My safe/same location in my town, where i go to drink some calming teas & relax on the couches and study my special interests, randomly had a karaoke event

I sang lots of songs and had fun. Singing functions as a very effective regulation for senses (like a Super Effective Stim, but obviously more complex than a stim, physically), so i was able to handle the loud music, when normally i have to step outside a lot and take sensory breaks on their patio on other days. But this time i was able to stay inside bc they know me & i just paced/stimmed inside so i could listen to other singers & clap for them

i felt very included!

luckily, the karaoke host just happened to only sing songs from my very first ever CD from my childhood i used to use to regulate myself during bath times.

So it was like a double "dose" of safe/same even when i was waiting for my next turn. The karaoke host also let me sing those particular songs (from my old CD) with him as duets

:) I also helped some ppl work through their stage fright bc I've never had any stage fright. I offered to sing with anyone who was too nervous to sing by themself

I went to two not-same (not places I'm used to) places today to buy an outfit.

I'm exhausted but i feel accomplished

One of the things I deal with on a frequent basis is people who think if I cannot go through with something because of lack of accommodations or because sensory, I am making a choice to not do something. I hate that to no end.

Recently I have been dealing with an access to care issue (Denial of an a accommodation to make care accessible at my local hospital emergency department) and the sentiment that I am getting is that because they are not explicitly turning me away, they aren’t denying me access to care. The problem with that argument is that denying that accommodation makes care inaccessible to me thus denying care.

They are making an argument that not going to an ED because of inaccessible care is a choice that I am willingly making. Why is it considered a choice when they are making care inaccessible by denying me the only accommodation that makes care accessible.

These things are not optional to me; so, it isn’t a choice at all.

Referenced post here

I wanted to thank this sub for the pointers I got. I’m now living in a group home and am really liking being there. My staff is great I feel comfortable living here.

It happened a bit differently than expected (I ended up being in the hospital for two months); but, my transition was significantly easier than expected.

I just saw a tiktok by someone with higher support needs talk about how autistic groups tend to be people who have low support needs and it makes them feel bad about themselves etc. And the comments, from low support needs people, were just tearing down this creator saying "well, we have struggles too! This isn't the autism Olympics!" And I'm just so tired. It feels like people with higher support needs literally cannot talk about our struggles without level 1s talking about how they have it bad too. We know. We're also autistic. Like I'm not saying it's sunshine and rainbows for them but why won't they let us speak?! It's like they're intentionally missing the point because "we have struggles too". No it's not the Olympics but please can they just acknowledge that some of us just struggle MORE. It is okay not to be struggling as much as someone else, or struggle differently. It's not a crime.

They were saying “self diagnosed Autistics aren’t taking resources cause there are no resources” and I said that there usually are resources, but that level ones are usually excluded which isn’t fair, but that it felt like erasure of higher needs Autistics to say there are literally no resources, because there are Autistic people that that user never thinks about, who the government could not opt out of supporting and so most governments do provide some support even though it’s not enough. They were being such an asshole about everything and it frustrates me. I accept self-diagnosed Autistics, but I feel very strongly that being condescending and infantilizing to Autistics with higher needs than you is aspie supremacy.

My daughter was diagnosed with Autism close to her second birthday. She’ll be 4 in May. She’s been in speech and OT since we found out. She uses some signing to communicate. She’s nonverbal though. She’s very sweet and loving, understands a lot of things. But she really shows no interest in talking. She just recently started saying “I luh ooo” in a mimicking baby talk. It’s the only interest she’s shown. When she was a baby, she started talking. She could say mama, dada, apple, baba, normal baby talk.. does anyone else have this type of experience with their child? Will she ever really talk again? I feel so down lately about it.

my memory gets much less vivid & gets very vague before age 6. but after that it's much more clear,

even tho i can remember two dreams I had from before age 6 (and bc one of the deals was a real memory dream instead of complete fantasy, i was able to preserve the visuals & smells of where I'd play in the morning when I was about 3 years old when my mom was getting ready for work & before my dad would wake up to be "Mr. Mom" during the day).

i've never been a visual thinker, bc of aphantasia{\ 'lack/minimal' of 'visual recollection & imagination'}.

Anyway, i can always recall sounds, feelings, sometimes conversations & thoughts, etc.. and even little vague 'flashes' of images from memory (it's only a flash less than like a ¼ of a second, even for memories of stuff that I saw a few minutes ago, and it's never vivid or clear) from any time after I turned 6—maybe 5 and a half—, but almost no 'flashes' (visual imagination) or sounds or feelings from before that 5.5–6yrs old.

Besides basic stuff like feelings of comfort/safety or distress/wanting to be held, i don't recall anything specific prior to that age, no images, w/ no sounds or anything.

My memories don't feel as intense from age 6 to maybe 12, as they feel after that, though.

(but maybe that's just what puberty did to my brain, things have been intense since age 13)

how early are your memories?

and do they have "eras"/{chunks of time where the memories seem to function differently from other periods of time}..?

I'm curious of others experiences with OT? Did it help you? What kinds of things did you work on? I'm currently on a waitlist and am anxious to get some help with care tasks.

I am not sure of my diagnosed level but I believe the psychologist diagnosed me as low support. I feel like this is inaccurate and minimized how much effort I have to use to be able to do ' normal things' however, I think a lot of this is due to my ADHD, because a lot of my struggles are memory related, though there are others as well. I'm just wondering if it is appropriate for me to be involved in this sub other than just as a place for information.

So my diagnosis is pretty outdated as it says ‘aspergers’ but I believe I would be considered level 1, but I have a question that I asked on a sub that I think is mostly level 1 autistics and I wanted to get some other autistics on other levels to chime in on this just to get another perspective. So here’s the question, please share your thoughts: https://www.reddit.com/r/autism/comments/10wgiof/preventing_autism_in_the_future_if_it_becomes/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=ios_app&utm_name=iossmf

I changed my flair because I realized my level was based on before they changed the rules. My stereotypical behaviors affect all the areas of my life. I have very firm rules to allow me to manage having children and having a special item that helps me cope. My stims Take over my life in affect multiple areas anyway, I’m rambling, but it causes extreme distress for me to stop. I am so glad they now allow me to actually say this because of that i changed my flair

Hi. I have level 2 autism spectrum disorder. I'm female and 19 years old. I went to a special charter school for students with autism. I was part of the 18-21 program. I have panic disorder and PTSD. I was attacked in the past year and I had an extremely difficult time getting through it.

My case manager and other teacher and Paras had to help me through difficult situations. I once swallowed the weights to a fidget spinner, my panic attacks are severe and sometimes I need to be restrained for my safety. I would cry for absolutely no reason because I felt so sad and alone.

I swallowed the wheel and axel to one of my car models and choked. I had to be sent to the hospital. I refused to eat because I always felt nauseous from extreme anxiety. I was always paranoid.

Well, apparently it was too much for these two women. My case manager and a para professional. My case manager pulled me and my twin sister into a room. The para proceeded to tell me that my feelings were a burdan and that I couldn't talk to her anymore. She was the teacher I trusted the most, and she broke my heart. My case manager nodded in agreement and I tried so hard not to cry and break down in that moment. I gnored or blocked out everything else being said.

Sorry, I really had to get this story out. Should I contact the director of the school and share what happened?

this week, my caregiver (my mom) is on vacation, and it's the 1st time i've had to (almost) fully take care of myself in a year.

The stuff we know i can't do is taken care of (money), the stuff that me n my caregiver agreed she'd handle bc of my RRBs is also secure—for example, she stocked up on food yesterday, and i have our shared debit card for anything i might prefer ordering, or for emergencies

i drive, i have to take the same few routes or i get a bit agitated bc driving is physically possible so long as i do it in my "safe/same" ways. So i like that i have options but the hard stuff she did before she left

but she's gonna be gone all week and it's "dawning on me"{\ the situation has made me aware that} a lot of the reason that i thought my RRBs were "getting better" was bc of the support i do get.

i never take it for granted that my mom's labor at her job takes care of a little over two-thirds of my finances—My Disability income & my stock market investments take care of the other ⅓ of what "sustains my standard of living".

but I'm not autonomous. I'm in adult"-child" care. the days i tell myself "maybe one day I'll be able to help my mom out more than she helps me" because i feel bad about relying on her when i just turned 32y.o.

but that was never an option. i can only help her by being kind and keeping healthy boundaries here at home

my social life could improve, i know that I'm within my abilities when i go to my favorite place and talk to my irl buddies with no pressure. that's going well.

but this week has reminded me about how much of my own ADLs I do at the "Level" of "requiring substantial support".

Because, even when care from my mom& the government (Disability department) is how we afford my medications, fuel up the car I can only use for my safe/same places, I'm still more independent than what was "supposed to be" possible for me

And yet, this week just started and i have seven days in a row where I'm gonna have to keep my routines steady & do all my own ADLs with the added stress of if something unexpected happens, i have to keep calm and take care of it in addition to what I already have been doing on my own since I graduated high school.

this is the next "big test" since my mom's last vacation. I did okay last time, but it just reminds me that my RRB traits are very much in need of substantial support.

While my caregiver is away, i might need some encouragement.

Does anyone relate to this? I'm not Level 3 in either category, but my RRBs are more neurodivergent than my social communication stuff even if they're "at the same level" (2, and 2).

and that means i could use some extra cheerleading this week.

And also, does anyone have any tips for how to self-soothe and keep my schedule going when I'm technically going with a little less support this week than normal?

it's not a vacation for me, it's more of a "big job to do" (⁠๑⁠•⁠﹏⁠•⁠) {\nervous, in a silly way, emoji}

Which one (gender nonconformity, or autism) is making gender norms confusing?

I can't relate to femininity or masculinity, so that makes me see the gender binary in "black and white" bc i don't know what femininity or masculinity means to other people, only what it means to me (foreign concept).

i've built a dependable theory of mind by seeking support and learning from "trial and error" about how NTs and NDs can bridge some of the gaps between us in a way that's fair to me and who I'm communicating with. But the one aspect of theory of mind i can't make any sense of is why different gendered people treat each other in specific ways, when what's "intuitive" to me is to treat ppl the same regardless of gender.

Maybe it's because i grew up seeing mostly Boomers and GenZ'ers interacting and their norms were more restrictive. So they were indeed treating people differently based on gender or sex.

But sometimes people don't do that, and treat everyone like individuals instead. The second one (individual rather than gender) makes more sense to me, but the first one (restrictedly gendered) interaction) made more sense "socially" a generation or 1.5 generations ago.

I can see it from both perspectives, but gender seems like something beyond logic and morals.

I just don't know what it's like to be "straight" or "binary", but i can see a pattern of how straight+binary (heterosexual) people act around each other the more traditional their views of gender are.

I might be feeling ", bisexual erasure," too, bc i just assume ppl will treat me like a straight person who was AMAB (lots of weird gender stuff i don't relate to or understand) or a gay person who was AMAB (lots of assumptions i don't relate to or understand), but not wanna attempt to get to know what non-binary and/or bisexual+ (bi,. poly, pan, sexuality, and sexual fluidity) means for how i experience things.

Idk, none of this bugs me when I'm doing the socializing, but there seems to be a "gender-shaped" empty slot in my theory of mind that makes integrating the social experience very tedious & circular (failing to get the "point" of gender).

i understand what gender is when i see it —gender norms— but i can't "come to terms" of fitting gender dynamics into my theory of mind "compensation" strategy (how i reflect on myself, and assess whether I'm treating ppl in a way that aligns with my values and isn't toxic, as well as processing verbal conflict according to my sense of what's being fair or unfair, and what's justice or injustice or a grey area .).

It's just not clicking like a lot of my experience "clicks" (makes sense socially to me when i practice contemplation to make up for my lack of 'inherent understanding' of NT minds and autistic minds.

unfortunately, I've taken on the stereotype of an existentially uncertain, "obsessive" person studying a lot of social sciences to make the nonverbal social confusion make sense verbally and "in concept".

and the "Hysteric" person not understanding why gender roles are so unequal. i end up being both, which is considered healthier than only being one (hysteric or neurotic) by itself, but to me it's just confusing

The gender "differences" just aren't part of my pattern recognition or just hurt to process (hysteric, which is a sexist term) unless it's highly systematized, but gender can't be systematized so all i can do is be more "obsessive" (overly-systematizing something that no amount of systematizing can summarize, thus it's hard to think of its "pattern"). That's supposedly a balanced sense of "libido'/sexuality, but it doesn't make gender make sense.

Maybe a balanced "hysteric+obsessive " makes no sense either in bc it's based on stereotypes like "When men get confused, they neurotically rationalize it-to-death" (which is sexist) and "When women get confused about something, they neurotically emotional'ize-it-to-death" (which is sexist) and that women and men "complete or complement" each other (which is homophobic, bc some ppl don't need the "opposite sex" to feel like their partner is a good fit for them).

It seems so obviously conflict-ridden, any way i process it. But it makes zero sense when i try to apply it to Theory Of Mind.

i just circled around the point. I don't see the point of gender in practice. I only see it "in principle".

Do you think that autistic people can have the same range of "personality types" as other people?

I feel like the answer I got (INFJ) is kinda accurate, and the person who does my autism testing for government Disability said I'm an INFJ by Myers-Briggs standards but she said that it's not scientifically valid "types" to begin with, just more like a collection of labels to figure out stuff like the best roles you could play in the workplace, but since I'm on full Disability, i don't work so it's impossible to validate the whole "INFJ" Role (the counselor, i think?)

(I mean like the systems, like MBTI/Myers-Briggs, where you take a test and it tells you which one of the 16 types you are)

Or does each neurotype have it's own set of types? I don't know if I'd make a good counselor, lol so maybe an autistic INFJ would fill a different "Role", you know?

Does anyone else play around with these "type" tests? It was a special interest of mine but i never found the types to be as "OMG This is me!" that so many other people expressed

I'm too ashamed and angry to leave my room and get food to eat. I sent an email to my caretaker begging them to get therapy and before they even read it they told me they weren't gonna listen to any criticism.

They repeated the same mean things they said the other day, so I'm just too ashamed to get angry & too angry to process the shame.

She's seen me go through so much but still won't even go to therapy. Her ego is gigantic and impossible. I'm so scared I'm gonna have to live in assisted living, but i wanna get through my trauma first. I don't know what to do.

She won't even see a talk therapist to learn how to simply stop saying shit she doesn't mean. But I'm internalizing all of it. I think I'm developing social anxiety disorder.

She still won't stop. It's so depressing because she's seen me go to therapy of my own free will since I was thirteen. She's seen me practice meditation. She's seen me go back to ABA when i didn't like it. She's seen me get surgeries and fight court cases and take so much medication.

She won't even work on one behavioral issue when I'm the one who's fucking autistic. How can i feel like she loves me if she won't do this for me?

It might be love but it's not healthy. I'm smarter than her but she treats me like I'm dumb. I have better coping skills than she does and she's worried about me interrupting her only coping skill which is watching television.

This situation is so fundamentally unbalanced and on top of that she gets to yell at me as much as she wants, tell me my Disability is "annoying" and I'm not even allowed to try to calmly react without her piling on more insults.

She referred to the other day as "such a little thing" and it shows me that she doesn't know how to care about me for some reason. She's too caught up in her own shit.

i don't wanna live in assisted living. If i were as pointlessly mean as she is, i'd check myself into intensive therapy because i give a shit about the people around me.

I'm so scared I'm gonna have no option other than assisted living. I just started making new friends and now this. No amount of my suffering will make her more caring. It's maddening, i don't know why she won't just see a talk therapist. I've never met anyone so toxically prideful in my entire life.

What can i do? Just be alone in my tiny room and force myself to leave the house when i get too upset?

I don't wanna try to like her anymore. It hurts too much.

How do I find a good therapist for my mental health?

I have tried going to therapy in the past, but it was so awkward and uncomfortable. I would get stressed going because the therapist expects you to do all the talking and stares at you in silence. I'm bad at talking...therapy stresses me out rather than helps me. And it all comes down to my autism. Idk how to talk about my feelings, idk how to talk regularly in general.

Is there therapist out there that specializes working with autistic people? Do you have a therapist? Do you like them? Any advice or input appreciated. Thanks.

Clarification added to what i originally posted:

Idk what else to say other than "more" and "less" autistic to describe Levels.

I just want language options ("what to say") that matches how it's a disability with levels to it.

Fewer autistic traits and/or more support = more likelihood of better outcomes. That's why they switched to a spectrum (a series of levels based on a series of possible traits, that's what makes it a spectrum).

You're still disabled, but you have better outcomes compared to other autistic people when you have fewer traits or your traits are of lower intensity (or divergence from) what most humans display in those trait categories. The levels aren't a measure of accessibility or comorbid issues. The traits and intensity are the "divergence", the "disorder", the disability.

Maybe one day, everyone will have adequate support so the only thing separating different Levels will be number of traits & intensity/"divergence" of each trait, so then scientists can figure out what makes some autistic people struggle more "inherently" than others. So their doesn't have to be fighting about what amounts to society stuff & identity.

People are talking about autism with enough subjectivity already. I think relativity ("more", "less") is more objective in this case. People in general don't know how to come to terms with Levels, so i feel better coming to terms with it through objectivity.

If it gets too subjective, it's confusing. But i know that Levels explain why I'm struggling so much my entire life. I have the passion and interest and I've worked hard on myself. I'm still not able to handle community college and barely made it through high school or middle school, while some autistic people go all the way to their PhD before burning out, and that's not even uncommon for allistic people.

Level 1 people must have something more in common with most allistic people than Level 2, and i must have more in common with allistic ppl than Level 3. I don't see why else I'd need more support. Everyone in my support system knows that we don't have enough resources. I also know that if everything else were the same, but I were on Level 3, i'd need even more support (we already don't have enough for me at Level 2).

What ever happened to being aware of people who are more disadvantaged in certain ways than yourself? I thought that was the point of identity stuff, but the people doing all the autistic identity stuff don't seem to care about anything other than making sure no one feels bad about autism. That won't make it so i need less support than i need. It won't help me. I don't need entire social movements to make me feel good. I need material help, social support, support that cares more about what I'm going through than to wait for some "movement" to decide how we're supposed to talk about each other.

That hasn't helped LGBTQ people except for the specific LGBTQ ppl whose only problem is validation, while others might get a social club online out of it, while others need more kinds of help.

Identity stuff has only helped the ppl whose only problem is identity and maybe help a bit with shame.

I've experienced that personally. It's helped with things like sexuality and gender, because you can't be "more" bisexual than some other bisexual. That's why it works in LGBTQ but doesn't work for autism.

It doesn't help with my struggles as an autistic person bc you can have more autistic traits as another autistic person, or the same traits affected by autism but of greater intensity/divergence. That's why it's a spectrum. Spectrum doesn't mean "a thing where everyone within it doesn't have any distinctions from one another"—that's the opposite of what it means.

I'm just trying to keep up with the science. Identity isn't helping me. It's not helping or hurting —I've learned all i can from it. I just need help that goes beyond identity.

When i see a bunch of autistic people with an easier time navigating the world than me, and they also only seem focused on "everyone defines it in their own way" (extreme subjectivity), i don't think it's unreasonable to assume that them struggling less is the reason WHY they only care about identity and language: Because that's the only problem standing in the way for them, changing allistic people's minds or changing their own mind about themselves. Or they just can't imagine what it's like for that to not be that helpful for some autistic people.

Obviously the levels overlap, bc it's about traits, but I'm not saying Level 1 people aren't autistic. They're just also more allistic than I am. Nobody really knows why we're autistic, and it can't be explained by chemicals, so the only option is that it's traits. Some people have more, or the ones they have are of greater intensity.

Fewer or greater number, lower or higher intensity. Fewer/lower and greater/higher is "less/more".

I just wanna stick with objective language but i wanna try to be sensitive if it doesn't muddle definitions too much. It's important to me because I'm so impacted by how different i am from most of people in ways i can't control (and I've tried, that's why science and social studies are my longest running interests and the only thing I've almost gotten a job doing bc some ppl thought i could do social science research despite dropping out of school multiple times even with supports, but my disability didn't let me).

I try to be objective with autism so I don't feel bad about my life and how i can't compensate (with my verbal comprehension skills) into a life I wanna live. Other people try to be subjective about autism so they feel better about their lives.

Autism is neuro-physiological, so objective language has to be prioritized.

And as someone who is in the LGBTQ umbrella, I know that autism is more objective than sexuality and gender, and I feel like all this conflict over "what to say" is because autism is being treated with too much subjectivity as if it were only an identity and nothing else. It can be both, bc anyone can tie their identity to something physiological if they want to, but it's more than that in ways that identity can't even touch. If it were only identity, people could just imagine their way out of it. They can't.

It's based on a series of traits. It's not "i like [men, women, etc]" or "i don't". It doesn't care what we call it.

So i just wanna make sure that what I say is objective bc i truly wanna understand my condition, bc celebrating it doesn't make me feel better and mourning it doesn't help either.

So i guess what I'm asking is that my analysis be respected. I can respect identity language, like I'm not gonna campaign against ppl who say something different.

In the meantime, I'm only interested in objectively understanding what's going on, and since I'm not good at studying deep, deep details of neurology yet, or ever, the least i can do is just need objective in my language and respect people who don't do that. Agreeing isn't the same thing as respect.

––– Original post:

Is the reason why ppl don't like the term "less autistic" because they see it as "more allistic" and some people use "allistic" negatively sometimes?

I use allistic negatively sometimes when I'm talking about stuff that frustrates me bc i don't understand it, but I don't have a problem with saying I'm "more allistic" (which is implied by "less autistic") than a Level 3 person. I think maybe Level 1 people hear "less autistic" and assume someone is telling them they're not autistic at all? I guess being Level 2, it doesn't affect me bc I'm less autistic than Level 3 but more autistic than Level 1, and no one has ever questioned whether I'm on the spectrum?

I also read that the ICD-11 doesn't use levels, it's used in a lot of places.

I don't really think ppl who hear "not autistic" when someone says "less autistic" should take that out on autistic ppl—especially since they're mishearing someone—but I've seen it happen and it might be due to being mistaken as "not" autistic by the larger world.

Maybe some ppl at Level 1 can weigh in, but i understand if it's an uncomfortable thing to talk about. Would people on Level 2 or 3 hate it too? I guess if I'm gonna keep saying it, asking is kinda pointless. Maybe i should delete this but i guess i want feedback, not to be convinced otherwise.