Hey guys! Welcome back to my blog! Today was my first day of my math class, so now I’m unsure if you’re going to get a new post every week, but I promise I will try! For this weeks post, I will be writing about something very important, and I hope this will help you understand me, and others on the spectrum a lot better, as we are VERY misunderstood. Even by ASD “professionals” sometimes. At least I feel that way. For this post I will be writing about things we may be mistaken as because of autistic traits. We never intend to be these negative things, but our traits of autism may cause us to think “irrationally” in your mind, but remember that it makes sense to us, and also, social skills trainings to help us think more like an NT do NOT work no matter how hard you try.
Personally, I’ve been accused of lots of things despite not intending to be that way, but I’m going to be writing, and explaining 3 today, and maybe I’ll make a part 2 of this sometime, we’ll see! I will also be linking the posts I used for my blog post. I personally have learned way more from Instagram autism activists about autism than I have from anywhere or anyone else. “Condescending” This one is going to be long, but who knows, maybe some people think this about me, but I would say I’m the total opposite of condescending. I have lots of feelings of insecurity towards myself, and I feel like most people are better than me. I guess the only time I’d say I’m condescending is when an NT tries to educate me on autism, and telling me what I’m saying is false, thinking they’re right compared to me actually living the life, but that’s about it. We tend to be very blunt when we’re having conversations, so we don’t always stop to think whether what we’re saying is socially acceptable in the NT world we live in. When we do take time to think, it can sometimes be hard to tell whether it is socially acceptable or not, so we guess, and sometimes that can go south. Most of us have a hard time reading social cues. I for sure do as I’ve written about that in the past. For the people who don’t know that we can’t read social cues, they may think we’re intentionally trying to hurt them, but that’s far from the case. (You can find more about this in week 37, but I also talk about it in weeks 40 and 53). I’ve had so much social dilemmas in my life to the point where I go out of my way to ask people if they’re sending me social cues or not. But when we do ask for clarification, it’s known as disrespectful??? What??? It’s because we care about your feelings, but don’t know how else to show it! I’ve learned that too. Even if the truth may hurt, I really appreciate that some people have the guts to be honest with me because that shows that they care about my time, and don’t want to waste it. I wish everyone was that way, because in my opinion, social cues sometimes turn into flat out lies, depending on how long it goes on for. I’ve learned that this past year especially. This one person who is no longer in my life for MANY reasons turned my social life upside down. The way she handled the situation left lots of wounds, and scars on my heart, and brain, and it affects how I interact with people everyday. It also affects how I see social situations. I’ve always taken things personally, but now it’s next level. I’m not saying I handled the situation great either, but she’s the older one out of the two of us, so she should’ve been able to handle it a lot better instead of run away from the conflict. I took the mature side and tried to take the conflict head on as much as I could one sided. “Calculated/manipulative” This is a BIG one for sure! Lots of us, me included prepare for situations before they happen so we can better our social skills with NT’s. This is always associated with negative feelings, and me being a bad person, but in reality, I think it makes me a better person because I want to benefit the NT’s in my life, since I care about you guys’ feelings so much. It also helps me learn, as I’m always willing to learn. I also wouldn’t be able to mask properly (week 19). I know NT’s probably prefer this version of me. “Steering things down a particular path and preparing for that path allows me to discern exactly what others need and give it to them within the strict timeframe their expectations provide, sparing us all any awkwardness, upset and conflict”. -@adulting_with_autism_ on Instagram. I decided to use that full phrase he used because I think he worded it VERY well, and I didn’t want to change it because I like it so much. I like to plan ahead when it comes to everything I do, and my social interactions are no different. Especially when I know I have to face a hard situation/conflict. I want to make sure to word my feelings as best as I can to get my point across and so I don’t choke up when I talk, or type it out if it’s over text. Also, especially if it’s with people who don’t know much about how our brains work. I hope they find it helpful. “Self centered” I’ve been called selfish a lot, mostly by my parents and sister, but this is basically the same thing. I wonder if anyone else thinks I’m self centered?? I always worry about that when I’m hanging out with people. Little do they know they think this because of an autistic trait, and I’m debunking the myth behind our “self centered-ness” in your eyes. When we respond to your struggles with our personal struggles, we are NOT invalidating your feelings at all! It is very much the opposite. We feel your feelings so deeply because we have experienced that as well, and we tell you our story to show you that you’re not alone, and we can put ourselves in your shoes. We have an easier time relating to the world through our lived experiences, and also expressing compassion, and empathy in the same way. I relate to all of that 100%, and I’m sure other people on the spectrum do too, which is why I feel safer communicating with my autistic friends/friends with autism. Unlike when I’m communicating with my NT friends, I don’t feel guilty when an autistic trait shines through me trying to fit in with the vast NT majority. So this was a longer blog post than my recent ones. Mainly because I want you guys to put autism in mind if you’re thinking any of these thoughts about me, or anyone else on the spectrum. When I was in high school, I NEVER wanted anyone to put autism into consideration with any of my actions, but now I do because I want people to understand me better, and I think it shows maturity that I’m bringing my autism into things now, and telling people “hey, this is why I’m doing this. Please be patient with me”. I’ve come a long way! Now that I’m starting in person school back up again, I’m not sure if I’ll have time to write a post for all of you next week, but I PROMISE I will try my best! Check out the links below if you’re interested in seeing the Instagram posts I used for this blog post! Email- [email protected] Instagram- @embracingmysuperpower Facebook- Embracing my Superpower https://www.instagram.com/p/CQEkBTkMHAw/?utm_medium=copy_link https://www.instagram.com/p/CScZqJAMwuM/?utm_medium=copy_link https://www.instagram.com/p/CO5Hwi-sQFK/?utm_medium=copy_link
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Hey guys! Welcome back to my blog! For this weeks post, I will be writing about autisms connection to sleep. I think this one is very interesting because it helped me know why I do certain things when it comes to my sleeping routine, and I feel like a lot of people don’t know this fact!
It is common for autistic people/people with autism to struggle with sleeping for many reasons. First of all, we need perfect sleeping conditions. I’m going to tell you guys my sleeping conditions, but I also want to mention that everyone on the spectrum is different and that does NOT mean everyone’s sleeping routine and preferences are the same as mine! I need a very specific environment to sleep. It’s kinda annoying, honestly. I need to sleep in pitch black conditions. Even if light is shining through my door from the hall or the window, I will lose it, and will turn off the lights, and close my blinds. I also hate sleeping with the window open, but I do it anyways because when my parents refuse to have the air on, I want to stay cool somehow so I open it. Another reason why I hate sleeping with the window open is because I hate hearing the noise of all the bugs, and all the cars and once it gets to dawn, I have to hear people rolling out their garbage cans and mowing their lawns, and since we have increased sensitivity to all 5 senses (haven’t written about that, but I should), it’s hard to fall back asleep. I also can’t leave the house when I’m going overnight somewhere without my pillow. I refuse to use any other pillow. I have one pillow that I take everywhere with me because every other pillow bothers me. Insomnia is very common with autistic people/people with autism. I don’t have insomnia, but I do have a hard time falling asleep at night sometimes. I take naps almost everyday, so that’s why. I also sleep with my cat, Rascal some nights and he purrs and snores really loud so it’s distracting, but I love him more than anything and we snuggle whenever we sleep together so I can’t resist letting him in my room. Believe it or not, taking naps is an autistic trait. Because of pretending to be NT, and trying to navigate your world, it gets tiring. I got excited to tell my mom the autism and sleeping facts, but she said she knew and told me she had a feeling I would start napping everyday after school starting in high school. According to @autieselfcare’s post on Instagram about sleeping (I’ll link it below), there was a study 2 years ago that showed it takes us 11 minutes extra to fall asleep compared to a neurotypical person. That study also showed that 80% of autistic children/children with autism have disrupted sleep. Since our brains are super active, it’s hard for us to fall asleep since we’re always thinking about something. A lot of us also have ADHD and anxiety, which are also factors to disrupted sleeping, and autism on top of that can get complicated at times when it comes to sleep! I spend a lot of my nights thinking about my past social interactions because I get myself so worked up about every social mistake I’ve made in my life. Even if it was from years ago. I know I’m not the only one on the spectrum who struggles with this. Some autistic individuals/individuals have an irregular amount of melatonin which is a sleep hormone, so some of us may need melatonin pills to help with sleep. Personally, I do not, as I love, and value my sleep! So that’s about it for this post. I start class next Tuesday, and it’s math which is my worst subject, so I get extra help from tutors, so I can’t promise posts every week from this point forward, and I’m trying to find a job and focusing on getting my drivers license. I’ll still be posting, but not as much. I want to prioritize all of those things over my blog right now. Thanks for reading and I may see you all next week! Email- [email protected] Instagram- @embracingmysuperpower Facebook- Embracing my Superpower https://www.instagram.com/p/CRMcxOTsZCb/?utm_medium=copy_link https://www.instagram.com/p/CPREnWcsxKy/?utm_medium=copy_link https://www.instagram.com/p/COzm9d6sk2W/?utm_medium=copy_link Hey guys! Welcome back to my blog! For my post this week, I’ll be writing about autism and gender. Lots of people on the spectrum struggle with their gender, like what I stated in my week 51 post. I didn’t know this was a common struggle until I became an autism activist, advocate, and blogger. When I started meeting my online friends, a lot of them do not identify with the gender they were born as, so as I put two and two together, it all made sense to me.
Personally, for me, I don’t, and have never struggled with my gender identity. I was born female, and have been identifying with that gender my whole life. I feel feminine, I act feminine, and I look feminine. I’ve gotten mistaken as a male before due to my short hair, and I hate that. I am a girl through, and through. I’m lucky that I don’t struggle with gender identity. Individuals who don’t identify with the gender they were born as are 3-6 times likely to be on the autism spectrum. Even undiagnosed autistics. The term “gender diverse” is used as an “umbrella term” because there’s a lot more things that have to do with hard times with your gender other than transgender. There’s also non binary, gender fluid, etc. There was a study at The University of Cambridge in the UK done by someone named Varun Warrier from 5 different data bases about autism and gender. He states that “all these findings across different datasets tend to tell a similar story”. The study also showed that most people on the spectrum have struggles with their gender identity. Another college professor, named Aron Janssen from Northwestern University also made a statement about autism and gender identity. She states that “but most previous studies have probed the relationship among people who sought gender-related medical care — often for gender dysphoria, a condition in which the ‘mismatch’ between gender identity and sex assigned at birth causes significant distress. That cohort doesn’t represent the full scope of gender-diverse people, says Aron Janssen, associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, who was not involved in the work”. The biggest data set they surveyed was 514,100 people who are autistic, and most of them said they were gender diverse, which autistic people/people with autism were 5% of the survey, which is 30,000. Gender identity also can be correlated with other things like ADHD, depression, schizophrenia, etc, but I’m going to stick with autism. I highly recommend reading the rest of this article because there’s SO much I didn’t cover. Mostly because this isn’t my work, so I’m going to link it below. Thanks for reading, and maybe I’ll see you next week! (Like I said, I’m trying to prioritize other things in my life right now). Email- [email protected] Instagram- @embracingmysuperpower Facebook- Embracing my Superpower https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/largest-study-to-date-confirms-overlap-between-autism-and-gender-diversity/?fbclid=IwAR3Tz97d5BMWYdI0VX35mUIM8uEsWmPyCBahMrvXghunOfFvXMiLzth4PGc Hey guys! Welcome back to my blog! For this weeks post, I will be talking about the “big reveal” aka telling people I have autism/am autistic. I’ve been super busy this month, and I’ve had a lot going on, so I haven’t had as much time to write, as I’ve been prioritizing other things, but I’ve had this piece of writing saved in my notes for a bit so I’m gonna post it this week. Right now I’m in the middle of a new piece for you guys which I’m going to post next week that I think you’ll really like!
Even though I am much more confident than I used to be, it’s still very hard to tell people this news about me because it’s pretty much my whole life. It affects everything I do on a daily basis. Everything I do revolves around my autism in some form. There is more to me than my autism and I hope people look beyond that, but it’s also a huge part of me. Much more than I’d like to admit tbh. A lot of people know I’m autistic/have autism since I have this blog, I post about it a lot, and things go around. But I don’t personally tell people from my mouth I have autism a lot. I reveal this big fact about myself pretty much right away because I don’t want to put my energy into someone for them to drop me because of my differences. The autism reveal always gives me a pit in my stomach. Even thinking about it. Other than my job interview 2 months ago, my most recent reveal was back in March. I met an NT online, and she is my only NT online friend, as the rest are ND and we met simply based on the fact that we’re both on the spectrum. Unlike her, (I will not be using her name for privacy reasons), we met in a different way, and not through my blog. After a few days of us connecting, I did the “big reveal”. As I was typing out the fact that I have autism/am autistic, I had a huge pit in my stomach. My body felt tense, but numb at the same time. I was so nervous. Especially since we don’t know each other personally, I was anxious about how she’d react, but now she’s one of my online friends that I’m closer with. Even out of some of the people I’ve connected with who are ND. I wondered if she had any experience with a person like me before. Believe it or not, not everyone has experience with people on the spectrum at all! You’re probably thinking that I’m a normal person and shouldn’t be scared about that, but the thing is, I don’t think like a “normal”, non autistic person. Sometimes my thinking rubs people the wrong way, even though I’m unintentionally doing anything bad, they don’t know that. They think it’s intentional like with an NT. I don’t know if I’m breaking NT rules of thinking because I’m not NT, and sometimes people forget that I am ND because of how normal I present myself. That’s how our brain is wired to think and we can’t help it. I wish I could control it, but sadly, I can’t, and as I’ve gotten older, that is something I’ve slowly started to come to terms with. Even though I did lots of social skills training growing up, I will always think like an ND person. The NT thinking style will never come to me, no matter how hard I try, and I know that may throw people off, and people may think I’m selfish for not wanting to think like the majority of the world, but I’m ALWAYS willing, and open to learning about the life of an NT. Just like some of you are willing to learn about the life of one of us, as you wouldn’t want to be us because a huge part of who you are would be taken away from you. Every rough patch I have with an NT is a HUGE learning experience and they all always help me grow as a person. No matter who it is, how I know the person, etc, the “big reveal” is always so difficult. The times when it’s hardest is when I’m revealing it to possible employers. It’s already hard enough for ND people to find a job, and stick with it without people knowing that we’re ND. I’m very nervous to apply for jobs because of this. The ones I applied to have all rejected me, and it’s hard to not think that my autism had something to do with it. When I apply for jobs and during interviews, I always feel so torn because I’m taking a risk no matter if I decide to tell the employer or not. If I say something, they may not hire me to begin with, but if I don’t, they could hire me, and once I do say something, they could let me go. As both of those are incredibly ableist, and illegal, people still do it anyways. This one was hard to write about, but I did it anyway because I feel like it’s a good learning post for my readers. I love all my blog readers so so much. I’ll see you all next week! Email- [email protected] Instagram- @embracingmysuperpower Facebook- Embracing my Superpower Hey guys! Welcome back to my blog! For my post this week, I will be writing about boundaries. (Like I stated in my week 53 post, I even need to set boundaries when it comes to what I post on my blog)! This topic hits home to me because of the boundaries I’ve heard from you NT’s so many times, but I want to write about it because it is important to set boundaries, and I’ve set boundaries in my life too, with both NT’s and ND’s. Especially with us, because we would never intentionally break anyone’s boundaries, it just happens with the way we think, and honestly, I’m used to it. I follow this autistic individual/individual with autism on Facebook and Instagram named Lyric, and they posted this article on their page, and they sum it up so perfectly, so I’m going to use it for this post. I’ll link their accounts below! We follow eachother on my blogs Instagram, which that is below too, per usual!
*DISCLAIMER- This is an opinion based article but I agree with them 100%, and I’m going to write my take on it!* Because of how I feel when boundaries are set with me, I have a hard time setting boundaries with other people. Especially other people on the spectrum because I know for a fact that they’re unintentionally doing it, and I know the struggle, so I give them more wiggle room than I would a neurotypical person. Please be patient with us. We aren’t bad people. If we do unintentionally break a boundary, it’s probably because we think you’re fucking awesome, and we want to be in your life (friendship or not), we just don’t know how to express that without coming off strong. With the NT people in my life (friends or not), I’ve learned to sit back, give them the reigns, and let them set, and lift boundaries if they want to. With my ND friends, I feel safer communicating with them since they understand me, and most likely do the same things as me. For people who are diagnosed with autism later in life, they may have a tough relationship with boundaries, because some of those individuals may not have the words to advocate for themselves and what they need, but even me being diagnosed at 3, I still have a tough relationship with boundaries because of the empathy autistic people/people with autism have. It’s hard for me to come to terms with my personal needs, considering it’s been engraved into my brain that I have to follow neurotypicals societal norms, and because of that, me and my peers personal needs are pushed to the side. And we’re known as selfish?? “When you have a need that other people do not understand very well, and you don’t have a clear explanation for why you need to do something differently, it can be hard to get your needs met”. An exact quote from Lyric themself. It’s so on point and so relatable, and basically what I just said in the last paragraph. Like I stated above, I know that a lot of ND people diagnosed later in life teach themselves boundaries once they find out they’re ND, and it finally makes sense to them why they’re different and may have not fit into the NT world as much. In grade school, I cared about nothing else other than fitting in, and my social life. I even prioritized this over my grades. Now that I’m in college, my academics always come first. My goal isn’t to make friends when I’m there, and to form relationships with my teachers, it’s to learn, and get out of there as soon as possible. It’s always an extra bonus if I find people I can connect with, maybe some turning into friendships! I’ve only had 1 1/2 in person classes, so I also haven’t had much time to meet people yet. That’s my boundary when it comes to school. When Lyric states that they started asking themself if they were doing what they did for themself or other people, like going to an event, or wearing a certain outfit. I felt that. Because of my desperate need to fit in, I did so many things I did not want to do in high school, and it’s no one else’s fault but my own. I only went to a few football games, but I did it just to get the experience and fit in, but I never really wanted to go to them. Same with my outfits, I look back at my old pictures sometimes and tell myself “damn I looked good, but did I feel good?” Even all of that is considered setting boundaries, which I never even thought of that being in that category until now. Before I end this post, I would like to say that I have never purposely broken any boundary that anyone has set with me, and I never will purposely. If I do break any, please don’t hesitate to tell me. It may hurt in the moment, and I’ll probably have a good cry, but whenever I’m communicating with someone, I always wonder whether or not I’m breaking their boundaries, so that weight will be lifted off of my shoulders. It’s always a learning lesson, and it helps me become a better communicator, and most importantly, a better person. I’m always learning something new everyday with you NT’s, and I’m empathetic so I want to learn. However, that doesn’t mean I want to be “converted” to an NT. I know how it feels when people break the boundaries I’ve set with them, and something I’ve learned recently is if they want to be in my life, they’d respect your boundaries. And of course, boundaries could be lifted depending on what may happen and how things progress with you and that person. Thanks for reading, and I might see you all next week! My life has been very busy lately, and my blog posts have been very last minute, so I can’t promise that I’ll be posting every week from this point forward. Email- [email protected] Instagram- @embracingmysuperpower Facebook- Embracing my Superpower https://neurodivergentrebel.com/2021/06/30/why-we-need-to-teach-boundaries-consent-to-autistic-people/?fbclid=IwAR06MPqVRz-Ih0O5SQjWdmo6G_BUqdWzvF9c1tP7uRqsc1u-On2ROdUxR5I https://instagram.com/neurodivergentrebel?utm_medium=copy_link https://m.facebook.com/NeurodivergentRebel/ |
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