I have Asperger’s Syndrome, social anxiety disorder, OCD and depression.
I’m 30 years old, female and am happily married to a wonderful autistic man.
I like drawing pixel art. I started drawing in Aug 2011 and have been addicted to it since then, so if you see a pixel picture in this blog, then it was probably drawn by me.
Other things that I love are pokemon and animals.
If you leave me a message, please let me know if you don't want the answer to be published publicly.
Normally I blame my lonerism all on my autism. But no, OCD, you played your part too. I’m sorry I overlook you so much when it comes to this.
(Source: ocdestroyed, via vulvastubble)
You are entitled to disagree with everything I wrote in this original post. I have written things from my point of view. I was stating the things that have happened to me (psychiatrist laughing at asperger syndrome and saying it’s just a personality) and I was giving my personal opinion on why he reacted that way.
I do not see how saying that something is part of one’s identity is simultaneously saying there are no negatives to it. Who are these people saying there are no negatives? Are you sure that is really what they are saying?
I unfortunately cannot give you a list of people that have said there are no negatives, as I am not referring to people who have said this recently or even on tumblr. Tumblr seems to be more focussed on allistic hate, but there are places which I used to frequent in which “autism is just a personality trait, it is not a disability, it does not cause me problems” was the main thing people said all the time. When I dared to say “my autism causes me problems, it makes life difficult for me”, I was bombarded with responses where people told me that I am wrong and bad for thinking this, that autism is not a disability, and that any problems I faced in my life must be caused by other people, or my other disabilities (like OCD). So yes, I do think they believed there were no negatives caused by autism itself. Any negatives associated with autism were just due to other people making life difficult and were not intrinsic to autism itself.
Overall, every disability is neutral. In a more accommodating world, negatives wouldn’t occur to impairing levels.
I both agree and disagree with this. In a more accomodating world, then a lot of negatives would disappear. After all, if I lived in a silent world, I wouldn’t be bothered by noise sensitivities. If I lived in a world where touching others was outlawed, I wouldn’t have to be bothered by being touched. If noise sensitivity and touch sensitivity are your disabilities, then in a more accomodating world, they would never affect you, and you would appear to have no disability at all.
However, some negative things caused by disabilities cannot be fixed by more accomodating worlds. As an example, part of my OCD is pure-O in nature. I get repeating thoughts of self doubt. My own thoughts attack me. My inner world is where all the impairments occur. Unlike with my germ-phobia parts of OCD, which can be alleviated by people washing everything and doing everything for me, no-one can help me with the pure-O bits. They cannot fix or take away my own thoughts.
The same is true of some aspects of my aspergers. For example, there have been lots of people in my life who have tried to be friends with me. They have been nice to me, they have given me lots of space, they have not been offended if I have not talked to them and avoided them for months. I’m not sure what else they could have done. Yet I still could not be friends with them. I still felt incredibly anxious around them to a degree that it affected my physical health. There are no accommodations that they can make that can help me with that.
I don’t see how acknowledging that is the same as saying we don’t need help.
Yes, you are right. This is what I think you are saying: “If we live in an accomodating world, we do not need to suffer from bad aspects of our disabilities. However, we need the world to help us by making these accomodations for us.”
However, when people say “it is just our identity, it is just our personality, it is not a disability, aspergers itself isn’t what causes our problems”, other people hear and think “oh, they’re just a slightly different kind of person. We should respect that they are just different people, and not ‘broken’ in any sort of way. There’s nothing wrong with them. They don’t have a disability. They don’t have any problems. They don’t need any help.”
I also don’t see how speaking in groups is automatically bullying. Non-autistic people are more of a group, being something like 99 out of 100.
I didn’t say that people speaking in groups automatically = bullying. People can speak in groups, but not be bullying someone. I said that the bullies tend to bully in groups. i.e. that there often isn’t just one person bullying another person. There are lots of bullies all bullying that one person together.
I don’t know what you’re talking about as far as lies and rumors go, nor what warranted someone’s “asshole” comment, but I do think things are being taken out of context. It is fine to have to an opinion. It is not fine to perpetuate damage and if one is called an asshole for that, well, that is inevitable.
This bit really hurt me. The last sentence in particular, I interpreted as you saying “I have perpetuated damage and I deserve to be called an asshole.” You say that you do not know what is being referred to as far as lies and rumours go, yet I know that you have liked every post that has been written with the sole purpose of spreading lies and rumours about me. I have been seriously contemplating blocking you because your likes to these posts has made me think that you are ‘egging on’ the bully, and therefore being just as bad as the bully. The only reason why I have not yet blocked you is because I decided to give you the benefit of the doubt.
Since you say that things are being taken out of context, then let me give you that context. Here is the original, full quote:
lol leytacle, you fucking asshole. if you don’t care whether i’m autistic or not, and micesacle doesn’t etiher, why were you two so fucking obsessed with it before? if you didn’t care you would’ve left it the hell alone. go baww about the fact that you harrassed someone and they bit you for it elsewhere. no one fucking CARES.
Here is the reason why I did not deserve to be called a “fucking asshole”:
- I do not care whether the person is autistic or not
- I never at any point was obsessed with them being autistic or not
- I never at any point harassed them about their diagnosis, or anything else
- The only time that I mentioned their diagnosis at all, ever, was when defending micesacle against bullying, saying that micesacle’s comments about her diagnosis might have been misinterpreted. After that the only times that I mentioned her diagnosis was when several different people decided to gang up and all pick at my words, accuse me of things, and question me about what I think about her diagnosis. It was in response to these people that I said that I didn’t care about whether she was autistic or not, but if they really want my opinion on the matter, then I think it’s highly likely that she is, since she seems a lot like most of the other people in the tag.
- draidpiedpiperofpenguins, now called orcinusorcinatapdance, has been asked several times to provide quotes for times when I have harassed them about their diagnosis. She has never once provided any evidence at all to back up her accusations of being harasssed. I can provide lots of evidence of when she has been mean to me. She has not and cannot provide such evidence about me.
I encourage you to read through all the posts. As I have had to resort to blocking a lot of the people that bullied me, you will probably have to read the posts on their individual blogs. If you still feel that I deserve to be called a fucking asshole afterwards, then fair enough. If you choose to call me that yourself, then please back it up with quotes so that I know exactly why I am being called that and so that, if need be, I can see that yes, indeed, I have been bad and I should apologise. However, do not take sides until you know all the facts. Do not agree with and egg on bullies if you do not know exactly what is going on.
(via adventures-of-cuteella)
I have had OCD since I was a kid. My OCD symptoms have changed a lot through the years.
Childhood OCD
When I was a kid, my OCD mostly took the form of me needing to scrape my hand across edges of things all the time. I have absolutely no idea why I needed to do it, I just did.
When I sat down to eat at a table, I felt the need to scrape the palm of my right hand vertically down the edge of the table. I would do it over and over and over again. It really annoyed my Dad and he would shout at me to stop every time I did it. Maybe it was his shouting, or maybe it was just a symptom that disappeared all on its own, but at some point, I did stop doing it.
I also felt the need to pull gloves tight against my fingertips. When I was wearing gloves, I’d just need to keep pulling them down, so I could feel the pressure on my fingertips. This symptom has persisted over the years, although it has changed a bit, since now that I have written that, I find myself needing to keep rubbing the ends of my fingernails with my fingers. It feels so uncomfortable if I don’t do it. I know how mad this sounds, but when I stop, it feels like my fingernails are emitting some kind of bad energy that could cause someone to become ill. Rubbing them stops that feeling.
Another thing that I remember is being scared of the number five. If I was reading a book, I couldn’t stop on a page with the number five in it, or a multiple of five, as if I did, I felt like something terrible would happen to my family. I avoided the number five quite a bit.
I had some other quirks which were related to cleanliness. In school, there was a corner of our classroom where we would go to sit at the end of the day, so we could have a story read to us. There were some benches in the corner, and some carpeted floor space. For some reason, I was scared of those benches as they seemed really dirty to me, so I would always avoid them and sit on the floor instead. I know it is strange because logically thinking, the floor would have been dirtier than the benches, but I didn’t really know much about germs in those days, I just had a strong feeling that the benches were really dirty.
I was also very protective over my toys. I hated to take them outside of my room as I felt like then they would get dirty.
Teenage OCD
Probably my most bothersome symptom when I was a teenager took the form of annoying thoughts that would plague me all the way through class. I would spend the entire time feeling like I was going to shout out things like “this is not my work!” or “I cheated!” and I would roll up my tongue and clamp my mouth down on it so that I could make sure that I couldn’t shout it. Even then, I’d spend my time worrying in case I had actually shouted it out.
Another symptom involved a fear of cancer. I can feel myself getting really anxious right now, just from writing the word. In school, whenever I had to write a full stop, I needed it to be perfectly round with no jagged bits or bumpy bits. I would go over and over the full stop to make sure it was perfect. If I didn’t do it, I felt like my mum would die of cancer. One time I spent a whole hour in class going over and over just one full stop. My pen eventually made it all the way through my entire exercise book because of it.
When I started using computers to type up my work, I felt the need to repetitively delete and rewrite the last sentence of each paragraph. I needed to keep doing this until I had a perfectly happy thought in my head, so as to prevent anything bad from happening to my family.
A lot of my life started being taken over by needing to think happy, good thoughts all the time. I’d need to keep repeating doing all sorts of stuff over and over until I did it whilst having a good, happy thought.
I also started needing to check and recheck my work before handing it in to a teacher. I couldn’t shake the feeling that I might have written something bad into the work, like a swearword, or some kind of really personal information that shouldn’t be in there. Each time I read through my work, I’d be checking for things like this. Once I finished reading it, instead of thinking “oh good, there was nothing there”, I felt like “oh no, what if I accidentally wrote something bad in there whilst I was checking it?”, so I’d need to check it again, which of course led me to thinking I’d written something bad that time, and it would just continue over and over.
A fear of germs also started to emerge during my teenage years, although it happened so slowly and subtly that I barely noticed it. I started finding it difficult to touch things, like hold onto banisters. I stopped being able to hug my dogs, then stopped being able to stroke them. Eventually I couldn’t even feed them treats and could do nothing more than just talk to them from a distance. When I did stroke them or feed them, I felt the need to wash my hands with soap up to 12 times each time because they just never felt like they were clean.
Adult OCD
My fear of germs became my worst OCD symptom once I became an adult, and remains my worst symptom today. I avoid touching most things. Having to use a public toilet is an extreme nightmare, walking past bins produces anxiety, being touched or touching people is horrible, seeing or touching red stains sends me into a huge panic, as I fear it might be blood. Even if it’s extremely obvious that it isn’t blood, my head just keeps yelling “what if it is blood, what if what if what if?”
[Discussion of mental illness, ableism, violent imagery]
OCD, or Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, isn’t just the tendency to keep things all tidy like Mary Poppins on a sugar rush. It doesn’t mean that you like your clothes hung in chromatic order or your socks folded a certain way, or even that you sort your M&M’s into color groups before eating them. It isn’t your friend with her dust free home or Bree VanDeKamp hair or Emily Gilmore six-inch tapers.
It does mean that you tend to have thoughts (obsessions) that intrude into your mind and make you extremely uncomfortable, because you know that they are unreasonable. Some people have thoughts where they hurt themselves or their loved ones. When I was much younger I once had repeated visions of shoving a corkscrew into my eye while at the bar where I was working. Understandably it was bothersome, and actually there were times that it worried me to tears, because I knew I wasn’t going to shove a corkscrew into my eye, and I couldn’t figure out why my brain was giving me that picture. People often engage in repetitive actions (compulsions) to alleviate the stress of these thoughts. I wiped bar glasses and liquor bottles until they were spotless, and later at home plucked my eyebrows into oblivion because they were never quite symmetrical. I brushed my teeth until my gums bled…anything to keep my mind off of that fucking corkscrew. In your mind you know that having washed your hands or brushed your teeth fifteen times before school has probably already taken care of any germs (and skin or enamel), but you can’t get the thoughts of those germs gone. So you brush, or you wash. And you still think your hands are covered in bacteria or you can feel your teeth rotting in your head (even though you know it isn’t true). So you wash again…and you miss that first class…even though you know better.
It overcomes your life. OCD isn’t just some cute little habit you have of always placing everything on your desk perpendicularly or always lining shoes by the door. It actually interferes with your life and how you are able to live it.
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Answer:
Thank you very much, and you’re welcome.
#ocd #autismSource: [ x ]
You must meet all 4 parts: A, B, C, D:
A. Persistant deficits in social communication and social interaction across contexts, not accounted for by general developmental delays and manifested by all 3 of the following:
- Deficits in social-emotional reciprocity*, ranging from…
I think that for section D, it’s meant to mean: even if you try your absolute best at everything, do your symptoms still prevent you, or make it extremely difficult for you, to be able to do certain things that are necessary for everyday life.
It isn’t a matter of whether it bothers you or not, or whether it bothers them or not. It’s simply asking if you can or cannot do things.
I think it is there to prevent people from being diagnosed as having AS, when all they really have are some personality quirks. I’ll use OCD to explain it.
Many people say they’re “sooo OCD”. You hear it all the time, and many of these people even believe they do have OCD. They think they have OCD because they like to keep their coloured pencils in rainbow order, or they like to keep their desk tidy at all times, or they hate it when people don’t wash their hands after using the toilet. I shall label this group NOCD (not ocd). I shall label another group, people who actually have OCD, as HOCD (has ocd), so that I can compare them both.
So, if we apply criteria D to both groups and ask, does it impair their everyday life:
Does it impair their ability to work?
NOCD - no. e.g. the person that needs to keep his desk tidy has a nice organised desk that probably aids him in doing his work efficiently.
HOCD - yes. e.g. the person needs to keep rearranging things on their desk for HOURS. It is the only thing they do all day at work and they end up getting fired.
Does it impair their ability to have a normal social life?
NOCD - no. e.g. they may feel disgusted at shaking someone’s hand after they’ve been to the toilet, but it is quickly forgotten and they carry on with the conversation.
HOCD - yes. e.g. they may force themselves to shake someone’s hand, but then they spend the entire conversation thinking about the germs on their hand and feeling like it is going to kill them. Thoughts go round and round and round in their head making them feel awful. They cannot pay attention to the conversation. They don’t know what is being said because they are too busy being distracted by their own thoughts.
An NOCD person has quirks which resemble OCD, but these quirks don’t impair their day to day life at all. A proper OCD person is often impaired in almost every aspect of their everyday life, even when they try their absolute best to suppress, get over, hide and minimise all of their symptoms.
So back to autism. I know that people are going to hate me and yell at me for ages for saying this, but autism is a disability. It is in the dsm iv because it is a disability. The main point of getting the label is so you can have access to support and services. It is NOT just a personality quirk.
If it is not impairing your life significantly in some way (i.e. making it far more difficult for you to do things without support, than it would for non-autistic people), then no, I do not think you’d fit this criteria for AS.
What if I went too near to that bin?
What if I touched that stain?
I am so sick and tired of seeing all the “I hate allistics” posts. Seriously, you spew hatred at every non autistic person in sight and then complain that they never listen to you. Why don’t they listen to you? Maybe because the only things you actually say are non helpful…
i’m just confused about why you’re not saying anything to the non-autistics? bragging about physically abusing their siblings?
I haven’t personally seen any posts like this, and I can’t have a go at something that I haven’t personally seen. However, I would always be against physical abuse, whether the sibling was autistic or not.
grieving the diagnosis and talking about how their child has ruined their lives by existing?
I have very mixed feelings about this.
I don’t think that it’s wrong to grieve the diagnosis. I think that grieving because of the diagnosis is a natural thing. Even I grieved when I got my diagnosis. I was happy to finally get a label and an explanation, but I went through a process where I became very depressed, grieving the life that I had lost because I hadn’t received adequate help, and grieving the life that I would never have, because I will never be normal. I don’t think I can be annoyed at people for going through a grieving process. An autism diagnosis really can be a shock.
If people say that their kid is ruining their lives, I feel like I should hate it, vehemently. I’ve been on the receiving end of this myself. My mum has told me many times before that I was ruining her life. It wasn’t because of my autism, but in reference to my OCD. It hurt really, really badly to hear her say that.
I can see why she said it though. I was stopping her from having a normal life. I needed her to help me with everything, I needed things done in specific ways, I would scream and cry when she did something wrong, as it would send me into an OCD panic. I’d embarrass her in public continuously because of the way I acted (I looked insane because of the way I walked and touched things due to OCD, I’d avoid her and act like she was disgustingly filthy etc). Going to a restaurant, to the shops, to anywhere, became impossible.
I can understand why it’s difficult, and why parents do need a place where they can vent their own feelings and complain and grieve etc. I know certainly at the time it was happening, I used to pray that she would either find a support group, or go online or do something so she could do all of the moaning that she needed and get all of her frustrations and hurt out without directing it at me. Maybe, just maybe, it would have helped the situation. Maybe she would have been emotionally more able to handle me in real life then.
I think that in general, I can’t feel too against parents moaning. I’m sure their kid probably does ruin their ‘normal’ lives. I’m sure they do need support and understanding for what they’re going through, just as their kid needs support and understanding for what they are going through too. I am seeing how them having their own tag to do it in would be an essential thing though. People with the disorder they’re moaning about shouldn’t have to hear how horrible they are, because of something they can’t help. Maybe this is why people are so protective over their ‘actuallyautistic’ tag.
What I would say though, is that all the grieving and moaning should not be a stagnant thing. I’d hate for parents to get permanently stuck in the thoughts of their lives being ruined and it all being their kids fault. If you’re going to moan and seek support, do it so you can move through and eventually past those feelings. Let out the hurt, so you can move past it and get to a better state of being and seeing the world. Life isn’t necessarily ruined. Life is just different. If you can’t go to a restaurant because of your kid, what’s stopping you from getting a takeaway and eating it in your house, with candlelight, your own choice of music etc. Surely that actually sounds better?
I definitely think though that you should NEVER, EVER, tell your own kid that they are ruining your life. It’s not their fault. They’re trying their best. They’re disabled. It’s up to you to get past your own hurt and help them, and not make life so much worse for them by telling them they’re awful little monsters.
Certainly the thing that always annoyed me the most was the fact that my mum never once looked at herself and the way she was acting, or at how she was impacting me. She was ruining my life through her ignorance. In her mind, I was the one with the problem, and I was the only one that needed to change. She never once considered that she ought to change her attitude. She never once stopped to think that oh, maybe her daughter was trying her absolute best, that her daughter couldn’t help being disabled, that she maybe wasn’t actually just a spoiled brat whose sole purpose in life was to ruin the lives of everyone around her. Again, I can see that maybe this is why autistic people shout so much to be heard, and protest their hate for ignorant allistics so strongly. Although on the other hand, I know that certainly if this had been directed at my mum, she’d have just hardened her attitude even more, seeing the protesters as just horrible, selfish people. If people told her stuff in a less “You’re an evil monster” way though, she probably would have been more inclined to listen.
Also, if you’ve got thoughts of killing your kid and or yourself, for goodness sake get some professional help. These types of thoughts are wrong, wrong, wrong. Maybe you’re depressed and that’s why you’re thinking it, or maybe you can’t cope etc. For goodness sake get help for your depression, and find ways to help you cope, even if that means giving your kid up to some family who can handle them better than you can. You’re having such thoughts because there’s something wrong with you and your ability to cope, not because of your kid.
talking about how they want to buy a taser for their sibling?
Again I havent seen anything like this personally. It does sound awful though.
i’m confused as to why that stuff is okay, but us not being nice in reply isn’t. we’re tired of having to move spaces because non autistic people take them over. so heck yes, we’re territorial. i’m sorry but there are spaces for autistic people to talk about their experiences. but they should not be the same spaces for non autistic people to talk about how horrible it is to have an autistic sibling/child.
I think I have explained above about what I think is and isn’t ok. Through my writing in this post, I am also coming to terms with why having your own space is an important thing. However, I still think it’s wrong for people to have quite such a large go at people that wander into the tag because of a simple mistake. I also don’t think that the tag is so obviously self explanatory. After all, their kid is “actually autistic”, so why can’t they write about them there? It’s not like the tag is called “for the sole use of bloggers who have autism themselves”.
Also, my main annoyance is that I go to the tag to read about experiences with autism and all that I can see is hundreds of posts about hating allistics, or about hating someone using the wrong tag. It’s just as annoying and bad as having to see the same inspirational video of an autistic girl speaking, being blogged a billion times by a billion different people.
in short, maybe you should be horrified at all the ableism spewed out by non-autistics instead of being disgusted at us for not being nice about being treated as un-persons.
Maybe I haven’t been around tumblr long enough, I don’t know, but I really haven’t seen ableism spewed everywhere. At least, certainly to nowhere near the degree that I’ve read anti-allistic posts.
What I have seen is allistic people being scared and having to write posts where they say “I’m on your side autistic people, really. I’m not autistic, but I’m not going to say my sibling/kid is inspirational since I know you hate that. I’m not going to say they’re awful and a burden because I know you hate that. I do want to find other people with siblings/kids like me though. Please let me do that? Please? Please don’t hate me and attack me if I write something about my autistic sibling/kid. Please, pretty please?” From reading such posts, I get the impression that autistic people have completely taken over the autism tag, rather than the opposite.
I’ve also seen several posts where autistic people have either misinterpreted, or simply misrepresented what non-autistic people have said, thus making them seem like awful, evil things that deserve hate. If it is just a misinterpretation, then it isn’t necessarily their fault and they are entitled to feel hurt by it, but still, such posts do annoy me.
