.Being.Us

This is a vent blog, but maybe it will give some insight into the types of changes that are hard as an autistic person: This week has been a barrage of change. I notice the tiny changes that I'm told allistics don't notice, and there were also a lot of bigger changes. First, I got a new student, which is a pretty common change; it happens about every 6 weeks. Then, I tried to do a lesson with an existing student, but our software wouldn’t work. Work told me the software had permanently discontinued service to our company, and I had to download and learn a new software, so I did. Several days later, though, they told me that the original software had been reinstated. This week, 4 lessons got rescheduled by students, my roommate was coming and going on a new schedule, and I was sleeping on a new bed. I started a new major project for work, and service techs came with noisy drills and disrupted my routines. I'm working way more hours than I can handle, and it's t...

I'm doing this prompt today: Make a list of 30 things that make you smile. My service dog 🐕. She makes me pull my hair out sometimes, too, but she's my Best💕. The forest🌳, especially when you can't hear traffic. I love the smell, the feel of the proximity of nature when my eyes are closed, the firmness of rocks and trees, the distant sound of rushing or trickling water. York peppermint patties. Enough said. Playing the flute ᭦♭ . It's really cathartic, too. Completing a drawing I like. Completing (writing) a poem I like. Shopping online Sewing relaxes me most of the time, but sometimes it stresses me out. Seeing certain family members, the ones I visit, is nice but draining, too Seeing a bird outside. Seeing a cat. Petting a cat. Holding a cat. Hearing a cat purr. Feeding a cat. Taking care of a toddler. Volunteering in a special ed classroom (kids), but my mental health makes this hard to manage, anymore. Gardening (small garden) Solving a log...

What am I like when I am well? I laugh a lot, but I don't smile at the same things as other people. Sometimes, I'll smile at the color of a hair band but not at the present you just gave me, even though I'm super excited about the present. Oh, yeah, you mean psych things. Well, I hear things you can't hear. I mean that literally. My hearing is very sensitive, and my brain doesn't tune things out as much as other people's brains do, so I notice tiny sounds. I have auditory hallucinations, too, though. Usually, it's just knocking or laughter, but once, I was treated to a surround-sound heavy metal concert that wasn't really happening. The lyrics were, "You broke the peanut butter jar!" Haha! I like logic puzzles, and I work through my homework from college again just for fun, but I can have trouble focusing, too. I also get migraines. At night time, I have paranoia and am afraid of monsters, but I don't have immersive delusions when I...

For a psychiatric recovery exercise, I had to write things that trigger paranoid or delusional thoughts or psychotic episodes for me. Listing them publicly might help my friends better understand why I decline to do certain things. So, here they are: Going outside at night, although I still enjoy and try to do this for the stars and the solitude. Being alone at night- I try to overcome this one to be "more adult." My service dog helps. Watching shows with certain content- I don't really know what content will be triggering until it starts to be triggering, and then I hit "skip." This is part of why I rarely watch shows with other people; I know I can't just skip triggering content as easily with others.  Talking about religion lends itself to delusions and hallucinations for me. Talking about the supernatural or non-science-based extra-terrestrial phenomenon does the same. Lack of sleep is also a common trigger for spiraling thought patterns and negat...

In many ways, autism makes me a good teacher. I explain things clearly and systematically. I keep detailed notes on each student because I have to do so to remember. I have formulas for everything and provide data-based feedback on student progress after every lesson. It also makes me a good English as a Second Language teacher. I pinpoint specific, recurring issues in students' speaking (accent, pronunciation, and oral fluency) and take a structured approach to addressing these issues. I do the same with academic writing (structure, grammar, vocabulary, spelling, coherence and cohesion). However, it makes me a lousy literature teacher. I'm good at poetry, but stories are not my thing. I take them at face value. It's hard for me to see symbolism behind the words. A story about talking rabbits ( Watership Down ) is, to me, just about the talking rabbits, and I'm totally into the narrative of those rabbits. I also cannot empathize with character emotions unless I...

♭♭♭ Here are a few things that keep me well ♭♭♭ Stimming constantly, and I need stim toys or objects for it My weighted blanket when I sleep or after a shower Going outside at least twice a week Talking (IMing) my friends daily Taking my psych meds on time, every time Time with my service dog is so, so important. Journaling or processing with others helps, too, but I can't always articulate. It comes in surges. Not talking on the phone, even to people I love, when I'm not up for it Avoiding my triggers At least one day per week with no expectations whatsoever ♭♭♭ These are a few things that keep me well ♭♭♭

I'd like to visit my family more often than I do, and I have the means to do so. My preference would be to visit around every 3 months, instead of closer to 2-3 times a year, and I know my family would like that, too. My mental illness has gotten worse since I moved to my current city, even though the way I handle it has gotten better. That's not unexpected. My age makes emerging psychotic symptoms expected with my illnesses. I manage them well. I maintain communication with my care team, take all of my psychiatric medications on time, participate in therapy bi-weekly, and know and avoid my triggers. Managing my illnesses well does not mean that they're well-managed, however. I was hospitalized last week for psychiatric reasons, and I'm still experiencing complex auditory hallucinations and simple visual hallucinations after the medication change. Additionally, I'm freer with my autism up here. I don't try to avoid things like self-stimulatory (stimming) b...

Copied from my Tumblr So, I have a number of vision disorders that did not become treatable until my sophomore year of high school. Additionally, I was unable to answer questions during the eye exam accurately due to autism and mental illness growing up, which made it hard to get glasses that helped as much as they could. My sophomore year of high school, I started vision therapy, but it wasn’t until I was 19, when I got tinted trifocles with prisms, that everything changed. That’s mostly what this post is about: seeing for the first time. I never knew that people could see the leaves on the trees from the ground. I didn’t know that our yard was full of clover; I thought it was just the couple of flowers I could see when I layed down. Briefly, I could see people’s faces, although my vision has worsened some since then. And the sky! I became obsessed with the sky. I spent probably the next 2 years of my life staring out of car windows and up outside, completely me...

I used to be really interested in religion. I was obsessively, devoutly, wholeheartedly religious. This blog might not be very well-written, because I've only recently started trying to put this to words, but I'm going to try to explain why I'm not so religious, anymore.  I converted to Christianity when I was 15, and in my autistic, all-or-nothing way, I was all-in. If this religion was true, in my mind, every word of it was true. My near-eidetic memory for text allowed me to memorize many parts of the Bible quite quickly. I was 15, an age when it's normal to think a lot about higher powers, life's meaning, and humanity's place in the world, and I had a lot of questions. Since the Bible said God talked to people, I asked these questions primarily directly to God. In order to believe Christianity wholeheartedly, I had to "turn off" a certain part of my mind. Theologians might call this suspension of disbelief, and psychologists call it allowing ...

My Hogwarts House- Ravenclaw "Or yet in wise old Ravenclaw, if you've a ready mind, Where those of wit and learning, Will always find their kind" -The Sorting Hat, Harry Potter and The Sorcerer's Stone The role models I've picked up over the years- The Brain from Arthur; Velma from Scooby Doo; Hermionie Granger, then Luna Lovegood, then Minerva McGonagall from Harry Potter ; etc. demonstrate this. My Ilvermorny House- Horned Serpent   According to Pottermore, "Horned Serpent house is sometimes considered to represent the mind of a witch or wizard. It is also said that Horned Serpent favours scholars." I often wonder if compassion or intellect matter more to me, and I think I've concluded that compassion matters more, but love of learning and study is more innate. I imagine that's why I got this house, as well as Ravenclaw. My Patronus- My Service Dog I used to wonder what form my patronus would take, and I was never satisfied wi...

I have a new echolalia/mantra: "Going to try to be chill. Going to try to be kind. Going to try to enjoy life." It's more meaningful than my usual phrases (which I still have), like "turtles, turtles, turtles" and "apples have oranges" and "purple turtles."

Dear unnamed friend, I carefully hoarded enough spoons to do the activity you suggested at the time you suggested. I went to bed super early and planned NOTHING for tomorrow to be able to do it. I just got discharged from psych this week, and the meds still aren’t all the way in my system, so I’m foggy-minded and emotional. I also woke up every 90 minutes last night for 30-45 minutes due to nightmares about the hospital that joined my normal nightmares. I told you I’d let you know around 9am today, when my alarm was set to sound, whether I could come to the 1pm event today, and I texted you that yes, I could come, but I needed to sleep until 10 to regain spoons. You texted me 4-5 times between 9:15 and 10, effectively cancelling any change I had to sleep, since it takes me at least 2 hours to wake all the way up. You tried to change the plans to pick me up around 10:15am, and I understand why. You were already in the area for something and didn’t want to drive all the w...

CW: Involuntary psychiatric hospital commitment, details of hallucinations and delusions So, I want to update everyone on my psych situation. I don't know if this will be a positive or a negative post. It may be a little disjointed. If I start talking about something and realize that explaining it is putting me in a bad head space, I'm just going to end the paragraph mid-thought and move on to the next part. I went to the hospital this week because my anti-psychotic, Seroquel wasn't working. I was having simple auditory and visual hallucinations, as well as delusions that were much more immersive than usual. It turns out that Seroquel often doesn't work for autistic people (like me). At first, the delusions started out disjointed, which is more normal for me. In the first couple of days of the psychotic episode, I thought all of these things (copied from my Tumblr ), but not simultaneously: That my neighbors were monsters and that there was a monster trapped ...