Intrusive thoughts. (from Fb group Autism, Late diagnoses)
Sometimes they’re like piranhas, nipping as you try swimming upstream. Sometimes they’re like a mass burdened on your back as you gasp up the mountainside.
Other times, they’re an easily shrugged off criticism, or even a hilarious commentary or sudden idea. Light or dark, they’re almost always there, forcing us into a dialogue with ourselves and our pasts.
I can stim them away at times, tapping and clicking them out of my nervous system. Yet if I tried to exhaust them, I wouldn’t be able to much else but stim.
Whether they’re loud or soft, vicious or humorous, they’re the heart of a lifelong identity crisis. We wind up not just putting walls between ourselves the world, but between ourselves and ourselves. Identifying with intentional thought and pushing the involuntary away as “other.”
It can take a long time to accept it all as ourselves. To accept Autism. Accepting that this is a journey, and that neither the good or bad days define it (or us) as a whole.
Then, the even harder challenge, is in extending that sentiment to others.
Other times, they’re an easily shrugged off criticism, or even a hilarious commentary or sudden idea. Light or dark, they’re almost always there, forcing us into a dialogue with ourselves and our pasts.
I can stim them away at times, tapping and clicking them out of my nervous system. Yet if I tried to exhaust them, I wouldn’t be able to much else but stim.
Whether they’re loud or soft, vicious or humorous, they’re the heart of a lifelong identity crisis. We wind up not just putting walls between ourselves the world, but between ourselves and ourselves. Identifying with intentional thought and pushing the involuntary away as “other.”
It can take a long time to accept it all as ourselves. To accept Autism. Accepting that this is a journey, and that neither the good or bad days define it (or us) as a whole.
Then, the even harder challenge, is in extending that sentiment to others.