The Okay-ish OT

"Alright everybody, raise your hand if you've ever experienced Impostor Syndrome! All of you without your hands raised, you're a liar." During my freshman year of college, at least three of my classes included this exact conversation. Everybody being told that everybody feels like they don't belong, and that they should publicly declare this feeling of not belonging with the world.  Even before my autism diagnosis, I found this tendency frustrating even though I couldn't explain why at the time. Now, though, I have quite a few opinions about the use of this label with this diagnosis in mind. First of all, I want to clarify that I'm not against the idea of people feeling like they don't belong; that is a very real feeling that people experience. My biggest issue is with the naming of "Impostor Syndrome."  According to google, a syndrome is "a group of symptoms which consistently occur together, or a condition characterized by a set of ass...

Chores are hard. They take up a lot of time and energy, and they're never really done. For autistic people especially, there's a lot of obnoxious sounds, smells, and textures that can make many chores very mentally taxing, and I include myself in that statement. If I didn't find ways around these sensory nightmares, my house would be a mess. Thankfully, the internet is a treasure trove of helpful tips for making these tasks easier, so I thought I'd share a few of my own. I'll be organizing these tips by whether they're a kitchen chore, a living room chore, etc. Hopefully these tips can help others like they have helped me, whether you're on the autism spectrum or just hoping to cut down on the effort involved in house chores. 1. Dishes When I moved out, I moved into a place without a dishwasher, and I became extremely aware of how many dishes I use on a regular basis. I discovered that using disposable plates, cups, and utensils drastically decreased the num...

On October 16th, it’ll be two years since I realized I was autistic. To be clear, it was another few months before I had an official diagnosis, but this was the day when it clicked, when I learned that there was something diagnosably different about me.   If you’ve done the math, you’ll learn that I was diagnosed during 2020, and many of that year’s events played a part in the mental struggles leading up to my eventual diagnosis. During that year, I’d been dealing with a lot of anxiety and depression, along with some other things that I couldn’t quite explain. Overall, it felt like my brain was attacking me, and I didn’t know how to make it stop. For a while, I actually contemplated having OCD until autism was brought up as a serious suggestion.  It wasn’t until my mom mentioned watching a TedTalk about Masking behaviors in autistic women that anyone thought that label might apply to me. My two younger siblings were already diagnosed through the school system at this point (al...