#activelyautistic

For anyone who’s heard me talk about my friends on the podcast, they’re my chosen family, but it’s a very small circle. They’re important to me because somehow, someway, we became friends and ended up loving each other. These people have been there for me in really difficult times in my life more than my biological family ever was or currently is. But they were difficult to find.

Most of my life, I dreamed about the kind of friendships you read in books and see in movies, and it took me years to realize that those friendships are written by people. Sure, they may exist, but they’re rare. After I finally accepted that I started to see the unique dynamic that my friends and I have. No one else has a relationship with my friends like I do. I still have a difficult time maintaining friendships, but the ones I’ve deemed my family don’t care about how long its been since we talked or hung out and when we do talk and get together we have to catch up a bit but it’s like not much time has passed since the last time we were together. We’re also all really honest with each other and I love that about us.

Friends used to confuse me a lot, but if I’m being honest (and as everyone may know by now, I always am) the ones that used to confuse me were never actually my friends. They were people who liked to push me around and told me what to do. If I tried to stand up for myself, they would bully me until I just went along with whatever they said. I left those people behind a long time ago and I went years again without true friends, but it was worth it because I found my family. They support me, they’re honest with me, and we’ve got a bond that no one else has with us.

@cap_artwork

Hi, so sorry I'm a bit late to this ask, school has started up again and I've been a bit frazzled lately.

And honestly? That's a huge jerk move, especially for a teacher. Teachers are supposed to be understanding and take into consideration their students and their feelings. That's what they get paid for, but also I feel like it's just human decency.

From a psychology student point of view, someone saying, "piss off" sounds really aggressive and inappropriate, especially as a teacher no matter the context. Psychology speaking, the feelings of getting yelled at by those words can trigger the amygdala in your brain. The amygdala is responsible for all of the emotions we feel and triggers our fight or flight response. Hearing those two words can be aggravating/annoying triggering that fight or flight and your body is responding to that making your stress hormones increase. Maybe it's because you heard it one day when you weren't feeling well and your amygdala remembered that feeling associated with those words or you heard it somewhere else in a specific context but again it's tied in with your emotions from a specific time wether you are aware of it or not.

ASD point of view, he's not taking the time to try and understand you in any way and he seems to really be enjoying the idea of upsetting you for whatever reason. And when we don't feel understood or listened to, it makes us really upset because we feel like we aren't important. That's my point of view at least...

Hey people of Tumblr, I, Admin G, was sent a message over our facebook page containing a petition. The petition is to get an article written in 2009 removed. It is hurtful, filled with albeism, and down right wrong.

I’m upset and I’m hurt. We are not life wreckers. If you have an Autistic child, have the time to actually learn about them and how to properly care for them.

https://www.change.org/p/the-daily-mail-hate-speach-article-towards-autistic-children-needs-to-be-removed-by-daily-mail?utm_content=cl_sharecopy_23048776_en-GB%3A3&recruiter=1099420602&recruited_by_id=7bcb50c0-a2af-11ea-9089-6b3d33188b75&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink&utm_campaign=psf_combo_share_abi&utm_term=share_petition

Hey everyone, I need your opinion.

I hate the idea of ABA therapy, and ABA in general from what I've learned from the community. I'm thinking of going for the more general program to avoid ABA but I won't be able to directly help Autistic people like I want to if I go for that program. I still have 3 years left to get my BA but I would absolutely appreciate your input.

Thoughts?

Hi Anon!

I use the puzzle piece because I want to reclaim it. When I was finally diagnosed with Autism, I felt like I found a missing part of myself and I saw the puzzle piece. But when I learned about AS I started to hate it and despise it. But then I remembered how important it was to me in the beginning. How I finally felt like I belonged somewhere. So as I say in the description of the items with the puzzle piece:

Now, I'm taking back the puzzle piece with #redinstead and also including the amazing infinity symbol which shows our inclusion.

I’m merging the symbol that I identified with when I found out who I was/am with the red from #redinstead because it’s a movement I believe in, along with my new love for the rainbow colored infinity symbol.