seen from United States
seen from China
seen from India
seen from South Korea
seen from Italy
seen from South Korea
seen from Finland
seen from Kyrgyzstan
seen from United States
seen from Norway
seen from China
seen from Germany
seen from Italy
seen from Pakistan
seen from Kyrgyzstan
seen from Türkiye
seen from Brazil
seen from United States
seen from Colombia
seen from United States
Does anyone (in the USA) have any tips or advice for how to apply for SSI...? I'm trying to apply for it but I'm finding the process really difficult and hard to understand. If anyone who's done it before sees this, I would really appreciate some tips and advice.
My book has finally been published! It's available on Amazon if anyone's interested.
Here's the link: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0H6GZ9RQX/ref=mp_s_a_1_1?crid=19SJAV38NIYAV&dib=eyJ2IjoiMSJ9.oZH26oM8KdKdKvFZWGg0YA.amSoPau_Q8xc47wv-Ct0NYZ_Ytn46i8JSWkKDMoQBqg&dib_tag=se&keywords=from+kiley+to+kai+and+everything+in+between&nsdOptOutParam=true&qid=1782264127&sprefix=%2Caps%2C175&sr=8-1
I only ask that you don't use my real name when talking or referring to me here on Tumblr, I don't like my real name being out there on the internet but I had to use it for my book, so that's the one exception. 😅
Autistic people of Tumblr...what are your special interests?
Personally, my main special interests right now are Pokémon and PAW Patrol. And on the non-fiction, non-media side of things, I'm really into all the different Zodiacs of the world for some reason I don't know...I just like it. That one is definitely my most random manifestation of a special interest in my life since I have no idea where it even came from. 😅
Anyway, what are YOUR special interests? Feel free to share in the comments below!
Autism and Associative/Emotional Memories (a post with an excerpt from the book I'm writing)
(Beginning of book excerpt)
It is fairly common for autistic people to associate almost everything they experience with something else. These associations and/or memories can be either positive or negative, simple or complex, and can completely affect the way the person perceives something. In my personal experience, they can resurface seemingly at random and change the way I view something as a whole. For example, as a child, I had multiple bad experiences in swimming pools, all resulting in me slipping underwater and having to be dragged out. This happened many times throughout my childhood, and all of those times I was at family reunions. I may not have noticed it right away, but I was always reluctant to go to family reunions after that, and was so relieved when my family decided to stop going to them. I realize now that these pool incidents played a sizable role in why I hated going to family reunions, as well as the general sensory overload. They also play a major role in why I hate water, why I still can’t swim, and why even just the thought of learning how is extremely frightening for me. I only became aware of this very recently, because the memories of the pool incidents resurfaced a few years ago and now I am absolutely terrified of pools and have not gone in one since as a result. It took me a long time to actually figure all of this out, because of my struggles with alexithymia and never knowing how I’m feeling about anything, but with help from my talk therapist and my grandparents, I was able to finally understand what was going on in my mind, even though I haven’t quite figured out what exactly caused the memories to resurface the way they did. These memories were complex, as there were multiple occurrences of the same event, but there can also be more specific, simple memories as well. A few summers ago, my dad and I went out shopping to get my brother some birthday presents. It was supposed to be a quick trip, but it ended up lasting much longer than expected, and we had to go to multiple stores, which would have been fine since I was bored that day and wanted to get out of the house. What made it really stressful though was that there was a sudden thunderstorm while we were in the car driving to the second store, and I didn’t have my headphones or even my jacket with me, which made me upset to the point of a mini-meltdown/panic attack because I always bring them everywhere I go just to be prepared for anything. Luckily my dad was very patient with me and I was able to buy some things too, which made me associate a positive memory with that trip as well as a negative one. While the positive memory is very simple, the negative one is extremely specific. Not only did this trip make me absolutely have to bring my headphones and jacket with me everywhere and keep them with me at all times, but I also remember the exact amount of steps it took me to get from the car to the entrance to every place we went that day (Kohl’s (47), Best Buy (33), and the mall (52)). Anything to do with those numbers makes me remember how upset and scared I was to be outside in a thunderstorm, since I already have a strong fear of thunderstorms, but thankfully, the positive memory of that trip typically overshadows the negative one (for once). It's even happened to me with fictional characters before...multiple times!
(End of book excerpt)
(From here on I'm just talking now)
Autistic people do not TRY to associate things like this, it just HAPPENS. It's how our brains work since they're literally wired differently! Trust me, I WISH I could stop associating things, but no matter how hard I try, I just can't. It happens regardless. It is something I literally CANNOT help, and I wish allistic people would understand that and stop telling me to "let it go" or "you've been associating *insert thing here* with *insert thing here* for a WHILE now...can't you stop doing that?" No. No I can't "stop doing that", it's literally how my brain works and I can't help it, and it makes me upset and stressed that allistic people don't understand that I don't like this either. The more I think about it the more I realize that my parents really don't understand me and the way my brain works and my special interests and how THOSE work, and that makes me sad. They keep pushing me past my limits and I swear they still believe in the functioning labels...I'm NOT "high-functioning", I'm BARELY functioning right now! But that's a post for another time. I hope you all learned something about autism and associations today! That would be really great, especially if you're autistic yourself and learned a bit more about how your brain works! Or if you're allistic and learned a bit more about the autistic person/people in your life, that would be great too! Either way, I'm just trying to spread information and correct misinformation as an autistic person myself who struggles with this and many other things on a daily basis!
A more personal story about a big struggle of mine...food.
I've talked a little bit about how I hate food before on this blog...but now I think it's time to go in-depth about it...even though I usually HATE talking about it, and I'm really nervous and anxious about making this post, but I'll do my best.
Ever since I was little (like, two years old when I was taken off the baby bottle and had to move to solid foods, which, actually, I have NEVER drank milk since the baby bottle was taken away because it was nasty and I no longer needed it to survive...and I STILL to this day hate milk and find it gross), I have had MAJOR sensory issues with food, causing me to be extremely picky and particular about what I eat. I have issues with the look, smell, taste, texture, etc. I also hate things on my plate touching each other, and as a kid I had to have everything on separate plates/bowls because I wouldn't eat if anything on the plate touched each other. I still hate that to this day though, with a lot of work, I have been able to move past the "everything on separate plates/bowls" thing. I do still try my absolute best to keep everything a good distance from each other though.
I am also very particular about even the same types of food. For example, I only eat certain specific brands of certain specific things, and if the brand is wrong, even if the food itself is the same, I will always notice just by smell alone, and refuse to eat it. If the brand is not the safe brand, I will not eat it. If we don't have a safe food or the right brand of safe food, I will choose to go hungry rather than eat, because it's just too much for me to eat a non-safe food/brand. My diet is extremely limited...I would say that 99% of all foods in this world are way too overwhelming for me, and I know for a fact that I can count the number of foods I will actually eat on my fingers...and everything on that list is bland, except for a couple VERY SPECIFIC flavors of VERY SPECIFIC kinds of candy. It has to be bland because I can't handle anything that's spicy (even if it's only a tiny kick or a pinch of seasoning, it will still feel like my mouth is burning and my stomach will start feeling bad), I can't handle bitter things (bitter things will immediately trigger the gag reflex), and I can't handle sour things (sour things, aside from being overwhelming in taste, make my mouth really irritated and that really hurts), or things that are too sweet (I can handle mild sweetness but if it's anything even the slightest bit over mildly sweet, I can't handle it, it triggers the gag reflex). If I could survive without eating, I would never ever eat a thing because I hate food and eating so much. I usually only eat one meal a day, that being supper, because my family always makes sure to have safe food for me in the house for supper specifically. And if we have takeout or go to a restaurant, we always make sure that the restaurant has one of my safe foods beforehand, otherwise I won't eat.
I have gone multiple days in a row without eating anything, because there was nothing safe around. This was back when I was in my early teens in the psych hospital. I was there because I needed a medication adjustment, they had to take me off everything and put me back on everything again slowly, as well as change some of the meds because I was struggling with severe anger issues and aggression, there wasn't a day that went by without me exploding on someone and physically hurting them or myself back then...so I was in the psych hospital for about a week and a half. The teen ward was like a dorm at a university or something, there was a common area, and two long corridors of rooms, with the girls on one and boys on the other. Now, the food situation there was...less than ideal... especially for someone like me. We had a choice of what we wanted to eat, but to actually GET to choose, we had to wake up at the designated wake-up call time...which was always really hard for me since I am not a morning person and I also had nightmares that woke me up and made me really anxious and panicky basically every night. So, as you can probably guess, I always missed the menu choices, meaning I always ended up with something random. That was not good, because it was almost always something that wasn't a safe food. The worst part of it was, there were multiple days in a row of this, and by the fourth day in a row of me not eating, one of the nurses did the worst thing possible for a person with severe food sensitivities...the nurse force-fed me...and continued to do so everyday after that. It was like torture, and every time after being force-fed by the nurse, I would go right back to my room, head right to the bathroom, and proceed to get rid of it by gagging myself on purpose to make myself throw up. The food sitting in my stomach made me nauseous as it was already so I just had to get it out of there so I could feel better. I never told anyone about it though because during my entire week and a half there it was so traumatic I was basically rendered mute, barely saying a word to anyone. I know that they were just worried about me and wanted to make sure I survived while I was there, but they definitely could've done it less...aggressively...
This wasn't the first time I was force-fed either. As a kid, with my OT, I did a type of feeding therapy called Feeding Team. It was supposed to help me learn to try new foods...but it didn't work. Now, the person who force-fed me there wasn't my usual therapist. My usual therapist never did that, she just sat there with me and reminded me that if I didn't eat the food of the week, I wouldn't be allowed to do all the other stuff...the stuff I liked doing in OT. Multiple weeks just consisted of me just sitting there the whole time because I just wouldn't...COULDN'T eat. But my usual therapist never threatened to force-feed me or anything like that. So how was I force-fed there, then...? Well...it was when my usual therapist wasn't there, and I had a substitute...a couple substitutes weren't the most patient and after it became clear I wasn't going to eat, they would pick up the fork or spoon, gather some of the food on it, and shove it into my mouth. I would immediately go running to the bathroom after that and proceed to, once again, get rid of it all so I didn't feel sick anymore with the food sitting in my stomach like that.
No one, absolutely NO ONE in my family knows that I've been force-fed before. They also don't know about me purposely getting rid of the food I was force-fed every time. I have only told my talk therapist and a best friend of mine who understands what having food sensitivities like this is like...and only brought it up in the first place because I've been thinking about this for a while and having nightmares about the force-feeding where I wake up feeling sick and like I need to get rid of the food I was force-fed in my dream...so it's been really bothering me a lot lately. And I'm one of those people who HATES anything to do with throwing up. If someone around me is sick with a stomach bug or flu and I hear or see it...I freak out and have full-on panic attacks over it, and when I have the stomach bug or flu myself, I try to keep everything from coming out as long as I possibly can.
And food unfortunately is something that can make me really sick and trigger the gag reflex from just the look and smell alone...which is why I always stay away from the kitchen when my family is eating their meals, and waiting until everything they had is all cleaned up and put away before I can finally have my own safe food for supper...I do this pretty much everyday, as it's very VERY rare for my family to have something I can eat alongside them for supper. The only thing that really comes to my mind that I eat with them is pasta...my mom makes it plain and makes the sauce separately because she's allergic to tomatoes and I don't like sauce. I completely cover my plain pasta in the (what I like to call) "cheese salt" type of parmesan cheese because that way it tastes better and it's not greasy. One of my younger brothers (who also has some food sensitivities, but he's not nearly as problematic in my parents' eyes as I am because he eats a lot more things than I do) does the same thing, and we often fight over the parmesan cheese because of it.
I used to have to sit at the table with everyone during holiday meals, which felt like torture, but now I don't have to do that anymore because I just can't do that without feeling sick and losing my appetite at the sight and smell of all holiday food. The only thing I eat on holidays is plain rolls...which is just bread. Everything else is way too much for me. So I wait for everyone to finish and clean up, and then I have a safe food, just like basically every other day.
On Easter yesterday I didn't even eat supper at all because I just wasn't hungry. I have a hard time noticing when I'm hungry or not, so that plays another part in me not wanting to eat, because I don't feel like I need to. I've been put on an appetite stimulator medication because my one meal a day is not enough for my family and support workers and it makes them worry...even though I'm totally fine with one a day but that's just me. It worked for a while, it didn't change anything I actually ATE but it made me feel hunger a bit more...though now it's stopped working and I'm back to one meal a day. I get really tired of my family constantly judging me for being picky, berating me for never eating anything, telling me I'm being difficult, and saying things like, "There are people starving out there, you should be grateful for what you have and eat!" When they say those things, it does not help at all! It instead just makes me really upset because I literally CANNOT HELP IT! I didn't ASK for this, I didn't ASK to have so many food sensitivities...and it drives ME just as crazy as it drives THEM! I wish I could eat more things so they wouldn't get so mad at me all the time but I just CAN'T!
You know how people will expect you to just toughen up and eat what's in front of you...? Yeah...no...that doesn't work for me. If there's nothing I can eat, nothing that's safe, I will not eat a THING until I have a safe food in front of me again, even if it takes multiple days...the longest I've gone without eating was four days. I am so glad my parents don't force-feed me though, like the nurses at the psych hospital or the substitute OT person did...because that means I haven't had to intentionally make myself sick to get rid of the things I was force-fed in about a decade now. I am so afraid to tell my family about those incidents because they have never heard anything about it from anyone at all and I always keep traumatic memories and things that happened to me to myself for years at a time, until I can't take it anymore and I just break from the stress, but I am working on it now with my talk therapist, so I hope I'll be able to say something eventually.
Anyway, I guess what I want to say is, anyone else who's autistic and struggles with food sensitivities, I see you and I feel you. You are not alone. I used to think I was alone in this until I met my best friend who struggles with this stuff too. It was so validating for me to finally have someone who understands what this is like, and I hope my story can help some of you feel not so alone either.
I am not "high-functioning". I am not "low-functioning". I am autistic.
Christmas can be a LOT for autistic people...but I hope that all of you who celebrate it had a good one yesterday
I personally had a good one, though a family member I don't get along with came over so I was stuck in my room for the whole afternoon, but I was able to keep calm thanks to this mechanical emotional support cat I got from my grandma on Christmas Eve. I absolutely love that cat and she is so soothing for me to just sit there and pet and hear her meow and purr, and the purring is actually like a real cat because it vibrates and that's so soothing for me, it's like a vibrating weighted pillow and I love it. She's designed like a tuxedo cat and I named her Casey after the real tuxedo cat I had growing up, but the real Casey passed back in 2019 at the age of 20 (almost 21, which is LONG for a cat) and I never got over it, especially since I'm one of those people who finds being around cats to be soothing and it really helps with my anxiety. But I can't have a cat nowadays since my house is way too small so I'm so glad I was able to to get the mechanical one...and the fact that those are MADE for emotional support is perfect, they're made for seniors with Alzheimer's/dementia, and also for people with disabilities of any kind (autism included), that can't have a real pet, to have a 'pet' that helps with anxiety or depression or basically any kind of mental health issues. I gotta say, she is working wonders for me so far, everytime I have her on my lap petting her and making her purr, I feel ten times more relaxed than I have in a LONG time. Here's what these cats look like, doesn't it look fluffy?
And here's a picture of MY specific cat, Casey 🥺
So yeah, VERY fluffy, VERY cute, and perfect for my anxiety and depression...she was the perfect gift and I'm so glad I got her.
I know I haven't posted anything in a while, but I HAD to talk about my new emotional support cat (she's a real cat to me, okay?) and share the fact that these exist in case any of you might think you'd benefit from something similar (they are expensive though).
To all autistic people who have a "childish" special interest, or just happen to like something that is viewed as "childish" by everyone around you, I see you and feel you. Your interests are valid, there is nothing wrong with liking something geared towards children as an adult. Don't let people who tell you otherwise get you down, you should be free to like what you like, especially if it helps you through tough times.
Sincerely,
An autistic person in his 20s who still really likes Thomas the Tank Engine, and who would still really be into PAW Patrol if I hadn't developed a phobia of sirens
