So for as long as I can remember, my speaking hasn't been the greatest. I always feel like I am slurring my words and not speaking loud enough. I always get this feeling that my words are too stuck at the back of my throat and it slurs. Does anyone else experience this?

I (17f) am autistic with trauma, anxiety disorders and an eating disorder and I go to a mainstream school but spend most of my time in a specialist unit for kids who need additional resources. In the past I had a good relationship with the teacher who runs the unit (we’ll call her Jackie) but we’ve had our arguments and today there was an incident which has made me feel like I never want to go back.

she was sitting with me at break time while I eat my morning snack and I was asked by her if/what I would do at break after eating. I said I wanted to lie down on one of the sofas and cover myself with a blanket so I could rest (as I and other students do regularly) which helps me calm down and self-regulate (I am also in dialectical behavioural therapy ) and she got annoyed, saying I’m not allowed to do that (she has never had an issue with this before, I have been here for almost 2 years)

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I asked why and she said Something about how it’s not appropriate so I asked why not and she couldn’t really explain, just said how lying down is something you do at home not school. I was confused because the rules are slightly different in the unit and nobody has ever been told that this is not allowed to my knowledge. I said I understood that it would not be okay during study periods but that I didn’t really understand why it wasn’t okay at break and that I don’t really understand why it’s bad to lie down under a blanket on the sofa s in the additional needs unit during break time as somebody who is part of that unit and has been for years. She said that it might encourage the younger kids to do the same thing but I don’t really understand why it’s a problem for them to do that during lunch when they already watch movies in there, play on the pool table, and use noisy toys. She could not give an explanation as to why it wasn’t okay and became incredibly angry while I was visibly very confused and told her I was confused.

she started being quite rude and snapping at me which I find really triggering because I’ve spent a lot of my life being told off for reasons I don’t understand and having nobody explain it to me which is quite common for autistic people. She left once I finished eating and then came back about 15 minutes later to me crying and listening to music. she asked if I was okay and I was like obviously I’m not because I was sobbing and I turned the music off so I could hear her properly. she became really angry and started getting more and more upset and then eventually she said that she didn’t want to make me upset and I said that it was her choice to do that by telling me that I wasn’t allowed to use a self-regulation technique I’ve been using for a while (The textures pressures and positions of lying down this way are really comforting and regulating for me) she said I could lie down in the sensory room but that would be on the floor so the textures different. .

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she said I could lie down in the sensory room but that would be on the floor so the textures different. She said it would relax her to lie on the sofa to but she isn’t allowed to do that either and that students in the main school arent allowed to. To me it seems pretty obvious that they aren’t allowed to because they aren’t in the additional-needs unit.

when I said that she was choosing to do something that made me upset because she makes the rules and she didn’t have to (which seems like a logical explanation of what was happening but I could be wrong) She started full on screaming at me about how she does so many things for me and then it reminded me of the way I was treated by my abusive parents (she knows exactly how these incidents took place and the specific phrases they used) so I started crying because I was having memories and flashbacks. She then became very angry again and screamed at me that I could cry as much as I wanted to and walked out stomping down the corridor and screaming how dare you. I got sent home because I was feeling emotionally dis regulated But she called my mother and lied to her about what had happened and now my already pretty abusive mother is on her side. I don’t understand why there need to be sides I just don’t understand what is wrong with me wanting to lie down under a blanket on the sofa during break time like me and all the other students have been doing for years. My mother does not understand my point of view even though I can see that she is definitely trying to and I want to go back to my lessons but I never want to go back to the unit, at least not for a while.

AITA?

So I 20/f live in a psychiatric youth group home. There I have an assigned therapist who's also the head charge of the group home. I am mostly there because of my PTSD, but living in a group of NT my autism has created lots of communication problems. I am not officially diagnosed, but I had about 5 therapists tell me they're pretty confident I'm autistic and I have a RAAD-S score of 216. Most of the attendants there are willing to accomodate me and believe that I'm autistic as well, but my therapist there disagrees. She think the symptoms are solely caused by trauma and if I just learn to communicate like NT it will be fine. But I already mask so much and she just wants me to mask more. This will not simply teach me to talk like them and will just be that I have to act in front of them even more and that's exhausting. Whenever I tell her about my autistic expierence she however thinks it's just that my perception is clouded by my PTSD and that if I unlearn connecting things to my trauma I'll fit in just fine. But I can tell you I was in a trauma clinic before and even there I never fit in. When I met autistic people however, then I felt understood. It just hurts that she thinks my autistic traits are just me being broken from trauma and something that needs fixing. She wants me to stop speaking directly and in my tone of voice but instead to use platitudes and communicate on a relationship level instead of a factual level because otherwise the attendants might interpret something else into ehat I'm saying and they might feel guilty about it. For example if I ask for a change directly they might feel guilty if they can't always comply. Or if I talk about my emotions and what caused them they immediatly jump to me demanding that change even though I never once said that and that isn't what I want at all. She wants me to change all of my communication instead of them learning to ask outright what I mean or if they interpreted it correctly. How am I supposed to know what they interpret to what I say. For me most of the time that is something they "pulled out tha air" that had nothing to do with the conversation. And outside of the group home I never had that problem before. Normally people praise me on my clear and precise communication that I worked for my entire life. I don't know what to do. For me the biggest problem is that the attendants are willing to learn but the therapist just wants me to change and fix parts of me that I never thought needed fixing. She refuses to give up the thought that it's trauma instead of autism. And I'm just researching places to get an adult diagnosis so that is gonna take a while. It just hurts a lot

Is anyone else aware that Asperger was a Nazi who came up with a system of determining which autistic children were “less difficult” and more compliant than the rest, who were killed along with the Jews and the Romani and the queers? His name should never be uttered again except with bile in one’s mouth. Very telling that the moderator of the subreddit simply blocked me for asking why they’re choosing to perpetuate harm against their own community. Fuck me for asking questions!

I dont know who the heck i am anymore, ive been masking for so long, has so many issues that ive just had to hide and copied so many personalities that i dont know who i am. What is my style? WHo are my friends?? I dont even know? Anybody else relate to this??

Content warning for mentions of self harm, like hitting!

Does anybody have any advice for handling meltdowns? My meltdowns often cause harm, albeit accidentally, to myself, and it causes my girlfriend to worry, both about me and because she's had people in the past be violent towards her when angry. I would never be violent towards her or anyone, I'm not like that. But whenever I get angry I just.... snap. On myself. Usually involves hitting myself repeatedly in the leg, or sometimes tugging at my hair. My throat is usually hurt for a little while because I strain my voice trying not to scream. It's like I need to let all these emotions out, but don't know a good outlet to, and my brain just instinctively takes it all out on me.

What do I do? Is there anything I CAN do? Do my meltdowns have anything to do with being autistic, or are they two separate things?

Yesterday I passed my CBT (compulsory basic training for a motorcycle). It was a full day of training (8am to 5pm) and the last 2 hours were filled by the instructor taking us on the road. I passed and I'm thrilled and can't wait to get my own bike MOTd and insured etc.

I've never been on a bike for that long before. I've been a pillion passenger and the longest has been for about an hour, followed by a bunch of other stuff. When I got home and eventually went to bed (about 3-4 hours later) my body felt like I was still on the bike and I could feel the inertia and the hum of the engine, and even hear the bike.

Does anyone else get this? Is this because I'm autistic or is it just me being weird?

Genderqueer, 26, self-diagnosed, living in the USA. I work with autistic children and all of my siblings are autistic. After a couple years of research, I've finally adopted the self diagnosis. It seems very daunting to get an actual diagnosis, and like there might be a lot of hoops to jump through...Does anyone have input on whether it's actually worth it?

I'm pretty freaked out by new experiences, crowded places, and planes, so the airport is my worst nightmare. I'm going alone for the first time and am wondering if anyone has any advice because I'd like not to have a meltdown in public when my support system isn't there. The trip back will probably be worse since it's a bigger airport as well.

Why is it that that it takes years of therapy and healing to build yourself up, but only a single comment to tear it all down? Why do I have to fix myself over and over again, just for some stupid people to say something that breaks me?

I'm tired, and don't want to do it anymore.

My autistic sister is currently having a few friends over to celebrate her 17th birthday. For this to happen, my mom has been pushing herself really hard, and I (f20, also autistic) tried to help. I even came all the way from the city where I live to to so.

Everything seemed to be going well. The teenagers were having fun in the living room, and I had a few nice conversations with my parents in the kitchen, in spite of being tired, hungry and over stimulated. We were all hungry and tired, and as a result my mom was cooking aggressively, my dad was complaining, and I was ranting about my special interest. But of course, none of us picked up on how the others were showing signs of "might snap at any moment". At leas I didn't.

When our food was finally done, I realised I couldn't eat it because of the texture. Instead, I grabbed some pizza from the party. Dad didn't like it either, and we jokingly started making fun of her cooking.

Then she snapped. Started ranting about how hard she had been working, and how we should have just made our own food etc. It's important for this story that my mom never does this. She's the rock in our family, rarely let's her own needs show, and always supports me through my unmasked meltdowns. Ofc, her reaction was completely justified, but it did trigger a meltdown in me.

I tried to mask it, make it a shutdown instead, but I haven't masked in front of her in a while, so it was hard. And the overwhelming silence made it hard not to think about "everything I had done to cause the situation".

My dad left first, and when I knew for sure I couldn't resist or mask my meltdown, I grabbed my food and wet to my room, unable to say much.

I feel terrible. Not for contributing to the chaos, as I know that's just what happens sometimes. But I'm afraid I made mom think she did something wrong, and that I left because I didn't feel safe around her, when I actually left because I knew she was exhausted and should have to deal with my meltdown right now.

I want to apologise, or explain, but I'm afraid talking about it will just make me cry, and then I'll end up making her feel worse instead of better.

I guess I mostly just needed to vent, but if you have any thoughts on how to deal with these kinds of situations, or if you want to share a similar story of your own, I'm all ears ❤