently. I think this divide is a major issue that will eventually need to be addressed, by the way.

To answer your actual question… Growing up undiagnosed autistic was confusing as all hell. Often sad. Very very lonely. I didn’t really get what I was doing “wrong” most of the time? For a large portion of my life I had a lot of magical thinking. I thought I was “special” and could like, control certain things in my life (kind of like in a serendipitous way? idk it’s hard to describe). I used to think I had schizotypal pd but that might have just been a result of trying to make a confusing life make sense. Maybe I do though who knows really.

I might have had these issues with or without a diagnosis, but I definitely have always felt “broken” bc I didn’t have an explanation for why I was different.I have a lot of self-loathing, lack of confidence issues that I’m still working through as an adult. To be honest with you (and I don’t consider this tmi because this is my blog lol)… I was really at my wit’s end when I decided to seek out a diagnosis. I felt broken, like a burden, like garbage parts that would never do any good in the world or mean anything to anyone. I had a lot of suicidal thoughts all the time, I was in a really dark place for many years and the only thing keeping me going was my husband (then boyfriend) and my pets. When it got bad enough that I was scared for my safety I decided I needed to demand help from myself and my family and friends.

Things completely changed when I got my diagnosis. Something in me shifted, and I felt I understood the universe more clearly. Kind of like when you learn something new in school or whatever and everything takes on new meaning somehow. It was like that. Since then, I’ve had a lot more self acceptance. I still have a lot of issues sometimes when I’m having a really bad meltdown or depression (okay it happens way more than it should, I really need to go to therapy I know, lol), but things have improved so drastically by knowing I’m autistic, I can’t even tell you. It’s also improved my relationship with my husband, (side bonus).

It hasn’t been all good, I mean, my family and irl friends have barely acknowledged it which just makes me doubt myself all over again… But then I remember “oh yeah other people don’t have to deal with this kind of shit!!!! This isn’t typical!!! This isn’t the “normal” everyone else is experiencing!! Fuck you I’m autistic or whatever else you wanna call it, come at me!!!! I’m done feeling like I’m broken so just accept it already and start to know me as me and not as this bullshit image you’ve created in your mind to represent me!!” :D

Besides, acceptance or not, I’m always going to have the issues I have. I’ll always have a hard time understanding what people are saying when there’s too much going on, I’ll always get overwhelmed and burned out, I’ll always have meltdowns (something that is very hard to accept about myself), I’ll always make social blunders and misunderstand people, I’ll always be misunderstood, I’ll always struggle with things that come more easily for others. But I’ll also always see the world from a totally different perspective from everyone else, which I think really helps me in my art and ideas. And I have a lot of fun in life when things are going well, I’m really super passionate about so much and I think that’s because of my strong emotions and connectiveness to things. I have a fun childlike view of everything when I’m in a healthy place and I love that about myself. There’s a lot of really cool things about it, and some bad things too.

Sorry this is such a long answer. I’m clearly avoiding my school work…………. It’s been a long stressful weekend and venting a little felt good so thank you for this question that I have taken way far off track, heh heh.

I should probably be more “professional” in my answers to these types of questions since this is the field I want to specialize in eventually, but whatever. This is real life and real life is messy and sometimes you get mad about your baggage and curse a little. It helps to curse a little. ;)

Also I’m an oversharer, sorry! Autism is a big interest of mine and so is human behavior. So it’s hard to hold back…

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