Autism Myth-Busting Part 2

true.

Habits, Tics, Stims, Compulsions, and Behaviors

You are tapping your foot. Someone asks you to stop. You do. You feel no ill effects aside from maybe disappointment at having to stop. You tap your foot often. This is a habit.

You are tapping your foot, whether you want to or not. Someone asks you to stop. You can’t. If you try to it feels like holding in a sneeze and the pressure builds up. It might come out in a different, even less controllable action. This is a tic.

You are tapping your foot. Someone asks you to stop. You do, but immediately feel worse physically or emotionally. It was a way for you to express yourself and how you feel. You may feel pressure. This is a stim.

You are tapping your foot. Someone asks you to stop. You can’t, because if you do something bad will happen, possibly some specific bad thing. You know it’s irrational, but not doing it gives you anxiety. This is a compulsion.

You are tapping your foot. Someone asks you to stop. You can’t, because if you do this specific bad thing will happen. It is not irrational to you, although it is to others. This is an erratic/disorganized behavior.

Psychology & Handwriting Analysis: Size

Aristotle spoke of dividing man into three aspects: the mind, the body, and the spirit: “Speech is the expression of ideas or thoughts or desires. Handwriting is the visible form of speech. Just as speech can have inflections of emotions, somewhere in handwriting is an expression of the emotions underlying the writer’s thoughts, ideas, or desires.”

Meaning: The size of the writing reveals whether a person is feeling socially extroverted or introverted. It also reveals your capacity for concentration.

Note: Sometimes your size changes, look at the definitions that describe your mood.

1. Overly Large Handwriting:

This person demands to be seen & heard

This writer overdoes (exaggerates) the size in compensation for an inner feeling of smallness and/or unimportance

Obsession with attention & will go to great lengths to obtain it

Displays obsessive tendencies by writing huge letters (to call attention on himself)

Keep reading

The present study examined the utility of meaning to differentiate between depression and grief in a sample of suicide survivors (N = 555). Three regression models were tested, each with a different measure of meaning predicting depression and grief. Across three models, meaning was negatively associated with depression but positively associated with grief. Additionally, grief and depression were negatively correlated across all models. Results support a conceptual distinction between grief and depression, with the presence or absence of meaning in life as a key distinguishing factor between the two in a population with a relatively high risk for pathological grieving.

Typing Tutorials With Different Keyboards

After switching from the Russian phonetic to the regular Russian keyboard, I’ve had to learn to type all over again. I did some Googling and found https://sense-lang.org/typing/. It’s a website that teaches typing, but the coolest part is they have a bunch of different languages available. Change the language from the drop down menu here:

Then click the icon that has the hand with the coloured dots (it should say “lesson” next to it in your target language).

It will take you to a dozen lessons or so to practice typing!

Once I clicked on the first lesson, it took a while to load — I thought maybe I had done something wrong. Just be patient and it will start up.

Hope that was helpful!

Nick Cave talking about the death of his son, Arthur

One More Time with Feeling (2016) dir. Andrew Dominik

From what I’ve read and observed, bipolar symptoms exist on a spectrum. Using these charts inspired by @levianta’s graphics about autism, you can visualize the extremity of every symptom you experience. As an example, here is a chart visualizing how i personally experience hypomania: