So, for the last 2 days, I've been constantly sobbing and thinking "I don't know" and having to deal with really huge decisions.
My spouse has been very lovingly supporting me, which included putting any variety of food in front of me to eat.
1/7
Yesterday evening he suggested I watch a show and try to stop thinking about my dilemma, so I sat on the couch and turned the TV on.
He mentioned something else. I looked at him and said "Oh how has your work been?"
He was absolutely spooked by this.
"What just happened?"
2/7
"How are you suddenly acting normal right now?! That is the quickest change in mood I have ever seen you do."
I didn't think about it but I guess my demeanor came off as "completely fine having a casual chat with the allistic spouse."
I just said what? What do you mean?
3/7
My reflex, when focusing on someone else, is to be as "typical" as possible. To mask.
It's autopilot survival mode. I had to explain to him that it wasn't that I wasn't in complete distress. I couldn't even really explain it at the time tbh.
4/7
I believe that this sort of "quick switch" into acceptable-ness is something that I learned to survive, to not have to explain, to not "make a scene," to not put myself in danger.
It's second-nature.
5/7
I think it was also to protect me from the judgments that the people around me would make if I didn't behave "appropriately."
Maybe it's just a trauma response a majority of autistic people learn, especially people with marginalized identities.
6/7
To non-autistic people:
This is to show you that autistic masking isn't just tailoring your personality a little. It's putting yourself and your needs behind everyone else's. It's suppression.
Don't assume that autistic people are okay even if they "look" like it.
7/7
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So, I want to do a short thread on autistic labor.
Recently I got asked to give input for some sort of design or study from a graduate student. I was asked if I could answer a couple of questions about X and just give my personal opinion and experience.
1/12
I asked if the project had autistic input and they said yes, and that their sibling is autistic (which generally means the person running it is not autistic).
Basically, by autistic input, they meant that they were asking autistic people like me to answer questions.
2/12
I ran out of spoons to really respond to this, but I said something like "generally it's best if you can pay autistic people."
The person responded saying they don't have much money for this, they're a graduate student, and it's "only a few minutes" of my time.
You know, one of the worst things about your mental health tanking when you're in grad school is that when you kind of "zoom out" and possibly to other people,
your struggles look ridiculous and overblown. But academia constantly teaches you that you NEED it to live.
So you can't tell people easily, and if you do you can't expect sympathy because sometimes it does sound ridiculous.
And academia constantly reinforces the idea that you -need- X/Y/Z to survive, to live, to be a "productive" human being. So it's easy for your brain to believe it
And we're also taught that these artificial (and a lot of other -isms) road blocks that pop up during graduate school are part of the journey and that if you don't "overcome" them you don't deserve the education because you didn't "fight for it."
Today was the first day in my life that someone, to my face, told me that I have experienced some sort of trauma.
And I've realized that maybe to most people, it probably doesn't look like trauma.
It probably looks like encouragement.
1/18
These are the phrases I have heard throughout my life (and still as an adult sometimes) which often trigger me:
You'll be fine!
You're an expert at this!
You can do this!
You deserve it!
Don't worry about it, it's not a big deal.
Don't be so negative!
You're so smart!
2/
When you get praised for being perfect, for never failing, for always being dependable,
you always wonder if once you mess up, the people in your life who cared about you and supported you will be gone. That they won't care or won't like you anymore or won't support you.
3/
This might sound like something one shouldn't admit,
But do you ever feel bitter watching people have a temporary injury who then recover completely without pain?
I feel like it's treated like a "phase"
while my permanent, mundane foot injury is the rest of my life.
A temporary understandable injury is something that people have sympathy for, attention, care.
Permanent injuries, chronic illness, eventually people just get annoyed, why can't you do X/Y/Z, you navigate the world differently forever. You can't do the things you did before.
I only realized this when I crashed my bike and hurt my shoulder. Things that make sense people don't mind.
When you tell them your surgery to decrease/get rid of your pain with walking, they just look at you saying "there's really nothing that can do?" completely stunned.
This was a great segment & I really want to talk about a feeling that was described by Ani Spooner regarding hiding her strawberry birth mark growing up.
It's not something I've heard talked about much but this feeling is something I relate heavily to as an autistic person. 1/18
In this segment about facial differences, she talks about how she was taught how to hide her strawberry birth mark by age 8. It took 1.5 hours to put the makeup on herself, so that people wouldn't see it.
By age 12, she started applying this makeup every single day.
2/18
She talks about how when other people saw her, they never knew she had that strawberry birth mark. And she said the thought of taking this makeup off was terrifying, because she had no idea if people were still going to like her or want to know her.
3/18
" - the Developmental and Medical History Questionnaire which asks about education, occupation, physical and mental health, lifestyle, sleep, and gut health"
2/5
"- a questionnaire that measures autistic traits
The baseline questionnaire takes approximately takes 20 - 30 minutes, and can be saved at any point and returned to later."
3/5