#satinthecornerwriting

[should-be-sleeping]

I want to be your friend

A person can never have too many friends, in my sincere opinion.

[should-be-sleeping]

Hi! You seem super cool. I was wondering if/how being deaf has affected your autism. I work with special needs children and know how hard it can be to communicate with children with autism alone and was wondering what throwing deafness in also is like

Good evening! Thank you, that’s always nice to read. Losing my hearing was a weird time for me. I wasn’t born deaf. I lost my hearing well into adulthood, back in 2007. So my whole life got thrown into disarray for a time, the adjustment period was long and tedious.That all said, it’s kind of nice, in regards to my autism, anyway. Having one less sense has helped some with my SPD, I no longer get overstimulated by sounds around me which has cut down on the amount of shutdowns I experience in day to day life.If I am starting to feel overwhelmed, I can just take my hearing aid out, and limit what I have to perceive at that point in time. Whereas before, I had to bring headphones with me and try to drown out unpleasant sounds with music I’d prefer – which was hit or miss because it was still too much sound.It’s been not so nice in other ways. I was always verbal even though I preferred communicating through writing – but after losing my hearing no one in my personal life learned ASL for me. So I was still expected to be verbal with them even though I couldn’t understand them anymore. To this day the only one who has is my SO.It took years and years of hard work to learn to lip read and even though I am really good at it now (and it gives me a good excuse not to maintain eye contact, which has always made me very uncomfortable), lip reading is exhausting and there is a lot of guess work involved. It can be pretty accurate in familiar settings with friends or family but with strangers wildly inaccurate.Emphasis on wildly. Which can be embarrassing and garner more attention that you would prefer from people wanting to help you or who also find it funny.So in all it has had some pros: silence when I need it, excuse not to maintain eye contact but also some cons: people still expect me to accommodate them, and I can’t sound-stim anymore (used to dance, sing, and play violin), may land me in situations where my routine/script is broken and I don’t know what is going on and that is really awful because it feels like failure and when you’re mainstreamed, failure feels really horrible.

[talesoftim]

Ah, I meant happy birthday!

Thank you.