May comic! Happy mental health awareness month. 🐝 Comic brought to you by my constant worry that I don’t exist if I have nothing to show for myself.  

Stimming

Just to be sure…

Like, yes, self diagnosis is valid but PLEASE stop telling teenagers that every quirky thing they do is a symptom?

“I dislike loud noises” is different than “loud noises make me want to cry and punch myself in the head until I stop hearing” and YES it is a spectrum but it doesn’t mean everyone is a part of it

If you think you are autistic PLEASE look up the symptoms on reliable sources, find actually autistic people who can really help you out, because thing is, if everyone is “a little autistic” it makes every autistic with big struggles invisible and the help we need is harder to get

most autistic people probably have higher support needs than nondisabled neurotypical allistics.

which is probably why some autistic people so strongly object to being labeled “low” support needs because compared to nondisabled allistics their support needs are not low.

however.

autistic support needs is not about comparing to an nondisabled allistic.

autistic support needs is about comparing to other autistics.

compared to other autistics, you if you can live relatively independently, don’t need assistance on bADLs, can keep own safety, etc, you have lower support needs than many autistics.

you can be low support needs autistic while needing a lot more support compared to nondisabled allistics. but that’s not who is being compared to.