Yet Another Autistic Blog

autistic | 32 | she/they | queer af main blog: @galaga-senpai

[paranormal-paracosm]

Holds you by the shoulders. You are not jealous of disabled people with higher support needs. You are jealous of disabled people with better families and higher class status. Do noooot conflate the two.

[thememedaddy]

[koobiie]

i feel strongly about this

[ailurinae]

[labmousegirl]

one of the things that makes autism a disability (and why some of us choose to label it as such rather than an “alternate neurotype”) is the stress. 

part of autism is just being incredibly stressed. overstimulation? stress. holding a conversation? stress. something happening to our schedule? stress. people talk about how often autism is recognized and diagnosed via our stress responses (like meltdowns) because it is just so common to see autistic people stressed because of lack of accommodations to how our brains work.

and this matters because stress kills. stress causes a lot of health issues, or it can trigger pre-existing ones by making certain chronic conditions flare up. i once had a psychiatrist very unhelpfully tell me i “just need to manage my stress” when the stress i was describing was things i could not avoid in neurotypical society and can’t “just get over”. i can do “self care” all i like but i cannot at the very base level change the way my brain inputs information and reacts accordingly.

[roach-works]

i only learned this year that loud noises aren’t physically painful for other people. i have lived 34 years in a world in which my friends and family regularly physically hurt me at random just by shouting, and i thought everyone else just thought i was kind of a wimp for not dealing with the pain as well as they did.

like. loud noises physically hurt. it’s like a static shock from my ears to my spine that doesn’t stop until the volume goes back down. i thought we all agreed that ‘that’s too loud!’ and covering our ears meant ‘ouch!’. turns out i’ve been dealing with a stressor almost no one else has, my whole life, alone.

autistic people have to keep functioning through debilitating levels of stress that no one else in their life acknowledges or helps them with. it’s no wonder that their most visible ‘tells’ are breakdowns. 

[infiniteoreos]

undiagnosed autistic people will be like "I don't get upset when my routine changes though!!" and it's because they've built a set of if-then loops in their head to pick from one of 6 different strict routines and they do get incredibly upset when they're unable to keep to any of the 6 scripts. I'm john normal

[thundercrackfic]

This is called a fault tree. You will always know how to act if your fault tree captures all possible scenarios. In NASA Mission Control during mission critical events like landings there are huge binders with fault tree protocols, kind of like choose your own adventure books except you’re not the one making the choices, the universe is making them for you and you’re just trying to keep up.

The engineers who develop fault trees, I am told, often imagine new ways for their precious spacecraft to die (new branches on the fault trees) either while in the shower or lying awake at 3am, because human

[toothpaste-footlocker]

[yet-another-autistic-blog]

Was just thinking about this the other day. Yeah I have a favorite seat on the bus (middle of the bus, near the back doors, slightly elevated, facing forward), but I don’t get upset if someone is already sitting there, I just pick one of my other favorite spots. Then I realized that most people probably don’t have a favorite bus seat, let alone a series of backup favorites.

[yet-another-autistic-blog]

Someone asked for more info about my favorite bus seats. Here is a very shitty drawing I did on my phone just now to illustrate my favorite and backups:

[animentality]

[evilraccoonoffical]

I am inclusive of non seatbelt wearers because it gives me more bones to add to my bone collection.

[yet-another-autistic-blog]

If wearing a seatbelt genuinely bothers you, look up seatbelt cushions. You can even get cute ones!

[wingkink]

btw it's so fucking stupid you can be anxious physically in your body even after you've decided mentally you don't care. I'm supposed to be in charge here

[yet-another-autistic-blog]

Curious because I recently saw a discussion about this on Reddit. Feel free to elaborate on your reasoning in the notes!

What direction do you typically face in the shower?

Primarily facing toward the water

Primarily facing away from the water

Rotating like a rotisserie chicken

Voting ended onMay 27

[enki2]

[yet-another-autistic-blog]

My 6th grade teacher hated me because I once told her she was wrong about something in the middle of a lesson. Another time I defended an answer I had gotten wrong on a math test, and she showed me the answer key, and I told her the answer key was wrong and explained why.

This is the same teacher who, when I told her the other girls in class were bullying me, she told me that maybe if I didn’t talk about Star Trek they wouldn’t bully me.

[homoquartz]

i’ve warmed up significantly towards the concept of small talk ever since i learned that its sole purpose is to make friendly noises.

as long as you smile and nod, people are satisfied. it’s just to show that you are nice and there with good intentions. we’re small in a big world and have to rely on other people to be decent to us. so we do our little human dance to each other to say, “i’m not here to hurt you. here’s something we have in common, like the weather or sports or itchy sweaters, so we both know we’re on the same team. we both agree on a basic fact, like that it is rainy or that being itchy is uncomfortable, and this proves we can get along. i’m being light-hearted and non-threatening right now.”

small talk isn’t to get to know a person. it’s just a greeting to affirm you’re buddies in the universe.

i am motivated by wanting the other person to know i am friendly, so i have gotten pretty decent at small talk when i used to hate it.

[piratedgender]

[themisally]

[butchboromir]

they won't tell you this when you enter the workforce, but regardless of where you work & how job titles function, there is a secret second way that all of your coworkers are ranked. this is as follows:

coworkers who you do NOT trust enough to reveal your autism diagnosis to

coworkers who you DO trust enough to reveal your autism diagnosis to

[json-derulo]

"you were always such a good kid! we never had to worry about you :)" thanks! you actually should've, though. like about this specifically

[infiniteoreos]

undiagnosed autistic people will be like "I don't get upset when my routine changes though!!" and it's because they've built a set of if-then loops in their head to pick from one of 6 different strict routines and they do get incredibly upset when they're unable to keep to any of the 6 scripts. I'm john normal

[thundercrackfic]

This is called a fault tree. You will always know how to act if your fault tree captures all possible scenarios. In NASA Mission Control during mission critical events like landings there are huge binders with fault tree protocols, kind of like choose your own adventure books except you’re not the one making the choices, the universe is making them for you and you’re just trying to keep up.

The engineers who develop fault trees, I am told, often imagine new ways for their precious spacecraft to die (new branches on the fault trees) either while in the shower or lying awake at 3am, because human

[toothpaste-footlocker]

[yet-another-autistic-blog]

Was just thinking about this the other day. Yeah I have a favorite seat on the bus (middle of the bus, near the back doors, slightly elevated, facing forward), but I don’t get upset if someone is already sitting there, I just pick one of my other favorite spots. Then I realized that most people probably don’t have a favorite bus seat, let alone a series of backup favorites.

[pangur-and-grim]

I think some of the loneliness of autism is that you feel like you hurt people just by Interacting Wrong, but you don’t know how to Interact Right, and the more effort you put into it, the more exhausted you are and the more artificial it comes across (with the end result of people still being upset with you). and it’s not anyone’s fault for not liking Being Interacted With Wrong, and it’s not your fault for doing it so wrong, but it is very, very lonely.

[shamebats]

How to talk to doctors

Post by @ julez27_

[kaputtsolvi]

What I feel people frequently forget about autistic special interests is that they aren't always information based. They may simply be visual or mental

Someone may have a special interest in a show, but instead of that meaning that they will talk about that show often, it may mean they watch that show extremely frequently.

Special interests are ways of regulating, not simply encyclopedias we have in our heads. Sometimes it's watching something frequently. Maybe only listening to one genre of music, maybe it's a collection, maybe it's an action. I'm tired of it only being seen as autistic people's personal encyclopedias

[infiniteoreos]

undiagnosed autistic people will be like "I don't get upset when my routine changes though!!" and it's because they've built a set of if-then loops in their head to pick from one of 6 different strict routines and they do get incredibly upset when they're unable to keep to any of the 6 scripts. I'm john normal