TIL The Double Empathy Problem theory suggests social difficulties experienced by autistic people when interacting with non-autistic people are due to reciprocal differences, not an inherent deficiency, most autistic people are able to display good social reciprocity with most other autistic people

via reddit.com

okay but the BEST part of the first study discussed (conducted by an autistic person!) Is that it shows that while easy, calm, mutual communication and social interaction is often more natural between two autistic people than it is between an autistic person and a non-autistic person, it is ALSO like this when an autistic person encounters a non-autistic person who imitates the autistic individual’s behaviours- neurotypical parents copying autistic children’s play, for example, apparently receive more positive engagement from their child- which is SERIOUSLY FUCKING IMPORTANT and VERY VERY GOOD because it is, once again, scientific evidence that bullshit like aversion therapy and enforced conformance and FUCKING “quiet hands” aren’t “”“”“solutions to the autism problem”“”“” and that “”“”“problems”“”“ with autism don’t stem from BEING autistic, but rather, from how NON AUSTISTIC PEOPLE TREAT AUTISTIC PEOPLE.

IE, once again, there is nothing bad or wrong about being autistic

Actually autistic ppl: pls refer to us as “autistic people”

NTs: people with autism

Autistic person: no

NTs: people suffering with the condition of autism

Autistic person: still no

NTs:

‘LOCKED IN AUTISTIC BODY’ HKFHDGDGFD?????

NT’s necks are going to be locked between these autistic arms if they don’t stop doing this shit

If i was the teen they wrote that about i'd start throwing hands

Teen with autistic hands

*beating someone up* sorry i can't stop uwu these hands have a special interest and it's violence

thinking about the time they sent me a seven year old autistic patient to investigate if he was suffering abuse because in every psychological test he kept drawing awful monsters

and I start the consultation already miserable as fuck and I give the kid some pen and paper so I can maybe communicate and see what's on his mind

and then I go WAIT A GODDAMN SECOND I KNOW THOSE MONSTERS

turns out the kid just had a special interest in Five Nights at Freddy's

I pointed at the monster and went "That's Freddy!" and I've never seen a kid that ecstatic in my life

the mom looked at me as if her son and I belonged at the same satanic cult and that's why I knew the names of the demons in his head

I wrote back to psychologist like "I'm not sure how to explain this but looking up five nights at freddys might bring you progress with this patient"

at some point the nurses realized the autistic children and I were like, Really Vibing

so they decided to highkey just appoint all of them to my day and it took me almost a month to realize that the fact that I kept arriving and finding that all of today’s appointments were autistic children was Not A Coincidence 

anyway this one time there was a kid who was really into christianity but it was like, specifically angels 

so I’m trying to start up a conversation with him and I ask what he’s reading and he goes “do you know what a nephilim is”

and like for one hellish second my soul is suckerpunched out of my body and thrown straight into supernatural-fanfic-on-wattpad hell, and then I reassume control of my flesh prison, ignoring the mental edits of Dean and Castiel making out, and go “Aren’t those the guys who are half human and half angel?”

and the kid was so fucking happy but the mom was staring at me like ‘why are you privy to this bit of occult jesus lore’

and my heathen lesbian of a self just looks at her and goes 

“i love bible”

A covering ears/screaming emoji for those with Misophonia or other noise sensitivities.  Feel free to use in your servers, and if you like what I do, maybe send me a tip?

A slightly less intense Bad Noise emoji, made upon request of our discord server.  Feel free to use in your servers, and if you like what I do, maybe send me a tip?

A finger tap stim emoji! Feel free to use in your servers and if you like what I do, maybe donate to my legal name change fund?

A ‘zoned out’ emoji for those with adhd/autism, or anything really that causes them to zone out but isn’t dissociation. 

feel free to use in your servers, and if you like what I do, maybe send me a tip?

A good noise emoji to go with the bad noise one. Feel free to use in your servers and if you like what I do, maybe send me a tip?

Clapping stims, both happy and upset!  Feel free to use in your servers and if you like what I do, maybe send me a tip?

some new nonverbal and semiverbal emojis bc i found my old ones ugly and hard to read and these ones are nicer.  Feel free to use in your servers and if you like what I do, maybe send me a tip?

An animated vocal stim/babbling emoji!  Feel free to use in your servers, and if you like what I do, maybe send me a tip?

My girlfriend, ADHD: *spitting out words at an ungodly rate for like an hour straight*

Me, her autistic gf who doesn't mind the rants because it means I don't have to talk:

I personally like to be nonverbal when possible because it's just more comfortable, but that doesn't mean I necessarily like to be alone all the time. I do like the company of my friends but I hate having to respond all the time because it's tiring.

My girlfriend though, talks so fucking much. I hope she never stops.

If you support disabled people, please stand with us against Discord’s redesign.

...and do more than reblog this post about it.

Chronic migraines. Dyslexia. ADHD. Autism. Vision impairment. Visual sensory processing disorder. Colorblind. & Neurotypical. Abled.

These are aspects of people that are affected by Discord’s new update to its color scheme and font, and there very well could be more I didn’t mention. Yes, you read it right, abled people and neurotypical people too. You are not immune to eyestrain.

What are the issues?

Aren’t there more? No. This is pretty much all that was changed.

Discord changed TWO THINGS and pretty much managed to land every single person possible to genuinely hurt with a visual design change that doesn’t add or remove any elements. Including abled and neurotypical people!!!

Discord is currently a good number of people’s lifeline and way to connect with others. And with this change, they just made using their app hurt. They know that we can’t leave their app without leaving our friends and communities behind. They know that if they can just sweep this under the rug, they won’t have to do a thing.

...So we can’t let them.

Why would Discord do this?

It’s actually fairly simple. Discord was hemorrhaging money from its very conception. Discord only exists because investors think it’ll make money in the future. If Discord doesn’t do as well, investors will push to make it “better” or they’ll drop their funding. Discord was probably forced into this situation, they probably knew exactly what would happen.

We have to show their investors that Discord was right.

What can we do to fix this?

DON’T:

DO:

Wait, don’t you have pictures of what’s going on?

We do. They’re under the cut, to prevent causing issues for people reading the post.

A claw handed happy flap stim emoji!

Feel free to use in your servers, and if you like what I do, maybe send me a tip?

Growing up autistic was kinda like growing up surrounded by mind-readers who

to the point you grew up thinking you were evil for not having superpowers like everyone else

Either autistic people need to stop being so relatable or I need to do some research.

just wanna add in this can also go for adhd; i always related to posts like this too and i never understood why until i got diagnosed 

YES. Make things clearer and more specific

Especially the first one! I have a really hard time knowing if somebody actually wants me to do something unless they are specific about the task and direct it towards me completely. 

This is some adhd/autism solidarity Mood™️

Seriously

Just be specific for fucks sake

Please

Sometimes I get real annoyed at the way adults treat delayed speech, like YES it takes some of us longer to download a fucking language, that doesn’t make us subhuman you dumb brenda

Oh I have a trick for this I just try to predict every possible way a conversation might go and have prepared answers for every path it may take in order of probability, and I also have generic non-comitting responses to gain time when needed. Also I use humour to stir conversations towards a path I can more easily predict. Sometimes I mix them all by having stock jokes and pre studied joke formulas so I can quip faster than I consciously think though that one can get me in trouble sometimes. But socialisation is just a series of algorithms that can be easily predicted and prepared for as long as you put in the work and pay constant attention to patterns. People don’t even notice it’s all planned most of the time.

this comment sort of perfectly encapsulates the way verbal disabilities are still disabilities even when they’re invisible. like, yes, maybe you have over-trained yourself to the point that you can pass as neurotypical. (this is why autism is so difficult to diagnose in adults, who are more likely to have coping mechanisms that disguise their symptoms.) But passing doesn’t make you neurotypical or non-disabled. What the comment above is describing is a hard-earned, imperfect coping mechanism that makes it easier to hide a communication disability, but not easier to experience.

Let’s say that maybe, after hundreds of hours of self-training like the person above has put themselves through…let’s say that just maybe, you can speak and sound like you don’t have a verbal disability:

Stop telling people “Oh you aren’t really [x]. you seem normal.” 

Keep reading

“I have to put an unreasonable amount of effort into my social performance to get other people to treat me like a person“ IS in fact an aggression against people with developmental disorders

Okay but oh wow the answer that other poster gave oh wow okay.

I plan out the things I say, to say how people can react to things in my mind. This is more during the conversation, or preparing for it, rather than memorising it beforehand. Though I guess I do memorise what to say if things get past my checker. I say "Sorry, I'm tired" so often. And that's effective (from my perspective) because I am tired. All the time. That doesn't change.

So often, I imagine things going wrong. If I say only this, how can I stop everyone from leaving me? So I plan. And I make sure that everything I say makes sense because that's a valid concern. Sometimes, when planning out what I'm going to say, I accidentally misgender my friend, so I pointedly make sure that I don't make the mistake when I'm actually saying it.

Also, I first started talking to myself so that everyone around me wouldn't misinterpret what was doing. I do that less now, but I still exaggerate the things I do to avoid confusion.