Hey guys! Welcome back to my blog! This will be my last post of 2021. Isn’t it crazy how fast this year has gone?! I hope 2022 brings me more autism related opportunities, and more amazing things for my autism advocacy career!
For my post this week, I will be talking about meltdowns compared to tantrums. This post will mostly be about meltdowns, because that’s what we have most of the time compared to tantrums. You may not think they are different, but they are. It’s so annoying when people say to me “are you going to have a tantrum like a baby” or something along those lines. It is so ableist and wrong. The main difference between a tantrum and a meltdown is that tantrums are goal oriented, and meltdowns are not. Tantrums usually occur when a child doesn’t get their way. At times, a child may stop throwing a tantrum when someone isn’t paying attention to them. When the child realizes they won’t get what they want, the tantrum will stop. Unlike meltdowns, when someone isn’t paying attention to them, it’ll keep going. It’s not that easy as realizing you won’t get your way that the tantrum will stop. It’s easy for people to go back to the emotional state you were in before the tantrum, and it may seem like the tantrum never happened. Now that you know the difference between a tantrum and meltdown, it’s time to talk about what autistic meltdowns really are. Autistic meltdowns are when we lose control when we’re in an overwhelming situation among other causes. Autistic meltdowns can be internal or external. For me, most of my meltdowns as I’ve gotten older are internal. It is very rare that I will start crying in public and stimming to cope with that (week 31). When I’m overwhelmed, I don’t show it. I feel it in my body, though. The aftermath of meltdowns can last a couple days, which may cause us to feel burnout. (Week 69). There are 4 stages of a meltdown. The first one is the trigger stage. This is the stage when there are triggers to the upcoming meltdown. The trigger may not be noticeable all the time. It may be something going on inside our heads we don’t care to talk about with you. The second stage is the rumble stage. The rumble stage is when there could maybe be a chance to avoid the meltdown from happening, by using the proper coping strategies. During the rumble stage, you may start to see some signs of a meltdown possibly getting ready to begin. Some of those are rapid breathing, curling up, increased heart rate, etc. To prevent the meltdown from actually happening, use things like a weighted blanket, or apps that make you feel calm. The third stage is the meltdown itself. There’s not much to explain to this. The fourth and final stage is the de-escalation stage. This is when you recover from a meltdown. This stage may take awhile depending on how tired we feel from the meltdown. It helps us recover if we spend time in a dark room, use stim toys, or engage with our special interests! So that’s about it for this post. Per usual, I attached the links below that I used for this post. As always, thank you so much for reading and I’ll see you all next year! ;) Email- [email protected] Instagram- @embracingmysuperpower Facebook- Embracing my Superpower Tik Tok- @embracingmysuperpower https://www.instagram.com/p/CR9AID2sXMO/?utm_medium=copy_link https://www.instagram.com/p/CSpQyHcsmNb/?utm_medium=copy_link
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Hey guys! Welcome back to my blog! For this weeks post, I will be writing about autism, and it’s connection to music. As you can tell, autism is connected to lots of different things lol.
As most of you know, lots of people with autism/autistic people like structure, predictability, and even rhythm, too! Music provides just that. Not only that, music helps us feel in control, mostly when we listen to the same song on repeat. We like listening to songs we know because unlike the world we live in, it has predictability. We may have a hard time picking up on social cues, but music is something we can always count on, even if the rest of the world may be chaotic. For us, music can help us with our emotions. Autistic people/people with autism struggle with identifying our emotions. The scientific name for that is “alexithymia”, and I will definitely be writing about this for a future blog post, so stay tuned for that! Because of alexithyma, we may gravitate towards sad songs when we’re sad, or happy songs when we’re happy. It’s also a communication tool as well, believe it, or not! When we’re having sensory overload with everything going on around us, music may help some of us balance it all out. Lots of autistic people/people with autism have headphones on in public for lots of different reasons. For example, if they’re watching a video, listening to music, or noise cancelling. We are not being rude by doing that. It’s our way to cope with overwhelming situations. You’re the rude one if you don’t let us cope in ways that are helpful to us. Music can also be a special interest to some (week 29). Some people with autism/autistic people can have a special interest be a certain band or artist they love. This is also helpful to us because we may make friends with people who like the same bands and artists as us. Music also helps people with autism/autistic people because it is a constant in our lives. People come and go, but music is always there when you need it, and we need, and love consistency in our lives. Some people may use music to focus. Personally for me, it depends. Usually music makes my focusing worse, but when I write blog posts, I almost always listen to music. I am right now, ironically lol, but I’m powering through this! Music hurts my focus most of the time because I spend too much time focusing on the lyrics and singing them in my head. I can remember random lyrics from songs I learned years ago, but not what I learn in school 2 seconds before lol, the struggle. So that’s about it for this post. Like always, thank you so much for reading, and I’ll see you all next week! Also, don’t forget to check out the Instagram posts I used to help me with this blog post! Email- [email protected] Instagram- @embracingmysuperpower Facebook- Embracing my Superpower Tik Tok- @embracingmysuperpower https://www.instagram.com/p/CQByiqEsEe1/?utm_medium=copy_link https://www.instagram.com/p/CRD2JIEsM8U/?utm_medium=copy_link Hey guys! Welcome back to my blog! For this weeks topic, I will be writing about something called autistic burnout. We all feel burnt out from time to time, but for people with autism/autistics, burnout has a different meaning, and different effects for us compared to an NT person. You guys may think we’re making bigger deals out of things than we should because some of you may think we experience burnout the same way you do, but that’s far from the case. Autistic burnout is a lot different than non autistic burnout, and here’s why…..
Burnout in general can happen to anyone. However, autistic people/people with autism are more prone to it because of the stress of living in a world that doesn’t revolve around us and our needs. We have to work 10x as hard as NT’s to do everyday tasks We have to live in a world all about NT’s and that can be tiring to navigate, such as you guys’ social cues, and hiding when we’re having sensory overload because it could be known as selfish, manipulative, or rude. Same with all other autistic traits. This can lead us to be really tired, and fatigued, which in turn, leads to autistic burnout. Other causes of autistic burnout can be stress, being sick, etc. We may be experiencing burnout if we show signs of being “more autistic” (aka taking our masks off. Week 19), lack of self care, and motivation, sensory overload, and meltdowns more often, sleeping more, etc. Autistic burnout isn’t easy to recover from. Sometimes burnout can last for weeks or months, which is partially why I took a month long break back in October. Now that I’m working, I’ve been feeling more burnt out lately. I love my job, and love kids, but they can be a lot sometimes, and I need to recharge when I get home, and most of the time, writing is not included in that plan, so breaks from blogging may happen more often now. Some strategies that may help us with autistic burnout are engaging in our special interests, setting boundaries, routines, and lots, and lots of rest! So that’s about it for this post. I have lots of Instagram posts linked below that you guys can look at all about autistic burnout. Thanks for reading, and I’ll see you all next week! (I hope. I may get too burnout to write lol) Email- [email protected] Instagram- @embracingmysuperpower Facebook- Embracing my Superpower Tik Tok- @embracingmysuperpower https://www.instagram.com/p/CXBiT3bMKFL/?utm_medium=copy_link https://www.instagram.com/p/CWiEMqQPQUX/?utm_medium=copy_link https://www.instagram.com/p/CWXXUcJPhvM/?utm_medium=copy_link https://www.instagram.com/autieselfcare/p/CSwIV4Nslsw/?utm_medium=copy_link https://www.instagram.com/reberrabon_bon/p/CVL3jX9BniQ/?utm_medium=copy_link https://www.instagram.com/actuallyautisticalien/p/CT4CT6isj87/?utm_medium=copy_link Hey guys! Welcome back to my blog! For this weeks topic I’ll be posting about something called infodumping, and oh my….. this is something I do BIG TIME! Some people may say I need to work on stuff like this, not knowing that it’s an autistic trait, so therefore, I don’t necessarily need to work on it. However, to fit in with NT’s I’ll tell them I need to work on it if I’m apologizing to them about making them mad for doing this. Aka people who consider long messages as breaking boundaries. As you guys hopefully know, we never intend to break anyone boundaries, and if we do, we beat ourselves up about it for days, weeks months, or years. (Week 56). All I’m doing is trying to stick up, and advocate for myself, which is what I was taught to do, but that breaks some peoples boundaries, I guess. A little sad, don’t you think?
Infodumping, also known as speaking in paragraphs is something autistics/people with autism do when it comes to talking about their special interests (week 29). Personally, I think infodumping can also be telling someone you don’t really know very well, or at all your entire life story. It’s not uncommon for autistics/people with autism to trust and open up to someone easily. If a person shows the slightest bit of kindness, some of us may do that. But on the other side of things, we may act completely closed off towards a new person, and think them being kind is fake because of past social traumas. Autism has been one of my special interests since I started making this blog. I now want to talk about it all the time, and want to educate people on it, and I’m always thinking about what blog topics to write about. Some people may not consider this (and the paragraph below) infodumping but I think it is. Infodumping can also be known as an autistic love language (which is on my blog schedule for an upcoming post). It’s one of our ways to show you that we want to engage in conversation with you about something that makes us excited. NT’s may view this as socially awkward, annoying, and inconsiderate since they think we don’t care about what they have to say, but that’s not true at all, we just have a lot to share and are excited about it! It’s a way for us to connect with you! Personally, I would be flattered if someone sent me a long thing of stuff they like because it shows that they want to connect with me, and personally, sending long messages to me isn’t breaking any of my boundaries! However, something I’ve learned recently, because I actually dealt with this is that sending long things can lead to even more misunderstandings. When we over explain ourselves during a misunderstanding, it may cause NT’s to misunderstand us even more. It’s a never ending cycle. We seriously can not win with you people. This just goes to show that our communication skills can differ from you THAT much! Rip to the friendship I lost recently because of this. I’m not saying I didn’t do anything wrong, but her being rude to me about my different way of communication is so ableist, and wrong. So that’s it for this post. I’m going to be attaching some great posts I found about Infodumping on Instagram, which I used some for this post. Thanks for reading and I’ll see you all next week! I love all of my blog readers so dearly! Email- [email protected] Instagram- @embracingmysuperpower Facebook- Embracing my Superpower Tik Tok- @embracingmysuperpower https://www.instagram.com/p/CWWdHsWMdlc/?utm_medium=copy_link https://www.instagram.com/p/CDT6fwlnOFL/?utm_medium=copy_link https://www.instagram.com/p/CVbFtOZP_vN/?utm_medium=copy_link https://www.instagram.com/p/CS-GhygodwA/?utm_medium=copy_link |
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