When I meet someone new, unless I know they're also neurodivergent or neurospicy-friendly, or we're meeting in a space that explicitly is, I'm very self-conscious about how much eye contact I'm making. Worrying that it might be insufficient or excessive, alienating this new person before they have a chance to get to know me.
It amplifies any social anxiety I'm already feeling, and distracts me from the conversation. Which I also notice and worry about.
(3/3)
"The world needs us. Especially now, when it is clear that the statute quo is destroying the earth and isn't healthy for humans either. We need the free-thinking innovative pattern seeking of the neurodivergent brain."
#AnissaLjanta, Wild of Brain, 2024
That's a manifesto in a paragraph.
"ADHD meds made it possible to land my dream job but medicated me was an untested creature and trying to do too much (because I could), this led to severe autistic burnout. If I couldn't live the life I wanted, if I was so exhausted and lapsing in and out of shutdowns and depression and found daily life so freaking hard, I didn't know what was left. I retreated to writing."
#AnissaLjanta, Wild of Brain, 2024
OMG this too is so me!
"'But you're so good with people' - I'm autistic, not a lizard."
#AnissaLjanta, Wild of Brain, 2024
(1/2)
"Many autistic people feel more deeply, sort of without filters - a constant raw download of environmental stimuli. I'm hyper empathic. Not that you can tell by looking at some of us with our extraordinary poker face masking at play. The reality is in opposition to what was thought for years, that autistic people were cold and emotionally incapable. Unfortunately that myth persists."
#AnissaLjanta, Wild of Brain, 2024
(2/2)
"The concept of the autistic spectrum is an attempt to counter the belief that all humankind is on a sort of graduated line from not-autistic-at-all to AAF (Autistic As Fuck). The spectrum is one way of describing the group of autistic humans, on a complex circular map of intersectional differently wired tendencies, with neurodivergence manifesting unique to individuals."
#AnissaLjanta, Wild of Brain, 2024
I only recently grasped this; it's *not* a gradiant.
(1/2)
I'm not sure 'spectrum' is the best word to communicate this. In other uses, like "electromagnetic spectrum", it *is* a gradient. Maybe it's more like an autistic map, or autistic graph (as is 'social graph'), or ...
(2/2)
I'm not autistic, but I've had to train quite a few autistic spectrum people at work. It could sometimes be a bit frustrating explaining details my brain just wanted to skim over quickly, but something I really came to appreciate was the kind of unfiltered emotional honesty that many of these people had, even if it was expressed differently (and I'm no benchmark for "normal" , lol). Often this was fear that they were misunderstanding or being misunderstood, but there was also joy and curiosity and laughter at things I wouldn't have even thought twice about. I have an almost physical aversion to deceptive people, most likely from being overly trusting as a kid. While many at work treated them as stupid/gullible, I came to admire the emotional honesty of my autistic co-workers.
@Blort
> I'm not autistic
> I have an almost physical aversion to deceptive people
Have you considered the possibility you *might* be autistic?
Does anyone know what's replaced the ADHD and ActuallyAutistic Guppe groups? I'd love to share Anissa's work with them.
@strypey I'm not sure if it's what you are referring to but ActuallyAutistic seems to have changed to autistics.life
@coffeemug
> autistics.life
Thanks, but this appears to be a Mastodon service. Guppe was a simple federated service, hosted at a.gup.pe, and I'm thinking of the @actuallyautistic group hosted there. Which it seems is now;
@ autistics@fedigroups.social
(added a space to avoid spamming the group with this post)
@strypey Ahhh. Well, good luck🥴
@punishmenthurts
You mean the one hosted at fedigroups.social? Found and followed, thanks to another reply from @adelinej
@strypey @ autistics@fedigroups.social and for ADHD I am not sure about a new group?
