This guy is really going to regret sitting down with Jon

Spicy-brained friends, I would like to propose an update to the very useful ‘if you hate everyone, eat, if everyone hates you, sleep, and if you hate yourself, shower’ mantra to live by

Have you suddenly become a petty, hateful little gremlin who thinks people should face the firing squad for (checks notes) leaving teabags on the counter, breathing loudly, or daring to exist in the same space as you? Perhaps mundane and reasonable requests like ‘hey, we agreed to hang out now, let’s hang out’ make you want to scream and move to a yurt in the woods.

You. Are. Overstimulated.

People talk a lot about being overstimulated, and the physical/mental effects of it. What I haven’t seen is people talking about what it does emotionally, and it took me an embarassingly long time to link up those nitpicky, resentful emotions with the state of overstimulation/meltdown/shutdown.

These feelings do not mean that you’re a bad person! They probably aren’t how you actually feel about the people around you. They probably do mean that your nervous system is at its absolute limit and any request/demand/stimulus is Too Much and taking you into fight or flight territory.

Go lie down in a dark room for an hour, or find somewhere safe and familiar to stim for a bit. If it’s happening a lot, schedule yourself regular low-stimulation shutdown time

Signed: someone who moved in with their nearest and dearest only to have a massive crisis of faith about Suddenly Hating All of Them. I don’t hate them, it’s just overstimulating living with people. If I can spare anyone else a similar 9 months of suspecting that they may actually be a bit of a shit person, then this post is worth it!

Quick, someone think of an R so we can make it HARLOT. I find harlots delightfully memorable.

Maybe ‘restless’? Sometimes you just gotta Go Outside

If you feel like you want to remove your own skin and removing stimuli from your environment hasn’t worked, then you might be Restless and need to Move Around?

Yeah! Understimulation is also a nasty fucker

PART TIME SOULMATE FULL TIME PROBLEM????????

But when does a comet become a meteor?☄️💫

When does a candle become a blaze?🕯️🔥

When does a man become a monster?

When does a ripple become a tidal wave?💧🌊

When does the reason become the blame?📈📉

When does a man become a monster… 🥼🩺🩻

The M.A.G.I.C saga, a group I will always miss together and gives me joy when I rewatch greys anatomy to see them again 🤍

WHAT A DREAM

Someone: yeah it was so sad when this character died

Me, who’s already read 15 fix-it fics and no longer can tell the difference between canon and fanon: when they what

I want to say this bc it does not get said enough: most grief you experience in your life will have NOTHING to do with death.

This is not talked about enough and as a result ppl struggle to process grief bc the world is telling them that grief is something else.

Grief is about loss, and IF you’d like to define it as a loss of life it is not restricted to loss of life via death. Even then I’d implore you to not view grief as about death or life but again, just loss.

Grief is also about having a shitty childhood that nothing can fix even if you have healed from it as an adult; your childhood was shitty and there’s nothing retroactively you can do about it. You grieve the loss of thriving your past self was denied.

Grief is about friendships that ended abruptly, confusingly and again, there’s nothing you can do to change that. You just have to sit with it. This is the only way grief can ultimately be processed and all it wants by the way: to be accepted and sat with. That’s it.

Grief is about opportunities that have passed, experiences you can’t have because of the way situations have ended up, and having to accept that while you do have your whole future ahead of you, there were some things you wanted to be a certain way then and they weren’t, aren’t and will never be.

Grief is being estranged from your family and missing family closeness even though you do not want to be closer to your parents, because you’re grieving the fact that there is a healthy part of human life you will not experience through them.

Grief can be the job you lost, the plans that fell through, the events that spiraled out of your control

If grief is strictly about life and death, understand that it includes grieving the life you never had and the death of who you used to be, too.

But moreover, grief is about loss.

—–

If my writing helps you consider > donating here,<  as FOSTA/SESTA has taken most of my income and I need support as I finish school so I can establish my work.

things I wish autism research actually tried to figure out:

but no it’s always “how do we train the animals to be something they’re not” or “but what made you this way??” or “Time To Find A Cure”

ALL. OF. THIS.

OK, so I decided to check out which of these had been researched and what they found.

Caffeine - not much, but this study looks interesting. It suggests that if you’re not a regular caffeine consumer, caffeine might temporarily make you act less autistic.

Oh, hey, this study has a potential answer to both caffeine response and sleep problems! There’s apparently an enzyme that affects both caffeine and melatonin metabolism.

GI issues - this study didn’t find a link. The rate of GI issues was 9% for both autistic and NT children. The most common GI issues for both groups were food intolerance, usually lactose intolerance.

This study found a much higher prevalence of GI issues in autistic kids (17%), although they didn’t compare them with NTs. They also suggest that there may be a link between regression and GI issues, and confirm yet again that the MMR vaccine has nothing to do with autism. The most common GI issue they found was constipation, followed by diarrhea and food allergies.

This study compared GI issues between autistic kids and NT siblings. They found that 83% of the autistic sample and 28% of their siblings had at least one possibly-GI-related symptom. They also give data on specific GI symptoms, such as gaseousness (54% of autistics and 19% of siblings), abdominal discomfort (44% of autistics and 9% of siblings), and so forth. They found 20% of autistics and 2% of siblings had three or more poops per day, 32% of autistics and 2% of siblings had consistently watery poops, and 23% of autistics and none of their siblings had large changes in consistency. Also, apparently parents felt that 49% of the autistics and none of the siblings had particularly foul-smelling poops. And another for the sleep question - this study found 51% of autistics and 7% of siblings had sleep problems, with sleep problems being more common in autistic kids with GI issues.

Stimming and Sensory-Seeking - I couldn’t find much. This study I found is interesting, but it’s about more OCD-like compulsions, not actually stimming.

Oh, here’s something. A big detailed review of neurophysiological findings of sensory processing in autism.

LGBT - I’ve written up stuff about this elsewhere, but in short, autistic people, especially AFAB autistics, are definitely more likely to be asexual, bisexual, kinky and trans. Some relevant studies here, here, here, here, here, here, and here, and there’s plenty more to be found.

Autistic Strengths - Well, Laurent Mottron and his team, including autistic rights advocate Michelle Dawson, have done a lot of research on what they term ‘enhanced perceptual functioning’, which they theorize explains the Block Design peak sometimes seen in autistic people. (Block Design is one of the subtests of the Weschler’s IQ test, and autistic people often show a relative strength on this test relative to other subtests on this test.) In general, I highly recommend looking at their research. It really shows what can happen when an autistic person gets involved in autism research.

This study by a different research team finds that children gifted in realistic still-life drawing have higher rates of repetitive behavior typical of autism (though none of their sample were actually autistic), and show similar visuospatial profiles to autistic kids.

This study finds that perfect pitch is associated with autistic traits. On the AQ, musicians with perfect pitch scored higher on the imagination and attention-switching subscales than musicians without perfect pitch and non-musicians. This study found a subset of autistic kids have extremely good pitch perception, with no relationship to musical training.

People in STEM fields are more likely to be autistic or have autistic relatives, especially mathematicians. (Which probably comes as no surprise to anyone who’s spent time in the math department of any university.) This study also finds that autistic kids tend to be better at math.

Sleep - as a couple studies above mentioned, sleep issues in autism could be related to melatonin metabolism or GI issues. This study found that 53% of autistic kids, 46% of kids with intellectual disabilities and 32% of NT kids have sleep problems. Autistic kids are both slower to fall asleep and more likely to wake up early than NT kids.

This study found a correlation between autistic traits and sleep problems in autistic kids. Repetitive behavior is related with being slower to get to sleep and not getting as many hours of sleep per night; communication problems are related to being slower to get to sleep, not getting as much sleep, and parasomnias (night terrors, restless leg syndrome, etc); and social differences are related to being slower to get to sleep, not getting as much sleep, waking up at night, parasomnias and breathing problems while sleeping.

This study found a strong correlation between sleep problems and sensory hypersensitivity among autistic kids. And this study found that autistic and/or intellectually disabled kids showed strong correlations between poor sleep, anxiety and behavior problems.

And this study found that 67.9% of autistic kids have sleep problems, and parents of kids with sleep problems were under more stress. Boys and younger children had more sleep problems.

Joint problems - This study found that people with Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome, a connective tissue disorder that causes joint hypermobility, were more likely to be autistic. (And also to have mood disorders and attempt suicide.)

This study suggests that people with joint hypermobility have larger amygdala and various other brain structural differences, which was correlated with anxiety and higher sensitivity to internal body sensations. And this study found that 31.5% of people with ADHD and 13.9% of NTs have benign joint hypermobility syndrome.

Faceblindness - This study confirms that prosopagnosia (faceblindness) is more common among autistic people, with 67% having some degree of facial recognition difficulties.

This study reviews three theories about why autistic people have prosopagnosia, and concludes that the most likely of the three theories is the idea that avoiding eye contact impairs face recognition.

This study found that autistic people are slower to notice faces in scenes, and pay less attention to faces.

The last two questions I’m not really sure where to start.

Ok but there was something so sweet seeing Rhaenys, Jace, and Luc head off on their missions. Cause if you ignore the contexts it’s just a grandmother flying with her grandbabies and how that might have reminded her of flying with her own children 🥺

#rhaenyra targaryen, queen of the seven kingdoms and grand entrances

Dragons in House of the Dragon Episode 1.10

Your honour : lemme hang you. On the wall. In a frame.

so that’s what i got from today’s ep

HERE SHE COMES

SHE WHO MIGHT HAVE BEEN QUEEN

GET OUT HER FUCKING WAY

RHAENYS ON HER QUEEN SHIT WITH THE RED QUEEN MELEYS THEY SHOULVE DRACARYSED THE GREENS

there are some autistic “traits” that people find really annoying but that are inherently kind

like overexplaining. a lot of autistic people didn’t have certain things explained to them because “everyone knows that.” so when an autistic person overexplains something it’s not because they think you’re stupid it’s because they know how it feels for someone to assume you know something you don’t and just not ever explain how or why. it’s a kindness. autistic people aren’t annoying or stupid for this. they’re kind.