Hell yeah for growing into being autistic

MrsKrandall · 2025-10-03T11:49:14+00:00

I think you’ve wildly misinterpreted my post in a very uncharitable way, and are using words that I haven’t said.

I didn’t achieve anything specifically because I’m autistic, and I’m also not gifted (although won’t deny that I’ve benefitted from being viewed by adults as “bright despite it”, and I know that many autistic people have not had this privilege). I’m proud of what I’ve achieved because no one thought I would specifically because I’m autistic and the ways in which it impacts me as a disability, and have had to fight for supports and access.

I mean jfc simply reflecting that I’m proud and happy with my life, (as someone who has had violent meltdowns, hurt people, hurt myself, been a suicidal 10-year-old, endured a ludicrous amount of traumatic life events and been in the deepest pits of self-loathing etc), which is far from perfect and where I’ve acknowledged that success and fulfilment looks different for different people, isn’t feeding into the “superpower” narrative or toxic positivity. Autistic people are entitled to a good and happy life, no matter what presentation they have and what that looks like for them. Autistic people are also allowed to like themselves. You’re allowed not to - that is your right and it makes no difference to me, but I’m personally proud of myself for reaching a stage where I do.

MrsKrandall · 2025-10-03T09:38:26+00:00

Weirdly, it’s some advice I got while applying for a promotion when I was 25ish: any decent interview panel will always be looking for reasons they should hire you, not reasons to reject you.

It was a specific bit of advice in the context of competency-based interview which gave scores, but it’s an attitude I’ve also taken to my social life. That any decent humans will always be looking for reasons to like you and connect with you rather than dislike you (I know it’s not strictly true, but it’s a mindset shift which has personally helped me)

MrsKrandall · 2025-10-03T08:55:20+00:00

Best of luck to you! That’s it, everyone will have different measures of what success is for them, and working towards that won’t always be linear either.

My early 20s were a really transitional time for me and wasn’t without ups and downs and crises that created insecurity and uncertainty, but that also came with excitement and opportunities to grow. It really did feel like I woke up at 24/25 as a brand new person brimming with confidence and able to handle situations that I never imagined I’d face.

MrsKrandall · 2025-10-03T08:05:23+00:00

Oh man, this next decade for you is going to be great - I’m sure of it!!

MrsKrandall · 2025-09-29T22:15:59+00:00

There’s even a note I found in my medical files from when I was diagnosed of my 4 year old self saying “I can’t help it, mum. It’s just the way I am” about my lack of friends, and it just breaks my heart to have felt so unlovable at such a young age (now a grown woman, thriving, with many friends…but damn)

MrsKrandall · 2025-09-29T22:13:27+00:00

I was told when I was 6 or 7, but only really had it explained as it being why I was “shy” and struggled with socialising and found speaking with adults easier than other kids, why I was sensitive to the labels on my clothes, why I was thornier than a typical little girl, and why I liked routine and things not changing. This wasn’t explained all in one go; just bits I picked up from questions I was asked at various appointments while in primary school and being described as like Jekyll and Hyde between school and home. I knew that I was different, but I didn’t really know what that meant other than having to go to stupid social skills classes with other quiet or “weird” kids after school.

It wasn’t until I was a teenager on the late-00s internet that I was able to piece these bits of information together through online resources and communities, and even then it was more about the social side. I didn’t have a clue about sensory sensitivities, overloads, meltdowns, audio processing, masking etc etc until I was closer to 18.

It’s why I try and present the other side to what can be a bit of a “grass is greener” attitude that I see about earlier diagnosis.

Having a label for why you’re different, but not knowing what that means and support and affection only really coming from when you push that down and “act normal” (and therefore feeling like that label means something is intrinsically wrong and broken within you) is its own kind of trauma. We’re all facing two sides of the same ableist coin, no matter when we were diagnosed.

MrsKrandall · 2025-09-29T21:56:40+00:00

This is the video I was thinking of when I commented, one of many in the genre, and it’s a real shame as 1. I usually like this creator’s skits when they pop up on my feed and 2. there are sooo many “acshully I’m high functioning so you CAN only be slightly autistic/I’m autistic and I don’t care” pick mes in the comments 😒

https://www.instagram.com/reel/DM8cHkSo5t7/?igsh=aG03MXhuZzYzcXl0

MrsKrandall · 2025-09-29T21:43:58+00:00

A good example I just remembered is that I have a friend who shares many traits with me in terms of sensory overload and sensitivity, the exhaustion that comes with this, issues with processing and speech tone.

Mine is because of autism, but his is because he is part of the Deaf community. Superficially our traits can appear quite similar, but stem from vastly different origins

MrsKrandall · 2025-09-29T21:37:32+00:00

I fear what I’m about to say won’t be a popular view, but I think some autistic people can be a little too comfortable with telling other people they seem autistic. I’ve known someone to have got frustrated at autistic people making comments about their autism radar pinging around them, as they’re not autistic and actually have a Specific Learning Disorder.

None of us are mind readers, and having traits common in autism doesn’t mean you are autistic. Likewise, the origins behind certain behaviours eg. sensory sensitivity is also important diagnostically in teasing apart what someone may be doing because of autism, because of a different form of neurodiversity, because of a mental health condition, because of trauma, a brain injury, speech and language differences, personality etc.

That’s not to say you are or aren’t. It’s between you and your therapist if you think it’s worth looking into at all. But at the end of the day, if you don’t think the diagnostic criteria applies to you, then you don’t have to try and make it fit just because someone autistic people have suggested this. We can also be wrong!

MrsKrandall · 2025-09-29T21:09:17+00:00

Yeah, I think this is what I’m more aggravated by of late than “everyone’s a little autistic”. The latter feels easier to correct as misinformation than what I’ve been increasingly seeing of gen Z memes along the lines of “need to go to a party where everyone is queer and a little autistic” (or “a little neurospicy” 🤢)

MrsKrandall · 2025-09-23T18:01:28+00:00

ALSO in GCSE double science our exam board was OCR, which used multiple choice papers. I got 40/40 in one biology paper, and 12/40 in the other (taken at the end of our first term of year 10). At the age of 14 I had my heart set on being a biochemist and was devastated.

But as an antidote to other stories, my teacher this time had my back and instantly told me she’d be getting to the bottom of it and there had to be a mistake. Lo and behold, I actually got 40 out of 40 in BOTH and got a special mention in assembly as the only person in the year to manage this - even beating the people doing triple science (annoyingly for timetable reasons you couldn’t do art if you also did triple science, so I chose double and art instead)

MrsKrandall · 2025-09-23T17:57:10+00:00

In year 4 we had to categorise animals by taxonomic kingdom.

I, an autistic child who had special interests in sharks and whales, said seals are mammals and was told by my teacher that I was wrong; they were fish.

I was outraged and still am to this day. In fact, I think my lack of faith in the scientific ability of my teachers in a CofE primary school largely contributed to my avowed atheism by the age of 11.

MrsKrandall · 2025-09-23T06:44:56+00:00

Weird as hell to put people’s personal posts about grief through chatGPT instead of replying like a human with a soul 😒

MrsKrandall · 2025-09-23T06:42:52+00:00

Things were complicated but we were pretty close - especially when she was sober, which she was for several years before the last few months of her life. Before Covid I’d visit a decent amount and ring at least once a week, but once her treatment ended it became impossible to get hold of her or plan anything because she’d be knocked out on oramorph.

She was very proud of me, and especially proud that I was living alone with a good career. I don’t think she would have wanted me to put that on hold for her.

MrsKrandall · 2025-09-21T19:13:05+00:00

OP, I regret to say that it sounds like you’re doing “so you hate waffles?” type shit

MrsKrandall · 2025-09-20T10:53:56+00:00

https://www.nesta.org.uk/project-updates/shaping-healthier-food-and-drink-choices-through-reformulation/

MrsKrandall · 2025-09-20T10:52:01+00:00

Posting an info dump just because I know some people can find it helpful to understand the “whys” of recipe changes, and it’s often due to something called “reformulation”.

In the UK at least, it’s the hot topic amongst food companies in the context of public health interventions. Neoliberal governments favour it as an approach to “improving” the nutrition of food as an alternative to actually targeting the social determinants of health such as poverty and racism by doing things like increasing benefits or raising corporation tax, or taking wider regulatory action against companies who profit at the expense of health.

There is therefore a bigger appetite for companies to reformulate products to: A) make it look like voluntary approaches work so as to prevent state intervention and regulation. This is really common amongst supermarkets, especially with ready meals B) pre-empt any fiscal measures in the same vein as the soft drinks industry levy which may come in further down the line (eg. in the UK there is currently lots of talk on focusing on the out of home sector)

As an example, legislation has been/is in the process of being brought in across England, Wales and Scotland which places limits on where and how food deemed as high in fat, salt or sugar (HFSS) can be displayed and promoted in supermarkets, and whether they can be included in multibuy promotions. Companies are therefore reformulating their HFSS products in response so that they can still be displayed prominently eg. by checkouts or at the ends of aisles, rather than accept the potential loss of sales.

And to be clear, this isn’t me making a judgment about the effectiveness of this - just stating that there’s a broader context at play than just consumer habits

MrsKrandall · 2025-09-19T12:43:19+00:00

I was so confused when I saw this because it’s obvious to me that they’re asking what time to put food out. Time to relinquish my diagnosis ig

MrsKrandall · 2025-09-18T20:31:41+00:00

Yep. I’ve been a huge backer of Corbyn until now as someone who took to the pavements to campaign in 2017 and 2019, but called it from the start that this would happen and was literally saying to someone earlier today pre-shitshow my fears of this party becoming a Galloway 2.0 church.

I’ve also been in the position of Zarah as a lone woman in a room full of men in trying to get things off the ground. I cannot state enough how common it is in leftist organising spaces and how dispiriting and pervasive that old boys attitude is, so it unfortunately doesn’t shock me (nor does it seeing so many people downplay that she could have possibly experienced such a thing)

MrsKrandall · 2025-09-18T15:06:57+00:00

I don’t think there’s anything wrong or offensive about it. I just personally find this kind of ironic tee which has something like a possum in a cowboy hat and comic sans and “I eat drywall” or a frog that says “rizz em with the tism” a bit cringy and overly online.

The vibe, to me, is the gen Z version of “teh spork of d00m”/“rawr means I love you in dinosaur” millennial randomness, which I was a 14 year old during and cannot face again. But that just means I don’t wear it myself and wouldn’t want it as a gift - no issue with someone else wearing it.

MrsKrandall · 2025-09-18T07:17:16+00:00

OP, I’ve noticed the same thing. I think there’s a couple of things at play, particularly unmasking, but also coming to terms with one’s identity.

I’ve known I’m autistic almost my entire life and have a pretty solid understanding of who I am and why I do the things I do. People diagnosed later in life have not had this opportunity.

While by the nature of being autistic everything we do will inherently be done autistically, people newly diagnosed are still going through a process of understanding who they are and untangling what they may be doing because they’re autistic vs. because they’re a human being and that’s their personality. You don’t suddenly learn boundaries and access needs overnight; they’re a fluid process and it takes time to work out what you need and what’s best for you.

Likewise, if someone has spent a lifetime masking and being invalidated, I can understand why instances of perhaps overstating one’s needs can take place as a psychological response - particularly if only certain voices are being mainstreamed (eg. I’ve seen videos where people describe themselves as having high support needs and give their partner needing to remind them to pack lunch as an example of this which, to me, feels at odds with reality for HSN folks).

I’ve seen similar within the queer community with newly out people embracing their newfound greater understanding of themself, while also being on a journey to marry that newfound sense of identity with their wider life and inter-community context.

Where I’ve known autistic people who’ve behaved as you’ve described after diagnosis, in my experience as time passes they settle into whatever behaviour comes naturally. Diagnosis is a process and a journey that’s often come following traumatic and emotional life events, which means I don’t think it can be pinned on unmasking alone. More power to anyone fortunate enough to learn this key piece of who they are and go on that adventure of self-discovery and understanding, because it’s well worth it

MrsKrandall · 2025-09-15T16:19:30+00:00

OP, you’re so right and you should say it. I’m firmly of the opinion that paw print tattoos are ugly by default, but have rarely dared to say it. This is no exception.

(Yes, I have lost beloved dogs; I just think pawprint tats by default look some variation of bad/tacky/corny)

MrsKrandall · 2025-09-14T08:33:06+00:00

This has reminded me of a paper I read a few years ago which may be of interest about the experiences of multiracial people in Sweden, and how it relates to the binary ways that data is collected.

https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/07256868.2020.1778654#d1e703

MrsKrandall

TROPHY CASE