IzabelaKaramia

autism101 , 14 hours ago to actuallyautistic

Do you form deep connections with animals or do you find them unpredictable and anxiety producing?

image: @autism_sketches
ko-fi.com/autismsketches

#AskingAutistics #ActuallyAutistic #AuDHD @actuallyautistic

IzabelaKaramia , 3 hours ago

@autism101 @actuallyautistic

I love cats! People who follow me and those who follow the CatsOfMastodon hashtag know how much I love Ginza, the feral cat I began to form a friendship with last year. She's such a sweetheart and sleeps beside me every night now.

dyani , 2 months ago to actuallyautistic

Any other autistic kin struggle with speech and articulation when they were little?

I'm recording an instructional voice-over today and my mom just told me I used to have a lisp when I was little. That's news to me!

I definitely notice sludgy articulation around L and S sound as an adult. Outside of voice over recording, I could not care less about my articulation. But it is interesting!

@actuallyautistic

IzabelaKaramia , 2 months ago

@dyani @actuallyautistic

I was a hyperlexic kid who learned to read on my own before kindergarten. In 1st grade, I was sent to work with the school's speech therapist who taught me to speak clearly. Some of my speech difficulty then probably stemmed from how I have a tight frenulum and that restricts the movement of my tongue.

LehtoriTuomo , 2 months ago to actuallyautistic

In the series "so that's an autism thing too": difficulties in cooking. I have hard time coming up with the shopping list outside of the routine things which I always check against a list on my phone. It's especially difficult to plan what particular dishes should be cooked in the following days.

Once I got hang of cooking -- which happened after I had turned 30, almost 35 -- I learned to like cooking when there's no rush and the recipe is clear. I even can improvise, albeit on quite restricted range. However, when my spouse isn't around, I default to microwaving things or eating frozen pizzas.

#ActuallyAutistic @actuallyautistic

IzabelaKaramia , 2 months ago

@LehtoriTuomo @actuallyautistic

The cooking method I've come up with over the years so as to provide reasonably good nutrition and save money is to learn to cook meals that can be done in batches. Sometimes one batch is a meal in itself, sometimes there might be two or three different batches that get heated up in a microwave to provide a meal.

Sometimes I enjoy cooking and trying out ideas to combine flavors. Sometimes when low spoons it's more that I just want do things I feel I know

autism101 , 4 months ago to actuallyautistic

Were you always more sensitive to sounds than others growing up?

#AskingAutistics #ActuallyAutistic @actuallyautistic

IzabelaKaramia , 4 months ago

@autism101 @actuallyautistic

Yes I'm very sensitive to noises and sounds.

18+ flowerpot , 6 months ago to actuallyautistic

If you are both Autistic and ADHD, do you take meds for ADHD and do you find them helpful?
@actuallyautistic #adhd #actuallyautistic

18+ IzabelaKaramia , 6 months ago

@holly @flowerpot @actuallyautistic

Yup, clonidine and guanfacine are both alpha agonists that sometimes can have good effect for ADHD and autism, especially for those with rejection sensitivity which is the reason why I began guanfacine about a year ago.

It's helped me with anxiety as well.

dave , 9 months ago to actuallyautistic

@actuallyautistic

Late-dxed/IDed #ActuallyAutistic friends:

Once you realized you were autistic, did you encounter overwhelming and overloading situations that you remembered "dealing" with much better before you learned you were autistic? Like learning you were autistic somehow changed how you processed these kinds of situations?

I'd love to (and frankly, need to) hear your stories. Please share if you're comfortable 💚🙏

IzabelaKaramia , 9 months ago (edited 8 months ago)

@dave Did I really deal with them better in the past? Or was I just trying to swallow down my discomfort and not actually dealing with it? It's complicated because of all the factors that are involved with coping. My physical health is not as good as it once was, but that may have deteriorated in part from the stress of overwhelming situations. And certainly these days I know I have to be careful with the spoons I have available.

@actuallyautistic

IzabelaKaramia , 11 months ago

@axnxcamr Yeah, that's how I feel. When I say I wish I had known earlier, it's in the sense that the more current understanding of autism is in effect. I'm certainly aware that autism understanding and therapies prior to 2000 were a horror show. I know now how masking with undiagnosed autism harmed me. The harm could have been worse with professionals instructing me to mask and deny my autistic self.

@pathfinder @Moondancer @actuallyautistic

IzabelaKaramia , 11 months ago

@axnxcamr It was in the early 00s that I began to wonder seriously if I were autistic and in early 2010 I made an appointment with a therapist for a first appt. Let's just say that appt was a terrible encounter and I was put off enough that I never went back because knowing what I know now, if he had diagnosed autism, I'm sure the therapy would have been some sort of ABA style of "You have to mask harder!"

@pathfinder @Moondancer @actuallyautistic

IzabelaKaramia , 11 months ago

@axnxcamr At least nowadays the medical opinion is moving towards a better understanding of autism and we now have autistic people who are involved in research to better understand the autistic neurotype.

Of course public understanding still lags far behind and at large I feel the public opinion is still more like "Autistics are broken and they have a knack for making us uncomfortable."

The public is not yet ready to deal with its pathologies.

@pathfinder @Moondancer @actuallyautistic