Sophie 🎲🏳️⚧️I’m still a huge mess lol, but now I am actually developing techniques to avoid burnout! It’s so exciting!
I’m exhausted, but excited and optimistic! It’s wild!
What the fuck, not everyone has visual snow????
Are you fucking kidding me?! Whaaaaaaaaat the hell! 🤯
This Wikipedia image almost feels like an attack lol, but it is cool to have a name for the little white dots that skate around my eyes when I look out a window (shame the name is gross tho)
Anyway my first memory of having visual snow is in second year at school when I told my classmates that I could “see the air”.
Anyway this isn’t an explicitly autistic thing, but it’s apparently it’s pretty common among autistic people and I had no idea there were people who just… don’t see it.
I feel like everyone should ask themselves “could I be autistic?” and taking just a little time to research.
It would solve so many problems:
1. Everyone would understand autism better
2. Fewer autistic people spending years thinking something is wrong with them and not knowing why
3. I stop having to fight the urge to personally tell specific people in my life that maybe they should think about it
Like, I try not to think about whether someone I know might be autistic because obviously it’s none of my business, but it’s hard not to when going over memories and thinking about distinct autistic things “yeah but X does that too”. And I know some people are going to be more resistant to the possibility if they feel confronted by it or that it’s imposed on them.
But also, the realisation that I’m autistic has been SO GOOD for me and such a huge relief, who wouldn’t want that for people they love?
Anyway, what I’m saying is please normalise the idea that everyone should give the possibility some consideration and that it’s okay whatever conclusion they come to (or whether they decide to even say)
Seriously though, that urge to tell specific people. It’s so strong, especially with family. How the fuck do I even deal with that?
Maybe I just… come out as autistic to them and drop some info to explain it… that also happens to list common traits they might notice? Okay no that feels manipulative that’s definitely not it.
btw if you know me, you’re reading this and thinking it’s about you - trust me it isn’t.
But also, everyone should give it some thought so I’m not going to tell you not to consider it.
Anyway in other news I really should get some sunglasses because I was just looking at a page in a sudoku book thinking “damn, I wish this book had a dark mode”
Okay, right, I mentioned near the start of the thread that I’d have some thoughts on stims vs tics and I think I’ve figured out what they are.
The TL;DR is, I think they are the same thing with different levels of severity.
Which is to say some things I’d call stims, some I’d call tics, but there is an overlap where they are some degree of both. I think both serve the same purpose (in me at least)
The distinction I’ve found other people say is stims are voluntary, tics are involuntary. I think this probably comes from people with one condition not wanting to step on the toes of another, to stay in their lanes. Which is super fair and admirable, I just think these lanes are reeeeeaaaaallly close and they seem to overlap.
What I’d say about this distinction is voluntary/involuntary is a false binary, things are much more interesting than that!
For tics it’s pretty accepted that if you feel them coming you can suppress them (for a time), otherwise they come out without warning. That already is some variable stuff!
I’ve also heard about stims that if you need to stim you’re going to stim one way or another, even if it’s not super apparent, that’s not clearly voluntary either, you can sim by choice or unconsciously.
All this stuff is way more murky than most people will talk about when making distinctions between stims and tics!
Anyway now I’ll jump into my personal tics/stims discovery journey:
A little while after starting antidepressants I noticed myself ticcing, it started fairly simple but progressed to a variety of complex tics including vocal tics. tbh, it had me really worried something was scarily wrong with my brain!
After a while though, I realised I’d always done things like this, but I’d just kept it tapped down and private in a way I couldn’t do anymore.
I sort of learned that in *some* cases, I could redirect a tic into something else, so instead of shouting “fuck” in the GP’s waiting room, I could wave my hand are make little mouth pops.
These could take pressure off the urge to tic until I was somewhere I could do it safely.
I realise now I was less redirecting a tic than stimming to manage the stress that was prompting it.
When I started thinking I could be autistic I allowed myself to stim much more, and something I’ve noticed in the time since is that as a result I’m ticcing A LOT less.
I am definitely still ticcing, but I haven’t had my tics exhaust me for a while now, it used to be every day.
My current theory is that I was unconsciously stimming my whole life, “oh I always ticced but I was keeping it down” nope that was probably stimming.
But when I started the antidepressants, my guess is they did something to change how I regulate, I had no vent for stimulation in my body and it became tics.
And I think that’s all it comes down to, they are both just ways of regulating this energy in your body/brain but they just have different levels of urgency. Stims are usually lower urgency so you have greater control on how they come out, tics usually have much greater urgency so they can be completely unexpected and uncontrollable. And of course there is a whole world of middle ground in between the extremes.
Anyway those are my thoughts rn, they may change over time but this is what seems true to me at least.
Omg I just remembered one of the biggest stims I did as a kid: chewing/sucking my sleeves and collar. I ruined a few of my school jumpers and would often have damp marks from it. I remember my mum telling me to stop, I guess I did?
I feel really nostalgic about it now somehow.
Took out an old hoodie and look, physical evidence!
Imposter syndrome can choke on a shit!
ngl this stim is still S-tier for me.
though I can't explain why most food is disgusting to me but fabric in my mouth is just fine.
since I brought up a ranking, here is my tier list for stims I've rediscovered, were already doing without realising, or tried out just to see:
S: Bite/suck on thick fabric, Shake fists hard
A: Rattle/roll dice, Flap hands, Music, Rain Sounds, Jumping
B: Spin in circles, Rock side to side, Touch thumbs to fingers
C: Sway, Speed cube (sexy move), Pop-it
D: Alternate snapping fingers as fast as possible, Leg bounce, Tap face/head
F/Hell: Shiver, Blink hard, Scratching, Bite skin
Different stims seem to help with different things, and sometimes I recognise I'm starting to stress and haven't been stimming, so I'll have to cycle a few until I pick one that helps (sometimes hitting ones that make it worse on the way D:). It's much easier when the right one just comes unconsciously.
Also there is no E tier, this is partly due to the nature of stims, but mostly due to me not proof-reading ever.
okay, everyone stop,
you can get bracelets to chew on.
chewelry.
CHEWELRY.
This is a fucking game changer.
Game changer?
Wait…
My autism, and all the resources that can help me… they were… !
Learning that not being good at reaching out to friends but still considering them friends even if you don’t get in touch for years is an autistic thing.
It’s wild how much of my personality can just get filed into this one box.
Also makes me feel bad for allistic people tbh, thinking someone isn’t your friend just because they haven’t spoken to you must really suck.
But also I guess if you’re reaching out to friends all the time maybe it’s not an issue? Seems like one of those cases where some neurotypes work well together but others have a bunch of incompatible kinds of communication.
Definitely aspects of my experience I don’t like too though of course. I have a regular group chat with some friends every week, I love it. But if everyone else stopped I doubt I’d try to bring everyone back together even though it would make me happy to keep seeing them. There’s no logic to it but it’s how I’d be, I rely on others to be social. Which is a problem when I’m super particular about what social stuff I am okay with.
This is probably also why all the D&D games I’ve run fail, when the party misses a couple of weeks I don’t have it in me to arrange a new session.
tbh I enjoy being a player more anyway, so I guess that’s fine.
btw if you’re looking for someone to join your online group… 🙋
I’m just going to say it: I love my autism.
So glad I got all those vaccinations as a kid.
.
.
.
(The second line is a joke, though I am glad for that for unrelated reasons!)
Ooooooh, so “scripting” is the name for the garden of dialogue trees I keep in my mind for various situations.
tbh it’s super illogical for me to keep such a thing because like every conversation goes into unplanned territory after a couple of branches, and then I’m back to “shit fuck think of what to say and how to say it and then find the right time to say it before the moment is lost and I lose my talk buffer and get discussion lag.”
(Discussion lag is a term I just thought of but wow I wish I had it sooner, so you can have it if you like. It’s for everyone who deals with a conversation moving on before they have time to process it and add input ❤️)
Walked into a supermarket for the first time since lowering my dissociation with my body and almost died.
Okay that is an exaggeration, but it was definitely some kind of fucking assault. Holy shit. Did they design these things to overwhelm literally every sense?
YouTube recommended this to me (presumably because I’ve watched hbomberguy before and will now watch anything with ‘autism’ in the title).
Anyway it’s a really good video that has nothing to do with autism, but does highlight the foundation of the anti-vax movement and WOW I had no idea that it was such a shitshow!
Vaccines and Autism: A Measured Response
People erroneously say that autistic people can’t feel empathy, which is fucking staggering when you look at the behaviour of Wakefield et al.
Like, it’s not easy to highlight a real person that is unambiguously evil but that right there is a one. If getting vaccinated did shift your brain to be unlike his, then that alone is reason enough to take every single shot possible.
So something I’ve been thinking about lately is autism as a disability, which I’m sure is a topic with no shortage of controversies and I’m still figuring out where it sits with me and where I sit with it, if that makes sense.
Since I began research I’ve been skimming stuff around the social model of disability and it makes A LOT of sense to me…
I don’t think I’ve felt like being autistic has disabled me at all. Maybe, ever? Any time I think of personal struggles involving it, I was disabled because of autism, not *by* it. For example, going to the supermarket today; I theoretically am completely able to go there and get what I need, but what made it difficult was the crowd, the lights, the clutter, the sounds, etc. The obstacles came from without, not within.
If it was normal that to walk in to the supermarket you had to solve a sudoku problem I’d not have any issues, but that would severely reduce the effective ability of many others. That’s the essence of the social model of disability as far as I can tell, that society disables.
But also that doesn’t feel *completely* right, because when I have a tic attack, I do feel like it is disabling me. I can’t do what I want, I can’t exist as myself. The tics (unprompted) disable me.
And I know that autism can be like that for some people (and might even be indirectly like that for me, if it is related to my tics or [other issues I’m not ready to look at rn]), it’s a wiiiiiide spectrum after all.
Realising I am autistic has been so liberating for me, but I know it can also be a struggle for people in ways that aren’t just social (but could be improved with social change!), and balancing those two perspectives is… interesting.
A common tendency among autistic people (and everyone else too, by my observation) is to fall for dichotomous thinking, to categorise things in black and white, right and wrong, correct and incorrect.
At first, through this lens, it seems like autism as a disability, autism as wonderful and flawless, the social model of disability - it seems these things can’t all be right… but I think they are. Stuff is just more nuanced and also, out of my experience and learning so far.
Which is all to say: I am autistic, but I’m not comfortable calling my autism a disability personally. But I fully respect those who consider their own autism to be a disability or disabling.
And I think importantly: I can still see the ableism that effects people with autism, myself included. A lot of it has hurt me and disabled me, more than my autism ever did. I’ll fight that when I can, regardless of whether I consider my own autism a disability. ❤️💪
(These posts are 1000000% NOT licence for anyone to say autism isn’t a disability. Again, this is *my* thread about *my* thoughts and experiences with and about autism.)
Saw this in a compilation and it was so good I had to track down the original to link it https://vm.tiktok.com/ZGJuaJXeK/
Was thinking about how any time I anthropomorphise something, there is no going back and I will care about it’s feelings forever (sometimes I worry that the moon gets lonely all far away and that everyone forgets to talk to her, so whenever I see her I always say hi.)
Anyway I checked and yep this kind of thing is common with the tism.
Now that I think about it I identify with the moon a lot. She keeps her distance, is pretty unusual for a moon, formed in a traumatic situation, observes everything but doesn’t get involved, avoids being touched (and probably didn’t like it when it happened), and is PALE AS FUCK.
… daydreaming is a kind of stim 🤯
Looks like this notion is a little (tho only a little) controversial and not properly researched, but I have noticed since stimming more frequently in meatspace I’ve been dipping into immersive daydreams MUCH less.
I’m pretty confident it’s true though!
(Not that I’d trust research on daydreams tho tbh, rn it is mostly about “maladaptive daydreaming” which as a concept is fucking bullshit and I’ve talked about it before too much anyway, which is why I’ll say “immersive” rather than “maladaptive” - same reason I’ll call autism a condition and not a disorder.)
Anyway so yesterday when I went to the supermarket, I picked up some cheap ANC headphones (£35, which is a lot, but cheaper than most ANC). I was expecting them to be meh at best, but they are my new favourite thing. They have a button I can press and 95% of background noise just disappears. I don’t even have to play sound through them. Plus, rare thing for headphones but they fit around my ears comfortably!
Only downside I’ve found so far is they don’t cancel my tinnitus lol, which is more noticeable when everything else is gone, but since the tinnitus itself comes and goes it’s not too bad, I can just play music and/or rain sounds when I need to hear something else.
In a few autism (well, AuDHD mostly) tiktoks the mostly clean clothes pile is mentioned like it isn't an everyone thing... that can't be right...
wtf do neurotypical people do with clothes they only wear for a chill couple of hours???? Anywhere but the mostly clean pile would be absurd!
Overheard while visiting family "oh I must be tired, my words won't come."
and I'm like 👀
Doing all I can to avoid diagnosing people around me but it's so wild the signs and language for things like becoming non-verbal have been there the whole time and nobody notices.
So since checking in with my senses, I often feel like I did as a kid again. For both good and bad.
A nice warm breeze feels the way it used to, a squashy plush or familiar-feeling carpet gives a genuine sense of comfort, I can actually smell sweet things again sometimes.
But also, food is terrifying again, in a way that I'd forgotten about. A loud truck or motorbike passing on the road outside can make me tense immediately. Some light bulbs are LOUD (to my ears AND eyes)
I think some of the unpleasant stuff is just because it is SO MUCH of a sensation, but also the last time I wasn't so physically dissociated was a pretty traumatic period, so some senses feel triggering. Which... sucks hard tbh.
I dunno, I'm more capable now in a lot of ways. The trauma stuff I can learn to manage, just thought I'd mention that even though I'm so glad to know myself better, it's still tough sometimes.
The dream: "Now I know I'm autistic I can manage my stimulation and avoid burnouts, shutdowns, and meltdowns! Never again!"
The reality: "I'm going to do the same stupid shit as before, but now I'll remember what problems are coming when it's too late to avoid them."
"Exercise is great for dealing with depression!"
I wonder how many people are just unknowingly in the middle of autistic burnout/shutdown and are using exercise as a stim 🤔
I guess, if it works then it works. Doesn't really matter why.
New hypothesis: the reason I sometimes can hear my tinnitus and sometimes can’t, is because my tinnitus is a meltdown siren.
Entirely possible that this isn’t how it’s working since I haven’t had time to test it, but wow I want it to be true. Something I can’t ignore saying “Stop, get to bed NOW.” would be a game changer.
ferunando@Sophie yeah *sigh* yeah... that's where i'm at. the only difference is that i'm starting to openly stim --in "lighter" ways-- at work, sometimes customers look me askance but last week i learned to shrug it off. in general getting back home with way more spoons than before.
Esme Povirk@Sophie This is how we feel about plurality (except we wouldn't use the word diagnose because plurality isn't a diagnosis).
@madewokherd yeah, there's so many common expressions that scream plurality "I'm of two minds." "Part of me wants to, but..." "listen to your inner child."
Like, come on!
Josh Grams@Sophie I very rarely wear clothes for only a couple of hours? I put them on in the morning, take them off to go to bed. Hooks by the door for jackets and long-sleeve t-shirts for layers as the temperature changes outside, certainly, but I think that's about it for short-term clothing for me...
Hmm, well, short-term events like singing a concert or something, but I haven't done that in over three years...
josh g.@Sophie relatable
@Sophie oh tinnitus, life long companion 😅. after i realized that bright places are loud to me --specially when already overloaded for other reasons-- and that the sun in my face makes it hard for me to hear what people are saying, i've begun to question if --at least a component of-- my tinnitus isn't some kind of "this is the background sound of lit-up things". i've been suggested those black-out eye masks, but haven't had the chance to get one yet 🤔🤷
@gureito oh I hope it works out for you! For my part I definitely get it even when it’s dark, though I suppose it could still be like a residual stimulation thing? I don’t really have an explanation for how or why it comes and goes
I’m Tired And Everything Hurts@Sophie Ohhh, this is interesting. I do a thing I like to call "going inside my own head for a while".
It's almost like going into some kind of standby mode while my brain plays out random scenarios or fanfiction versions of movies/games or whatever.
I've never considered it as a form of stimming until now.
@guffo I do the same thing! I think it can blur the lines between stimming, dissociation, and just like, a pastime- but I really think it is stimming a lot of the time!
clarity flowers@Sophie the thing that helped me accept it as both a disability AND a thing to be proud of was learning more about Deaf culture, where that contrast has been really extensively explored and written about.