echo

Adult. Disabled. Queer. Black. Mad. Tired

[faded-echoing]

intro. Disability blog.

[ID: banner of stars pouring out of jar. ID end]

I am creature. I am strange. I love making joy and poetry. I love art all kinds. I watch YT and play games and scroll tumblr when not working. I big big nerd like learn fill brain with understanding, find patterns everywhere. Map out whole big world in my head.

Will reword self if needed, just ask!

about my disability / where I at in life / sideblogs:

low support needs I think

Cognitive and physical function both fluctuate. Dynamic disability is what a case manager said recently. Mostly bedbound right now, 70% of time. First time independent living and working whole job and it very hard on me. But I finally have money for medical care! Have hope get better, stronger

Speech very exhausting. Spend much time isolating. Learning asterics grid aac and self advocacy for talk honest in my voice, talk honest for my needs

I have unmet support needs including needs I don't know how to describe. I have bootleg disability helper who doesn't do disability support before. But at least makes surviving possible right now. Nurse case manager trying to get me palative care. Gotta see if can get medicaid waver for home care cause need hygiene help desperately

I am here on blog to figure things out about myself. Find words for needs. Find new accessibility tools. To not be alone in it

May we all have our needs met!

[ID: Banner of starry night waves. ID end]

Side blogs

AAC symbols: @aac-symbol-crow

Regressor: @lilechos

Nondisability/misc: @echoinghoard

[bebsi-cola]

you know what, "because i'm in pain" is a good enough reason as any. why do you want to take meds? in pain. why do you wanna cancel? in pain. why didn't you want to talk? in pain. yeah don't be a jerk to everyone you meet and expect them to welcome that. but why were you being a jerk? in pain. it's a reasonable explanation. being in pain should be enough of an explanation. it should be considered an immediate problem that we try to fix as soon as possible instead of expecting the vast majority of people alive to just get on with it.

[paranormal-paracosm]

Insane to me that you can be in so much pain that you’re literally begging for it to end and then just. Nothing happens. Like your body and your brain should just explode into pieces at some point but no you just keep laying on the floor

[five-thousand-loaves-of-bread]

the r slur be word from old term they call intellectual disability/ID (mental r—tion). in history, it be use against people with ID in legal/law, education, social, medical, institutionalization, and right to live in general.

it be medical term not make it better. in fact it make it worse because it gave word Official Power and use to allow bad things.

yes it sometimes people use it to people technically without ID, but still as that [mental r word] n comparing them to people with ID.

even if bigoted people who use the slur now, not realize by explicit word they compare you to people with ID…. image they have in head, the traits they attack, what they mock, they still done to compare to how they see people with ID.

be called it n bullied with r slur be hurtful, yes, bad, and should not happen. but it not compare to and override harm the slur cause to people with intellectual disability on whole institution and system level - again, it everywhere, legal/law, education, medical, institutionalization, social, if allowed to live, n so much more.

it is word with heavy history. you cannot remove history from this word/slur, especially not when you not even admit the history and history harm in first place.

it cannot be reclaimed, especially not when most of main group people it harm (people with ID) not want it reclaimed. not when you using it in harmful way.

do not remove how the word harm people with ID when talk about r word, they primary target & who word compare to, even if yes sometimes it throw to disabled (and even nondisabled) people without ID.

[wykart]

what do you mean my disability disables my abilities? what the fuck

[melr2025]

[cielinginspace]

My AAC plush!!!

Yes/no

Maybe/help

Hungry/thirsty

Overstimulated/sleepy

[daggers-drawn]

All it means when people say “you’re speaking from a place of privilege” is that you’re likely to underestimate how bad the problem is by default because you are never personally exposed to that problem. It’s not a moral judgement of how difficult your life is.

[mrloveballad]

^^^^^^ read it. say it out loud. keep repeating it until you understand.

[autistic-twilight]

I think people have forgotten what high support needs means. It makes me frustrated. You are not high support needs if you can live on your own and hold a full time job. I am not sorry to say this.

[heehoo-agere-corner]

[super-autism-death-ray]

something's fuckin wrong with me dude

[ordinarytalk]

Recovering from autistic burnout as a high-masking adult:

To recover, you literally need to manually learn skills that most people learn as a toddler

You need to learn what makes your body uncomfortable, and what to do to fix it

If you are high-masking, that usually means that you have learned to ignore every distress signal your body sends unless it is a distress signal that a neurotypical person would recognize. People have likely been unintentionally gaslighting you about your lived experience your entire life

If you feel bad or panicked for no reason, stop and try to pay attention to your body. Are you tense? You are likely feeling physical pain somewhere. If you've been gaslit about your pain your entire life, you might not be able to identify it.

Go through a sensory checklist.

SIGHT: Try closing and covering your eyes. If this gives you relief, the lights are probably too bright. You may also need differently-colored lights

SOUND: Cover your ears. Does this give you relief? If so, you may need earplugs or noise canceling headphones. You may also benefit from a neutral or pleasant background noise, like soft music or brown noise.

TOUCH: Are your clothes uncomfortable? Your chair? Your body? Do you feel greasy, like you need a shower? Do you need softer, sensory-friendly clothing?

TASTE: Do you need to brush your teeth or tongue? Would chewing on something help?

SMELL: Is there a strong or unpleasant smell in the room? Do you need to clean or empty a trash can? Would an air purifier help? Would a pleasant smell like a candle help?

INTEROCEPTION: Are you hungry? Thirsty? Tired? How is your posture? Are any of your muscles tight or sore? Scan your body slowly from head to feet, tensing and loosening each group of muscles. Going for a walk or doing a series of quick stretches may help a lot.

Learning how to do this stuff is not intuitive, if you've had an entire lifetime of gaslighting telling you that everything hurting you isn't a big deal and you're being dramatic over nothing.

This takes time, it takes work, it's not intuitive, and it's hard. Most people forget how hard it is, because they learned this as toddlers.

If you want to recover, you need to relearn your whole body. And get over your idea of "normal" and just wear the damn sunglasses and put on the headphones. If people stare, fuck em. You're disabled and they can deal with that.

[whatbigotspost]

What a great post! So helpful.

People often ask me about my unmasking journey and express surprise to hear that such a big part of it has been 1) accepting I must avoid light/the sun and 2) wearing clothes I can stand.

I’ll play it jokey and say it like “well it took me far too long to realize that my former wardrobe made me want to jump off a bridge.” Or “turns out my old underwear was anti-autistic.” Or “for whatever reason when it’s too bright, I can’t think.”

It sounds silly to some people. It’s very hard for the average allistic person to understand how severed I was from what my physical person was feeling. It served me to be disembodied to survive for a long time. Until it didn’t.

[headspace-hotel]

eliminating all polyester blends from my wardrobe (and polyester in general) changed my fucking life

[bebsi-cola]

i'll be honest. If you can't deal with someone wording things badly then you aren't going to be an ally to autistic people or indeed anyone with a developmental disability, intellectual disability, or disability that impacts language.

also you are never going to be safe for people for whom english is their second language. if someone clarifies their meaning and apologises and you can't accept that over the original wording then don't bother pretending to be autism friendly.

and like part of my autism is that i become convinced that the way i interpret words is the way that they're meant. my autism is disabling to my communication abilities. i have poor emotional regulation, i jump to conclusions. a lot of my reactions are informed by prior negative experiences. i can and probably have been overly defensive in the past.

and i've been misinterpreted so much and had my words picked over and mocked for saying the wrong things and mocked for being unable to say anything at all and it always feels devastating. it's ironic that the same disability that has me treated poorly would have me react poorly to a similar situation, but that's just how it is.

so i'm not saying you can perfectly manage all your reactions just by trying hard enough. especially considering how much disability affects these things. but i do think if you are completely unwilling to give autistic and other DD/ID people leeway for how they word things or understand that they have a disability that impacts their communication and give us grace then you aren't a disability advocate.

[violettbackedstarling]

thought tumblr would enjoy this

[faded-echoing]

Roommate understands my goodbye meow now and gives it's own meow back and that's awesome

[sea-mists]

literally though if you feel like your life is slipping through your fingers and every day goes too fast… try doing hard things, not just taking the easy route, like reading and making art and exercising and cooking a meal from scratch and journaling, doing these things without distraction, without being absorbed on a screen… the time will stretch and you’ll be reminded that life is long and beautiful if you make it so.

[queriesntheories]

Reblogging this with these tags because oh my goodness

To the person I reblogged this from THANK YOU i am now going to stick this on my pinboard where I’m gonna see it every single day

“Life is long and beautiful if you make it so”

[can-i-make-image-descriptions]

[Image ID: Tumblr tags reading: this is literally it. this has psychological support

time as we perceive it "slows down" during new and/or challenging experiences

because our brains are encoding more details about the experience. more data = larger file size = a "longer" memory

hence time "slowing down" during highly stressful events. in fight/flight/freeze we take in A Lot of details that we otherwise wouldn't

and one of the reasons childhood and adolescence feel so long in retrospect is because we were having novel experiences all the time!

the older we get the less "new" everything is

Unless we make an effort to continue learning and growing and trying new things whenever we can.

it's not only good for you but your life will literally feel longer. time will literally feel slower.

anyway i just think it's neat :^)

psych

tags /End ID]

[akindplace]

one day you’re going to remember something hurtful that happened to you, but the memories will be hazier, and you will struggle for a few seconds to remember the name of that person who once upset you so much when you were younger, an laugh at yourself because at one point this was something that caused you so much anguish and now everything is different and you’re far removed from that situation. maybe time doesn’t fully heal you, but realizing life went on helps you to let go, even if at times it felt like you wouldn’t.

[akindplace]

it gets better. unfortunately it takes some time for it to get better, but it doesn’t mean that it never will! you still have time for it to get better! im telling you it is worth it to have hope and allow time to pass!