Personal Blogs

Its a two for one today, mainly because this post should been done this week and the last post should have been done last week but the our internet company decided to forget about us. 

So this is the last topic in this and its about gender and sexuality, I’m going to add relationships in as well just to give a fuller picture. Word of warning this is going to get complicated really quick and its going to get odd very quickly. So you have been warned.  

So I'm guessing anyone you is reading this knows about LGBT+, I know I have missed most but for the sake of simplicity, anyway if not L is Lesbian, G is Gay, B is Bisexual and T is Transgender and the + is for everyone else who comes under their banner. Here where it will get confusing.  A lot of people with autism are LGBT+, but for most who aren’t we don’t have definitive gender. We can be seen as male, female, slightly feminine, slightly masculine, Male but very feminine- although not gay, Female but very masculine- although not a lesbian. Right I can hear people like that saying that seems normal so far what wrong with any of this? Those who are slightly or are very feminine but are male have either learned their sexuality from the wrong sex or they don’t understand what gender they are but know what they are anatomically. The same along the female side. For most people the gender and sexuality are in their brains who and what they are, for most of us nope.  Okay lets put things into confusing matters. If you are still on board then lets see if this stumps you. A lot of people with autism and mainly Asperger’s can be heterosexual but we can have moments where we still look at the same sex and think that they are attractive.   

I’m going to talk a bit about relationships again this one is odd. Lets go from the start. Asking someone out is hard, but most people with autism or Asperger’s thinks that they must know whom ever they maybe must be know they have autism/Asperger’s usually they flee by that point- my experiences anyway. Before any of that they have to make sure they can be trusted and that they don’t freak with any twitches or behaviours we have. So if they can be trusted, can deal with our behaviours and they know they have autism we try and make them friends or acquaintances from there we use our own scale of our friendship before asking. If no we try and keep them close if yes they we change are whole system for them. Within that we know that we may not know what we are and what we understand gender or sexuality. So we can be a bit confused.  Then you have the quirks of each person, in my case I don’t like being touched or touching people, so you can see where the issues are and to top it as I keep saying I have limited emotions so if I can have any type of relationship it would be more like a close friendship then anything, which sounds a little sad but I don't really care I can mimic certain emotions so I try and make up for what I miss. 

This is the last post for this seires. I will plan some more things like this I think I might do a seires about how we view the world. There will be some odd post on here from then but I’m going to mainly plan this.

It's the last day of mental health Awareness week and it's focusing on stress... Oh boy. I know they want more people to know more about mental health in general but stress? I know everyone 'suffers' through stress, I'll explain why it's put like that later, let's put it through the eyes of someone who autistic. 

Stress to us is well... life. I could just sum it up like that but I'm going to explain mainly because when I talk to people they don't understand how I see things, but if i do anything general I'm going to focus from a higher functioning autism (& Asperger's) point of veiw. 

Every step I take I see countless dangers, it could be anything from me tripping to a meteor falling on me, most non-autistic brains will filter this. Then add on contacting people so talking or just walking past them, as I think a meteor is going to fall on me you don't have to guess much with might happen with that, still I will say, so to me the person could be harmless to they might spontaneously combust (blow up with no help needed).  When it come to talking to people I don’t know what people could say so I prepare phases to things either to buy me time or to give answer. Also like most people with autism I’m sensitive to the world around me, in my case light and sound. So I have to process all the sounds around me to keep a step ahead of what’s in front of me. I have to adjust my vision so I take in enough light to see but that’s it any more and I feel like my eyes are going to burn and too little and I can’t see. It’s handy at night time but I’m not an owl. On top of things I physical twitches so I have to hide that because if I twitch people have been known to either not help me or treatment like I’m a toddler. Also I also have verbal twitches/outbursts, which make things interesting... I sometimes can’t control somethings I say like “peek-a-boo” or “I’m a turtle”. This doesn’t make life easy but you get use to it. To add some general things in its between 23-28% of all autistics are epileptic and a further 25-36% have epileptic like issues but it’s not epilepsy. In this area all of them combine so that is 48-64% of all autistics will have a epileptic attacks (for the 25-36% it is usually their last) usually it will happen whilst being asleep.  Also when we have meltdowns or shutdowns all what I said times it by ten because most of us won’t even talk until we can handle what is happening. So the idea of handling stress for neurotypicals (non-autistic people) is laughable because before people usually think they have a lot going on or too much happening. For a day just try being us or look at how much you actually have going on. Most of autistics have all this and most likely more. This is partly why I  (and maybe others) have special items such as bowls and forks etc. Or why I have special places I vist or have specific spot I go or sit. If it moves the slightest bit I have to recalculate everything and adapt. 

This is why I phrased stress the way I did to a neurotypical, stress can be a hard thing and I can do other things like affect eating and sleep. To people who are autistic we have the same things but it affects us physically we have so much mental capacity we can starve are brain of anything needed or we can stop any of our senses. In theory with the capacity we have over our brains we can do anything in theory. For neurotypicals there are signs and symptoms for us there’s some signs and some symptoms but no one knows what happens in our heads. Stress is the most certain uncertainty most autistics face and it leads to different forms of self harm and abuse. It also makes any condition/s we have a whole lot worse, take socialising it’s tough but it’s doable, with stress it’s like your mouth is sowed shut and your whole body is wrapped tight. 

I thought I would end of my mental health experiences. Through my autism I have anxiety disorder called selective mutism  also I have anxiety on top. I have also had breakdowns, yes breakdowns-plural, no one noticed accept me. They though I also had depression- but that turned out to be autism. I’ve also had other things happen which I won’t say on here being public. So my mental health was rough and it still is but I take a day at a time because that’s all I can do. I evolve to a different thing every time, like eevee - best excuse for use pokèmon I could find.  

As today is the last day of autism awareness month I would like to share how life with autism is well to me anyway. I going to spilt this in to three bits: Emotions, danger and life.

Emotions: In general I have three emotions these are happy, sad and angry. I can't laugh (as in i make a face but no sound comes out) although i can mimic laughter each mimic of laughter is my gauge of how funny something is. To me there is no inbetween i am one of those three. When I was around year 5 to year 6 I got bored with just having these emotions, partly because i couldn't connect with anybody but also because I couldn't see from points of view only my own which is purely logical which caused issues beacuse i could take in more things then anyone in my class but my teachers couldn't really understand me although they could teach me. So I made what i called a 'Synthetic Emotion Chip' in this i put all the emotions i thought i should have like annoyed, excited and worried I think now i have around 15 'synthetic' emotions this doesn't always work but it better then not understanding someone i really want to help. An added bonus is i can turn of my 'emotion chip' when needed.

Danger: This one is an odd one where I overthink so i can see dangers before they happen. The example I use is if two cars, one going up a road the other down, are coming to a point where they meet. The three I see at least are what I call  a safe vision, a mild vision and a extreme vision these look like.                                                                                                                                                          

A Safe-  they pass it other keeping on their side of the road and no harm is done.

A Mild- They clip each other but all is well

A Extreme- The hit head on and bust in to flames anyone who was in the cars or near them is dead. 

Also the other issues I have are not seeing cars or noticing any danger coming towards me so have learnt to bounce, I'm pretty sure I am made of putty.

Life: As I have said I overthink but my life is full of bits i can't filter like that but i see things like this pretty much every step. I don't cope well with lound noises, people, touching or lots of light. I swear i was meant to be a bat. I don't really have friends or what I will call friends. I think I have one or two but thats it. I can see things from other people's point of view but its hard to unstand my own. I tic pretty much constantly whenever i have an emotional reaction which isnt good especially  when you don't want to look like a panda. It may sound like hard work or hell to me this is life I've learnt how to control certain bits  like the twiching... to a point. 

So Please be Autistic aware Some people may have issues worse then me or better but all we want is to be treated with respected and not looked at like we are odd.