Autistic Hedgehog

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?

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?