Neurotypical: You Should Help Me Put More It's The Nice Thing To Do.

i love you autistics that are picky eaters. i love you autistics that dont eat vegetables. i love you autistics that dont eat foods because of the color or texture. i love you autistics who have to take vitamins because their safe/same foods dont provide enough nutrients. i love you autistics who have to look at the menu ahead of time before they go somewhere to make sure there is safe/same foods.

Falling Through Dreams.

cold

༺2006༻

I feel like life was very black and white as a kid. There were straightforward rules everywhere; posted signs and adults telling us to do this, don't do that, say this, respond this way in this situation. But the older i get the grayer life gets. Situations are complex and have good and bad mixed. Right and wrong is subjective. No one taught me how to live in between points on a spectrum.

Telling me that being upset by my intrusive thoughts is proof I'm a good person did jackshit to help me, ngl. In fact, all it did was make me feel like I HAD to go down a spiral of horror and self-hatred any time I had those thoughts in order to prove those thoughts didn't make me a monster. I still feel like that.

But the most helpful advice I got about them was genuinely just to treat them gently. Laugh. Roll my eyes. Go "not my brain acting up again 🙄" or "Bro, I do no want to do that, shut up 😩".

Like...Telling people their suffering is proof they're good people isn't really helpful, in the long run. Or at all, for plenty of us. We need to be working WITH our brains, instead of constantly fighting against them. I have this tiny section in my journal, where when I was feeling okay, I wrote myself a note on intrusive thoughts and hallucinations and there's a line I keep in mind:

"Having thoughts-it's like an ocean; shit washes up sometimes. And then, if you let it, it gets washed away."

You have to let it wash away. You can't pick up every piece of crap that washes up and study it, keep it in your little backroom, trying to determine why it's here and what its purpose is. Babe, you're not a marine biologist. Sometimes bullshit is just bullshit and you've gotta train yourself to recognize that. You don't have to be disgusted every time you run across it. You can just keep moving.

Specify if: With good or fair insight: The individual recognizes that obsessive-compulsive dis- order beliefs are definitely or probably not true or that they may or may not be true. With poor insight: The individual thinks obsessive-compulsive disorder beliefs are probably true. With absent insight/delusional beliefs: The individual is completely convinced that obsessive-compulsive disorder beliefs are true.

Source ~ Twitter OMGImAutisticAF

"My whole life, I enjoyed big family gatherings but also would have to go run off and hide somewhere quiet by myself for awhile and get away from it all. I never knew why I needed to get away from the people I wanted to be around. Now I know it was sensory overload."

Princess Jellyfish, Akiko Higashimura