I have a Patreon where I share advice, insights, research and more on navigating life with Borderline Personality Disorder every month. It includes tips for dealing with various aspects of BPD, as well as supporting someone with BPD!
It costs only the cost of a cup of coffee per month, and every contribution means quite a lot to me. ☕
It’s also linked to a Discord server to connect with other BPD-ers and I host virtual support groups for Patrons as well! ❤️
legimate autistic trans person: this mogai shit, especially neurogenders and your “autigender”, harms us
some cis kid: lmao mean gatekeeper
Me, neurodivergent and nonbinary: neopronouns arent necessary and saying that people like me “need” them to “properly express” our gender makes us out to be dumb toddlers.
Some cisgender neurotypical: you’re ableist >:((((
FlappyHappy is a small business that has been started. It is run by autistics. Our goal is to make stim toys affordable and accessible to those that need them. Many places that sell stim toys are focused on the needs and experiences of parents of young autistic children. Here at FlappyHappy, autistic needs and voices are centred over caregivers. Our stim toys are also great for people living with trauma, ADHD, chronic pain, anxiety, or other needs!
As a small business, we could use your help to get the word out and get started.
If you can’t afford to purchase from our shop, you can still help by tagging us in social media (the links to all of them will be at the bottom of this post). You can also help us by sharing our social media posts whether that be on our Tumblr platform or other ones like Twitter, Facebook and TikTok.
A lot of our success will depend on being able to get the word out.
We will be using the proceeds of sale to expand our product line to bring you a variety of quality, affordable stim toys.
How to live when you don’t know left from right in a world where everyone else does.
It frustrated me a lot as a kid because I didn’t know what was wrong and took years to find workarounds. I was worried about driving but turns out I never mix up the pedals this way.
A lot of the time I’ll get the correct direction from hearing it so it’s not debilitating or anything. It’s just hard to put the words “right” and “left” in my memory along with an action.
Muscle memory is great though. Most people turn the sink to cold water without trying, so the more you practice something, the more it’s programmed into you without any pesky words.
You can also use this theory when living in a new part of the world where things are oriented differently than you’re used to. Just make up a new logic rule for the differences.
Happy navigating!
This isn’t helpful for me, but I bet it will be for a lot of people.
By the way, the way I remember brake vs. accelerator is that the brake is closer to the wedge/platform thing that I put my non-driving foot on, and that doesn’t move. So, the pedal closer to that is the one that stops the car from moving.
Saying “that’s karma” about people having disabilities or getting diseases is very ableist.
TW + CW: ableism
I saw two reddit posts today
1. A six year old girl gets a agressive form of cancer and may die.
2. A 11 year old girl gets paralyzed in a tragic accident
So what were people’s reactions??
Saying that’s karma because the parents, kids or someone tbe kid knows did something “ bad ” so people claiming the kids “ deserved ” such things..
I see this a lot. People claiming disabilities and illnesses are “ deserved ” and “ karma” because the person or someone they know did something bad…
Like it’s so messed up to say that such things are deserved and karma.
But also it has some really f×cked up underlying implications that people truly believe those with disabilities or illnesses are bad people that deserved it or in somehow karma.
executive dysfunction often makes you feel totally disempowered and out of control in your own life. i promise, it’s okay. you don’t have to do everything today. you don’t have to write the whole essay, i know that’s overwhelming. just open up a new google docs. you don’t have to cook the whole meal right now, just slice the bread and set it aside. take it one step at a time. if you have the energy to write one more sentence, to prep one more ingredient, go ahead! even if not, you’ve set yourself up for better times, you’ve done something instead of nothing, and you’ve set yourself a goal that you accomplished. great job!
(Trigger warning for abuse, electroshock therapy, torture, and ableism.)
The US court has overturned the ban on shock devices being used against disabled students, predominantly autistic students in the US.
The shock device being legalized is called the graduated electronic decelerator (or GED). This is a torture device that is used to ‘correct’ autistic behaviors / symptoms. Autistic people are shocked for stimming, and for having meltdowns, ect. This device was made popular by a behavioral center (the Judge Rosenberg Center, specifically) that is infamous for its abuse and torture of autistic / disabled patients.
(Image ID: someone is holding their arm out and resting it on a table, with their sleeve rolled up. Attached to their arm are wires, which connect to a small cube device.)
This is what the device looks like. It sends electric shocks into the victim’s skin; the victim often being restrained and held against their will. This is torture. GEDs have been reported to cause intense psychological trauma, PTSD, and physical injuries.
In March of 2020, the FDA ruled for GEDs to be banned. (Although, of course, they were still illegally used at a number of places.) This ruling has recently been appealed, and today, the US court of appeals has re-regulated the law to stop the use of GED. Sounds great, right? It would be!
… If not for a huge loophole in the wording, which basically allows this torture to continue. This device is going to have continued use on autistic students in order to “correct their behavior.”
“So…. What can I do??”
Great question! You can:
Listen to and boost autistic voices to spread awareness
As-of now (August 7th), autistic activists are trying to get #StopTheShock trending on Twitter, so Tweet out the hashtag if you have Twitter
If you’re in the US, email / call your legislators
I’ve seen discussions sometimes about how fanfiction-based fandom culture is heavily influenced and dominated by people who are not cis men.
One thing I haven’t seen discussed as much though is how much of fandom in general is shaped by neurodivergent people.
I mean, you have autistic and ADHD people with special interests or hyperfixations collecting information and writing detailed meta, connecting very strongly with characters and fandoms. I would not be surprised if the percentage of autistics in fandom communities was significantly higher than in the general public.
And that’s not even getting into other types of neurodivergencies and how they influence fandom culture.
I sometimes see people try to divorce fandom culture from the idea of being a “geek”, and I understand that this is sometimes because of the association with the sexist geek stereotype, but I also know that there is a connection between the two concepts, and it’s probably us neurodivergent people.
I also think this is why at first I was like “my fandoms can’t be special interests, that’s just how fandom is”
Yeah, because a lot of people in fandom have special interests
I’ll go slightly further here, and say this (well. this plus ableism) is the root of a lot of current issues in fandom.
Back when I started being in fandom, a couple decades ago, I’d argue that damn near every single person in fandom was autistic or ADHD. You’d only join fandom if you were obsessive and were chill with doing things that weren’t socially acceptable. (Because being a fan absolutely was not socially acceptable at the time! We went to ridiculous amounts of effort to hide that we were fans!)
And fandom culture was absolutely shaped by this. The standard behaviors in fandom were those of happy autistics. That’s how you were expected to act. You remember “squeeing”? The visual image of it is generally someone so happy and excited they can’t physically contain it so they make a high-pitched noise and flap their hands and - a squee is literally just a happy stim. And so many fans at the time did happy stims that we gave it a special fandom name! So even if a neurotypical person happened to stumble in, they’d learn that the “social norm” in a fandom space is basically just “act autistic/ADHD” and assimilate.
But then… fandom got mainstreamed. It became socially acceptable. And then the neurotypicals started showing up in large numbers. And instead of assimilating like they did before, when they were the minority, now that there were a lot of them they started going “what the heck is this! why are people here acting so weird! this is embarrassing!”
…and then we got cringe culture within fandom.
No one says “squee” anymore not because fans don’t squee anymore - happy stims don’t just go away - but because the neurotypicals showed up and told us “squee” is a cringy word and concept. Which they had ALWAYS told us out in public, but we used to have fandom as an insular autistic/ADHD-dominated space where we were safe and free to be ourselves.
You know how everybody talks about how cringy and embarrassing 2012 tumblr was? Dude. We were literally just acting like happy autistics, because that’s what we were. It’s just that - like you always have - you think autistic/ADHD behavior is cringy and embarrassing.
This isn’t new. “Cringe culture” isn’t new. It’s just a new euphemism for the exact same ableism that’s always existed, with the only difference that now it’s coming from insidefandom.
All those posts saying “if these people were bullied more they wouldn’t act like this”? They’re not just bizarrely tasteless jokes. They’re because the people making those posts werebullies. Are bullies. Fandom used to be where the sort of people who were victims of peer abuse went - where we went to be safe from bullies and be openly ourselves - but now the bullies are in here with us.
On the happier side, while mainstreaming has resulted in a lot of neurotypicals showing up, autistic/ADHD people are absolutely still the backbone of fandom. We’re the ones collecting tiny bits of info and connecting the dots to write galaxy brain meta. We’re the ones churning out new content every single day, rain or shine. We’re the hyper-verbal ones writing 250k fics and the ones who hyper-relate with the characters and make incorrect quote posts so spot-on they sound canon. They may think we’re embarrassing - but they still need us.
SO MUCH THIS!!!
Fandom would be nothingwithout neurodivergent people. Because there’s nothing on this earth that can rival the white-hot intensity of an Autistic or ADHD person in full-blown hyperfocus or special interest mode.
I could have written all of this. Thanks, shared brains!
okay legit though, I never understood why hand flapping was considered an autistic thing because, like, I did it and everyone I knew on the internet did it so it had to be normal, right? and honestly it’s only just now reading this that I’m like “oh shit that explains so much”
Hi everyone, I hope all my fellow neurodivergent people are doing okay in this crazy world!
I got to take part in an interview for an app being developed that’s aiming to provide individualized tools for improving well-being and cognitive skills for neurodivergent children and young people. (And they used identity first language in the interview I participated in, woo!)
It’s called MindOpp and the pilot for the final stage of development will be starting soon, so if you’re interested in getting involved too, feel free to sign up here!
(I always love to see something for autistic people that actually asks autistic people what’s good for them! I hope that this can become something really helpful. :))
i think it’s funny when neurotypical ppl are on their “do something every day that scares you :)” thing bc everything in the world scares me every day including things i already know i like doing
Direct byproduct of being neurodivergent and growing up isolated from your peergroup is having no idea when it’s appropriate to define someone as your friend
Is this person I met yesterday my friend? What about this person I’ve been talking to every day for three months? What about this person I’ve known since middle school? Is friend a title I have to earn? What are the limits of friendship? Is it a static state, make-or-break, or is it some endless dance-dance-revolution style cavalcade of prompts and challenges and social cues I have to hit perfectly to keep it up? Does it bend? Does it break? I don’t fucking know man I just work here.
i still remember when the dude doing my autism assessment asked me how many friends I had, and I was like “okay but how are we defining friendship?” and he just like, stared at me for a second and then wrote down some notes
just neurodivergent things: feeling both pleased and betrayed when your (admittedly also neurodivergent) friends call you “the stable one.” on the one hand, thank gods, the facade is working; on the other, (it feels like) if they cared, they could see through it to how bad you’re really doing.
New published work in Operative Neurosurgery. How many of those sylvian fissure triangles can you name? (winner gets a prize…) The article is titled “Cavernous Malformations of the Optic Nerve and Optic Pathway: A Case Series and Systematic Review of the Literature” and was written by @barrowneuro ‘s endovascular research fellow Visish M Srinivasan, MD, Redi Rahmani, MD @redi_rahmani and Michael T Lawton, MD @michael_t_lawton the second and third illustrations were created by Kristen Larson Keil, MS, CMI. More info via link in my bio https://doi.org/10.1093/ons/opab284 #medicalassistant #neuropathy #brainhealth #surgicaltechnologist #medicalstudent #sylvia #fissure #optic #pathologist #medsurgnurse #paschool #paschoollife #neurodiversity #journalingcommunity #triangleparts #medicinewoman #journalart #medicalimaging #braintumor #artworkshop @aansneuro @supportbarrow (at Barrow Neurological Institute) https://www.instagram.com/p/CTxHZb-J7le/?utm_medium=tumblr
