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The Irritated Autie⁷ 💙 Profile picture
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Feb 2 • 4 tweets • 2 min read
This was something neurotypical schooling just didn't get. I couldn't wake up twenty minutes before school like other people, even if it had been across the road (it wasn't).

I needed 2 hours to process the sensory discomfort of every morning task & mentally prepare for school.
I'd wake up at 4am, after just a couple of hours sleep due to delayed sleep phase; spend two hours getting ready; leave at 6am.

I needed to get there early before it got too busy. I needed to be at my quiet spot in the library before 8am.
If I woke up late, I refused school because

1) it made my 2 hour routine impossible to go through, and

2) being late was traumatic. Curious eyeballs from students and angry adults punishing you. Anxiety attack fodder.

#ActuallyAutistic
Going through this every day for years on end leads to burnout and trauma. I was so exhausted that I wanted to be dead. Every day I hoped I wouldn't wake up in the morning. Death was preferable to another day of the school routine.

#ActuallyAutistic

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More from @AutieAdorableMC

The Irritated Autie⁷ 💙 Profile picture
Feb 3
If my age 14 burnout, in which I "regressed" and lost all of my functioning skills, had happened when I was 4 years old, I would have been diagnosed as #ActuallyAutistic in a heartbeat.

In my case, the only difference between "high functioning" and "profound" Autism, is age.
A seemingly functional 14 year old girl with an advanced reading age, doing well in all her subjects, previously a "delight to have" etc ...

... gradually became a non-verbal school refuser who didn't bathe, barely ate, had no friends.
And I still haven't gained those skills back, 11 years later. I am permanently in the "low functioning" camp that allistics are obsessed with.

I can't live an independent life beyond my front door, can't do social tasks, still don't bathe, never finished school & am NEET.
Read 6 tweets
The Irritated Autie⁷ 💙 Profile picture
Nov 27, 2021
"Learned helplessness" was really one of the most damaging psychiatric concepts for me as an unknowingly Autistic person.

Being told that systemic inaccessibility, hidden disability, alienation & burnout was just a figment of my imagination was unhelpful.
It was basically the "problem" my Sixth Form CAMHS interventionists tried to address. If I could just remind myself of all the nice abled things other people believed about me, my grades & mental health would magically fix themselves.
It's ironic because actually I had a very inflated sense of my own abilities due to a decade of teachers equating my hyperlexia and previously good grades with abledness. I was aiming for A*s and Oxbridge. I didn't need *more* confidence. I needed taking down a peg or two.
Read 6 tweets
The Irritated Autie⁷ 💙 Profile picture
Nov 26, 2021
Don't know whether my executive functioning has got worse or I've just underestimated it until now, but these days I find myself having to verbally narrate every aspect of a task in order to get anything done.
"Open the oven. Okay, now tray. Put tray in oven. Close oven. Mitts. Knife in wash. Grater. Now we fetch carrot ..."

I go on and on like this, otherwise I will just stare into space and daydream, forgetting the task or be unable to initiate it.

#adhdautism
I now literally give myself a round of clapping & pause to celebrate after getting the bare minimum done. I savour an accomplishment & force my brain to release some satisfaction chemicals. And sitting down to do nothing for a few minutes helps me to switch tasks.
Read 4 tweets
The Irritated Autie⁷ 💙 Profile picture
Nov 26, 2021
It regularly shocks me that there are no official resources or recognition of Autistic-specific cPTSD. We are just expected to be okay with the way we are treated.

Eihter because they don't see anything wrong with it, or we're not human, or both.
When I'm in a spiral I find myself googling for help even though I know it's just gonna make me feel worse. "Disorder"/deficit language is everywhere & recognition of Autistic PTSD is only in relation to specific events unrelated to neurotype that could traumatize anyone.
Meanwhile, Autistic cPTSD is more like burnout, sensory trauma, misinterpretation & punishment trauma, alienation, body language & masking trauma, bullying trauma (and how we might internalize bullying differently), trauma at intersections of identity, poverty, medical ... etc.
Read 9 tweets
The Irritated Autie⁷ 💙 Profile picture
Oct 23, 2021
Going through all my childhood books filled with #ActuallyAutistic drawings and writing (I have dozens of books), and there are some striking themes that repeat themselves.

So, a thread on hypergraphic Autistic play!
1) Lists. So many lists. 📃

Lists of books, artists, shows, movies, people, food, vocabulary.
Information sorted into categories from memory.
Imaginary budgets with items listed from catalogues.

I used 100s of notebooks & did this for years. Notepads/paper was my main "toy".
2) 🎭 Absurdist writing. Parodies of famous books and movies. Characters with funny names. Lots of puns and random chaotic plots. Slapstick violence.
Read 13 tweets
The Irritated Autie⁷ 💙 Profile picture
Oct 16, 2021
Constantly thinking about how capitalist society structurally excludes and harms me as a neurominority, and how Westerners spent 500 years systematically eradicating societies that could have taught us how to *not* structurally exclude neurominorities.

💔 Heartbreak.
It's annoying to see Conservative and centrist types who believe that this is just how things always have been and the only way to live. That only *wage* labour is valuable. The individualist bootstrapper mentality is a symptom of urbanisation and white supremacy.
I know my family history. They were poor Yorkshire sheep farmers and cottage weavers who moved to the city factories during the industrial revolution, then spent 200 years rolling around like broken cotton reels at the bottom of society with our "undiagnosed" neurodivergences.
Read 13 tweets

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