keltik:

youmattered:

comfydummy:

(via cosmomoore)

prokopetz:

What y’all think ‘gifted child’ discourse is saying: I used to be special and now I’m not and that makes me sad.

What ‘gifted child’ discourse is ACTUALLY saying: The way many educational systems treat children who’ve been identified as ‘gifted’ is actively harmful in that it a. obliges kids to give up socialising with their same-age peers in favour of constantly courting the approval of adult ‘mentors’ who mostly don’t give a shit about them, b. demands that they tie their entire identity to a set of standards that’s not merely unsustainable, but intentionally so, because its unstated purpose is to weed out the ‘unworthy’ rather than to provide useful goals for self-improvement, and c. denies them opportunities to learn useful life skills in favour of training them up in an excruciatingly narrow academic skill-set that’s basically useless outside of an institutional career path that the vast majority of them will never be allowed to pursue.

(via oak23)

bestial-eyes:

✦ADHD is not a personality quirk

- some things that tag along with ADHD are:

        ~sensory processing disorder

        ~executive dysfunction

        ~poor fine motor skills

        ~sensory overloads (that lead to meltdowns)

        ~sensory seeking (self stimming)

        ~hyperfixations

        ~moderate to severe memory problems

        ~Rejection Sensitive Dysphoria- is an extreme emotional sensitivity and emotional pain triggered by the perception that one is being rejected, teased, or criticized. The emotional response is complete with suicidal ideation and people suffering from RSD often get misdiagnosed with serious personality disorders. RSD is only seen in people with ADHD and the emotional sensitivity/reaction is much more severe than that of a neurotypical person.

✦Some other “fun” ADHD things! 

          ~inability to regulate emotions

          ~no concept of time

          ~noticeable public stimming (resulting in stares from neurotypicals) 

          ~no impulse control

          ~insomnia

          ~listen but cannot absorb what is being said 

          ~no volume control 

          ~increased inability to focus when emotional

          ~difficulty stopping a task and transitioning to the next 

          ~social anxiety

          ~higher levels on generalized anxiety

          ~extremely forgetful 

          ~”all or nothing” mentality  

@ neurotypicals- some things to be aware of: 

- you cannot hyperfixate. only people who are neurodivergent can hyperfixate. please don’t use that word when describing your latest obsession :-)

- please don’t stare at neurodivergent people who are stimming in public

- be respectful of those who actually need fidget toys so they can subtly stim in public 

- if we forget something you tell us it is not because we don’t care, we just have a million other thoughts racing through our mind and no way to filter through them. 

- please be gentle with us. no don’t tip toe around us and treat us like we aren’t human, but be aware that even offhand comments can trigger RSD. no we aren’t being too sensitive, our brains are wired differently than yours. 

(via oak23)

cipheramnesia:

jenroses:

Have I told y’all about my husband’s Fork Theory? 

If I did already, pretend I didn’t, I’m an old.

So the Spoon Theory is a fundamental metaphor used often in the chronic pain/chronic illness communities to explain to non-spoonies why life is harder for them. It’s super useful and we use that all the time.

But it has a corollary. 

You know the phrase, “Stick a fork in me, I’m done,” right?

Well, Fork Theory is that one has a Fork Limit, that is, you can probably cope okay with one fork stuck in you, maybe two or three, but at some point you will lose your shit if one more fork happens. 

A fork could range from being hungry or having to pee to getting a new bill or a new diagnosis of illness. There are lots of different sizes of forks, and volume vs. quantity means that the fork limit is not absolute. I might be able to deal with 20 tiny little escargot fork annoyances, such as a hangnail or slightly suboptimal pants, but not even one “you poked my trigger on purpose because you think it’s fun to see me melt down” pitchfork.

This is super relevant for neurodivergent folk. Like, you might be able to deal with your feet being cold or a tag, but not both. Hubby describes the situation as “It may seem weird that I just get up and leave the conversation to go to the bathroom, but you just dumped a new financial burden on me and I already had to pee, and going to the bathroom is the fork I can get rid of the fastest.”

I like this and also I like the low key point that you may be able to cope with bigger forks by finding little ones you can remove quickly. A combination of time, focus, and reduction to small stressors that can allow you to focus on the larger stressor in a constructive way.

(via earlgraytay)

gaypeopletwitter:

earlgraytay:

margoisapest:

Nearly every autistic person on the face of the Earth has been groomed for abuse from an early age.

We don’t attract abuse by being idiosyncratic or sincere. To say that is to blame our personalities. To say that that is to make yet another attempt at getting us to suppress ourselves, ruining our emotional and physical health.

We don’t stumble into abuse because we’re naive or poor judges of character.  To say that is to infantilize us. To say that is to make yet another attempt at robbing us of our independence and agency, impoverishing our life experiences.

We find ourselves in toxic, abusive friendships and relationships because we are groomed for that shit by the authority figures in our lives who teach us how to behave and blend in while ignoring the nuances of interpersonal interaction - particularly the nuances of the sorts of interaction that happen when acquaintances become friends, when friends become close friends, or when our relationships with those friends become romantic and/or sexual. They simply don’t see those stages of relating as something we want, or, if we do want them, however desperately, they are dismissed as something that’s simply not in the hand we were dealt. We are taught only how to get by in shallow interactions, and left to trial and error should we wish to pursue anything beyond that.

Unfortunately, a lot of that “error” entails emotional, psychological, physical, and sexual abuse.

Not just that. 

A lot of the authority figures who try and teach autistic people how to ‘behave’ are mostly teaching us to behave ourselves. Not how to behave so that you can be successful in the world, not how to behave so that other people will like you, how to behave yourself so that you’ll be easy for the authority figures in your life will control.

I remember learning this process for disagreeing with authority figures, for example. You were only allowed to try to convince them that they were wrong once, calmly and politely, and then you were supposed to calmly acquiesce to whatever the authority figure said without question. Even if the thing that was wrong was ‘I’m on the verge of a meltdown and about to go nonverbal, I need to get out of here now’ or ‘the chronic illness I haven’t been diagnosed with yet is making my whole body hurt again and you said it was nothing the first time’. 

There was no information about how to deal with an abusive authority figure or an authority figure who was wrong but wasn’t willing to admit it. There was no information on, say, organizing a group of people who feel the same way to go and talk to the authority figure. Or on what the best way is to ask again after some time has gone by without badgering them. The thing and the whole of the thing was “you get one shot, and if that doesn’t work, that’s the end, henceforth and forever”.

If that’s your only script for dealing with conflict with authority figures, then how are you going to survive in the workforce (where your boss can be clearly wrong about things sometimes, and yet will still need to know this)? If you learn to translate this process to other interpersonal relationships, how will you be able to keep yourself out of an abusive friendship or an abusive relationship? 

You won’t. But it makes you quiet and docile and easy to warehouse, so they teach kids this stuff.

theoriginalmkp:

I.

this is the first lesson you learn:
you are always wrong.

there is no electric hum buzzing through the air.
there is no stinging bite to the sweetness of the mango.
there is no bitter metallic tang to the water.

there is no cruelty in their laughter, no ambiguity in the instructions, no reason to be upset.
there is no bitter aftertaste to your sweet tea, nothing scratchy about your blanket.

the lamps glow steadily. they do not falter.

II.

this is the second lesson you learn:
you are never right.

you are childish, gullible, overly prone to tears.
you are pedantic, combative, deliberately obtuse.
you are lazy, unreliable, never on time.

you’re always making up excuses, rudely interrupting, stepping on people’s shoes.
you’re always trying to get attention, never thinking about anyone else, selfish through and through.

it’s you that’s the problem. the lamps are fine.

III.

this is the third lesson you learn:
you must always give in.

mother knows best. father knows best.
doctor knows best. teacher knows best.
this is the proper path. do not go astray.

listen to your elders, respect your betters, accept what’s given to you as your due.
bow to the wisdom of experience, the education of the professional, the clarity of an external point of view.

what do you know about lamps, anyway?

(via earlgraytay)