Burnout: My story of chronic fatigue, neurodiversity & tech
... or how I came back from the brink. Join me as I collect my spiralling journal threads and piece together a way forward, sharing with you what I've learned to avoid burning out.
Open Society
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PsyArXiv Preprints | Central Sensitivity Symptoms and Autistic Traits in Autistic and non-Autistic Adults
Central sensitivity syndromes (CSS) are a group of related conditions thought to include an underlying sensitisation of the central nervous system. Evidence suggests autistic adults experience more physical health symptoms than the general population and could be more vulnerable to developing CSS. This study examined CSS diagnoses and symptoms in autistic and non-autistic adults, to determine whether CSS symptoms were related to autistic traits, mental health, sensory sensitivity, or gender. Participants included 534 adults with clinical diagnoses of autism, CSS, both conditions or neither, who completed online self-report validated questionnaires. Independent t-tests, ANCOVA, hierarchical regression analysis and path analysis were used to analyse relationships between CSS symptoms, autistic traits, depression, anxiety, sensory sensitivity, age, and gender. Autistic people without a diagnosed CSS reported significantly more CSS symptoms than controls, with a mean score above the clinical cut-off. Non-autistic participants with a CSS had significantly more autistic traits than controls. Autistic people with a diagnosed CSS reported the most sensory sensitivity, with autism only and CSS only groups reporting similar levels of sensory difficulties and all diagnostic groups reporting more sensory sensitivity than controls. Sensory sensitivity, anxiety, autistic traits, age and gender were all significant predictors of CSS symptoms. There appears to be a large crossover between physical health symptoms in autistic people and people with a diagnosed CSS, suggesting there may be diagnostic overshadowing in these populations. Increased awareness of an association between autistic traits and CSS symptoms should inform clinicians and guide diagnostic practice.
A Playful Manifesto
"This is a manifesto that begins but will never end. This is a translation of my world to yours. This is a celebration of existence; mine, yours and theirs. This is a public display of affection...
The Blackfoot Wisdom that Inspired Maslow's Hierarchy – The Esperanza Project
Esperanza Project is a green magazine for the Americas
@Autistic Realms on Twitter / X
@CathyEarlyYears @WestrayAlison @egstirling @PEDALCam @FroebelTrust you may be interested in the fab pulling together of some of these ideas on @stimpunks website https://t.co/1EqKeXrPtnand also https://t.co/P6c1mm1Dax— @Autistic Realms (@autisticrealms) February 8, 2024
The New Psychology of Belonging
It's the principle from which all other needs flow.
Kim Samuel
Author of On Belonging
Home - Samuel Centre For Social Connectedness — Samuel Centre For Social Connectedness
Where Do You Feel at Home?
Let’s renew the sense of home in our life.
"Success at Any Cost" | Human Restoration Project | Chris McNutt
Our narrow definition of "success" is dehumanizing young people and educators alike. Published by Human Restoration Project, a 501(c)3 organization restoring humanity to education.
Learners on the Autism Spectrum: Preparing Educators and Related Practitioners
This third edition is a foundational text that has been updated and expanded to prepare educators, therapists, and other care providers with vital knowledge and practical skills to support diverse learners on the autism spectrum. Covering an expanse of fundamental topics, this edited volume features new directions in research and practice that are essential to understanding the ever-changing field of autism. Along with new chapters from leading experts (including those who identify as autistic),
More than words supporting effective communication with autistic people in health care settings
13 Investigates why twice as many teachers have left HISD this school year
13 Investigates found about 600 Houston Independent School District teachers have left so far this school year, with the majority of them leaving NES campuses.
From artificial scarcity to ecologies of abundant care
Autists learn and play differently, because our senses work differently, and because we make sense of the world in different ways. Our sensory profiles don’t allow us to push cognitive disson…
10
Toward a Neuroqueer Future: An Interview with Nick Walker
High School GPAs and ACT Scores as Predictors of College Completion: Examining Assumptions About Consistency Across High Schools - Elaine M. Allensworth, Kallie Clark, 2020
High school GPAs (HSGPAs) are often perceived to represent inconsistent levels of readiness for college across high schools, whereas test scores (e.g., ACT scor...
79f464 4849c852564443feb97344a518a6ef9f
Why disabled people's needs aren't "special" - Life of a Blind Girl
Why we need to shift from referring to disabled people as having “special needs” and what we should be saying instead.
(PDF) Biocertification and Neurodiversity: the Role and Implications of Self-Diagnosis in Autistic Communities
PDF | Neurodiversity, the advocacy position that autism and related conditions are natural variants of human neurological outcomes that should be... | Find, read and cite all the research you need on ResearchGate
Human Biodiversity Conservation: A Consensual Ethical Principle
Published in The American Journal of Bioethics (Vol. 15, No. 6, 2015)
Biocertification and Neurodiversity: the Role and Implications of Self-Diagnosis in Autistic Communities
Neuroethics - Neurodiversity, the advocacy position that autism and related conditions are natural variants of human neurological outcomes that should be neither cured nor normalized, is based on...
Psychometric exploration of the RAADS-R with autistic adults: Implications for research and clinical practice - Alexandra Sturm, Sijia Huang, Vanessa Bal, Ben Schwartzman, 2024
Several validated adult autism symptom screening tools exist; however, there are concerns about the validity of instruments in adults who self-identify and thos...
Capitalize the "B" in Black.
"Being-in-the-Room Privilege: Elite Capture and Epistemic Deference" by Olúfémi O. Táíwò
© Melody Overstreet From The Philosopher, vol. 108, no. 4 ("What is We?"). If you enjoy reading this, please consider becoming a patron or making a small donation. We are unfunded and your support is greatly appreciated. “I abandoned the pitch because I don’t think I’m the right person to write this story – I have no idea what it’s like to be Black... I can send you the Google doc with my notes, too?”
I flinched inwardly. It was an innocent and properly motivated offer: Helen, a freelance journ
OSF Preprints | List of potential Monotropism Questionnaire (MQ) Research Topics.
For those who only experience monotropic cognitive style, monotropism is everything. it is woven into every aspect of life. It is who you are, your whole state of being; the way you think, process, respond, perceive sensory input, interact with people and your environment. The Monotropism Questionnaire (MQ), is a self-report tool designed to assess for features indicating monotropic cognitive style. Which is based on an Interest Based Account of Autism, and it has been argued to be a Unified Theory of Autism. Please see here for further information on monotropism theory, research, and practice. The present MQ items are informed by this Monotropism model to explain “Pathological Demand-Avoidance” in autistic persons, there is debate if the anxiety-based items should be removed from the tool, because how autism is often defined in clinical contexts, anxiety is not a core feature of autism, or a universal experience amongst autistics, and generally due to how autistics are being present, or previously situations. We know that autistics are systemically poorly treated by broader society and culture. Causing many autistics to become an Academic, Activist, or Advocate. This list is intended to only be used to guide researchers until research is conducted to indicate Autistics’ preferences on the matter. This document is published under a Creative Commons license, CC-BY-NC-SA, to allow the list to be widely shared. Below is the finalised list of potential research topics, which can be completed by adult participants for the Monotropism Questionnaire (MQ). The development of an observer rated version for use by adults, like caregivers, might best be waited for until refinement of the present MQ. There should be a separate list of potential research topics for investigating Monotropism in children and young persons. The research topics are grouped by category, for ease of reference. The placement of some research topics on the list maybe arbitrary.
Autism and Executive Functions
I have mixed feelings about the term ‘executive dysfunction’. My main problem is that it seems to refer to a whole grab-bag of…
Welcome to Weird Pride Day! - Weird Pride Day
The 4th of March is Weird Pride Day. This is a day for people to embrace their weirdness, and reject the stigma associated with being weird. To publicly express pride in the things that make us weird, and to celebrate the diversity of humankind. Many people need desperately to receive this message: ‘I feel and […]
A Thousand Rivers — Carol Black
What the modern world has forgotten about children and learning.
What the modern world has forgotten about children and learning.
Many such “scientific” pronouncements have emanated from the educational establishment over the last hundred years or so. The fact that the proven truths of each generation are discovered by the next to be harmful folly never discourages the current crop of experts who are keen to impose their freshly-minted certainties on children. Their tone of cool authority carries a clear message to the rest of us: “We know how children learn. You don’t.”
So they explain it to us.
This is when it occurred to me: people today do not even know what children are actually like. They only know what children are like in schools.
People all over the world know these things about children and learning, and interestingly, they are as workable for learning how to design software or conduct a scientific experiment or write an elegant essay as they are for learning to hunt caribou or identify medicinal plants in a rainforest.
But we don’t know them any more.
Collecting data on human learning based on children’s behavior in school is like collecting data on killer whales based on their behavior at Sea World.
It turns out that Americans are at the far end of the spectrum in their preference for competition over cooperation; for self-promotion over humility; for analytical over holistic thinking; for individual rather than collective success; for direct rather than indirect communication; for hierarchical rather than egalitarian conceptions of status.
When you see children who do not learn well in school, they will often display characteristics that would be valued and admired in any number of non-WEIRD cultures around the world. They are physically energetic; they are independent; they are sociable; they are funny. They like to do things with their hands. They crave real play, play that is exuberant, that tests their strength and skill and daring and endurance; they crave real work, work that is important, that is concrete, that makes a valued contribution. They dislike abstraction; they dislike being sedentary; they dislike authoritarian control. They like to focus on the things that interest them, that spark their curiosity, that drive them to tinker and explore.
He was one of those magnetic, electrical, radiant boys; kind to the younger ones, strong, quick, inquisitive, sharp as a tack, his eyes throwing sparks in the clear air. It was a joy just to watch him, I said to the friend standing beside me. She told me he had just been diagnosed with ADHD.
“Experts” in our WEIRD society tell us these children are learning disabled; they have poor impulse control; they lack organizational skills; they are oppositional. One in twenty, one in ten, one in seven of our precious bright-eyed children, we are told, have some kind of organic brain defect that disables them as learners.
But a Maori parent knows that you have to watch a child patiently, quietly, without interference, to learn whether he has the nature of the warrior or the priest. Our children come to us as seeking beings, Maori teachers tell us, with two rivers running through them — the celestial and the physical, the knowing and the not-yet-knowing. Their struggle is to integrate the two. Our role as adults is to support this process, not to shape it. It is not ours to control.
“The rainbows kind of wilt like flowers.” That’s what my daughter said as she stood at the top of a mountain one rainy, sunny day, watching the colors arcing and dissolving in the air. She was two and a half.
Dyslexic children often have better imaginations than non-dyslexics, after all, but nobody labels the “normal” children as having an “imagination disability.”