neuroqueer

adventures in autistic//allistic romance*. white, queer, non-cis, kinky, non-monogamous. we're figuring it out as we go.   *reblogs & original posts by the bunny wonder (neuroⒶtypical - they) and SK (allistic & crazy - they/she)

[hekacute-deactivated20141230]

i wish everything was quieter and softer and less often

[neuroqueer]

This page is for people concerned, related or otherwise involved with alexithymia and also for people interested in this disorder. Beside information about alexithymia there is also a forum and an online questionaire about this disability to work with feelings.

[homojabi]

Stimming!

What is stimming?

In it’s most simple form, stimming is a repetitive body movement that self-stimulates one or more senses in a regulated manner.

What types of stims are there?

Visual Stims

Flapping hands, blinking and/or moving fingers in front of eyes, staring repetitively at a light, pressing on closed eyes to create visual effect [pressure phosphene], …

Auditory Stims

Snapping fingers, tapping on objects, listening to the same song on a loop, rolling Rs, “cat noises”, repeating words, putting hands over ears, singing, clicking tongue, humming…

Tactile Stims

Scratching, rubbing the skin with one’s hands or with an external object, pinching the skin, putting thumb inside fist, sucking thumb, rubbing hands/feet together, petting preferred textures, tying knots/twirling string, twirling/stroking hair…

Vestibular Stims

Moving body in rhythmic motion, rocking front and back or side-to-side), spinning, pacing, walking in circles, walking on tip-toes, jumping up and down…

Taste Stims

Licking body parts, licking an object…

Smell Stims

Smelling objects or hands, smelling other people…

Rhythmic Stims

Tapping on surfaces/objects/self, clicking fingers, making repetitive vocal sounds, bouncing legs, foot tapping, hand flapping, clicking pens, …

There are a lot of other stims as well that don’t necessarily fall under the category of “repetitive” such as pressure stimming, which are still just as valid. Basically if what you do serves the purpose of the stim, you can call it a stim.

Why do people stim?

People stim for all different kinds of reasons. They may stim when they are happy or excited, when they are stressed, as a part of their normal body language, as a way of communication, as a punishment, as a response to something internal or external, as a compulsion, to focus, to self soothe, etc. Stimming can be a coping mechanism, but it can also be so much more! No matter what reason someone has for stimming though, it’s important to remember that all stims are natural and normal.

Who stims?

Anyone that find stimming useful, whether consciously or subconsciously, can stim. That includes neurotypicals, but mainly stimming is seen as something that neurodivergent people do and it occurs most frequently in:

autism spectrum

Tourette’s

schizophrenia

OCD

people that experience mania/hypomania

people with ADHD/ADD

etc

Where can I find stim toys/jewelry?

Stimtastic

TherapyShoppe

AutismShop

SensoryUniversity

OfficePlayground

RuthDoodlle

[neuroqueer]

How do you navigate a relationship when one or both partners are dealing with pain?

[neuroqueer]

me in a professional setting: haha yes it is I a fellow mentally healthy. so chums how do you enjoy always feeling the correct emotions at the appropriate times? personally I like how said emotions are always a reasonable intensity!

[youbelievedineverything]

you want to talk about the abled person/disabled person relationship dynamics today? because i do

literally ANYONE who has to be around a disabled person is considered a “saint” or somehow better than a normal person just because they have to be with disabled people. that is a fact. friends, family, teachers, aids, spouses, boyfriends, girlfriends everyone. don’t even try to deny this because there are whole websites dedicated to blogs for mothers so they can share THEIR struggles of being a “disabled mother” as i’ve seen them call themselves. a disabled mother. (do i even need to explain that? really?)

like, i understand it would be hard sometimes but??? raising all kids is hard??? you don’t get a special token because your kid is disabled?? and so often they have the narrative that “i never wanted a disabled kid. that was my worst fear. but now that i have them i love them just like my abled child” if you don’t want a disabled kids don’t have kids please. please. i’m begging you don’t have kids if you feel like you wouldn’t want a disabled child. 

and it’s not just moms, it’s family and friends too. i’m not going to treat it as a coincidence that the rest of my family seems to interact and spend more time than my abled cousins than they do me. do they feel like it’s harder to take me out into the “real world”? are they not prepared to help me me with simple tasks that i can’t do? who knows. and it’s no secret with friends it’s the same situation, maybe worse, ESPECIALLY when they’re young. how many “inspiring” articles have you seen where it’s basically “look! my small child made friends with the disabled kid at their school! children are so much more accepting that adults <3″ what about that time when i was 13 and i went to a birthday party and the mother basically asked her daughter if i was the same girl that was disabled? i feel like i’m seen as the “token disabled person” in school more than anything else. 

and then you get to the people who work with disabled people and their viewed as such good people just because of it. oh, you’re a special education teacher? and aid? that must be so hard! i could never do it. you deserve and award.

the ABSOLUTE worst part of this comes when you’re dating a disabled person. you NEVER see abled people saying “oh, i want to date a disabled person” and when disabled people say they want to date abled people? it’s seen as almost unrealistic. “it would just be easier to date a disabled person.” disabled people are seen as unlovable, helpless, broken and almost not even fully human. abled people are pegged as saints for dating disabled people, and when something happens to an abled person to make them disabled? “you’re so brave for staying with them. it must be so hard.” and i dread prom season, because there’s a million articles that are just “the fact that this popular person went to prom with a disabled person is inspiring.” when disabled people DO want to date other disabled people i feel like their relationship isn’t even seen as a romantic relationship because disabled people can’t do that right? they’re not capable of holding down relationships? loving? there is so much stigma around two disabled people getting married, even more so with them raising children. i can assure you that two disabled people are capable of raising a child. i promise. there does not need to be an abled person in the relationship to make it work. 

disabled people are not helpless. we are not just our aids, our caregivers, our able bodied companions. we are complete as is. we do not need able bodied people to make us valuable. sure, some of us do need assistance from able bodied people but that does not take away from the people that we are. we are enough. 

[flyingpurplepizzaeater]

therapists often say “stop asking the world to change for you” “the world won’t change for you so you need to change yourself” but the way they use it is sometimes. like 

*rearranges objects in a room* look, the world changed for me! 

and they act like you’re asking the world to change for you when you are changing yourself! like, if the sound of people eating chips really really bothers you and so you leave the room whenever people eat chips, you are not telling people to stop eating chips! you are adjusting your behavior to avoid unpleasant (and possibly painful) things! but therapists will act like, by doing that, you are, not even telling people not to eat chips around you, but like, trying to force people to never eat chips again, or trying to uninvent chips 

and also! it’s not always a binary between “the world needs to change or I need to change”, sometimes it is “the world and I both need to keep doing our thing even if things are hard sometimes” and sometimes it “the world needs to change but it won’t change, but that doesn’t mean I need to change, it doesn’t even necessarily mean I need to stop trying to change it” just because you find that life’s not fair it doesn’t mean that you just have to grin and bear it

[neuroqueer]

“When you’re older you’ll be expected to turn your face and body toward people when you talk to them. Even now, you should look at Humans with your eyes. If you don’t, they yell at you or repeat things because they’re not sure they have your attention. Or they start to ignore you because they think you’re ignoring them.”

“Humans needed to touch people, but they could not do so in ways that were pleasurable or useful. Only when he felt lonely or frightened was he glad of their hands, their protection.”

“Humans said one thing with their bodies and another with their mouths and everyone had to spend time and energy figuring out what they really meant. And once we did understand them, the Humans got angry and acted as though we had stolen thoughts from their minds.”

-Octavia Butler, Lilith’s Brood

[luckyeahshelsilverstein]

[neuroqueer]

[Image]Simple line drawing of a cartoonish bat, with wings and legs extended.

Poem below the drawing reads:

BATTY

The baby bat

Screamed out in fright,

“Turn on the dark,

I’m afraid of the light.”

(drawing and poem by Shel Silverstein)

[neuroqueer]

On disabled & chronically ill folks providing service in a D/s relationship (with tweets) · TGStoneButch

A Social Media Story storified by TGStoneButch

[flyingpurplepizzaeater]

even in the absence of all bad things that can happen in therapy and all bad things the therapist can say and do

it’s like you’re scared of dogs, because you were bit by a dog. well, you were bit by multiple dogs. almost every dog you have met, actually.

and now you are locked in a room with a dog for an hour and not only that but you have to pretend to really like the dog and to not be freaking out and you know the dog has the power to have you imprisoned, if they so choose, in a place full of dogs, and also the dog keeps asking you personal questions

[oliviaszines]

Made a separate blog for the autistic self care and community support zine!

[autistic-flirting]

Autistic Flirting: You’re so cute when you infodump.

[awn-network]

Image description: A square shaped meme with blue and green coloring blended together and the following words in white capital letters: “On this Labor Day, we recognize that close to 30% of adults with intellectual or developmental disabilities who are employed are working in sheltered workshops.

In sheltered workshops employees:

Make less than the federal minimum wage, often less than $1 per hour Are often segregated and isolated from the community Do not have the benefits of workers’ compensation Do not have the privilege of collective bargaining Are exploited and trapped in cycle of poverty.

Labor is a disability civil right issue”

[autistic--author]

I wish that there was enough acceptance of alternative communication methods in society that I could simply pull out my phone in the middle of a conversation or during a class discussion and use a synthetic voice software to speak without anyone judging me. Our society is still struggling to accept the use of alternative communication methods by people who actually can’t speak, the chances of them accepting the use of it by someone like me who is fully verbal but struggles to express thoughts out loud in as coherent a manner as I can online is very low. This is why I want Autism acceptance, because if you weren’t working so hard to change me then you might actually be able to hear my voice come through, you might actually be able to accept me for who I am.

[neuroqueer]

In addition to not being "unfortunate" because i'm variously disabled, i'm also not incapable of fucking things up, of taking critiques, of being called out, of existing in an uncomfortable place. ...

[askanautistic]

Is it common for autistics to be uncomfortable about/uninterested in sex? Like I'm 99% sure I'm not asexual, I'm really just... not interested, and the idea of it makes me want to curl up and hide, but I'm very unsure if it's because I'm transsexual (and therefore /not/ comfortable with /those/ body parts on /any/ level) or autistic or only sixteen. It's probably a mixture of all three, but I just don't know.

It sounds perfectly understandable in your situation to not be very keen on physical intimacy. Autistic people often have their own ideas of what’s important or what’s pleasant, and can just not want all sorts of things that “everyone” likes. I can’t give you good numbers, but plenty of people find sex unpleasant or unappealing for all sorts of reasons, and all of them are perfectly valid. So the only reason that it matters *why* you feel this way is if you choose to work through or around it - and that’s an involved and detailed process, probably better suited to a good friend or a therapist than an anonymous ask. So, this doesn’t make you a freak, or any more or less autistic. And if you’d like, I’m happy to talk about this further in private (which I’m afraid means off anonymous), but we try not to have this sort of thing all over the blog.

- Mara