auschizm

We are real. Our mental illness doesn't invalidate our identity. Our identities aren't the reason we are mentally ill.

part of autism is just being incredibly stressed. overstimulation? stress. holding a conversation? stress. something happening to our schedule? stress. people talk about how often autism is recognized and diagnosed via our stress responses (like meltdowns) because it is just so common to see autistic people stressed because of lack of accommodations to how our brains work.

like. loud noises physically hurt. it’s like a static shock from my ears to my spine that doesn’t stop until the volume goes back down. i thought we all agreed that ‘that’s too loud!’ and covering our ears meant ‘ouch!’. turns out i’ve been dealing with a stressor almost no one else has, my whole life, alone.

you have to be kinder to people who are slow processors.

you have to be kinder to people who don't understand your jokes.

you have to be kinder to people who forget important dates.

you have to be kinder to people with cognitive decline.

you have to be kinder to people who were always this way, too.

when someone tags your post "#unreality" and you screenshot the tags and say "what are you talking about? this is real" because you consider the post easy to discern as not real and find this joke funny you're actually just causing paranoia for people who now feel like they can't trust the unreality tag. not everyone has the same reality discernment skills as you. what's "obviously" a fictional story to you may not be obvious to other people.

I am reminded of the story of an autistic college student. The boy had classes at 8:30 a.m., but the battery in his alarm clock had died. He was concerned he would oversleep and miss his lessons, so he had to think of a solution. The one he came up with resonates so deeply with me. He decided to sleep in the classroom at school. He lacked the adaptive skills to replace the clock battery.

I have so many of this kind of incident in my life that I have stopped noticing them. Perhaps the most dramatic was the first time I ever drove in the snow. I noticed my car was behaving differently on this unusual surface. I realized I didn’t know how to deal with it. I did what at the time seemed utterly logical: as I lost control of the car, I opened the door and threw myself out. I was lucky. The car narrowly missed my head and brought itself to a halt by crashing into a tree. Since then I have avoided driving in snow whenever possible. On the occasions I must do so, I inch along at a couple of miles per hour. Until this moment, it has never occurred to me to ask someone to teach me how to drive safely in the snow.

Many autism experts believe daily living skills, such as managing finances, need to be explicitly taught to people on the autism spectrum. Everything most nonautistic people pick up as they go along—how to shop, catch a bus, cook, clean, or manage money—are skills that are difficult for me to acquire simply by assimilation. I need a book, a video, or someone to explain and show me how to do it.

There’s a perception that anyone with average or above-average intelligence will naturally pick up these skills. Strangely, intelligence seems to have little to do with it, and one study even found that problems of this kind are especially prominent in those autistic people with greater cognitive abilities.

I have been lucky that I managed to somehow muddle through. The points where my deficits might have been picked up were missed, or the people who have helped me have failed to mention how unusual my issues have been. Every month the phone would be cut off. I had no system for paying bills. In the past, we have had to have a prepaid electricity key. Even now something unexpected—like a demand to pay the Dartford bridge toll—can go unpaid until the amount has more than tripled. I cannot adequately explain why this happens.

My bank manager and accountant got together and sorted out a system for me. It was a simple one. I would have two current accounts: one to use with my debit card, the other for direct debits. Rather than paying myself only when I thought I needed to, a set monthly amount would go into my bills account, and each week an amount would be transferred over to pay for daily living expenses. The system worked well. At least it did until I started earning less money. It hadn’t occurred to me I would have to cut back.”]

in specifics, i believe i am physically/biologically an alien & a weredog. i hold both of these as absolutely true, but i am also highly, highly aware that others would consider these beliefs of mine to be delusions, and believe me to be "crazy" for having them. sooo i just do not talk about them except behind an anonymous mask. i am not "aware that they're delusions" (although i'll use language as though i am in this ask for simplicity's sake), i am aware that others see these beliefs as delusions, and i act accordingly. the only distress these beliefs "cause" me, comes from the knowledge that if i talk about them openly, i will be shunned and treated with cruelty from others, which leads to a lot of anxiety of being discovered or found out. i already have a reputation for being the weird/eccentric one, which causes enough trouble for me, and i don't want that to get worse. i sometimes will experience--what would be called--somatic & tactile hallucinations, largely in the midst of a transformation (eg, i can feel my face turning into the face of a dog), but aside from that, no hallucinations.

aside from that one thing (two specific, long-term delusions that come with/cause related hallucinations, but no distress outside of fear of social ostracization, and no hallucinations outside of what comes with the delusions), i am far more stereotypically schizotypal than schizophrenic, and i find the label and experiences of schizotypal disorder to be more accurate so long as i ignore the above. i otherwise have no psychotic symptoms outside of when i'm experiencing severe stress (well, save for quasipsychotic experiences such as magical thinking & paranoia). perhaps i shouldn't be worrying as much about the distinction as i am, but i am not a fan of vagueness and much prefer being able to use specific and accurate language, and being so caught between the two as i am makes it harder to have that. any insight would be appreciated.

Hey there!

Well if it's any consolation this is a very common conundrum that comes up for many people again and again.

And the annoying answer is that there's no clear answer, and the actual (official) diagnosis you'd end up with if all of this was explained to a psychiatrist would depend on their individual interpretation of the line between psychosis and quasi-pyschosis.

Some consider a lack of insight into the fact that their beliefs would be considered to be delusional to be a hallmark for "full blown psychosis", while others hold that if you truly believe it even while able to acknowledge that it isn't aligned with consensus reality and acting accordingly, then it's fully psychotic. Some argue that any level of "actual hallucinations" means it's full blown psychosis thus warranting a schizophrenia diagnosis, while others think it depends on the type and duration.

So frustrating as it is, there's actually a huge group of people who aren't clearcut either schizophrenic or schizotypal, but who could go either way depending on the person doing the diagnosis.

Personally I fall into this category. My official diagnosis is schizophrenia, but I generally just refer to myself as schizo-spec because of this.

But like. We're a lot of people out here who can't make a clear cut distinction bc ultimately these diagnoses are clumsy attempts to simplify a complicated reality.