Understanding Autism Quotes

He was a man of very few words, and as it was impossible to talk, one had to keep silent. It’s hard work talking to some people, most often males. I have a Theory about it. With age, many men come down with testosterone autism, the symptoms of which are a gradual decline in social intelligence and capacity for interpersonal communication, as well as a reduced ability to formulate thoughts. The Person beset by this Ailment becomes taciturn and appears to be lost in contemplation. He develops an interest in various Tools and machinery, and he’s drawn to the Second World War and the biographies of famous people, mainly politicians and villains. His capacity to read novels almost entirely vanishes; testosterone autism disturbs the character’s psychological understanding.

In a noisy place I can’t understand speech, because I cannot screen out the background noise.

The Tragedy isn't Autism - The Tragedy is the lack of understanding of Autism, Lack of resources, Interventions not being met with the person in mind and Assumptions being made about the person.

Teachers who work with autistic children need to understand associative thought patterns.

It’s wondering … always wondering and never understanding: how can I be so smart and still feel so stupid?

A marijuana high can enhance core human mental abilities. It can help you to focus, to remember, to see new patterns, to imagine, to be creative, to introspect, to empathically understand others, and to come to deep insights. If you don’t find this amazing you have lost your sense of wonder. Which, by the way, is something a high can bring back, too.

It’s true, though, others won’t understand me. I know that. I’m still an alien in the American Christian subculture. Each evening I retreat from it, and I go straight to the Gospels. It's not out of duty that I read about Jesus; it's a respite.

I never know what people are thinking. It's like visiting a country where you don't speak the language and you're trying so hard to understand but no matter how many times you ask for juice, they keep bringing you milk.

Autism, as far as I understand it, is about not being given the rule book at birth.

The closer we come to understanding the challenges of autism, the better we are placed to accommodate and educate without risking removing that individuality we all love.

Though she has trouble deciphering other people's facial expressions, her face is an open book and no one would ever have trouble understanding hers.

Diagnosis (of autism) is such a clinical word to describe a moment in which your humanity is so deeply affirmed, understood, and valued.

One of the problems in understanding sensory issues is that sensory sensitivities are very variable, among individuals and within the same individual. A person can be hyper-sensitive in one area (like hearing) and hypo-sensitive in another (like touch). One

Would I ever have the courage to tell Wills the truth? That he wasn't just imagining the world was a more difficult place for him to understand than for some of his buddies - that it was, in fact, more difficult for him. That he'd been dealt a rotten hand in that regard, but only in that one regard. Because I wouldn't change one freckle, one misunderstood moment, one tiny piece of him for anything in the world. I would change myself. I would change the things other people said or thought out of ignorance or fear. I would change so many things, but I would absolutely never, in a million years, change him.

People can only understand their own pain. Even a genuine desire to help a person with a disability can become a burden or a discouragement for the person on the receiving end. It is important for helpers and therapists to ask themselves, If I was the person I’m helping … ? It would be useful also if they double-checked that the assistance they’re offering is of real relevance to the person with special needs, and not about gratifying their own desire to care.

I can pass for normal most of the time, but I understand perfectly why some of my autistic patients scream and flap their arms -- it's to frighten off extroverts.

And don’t ever, EVER compare yourself to a neurotypical (NT) girl or woman. They are a different species and you’ll only feel inadequate and bad about yourself. Find your tribe – online, in groups at comic conventions. Find people who are delighted that you are you. And you should be delighted that you are you too because when you’re 70, you’ll still be skateboarding, you’ll look amazing (from all those years of not ruining your skin with make-up) and you’ll realise that all those things you worried about don’t matter at all.

There are many things we don’t understand, and many ways to unlock the brain and maximize function. Don’t ever let anybody tell you it can’t be done.

My ears work. My brain understands. Can't you see I am a REAL PERSON?

If I tried to describe what it’s like to be nonverbal in the World of the Verbal in a single word, I’d choose this one: agony. And yet, this is also true: if we know there is even a single person who understands what it’s like for us, that’s solace enough to give us hope.

I ask this question a lot—Does that make sense?—usually to my family, because I appreciate clarity and assume others do as well... we just assume other people understand what we are talking about. That we are, as the idiom goes, on the same wavelength. In my experience, we are not.

Adults tend to be more understanding and accepting of differences than teenagers. The important thing is to find a group that your adult child is personally interested in being a part of, and then acting on the assumption that he has the right to be there and that he will fit right in.

When we feel either understimulated or overstimulated, we physically cannot reason, listen, or think about anything else. We can’t just ignore it. We can’t learn. We can’t be spontaneous or fun. We can’t rationalize well. And we can’t hear others’ needs, let alone be certain we understand our own. It’s like trying to see your own reflection in a pot of boiling water. Nothing is clear.

[I]t seems to me that a lot of the stranger ideas people have about medicine derive from an emotional struggle with the very notion of a pharmaceutical industry. Whatever our political leanings, we all feel nervous about profit taking any role in the caring professions, but that feeling has nowhere to go. Big pharma is evil; I would agree with that premise. But because people don’t understand exactly how big pharma is evil, their anger gets diverted away from valid criticisms—its role in distorting data, for example, or withholding lifesaving AIDS drugs from the developing world—and channeled into infantile fantasies. “Big pharma is evil,” goes the line of reasoning; “therefore homeopathy works and the MMR vaccine causes autism.” This is probably not helpful.

Try to understand how they feel - put yourselves in their place. Imagine you are in a foreign country with no money, possessions or friends. You cannot speak the language; the culture is completely different to your normal environment; isolated and helpless. You would be dependent on someone supporting you. Think of that when you next meet someone who is autistic...

The label neurodiverse includes everyone from people with ADHD, to Down Syndrome, to Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, to Borderline Personality Disorder. It also includes people with brain injuries or strokes, people who have been labeled “low intelligence,” and people who lack any formal diagnosis, but have been pathologized as “crazy” or “incompetent” throughout their lives. As Singer rightly observed, neurodiversity isn’t actually about having a specific, catalogued “defect” that the psychiatric establishment has an explanation for. It’s about being different in a way others struggle to understand or refuse to accept.

What I wish to say is this: the value of a person shouldn’t be fixed solely by his or her skills and talents—or lack of them. It’s how you strive to live well that allows others to understand your awesomeness as a human being. This miraculous quality touches people. Via this “how,” people consider the sanctity and validity of everyone’s life, whether special needs are involved or not.

As far as I’m concerned, there’s no need whatsoever to “practice being bullied.” Acquiring superpowers of endurance is not something children need to be learning before they enter society at large. It is only the person being bullied who understands the true cost of what they suffer. People with no experience of being bullied have no idea how miserable it is to grow up being picked on the whole time.

One of the first effects of this hyper-democratization of data was to unmoor information from the context required to understand it. On the Internet, facts float about freely and are recombined more according to the preferences of intuition than the rules of cognition:

Diagnoses —such as ADHD, oppositional defiant disorder, bipolar disorder, depression, an autism spectrum disorder, reactive attachment disorder, the newly coined disruptive mood regulation disorder, or any other disorder—can be helpful in some ways. They “validate” that there’s something different about your kid, for example. But they can also be counterproductive in that they can cause caregivers to focus more on a child’s challenging behaviors rather than on the lagging skills and unsolved problems giving rise to those behaviors. Also, diagnoses suggest that the problem resides within the child and that it’s the child who needs to be fixed. The reality is that it takes two to tango. Let there be no doubt, there’s something different about your child. But you are part of the mix as well. How you understand and respond to the hand you’ve been dealt is essential to helping your child.

Autistic people are born with the mask of neurotypicality pressed against our faces. All people are assumed to think, socialize, feel, express emotion, process sensory information, and communicate in more or less the same ways. We’re all expected to play along with the rules of our home culture, and blend into it seamlessly. Those of us who need alternate tools for self-expression and self-understanding are denied them. Our first experience of ourselves as a person in the world, therefore, is one of being othered and confused. We only get the opportunity to take our masks off when we realize other ways of being exist.

I wish people could understand that masking is so much more than biting your tongue and forcing yourself to be as average as possible. It's about supressing basic physiological needs. It's about hiding the parts of yourself that come naturally, so they don't seem unnatural to others. It's physical. It's insidious.

[...] nobody anywhere seemed to be willing to ponder for a moment the possibility that a human being who refused to participate, who refused to speak or listen, who failed to ‘interact with his peer group‘, might not be all that crazy, and might even have arrived at an understandable response to the world in which we lived.

The more frantic and desperate I become, the more I punch myself: by now, it’s no longer about punishing my brain, it’s about punishing myself for having lost the plot so woefully. If, however, people don’t flip out at the sight of me and understand next time you see someone like me in mid-meltdown, I’d ask you to conduct yourself with this knowledge.

Among those women questioned, art and English topped the list of favourite subjects at school.

Someone else's lack of understanding isn't your weight to carry.

Each one of us is different, but one thing that is true; Each one of us is wonderfully made, and so, my dear, are you!

the hope is that laying out what we understand about essential differences in the minds of men and women may lead to grater acceptance and respect of difference.

Thank you to everyone who has helped me feel less broken over the years, particularly every friend who has extended me grace when I didn’t understand myself or how to relate to other people.

That’s the way I’ve always been. It’s hard for me to see any situation as a whole. I feel like I’m always looking at a mass of moving parts, trying to break every tiny piece of experience down and understand it in a methodical way. It’s beautiful but it’s also difficult to interact with people because they expect me to communicate the whole machine and I’m too distracted by the cogs.

auditory processing issues: difficulty understanding spoken language, often experienced as a delay between hearing spoken words and being able to process those audio sounds into recognizable words .

Seeking to eliminate behavior without fully understanding its purpose is not only unhelpful; it also shows a lack of respect for the individual. Worse, it can make life more difficult for the person with autism.

For Autistic self-disclosure to really have an impact on someone, you need a mutually respectful, trusting relationship. They need to be willing to keep learning and revise their understanding of what Autism is as they go along.

The most significant trust-related challenge for people with autism is trusting other people. Most of us are neurologically hardwired with the ability to predict the behavior of others—to read body language intuitively and make subconscious judgments based on how relaxed a person’s body is, on how a person looks at other people, or by the social context. But that is often more difficult for people with autism. Ros Blackburn explains that she lives every day trying to understand people’s intentions when they approach her. “Because I find it so difficult to predict the behavior of other people,” Ros explains, “what they do often comes across as very sudden and threatening to me.

I taught myself to be as fluent as possible in nonverbal languages because it's the only way to understand what people aren't saying, to carve out your space and claim it. It's the only way I can feel like I know what's going on.

Firing the question back is a way of sifting through our memories to pick up clues about what the questioner is asking. We understand the question okay, but we can’t answer it until we fish out the right “memory picture” in our heads.

The real irony of all this talk about muted sense of self is that the very word autism comes from the Greek root autos, meaning “self” (as in “autograph” and “automobile”). We are self-referenced, certainly. It is so hard to understand others’ experiences of the world that being able to distinguish our wants, desires, and thoughts from anyone else’s is almost impossible. Our minds feel transparent. Not because we have so much sense of self. But because we have so little.

Children with disabilities might, to your eyes, look stuck in a perpetual childhood, but our thoughts and sensibilities evolve constantly. So, using vocabulary the child understands, please show them how they can live their lives to the full.

Reduced levels of ATP have been found in a wide variety of disorders, including schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression, alcoholism, PTSD, autism, OCD, Alzheimer’s disease, epilepsy, cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, and obesity.

This is cool I have my Autism profile (information processing - visual, verbal, auditory, body, context blindnesses/deafnesses etc) and my Personhood which is Idiosyncratic/Solitary/Emotional personality traits these come from different places but "hold hands" personhood and Autism are different entities and can be separated in terms of context, understanding (differences between ASD and Personality) but they're within one person and I would always want to seen as someone for their personhood rather than my Autism.

The ‘buzzy’ head mentioned by younger girls seems to persist for some older women. The need to ‘file’ and process the day that has passed and to anticipate the one to come appears to prevent easy rest. Difficulty in getting to sleep was most commonly mentioned.

People often said to me what I couldn't do things when I was younger such as sports, writing, mathematics, geography, science etc - I pathway can always be tailored can change and that change itself is possible what did I excel in well art was one of those things of have gone BACK to to move FORWARD and have taken up poetry and creativity something that occupies my mind in way that creates happy thoughts, happy feelings, and happiness all round really. To invest in your strengths and understand but not over-define yourself by your deficits is something that has worked for me over the years and this year in particular (the ethos was always there instilled that I am human being first like anyone else by my parents and family but it has been tenderly and quite rightly reaffirmed by a friend also) it has made me a more balanced person whom has healthy acknowledgment of my autism who but also wants to be known as a person first - see me first, see that I have a personality first. I say this not in anger or bitterness but as a healthy optimistic realisation and as a message of hope for people out there.

The most common hit I get is the cringeworthy “You’re autistic? Well, you must be very high-functioning.” Sigh. I understand what they’re trying to say. Really, I do. They mean to be kind. The implication is “I don’t see many—if any—of the clearly debilitating characteristics I associate with autism when I talk to you. So, good on you. You’re not bad off!” Only that’s not a compliment at all. It’s a comparison based on the premise that “autistic” is an insult. A stigma. Or at least a bad thing. Because the only reason someone thinks of me as “high-functioning” is by holding me up to someone who is no more or less autistic—just more obviously challenged—and deciding that they are “lower-functioning.” Really, it’s no different than saying, “Oh! Well, good for you. You’re not too ugly. That gal over there? She’s royally ugly.” Lack of understanding tied up with a bow of condescension.

I would either head to the playground alone or sit beside her and read—which she said “looked weird.” Though she couldn’t know, those words hurt more than anything else. Feeling that we have let down our parents is a pain anyone can understand. But feeling that one’s innate self is a letdown just slays you.

have a Theory about it. With age, many men come down with testosterone autism, the symptoms of which are a gradual decline in social intelligence and capacity for interpersonal communication, as well as a reduced ability to formulate thoughts. The Person beset by this Ailment becomes taciturn and appears to be lost in contemplation. He develops an interest in various Tools and machinery, and he’s drawn to the Second World War and the biographies of famous people, mainly politicians and villains. His capacity to read novels almost entirely vanishes; testosterone autism disturbs the character’s psychological understanding.

I didn't cry out and I didn't weep when I was told that my son Henri was a prisoner in his own world, when it was confirmed that he is one of those children who don't hear us, don't speak to us, even though they're neither deaf nor mute. He is also one of those children we must love from a distance, neither touching, nor kissing, not smiling at them because every one of their senses would be assaulted by the odour of our skin, by the intensity of our voices, the texture of our hair, the throbbing of our hearts. Probably he'll never call me maman lovingly, even if he can pronounce the world poire with all the roundness and sensuality of the oi sound. He will never understand why I cried when he smiled for the first time. He won't know that, thanks to him, every spark of joy has become a blessing and that I will keep waging war against autism, even if I know already that it's invincible. Already, I am defeated, stripped bare, beaten down.

There are a few things that need to occur for our loved ones to have more relationships. First, they must learn some social skills and competencies -- especially so for those who are independent and often on their own, so that they will not become victimized by others and can make some connections. Second, for those who require it, they need to have support staff who understand movement differences and sensory challenges and how to include a nonverbal person who uses alternative means of communication. Last, but not least, for friendship to occur, people need to have an open mind, be more flexible, and be more accepting of people with differences.

Sometimes, we knock it out of the park. Other times, we can’t even get our jerseys on. This can be confounding for people observing ADHDers, because they see what we can do and then wonder why we don’t just, you know, do it. You didn’t forget to unload the dishes yesterday. How come you forgot today? But like people who have other types of neurodivergent brains—such as people with autism spectrum disorder or dyslexia—those of us with ADHD are not in control of how our brain differences manifest. It’s simply how we are wired. Unfortunately, much of the world doesn’t recognize that, and this lack of understanding can make people with ADHD feel . . . well, bad.

I fear depression - intensely. It is by far the most painful ailment I have ever faced. It is the thing that slammed into me, ran me over repeatedly, and then kicked me in the head when I was down. I struggled for change, for understanding, to figure out what was "wrong" with me - no one knew. Or at least, they didn't guess correctly.

science and reason, which has found itself in recent decades under attack on many fronts: right-wing ideologues who do not understand science; religious-right conservatives who fear science; left-wing postmodernists who do not trust science when it doesn’t support progressive tenets about human nature; extreme environmentalists who want to return to a prescientific and preindustrial agrarian society; antivaxxers who wrongly imagine that vaccinations cause autism and other maladies; anti-GMO (genetically modified food) activists who worry about Frankenfoods; and educators of all stripes who cannot articulate why Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) are so vital to a modern democratic nation.

process of giving meaning to experiences is sometimes known as sensemaking or creating a sensemaking narrative. It happens when our current way of understanding ourselves or our situation is inadequate. Without the Asperger’s piece of the puzzle, I was forced to cobble together incomplete explanations for my developmental history and my life experiences.

I’ve noticed a communication pattern among autistics, myself included—we often try to express solidarity through similarity. “I’ve been through something like that” is the most natural way for me to tell someone that I support and sympathize with them. Unfortunately, this pattern contributes to the false stereotype that autistic people lack empathy, because it can make people feel like we’re minimizing their struggles by turning the focus on ourselves. For me, though, sharing an analogous story is an expression of empathy—a tangible proof to back up my claim that I can understand how someone feels. It’s also an invitation for them to compare and contrast, telling me how their experience differs, so that I can understand them better.

And I think for a moment, because people don't actually ask that very often. They tell me what they think I feel because they've read it in books, or they say incredible things like "autistic people have no sense of humour or imagination or empathy" when I'm standing right there beside them (and one day I'm going to point out that that is more than a little bit rude, not to mention Not Even True) or they -- even worse -- talk to me like I'm about five, and can't understand. "It's like living with all your senses turned up to full volume all the time," I say. "And it's like living life in a different language, so you can't ever quite relax because even when you think you're fluent it's still using a different part of your brain so by the end of the day you're exhausted.

Before I knew I was Autistic, I was profoundly alienated in every possible sense. I was at odds with myself, unable to understand why normal life felt so perplexing and imprisoning to me. I was detached from the world, with no trust in others or in my own potential to connect and be understood. Because I was so alone, my identity was also completely unmoored. I had no community to anchor myself within.

I do believe that we (autistic individuals such as myself) are very susceptible to suicidal thinking for multiple reasons that include: chronic high levels of anxiety, tendency to fixate on or get stuck on negative disturbing thoughts, low self-worth, inability to have significant or intimate relationships with others, replaying over and over again negative statements that others have said to us, feeling unable to be understood, lack [of] a solid self-identity, difficulty with expressing self to others, feelings of great isolation, feeling that you are or may be a burden to others, feeling unable to contribute to society or the greater good, etc […] I do believe that the most important thing that someone else can do for a struggling autistic individual is to affirm their self-worth, recognise and validate their struggles and affirm the things that they do that are greatly valued by others. The worst thing to do for an autistic individual, or any struggling individual for that matter, is to not believe them or to deny the validity of their struggles. My greatest and deepest hurt is that doctors, family members and important others did not believe me in my struggles, particularly when I was younger, before my diagnosis at the age of 35 years. This has been the strongest impetus for my feelings of unworthiness and suicidal thoughts. (Woman with autism)

The autistic form of life does not conform to assumed social normativity and does not easily extend outward into the social, leading to a 'double empathy problem' between people of diverse dispositions, that is, both parties struggle to understand and relate to one another. Such differences in presentation can lead to dyspathic reactions and stigma, often leading to ill-fated attempts at normalisation and a continuing vicious cycle of psycho-emotional disablement.

For as long as I can remember, I have been on a quest for self-understanding and self-improvement. I am driven to figure myself and other people out. I have analysed myself as far back as I can remember, reanalysed myself, been to many psychologists, psychiatrists, doctors and psychics. I love self-help books, courses, anything to improve myself. My special interest is self-improvement, quantum physics, medicine, anything to do with bettering oneself and self-help.

Many of the women and girls who participated in this book were precocious early talkers, often with extensive vocabularies. This does not mean that learning came/comes easily to them, on account of the neurotypical system they were/are expected to adhere to. We must not forget that, even in a learning environment, social requirements are always present, which means that our girl with ASD has to work doubly hard to make sense of both the social and the academic elements.

There are strong similarities in the way horses and those with autism see the world. Horses are often born into an environment they don't understand, with overwhelming sights, sounds, and smells, and a sense that no one understands them. And when they see someone with autism, who has much the same background, and who knows them, and knows what they need - there is a connection. Since the two share the same experiences, they both relax, and seem to talk and understand each other.

Rather than lacking a theory of mind, it is argued here that due to differences in the way autistic people process info, they are not socialised into the same shared ethno as neurotypical people, and thus breaches in understanding happen all the time, leaving both in a state of confusion. The difference is that the neurotypical person can repair the breach, by the reassuring belief that ~99 out of 100 people still think and act like they do, and remind themselves that they are the normal ones.

I hate it when people change plans, but I never let it show because I’m supposed to be flexible. This leads people to think that I can handle anything. I tell them it’s fine, but it’s not fine. It’s never fine. When they have gone my head hurts with the effort of making sense of why they couldn’t do what they said they were going to do, what it will mean for me to have to reconfigure everything to take into account the new situation and what bad things I can wish upon them for being so unreliable.

I feel intensely. I smell mold and bad food before others. I hear fluorescent lights. Clothing hurts, noises invade, colors take my breath away. My daily reality is governed by too much sensation and not enough sensation. Patterns are soothing because they create order in what feels like chaos. Sometimes I shut down and I lose language. Other times I get overloaded and act it out in ways that get me in trouble. My world is intense, rich, real, sometimes painful and definitely different. Understand

The specific psychiatric disorders in which mitochrondrial dysfunction has been identified include the following: schizophrenia, schizoaffective disorder, bipolar disorder, major depression, autism, anxiety disorders, obsessive-compulsive disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, attention deficit/hyperactivity disorder, anorexia nervosa, alcohol use disorder (aka alcoholism), marijuana use disorder, opioid use disorder, and borderline personality disorder. Dementia and delirium, often thought of an neurological illnesses, also included.

The main and frustration this boy must have endured his whole life. having thoughts and words he desperately wants to express but couldn't, fearing this might continue for the rest of his life. Whether you're an immigrant, you stutter, or have autism, aphasia/dyspraxia, Angelman syndrome---there are so many reasons why you might have trouble speaking, unrelated to the quality of your thoughts. ...our society's deeply ingrained assumption that oral fluency is equivalent to intelligence. Just because you can't speak doesn't mean you can't think or understand.

We may assume that the socialising aspect of play settings is beneficial to the child. This is an almost universally held belief, particularly in the case of girls. The child with ASD may disagree. It may be that for some children with ASD there really is no point or functional benefit in them attending a group play setting and that the distress caused outweighs any possible benefit gained. This notion is difficult for many parents to acknowledge as they believe that being alone cannot be good for the child; but for many children and adults with ASD, being alone is the best thing of all.

With age, many men come down with testosterone autism, the symptoms of which are a gradual decline in social intelligence and capacity for interpersonal communication, as well as a reduced ability to formulate thoughts. The Person beset by this Ailment becomes taciturn and appears to be lost in contemplation. He develops an interest in various Tools and machinery, and he’s drawn to the Second World War and the biographies of famous people, mainly politicians and villains. His capacity to read novels almost entirely vanishes; testosterone autism disturbs the character’s psychological understanding.

I think in the ever growing diversity of the distinct and person-centred presentations of autism it is important to know and acknowledge the crucial differences between Autism & Asperger's Syndrome. Both are which are forms of autism but have different "mechanics" that drive them. I have Autism (as opposed to Asperger's Syndrome) I live in a world before the literal, words tumble in my mind into sounds I love tone, melody and beats they brings my world alive. I live in world world where visuals hold no significance fragmented and not in my "mind's eye" and need to be touched in order to be "seen". I like elevated gesture and tone when people speak dead words wander alive into my mind and give them meaning and circumstance. Where a sense of "self" is not wanting to be exposed by the directness of people but at the same time I want to understand "other" even if I struggle to at times. I am empathic young man and this not through lack of care nor wanting. I care deeply. Logic and literalism are not the name of the game for me to "decode" the word around me it's sensing, patterning and feeling to gain an "understanding". I am using a different part of my brain. So as with AS Autism has many different presentations too this is mine. I think it is important to know differences it has helped me so much to know that.

some people think being autistic means you’re unable to perceive the thoughts and emotions of others. Actually, based on my experiences and from talking to other people on the spectrum, it’s quite the opposite: you feel every possible emotion and see every possible outcome of a social situation at once. It’s kind of like being Doctor Manhattan from the comic Watchmen: you’re seeing several timelines happening simultaneously. But unlike Doctor Manhattan, you can’t teleport to Mars every time you feel overwhelmed, so you shut down and remove yourself socially. People are exhausting, and when your brain is working overtime to try to understand them, it can suck the joy out of socializing.

Women receiving late diagnosis often share the same sense of relief and self-acceptance as men, but perhaps to an even greater degree, due to the way in which they have needed to manage their autism – often through bending to fit to what’s expected of them in terms of gender expectations through camouflaging (which autistic men are seen as less prone to and/or able to do). Feeling justified or vindicated by diagnosis is the strong response of many of the women I have spoken to: a sense of having the right to be yourself established – for the first time – in a world that doesn’t always welcome or appreciate that self. These are women who are exhausted and angry at having tried so hard to make everything make sense, while presuming that they were to blame for not getting it in the first place: women who feel they have had to put on a persona of social acceptability in order to be tolerated.

If a woman does not comply, then she is the problem, the ‘feminist killjoy’, the Old Dragon, the Battleaxe, the Termagant, the Nippy Sweety, the Uppity Cow, the Bitch. I’ve come to understand all that, and also to understand that ableism works in the same way, that as an autistic person I am not supposed to make assertions that cause non-autistic people–parents of autistic children, autistic professionals–to feel bad about themselves. If, as an autistic person, I make a non-autistic person feel bad about themselves in relation to autism, it must be because I am a defective person, lacking both an adult understanding of my own condition and empathy for the individuals who are trying so patiently to cope with the consequences of it. I see this very argument–if I must dignify it with that word–used on social media again and again, whenever an autistic person seeks to advocate for autistic people as a group.

Internally, I was fractured, a series of faked personalities and protective shields that kept people at a distance. I could only drop the shield when I was alone, but even in my solitude I was miserable and confused. I was all defense mechanisms, with nothing left inside worth defending. When a masked Autistic person lacks self-knowledge or any kind of broad social acceptance, they are often forced to conceive of themselves as compartmentalized, inconsistent parts. Here is the person I have to be at work, and the person I must be at home. These are the things I fantasize about doing but can’t tell anybody about. Here are the drugs that keep my energy levels up, and the lies I tell to be entertaining at parties. These are the tension-defusing distractions I’ll deploy when someone begins to suspect there’s something off about me. We don’t get the chance to come together into a unified whole that we can name or understand, or that others can see and love. Some sides of us go unacknowledged entirely, because they don’t serve our broader goal of remaining as inoffensive and safe as possible.

We can all be "sad" or "blue" at times in our lives. We have all seen movies about the madman and his crime spree, with the underlying cause of mental illness. We sometimes even make jokes about people being crazy or nuts, even though we know that we shouldn't. We have all had some exposure to mental illness, but do we really understand it or know what it is? Many of our preconceptions are incorrect. A mental illness can be defined as a health condition that changes a person's thinking, feelings, or behavior (or all three) and that causes the person distress and difficulty in functioning. As with many diseases, mental illness is severe in some cases and mild in others. Individuals who have a mental illness don't necessarily look like they are sick, especially if their illness is mild. Other individuals may show more explicit symptoms such as confusion, agitation, or withdrawal. There are many different mental illnesses, including depression, schizophrenia, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Each illness alters a person's thoughts, feelings, and/or behaviors in distinct ways. But in all this struggles, Consummo Plus has proven to be the most effective herbal way of treating mental illness no matter the root cause. The treatment will be in three stages. First is activating detoxification, which includes flushing any insoluble toxins from the body. The medicine and the supplement then proceed to activate all cells in the body, it receives signals from the brain and goes to repair very damaged cells, tissues, or organs of the body wherever such is found. The second treatment comes in liquid form, tackles the psychological aspect including hallucination, paranoia, hearing voices, depression, fear, persecutory delusion, or religious delusion. The supplement also tackles the Behavioral, Mood, and Cognitive aspects including aggression or anger, thought disorder, self-harm, or lack of restraint, anxiety, apathy, fatigue, feeling detached, false belief of superiority or inferiority, and amnesia. The third treatment is called mental restorer, and this consists of the spiritual brain restorer, a system of healing which “assumes the presence of a supernatural power to restore the natural brain order. With this approach, you will get back your loving boyfriend and he will live a better and fulfilled life, like realize his full potential, work productively, make a meaningful contribution to his community, and handle all the stress that comes with life. It will give him a new lease of life, a new strength, and new vigor. The Healing & Recovery process is Gradual, Comprehensive, Holistic, and very Effective. www . curetoschizophrenia . blogspot . com E-mail: rodwenhill@gmail. com

IN AN obscure journal, an article by Professor Tzvi Lamm of the Hebrew University charges that Israel has lost touch with reality.* Lamm’s view is that although the Zionist idea in its early stages seemed more dreamlike than practical, it was soberly realistic. Its leaders knew just how much power they had—or had not—and adhered closely to their goals. They were not hypnotized and paralyzed by their own slogans. Jewish leadership, and with it Israel as a whole, later became “autistic.” Autism is defined by Lamm as “the rejection of actual reality and its replacement by a reality which is a product of wish-fulfillment.” The victory of 1967 was the principal cause of this autism. Israelis began to speak of the West Bank of the Jordan as “liberated” territory. “The capture of lands aroused … a deep, sincere, emotional response to the territories … and to the historical events that took place in them: the graves of our patriarchs and matriarchs, paths along which the prophets once trod, hills for which the kings fought. But feelings cut off from present reality do not serve as a faithful guideline to a confused policy. This break with reality did not necessarily blind men to the fact that the territories were populated by Arabs, but it kept them from understanding that our settlement and taking possession of the territories would turn our existence as a state into a powerful pressure that would unite the Arab world and aggravate our insecure situation in a way previously unknown in our history.

The Blue Mind Rx Statement Our wild waters provide vast cognitive, emotional, physical, psychological, social, and spiritual values for people from birth, through adolescence, adulthood, older age, and in death; wild waters provide a useful, widely available, and affordable range of treatments healthcare practitioners can incorporate into treatment plans. The world ocean and all waterways, including lakes, rivers, and wetlands (collectively, blue space), cover over 71% of our planet. Keeping them healthy, clean, accessible, and biodiverse is critical to human health and well-being. In addition to fostering more widely documented ecological, economic, and cultural diversities, our mental well-being, emotional diversity, and resiliency also rely on the global ecological integrity of our waters. Blue space gives us half of our oxygen, provides billions of people with jobs and food, holds the majority of Earth's biodiversity including species and ecosystems, drives climate and weather, regulates temperature, and is the sole source of hydration and hygiene for humanity throughout history. Neuroscientists and psychologists add that the ocean and wild waterways are a wellspring of happiness and relaxation, sociality and romance, peace and freedom, play and creativity, learning and memory, innovation and insight, elation and nostalgia, confidence and solitude, wonder and awe, empathy and compassion, reverence and beauty — and help manage trauma, anxiety, sleep, autism, addiction, fitness, attention/focus, stress, grief, PTSD, build personal resilience, and much more. Chronic stress and anxiety cause or intensify a range of physical and mental afflictions, including depression, ulcers, colitis, heart disease, and more. Being on, in, and near water can be among the most cost-effective ways of reducing stress and anxiety. We encourage healthcare professionals and advocates for the ocean, seas, lakes, and rivers to go deeper and incorporate the latest findings, research, and insights into their treatment plans, communications, reports, mission statements, strategies, grant proposals, media, exhibits, keynotes, and educational programs and to consider the following simple talking points: •Water is the essence of life: The ocean, healthy rivers, lakes, and wetlands are good for our minds and bodies. •Research shows that nature is therapeutic, promotes general health and well-being, and blue space in both urban and rural settings further enhances and broadens cognitive, emotional, psychological, social, physical, and spiritual benefits. •All people should have safe access to salubrious, wild, biodiverse waters for well-being, healing, and therapy. •Aquatic biodiversity has been directly correlated with the therapeutic potency of blue space. Immersive human interactions with healthy aquatic ecosystems can benefit both. •Wild waters can serve as medicine for caregivers, patient families, and all who are part of patients’ circles of support. •Realization of the full range and potential magnitude of ecological, economic, physical, intrinsic, and emotional values of wild places requires us to understand, appreciate, maintain, and improve the integrity and purity of one of our most vital of medicines — water.

Let’s explore some key signs you should be watchful for: Unrelenting fatigue: Persistent exhaustion, even after adequate rest and sleep, is a key part of Autistic burnout. When grappling with burnout, your body may feel utterly exhausted, leaving you scrambling for energy to complete even the simplest tasks. Heightened sensory sensitivities: Sensitivity to sensory stimuli—be it noise, light, texture, or smell—intensifies during burnout, amplifying your susceptibility to sensory overload, meltdowns, and shutdowns. Sensory stimuli that used to feel manageable may now feel overwhelming. Skills and functioning decline: A conspicuous drop in skills like focusing, organizing, problem-solving, and speaking is another feature of burnout and makes social interactions more daunting. Emotional dysregulation: Burnout-induced dysregulation in your nervous and sensory systems hampers your ability to manage your emotions, resulting in intense emotions or emotional numbness. Increased anxiety, irritability, or feelings of being overwhelmed are common during burnout. Diminished tolerance for change: During burnout, your capacity to absorb and adapt to change wanes, and you may seek comfort in sameness and predictability. You might experience heightened distress in the face of the unexpected. Social isolation: Burnout can spark a retreat into solitude and diminish your ability to engage socially. You might withdraw from social interactions and lose motivation for once-enjoyed hobbies or activities. Masking: Burnout can throw a wrench in your masking abilities, and it can be confusing if you don’t understand what is happening! Interestingly, lots of adults don’t get their autism diagnosis until they are in burnout and have lost their ability to mask.

What I gleaned from all this research is that empathy is the result of numerous cognitive and affective processes, all firing away behind the scenes somewhere in our brains. Cognitive processes allow us to understand the mental state of another person—his or her emotions, desires, beliefs, intentions, et cetera—which in turn helps us to understand and even predict the person’s actions or behaviors. They allow us to step outside of our own experience in order to take on and understand other people’s perspectives—something that every wife on the planet wishes her husband would do. The affective component of empathy is more related to our emotional responses to the mental states that we observe in other people. This component allows us to feel some appropriate and non-egocentric emotional response to another person’s emotions—something else that every wife on the planet wishes her husband would do. Empathy involves both processes, and while they operate independently of one another, there is some overlap. A graphical representation of empathy might involve a Venn diagram—two circles, one for the affective component and one for the cognitive, slightly overlapping, with me standing well outside of both circles talking incessantly about the weather during a funeral. In people with Asperger syndrome and other autism spectrum conditions, these mechanisms of understanding are much less reliable and productive than in neurotypicals. Those of us living within the parameters of an autism spectrum condition simply can’t engage the empathic processes that allow for social reasoning and emotional awareness. Furthermore, we have difficulty separating ourselves from our own perspectives (the word autism comes from the Greek word autos, meaning “self”), so we can’t easily understand or even access the perspectives and feelings of others.

And who do I go to for help when there is no one left in the spotlight that understands?

Dislike of changes to plans or vague plans when trying to plan outfit/shoes/things appropriate to activity/location/weather – intense dislike of feeling wrongly dressed or not having the right things with me. (Woman with autism)

An autistic person may constantly change their image (‘which mask should I wear today?’). In doing so, they may have developed a lack of self-identity caused by years of masking. This may have led to a misunderstanding of who they are, which can result in not having a sense of self or purpose.

An autistic person may consciously avoid social contact because they know they struggle in social environments. At school or work, they may prefer to sit on their own at break times or walk around, trying to find alternative things to do just so they can pass time. Keeping themselves occupied masks their anxiety and difficulties of not knowing how to interact effectively.

Can you imagine what it must be like to have to suppress almost every aspect of who you are? Consciously having to prepare yourself each day, just so you can socially engage? Rigorously running social scripts through your mind daily, carefully constructing all your responses and behaviours just so you can converse and interact without obvious social mishaps and judgement of your differences?

Speech Therapy for a Child with Autism Spectrum Disorder Communication is the bridge that connects us to the world around us. For children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), this bridge can often feel like a puzzle, with missing pieces that can make expression challenging. That’s where the power of speech therapy steps in. With the guidance of professionals, like those at the best childcare hospital in Chandigarh– Motherhood Chaitanya Hospital, let’s delve into the world of speech therapy for children with ASD, understanding its impact, approach, and the journey to unlocking communication.

Autistic people process the world from the bottom up. If you want to understand Autism as a disability and a source of human difference at a glance, it’s best summed up this way: we process in a careful, systematic, bottom-up way. Allistic folks, in contrast, make sense of the world in a very top-down fashion. They’ll enter a new environment, such as an unfamiliar restaurant, take a quick look around, and jump to reasonable conclusions about how to order, where to sit, what kind of service to expect, and even how loudly they should talk.

When a child or adult typically does well at school or in their workplace with no issues, but then explodes into disruptive meltdowns or raging anger once home in their ‘safe space’, it is a huge sign that they have been masking for the duration of the day. The energy it takes to mask and ‘fit in’ can be mentally and physically exhausting.

We also need to teach acceptance. As a society, we are unavoidably pressured to act and behave in a certain way to be socially accepted, but it’s important to remember (and accept) that people ARE different, and it’s OK to be different.

Social burnout’ is a common term used within the autism community due to the effort it takes to maintain and manage a social life.

Self-advocacy is about empowering yourself to develop choices, make decisions, solve problems, and challenge others to know better. Done effectively, it is not violent or overbearing. Self-advocacy does not use power and control; it seeks to work with others and engage them on your behalf. It requires fair treatment, presumed competence, and openness to understanding from all sides.

Attachment theory can too easily segue into mother-blaming, so I want you to understand that this lack of a sense of safety doesn't have to be the caregiver's (read 'mother's') fault; a parent and a baby are two different people, and sometimes, with the best will in the world, two people can be a bad fit for each other. Misrecognition is very often mutual.

Autism is a communication disorder. The important thing to understand is that we are not unable to communicate, we just do it differently.

It would’ve been really easy to blow off the question. I could’ve said that the neurodiverse crowd simply hadn’t shown up. Or I could’ve cited my own limited knowledge of such disabilities as the reason for a lack of diversity, and that likely would’ve ended the conversation. It also would have ended my blog’s premise of being a resource devoted to offering a platform for the underrepresented. Instead, I took a different tack. I posted the reader’s question publicly and asked for help. Soon after I did this, I received messages from other readers who had more experience with, and knowledge of, disabilities than I had. Through this influx of new information, I was able to reach out to a polyamorous blogger with Asperger’s syndrome. I got some letter-writing assistance from a partner who has some familiarity with Asperger’s, and I communicated the needs of the blog, and let this blogger do their thing. What I received from this blogger, was one of the most personal and informative entries in the blog’s history. Not only was the profile amazing, the author immediately followed up its publishing with a second entry that drove even deeper into the intersection of autism and polyamory. Had the self-identities questions been available then, the follow-up might not have been needed. Instead, that follow-up became the signpost that such a question was necessary. It would be added to the submission form the very next week. So, what happened in this situation, is that I gave up control of my platform, and opened it up to ideas outside of my own. As far as representation goes, the goals of my blog are clear, but I understand that I don’t have the tools to manage them. Not completely and not by myself. Had I kept my hands on the steering wheel, this bit of magic would never have occurred. Furthermore, I’d have lost the idea that my platform was welcoming to neurodiverse people or people with disabilities. I didn’t want to be the kind of privileged person who tells oppressed people what their version of diversity should look like. It’s the reason why I readily accept nominations for blog contributors. Everyone can have a hand in the creative process, in as much as it pertains to them. So, instead of trying to control the narrative, the pen was passed to those with lived experience to express themselves in the way that felt most authentic to them. In response, Poly Role Models became a more honest and welcoming resource, especially with the newly inspired question.