Personal (development) and mental (health) from a queer empath aspie
A somewhat questionable post on dance improvisation, body awareness (feeling the internal states and thoughts of the body), proprioception, interoception, and (perhaps) specifically autistic movement needs (from my personal perspective; no general rules). Includes embarrassing dance club stories and a theory on craving movement, weight and resistance as desperately needed proprioceptive grounding when your proprioception is by nature foggy / hypo-sensitive.
. Whenever life confined me to solitude (with loneliness and feelings of abandonment being my most frequent tormentor), I tried to turn it around and remember that at age 10 ... or 8 ... I don't remember ... I wanted to be a monk. I try to tell myself, Look, this is the Himalaya you've … Continue reading Vague variations on the ten bulls (a Zen parable on taming the mind)
Personal narrative about emotionally traveling between disability and diffability models of autism, after realising that autism applies to me – a person who was considered more "able" than average for most of their life. Some ego crashes, juicy details, and reflections on the precariousness of privilege.
This is another bookish post, based on having read Roeper (1982) How the gifted cope with their emotions yesterday. Having been 99% sure that everything points to me being an aspie, I wanted to check the last other possibility that seemed open, namely that most of my social unusualness and permanent feelings of isolation (or there … Continue reading Using giftedness to mask autism; overlooked gifted autistic girls
Bookish and theory (but also exhibitionist personal) post on whether what's called "mental health crises" in contemporary parlance is equally well – or better – conceptualised as either the necessary growth pains of personality development (Dąbrowski's Theory of Positive Disintegration; post-traumatic growth theorists) or the breakthrough moments in spiritual development (Brogan, McLaren, and lots of others including New Age shamanism). Includes bibliographical and Pink Floyd references.
I knew I had a lot of quirks – even as a very young child I was vaguely aware that there seemed to be something special about my perception that others didn't share. I could look at the structure of tiny things like leaves, grass or beetles for a long time. I could observe ants … Continue reading Suppressing autistic behaviours = sucking the juice out of life?
This is the second part of an article on the differences and overlaps between being highly sensitive and autistic (which I see as two types of being neurodivergent). The first part of this article – my journey figuring out that my quirks and sensitivities are not just high sensitivity – is here. And this one … Continue reading Inheriting neurodivergent traits: blending the highly sensitive with the autistic, in a family (2)
