helping to write tics and specific learning disabilities

To recover, you literally need to manually learn skills that most people learn as a toddler

You need to learn what makes your body uncomfortable, and what to do to fix it

If you are high-masking, that usually means that you have learned to ignore every distress signal your body sends unless it is a distress signal that a neurotypical person would recognize. People have likely been unintentionally gaslighting you about your lived experience your entire life

If you feel bad or panicked for no reason, stop and try to pay attention to your body. Are you tense? You are likely feeling physical pain somewhere. If you've been gaslit about your pain your entire life, you might not be able to identify it.

Go through a sensory checklist.

SIGHT: Try closing and covering your eyes. If this gives you relief, the lights are probably too bright. You may also need differently-colored lights

SOUND: Cover your ears. Does this give you relief? If so, you may need earplugs or noise canceling headphones. You may also benefit from a neutral or pleasant background noise, like soft music or brown noise.

TOUCH: Are your clothes uncomfortable? Your chair? Your body? Do you feel greasy, like you need a shower? Do you need softer, sensory-friendly clothing?

TASTE: Do you need to brush your teeth or tongue? Would chewing on something help?

SMELL: Is there a strong or unpleasant smell in the room? Do you need to clean or empty a trash can? Would an air purifier help? Would a pleasant smell like a candle help?

INTEROCEPTION: Are you hungry? Thirsty? Tired? How is your posture? Are any of your muscles tight or sore? Scan your body slowly from head to feet, tensing and loosening each group of muscles. Going for a walk or doing a series of quick stretches may help a lot.

Learning how to do this stuff is not intuitive, if you've had an entire lifetime of gaslighting telling you that everything hurting you isn't a big deal and you're being dramatic over nothing.

This takes time, it takes work, it's not intuitive, and it's hard. Most people forget how hard it is, because they learned this as toddlers.

People often ask me about my unmasking journey and express surprise to hear that such a big part of it has been 1) accepting I must avoid light/the sun and 2) wearing clothes I can stand.

I’ll play it jokey and say it like “well it took me far too long to realize that my former wardrobe made me want to jump off a bridge.” Or “turns out my old underwear was anti-autistic.” Or “for whatever reason when it’s too bright, I can’t think.”

There is pretty much no representation and even when there is I can't interact with the media because it'll trigger my tics. Like wtf. I'd love more books and movies and really anything with characters that have tourettes but it'll just be a new thing I have to avoid.

I am a 20y queer guy diagnosed with an unspecified tic disorder, dyslexia, dysgraphia, dysortographia, and with undiagnosed sensory issues (possibly autism, but i am not going to start diagnostic process for that now, so we will never know for sure).

i am not a medical professional, i am not a professional sensitivity/beta reader, i am not a professional researcher. Everything i do here is out of pure passion. I am not your end all be all. Asking me doesn't mean that you did enough research. I am your helper and consultant, not an oracle.

i am a hobbyist writer and a passionate reader, and i love to see myself in the stories that i read.

i love fantasy and i recently started getting into horror as well, but since i was a child i would read literally any genre.

i find great comfort in reading about characters who are similar to me, but finding stories like that (which are not for literal children, or are about literal children) is very difficult

that's why i want to encourage writers to write more characters with tics/specific learning disabilities! And i want to make writing them easier for you

people will finally snap and stop tolerating me, they will think i’m rude

my tongue muscles will get stronger and my pronounciation will get better (i actually should be doing some exercises to strengthen my tongue, im just too lazy to do it willingly lol)