#writing autism

LIVE

aspergyaru:

FromWikipedia:

Inpsychologyandneuroscience,executive dysfunction, or executive function deficit, is a disruption to the efficacy of the executive functions, which is a group of cognitive processes that regulate, control, and manage other cognitive processes. Executive dysfunction can refer to both neurocognitive deficits and behavioural symptoms. It is implicated in numerous psychopathologiesandmental disorders, as well as short-term and long-term changes in non-clinical executive control.

FromMusings of an Aspie:

Executive function (EF) is a broad term that refers to the cognitive processes that help us regulate, control and manage our thoughts and actions. It includes planning, working memory, attention, problem solving, verbal reasoning, inhibition, cognitive flexibility, initiation of actions and monitoring of actions.

Most people on the autism spectrum have some degree of impaired executive function. Because executive function is such a complex concept, it can be hard to understand how it impacts our lives in practical ways. 

For me, it’s not so much an unwillingness to do things or being lazy or putting it off. It’s that I can’t make myself focus on them. Sometimes other things take precedence in the hierarchy of my mind. Sometimes I feel like I’m waiting for this ephemeral thing that I can’t name. I will sometimes feel stuck in place, unable to move or think. In those instances, it’s like being mute but with my body. It’s a very hard thing to pinpoint. Sometimes, the thought forms in my head, and then it’s gone before I can act on it.

For me, it leads sometimes to chores not getting done, or to forgetting to go to events if I don’t set myself a reminder, or even doing things like reading or charging my computer or doing laundry.

#writing reference    #writing resource    #writing    #writing resources    #autism    #writing autism    #writing autistic characters    #executive dysfunction    #character help    #writing neurodiverse characters    
Specs has Resources (TW)@the-darkish-side-of-specs
Thu, 24 Jan 2019 16:00:56

autism-asks:

Hello lovely followers! This page is a collection of resources to help you with your questions. These are all resources that are frequently referenced on this blog. They are broken down into categories based on the subject matter. As always, if you have any questions, send us an ask!

General Autism Resources

Self-Diagnosis Resources

Autism versus…

Autism and ADHD

Sensory Processing Topics

Meltdowns and Shutdowns

Autistic Burnout

Echolalia

Alexithymia

Hyper-Empathy

Executive Dysfunction

Special Interests

Stimming

Where to Buy Stim Toys

Neurodivergent Creators

The following are people from our community who create products that are helpful for autistic people such as stim toys, communication tools, and more! Check out their shops as a way to support neurodivergent creators!

  • PangeaMea by Francis Mark (autism, OCD, ADHD, anxiety, depression) sells stim toys, sensory friendly clothing, noise muffling beanies and headbands, padded arm protectors, and skin picking simulators.
  • StimForTheWin by Exo (autism and ADHD) sells tangles and fidget cubes with silicone spikes on them for maximum stimming, communication necklaces (also with silicone spikes), and marble mazes/ donuts.
  • StrangerDarkerBetter by Mod Sabrina (autism, ADHD, schizoaffective, PTSD, depression, anxiety) sells visual schedules and communication cards.
  • PieFanArt by Pie (autistic) sells mostly plush toys, art and jewelry but also weighted plushies and scented plushies!
  • WagglesStudio by Dailyspeal sells stim toys

Identity First Language

Autistic In the Workplace

Neurodiversity and Autism Acceptance

Autistic Community

The Social Model of Disability

What’s Wrong With Functioning Labels?

Why Autism $peaks is Bad

What’s Wrong With ABA?

Anti-Anti-Vaccination

If something can be written well, it should. If you want to write an autistic character, you have no excuse not to do it well. Questions? There are at least a dozen blogs out there who can help, myself included. Nervous? We all are. And personally? I talk a LOT, so if you ask me ANYTHING, literally anything, I will go on for a while. Be it about autism, dogs, zoos, etymology, bees, Disney characters - legit, ask my friends. I talk a lot.

#writing reference    #writing resource    #writing resources    #character help    #autism    #writing autism    #writing autistic characters    
Specs has Resources (TW)@the-darkish-side-of-specs
Wed, 09 Jan 2019 18:58:42

geekwithsandwich:

seriously though it would be an enormous help if more people understood that autistic brains/bodies (and some other conditions too) very VERY frequently don’t process sensations and emotions in normal ways and INSTEAD replace them with bodily and emotional responses that are total nonsense in an NT context

like i have chronic pain, i have an always-on headache that used to be around a 2-3 on the pain scale and is now a 6-7 most days.  but periodically i find that instead of actually feeling a level of pain i can rate, i have a series of puzzling physical sensations like nausea that miraculously get better when i take painkillers and go lie down in the dark.  because they were actually pain signals.  pain signals that got turned into something else at some point in my body.  so i have days where i feel GREAT and pumped to do stuff and then i’m like WHY AM I NOT FUNCTIONING WELL and i go lie down in the dark for a while and it gets better??  because i was actually at an 8 which is Can’t Function levels for me, but 90% of that pain was invisible to me, turned into nausea and manic energy and weird sudden mood shifts instead of “pain”.

I don’t experience normal thirst signals most of the time, either.  I get cravings for ice cream and lime popsicles and watermelon instead of being thirsty.  I had to learn that “i suddenly desperately want ice cream” is my body’s way of saying “put some water in this bitch”.

I also get nausea instead of hunger signals a lot of the time.  nausea is one of my body’s favorite go-to signals to send, in general, so it can mean almost anything.  when my stomach turns i have to go through a checklist of possibilities to figure out what i’m actually feeling.  this is a big reason i eat a lot of snacks.  it’s step number 3 or 4 on my “why do i feel sick” list and happens at least once a day.

and anyway this shit is important for non autistic people to know because we can’t always tell you what we’re experiencing, but also sometimes we can get really upset and overwhelmed with trying to even understand what we’re feeling.  doctors especially need to know this.  how can i tell you what’s wrong with my body when my body doesn’t know how to use its own language for communicating what’s wrong?  when it routinely sends me a mishmash of signals that are totally useless for figuring out the problem?  it’s not impossible but it requires an understanding of just how different the place i’m coming from really is.  you can’t get anywhere by treating me just like an NT patient.

but most people aren’t even aware that “body signals” are a real tangible thing that can be effected and “go wrong” when your brain and body are built weirdly.  literally any process in your body can be broken, that should be obvious, but people are so oblivious to the things their body does automatically that they aren’t aware they exist, and therefore don’t know they can break.  it’s really important to make people aware of these functions.  there are so many disabilities that happen when a hidden function breaks and it’s impossible for abled people to grasp those disabilities without comprehending that that’s an actual thing their body does for them.

I can relate. My body doesn’t like to experience hunger always, and will instead go for “stomach hurts for some unknown reason” or, if I have gone without food for a while, nausea. It’s weird.

#writing autism    #writing disability    #writing diversity    #actuallyautistic    #actually autistic    
MissLunaRose on Tumblr@misslunarose
Tue, 09 Jan 2018 12:40:37

scriptautistic:

[this is part of an ask sent in by @acemindbreaker. The rest of the ask can be found at the ‘acemindbreaker questions’ tag]

At the start of the story she’s only a few weeks along, and it’ll follow her at least until the baby’s birth. What issues might affect her as a pregnant autistic woman?

Some people love being pregnant, they feel really healthy and love their bodies. Other people really struggle, feeling unwell and in pain.

Pregnancy will come with changes to your character’s body. This includes changes in hormones which can lead to fluctuations in her emotions and sensory needs. She will also have physical changes (abdomen gets bigger) which can cause pain and issues with proprioception.

She might experience nausea/morning sickness. Any pre-existing hypersensitivites, combined with hormonal changes to her sense of smell and taste, might her extra susceptible to nausea.

Pregnancy can lead to tiredness, aches, and pains. If this is the case, it may impact her ability to cope with difficult social situations, and may lower her threshold for withstanding difficult sensory environments.

Of course, some people feel really healthy when they are pregnant, so she might really enjoy herself! Part of it seems to be down to luck.

Pregnancy comes with lots of things to organise. Less than once the baby arrives, but there are still many medical appointments to attend, arrangements to be made for the baby’s arrival, and changes to diets to manage.

Of course, your character is likely to have co-occurring physical or mental issues which might be complicate by pregnancy. For example, if she already experiences anxiety and cognitive distortions, common worries about her child’s health are likely to present more of a problem than in a neurotypical mother.

Pregnancy also means that she might have to adjust any medications she is on. If the character takes anti-epileptics to manage seizures and mood-stabilisers to manage hypomania, then she will be affected by changes to her meds as well as by hormonal changes. She might need to have more frequent check-ups with her doctor to make sure that she stays healthy during these changes.

If she was previously a drinker/smoker then pregnancy might give her the impetus to give up, but changes to non-prescription drugs can also have an impact.

Your character may find pleasure from doing research related to the pregnancy. There is lots to read about, and she might enjoy planning the birth, researching how foetuses develop, or looking into the origins of various names. In this post a mother talks about using routines and schedules to help manage changes to her body and hormones.

As her pregnancy progresses, your character may find that others begin to treat her differently. This might be differences in people’s expectations for how she behaves as they try to accommodate the changes she is experiencing. On the other hand, there may also be times when she has to tell other characters that she needs accommodations like changes to dress code or seating with more back support.

She might also find that she has to adapt the social scripts that she uses because people might start asking new questions like “when are you due?” or making jokes about her belly.

I don’t think that it is relevant to your story, but as this post will be shared with other writers I feel that it would be remiss not to mention the discrimination that disabled parents face, which I talked about in more detail in this post about obstacles for an autistic parent raising a baby (eugenics cw).

It is worth looking for autistic people’s accounts of their pregnancies. Here are a few examples:

-Mod Snail
buy me a coffee // check out the FAQ 

#writing autism    #writing disability    #writing diversity    #actuallyautistic    #actually autistic    #autism    #pregnancy    
MissLunaRose on Tumblr@misslunarose
Tue, 09 Jan 2018 08:20:30

@pcwiz84 reacted to your post:

To be fair, everyone is entitled to their opinion. The person messaging you has their own opinion, but they shouldn’t impose their opinion on you. If they feel strongly about not coming out, they don’t have to. It doesn’t mean you shouldn’t because they tell you to. As long as everyone respects each others opinion and stays in their own lane, the world should be a better place.

I wouldn’t have been so upset if they had anything else to say about my story, whether they feel it’s good representation or not, if there’s something they appreciated or something they disliked… But no. They just came here to tell me that I shouldn’t mention my diagnosis, because we don’t “come out on everything we post”.

As if they only clicked briefly on it, because they noticed my “Written by an autistic author” in the summary and they couldn’t accept it. I’m not even sure they read my story, because they posted that on the second installment of my series (the most popular of them all), and they didn’t comment at all on the first. 

I don’t “come out on everything I post”. I only did so for this story, because I’m writing about an autistic character using my experience as an autistic person. I’m genuinely upset that this person took the time to police me on my own story about the way I handle my diagnosis, but didn’t have anything else to say about my story. I’m absolutely sure as of now that they didn’t read it at all.

#actuallyautistic    #actually autistic    #fanfiction    #writing autism    #autism    #ableism    #autism diagnosis    
LadyAutie@ladyautie
Mon, 22 Mar 2021 01:35:43

Someone really had the guts to tell me that I shouldn’t come out as autistic on my fanfiction about autism. Like, really. 

They come here, they don’t mention anything about my story, they’re just dumping this thing in my inbox, for me to discover when I’m already at a low point:

“You want the reader to focus on the story, not your autism. We don’t come out autistic on everything we post.“

First of all, I don’t necessarily come out as autistic on every single one of my stories. I heavily talk about my autism in my author’s notes and mention it in the summary of this story becauseit’s a story featuring an autistic character and a lot of my own experience as an autistic person. 

Second, it’s my choice to talk about my diagnosis or not. People have been taken that choice away from me so many times, as if I didn’t have any agency, and I refuse to let anyone decide that for me any longer. Yes, I’m autistic, unashamedly autistic, bite me if it’s bothering you!

For the people that read my blog and/or my fanfics: it’s not your place to tell me how to talk about my autism, even if you’re an autistic person yourself. That’s my choice, my personal choice. If you’re autistic and don’t like to talk about your autism in your stories, then that’s alright, I don’t have the right to tell you anything about that.

But it’s MY story, MY experiences, MY diagnosis, and anyone who want me to keep that to myself, you can go f*ck yourself. Thank you.

#actuallyautistic    #actually autistic    #autism    #ableism    #writing autism    #autism diagnosis    
LadyAutie@ladyautie
Mon, 22 Mar 2021 01:20:38
loading