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five-thousand-loaves-of-bread · 2 months

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poke hornet nest

my stance on ABA

(my stance on ABA)

as someone with (some) lived experience

most of it is shit.

for long time in past and even now, ABA only service available for a lot autistic people & family.

most of it (< ABA*) still is shit. (*this disclaimer applies to rest of repetition)

heard of more than enough cases of. insurance/school system/etc give pathetic number of hours/sessions for speech, OT, etc for autism but many more hours of ABA. or only cover ABA.

most of it still shit.

some speech & OT & other so called “alternatives to ABA” use behavioral & ABA tactics.

most of it still shit.

for many family, especially those with autistic person diagnosed as “severe” or level 3 and or have extreme behavioral issues etc. their option isn’t “ABA or no ABA.” often, option is “ABA or be labeled as abusive neglectful by government” or “ABA or have child taken away” “you ‘willingly’ enroll in ABA or we take and put them in ABA anyway” or “ABA or lose job.”

most of it still shit.

“ABA or lose job” because school not able or not willing help (because autistic person’s needs “that much”), you keep getting called to pick them up from school, from day care. other people not know how “deal with” your autistic family member, you know how help them a little more but also you sure as hell don’t and are just as lost. so you keep miss work to go pick them up from places that kick them out and you exhausted and you not get sleep because autistic family member needs pretty constant supervision and you not have respite and you not know how help and eventually your job fires you because you keep miss work. and oh did ever mention caring for disabled person extremely expensive? but oh btw there ABA agency you can send autistic family member to for up to 40 hour/week so maybe you can keep job and thus keep roof over head and can still put food on table for family for your autistic family member. oh they also say they may able help with autistic family member behavior so maybe they don’t get kicked out of every necessary service.

most of it still shit.

ABA agencies frequently kick out people deemed too severe or “cannot be helped” or too violent or too many behavioral issues or cause too much harm.

most of it still shit.

in world where may & very often do kill you for seeing you as different thus “threat,” ability mask life saving survival tactic. am talking about POC. am specifically especially talking about Black people. is teaching how mask greater evil than dead killed hatecrimed? sure, no one should have to choose between these two options, but world not care about your morals n your “should”s n your envisioned better future you may or may not be actively help build right now, these people need survive in real world here and now.

most of it still shit.

there (some. a few.) ABA survivors who went thru ABA in past and now who think ABA helped. helped them gain skill. help them prevent harm. some of them don’t see self as abused in ABA or traumatized by ABA. some see it as both abused and helped and grateful for help and hate abuse. some see as both abused and helped and don’t see amount of helped as ever worth abuse.

most of it still shit. (so many were & are abused. n abuse is abuse)

many newer ABA agencies realize ABA heavily criticized n labeled abusive & say they change methods & no longer practice old school ABA & now no longer abusive.

most of it still shit. (many of these agencies still do coercive abusive stuff even if call themselves changed)

some of them maybe truly changed. getting rid of abusive practices, focusing on skill building & adaptive functioning, child-led, instead of drills and forced masking.

most of it still shit.

talk a lot with people who so adamant about “all ABA abuse” “all parents who put child into ABA abused deserve get child taken away” who never was in personal proximity of ABA who. when ask to describe what ABA is in own words, not able to. or give generic response like “abuse & force mask”, but when ask to describe specific methods they do that, not able to. when ask them what discrete trial training and prompting is and what goals may look like and how they write behavioral analysis, never heard of any of them. say listen to ABA survivors, but not able name any individual names. just “oh listen to them online, if you actually listen like me you would know & i wouldn’t need say more so it really your ignorance.” but more often, just get reactionary shut down whole conversation be seen as ableist threat if even be asked first question. how you help advocate for ABA survivors if don’t even know what ABA is? or who ABA survivors? if cannot even talk about ABA? how even fight against your enemy if don’t even know what enemy look like, not able pick out enemy from crowd unless spoon fed?

most of it still shit.

found that. when am talking about ABA. from add nuance to encourage thought provoking questions to even rhetorically ask people to describe ABA. have to repeat emphasize that am not saying ABA all not abusive. even if it first thing i lead with. even if it super clear that am indeed criticizing ABA, just with more grey area and nuances than people used to. lot people will block me from this post just within some paragraphs. lot will block me over saying “most of it still shit” instead of denounce all ABA, when it clear that use of word “most” is deliberate choice n reason of said choice is in every corner of this post. others will finish reading (if even that) and all get out of is repeating “most of it still shit.” made similar posts year(s) ago. and still, find people vague post or explicitly post about me or my post, paint me as evil ABA apologist. whenever come across people who talk about “post where talk about ABA good,” stop and wonder, are they talking about me?

don’t want to talk about ABA because of this. tired, not worth it, often is bad starting point is turn off for people who never seen my posts when have other posts much easier entry point, n start off at bad start may cause them to not listen to me and maybe even other higher support needs and or nonverbal nonspeaking autistics in foreseeable future or ever.

you know, this post started off as “… so you all know i don’t think kindly of ABA right”

throughout write this post, don’t know which part am emphasizing more. the “most of it still shit” part or parts in between.

still. most of it still shit.

#loaf screm #aba tw #aba therapy tw #long post #repetition

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a-cure-for-hysteria · 7 months

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Crowley attracts neurodivergents because he smells like us.

(Expanding on my previous rant about how we see ourselves in him). No, not saying he's autistic coded or anything like that, just that - and you probably don't struggle to see where this is going - he kinda portrays several very common autistic experiences. 1: First, he's a naïve 'kid', clearly with a special interest (machines and building things), something he's very skilled at. He assumes he's allowed to ask questions about Creation, not trying to hide his frustration when he doesn't understand why things are the way they are. He does not mask. 2: Then, he's cast out of Heaven with the rest of the angels who asked questions, after them having waged a war on Heaven (?). He fights for good, he wants justice no matter what. 3: After the Fall, his naïvety is gone, replaced by bitterness and cynicism - but even on the walls of Eden, he's still nice to someone who presumably never hurt him. 4: We see him turning into a snake at will in Eden. He slithers around, tempting Eve, pulls strings - still, for justice. He has started masking, and does it well, but believes he does it for good. 5: Throughout history, he mostly spends his time alone or in situations that don't offer connection with others, completing tasks for Hell, gradually losing his sense of self. He still cares, he still want's to be a good person, but he doesn't know what "good" is. Everyone's a hypocrite, and he feels all alone. All he has is his sense of justice, and he comes to believe that he can only trust himself. 6: Aziraphale, arguably also portraying several common autistic experiences, is the only person who understands Crowley. Possibly because he has a different trauma to that of Crowley's, but definitely still a trauma caused by Heaven. Aziraphale knows WHY one masks in Heaven, something Crowley learns too late. 7: Crowley wants to isolate from the world, is angry, traumatized and wants nothing to do with Heaven or Hell. At some point, this requires him opening up just a little to that other weirdo he keeps running into, and they form a partnership - initially only because of common interests. I might be reaching here, but a lot of autistic people have "common interest acquaintances" morph into friendships, they often can't be friends with just anyone. They need a good reason to. And Crowley and Aziraphale's shared desire to do as little as possible (and later, save the world) is such a common interest. 8: Via engaging through their common interest, Crowley opens up more and more. Again, we see the naivety we witnessed earlier (In The Beginning, S2E1) - that happy kid who just enjoyed seeing his machinations take form. For him to dare a romantic relationship with Aziraphale, it is essential for Crowley to (at least begin to) heal the trauma caused by Heaven. Him allowing himself to experience pure, naïve excitement is a prerequisite for love, I think. Without this change, he will be on his toes at all times, never letting his guard down. 9: He finally reaches a point where he forces himself open, out of desperation. It wasn't done right - it was done with fear and anger, but he was vulnerable enough, and finally naïve enough to try. This was immediately punished by Aziraphale, who abandoned him (not necessarily what happened, but definitely what Crowley feels). 10: And so, Crowley might retreat back into his hard, cynical shell, having lost the only person who gets him. Better just self-medicate, with alcohol and whatever else not shown on screen that I can promise you Crowley does. It's the "autistic, care-free kid to bitter, cynical, functional addict/goth-adult"-pipeline.

#good omens season 2 #aziraphale #aziraphale x crowley #crowley #crowley x aziraphale #good omens #ineffable spouses #innefable husbands #neurodivergent #neurodiverse stuff #its the neurodivergency #neurodiversity #audhd #autism #asd

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ae-azile · 10 months

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So, I usually prefer AO3 for reading and writing, but decided to make a Wattpad account to post my stories across multiple platforms. Starting with Giant Dancing Hedgehogs are Nightmare Fuel!

Summary of Giant Dancing Hedgehogs are Nightmare Fuel:

There are several scenarios that Pete suspects to walk in on when he arrives back at the hospital:

Scenario 1: Vegas is still asleep and Macau and Tankhun have somehow managed to remain civil towards each other. This seems like the least likely scenario.

Scenario 2: Vegas is still asleep and Tankhun has tied Macau to a chair for the hell of it. While this would cause a great amount of trouble, it is almost comforting in its normalcy.

Scenario 3: Vegas has woken up and spilled every single secret that he has in his drugged up state, leaving him even more vulnerable than ever.

Scenario 4: Macau has killed Tankhun in a fit of grief stricken rage, which causes Arm, in turn, to kill Macau in a fit of grief stricken rage, since Arm and Tankhun are apparently in love and Pete can’t stop thinking about it.

Scenario 5: Tankhun has verbally attacked drugged up, pod person Vegas, which has caused him to burst into tears and pull out his IV, in hopes that he bleeds out.

It’s none of those things. Those things would be expected. Nothing happening right now is expected.

Some people love detailed spoilers and some people hate them. Stop reading now if you want to go in spoiler free.

SPOILERS BEYOND THIS POINT

Some themes of this story include:

1. Post-Canon: It accepts pretty much everything that happened up until the one month later epilogue in the finale.

2. Trauma: These characters are TRAUMATIZED. They are traumatized by the night of the attack, they are traumatized by their pasts and being abused/manipulated/gaslit, and they are all collectively traumatized by Korn. And Gun. But Korn is the real villain in this series.

3. Recovery: This primarily applies to Vegas, but also to other characters. Vegas is recovering from a coma and significant injuries. One is a hypoxic brain injury, which makes his autism a bit more apparent and something Macau eventually explains to Pete.

4. Autistic Vegas: In this story, Vegas has autism. He is low supports needs, intelligent, and his autism mainly becomes apparent with sensory processing, emotional regulation, and a little with social cues. His symptoms were more apparent when he was a child, but he learned how to mask. He struggles with masking more after coming out of his coma and pushes Pete away due to this, along with his guilt from his actions. Pete eventually talks to him bluntly and Vegas accepting his autism as part of his identity is something he works on through this fic.

5. Amnesia: Pete and Vegas have a history that goes much farther back than some funny run-ins and the safehouse. While Vegas has been pining for Pete for years, Pete forgets their friendship/sort of relationship due to being attacked on the job, resulting in a TBI and amnesia. This gets out when Vegas asks him if Pete remembers Vegas having a crush on him when they were young.

6. Cousin Reconciliation: Tankhun takes this first step in making amends with Vegas with Arm's support. Kim follows. Kinn gets there.

7. Side Couples: ArmKhun are the supporting lead couple. They are probably the healthiest couple in this series and have their own prequel story on AO3 that is longer than this story. Something to note: Tankhun protected Vegas during their kidnapping and was physically and sexually assaulted. His "hatred" for Vegas stemmed from resentment and trauma, which broke Vegas's heart because he genuinely loved and looked up to Tankhun as an older brother figure. Tankhun held onto that resentment for quite some time, but he also held onto a lot of guilt. When he saw Vegas shot over the security cameras, he was devastated. He - along with Arm and later Porsche - were the ones to get Vegas quick treatment and transferred to a good hospital. Arm is also a victim of abuse in this series. This is one of the main reasons why Tankhun chose him - along with Pete and Pol - as guards. They understand, they won't judge him, and he hopes they know he doesn't think less of them either. Arm is very aware of why Tankhun chose them and sees Vegas as a victim too (without knowing the abuse Vegas faced later on). He accepts and encourages the reconciliation because he loves Tankhun and knows it will bring him peace. Tankhun, Arm, and Kim are also discovering the kidnapping may have been ordered by someone close to them as damage control/retaliation.

KimChay are at odds but co-existing while Kim visits Vegas (+pines for Chay) and Chay hangs with his new bestie Macau (while holding a grudge against Kim). Kim is kind of going through it and arguably on the brink of a mental health crisis. He is also yearning for a connection with his brothers and cousins, especially after learning how much Korn put them all through. Chay has a bigger role in the sequel of this story, but he is forming a brotherly bond with Macau, is expressing how wronged he felt by both Porsche and Kim, yet is trying to support people in the ways he knows how. He also struggles with connecting to his mother, who can't communicate and doesn't seem to remember him.

KinnPorsche have a LOT on their plates in this series. Porsche has been thrusted into a role that he never expected or was trained for and is overwhelmed. He harbors hate for his boyfriend's father for keeping his mother away from him and for all of the lies. He is also worried about Kinn, who is feeling excluded from his brothers spending time together without him for unknown reasons. Kinn also carries a lot of confliction and resentment regarding his father's actions. He feels incredibly guilty and is going through mental health issues of his own.

8. Macau is very active in his brother's care and extremely protective of him. In turn, Pete protects Macau and is a good listening ear. Macau accepts Pete as family before Vegas even wakes up.

9. The Mothers: The mothers and how the boys' lost them are covered in this fic. Vegas was greatly impacted by the loss of his mother. She was his best friend and advocate. Losing his other parent and hearing of Porsche's mother bring up feelings of loss, sadness, and grief. He misses her terribly. Tankhun and Kim suspect that Korn had their own mother killed and are not surprised to hear that Vegas feels that Korn had something to do with his mother's death.

10. Crack!fic: These issues are covered seriously and treated with respect. That being said, this fic is a total crack and humor fic when it isn't doing that. Vegas says "I love you, Pete" 62 times within the first week of being awake because he can't stop saying it due to his brain injury and possible echolalia. Kim randomly starts calling Arm and Tankhun Pa and Dad, then never stops. He also tells fortunes by asking his friends and family to choose a Nintendo Switch and analyzes them by which color the choose, and his reads are extremely accurate. Due to obtaining Nintendo Switches, Arm and Tankhun run a farm together on Stardew Valley. Vegas has to be redirected away from Pokemon since he cries every time his Pokemon faint in battle. Kim tries to woo Chay by obtaining blue roses on Animal Crossing, all while Chay won't invite him to his island but will invite Vegas to give him starter crops and supplies. Pete buys Vegas a weighted blanket, something the whole family loves until it becomes sentient and starts hinting to a chosen few of their futures. Or, Pete's case, it gives him trippy dreams that always feature his boyfriend's mother.

This story is available both on AO3 (along with WIP companion stories). It is also now on Wattpad. Hope you enjoy and feel free to ask me any questions about this weird universe or for headcannons about it! Also open to prompts 🙂

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twowink · 1 year

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i found ur blog because ur post about autistic subaru was recommended to me do u have anymore to say on it because that post was like sweet honey to me

oh my god i love subaru . hm i think that post basically sums up my major reasons for finding him one of the most easy to read as autistic characters (HIS LOW EMPATHY SWAG AND HIS MASKING HORRORS… + the him being a weirdo (affectionate) stuff) but i do have a lot of general thoughts on subarus autism hc wise

hes really picky abt foods he will not eat anything if he doesnt like the texture a little and so trickstar has to help him w that sometimes bc he gets pouty about it

he also hates fabric texture. chiaki got him a scarf that he never wore and he was devastated till subaru was like “??? chi chan senpai that was the weirdest wooly thing ive ever worn i dont hate you”

i think he and makoto both like stim toys a lot (makoto is a little fidget cube boy To Me) maos ambivalent on them and if you give hokke one hell never let go

but in terms of fandom treatment i do also have a lot of thoughts … hes generally either found as too peppy or too mean and hated for being annoying / bland / bitchy . and he IS annoying and bitchy but he is an enstars character thats par for the course. but hes not bland remotely he has a lot of depth that people arent willing to read into. hes a traumatized boy who lost his dad and spent the rest of his life trying desperately to meet people who would love him when hes unable to communicate well. trickstar is the friends who saved him truly (because chiaki for all he tried and natsume for all the time they spent together couldnt.) trickstar is the prince that found him and the flashlight that props him up and his best friend who he shares so much with and the girl who marked the change at a hopeless time and they brought little first (then second) year subaru some hope that there was going to be something good for him.

theres a weird double standard with him basically i feel like where people dont seem to understand that hes not always intentionally mean (hes really mostly just playful) and hes not just a genki anime boy . his depth is ignored by people who dont actively try to read about it because it doesnt Fit to them.

#.log #anon #enstars #and that makes me mad because hes easily my second favorite and also a really interesting character to me outside of that #amia.txt

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moomatahiko · 1 year

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Found this incredibly sad list of things I wanted to "improve at", from college

This was from before I considering I might be autistic or ADHD.

It's basically a list of all the things I felt I was failing at, but when I wrote it I'm sure it was an attempt to "set goals" and retain the fantasy that my autistic traits were just a result of chronic depression, anxiety, and lack of hard work on my part.

The list:

I think college was really damaging to me, because of the academic and social expectations. It's an amazing privilege, and I was/am always grateful because in the gaps of sensory/social/adhd hell, I got to do my favorite thing - learn. But at the same time, it was traumatizing in many ways. Being away from family, living in a dorm room with a roommate, moving to a different state, relearning social norms which differed from where I grew up, constructing an entirely new mask, etc.

I'm glad I documented my feelings, though. I'm glad I made art and always carved out little spaces (no matter how small) for me to process what I was feeling. It motivates me to do the same now. And now I can look back and reframe things. I so clearly felt like I wasn't meeting others expectations, and couldn't figure out how to manage to connect with people nor myself. I felt guilty and secretive because I was constantly masking. I was struggling with meeting basic needs like hygiene and emotional safety - I was disabled, and I am still disabled.

#neurodivergent #disabled #late diagnosis #autistic #adhd #late diagnosed autistic #late diagnosed adhd #asd #autism #neurodivergence #disability #moomatahiko #naominoop

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many-but-one · 2 years

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Hey, I saw your post explaining your views on endos and as a proxy-endo plural (formed to cope with trauma/stress at an older age, as far as I can tell) I think your take on it as an exaggeration of IFS is really neat. I didn't choose to experience my altered states in the way I do, but I think I subconsciously formed them to help me cope with stress, especially as an autistic person who cannot deal well with change. My different "modes" help me adapt to different situations and help me feel more capable. Thanks for keeping an open mind. Hope you're doing well.

Hello! I’m really glad our post resonated with you. Early on in our system experience we were starkly anti-endo, even had like Endos DNI on our pinned and everything. (Which was fair, boundaries are important for everyone if they choose to set them. We don’t use DNIs anymore.)

But as we started healing in therapy and started hating our own disorder less and realizing how honestly incredible the brain was I realized that the brain will literally do just about anything to help itself cope with traumatic stimuli. As a child, it broke me into literal pieces. While I do believe endogenic plurality is definitely not quite the same as OSDDID levels of plurality in terms of things like separation of parts or amnesia between parts (if you are having amnesia between parts, that means you likely have dissociative barriers in place which likely means Trauma). I feel like this is especially true because one of the largest arguments I see from endos is that their systems are NOT “systems of parts” and they DON’T consider themselves a fragmented whole (many traumagenic systems think this too, I know that, but this is something I’ve seen from endos the most) which means that in endogenic plurality maybe their parts really are more like separate people, like in an IFS situation. And for endos that didn’t make their systems on purpose (which…I’m still not really sure why some do that, but to each their own.) I feel like the exaggerated IFS with characters or OCs or more “alive” versions of their “inner child” or “inner teen” or “angered self” or “work/school self” etc just kind of Made Sense to me. I feel like this could almost definitely be more capable from someone who already HAS “modes” and “masks” like an autistic person does, which is why you see so many endos who are also autistic.

Ofc I’m NOT saying my little theory is set in stone, that was just my way of wrapping my brain around endogenic systems and why they might exist without childhood trauma. And when I kind of opened my mind to that I was just kinda like “huh. That’s really cool, actually.” Brains, like I said, are very plastic. The trauma that literally damaged my brain as a child? While those wounds will never fully heal, our brain can bounce back with healing, grace, and time. Realizing that WE could come BACK from what was essentially repeated traumatic brain injuries as a kid, it really makes sense that the brain would change in the presence of teen or adult trauma too, and if IFS times 100 is what helps someone survive the literal hellscape that is middle school, high school, abusive parents, abusive siblings, manipulative friends, etc., then of course the brain will fucking jump on that shit quick. The brain is remarkable at surviving, it will do whatever it can to do so, even if it’s maladaptive or detrimental after the pain and trauma end.

AKA us having DID helped us survive as a child but is not helpful as an adult, at least not before we started cooperating. Now I can’t imagine life without them. But if I could choose to not be traumatized or have alters, I personally would choose no alters or trauma. This stuff is hard as hell. But I am no longer resentful towards the disorder or to my brain for making us have this disorder. The brain is capable of so much, so why are endogenic origins so far-fetched, I suppose? Ofc, there are probably plenty of people who claim endo (and traumagenic if I’m being honest) origins who aren’t plural and are using it for roleplay. Which 🤷🏻 is none of my goddamn business and nobody else’s either.

That’s just my take on it! I’ve already started losing followers but I feel like I need to be a more positive and open person rather than so fucking angry about something that’s not going to change anytime soon. Like, anti-endos being so enraged and bullying endos is not going to make them stop anytime soon. Especially if it’s something they legitimately have and can’t stop. Are there some endos that might have repressed trauma? Yeah probably. But that’s not always the case and to try to force someone to accept trauma early on and without proper therapy is just dangerous as hell. Our DID specialist, when some of the ugly details of our trauma started spilling out, actively encouraged us to have a little bit of denial. Deep down, I knew it was real. But letting myself sit on the denial train for a few weeks let me come back and process the very real memories with a clearer head and heart. A lot of endogenic folks who have repressed trauma probably do not have access to trauma specialists and to try and jump start trauma processing by yelling at them to accept they’re traumatized or ELSE is just. Gross, honestly. There are huge vices on both sides of the community, but both sides of the community have also brought great things. Research from scientists who support traumagenic theories has allowed us to understand our disorder more, and endo positive companies like Simplyplural and Pluralkit have changed the game for systems, both on the pro and anti side. To actively say neither side has ever done good and neither side has ever done bad is just false. We all have done really bad shit to each other and I wish we could just not be so damn angry all the time.

Alright, rant on your ask is over lol. Thanks for sending this in. I was honestly worried I was going to offend endos by posting that little theory and I didn’t want to make them think I was boiling down their experiences to just IFS because I am not endo and I don’t have that lived experience so I can’t talk over you. Just like endos can’t talk over OSDDID systems about OSDDID. *wink wink nudge nudge* lol.

-Jules

#anon ask #anon answered #asks #jules #pro endo #endogenic safe #syscourse #syscourse unaligned

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a-m-e-t-h-y-s-t-r-o-s-e · 10 months

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I'm autistic and have been my whole life, diagnosed in grade school, bullied most of my school career, discriminated against at work for it, etc etc, just as a disclaimer for this unpopular opinion.

Why does everyone act like masking is this big horrible thing that basically destroys your life? I've read like 3 articles and it literally just sounds like learning how to function. I had to learn how to make eye contact, I had to learn the right speaking volume (and speed, and time,) and I had to work at not having meltdowns multiple times a week. I'm not like, traumatized from any of that?? It's not like they were "erasing my identity" or wtf ever.

Yeah, I learned to stop spamming everyone irl with inane Michael Jackson trivia when I was 12, that didn't make me stop liking Michael Jackson and didn't stop me from sharing that info with people who actually gave a shit. Who tf is out here like "Well, teacher told me to stop lecturing everyone about FNAF unprompted, time to go kill myself"

Like I get everybody has different experiences but for the love of God all this "ohhh masking is so bad it stresses me out and makes me tired UnU" shit from Gen Z kids just looks like trendy whining. We literally all have to learn how to act around other people, what the hell kind of world is the alternative where nobody is ever taught how to behave???

#ignore me #sj shit

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my-gf-is-kazuichi-soda · 1 year

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Sonia freetime commentary part 2

Under a readmore because it's lengthy. Obviously Danganronpa spoilers, but if you're on this blog you probably should expect untagged spoilers.

Monokuma voice: "No :("

this is so much...this whole situation is traumatic for all of them, but she is hiding so. much. pain.

OOF oh no!

Ohhhhh no wonder her reaction in the end of the game, when she found out she was on tv and her people all saw her being afraid and emotional and acting, y'know, like a kid. And possibly...doing things with Gundham, though now I feel bad for making that assumption because I would need to look at that line again to see if that's really what was implied or if I just made assumptions after my playthrough.

Anyway, yeah. She was hiding pain and fear. This probably makes it harder for her to relate to characters who simply can't hide their emotions (Kazuichi). She might even have resentment stemming from a subconscious jealousy that other characters can act without being held to a high standard.

And now I'm noticing a parallel between her and Kazuichi with Raven and Starfire from Teen Titans, so that will likely become fan art soon.

Not that Kazuichi was taught to show her emotions, other than boy-boasting. Kazuichi should have gotten more guidance. Sonia was raised on high expectations.

And I'm still wondering if Sonia is autistic or not. I like to think she is, but then again I like to think a lot of characters are. I can definitely relate to any character with the stranger-in-a-strange-land/fish-out-of-water vibe. And she self-described as "cold" when she is trying to act the right way and be considerate, which is such an autistic mood. Neurotypicals are never pleased, are they? You get emotional, you're too emotional, but if you lack an emotional response or learn to mask, you're too cold. There's no winning.

Ah, I read this line on TV Tropes and saw it in fan art so I knew it was coming. Sad. What can be said about it? Way more than I have the energy for at the moment. But yeah, that shit hurted.

Good Hajime. (Now please stop saying "I don't deserve it, but I grew closer to Sonia today.")

Yes. Unquestionably Yes.

I know you want everyone to be friends, Sonia, but Nagito is Not a Friend. I get very confused when I see fan art that treats Nagito like One of The Pals (not angry or upset, just...confused). The guy bothers me on a visceral level. Kazuichi, even at her worst, is a good person who is trying to help people. Most of the kids in this game are, except Nagito. Nagito said that the Ultimates and their struggles are his entertainment and he'd put them through Hell if it gave them a chance to let their hope shine, at least if I'm understanding that correctly. I admit, I don't see any good in his philosophies. He talks like a school sh**ter trying to sound deep and complicated like "you can't understand my logic" but he just looks like a stupid, smug asshole. I know he has some mental illness, but I just can't afford much sympathy for him. I enjoy his character like an iredeemable bad guy, I don't think he could be better. That's my opinion on him.

I get that Sonia would be different though. She's researched serial killers, she wants to be sympathetic to different perspectives even if they are strange or scary. But like, there's a limit. Still, I'm not judging her harshly, I'm just saying I support anyone tying up that guy and stopping him, and I felt like that before he blew up Kazuichi and caused the mayhem that was second-to-last trial.

Anyway, Kazuichi had her heart in the right place and my only problem with her plan was when she put Chiaki in the middle as "the bait" and yelled at her when Chiaki didn't want to do that. That was bad. All the kids were on edge and suffering a lot in this part of the game.

WOT 😳

Heh, more likely than that, she's going to make Hajime be in a creepy cult ritual

relaxed? ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°

Okay, so mood change: she talks about how she's adjusting to taking care of herself and didn't even know you were supposed to turn off the shower water and flooded the bathroom. Oof. I laughed.

And then she talks about how she had a nightmare and...

At the end of the day, she is not just a princess. She is a scared child and she wants to go home.

Hajime says what I was thinking: "She's been holding it in for so damn long."

The ahoge*= antenna xD

(*side note: thank goodness I looked up this word! I almost wrote this as "ahego" and...that is NOT the word I was trying to use! I had the letters correct but in the wrong order)

Hey wait, can her description fit Akane as well?

Never mind xD

Agh, you can't say "Never mind" with this character, it becomes an unintentional joke

Anyway, she's basically saying "thanks for comforting me! Btw, you're so boring-looking that you can be the chosen one." Wow lol

Wowwwww

Oh my.

The visual that gave me...

Anyone remember Rad Repeatin' Tarzan?

The doll that was infamous for its hand-movement where it just... bobbed its hand up and down near his crotch while doing a Tarzan yell....you don't have to imagine what it looked like, an old youtube video shows you.

So yeah, because she mentioned the Makango, I pictured them surviving in the wildnerness and then pictured Hajime whipping out...okay I'm tired I'm overexplaining...let's move on ...

whoa there pard'ner slow yer horses

(I realized it was faster to use the wikia page for free time events since I'm on the last one anyway lol)

okay I was joking about slow yer horses bc I thought this was leading to another joke but she's actually serious??

I think... I think that's a bad idea. I assumed Gundham was her boyfriend, and he died not too long ago. Sonia, sweetie, marriage proposal to a guy you weren't even dating and you're still in the danger zone?? Not a good time for this.

Besides, Hajime is kinda boring! Well, I guess she wants an escape to be "normal" and Hajime does provide that... still, this is a bit much!

Callback to "we should do our best" from the end of the first trial!

Also, that was a great plot twist. Sonia was just trolling. Or like, half-hearted trolling. If someone actually accomplished all of that just to be her husband, then she'd have to consider. Good job Sonia, keep your standards high!

Why does he need to know diagnostic medicine?

Okay so that was basically the end.

I feel like I got to learn a lot about Sonia, and I'm more confident with the version of her that I've been writing.

I once saw someone make a post about how Sonia is the worst written character and you learn basically nothing through her free time events, and I'm really glad to say that that was a load of crap! Sonia has a lot of character to her, and yes I'd like to know more, but that's always the case with all the Danganronpa characters that I like. That's just where you have to fill in the blanks, because you know the Danganronpa writers certainly wont do it lol.

Anyway, I gotta sleep.

Goodnight!

#sonia nevermind #liveblog

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studiono13 · 1 year

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Can You See Me?

I’ve just finished this book - ‘Can you See Me?’ Co- authored by Libby Scott, 11 years old at the time, and Victoria Westcott. It’s been an emotional morning.

It should just be called My School Days - how amazing, and slightly traumatic, to see my experience of school so clearly articulated in black and white. I was constantly told ‘these are the best days of your life’ - they really were not.

Although obviously I never knew I was autistic then, and I mean I definitely couldn’t have been could I? Because I was a girl and it was the 80s… But oh my god, having just read my school reports from that time - it is quite clear that I was struggling - I can’t believe no one at school tried to help me… (actually there was a piano teacher who spent no time teaching me piano but a lot of time listening to me telling her how scared and paralysed I was by EVERYTHING). Even if Autism, particularly in girls, wasn’t really a thing it is baffling that no-one acknowledged that something was going on. Most of the focus in my reports is on how little effort I was making in trying to make friends. Although there was a big list of reasons I was never going to fit in and a lot going on in my life - I didn’t know then that I would always be a bit of an outsider. Thankfully schools now seem more open to the idea of giving pupils time, space and understanding. They actually listen to them - groundbreaking eh!?!

Back to this book - it clearly explains masking, pathological demand avoidance, meltdown, overwhelm - all in the format of a girl in year 7 trying to navigate that difficult step up to a secondary school where nobody understands her.

And I love the title - Can You See Me? I have always felt a little bit invisible, a little bit irrelevant, always made to feel my opinions, thoughts and worries not as worthy as those of others, or just plain wrong. To compensate I had always made myself that little bit smaller, that little bit more accommodating in order to fit in, in order to get people to like me. And then periodically I’ve exploded or completely retreated into myself when that became too unbearable, too unnatural. Bloody hell it was exhausting.

I highly recommend this book for the young people in your life - whether they’re autistic or not, to either see themselves or to gain understanding of others.

Also brilliant for middle-aged, late-diagnosed autistic people because these books were entirely missing from our lives when we were young.

#actuallyautistic #autismawareness #timeandspace #takiwātanga #canyouseeme

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anexperimentallife · 2 years

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Man, as an undiagnosed Autistic/ADHD kid growing up pre-internet around a lot of ultra-far-right, ultra-religious folks, I KNEW I was different, and assumed that meant I was wrong, and that I’d better adopt the positions and behaviors of those around me if I wanted to be “normal” and accepted.

From the time I was able to speak, any time I expressed my true thoughts and feelings, I was either laughed at, angrily told I was wrong, ridiculed, or bullied. And if everyone around me agreed on things that I didn’t believe, I MUST have been the one who was wrong, right? So I developed some truly horrible takes and behaviors by mimicking the people everyone else seemed to look up to, in an effort to appear "normal."

Of course, I also had it drilled into me from an early age that unless I forced myself to believe in things I didn’t, that I would spend eternity being tortured in the Hell I no longer believe in. Not sexist or homophobic enough? You’re going to burn in Hell. Did you even THINK about sex or IMAGINE a naked girl outside of wedlock? Going to Hell if you get hit by a bus before begging forgiveness. Think evolution makes sense? Hell. Don’t believe strongly enough in every word of the Bible, or don’t take the parts literally that the Powers That Be have decided are to be taken literally? Hell. Take the parts literally that the Powers That Be have decided are to be ignored? Hell. If you have a girlfriend or get married, and, as a man, don’t take charge of and dominate your relationship or household enough? Free ticket to Hell (and also you’re not a “real man”).

Sure, it sounds ridiculous, but when it’s drilled into you from an early age, it’s hard to break away from. I don’t know if all of it was what they were TRYING to teach, but it’s what I learned from them.

Then add in all the toxic masculinity of the far right, and you’ve got a truly horrible package of crap. Like, imagine every horrible ultra-far-right and downright out-of-touch-with-reality evangelical, and toxic-masculinity tweet you’ve ever seen, and that was what was shoved down my throat my entire childhood and young adulthood as The Only True And Correct Way Of Thinking And Behaving.

And again, no Internet, no real exposure to other types of thought for the most part, and when I DID meet someone who thought differently, they were a Bad Influence, who wanted to Tempt Me Away From Righteousness.

And again, deviating from any of that--even THINKING in contradiction to any of it--was punishable by an eternity of torture in Hell. God was always watching, always judging, and anything less that perfect holiness in thought, belief, and action meant I would spend eternity in Hell.

But I couldn’t STOP thinking it all seemed wrong--especially when I started finding and reading books with alternate views--so I lived in a state of constant terror, because no matter how much I pretended and tried to force myself to believe, I doubted everything I had been taught.

And again, was I supposed to take it all literally? I don’t know. But my autistic brain took it at face value. Hell awaited if I wasn’t a perfect enough Christian.

I remember how any time I came home from school to an empty house, I was terrified that the Rapture had happened, and that I wasn’t pure enough to be taken up with everyone else.

If you didn’t grow up like that, I don’t know if you can understand just how traumatizing it can be, especially for a neurodivergent kid who already knows they’re Not Like Everyone Else, and who is desperate to be what literally everyone in their in-group tells you is The Right Kind Of Person.

Eventually I rejected all that, but after literally decades of masking, outwardly adopting a lot of attitudes I didn’t agree with, trying to force myself to believe things I didn’t, and mimicking what I now understand were shitty behaviors (because of being constantly told, “that’s how a man is supposed to act”), although I knew who I didn’t want to be, I didn’t actually know who I was, who I wanted to be, or how to become that person.

And even after I rejected most of that, a lot of the toxic masculinity remained. I quit college and joined the Army at eighteen for several reasons, but one of those reasons was to prove myself “manly.” I cannot even begin to describe the degree of toxic masculinity and far right nationalism in the Army at the time (Maybe it has changed in the past forty years), but spending my late teens and early twenties there just reinforced a lot of what I’d been taught growing up.

It was only later, after I completely rejected religion and much of the other stuff I’d been taught growing up that a light appeared at the end of the tunnel. But it’s a long-ass tunnel, and I’m still going through it.

I was fortunate enough to make some friends who challenged me on a lot of that stuff, who in some cases recommended learning resources, and who were patient with me while I worked through figuring out what I really felt and believed. And it made a huge difference.

Tumblr has also been a great resource for me to correct some of my decades of conditioning--I say conditioning, but maybe brainwashing is a better word. There are a lot of shitty takes on here, sure, but also a lot that have caused me to reevaluate myself as a person and make conscious changes to myself and my belief system over the past few years. Mostly from younger people, because let’s face it; most of my generation has stuck with the sexist, nationalistic, transphobic, racist, pro-capitalist ways of thinking they learned in their youth.

I’ve come a long way from the person that I was--I’m embarrassed to even mention some of the behaviors I used to think were okay because people around me made it seem like those behaviors were expected and admired--but I’m sure I still have some bad takes I don’t even recognize as bad yet, and that I’m going to work on.

The worst part is knowing how many other people I hurt with my toxicity.

I feel like I’m in a constant state of deprogramming myself. It’s exhausting.

#rob gets personal #religious trauma #actually autistic #autistic #neurodivergent #autism

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theoliviaset · 2 years

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The Olivia Set

I guess we should do an introductory post and all that.

About the Set

We are an adaptive plural system of about 8 members (it depends on how one draws the lines between us, and which of us really count as members). We're autistic, dealing with CPTSD, and none of us are binary.

We are very pro plural and inclusive (to spell it out, that means we are inclusive of all plural system origins). Two of our frontrunners have plurality as a special interest, so expect syscourse here.

Do Not Interact (DNI)

If you would need to violate your own DNI to interact with us. Seriously, don't abuse your DNI to shield yourself and then go out and interact with others that you specifically request to avoid. It a) has a negative impact on the use of a DNI similar to how "triggered" got watered the hell down; and b) it's really unhealthy to go out of your way to interact with those that cause you distress.

We will probably yell at you and block you if you violate your own DNI to talk to us.

Boundaries

In addition to anyone and anything that just happens to be bad for our current mental health, we will block for the following things (also probably chew you out):

Misgendering (mistakes happen we know)

Insulting people's intelligence or general mental capabilities (which is ableist as fuck)

Calling us parts or alters (the term we use is headmates)

Assigning any of us alter roles (our only job is the one we get a paycheck from)

Fakeclaiming

Otherwise, we block on a case by case basis. Seriously it's so easy to hit that block button.

The Members

We don't quite know how many of us there are, but mostly because we aren't sure how to do the counting.

Faye (she/they/fae) - Faye was our primary frontrunner/host for around 5-8 years prior to discovering plurality. At least that's what it feels like. Her personality really seemed to pop up when we got out of college and into the work place, but her theological beliefs seem to stem from far earlier. Who knows?

Moxie (she/her any/all) - Moxie is the member who discovered our system. One morning she said from the back "Hey, what if we're a system?" And since Faye couldn't let go of the thought, she asked Moxie to introduce herself. Because of her love of philosophy (specifically metaphysics) we're pretty sure she was the us that went to college. She's also a frontrunner.

Foxy (she/her) - Foxy is an amalgam. One part fictional entity, one part soul cast from a world we found through our imagination, one part suggestion, one part tulpa, one part autistic mask. Her spiritual beliefs regarding her existence have conflicted with us a lot (traumatized girls scared of being ostracized, surprise surprise they have trouble letting me talk or even think about it). We're trying to get better about violating her autonomy and letting her express herself as she pleases. She's become one of our frontrunners since arriving and is fiercely committed to the well being of this set. Expect a lot of cussing out of her.

Jack (any/all) - Jack just showed up after Moxie discovered our plurality. He's relatively chill and has been helping out more lately. None of us are terribly sure if he's been around a while, or if he formed recently, but we're happy he's here.

Nyroka (she/her) - Foxy's wife from their life before. Her view is that her and Foxy are paratives. Glad she's here regardless of how (we were kinda getting worried about Foxy's homesickness). She doesn't front much.

Octavia (she/her?) - Octavia doesn't come forward much, let alone front, but when she does its... weird. She's a self-proclaimed placebomancer using her will working to trick our minds into accomplishing our goals. Honestly, in spite of all of the dressings of magic and the occult she likes to use, she's managed to do things others can't, so hey, placebomance away!

Harper (he/they) - Dont know if we should count Harper. They consider himself to be a part of Faye. He hasn't been around lately, as he would rather "just be an impulse". Hope they're doing alright in whichever brainfold he's hiding in.

Eeveelyn (she/her) - She's our little one. Don't expect to hear much about her, and expect nothing from her.

The Others - There are more people one could call headmates. Maybe they're imaginary friends, maybe they're fragments, maybe they're characters that took on a life of their own. It's probably a mix of all of that and other stuff, but they aren't around enough to introduce.

Our System Name

We went by Olivia collectively for years before discovering we were gender fluid, and then realizing those weren't just genders. So we feel a nice connection to that name. Any of us will answer to Liv as well still.

The "Set" part comes from a few places. First, it's the same kinda convention as the Julia Set or the Mandelbrot Set. And we view ourselves as somewhat fractal. We as a collective pretend to be one person, and as individuals are many faceted.

We also like the idea of viewing ourselves as a set (as in Set Theory). We are a set of sets. Some of our elements can be shared or passed between the subsets.

There's also some philosophical aspects to this. One argument for the existence of sets as real things comes from their usefulness. David Lewis (in his book On a Plurality of Worlds funnily enough) says of possibles:

By what right do we call possible worlds and their inhabitants disreputable entities, unfit for philosophical services unless they can beg redemption from philosophy of language? I know of no accusation against possibles that cannot be made with equal justice against sets. Yet few philosophical consciences scruple at set theory. Sets and possibles alike make for a crowded ontology. Sets and possibles alike raise questions we have no way to answer. [...] I propose to be equally undisturbed by these equally mysterious mysteries.

We really like how this thought applies so well to our view of plurality. The experience of multiplicity is an internal one. It can be proven no more than any experience of singlehood. It has hard problems to deal with as does singlehood. It is extremely useful as a framework for us (and others) to view ourselves. And by that usefulness, we are justified in asserting the ontological status of our individual personhood of 'real'.

If you're willing to presume that bodies you meet in the world are in fact thinking beings, then it's no more implausible to believe that we are many thinking beings sharing a body.

-{O}

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thinkatoryprocess · 2 years

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Well, fuck, it's autism acceptance month. Sure. This is long, but I have absolutely no idea where to put a read more. I'm gonna post it and see if it looks like absolute ass on my dash and maybe edit one on. Don't kill me for this.

I'm old enough that I share basically no overlap in experience with people being diagnosed or self-diagnosing now. I was diagnosed autistic in 1988 purely because my expected developmental milestones not only stopped dead but started to go backwards. They immediately tried to put me into an asylum (yes, an asylum), but my mom was not having it. I was poor, but my mom got me to a specialist using some social services, and they pulled some medical fuckery that I still don't understand to this day (something with my diet? I don't understand, but I don't have the medical records) that got me able to communicate verbally and engage with things like self-care again.

I underwent ABA "therapy" for two years, neither of which I remember. I am distinctly certain this traumatized me and likely pinned me with the anxiety disorder I still have. Hey, here's a headline for autism acceptance month! DON'T PUT YOUR CHILDREN IN ABA. I have a horrible feedback loop in my brain where stimming is the best way to make my overstimulation go down, but stimming causes me anxiety due to whatever the hell they did in there, which makes me overstimulated again. I feel like I'm spinning plates trying to keep myself from overheating whenever I try. It's been a slow process getting comfortable with stimming even slightly again in the last few years.

I was very briefly in what we would now call special education but was called, I fuck you not, the "ED" or "emotionally disturbed" class - god, the 90s sucked - but the minute that they realized I was intellectually capable of keeping up with children my age they yanked my autism diagnosis permanently, mainstreamed me, and left me for dead. I didn't get an ounce of special education or a single accommodation after the age of four. I had to be rediagnosed at the age of 17 in my senior year by a guidance counselor (who happened to be a doctoral candidate) in order to get any accommodations or medical acknowledgment of being neurodiverse.

So, really, I'm a relic of an old system. I was developmentally behind my classmates and peers in every way except intellectually, and under the pressure of constant bullying and othering I slowly started to build a mask. Masking socially might seem to be a privilege for some, but mine is a trauma response and not a coping skill. I instinctively keep my mask up at all times, always have, because all signs of my autism were inherent flaws I needed to hide (because I wasn't autistic, right? what else could it be?), and it's still exhausting. In recent years I've tried to drop it with people I trust and try not to mask constantly with people I've just met so that they can accept the real me rather than be surprised when symptoms come out. It's been a process.

I think when it comes to autism acceptance maybe that's the thing I'd say? Even if you know someone's neurodiverse, you may not know how deep that goes, what they look like when the symptoms come out, and the most important thing you can do as an allistic is to accept that, yup, symptomatic behavior is a part of them, too. They may also be like me and have negative treatment histories that impact the way their autism manifests. You can't just claim allyship with the masking and apparently neurotypical moments you see of an autistic you know while ignoring, dismissing, or whitewashing the symptoms they experience. I've more than come to terms with my neurodiversity (I have a few comorbidities, too, but who the hell doesn't, am I right?) but it comes with complicated and overwhelming shit that is just as validly part of us as the easy to handle, fun shit.

I don't know, this all feels like rambling, but I gave it a try. I might try to talk about a specific topic at some other point this month.

Oh, while I'm here! These won't work for everyone - I'm sure some people will hate the sensation of them being in their ears - but I am absolutely in love with my Calmer Audio earplugs: https://www.flareaudio.com/products/calmer I carry these wherever I go. They work best for me when I'm in a situation where there are dozens of different sounds happening at once and I just need to quiet my ears down to a manageable 1-3, especially if I'm in a social situation and I need to be able to focus on the person's voice. They're relatively cheap, considering, and I've got a cute little carrier tube that just hangs out on my purse. If you can tolerate earbuds, they're easier. Recommend.

#personal #autism acceptance month #autism #neurodiversity

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ashintheairlikesnow · 4 years

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Yeah no pretty much every autistic kid has a jo. My mother was a jo. My father was a jo. It was easier cuz my sister and I are both autistic, so I got to protect her, but it also made me really good at masking and have a lot of internalized ableism. I’m always kind of jealous of Chris, because he was able to go back to being happily autistic once he got to the safe house, because he knew how to before, with Ronnie. So many autistic people don’t get that :(

CW: This got long. Discussion of ableism and trauma for a neurodivergent person in here, also discussed parental death

Honestly, with the trauma and torture that Chris goes through, I really wanted Tristan to have come from a family that gave him a solid foundation of acceptance. Ronnie pretty much writes herself, I wont lie - I have made very few choices for her ahead of time.

The story in the first piece I did from her POV - about toddler Tristan ‘playing’ with pieces of dust floating in the air and Ronnie realizing that the usual methods of discipline simply wouldn’t apply to him - is sort of a true story about my partner and his mother (my partner has ADHD, for the record, and is not autistic). I wanted to take the bones of that story and show a parent who realizes “everything the books say about children did not prepare me for this” and show that parent make a decision then and there to figure this out, come hell or high water, without hurting their child in the process.

Chris’s eventual fear of medication comes entirely from WRU/Oliver, and not a holdover from childhood - Ronnie was very very careful about his medication and therapies working together, rather than relying on one over the other - but Chris’s fear also pulls from my partner, who was overmedicated as a child and as a result struggled to feel able to start taking meds as an adult (once he did, working with a doctor who acknowledged his fears and was willing to start from the lowest possible effective dose and work up from there to perfect it, SO MUCH changed about how he was able to filter out the ‘noise’ of the world around him).

I knew that CHris would have been subjected to a unique form of hell for him - what WRU does is hell anyway, but for someone like Tristan, who depends heavily on constant stimulation, routine/schedule, etc, it seems almost specifically designed to destroy him.

The more I wrote Chris, the more I knew I wanted his background to be one of support and care - one of the sort of side facts on Ronnie is that she goes back to work when Tristan is school-aged essentially just to help pay for his gymnastics and get health insurance to cover his therapy appointments, because who Tristan is with a caring, involved therapist who understands that autism is a function of how his brain is built and not a bug that needs removed, and with an outlet to help him get his energy out while also emphasizing structure and schedule without rote memorization or flat routine, is a totally different boy than he would have been otherwise.

Chris functions as well as he does largely because the people around him don’t push at him in ways that set off trauma responses or negative stimuli response. But, like with the little piece where Ronnie has to carry her weeping, screaming child out of Target, she was really worried for a while that he would retreat into himself and not come back out.

In my research I did before I felt comfortable naming Chris’s neurological makeup for what it was, one thing I came across over and over and over again were autistic adults talking about how they functioned vs. reading up on these historical situations and the burgeoning Autism Speaks group when it first started and how starkly different the goals of the two groups were.

So I wanted to write Ronnie as someone who would both reflect and NOT reflect the voices of those parents - and I wanted to write Jo as someone who would reflect all the worst possible ways to react not only to a teenager who lost his parents, but also a neurodivergent child dealing with an immense amount of stress. She removes his routine, the way he expects things. The loss of his parents removes his ‘safe’ environment and thrusts him instead into a small windowless room where nothing is HIS except for one rubbermaid plastic bin and his bed. Nothing is right, nothing is the same, she doesn’t enroll him into a new school, she cuts off his access to physical outlets, she takes him off his medications and stops him going to therapy.

If Tristan seems more out of control in those drabbles with Jo, it’s because he is already undergoing trauma, with no way out. So his ‘signs’ of being autistic may seem far more obvious, because he is in distress. His head-banging and hitting himself are symptoms of his stress and trauma, even if Jo only sees them as annoying things he does.

Jo ALMOST touches the point when she thinks about how Ronnie never talked about him hitting himself or hitting his head on things. It’s not because Tristan never did that, but because Ronnie had largely figured out how to set up his life in a way that minimized or mitigated the stressors that made him resort to those attempts to self-soothe. When Jo thinks about how Ronnie talked about his gymnastics medals, she is SO CLOSE to the simple point of how to pull Tristan out of himself.

But ignores it.

Nat also has a lot of base understanding of human development and brain development after twenty years helping incredibly traumatized rescues try to rebuild their lives, which is part of why she knows what Chris is doing when he first shows up. She’s not perfect, but she is able to encourage Jake to allow Chris to self-soothe in non-harmful ways, redirecting him from self-injury to something that is soothing to his mind without causing any harm to his body.

Ben, once Chris is in college, has an autistic little brother and recognizes almost immediately what Chris’s meltdown is, and so he just throws everything that works at his brother at Chris, calming him down from hitting his head on the wall and getting him together enough to come back.

Laken, once they know Chris fairly well, is good at recognizing when his words are just... gone, for a while, and they talk to him knowing he is listening but without expecting him to answer.

Jake just lets Chris lead the way. He has no idea what he’s doing, on any level, when Chris shows up terrified of everyone, but he just lets CHris show him who he is and tries to go with that. Jake and Nat are aware of Chris’s autism, or suspect it, long before it’s confirmed and he starts receiving treatment again.

You’ll see a little of that in an upcoming Whumptober drabble when Chris gets sick.

#chris asks #tristan higgs #jesus this got long #this is basically DVD commentary #damn

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