"In the world of #Palestinian activism, the plight of autistic people is often overlooked...Speaking about the plight of our #autistic friends and family members can loosen the clutches ever so slightly. In a world where Palestinians are constantly and aggressively silenced, these #voices [also] need to be heard."

https://www.middleeasteye.net/opinion/israeli-occupation-further-isolates-autistic-children-how

#autism #palestine #westbank

(#trauma also causes #neurodiversity as neuro pathways generate or reroute to respond, endure, and anticipate the new stimuli)

Inhaltswarnung: mh, question Zum Öffnen/Schließen klicken

Why is it always so stressful trying to make a complaint to a company/bank these days?🤔

Well,
1) Sending me a message via online banking message about their branch closing in a town I haven't lived in for 14 years, even though they put my correct/current address at the top as if it were a posted letter 🤦🤦‍♂️🤦‍♀️.
2) All details of alternatives in the old town I've not lived in for over a decade, present!
3) All details of alternatives in the current town I live in & have done for over a decade, tumbleweed has more presence.🤯

4) Online 24/7 help not working & hitting the Retry button just repeats the fail.😠
5) DDG to the rescue but could they(the bank) just give me a frelling postal address?
... Nope!
6) Find working online complaint page.
7) Yay! I should no in '...four days...' once I've completed this form.
8) Starts simple but then the Qs get more ambigious, my complaint might be to do with that option or it might not. If only there was a blue circle with one of these❕ that I could hover the mouse over for more info.😡📈
9) Finally done > SUBMIT
10) Nope, I missed something? Then why the F did it not show me when I was at that part of the FRELLING form⁉️📈🤬
11) Success❕ Or was it?
It will take 1 - 8 weeks before they get can deal with the thing & that long for them to get back to me about it.
What happened to FOUR DAYS❗🤬⁉️📈🤬

Guess I best forget about it so I can have a nice surprise in 1 - 8 weeks... or not 🤷.

#BusinessIncompetence #Incompetence #OnlineFail #IdiotsInCharge #Life #AutisticProblems #Autistic #ActuallyAutistic #Autism #AuDHD #ADHD

Found this great resource:
https://autisticgirlsnetwork.org/downloads/

You can download "passports" for free for yourself and/or someone you support who has autism. Generally geared towards girls, but this includes gender diverse individuals.

#autism #audhd #neurodiversity

I wrote a thing about being #ActuallyAutistic in the workplace, and how communication norms are ableist rubbish. This is me venting my spleen about an awful training thing I did yesterday.

https://write.as/therivercrow/neurodivergence-and-communication

#autism #AutisticAtWork

No, I'm not like your child. I'm Autistic, but I'm still human. Humans are a diverse species.

#ActuallyAutistic #autism #Autistic #AuDHD #neurodiversity #neurodivergent

"Neri Alvarado was working as a baker in Dallas, caring for his 15-year-old brother who has #autism. He even got a #tattoo celebrating “autism awareness month” in support of his younger sibling.

So #Trump — with no legal process whatsoever, in complete defiance of our #Constitution and the Bill of Rights — kidnapped him and deported him to one of the world’s most notorious prisons in #ElSalvador, citing the tattoo as justification."
https://hartmannreport.com/p/she-stepped-onto-a-sidewalk-in-boston-a74

#DonaldTrump #GOP #Fascism #News #US

Aha!

These ‘48 laws of power’ could go some way to explaining why autistics don’t do very well socially 🤣

⬇️

(From the bestselling '48 laws of power’ by Robert Greene)

#LawsOfPower
#48LawOfPower

#Society #Power #Capitalism #Wealth #Homelessness #Poverty #Intersectionality #Autism #ActuallyAutistic #Neurodivergent

Such an ableist book and article! #Autism, #ADHD, cancer, Lyme disease, etc. are not the same thing. 🤮 😡

I’m not sick, I’m #AuDHD and I had breast cancer.

Why The Guardian keeps publishing these ableist articles? ( rhetorical question)

@actuallyautistic @actuallyadhd

Heard this woman on radio diminishing the #Autism diagnosis, along with saying #ADHD does not exist in adults, and it has made me SO ANGRY. And she is getting huge media coverage.

@actuallyautistic @actuallyadhd

The Age of Diagnosis by Suzanne O’Sullivan review – do no harm | Health, mind and body books | The Guardian
https://www.theguardian.com/books/2025/mar/12/the-age-of-diagnosis-by-suzanne-osullivan-review-do-no-harm

Many such cases is all I can say about this. #Autism CC @ActuallyAutistic group

@actuallyautistic

It will soon be Autism awareness month, that wonderful time of the year when many autistics hit their foxholes screaming "incoming", or take to their bunkers and hide.

"But why?" I hear you ask. "Surely awareness is a good thing?"

Well, obviously yes, normally, but mostly, actually, no. Not in the way this normally pans out, anyway. Because this is the time of year when everything starts getting lit up blue and puzzle pieces start making their appearance and Autism Speaks articles rear their ugly, eugenic, heads. No matter how many times the vast bulk of the autism community explain that these symbols and the organisation that they are linked to, do not bloody speak for us and never sodding will.

Pity-me mothers parade their kids to showcase how terrible their lives are, or how there isn't enough help for their darling children. Which, whilst admittedly this is true for the kids, could be highlighted in better ways. Various celebrities and sports stars come out about the wonders of being diagnosed with autism and the huge change it has made in their pampered lives and puff pieces pop up everywhere about how someone succeeded because of their autistic superpower, or how they wouldn't be where they were now without it, or how someone's a hero, for standing up for their autistic friend. And editors across the land, slap themselves on their backs for such a wonderful job of awareness and here's to the next year and then silence once again falls.

OK, I may be slightly exaggerating this, but unfortunately not by as much as you might be thinking. So many times, even within the good articles and representation, there is the implicit message that only an official diagnosis can do this for you, which is a real kick in the teeth for everyone who has as much chance of getting one of those, as of winning the lottery. That this is something that is seen in us, rather than something that we can see ourselves. And all too often, even with the good stuff, it's always accompanied by the stock, what is autism? answers, from the internet. You know, the ones that just dryly quote the highlights of our disorder, in a way that none of us can actually recognise ourselves in and certainly don't help with others seeing us.

And this is the real problem with awareness month. It's all fine and dandy trying to increase awareness. But of what? Is it the problems and struggles, the difficulty of having autistic children, or being autistic in a world without support? The virtues of finally having your eyes opened to your autistic superpower? Of how the community and others could finally rally around you.

Or is it the different stories that finally allow others to see us, or even for us to finally see ourselves after decades in the dark. That allow the friend or neighbour, or workmate to maybe stop seeing you as the weird, or creepy, or even scary, person. But instead, someone who's just different, who sees and perhaps understands the world in a way that they don't. Not superpowered, or a burden, or broken in any way. Just yourself, just autistic. The stories that lead to acceptance and not just awareness.

#Autism
#ActuallyAutistic

‘For anti-vaccinationists, the holy grail is to add #autism to the schedule of compensable injuries under the US National Vaccine Injury Compensation Program, a system that offers a low-cost route to compensation for known vaccine side effects.’

https://eastangliabylines.co.uk/science/vaccines-and-autism-an-anti-vaccine-zombie-argument/?fbclid=IwY2xjawJGK4JleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHWoX9TwuUMOVdBFOPsGChO2mg9Ij8t6F9_c1ceIeMW4miBwUoniK8EJNTA_aem_ub7Ycw2Gb1bDL0WnSqpykg

original application. We’ll contact you to let you know the outcome."

Reference 59 is the #NDIS legislation 21 (3)
https://classic.austili.edu.au/au/legis/cth/consol_act/ndisa2013341/s21.html

So in fact it seems I got turned down because they couldn't process my application in time. How ridiculous. 😤🤯

#Autism #autistic #neurodiverse @actuallyautistic #AutisticBurnout #ActuallyAutistic
@Tooden

@actuallyautistic

Much of the difficulty in realising and accepting that we are autistic much later in life comes, in part, from the fact that we have been exposed to so many ableist stereotypes of it through our lifetime. The rest from the reality that much of the information we may have, is either outdated, or such that we struggle to see ourselves in it. It means that we have to spend a considerable amount of effort both in digging out and dealing with our internalised ableism, a somewhat ongoing process for many of us, and also educating ourselves on the reality of what autism is.

Such education quickly reveals that what it mostly is, is a spectrum of difference. It really is true that no two of us are alike. It may only be in the difference in which something affects us, its intensity, or the degree to which it affects our ability to function or cope. Or it may be in the aspects that we experience that others don't and vice versa. We also have to realise that whilst autism is often described by the way that it manifests, in terms of the various traits associated with it. That doesn't mean that you have to manifest all those traits to be autistic. Nor does it mean that there is one and only one way that those traits can look. Each of us, in this, really are different.

To further muddy these waters. The older we are when we begin this process, the longer we've obviously lived. In other words, the longer we have lived with what being autistic meant for us. Not by name obviously, but in terms of the ways we've learnt, as often as not the hard way, what we can and can't do, how we struggle, when we don't, our strengths and our weaknesses. And we haven't just ignored this, as much as possible we've built our lives around it. Obviously not ideally, we didn't always have the knowledge to be able to set the right boundaries, or the paths we should, or shouldn't walk down, regardless of what others wanted from us or even how we thought we should be. But still, as much as we could, we walked a path that was a reaction to what we were. That meant that over time we could learn to hide and compensate, to try and take advantage of our strengths and fear our weaknesses, adjust and compensate. In fact to continually layer the products of false awareness and understandings, of guess work and trial and error, over our behaviours, like papering over a crack, until the original could hardly be seen any more and we could at least get by.

This is why it can be so difficult to realise that you are autistic and everything about it now. So much of what is described is the cause of our behaviour today, but not the behaviour itself. And seeing past that to the root of the behaviour and the way we are and that it can still be different from how others are, is the reason why it takes so long and why so much of it, is still an ongoing process.

#Autism
#ActuallyAutistic

Update on my broken paw.

I saw the physio today. All seems to be healing as well as can be expected and he gave me exactly what I wanted. Which was a series of exercises to help my hand. He did seem slightly mystified as to why I was still wearing the wrist brace, which, as I already knew, is not necessary and seemed somewhat confused with my explanation that it helped me to remember that the hand was injured. Further explanation that I'm not always aware of pain and that I've never met a door frame yet that I haven't eventually bumped into and that I wore it for added protection, for some strange reason, didn't seem to help.

On a further note, coming up to three weeks off work means that I have almost completely lost track of what day it is. I spent all last Tuesday utterly convinced that it was Monday. As a consequence, waking up the next day to find out that it was Wednesday, meant that part of me was utterly convinced that somehow I had been robbed of a day.
All I can say is, given that I spend so much time on here, which one of you bastards did it?

(Although, my money is on that bloody armoured squirrel.)

#Autism
#ActuallyAutistic

How shitty I am 😅😅😅😅

#autistic #autism #actuallyautistic #nosocialinteraction #nosocial #autistichumor #humor

#Autism
Hopefully one day, we'll have a movie about #Neurotypicals seen from the point of view of #Autistics ! (#Neurotypicals are very strange, I tell you! 😉)

In the meantime, there's a new movie: "The stimming pool"
I hope we can see it in Canada soon!

🔗https://www.thestimmingpool.com/

You have to be f'ing kidding me. The lunatics are definitely running the asylum!

#vaccines #antivaxxers #autism

https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/trump-administration/cdc-research-debunked-link-vaccines-autism-rcna195499

John Delmenico‬ ‪@thebigjohnnyd.bsky.social‬ nailed it with a great comment on #autism. My reply: Society is great. If only there weren't all these people. #SharingIsCaring #sharingisthenewlearning#autismnews #autismacceptance #autismawareness #autistic #actuallyautistic #neurodivergent

RE: https://bsky.app/profile/did:plc:np4hwoauchyvjz537tuvnc6x/post/3ljzdy3lyic2o

Worried how someone will react if you tell them you're autistic? Want some tips to make that conversation go better? And deal with rejection sensitivity if it doesn't?

Perfect timing. I'm hosting a free workshop tomorrow on that.

https://www.autismchrysalis.com/events/

Inclusive. Recorded. Actually free.

#Autism #autistic #ActuallyAutistic #AutismAcceptance #autismawareness #AuDHD #neurospicy

Are these deficits?

I can certainly see why current human society would frame them as such!

But I have another word for possessing less 'theory of mind'.

Authenticity.
💝

#Neurodivergent #ActuallyAutistic #ASD #Autism #AuDHD

Our grey matter - and the sheer amount of it (energy-draining, esp when combined with the heavy skull it needs for protection) - grew that way to help us, as individuals living in human societies, a) detect deception, and b) deceive and outdo others. Of our own species.

Now, enter #autistics.

Even the name, #autism - it's about not being what's considered properly 'socialised'.

There is so much wrong with this statement by Health & Human Services (HHS) Secretary RFK Jr.

1) Autism isn’t a chronic disease. It isn’t even a disease.

2) Autism doesn’t lead to someone potentially developing fatal encephalitis (brain swelling) or pneumonia.

3) Autism doesn’t require urgent medical hospitalization (which measles can) & stress the healthcare system.

3) Autism doesn’t spread from person-to-person in the air.

/1

#PublicHealth #measles #autism #rfkjr #USA #FalseComparison

He’s Using #Autism as a Defense for a #CapitalMurder. It Might Work.

https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2025/03/autism-idaho-university-capital-murder-defense.html

Are there some who are experienced with #autism on here? I've been in therapy for almost a year now and I have to take a specialized test. It certainly would explain many things in my life but I still kinda doubt it, because I do not have those typical things I associate with autism such as stimming or difficulties making friends. On the contrary, I am good in socializing when the context is clear, eg. conferences. I mean I do put on a show and I am exhausted after it for a few days...

I respect Dr Peter Hotez - he's an autism dad. But he implies mom's the cause, ignoring the dad's contribution to #autism. In fact most autism comes from the father. His sperm's much more vulnerable & susceptible to mutation, and drugs - esp illicit drugs - are a prime cause of such mutations.

So put that in your pipe and smoke it.

https://abcnews.go.com/Health/Autism/autism-linked-family-inherited-gene-mutations/story?id=16071503

https://www.psychiatrist.com/news/siblings-with-autism-share-more-of-fathers-dna-not-mothers/

The AJ Chronicles: 7 March 2025
A week in the life of an autistic widower. (That's me!)

Free to read on Substack.

https://soultoscribe.substack.com/p/the-aj-chronicles-7-march-2025

#blog #journal #life #grief #health #family #cars #technology #music #parenting #autism #autistic #adhd

Ok, one last ditch attempt with for crowdsourcing social work (and please do forgive me if I don't have spoons to reply to your toots, if there even are any).

I'd need a tax lawyer in Ireland (the Republic, that is) who understands disability pensions their international taxation, and could help me pro bono. Due to circumstances I can't affect, Ireland pays a miserly amount of disability pension to me and every year there's some issues with my tax returns. The tax officials are useless, they give me different instructions every time I contact them. As said, I'm on minimum disability pension so I don't have the means to hire anyone to help me with this.

And before anyone suggests these, I've contacted the tax authorities, I've contacted the citizen information and all these other "free" services, each and every one has refused to help me as I am not Irish, I don't live in Ireland, and I'm not even a tax resident in Ireland, and stating that my case is too complicated for them.

And please do not offer your own "well you should do this" or "shouldn't do that" advice, unless you are, in fact, a tax lawyer in Ireland. My apologies for brashness here, but I've dealt with too much goodhearted advice as is in the last few years and don't have spoons to go through those now.

#ireland #disability #actuallyautistic #autism

@actuallyautistic

What do you like & hate related to senses?

Mine:
❌ grease on my fingers
❌ ticking clocks; dripping water
✅ sweets
❌ bitter; sour
✅ lots of pillows

@autistics @actuallyautistic @youronlyone @youronly.one

#AskingAutistics #AutisticActually #ActuallyAutistics #Autism

Förklara sensorisk känslighet med en bild #autism #adhd
Detta är efter jag filat bort kanten med nagelfil men den ändå kändes. 💅

looking to speak (directly only) with other people who've gotten an #Autism assessment as an adult, and even more specifically if it's been through #Kaiser #KaiserPermanente #KP.

thanks in advance. please boost but be aware I'll be nerfing the post at some point.

#ActuallyAutistic (actually only means the author is autistic) #ADHD #AuDHD #autism

Read recently in How to ADHD by Jessica McCabe: “she put her medication in her shoes“ (or something like this), because that way she doesn’t forget her medication.

My more recent trick is to keep in front on the lamp on my bedside table the moisturizer, because I need to hydrate the arm where I have a lymphodema when I go to bed. I don’t forget because I have to move it to turn on the light. 😂

What kind of personal trick you use to not forget (at least try not to) to do/take something? Share your tips!

(edit to change the language of the post, I always forget. 🫠)

Are there any you would add to this list?

#AskingAutistics #ActuallyAutistic #autism #AuDHD #ADHD #neurodiversity #neurodivergent @audhd @adhd @actuallyautistic @autisticadvocacy.a.gup.pe @neurodiversity

Now available on YouTube, an #OnlineAutscape2025 “More Autistic Joy” performance:

On the 7th of February at 20:30 GMT/UTC, autistic stand-up poet and BBC Radio 4 regular Kate Fox performed some of her pieces from last year’s hit Autscape show, the Dr Who-themed “Bigger on the Inside”, plus other poems which invoke autistic joy!

Content warning: Profanity, explicit references to sex.
Watch it at: https://youtu.be/c3_aYD89TUI

#Autscape #AutisticJoy #ActuallyAutistic #autistic #autism #neurodiversity #neurodivergent #poetry #standup

It's apparently aromantic awareness week. At 60, I only realised a few years ago that this is what I was. Before that, I didn't have a name, only the reality.

One of the things I always knew, from quite a young age, was that I would never be married. As a teen and young man, I was painfully aware of the pressure to settle down and get into a settled relationship. But, to be honest, I never had the desire to. It's not that I didn't try, but it was certainly more in terms of thinking that I should do, rather than because I had any real desire to. It was not a pleasant time in my life. The relationships I did attempt never ended well, which was hardly surprising and almost totally my fault and I always felt a certain amount of guilt about that. I also felt a degree of shame about the way I felt and the need to hide it. It was yet another way in which I was different and the sort of different that stood out and set me apart from others.

Of course, being an undiagnosed autistic, this feeling was nothing new. I had always been different, in so many ways and learning how to hide that, at least as best as I could, had become second nature by then. It also gave me another reason to, that I was so fundamentally broken, that I couldn't even function normally in this way. That it wasn't me, it was all the ways in which I was wrong and dysfunctional and the low self-esteem that arose from this, that made me this way and that if only I could find the key to understanding and therefore potentially fixing this, then I could be alright.

Not that I was going to get to that point for a long time, or that fixing this was ever really an option. But, as the years rolled by and the pressure to be in a relationship faded, I did manage to settle more into my solitary life, without feeling the guilt and failure as much as I did, but with it still being there. Of course, as a man, I had the advantage of being able to do this. There is a quantifiable and appalling difference in the way men and women are treated in this respect. In the ways in which society views unmarried, or unpartnered, men and women, that has nothing to do with the reality and everything to do with prejudice, bigotry and sexism. Something that may never entirely be eradicated. Because the normative expectations of what it means and the ways it should be expressed are deeply engrained.

But, the simple fact is that, being in a traditional romantic relationship is as impossible for me to imagine, or want, as being in a homosexual relationship is for a straight person, or vice versa. We are the way we are, simple as. Not because we're broken, or wrong, or defective in any way. But, because it is our nature. I am aromantic, just as I'm autistic, and there really is nothing wrong with that.

#Aromantic
#Autism

RFK Jr. Is Already Taking Aim at Antidepressants
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2025/02/kennedy-rfk-antidepressants-ssri-school-shootings/

Robert F. Kennedy, Jr has been planted by Trump in the role of Secretary of the US Department of Health and Human Services.

He wants to slash scientifically-established medication, hospital treatment, financial benefits, and government programs for people with these conditions:
- Chronic illness.
- Autism.
- ADHD, and medication including Adderall and Ritalin.
- Asthma.
- Obesity.
- Multiple sclerosis.
- Psoriasis.
- Mental illness such as depression and anxiety, and SSRI medication including Prozac and Zoloft.

RFK Jr says wants people who live with chronic illness such as those listed above — who often require daily preventative medication, a professional carer/assistant, or an assistive device for their daily functioning and to maintain their quality of life and sense of dignity and autonomy — to be stripped of their treatment and put into in "Wellness Farms" for "three or four years if they need it".

This is the sort of inhumane mistreatment of people requiring medical care that happened in the USSR and still goes on today in North Korea. It should not happen in the USA.

This move by RFK Jr is going to destroy childhoods, ruin families, cause people financial ruin, and for some people it will cost them their life.

#USPol #RFKJr #Trump #ChronicIllness #ChronicDisease #Autism #ADHD #Adderall #Ritalin #Asthma #Obesity #MultipleSclerosis #Psoriasis #MentalHealth #MentalIllness #Depression #Anxiety #SSRIs #Prozac #Zoloft

Went and saw my son’s new #pediatrition and while he has been in every meeting since 10 he was surprised he has #autism. He interrupts the conversation with: is it curable..without a pause i said no and continued the conversation. He was quiet after but not stressed. I found this on #youtube and showed him ….he is ok. https://youtube.com/shorts/zAr_0oCDDts?si=MXAMl0yOHqk284Xb