This is a fantastic article by Keiran Rose and Jade Farrington describing the costs to both masking and unmasking. It more closely describes my experience than anything else I’ve ever read about autistic masking. I’ve copied a few paragraphs below in italics, but I recommend the whole article if you have time, it’s quite long. Delving into the Complexities of Autistic Masking & Unmasking Safely They describe how autistic masking is much more than intentionally acting a certai

This article from The Guardian is about the UK but I'm sure this happens in Canada as well, maybe not as much because I think its more difficult to get diagnosed as an adult in Canada. "In recent years, the number of people diagnosed with autism has rocketed; a study of diagnosis trends, published in August, found the median age for diagnosis is 10 for males and 13 for females, and there was a 787% exponential increase in its recorded incidence, in the 20 years to 2018. " At

Autistic spiky profiles and positivity ! is about something called "spiky profiles" which is a term I was not familiar with but according to the writer its a common term in the 'autistic community' :) Although I wasn't familiar with the term, it is certainly a concept I'm familiar with"we are good at some things, bad at other things, and the difference between the two tends to be much greater than it is for most other people"from N euroclastic . Most other people referred

This article was recently shared on twitter. Are Co-occurring Conditions Part of Autism ? This was written by Max Sparrow It's a couple years old but I thought it was interesting especially when you consider the way autism is defined compared to what non autistic people often think it is. It talks about the many co-occurring conditions that autistic individuals may have and yet those conditions are not actually autism. But at the same time you're more likely to get a diagnosi

I saw a thread on twitter recently that started "Still investigating what it means to be semi-speaking" and continued with a list of examples of what semi-speaking means for the OP. I found it very interesting for a few reasons. I first heard about this condition a few years ago, some people refer to it as selective mutism or being semi verbal. (I've added some info at the bottom as I now think these are two separate conditions) It is basically "an anxiety disorder in whic

There was a lengthy thread on twitter recently about autistic-specific dislike of phones. One of the replies was researcher Felicity Sedgewick who provided a link to this (free to read) paper: ‘Anything but the phone!’: Communication mode preferences in the autism community' The research explores different communication methods - face-to-face, phone call, letter, email, text message and online instant messaging, involved in different scenarios - accessing services, employmen

This article was on CTV a while ago. I think its very relevant to the other articles I've posted about double empathy and the effect on communication and social relationships. It was written by Tom Yun https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/a-unique-way-of-communicating-canadians-with-autism-share-challenges-debunk-misconceptions-about-autism-1.5387208 "Around one in 66 Canadians are diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, according to a 2018 report from the federal government . Bu

I found this very interesting. The University of Edinburgh is doing a "Diversity in Social Intelligence" project "challenging the notion that there is only one legitimate form of human intelligence. Specifically, we explored social intelligence in autism, drawing together diverse findings to build a hypothesis that autistic social skills may be enhanced in an autism-specific cultural context: i.e. when interacting with other people on the autism spectrum." http://dart.ed.ac

This post further explores the complicated notion of low and high functioning autistic people that I posted about on March 27 "High Functioning? It depends: " and it also touches on what I was trying to say in "Are Co-occurring Conditions Part of Autism?" that I posted a few days ago, that there should be support for all autistic people as we ALL struggle. This is actually a twitter thread posted by A_Typical_Psychiatrist @AtypicalPsych whose profile identifies them as Former

This reminds me of what I wrote in my submission to CAHS Assessment on Autism although I'm not nearly as eloquent as Autistic Science...

I thought this was a fascinating article by Rachel Zamzow regarding something called Double Empathy. Very relevant to autistic adults...