Up until 1973, psychologists and psychiatrists will still consider homosexuality to be a form of illness. It will be 1987, the year I’m born, before homosexuality will be completely removed from the DSM. Continue reading LGBTQIA+ & Autism Medicalization Timeline – A NeuroQueer Conversion Therapy History Lesson
Gender is a social construct and a social identity. Someone’s gender is determined by how they feel. An individual can feel more like a man, more like a woman, they can also feel like both, neither, or something in between.
According to one study that included 641,860 people: “people who do not identify with the sex they were assigned at birth are three to six times more likely to be autistic as cis-gender people.” Continue reading Autism & Gender 101 – My Trans Nonbinary Autistic Experience with Autigender
Learning I’m Autistic has helped with some things, and made them easier. I am studying facial expressions and body language, to learn what some of that stuff means. I’m learning it in a very unnatural way, and I hear some people picked up on that naturally in life, which is hard for me to fathom… but I’m learning it.
I’m capable of understanding these things, it’s just like learning a foreign language to me. Some things, however, haven’t gotten any easier, because some things might be more difficult for some of us.
Continue reading The Challenges of being Autistic in a NonAutistic World
What’s it like being Autistic? The answer to that question is going to change a lot, depending on the Autistic Person you ask… but I’m happy to share my experience with you this week. Continue reading What is it Really Like Being Autistic
There are people out there in the world today who do not know that they are NeuroDivergent, and may never know in their lifetimes. Not knowing that our brains work differently from that of a lot of other people on this planet, can have impacts on us, on our mental health, and our sense of self-worth; when we constantly compare ourselves to others around us, whose brains do not work as ours do. Continue reading I See Autistic & NeuroDivergent People Who Don’t KNOW their Minds Work Differently
Shame is defined as a painful emotion caused by consciousness of guilt, shortcoming, or perceived impropriety. That is one definition talking about how shame is experienced from the inside.
However, I want to talk more about having shame that is put on you from society and people around you; shame that is unjustified, that many NeuroDivergent, LGBTQIA, and other marginalized people may feel, and the impact that shame has on those of us who are in those groups.
Continue reading Shame Kills – Autism, NeuroDivergence, Pride, & Shame
I knew, at the age of four or five, that I wasn’t a girl, but I couldn’t articulate what I knew, and the world told me I was a girl, and I had to get used to that somehow.
I also knew, around the same time, that I was not like other kids, but not knowing I was NeuroDivergent, also meant not having the language to describe that experience either, and falsely believing that I was an inferior, lazy, NeuroTypical child, and then, eventually, a inferior lazy NeuroTypical adult. I held myself to those NeuroTypical standards, even to my own detriment.
I forced myself to fit into their boxes, at the expense of my own mental and physical health.
I held myself to CIS heteronormative standards, often feeling like I was living a lie and pretending to be someone I wasn’t, for the comfort of other people.
I hit for safety, to blend in, and not make waves. I hid to avoid being the target of bullying and harassment, though bullies still managed to find me. That’s what happens when you grow up in a violent, hostile place, where you don’t feel you’re safe, and you are forced into the peripheries of society.
Being invisible was safer and preferable to standing out, so I did my best to be invisible, and it almost killed me.
Eventually, I got to a point where I couldn’t do it anymore. I came to a place where I could no longer maintain the complex social mask that had protected me for most of my life, and when it all fell apart, I found myself in a place of crisis and was diagnosed Autistic at 29. Continue reading Queer, Trans, NeuroDivergent, Autistic: The Human Need for Authenticity
Over the past five years, there have been many videos breaking down different questions and parts of my Autistic experience, sharing some of your experiences, and talking about what it’s like to be an Autistic person, but every now and then I still get the question…. “Well, that’s great Lyric, but what is autism, exactly?”
It’s a question I dodge a lot of the times, if I’m honest, and that is because autism is something that’s very hard to quantify because… it is a lot of different things to a lot of people, depending on the lens through what you are viewing. For example, autism, when you ask the medical community is very different than if you ask an Autistic Person what autism is… or a parent of a newly diagnosed Autistic child.
Depending on who you ask, you’re going to get very different responses, and even asking and looking at Autistic Person to Autistic Person, what autism is within those contexts, and for each and every Autistic Individual, also, can be very different.
Continue reading What is Autism to Me – One Autistic Person
Unfortunately, sometimes as Autistic People, when people find out we are Autistic, it can cause us to be infantilized by people around us.
Continue reading Autism & Infantilization – My Experience with Autistic Infantilization
The missing generation is Autistic/NeuroDivergent adults, typically growing up in the 1980s or earlier, who were not discovered to be NeuroDivergent as children (because of diagnostic limitations of the time).
Autism was not even in the DSM until 1980. So prior to 1980, Autistic People weren’t even listed in the diagnostic manual. That generation, and generations prior grew up when understanding was very limited, leaving generations of Autistic People undiscovered, or missed. Continue reading Where are the Missing Generation of Autistic & NeuroDivergent Adults?