Unlearning conformist bigotry is so weird when you've been entrenched in it and brainwashed with it since you were a child. Instead of all those triggers at the world tells you you should be weirded out by, you now have to take that and flip that into celebration

It's very freeing but that freedom is also mildly anxiety inducing as you have to re-learn boundaries of what is actually unacceptable. No, the person showing their interests full blown is perfectly fine and a good thing. Yes, the "cool" people mocking people over being themselves should be viewed as toxic and are not cool at all. Etc.

Hi. I'm TOO MUCH.

I've spent a lifetime making myself smaller for everyone.

Making myself the version of me that was most useful and comfortable for everyone around me.

And I *HAVE* to stop before I disappear.

I wrote about learning to TAKE UP SPACE: https://fromemily.com/space-taking-defiance/

Maybe you've made yourself smaller too? Let's TAKE UP SPACE together.

@actuallyautistic

RFK Jr. Set to Launch Disease Registry Tracking Autistic People

https://newrepublic.com/post/194245/rfk-jr-disease-registry-track-autistic-people

@actuallyautistic
And two hours after NY Mam's weekly phone call, I can definitely say that & has done a number on me. Still totally burned out from it & the frelling Waiting mode before it.

I'm just going to have to call tomorrow & Tuesday my weekend. Just me, my chocolate eggs & I… well, okay probably some Mastodon too.

@lifewithtrees
I think it’s SO important to celebrate executive function/self-care victories.

I feel like the “everyday life” stuff takes a Herculean effort to maintain & attend to with my #ActuallyADHD #ActuallyAutistic brain.

I used to think I was weak & messy & irresponsible (even though I kept things “kinda together” mostly by force).

Now I try to remind myself how remarkable it is that I even feed & clothe myself

@actuallyadhd @actuallyautistic

Interview for promotion tomorrow. Queue the internal screaming. Very glad one of the two likes me because I guarantee you I will fuck this up somehow, I do NOT do well placed on the spot. Time to over-prepare and then forget everything...

Hi. I'm terrified.

I've been trying to make my own space on the web for years. And I've been stuck. Badly.

But today is my birthday. And I refuse to let another year pass without putting something—anything—out there

So here it is in all its messy glory. My first post on my barely-there #website: https://fromemily.com/hi-im-terrified/

It's not great. But it's okay...enough

And I hope it means something to someone

@actuallyautistic

Hi. I'm terrified.

I've been trying to make my own space on the web for years. And I've been stuck. Badly.

But today is my birthday. And I refuse to let another year pass without putting something—anything—out there.

So here it is in all its messy glory. My first post on my barely-there #website: https://fromemily.com/hi-im-terrified/

It's not great. But it's okay...enough.

And I hope it means something to someone.

@actuallyautistic

I’ve been trying my best to put on a brave, positive, face/mask. But it becomes clear I need to accept that I’m having a lot of trouble with the house selling and especially the apartment rental process. I assume it’s my AuDHD, but I need regularity and consistency, and the current state is anything but. It’s hard also to be told I was denied or failed repeatedly, and getting my hopes up many times.

Hopefully I’m near end game so I can find my stability and peace again.

Hope this might help someone else in some small way.

@actuallyautistic @actuallyadhd #ActuallyAutistic #ActuallyADHD #MovingResidences

@actuallyautistic A few weeks in, I'm starting to see: this is and will be a long journey requiring me to understand myself more deeply than ever before. If I do not, I will remain as disabled as I am now. When I have a small success, identifying a (seemingly) new trigger, I am now seeing it as an invitation to let something go.

Letting go is not easy but it is easier than confrontation. There will certainly be times to confront but I will choose those; confrontation requires more energy and has a higher cost.

Sensory unmasking is brutal. It is almost like learning how to ride a bike all over again but without training wheels. But I am learning.

Been playing on https://www.erionmud.com and am thoroughly enjoying the crafting system. Having the option to just work uninterrupted, in familiar patterns, appeals to my #ActuallyAutistic need for structure and familiarity, while when my #ActuallyADHD side wants novelty, I can go wander the realm and see what pops up. And if I need something, I can make it myself, darn it! LOL If you try it out and need some pointers, I'm usually up there as Tamryn, so feel free to ask me anything.

***Hashtags Here:***
#ActuallyAuDHD #MUDs #MUD #Gaming #MultiUserDungeon #Neurodivergent

Question for other #ActuallyAutistic people and also #ActuallyADHD:

[Long post due to lots of context]

When there is a change to my routines - even if it’s an expected change that has been planned for days or even months in advance - I can feel something like “anticipation” until I’m back to familiar routines. This is also true when starting a new routine until it feels familiar.

The “anticipation” is strange as it manifests as if it’s anxiety with all the physical signs, but the word “anxiety” does NOT feel right to me at all.

I know it is definitely related to “uncertainty”. And that’s true even when I have a very good idea of how the change in routine will pan out (i.e. I have low levels of uncertainty, not always high). So this also excludes catastrophising MOST of the time because I already know nothing awful will happen.

If I can’t predict how the change of routine will unfold then I find my brain tries to calculate ALL the possible outcomes - good, bad or indifferent - and try to prepare for as many of them as possible. This response seems learned; I’ve been in situations when I’ve had an unexpected routine change in the past and been unprepared which led to awful outcomes. After those events, I have often reflected and seen that it might have been possible to predict what happened and prepare to a reasonable degree. So that’s what I do now. If this is catastrophising, then it ALSO includes the BEST possible outcomes and everything in between. So it’s not straight forward, anxiety-driven catastrophising which is focused only on the negative.

I really wanted to learn more about autistic “anticipation” as it relates to routine changes, or even “anxiety” in response to routine changes (even though anxiety doesn’t sound like the right word for me), but I couldn’t find much online.

So, do any of you have any good online resources that could help me understand myself better when it comes to this? (I may want to share a resource with a neuro-affirming therapist in future so an online resource would be great.) Could be blogs, articles, videos, etc. I’m not great with podcasts unless there is a full transcript.

Or, do you have any personal insights that you could share with me that might help me understand this better?

Key to note here: I can understand the anticipation or anxiety if something potentially bad might happen (classic anxiety / catastrophising) but I ALSO feel this way when I KNOW the routine change should bring about normal life things, just slightly differently. I.e. nothing bad and there are even benefits to the routine change! So this is the part I am most stuck on and wanting to change… if it’s even possible.

Phew! Long post. Please feel free to ask any clarifying questions. Alexithymia is common for us autistics so this question might not be easy to understand, and that’s okay

#AskingAutistics @actuallyautistic

True ADHD story…

For a good hour I was working on consolidating the tabs in my browser.

I closed lots of them. But when I finished there were actually more than when I began.

People always say ADHD is a superpower. It some ways it is. But in other ways it’s a lot of WTF moments.

Some people are so _poisonous_ that not even understanding them is an effective _antidote_.

How does one recognize whether or not what one experienced was narcissistic abuse?

It's not like one can ask the hypothetical abuser. They will deny it. Is learning about the patterns of narcissistic abuse and subsequently recognizing how they show up in one's lived experience the best one can do?

I find that a very unsatisfactory conclusion but it does seem like the best one can do. I probably lived in a relationship with at least narcissistic abuse patterns. And the unsolvable ambiguity of it all bothers me.

I feel this must be a deeply autistic experience: the disbelief when people actually try to convince you that they didn't mean what they said. And I'm not talking subtext, I'm talking about the grammatical meaning of their verbatim words and sentences.

And then you ask them to clarify and through a convoluted sequence of justifications they end up at "see? And this is why I couldn't possibly have meant this!".

Like wat? Why did you say/write it then in the first place? So fucking confusing. But maybe the explanation really is that autistic people choose their words much more carefully. It's certainly my lived experience.

#neurodivergent #neurodivergence #ADHD #actuallyADHD #Autism #autistic #actuallyAutistic #AuDHD #actuallyAuDHD @actuallyautistic @actuallyaudhd