Usually I am quite self-conscious, tend to people-please a lot and feel embarrassed after nearly every social interaction. I hide my true self mostly because I'm afraid people will reject me.
Yesterday though, I suddenly had this thought that I'm maybe not that pathetic after all, but actually a beautiful human being and that I want to be me.
I just tend to think that there is no such thing as beauty among humans, because we represent the ugliness declared to be the purpose of life. (But of course the others are primarily to blame 😅)
Still, this reminds me of what Dolores from Westworld used to say: "Some people choose to see the ugliness in this world, the disarray. I choose to see the beauty. To believe there is an order to our days. A purpose."
@Sci_Fi_FanGirl@actuallyautistic@allautistics Ok, Because Dolores is not human, she can say that without it being cynical. When the main perpetrator of the ugliness of this world says that, such transfiguring statements are, in my perception, mainly a proof of human ignorance.
We could dive into very philosophical questions here and yes there is a lot more to the quote, but I only wanted to highlight the idea that we choose what we want to see. There is a lot of pain and ugliness in the world. Yet, this doesn't mean that there isn't beauty as well. To me it's important not to ignore the ugliness, but to enjoy and cherish everything that is beautiful.
Agree. Just wanted to note that I do not believe that something like a beautiful human being exists. Under this premise I find it legitimate and healthy to estimate the own self-worth among humans at least as equal. That was basically only linguistic nitpicking. 😅
@danimo@Sci_Fi_FanGirl@actuallyautistic@allautistics Ive realized recently that humans are self blaming a lot. Through ideas like: what we do is unnatural, our very own life is unnatural and of course we classify ourselves as outside nature
But imo the truth is more like what they say in War of the Worlds, we are not self sufficient we heavily rely on a lot of ecosystems we actually feel responsible for them, so imo we are 100% part of nature
@cecton The point is that our species is a plague to the planet. Esoteric considerations of whether humans see themselves inside or outside of nature have no relevance to this. We are as a biological unit simply an asshole club. Unfortunately, no change of the viewing angle helps here.
@danimo@Sci_Fi_FanGirl@actuallyautistic@allautistics it doesn't yeah but it does too: considering that you yourself are part of humanity and many others agree with your points means that at some point the forces will change direction
It's not an idealistic point of view either: it's very possible that we will be too slow to change and we end up destroying the entirety of nature. The way I see things is that we all are one big blob of a thing
@Sci_Fi_FanGirl@actuallyautistic@allautistics yes! Proud of you. I find that when I can make steps like that I feel so much better. In terms of interactions with other people who are used to my people pleasing it can get hairy. But ultimately that ends up better too. I’m only speaking for myself but I hope you experience something similar.
@allautistics@actuallyautistic
Contemplating my burnout recovery today. I'm definitely doing a lot better than I was a year ago, but I find myself frustrated and angry about the economic reality of mental illness. In order to ride out the worst of my burnout I had to go into debt, now that I'm able to work I absolutely have to work or lose my home. But I don't have a lot of spoons, so I have nothing left to give to building relationships, which is what I need to get support to keep recovering
@allautistics@actuallyautistic It's so freaking disheartening to know how capable and giving I am when I'm well supported, only to be treated like trash who doesn't deserve support because I can't be totally independent and capable or giving. I need support, and this economic system has decided that makes my life entirely disposable unless I can find some kind of angel investor to help me back on my feet without turning around with their hand out to claw back what they gave me before I'm stable
For anyone having issues with the #ActuallyAutistic hashtag, there is also #AllAutistics and @allautistics (the latter being a recently created group that you can follow and post to).
They are intended for anyone who is (or thinks they might be) autistic (formally or self-diagnosed).
@ratcatcher@FrightenedRat@allautistics@actuallyautistic
Saying "I think the meaning is clear enough" implies, to me anyway, that you think the meaning is clear enough for everyone to understand without any confusion what you mean it to say. With that interpretation, correct or not, the statement would be a form of claiming to speak for others. This is one of the reasons I have not chosen to use the hashtag. However, I understand that not everyone will comprehend it the same way.
My best practice is to try always to be explicit, no matter what hashtag I am using, and state my understanding or experience with a clear limitation that my statement applies to me. It's more work to do that, but my experience online is better when I do.
I'm gonna ramble a bit. I usually try to be coherent, and take my time, but I just don't even know where I'm going here just yet.
There are assumptions I see in current Mastodon #autism discussions that are misleading or even wrong about so-called "late diagnosed".
One is that those who weren't screened as children must not be very autistic, and that these late diagnosed persons assume superiority and higher status, and then dominate spaces and talk over the early diagnosed.
Trying to get a sense of this, because I'm very late diagnosed. No doubt there is some validity to this point for some. I haven't seen it, but that doesn't mean it isn't there.
But I will say that some of these "takes" are very much like the toxic views of the "autism parents" on Twitter, who think adult autistics are all "high functioning" or not autistic at all, just people who are frauds and wannabes.
Having said that, being neurodivergent isn't new to me. I knew I was different in my early teens but saw myself as having a very different "consciousness" than others, rather than a different neurology (long story). And I was dx'd as ADHD 23 years ago, and self-diagnosed as autistic 8 years ago, and then received a formal diagnosis of ASD about 2 years ago. So is that "newly diagnosed"? Lol. I've lived the autistic life longer than most on the planet at this point. I'm hardly uneducated in the topic.
So I've known about my differences for a long, long time. ADHD is anything but "new" to me.
As to autism, I think it will always be "new" to me, and yet it will always be something I've lived with all of my life. And I've been alive for awhile.
Included either directly or by implication in some of the comments I've read is the pathologizing of autism, and separating the autistic community into severity levels, a concept that is clumsy and inaccurate, and often results in withholding assistance to those who are perceived as "mildly" autistic or underestimating and infantilizing those seen as "severe".
And it also misses the fact that people who grew up before 1980 (and especially before 1970 or 1960) would not likely be screened as autistic, and instead could be treated as a "terrible, strange, misbehaved child" with resulting parental neglect and abuse (raises hand), or misdiagnosed as any of a plethora of other conditions including schizophrenia (raises hand) or intellectual disability.
They might be hospitalized as needing in-patient psychiatric care (raises hand).
They might be terrorized by siblings (as in fearing for my life in repeated, prolonged, and constant attacks) and left to fend for themselves leading to lifelong trauma and all the self-esteem and others traits of PTSD and c-PTSD (raises hand).
Undiagnosed autistics can be treated with a high degree of neglect, misinterpretation, leading to severe estrangement from parents, and outright physical abuse by parents and siblings.
My mother was autistic (I'm quite certain). My brother was autistic (quite certain). My grandmother was institutionalized and I think that was autism.
But no one knew about autism when my grandmother and mother were born. My mother was delayed in speaking, potty training, tying shoelaces, delayed in learning to read. Because of her differences she was horribly abused by her aunt who raised her.
Oh but she was undiagnosed so she must not have been very autistic. Right?
She had no friends throughout her shortened life, although she managed to do well in college, and received a masters in family counseling from CalTech in her 40s. She spent most of her time reading, sitting in bed at night, when she wasn't teaching "educationally handicapped" children (that was the term in those days... so interesting that she chose that as her career).
She died by suicide when I was 26. I gave her CPR at 3 AM, and I'll never fucking forget those staring, dead eyes. Fuck, fuck, fuck.
@obrerx@allautistics@actuallyautistic i gave this a Favorite because it's so important. (i almost didn't because of the terribleness.) if you're okay with them, hugs.