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

Here is a copy of the brief I submitted: Written Submission for Pre-Budget Consultations for Federal Budget 2025    By: True Taylor July 2024 I. Recommendations:   ●     Recommendation 1: That the government includes specific initiatives in the National Autism Strategy (NAS) to find, diagnose, support, and assist older autistic adults and autistic seniors . Recommendation 2: That the recommendations for the National Autism Strategy (NAS) outlined in the brief provided by the

Please help put the pressure on Ottawa for a no strings attached Basic Income Guarantee NOW! Dear friends, I am reaching out yet again at the end of another week of just awful world news. If you need a break from reading emails and blog posts and are choosing time away from digital technologies I very much understand and respect that. If you have a bit of time and energy to briefly read on, thank you. All the awfulness in the news of late is enough to shut this deep feeling h

Basic Income Guarantee (BIG) or Guaranteed Livable Income (GLI) or even Basic Income (BI) are three different names for one very important idea whose time for action has come! A Basic Income is a just way of distributing money so that those who are most marginalized by the current economic system are able to have the opportunity that many others take for granted...to participate in the economy and to meet their basic needs with dignity! The PEI Working Group for a Livable In

This is a very interesting/insightful thread I copied from Twitter before the storm, in the 'how does this total stranger know so much about my life' category. Some of our conversation at the meeting Saturday reminded me of it so I thought I would share. Written by Dr Sam Porter @PerinatalBirder His Twitter profile describes him as " #Neurodivergent Consultant Perinatal Psychiatrist" and he describes this thread "Here’s a thread I’ve written for psychiatrists to help them pi

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 this on Facebook this morning from the Autistic Self Advocacy Network . Although I've already posted a couple other descriptions of autism, I enjoyed this one because its not as clinical and its also not all negative. "Autism is a developmental disability that affects how we experience the world around us. Autistic people are an important part of the world. Autism is a normal part of life, and makes us who we are. Autism has always existed. Autistic people are born

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

Unmasking This is a very thoughtful/interesting article on a great website. In fact, I added the website to our resources as there are many great articles by Mykola Bilokonsky and other guest writers. As usual, I would love to know what other autistic adults/seniors think of this article. It talks about dropping the mask, both the active and passive masks and being your natural self: "It turns out it’s easier than you may think to stop a lot of your active masking behaviors

Th is is an extract from Ten Steps to Nanette by Hannah Gadsby "Hannah Gadsby on her autism diagnosis: ‘I’ve always been plagued by a sense that I was a little out of whack’ Even as a child, the comedian knew her brain was atypical. But it was only in her late 20s that her anxiety, depression and meltdowns finally made sense." This is a terrific article . I identified with much of what she has to say including what she says about meltdowns, shutdowns, executive function,

I was reading an article today that described the research by Dr Damian Milton on the “ Double Empathy Problem ”as the most important memo in Autism research in decades . I've mentioned double empathy before but I don't think I explained it well so I thought I'd add this interview with Dr Milton. "In this broad-ranging interview, Dr. Milton discusses the theory of the “double empathy problem”; hyperfocus/flow state; autistic parenting; the medical versus social model of dis

This is a summary of study findings from Florence Neville, an autistic Health and Wellbeing PhD student at the University of the West of England, exploring the need for autistic people to have alone-time. "Alone-time for autistic people isn’t really talked about in academia, but I know it’s vital for my wellbeing, and lots of my autistic friends feel the same way. So I want to explore what alone-time means for other autistic people." The researcher looked at: " Reacting to

This article is from The Guardian written by Amelia Hill @byameliahill "Women from around the world describe the life-changing impact of finally receiving a diagnosis:" "There were women whose lives had been scarred by victimization, from bullying to rape, because without a diagnosis they did not know they were highly vulnerable to manipulation and abuse." "There were women who were diagnosed in their 70s, who had known there was something different about them for 60 year

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...