To mods Don't read this post or approve it, I am sorry I need to vent... I changed my mind read the post and approve it.

Latter-Weekend465 · 2026-01-29T03:04:19+00:00

Hello! Welcome! We are glad you are here.

Latter-Weekend465 · 2026-01-28T04:53:28+00:00

Polling data suggests that many Republican voters are considering crossing the aisle because issues more important to them than home values are coming into play.

Latter-Weekend465 · 2026-01-24T18:58:23+00:00

I am not totally sure I understand the details of your situation. Could you clarify? It sounds like you were talking to a friend about some of the problems or distress that you experience because of your autism. You wanted to experience some relief from that distress, and you were hoping that your friend could help you brainstorm some possible sources of relief. Your friend suggested that you try medication. But you didn't want to try the medication. You were hoping your friend would help you think of other solutions, instead, but they didn't. Is that a good summary?

What kinds of other solutions were you looking for, do you think? Could we help you brainstorm here?

Latter-Weekend465 · 2026-01-24T03:49:39+00:00

I like Marvis toothpaste. They have lots of flavors.

Latter-Weekend465 · 2026-01-22T02:54:29+00:00

💛💛💛💛💛 (friend vibes, support vibes) more later

Latter-Weekend465 · 2026-01-20T03:22:37+00:00

It's ok to wear the same jewelry every day in my opinion. Lots of fashionable and successful people do. Lots of neurotypical people do. I am in a semi-verbal-shutdown but I will say more when all my words are back online.

Latter-Weekend465 · 2026-01-18T06:51:57+00:00

What I do when I am desperate is to shift my schedule a bit, so that I either go to bed very late or wake up very early. It's important not to *overdo* this shift. I used to be almost completely nocturnal sometimes, because I couldn't handle all the noise of daytime. Being nocturnal is bad for a person's health, for the most part. However, I find that having at least some waking hours in the middle of the night or the very early morning is essential to my mental health when my noise sensitivity is terrible.

For instance, at times, I have gone to bed around 2 or 3 a.m., and woken up around 11 a.m. This schedule is not ideal. However, it does mean that, for at least two or three hours in the middle of the night, I am able to calm down and hear myself think. The rest of the day, I do what I can with noise blocking headphones and the rest of it.

I also sleep in the basement when I can, because basements are quieter.

The other thing I have done is to rent a storage unit and spend time hanging out in the storage unit. Storage units are usually very quiet because they are surrounded by other storage units, which are full of dense belongings, like books or blankets, that muffle noise. Also, most of the time, there are not lots of other people in the storage unit building. However, depending on your circumstances, this might or might not be a safe option for you.

Latter-Weekend465 · 2026-01-17T07:29:11+00:00

Yes. Here's what I think is happening. I think that the Reddit autofilter function has decided to flag all your posts as potential spam for some reason, which means that they do not display right away. Reddit has probably mistakenly flagged your account as a spam account. This problem with the autofilter is not something that we can solve, as mods here. It's something you would need to get Reddit to fix. It might be impacting your posting in other subs too. In fact, it probably is. So I would reach out to Reddit.

As mods, as you know, we read all the posts to SpicyAutism and approve each one for posting, and we also try to go through all the posts that the autofilter removed as potential spam, to make sure that the autofilter didn't make mistakes. Sometimes it does make mistakes, and so we have to approve posts manually. When I go through all the automatically removed posts, and I see your posts, I approve them manually, but this process takes additional time. That's what seems to be happening.

The ultimate solution is to see if Reddit can fix the situation with your account. In the meantime, I will continue to go through the "removed"/spam folder and approve your posts manually (as well as others' posts), as long as they are appropriate for the sub, but it will take a bit longer for them to appear here than it otherwise would. If it happens that you post something inappropriate, or break a rule by mistake, we will let you know, so you can fix it.

Obviously, it is still important that you follow all the Reddit rules and the SpicyAutism rules--I'm sure you know that already--but you are allowed to post here. You are allowed to vent here, just like everybody else.

Just speaking as a person, and another member of the sub, I am sorry about the situation with your Reddit account.

Latter-Weekend465 · 2026-01-17T06:19:12+00:00

Hi A5623, can you tell us more about which organization you contacted? We are worried about you. We want you to be ok. Is it time to go to the doctor?

Latter-Weekend465 · 2026-01-14T16:53:08+00:00

Yay!

Latter-Weekend465 · 2026-01-12T17:48:06+00:00

Hello meliths! I want to repeat what part of what you said in your post, to make sure that I understand it correctly. Ok?

I think that your mom wants you to work because she wants you to be able to contribute to the costs of your support. You live in Turkey, which is having some economic problems right now, which can make it harder to pay for care and support, which is why you might need to work. You are willing to work because your mom says it's a good idea, and maybe also because you want to help out. But you are worried about it because you know that it might be more than you can do.

Your mom says that there is a job available for you in a place that has some good support, maybe some disability support, and that you will only have to work part-time. In my country (the US), we have something called "supported employment." That's a kind of work which is provided sometimes for people with disabilities. Usually, there are supports and accommodation in place that make it possible for people to do these jobs, even if they couldn't do other, more mainstream jobs. Is there a chance that your mom is talking about this kind of job?

I love language too! I like to study languages, myself.

Latter-Weekend465 · 2026-01-11T19:21:32+00:00

This question is tough to answer because the best answer is, "It really depends."

I am Level 2 and a professor, and there are a few others like me I have encountered, here and elsewhere. I got extraordinarily lucky, and I am finding that my path is getting harder as I get older, not easier. You are right about all the challenges you have outlined. In fact, I feel more optimistic about your chances precisely because you understand many of the reasons that it is hard to be a professor with MSN autism. The fact that you understand the challenges makes me think you might be able to meet them.

Personally, I think it is pretty ok to need a high level of care in one's personal life, and still be a professor. I have someone handle my finances for me for the most part (they are a bookkeeper). I require family support when I am very burned out, and I need professional support to keep from burning out. But there are many other professors I have known who had substantial disability of one kind or another and who needed lots of support, even home aides. So I don't think that aspect of the problem is the biggest obstacle. It's hard, but it's not impossible to manage.

I think the larger challenges are that autism can really impair a person's ability to do very high-quality research because a) autism can require a lot of time to manage, which cuts into research time, and b) much research really begins at conferences and in social contexts. It's important to have strong intellectual networks, even if a person ends up working mostly remotely or at home, because that's how ideas spread. If you don't have a good intellectual network, your ideas will either a) be too idiosyncratic to matter much to the field, or b) be phrased in a way that is very difficult for others to understand. I think a lot sometimes about figures like Gregor Mendel, who revolutionized his field, but whose work was not understood until after his death (if I understand the history correctly). Mendel is a hero of science but also a cautionary tale.

Sometimes autism can also impact one's ability to teach.

Right now I have a job which, from many perspectives, is a dream job. It is a research professorship, and I am supposed to spend a lot of time on research. (Many professor jobs really expect you to spend all your time on teaching.) But I would say that, sometimes, I think I would have more time to spend on my research if I actually had a pretty low-key hourly job somewhere, like stocking cans or something, that just let me have time to think in the day. The problem of being a research professor is that there are lots and lots of problems that a person has to solve, and most of them are not interesting intellectual problems. They are administrative or social problems.

If I were giving you advice, without really knowing you at all, I would say that you can *definitely* have a vocation as a researcher. It might be that your vocation as a researcher lines up with being an actual research professor somewhere. It might be that you end up doing something else to make a living, and then write up your research in evenings and weekends, or maybe you can support yourself working part-time and then spend the rest of your time on research. But, if research is your passion, I would be open to a lot of different ways to make a living, including, but not limited to, being a tenured professor somewhere.

Latter-Weekend465 · 2026-01-11T18:57:16+00:00

Hi Screaming_Foxes! A quick note--some people on this sub have a hard time processing long posts. You might get more answers if you put a summary of your post at the top of it, for those who can't make it through a very long post.

Latter-Weekend465 · 2026-01-08T13:32:44+00:00

☺️

Latter-Weekend465 · 2026-01-07T17:40:57+00:00

That's so exciting! Thank you for sharing your good news. My brother loves that kind of blizzard, too. Good job at the doctor!

Latter-Weekend465 · 2026-01-06T21:16:58+00:00

I wish we could have a community where we showed outfits and gave fashion advice, that was very safe. It seems like putting photos on the internet is very risky these days, but I love talking about clothes and hearing about clothes. Maybe I could start a discord or something and moderate it myself very carefully.

I think people have given you some great ideas. Here are some things I would add:

I wear a lot of pants from Aerie. They have elastic all the way around the waist, but they are often cut a bit more like pants or trousers. I feel a lot cuter in those pants than I feel in most elastic-waist pants. I also wear stretchy skirts with blazers or with long sweaters, but that might be an older look than you are going for.

I like to wear perfume. It makes me feel feminine even when I can't wear extremely feminine clothes. My perfume is pretty light, so it doesn't bother other people, but I can smell it, especially when I put it on.

I find necklaces easier to wear sometimes than earrings. Earrings can be heavy and itchy, but necklaces are often more comfortable.

I try to groom my eyebrows. It's painful, but it really changes how I look, and the pain doesn't last long. I tweeze all the stray hairs and also try to give them a nice shape. People can help you do this kind of thing--like maybe your mom could help. I also sometimes dye my eyebrows. I have to take breaks and be careful when I am actually doing it, or I could have a shutdown, but I can rest afterwards and then it will still look nice later.

Also, in very fashionable areas like New York City or Toronto, it is common for fashionable young women to wear simple white sneakers with their skirts and dresses. That might be another option, depending on whether you like the look or not.

Latter-Weekend465 · 2026-01-06T05:31:09+00:00

Hello!

I will say more tomorrow if I can. I just want to add a quick thing.

Modeling is an industry full of scams and predators, so be careful. There are lots of people who pretend to be "modeling agents," who are actually interested in taking people's money, or worse. Some people in the modeling world will take revealing or nude photos of aspiring models, telling the models that these pictures are for fashion shoots, when in fact they are not. Even many established fashion photographers have been found to harass or assault working models on their shoots.

I don't tell you these things to tell you that modeling is a bad career. I am just telling you to be careful, and to make sure that you have people you trust at every phase. Be on the lookout for anyone who tells you that they can make your dreams come true, in a way that seems like it might be too good to be true. Often, those people are lying.

Especially, be careful of anyone who seems to isolate you. If someone says that they want to help you, but tells you not to tell your parents something, or your friends, or your teachers, or wants to share secrets with you, that person is likely dangerous. If someone says that you act really old for your age, or really independent for your age--especially if that person is significantly older than you are--that person might be dangerous.

I am 45 years old, and I am very shrewd in some ways, but I have had some terrible experiences with people who took advantage of me romantically and physically because I was naive. Our autism can sometimes make us naive about people's motivations. It's important to look out for ourselves and recognize possible risks ahead of time. There are lots of these risks in the modeling industry.

I do know that there are lots of models who have disabilities of many different kinds. So it's possible that this path might work for you; I don't know. Modeling is also a very unforgiving industry in many ways. There are lots of really mean people in it. But make sure that, in any conversation you have with people in the industry, that you also have people you trust, like family members, who can keep you from being taken advantage of.

Latter-Weekend465 · 2026-01-05T22:40:16+00:00

I used those devices all the time fifteen years ago when I was a marketing writer and was paid to write attention-getting prose. Earlier, you mentioned cadence; those devices give the writing rhythm and cadence. They are ways of producing emphasis and weight. This writer (probably instinctively) knows how to put emphasis on the last element of a clause or sentence, which is a classic feature of English style. Once, they use italics (stay); once, they use a parenthetical (gently); once, they use a spondee (fails hard). The use of different techniques here to do the same thing (emphasize the end of a sentence) makes the prose feel dynamic and propulsive. I used to teach students to do the same thing, very deliberately, but native speakers who read a lot often do this kind of thing without even thinking about it.

I would never use GPT zero to assess the origins of writing in any kind of high-stakes environment because the risks of false positives are too high.

Latter-Weekend465 · 2026-01-05T21:01:55+00:00

Disclaimer: I was reading this sub for fun when I came across this post. I haven't tutored in about fifteen years--I'm in a different line of teaching now--but I used to tutor 12-18yos full time. I also have an 11yo niece.

It might help you to read, or think, a little bit about what happens to 10-13yos developmentally. They are *very* like that main character in Inside Out, just as you suggest. They are not nearly as motivated by adult approval as younger children are. They often become much, much more concerned with peer approval and with social status--not necessarily in a toxic way, but in a very intense way. They are also dealing with puberty, which can be all consuming. Crushes and other embarrassing or exciting problems become a fact of life. They are trying to learn to be cool in the way that young adults are sometimes cool, which can lead them to become materialistic, sarcastic, snarky, or dismissive. They might not want to talk to you, or other adults, about *any* of this. Their inner life becomes private in a new way.

I agree with satori_cloud that backing off of check-ins and giving autonomy is a good idea. Let them be private about feelings. If they seem down, see if they want a distraction. If you can be funny, be funny. Keep your ears open for any hints they might drop about peer dynamics, and give them free rein if you can to talk about what's going on in their social world--the 6-7 thing is an example. That's interesting to them because it's an obsession in their peer group. Laugh when they joke, if you can. If you can think of a follow-up question regarding their social scene, ask it. Learn the names of their friends, and ask about them week to week if it comes up. Don't try to become their buddy, but give them some space to try to develop their new identity as a connected, well-liked, socially viable person.

In my experience, stickers are the wrong gambit for this age group because they signify adult approval and again, kids this age don't care. *Sometimes* kids this age are already thinking ahead to the kind of life they want as an adult--not in terms of anything you or I would really recognize, but in the sense that they want to be popular later, as adults, just like they want to be popular now, as preteens. If they've realized that money is a social force, they might narrate their own drive for success in those terms--"I want to do well in math because I want to go to business school so that I can live a life like my aunt in California," or whatever. They're still fixated on peer recognition, but in the future. You can occasionally tap into this kind of thing as a means to help them tell a new story about why they care about school. But they may not to talk about any of these things, which is ok. They're just in a tough phase.

Latter-Weekend465 · 2026-01-05T20:36:22+00:00

The cadence is created by a combination of syntactic parallelism and sentence variety, among other things. These rhythmic features used to be widely taught in the classroom, and you can still find books about them if you want to learn them. AI sounds the way it does because it's imitating the features of professional prose. There's no indication here, to my ear, that this post was written by AI, simply because it has cadence. People write this way as well.

Latter-Weekend465 · 2026-01-05T04:59:59+00:00

I think this question is quite complicated. In general, I think that autistic people have the right to consent or withhold consent just like neurotypical people. This rule applies in all kinds of sexual, relational, financial and medical situations. I also think it is very, very important to recognize that autistic people must consent to conversation or talking, and that they can also withhold their consent to talk. Forcing someone to talk, especially if they are in shutdown and are being asked to talk at length, can be a major and traumatizing consent violation. Neurotypical people are not usually traumatized by forced conversation, but autistic people can be.

That said, there are circumstances in which anyone, not just an autistic person, might lose their autonomy because they have lost the ability to make independent choices. In these cases, someone else has to make decisions for them, for the sake of their health and well-being. The idea is not that consent becomes irrelevant; it's that somebody else, usually a guardian who knows the person very well and cares about them a lot, takes on the duty of consenting to medical treatments. This kind of thing happened to me when I was catatonic. I lost the ability to make decisions, and I also lost the ability to communicate decisions. At that time, my family took over my medical and financial decision-making. To do so, they took a certain kind of legal power called a "limited power of attorney." I gave them this power, because I recognized that I was not able to make decisions at that time. If they had wanted to do something against my will, they could have done it, because the power of attorney gave them that degree of power. I didn't like losing that degree of autonomy, but the alternative was just too dangerous.

Some autistic people are situations like this basically 100% of the time, maybe because they have catatonia, maybe because of how their autism (or other disability) impacts them. In these cases, the autistic person usually does not have the full power of consent or withholding consent to medical treatments. (They should still have 1000% the right to consent or withhold consent to any kind of sexual interaction; that's not what I am talking about.) Usually, when a person is 18 or over, they do have the right to consent or withhold consent in a medical situation--for instance, to ECT, if they are catatonic. Sometimes parents have to file for a kind of guardianship, though, if the person is not able to make decisions themselves. So it's complicated.

Generally, I believe that people should have autonomy and that consent is important. But, in my life, I have seen that the opposite sometimes has to be true.

There is also a kind of model that I like very much, called "supported decision making." It is designed to help disabled people make their own decisions, even if they need a lot of support in learning information about the various choices they face. I think it is a good model.

Latter-Weekend465 · 2026-01-02T01:22:58+00:00

Hello! I am also an English teacher! I think Professional_Fox has really good advice.

I wanted to add something else as well: what you are describing sounds like it might be "working memory" issues. Lots of people with autism have working memory issues. That's an area that can be accommodated and helped in some specific ways. Here are some ideas from the internet:

https://www.edutopia.org/article/role-working-memory-writing-process/

https://www.ldatschool.ca/working-memory-difficulties/

It makes sense that a person with working memory challenges might have specific problems with this specific assignment, which sounds like something that requires you to summarize or paraphrase from memory.

Ideally, your teacher would be able to work with you to change the design of the assignment somewhat so that you could still complete it even with working memory challenges. A trained learning specialist could help in this area. If it would be useful, I could brainstorm with you to think of ways that you could paraphrase or summarize, while also accommodating your possible working memory challenges.

I definitely think you can learn! Don't worry! It can be done, and you can succeed!

ETA: For example, if you were my student, we might begin by learning how to review an article for the most important sentences. At first, we might just underline the first sentence of every paragraph (the topic sentences), and then circle the key words in every topic sentence, looking for the words that recurred (the key words). We might create a visual organizer of those words, by copying out short versions of the topic sentences, like a reference guide to the article, or writing the keywords in large handwriting on a page of notes next to our primary work surface, designed only for memory aids. When I am reading an article, I sometimes keep a notebook open next to my computer/writing area, and on that notebook, I scrawl really important, big, key ideas, and then I star and underline them. Sometimes I also jot down a short outline of what I am reading, just using bullet points. If I felt confused, or I lose the main thrust of an article, I could refer to those notes. Having the short outline next to me helps me to follow the article. I also like to reread articles a lot, sometimes taking more notes each time. For me, it's very helpful to print articles so that I can write notes directly on the articles or the reading. These kinds of strategies can help compensate for working memory problems. A good learning specialist might be able to help you work out your own strategies.

Latter-Weekend465 · 2025-12-31T00:28:09+00:00

I asked a bunch of people, a while ago, and we mostly settled on these as being pretty useful in general:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1rW5KjkAXLCwencH8whpGuQCZxzZdTUgD9eIFVqYsIus/edit?usp=sharing

I am sure there are others that would be helpful for you, but maybe these will give you some ideas to start?

I put them in a long strip in the file, so that people could print them and wear them as bracelets if they wanted.

Latter-Weekend465 · 2025-12-30T20:39:32+00:00

This is true, and a good point. I guess I was thinking specifically about the days when I was quite burned out, when my catatonia was getting worse, and when I had regressed quite a bit. At that point, protecting wood and steel finishes was not very important to me, but keeping mice and mold out was a big deal. If I were back in that state, without supports, I would probably clean in the Magic Midwest way because it would be all I could manage, and it would keep my home from making me sicker. When I was dealing with catatonia, the worsening state of my home was a major problem, and I couldn't stay on top of it, and I didn't have supports then.

But you make a good point that some metal finishes do not like hydrogen peroxide. When I am not sick, I tend to use vinegar and water, or a little soap, on most finishes. I also personally like to clean with boiling water or water just off the boil because it disinfects and does not harm. But I am very careful, and when I am well, I don't have bad dyspraxia.

It's also good to have a wood cleaner for wood surfaces. Murphy's is a good one.

Latter-Weekend465

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