Autistic Hedgehog

Stimming can help you stop a meltdown or recover from one, or may occur during one–it’s generally a repetitive movement done for comfort (though plenty of us stim out of happiness or excitement, too). Classic stims are things like rocking or flapping one’s hands, but a number of other behaviors count as well (I tend to like to rub satin ribbon).

The thing about defining a meltdown is that a) they’re not precisely the same for all of us and b) I suspect they change shape and form from childhood to adulthood.

How you meltdown depends entirely on you. You might get angry (this is common in children and is, sadly, often dismissed as tantrums), you might cry, you might scream, you might go completely numb. The most important factor and the thing that distinguishes a meltdown more than anything else, though, is this: You will not care what other people think about you while it’s happening.

This is very important for recognizing what a meltdown is to you. Me, I tend to cry (though in certain situations I cry until I get angry, at which point I often find the strength to get myself through, which is different from when I was younger) and I will sob my eyes out without noticing or caring that there are people all around me. 

In the end, a meltdown occurs when you’re so overwhelmed by something that you can’t handle it anymore, and the response is usually an outburst of emotion (but can be the complete absence of it). Knowing when you yourself are having an actual meltdown is going to take a bit of time and thought on your part. After the dust clears on a particularly emotional moment for you, look back at it. Were you somewhere others could see and didn’t care what they thought of your behavior? Even if you were alone, did it matter to you if someone saw you? Learning to recognize these things will tell you when you’re having a meltdown. 

I’ve never experienced this problem myself, so I have absolutely no idea.

Anyone else have any sort of experience with this kind of thing and/or advice on how to deal with it?

Allistic simply means not autistic.

I don’t hate allistic people. Or more specifically, I don’t hate all allistic people, but I certainly have low patience for the ones mentioned here, who behave in these ways. A lot of times we (that is, autistic people) are told we’re supposed to be nice, to appreciate our so-called allies even when they treat us like crap and say horrible things about us, and those are the allistics we tend to have issues with. (Or the ones who are straight up asshats.)

Anyone is welcome to follow AH, whether they’re autistic or not. However, in the end, this is a place for autistic people to vent their frustrations, and this often means that we’re going to be frustrated with allistic people. If you can understand that and are okay with it, you’re more than welcome to stay. All I ask is that you don’t try to tell us how we’re supposed to feel or act.

I don’t really know for sure, but it wouldn’t surprise me. I have some similar issues. The biggest problem I have is that if my mood is already bad or if I’m not feeling well in some other way, I get terrified to be out on my own. But also, when I’m depressed, it’s easier for me to miss certain social cues and I can be more sensitive to other issues as well.

Anyone else experience something like this?

I have no idea, but probably. Well, unless one flaps for reasons other than happiness. I tend to flap out of some form of anxiety. I think. I don’t fully recognize the emotion that causes me to flap.

But I suppose if it is your happy stim, then it makes perfect sense that doing it more means you’re happy more often. 

Oh boy. I’m not entirely sure I, personally, should be answering this question. My relationship with school was uh, rocky, to say the least. Usually when people bring up education, especially education for people like me, my communication skills go all kind of…camel-like. 

What I think is that the way schools divide children up into “good kids” and “behavioral problems” is majorly problematic and fucked up, and that right there makes the question a bit tough. However, basing it on the system as it currently stands: I think it’s a horrible idea to put autistic children with rowdy, loud children for long periods of time. I was always, always in with the wrong group of kids in one way or another and now I can’t go into a school building without having panic attacks. 

Mind you, there are a lot of reasons kids are loud and troublesome, and just saying they have behavioral problems and handling them all that way is in itself a very bad idea. But autistic people especially have an extra issue when it comes to all our sensory problems. No autistic person should have to be in a loud, chaotic situation they did not choose to put themselves into. Ever. 

Well, I do occasionally get so overwhelmed that I can’t speak. It happened recently, too.

Last week I had to go for blood work. I loathe needles; they terrify me, due to some trauma I don’t even remember. It’s gotten worse as I got older, especially since I moved to Sweden, since for some reason people here have a damn hard time finding my veins. One of the last few times I went, they ended up with three people crowding me trying to find a vein. They had to stick me three or four times in several different spots, and one of them refused to listen when we said they couldn’t take blood from my wrist (I bruise badly) and caught the spot where my RSD is.

This time went very smoothly, but even so, by the time it was done I couldn’t speak for a little while. I knew what I wanted to say, but the words simply wouldn’t come out. All I managed for a while was a few little squeaks.

So these sorts of things can and do happen to us, I think. Anyone else experience these kinds of things? 

(Not a clue. If you’re referring to who I think you’re referring to, though, I think the word ‘asshat’ fits said person nicely.)

I’ll try not to ramble too much. Basically, as of this point, I don’t get a lot of submissions; most of the hedgehogs come from my time spent on tumblr and other places online. 

But you see, this year I’m doing NaNoWriMo. For me, it’s a discipline exercise. I’ve been having all sorts of writing discipline problems and–well, it’s a long story. But I’ve discovered that part of my problem is that I’ve allowed myself to get too into the habit of being distracted by the internet. In order to succeed, I need to keep my browser closed and really focused. Thus, I don’t know how much time I’ll have to spend on hedgehogs.

So I kept those two in reserve. Because I don’t know if I’ll get submissions, and that way I’ll have at least a couple of things to post in November, so AH won’t be completely idle the entire month. 

(I’m a resource hoarder like that. Seriously. I’m the easiest person to beat in games like Monopoly and Carcasonne because I hold onto everything. Because what if I don’t have it later!? XD)

I’m not sure, but it sounds plausible. I don’t tend to have such problems, so I can’t really comment reliably about it.

Anyone else find they have similar issues? 

Also, the lack of empathy that autistics are notorious for is very apparent in you - the OP has a case of cancer in the family, ill parents, suffers from depression, tries to handle college and create some stable future so she could always be helpful to her sister. But YOU twist her words like she is some crybaby making her sister’s autism ‘all about herself’. You make it sound like all of the OP’s REAL LIFE PROBLEMS are irrelevant and she has no right to be sad, worried, or depressed I’m one of the rare (it seems) autistics with a lot of empathy, so I understand that people get sad, depressed, worried when faced with a very difficult life. It shocks me over and over again, the hypocrisy of autistics who demand unconditional acceptance and respect when it comes to their feelings and behavior, but have utter lack of respect for feelings of others, and no compassion for any allistic’s problems, no matter how difficult. Acceptance and respect should be RECIPROCAL Anyway, won’t be visiting your blog anymore. If you want to convince people that autistics can have a happy life, you can start by showing that you yourself are a positive and happy person, well-grounded and with a good character, without crabbing about petty things and belittling anyone’s problems except your own.

——–

I find it funny you criticize my reading comprehension when you a) chose to completely ignore that I was talking about multiple of those types of posts (of which there were several in the autism tag this morning alone) and b) apparently didn’t read the part where the poster in question complained about what they would do if something happened to their parents, as if said sibling would just never be able to do anything for herself. As if she would never be able to cope with the world, as if all was lost.

What makes you think you have a right to come here, insult autistic people by saying they have no empathy, pat yourself on the goddamn back for what a special empathetic autistic person you supposedly are, and then call us hypocrites? You think you’re better than us because you can be nasty to us when we don’t want to be treated like we’re burdens, like life is never going to be good for us? 

Let’s get something straight: I do not have to be a happy cheerful rainbow barfing sideshow puppy. I’m not going to be nice and suppress my every negative feeling to spare the feelings of the poor allistics who will never experience what it’s like to be me. Been there, done that, owned several different T-shirts on the matter. I do not have to be positive about people who whine about how horrible it is for them, that someone they know is autistic. None of us do. 

Please, go, and don’t let the door hit you on the ass on the way out. This is a place for autistics to express their frustration with the way the world treats us; it was made for that and it is in fact stated right on the blog that that is it’s purpose. It is not a place to pander to the feelings of allistic people, not a place that demands we change how we think and hide who we are. You want a place that doesn’t offer you that? Go just about anywhere else in the world, you’ll find it.

I’ve actually seen a lot of your posts to Autistic Kitten and it’s so nice to see a parent doing it right. I just wish there were more parents and family members like you. It makes such a huge difference when people get it. 

I aim to misbehave please. :)

As to the fan mail button…I’m not sure. I think it might be because this is a secondary blog. I can’t find anything in the settings to change it, so that’s my best guess.