Autism, Life and Learning

Sorry for not posting anything last week I was planning something. So what I have been planning is this. If is a small three part series called: Changes. In this I will talk about some changes that lots of people including me hate. I put up with it, some can't. The title names are as followed. 1) Slow Changes 2) Sudden Changes (Death and Schools) 3) Environmental Changes I have been planning this for a while hopefully this should be one of the more engaging things I put on here. Slow changes will look at people changing in themselves and also slow changes throughout life. Sudden changes will look at death, school/education and a sudden change in circumstances like injury or money. Finally environmental changes will look at how things like change in light, sound or even someone moving changes things. Sorry it's a short post but the series will more than make up for that.

This is one I really wanted to talk about but I wanted to research it first, there is literally nothing on it and yet me and some of my friends deal with this. It has no name- or at least one I can find.  I call it a one day depression. This happens roughly after a meltdown for a day or the day after a meltdown. To me it drops my mood slightly, I also feel more anxious and that affects other things which may or may not start another meltdown. If that happens then  more and more meltdown happen, so sleep is the best answer and start from where we can process. If it isn't going in a vicious circle, then you just feel down, more anxious like I have already said. I also shut people off and don't want to talk. So it  is like going back to a basic mode where everybody looks at you where they know something is wrong with you, what isn't nice but you can't do anything. I'm lucky that I adapt to situations and can mimic personalities so people don't know what happens ...

Autism can be a confusing thing- this is coming from who is on the spectrum.  Hopefully I will be talking about how our senses help us see the world. This will be just my My view as everyone varies, you never get the two people exactly on the same spectrum.  Lets start from the ears.😃 Hearing:  Most of my hearing is through the little bones in my ears and  the edge of my jaw because I'm partly deaf so I don't rely on hearing so much more feeling. So things like tones, like sarcasm get a little lost if im not listening, or can't be bothered hearing. From this i have learnt to a point to 'turn off' so much of my hearing  so everything sounds flatter. Although nature has a really sense of humour because I'm hypersensitve to noise, most people with autism are, so because i can't really hear everytime I do it hurts. Sight:  My sight is... okay. I'm clumsy so run in to walls- yep into walls willingly...ish. I trip anything that is near my feet, includ...

Right I will admit that I haven't said everything about this topic, partly because I'm really bad at explaining but also because its a really confusing topic to talk about especially when you are tired. From where is I left off  where I talked about different degrees of gender and when it comes to sexuality we still fit into very normal boxes, like being heterosexual, gay and lesbian, trans-gender and bisexual. Well most of us don't fix ourselves in those brackets. If you wanted to label me you could put me in non-binary or in gender fluid as I am either depending if my emotion chip is working. So some of us have no natural gender, although I know I'm male. When it comes to sexuality I think I can be safe to say quite a lot are pansexual. Pansexual is where you fall in 'love' with the person/machine not the gender so some of us may 'love' a robot rather than a person. If you wanted an example from me then although I like somebody I have a connection wi...

So firstly out of the gate I'm not at Nottingham due to ill health which I am really not happy about but rules are there for a reason. My 'ill health' is partly to do with my autism so thats one part of my life it had ruined this weekend, usally I can just keep going but I had to take everything into account this time around.  As it is rare i have lots of sensory overloads in a row, meltdowns I can deal with; just go into basic program and use echo location.  Anyway enouch of that this is something I have been trying I am to to try to use something called Google Blogger. Instead of this blog, although everything will be here it won't be when I finish the OU but I am unsure if it will be after my first year or my third either way to make sure everything I have said is read and people can see things I have put it will be copied over their. It will most likely be named something simliar. I will link it when I have completed the transistion. In this case I'm an Eevee...

Its a two for one today, mainly because this post should been done this week and the last post should have been done last week but the our internet company decided to forget about us.  So this is the last topic in this and its about gender and sexuality, I’m going to add relationships in as well just to give a fuller picture. Word of warning this is going to get complicated really quick and its going to get odd very quickly. So you have been warned.    So I'm guessing anyone you is reading this knows about LGBT+, I know I have missed most but for the sake of simplicity, anyway if not L is Lesbian, G is Gay, B is Bisexual and T is Transgender and the + is for everyone else who comes under their banner. Here where it will get confusing.  A lot of people with autism are LGBT+, but for most who aren’t we don’t have definitive gender. We can be seen as male, female, slightly feminine, slightly masculine, Male but very feminine- although not gay, Female but very mascu...

First a quick catch up I passed my TMA04 which is good. I have just TMA05  to do and my assessments, an exam through course work, for this module. I'm just getting ready to go back to Nottingham  and whilst training I may have caught a bit of sun stroke- but I can't stroke the sun because apparently it 'too hot’  .  This one is going to be an odd one. This post is going to be how some people on the spectrum don't feel like they are human, or should I say they don't feel like homo sapiens. There are two main ways to look at this.  1) They feel like they can do everything better then the standard homo sapiens because their 'gifts' give them an unusual amount of input to the world around them. I kinda fall in this category with my 'gifts' I can mimic and adapt to virtually any situation or environment given to me with near precision hence the nickname Gecko. From this things like adverts or sublimate messages don't work on me because they b...

Right first of all catch up, I have finshed my 4th TMA and I decided to run yesterday, 11th, and well I tried in 27C to run 5 mile I got 3.5 miles and a tiny bit of heat stoke. Then a sensory overload because of the heatstroke- I don't like heat.  This topic is going to be a kinda fun one because the only I can describe somethings are going to describe or explain I might have to use song lyrics. I am hopfully going to talk about friends or at least my idea of friendship.  This is kinda common some people with autism have rules, as with everything we have rules. I will run through my basic rules to show how bad some of these can be. If i can i will try to explain so of them. 1) Have to be able to keep up with me mentally- so if can speak to them and don't have to dumb anything down. 2) Have to be female- its a precourtion most males are either agressive and/or posessive through evoultion so stop me mimicing or adopting any traits.  3) Have to be paitent- I tend ...

Well this firstly isn't an argument more bigotry or ignorants, take your pick. For anyone whos dosen't know too much about autism I will run the basics off. Firstly because Austim is known as Autism Spectrum Disorder(ASD), or Autism Spectrum Condition(ASC). Autism is a 'developmental' disorder, this meant to happen as we develop but before birth. That is pretty much everyone knows about that bit. Autism allows that person to become sentive to sound, light, tates and touching or just all of them.Autism affects social and communition skill aswell as motor fine and gross funtion skills, thats movement skill. Fine motor are small/fine movements like threding needles and gross movements are big moments like walking. It can also affects speach, thats why some are non-verbal or have a stammer.  Also  most  have a talent of some kind and perfect pitch or can at least sense perfect pitch. Anyway thats enough of that. Heres the cure 'argument' There are people wh...

It's been a while since my last blog post so here is a litlle catch up. Ive raced up in Nottingham and came first in my final and beat the Girls4Gold team, which is nice broke a couple records for Exeter but still no medal 😕 . My fourth assigment is due soon and the tutorial for this assigment was last week and guess how many people turned up... Yep ONE, me. I know im special but I didn't need a whole classroom to myself. Anyway here is some, I'm not saying all but these two are quite popular, what I mean by that is people who work in the autism field and when i got tested they asked "which argument do you support". I will try and be neutral and list pros and cons of each if I miss something please say. Argument 1- Autism is a evolutionary step. I know as first glace its sounds odd. This is the arument as I understand it. As most reasonable minds see things there is a thoery of evoulution. In this we came from lizards or small mammals of the time and further b...

I know this is my fourth blog of the month. Which shows that i have a lot of free time, that wasn't planned but work has been lax so i have done my hours which meant waiting for emails mainly. So I have a lot of time to plan things. Training has been odd as I'm racing in about a week's time, more about that later, so I have done sets which meant I couldn't push it too much in case of injury. So anyway my third assignment came back was another PASS in this case just, i just passed because I put too much detail in my work. I don't quite understand how you do that I was told to describe... so I did a lot.  I had to make a plan so did, I had to follow the plan so I did and use statistics in my assignment so I did. I swear part of the marking scheme doesn't account for autistic people taking things absolutely literally. I think it's about 1 in 80 ish people are autistic and that is rising steadily. So is there a 1000 people studying that's at least 20 peop...

It's the last day of mental health Awareness week (20th May)and it's focusing on stress... Oh boy. I know they want more people to know more about mental health in general but stress? I know everyone 'suffers' through stress, I'll explain why it's put like that later, let's put it through the eyes of someone who autistic.  Stress to us is well... life. I could just sum it up like that but I'm going to explain mainly because when I talk to people they don't understand how I see things, but if i do anything general I'm going to focus from a higher functioning autism (& Asperger's) point of veiw.  Every step I take I see countless dangers, it could be anything from me tripping to a meteor falling on me, most non-autistic brains will filter this. Then add on contacting people so talking or just walking past them, as I think a meteor is going to fall on me you don't have to guess much with might happen with that, still I will say, so ...

I thought I would say some of the funny things i had said or done to me or what i have done. As I have had some weird and wonderful things said when i mention i am on the spectrum. Also some people think that its hard being autistic, its even what i got taught in my health and social care course apprently be autistic can be very challenging. I haven't seen much difference from being normal. We just tilt are heads and walk- get it as we see things froma different angle. Sorry i know its a bad joke.  Anyway lets get on with beign funny. Apologies for anybad jokes.    I was training on the water and someone decided to have a conversation with me we got talking, although it took awhile to get talking, this person i mentined that was autistic more exacly i have Asperger's Syndrome and he response was " Oh, I'm sorry" I just smiled. You wounldn't belive how many people go to this response if you mention you have autism or Asperger's. I'veeven had it in ...

I thought I would talk about what overloads feel like and also what shutdowns feel like as well. I thought i would firstly explain what overloads and shutdowns are for anyone who isn't ASD literal.   Overloads are where all the information me or anyone with autism has collected through the day but it usually hasn't been processed yet most of this is filtered by your brain if you don't have autism or some learning disabilities. This will usually be everything you encounter so everything you see including raw light, hear even if it is distance or background noise, feel including air touching your skin and taste including everytime you breathe.  If you think about it you do a lot of this in a day and not realise. So if you overload you feel slow and sluggish as your brain can't take anymore thing in but it has to, it's like force feeding your brain to stay awake and take more things on. Shutdowns/Meltdowns usually happen if someone is overloading or have overloade...

As today is the last day of autism awareness month(30th April) I would like to share how life with autism is well to me anyway. I going to spilt this in to three bits: Emotions, danger and life. Emotions: In general I have three emotions these are happy, sad and angry. I can't laugh (as in i make a face but no sound comes out) although i can mimic laughter each mimic of laughter is my gauge of how funny something is. To me there is no inbetween i am one of those three. When I was around year 5 to year 6 I got bored with just having these emotions, partly because i couldn't connect with anybody but also because I couldn't see from points of view only my own which is purely logical which caused issues beacuse i could take in more things then anyone in my class but my teachers couldn't really understand me although they could teach me. So I made what i called a 'Synthetic Emotion Chip' in this i put all the emotions i thought i should have like annoyed, excited ...

This month has been busy. To make sure Ive understood this because my head its still spinning. I have been working now two months going all over Devon, I have caught up with friends i lost contact with, I raced in my C1, had a car accident (more on that one later), had  lesson for my OU course and finished my TMA.  That's pretty condensed and with all this i had 2 meltdowns.  Right, I'm going to spend most of this post explaining this silly accident. I should say I wasn't driving. A couple weeks ago me and my mum were going down to training. As my mum was looking  up the junction the car go hit  on the rear, the number plate came off, I was the only one in the car that was calm and making lots of inappropriate jokes, many i can't say on here. We then chose to abandoned training to go head home to phone the insurance people.  No one worry we are both fine. The car had to be repaired though. So we had a hire car... It was a hybrid -_- but not a prius....

Well, I had a few good days and spent time with people I trust, sorry everyone but I don't have friends, best you get though. I know that I look at life differently, I guess that's with most if not everyone who is autistic, whether that be in my head, inside a rainbow- pun intended or just blurred with music with colourful lights. Some autistics, including myself, will never really understand people and how to cross the road safety (thank you Toyota Prius driver). However, there are some things that I find that I really understand like physics, mathematics even languages ( to a point). All these have one main thing in common; all these have patterns. So I'm guessing here but other people with autism, Aspergers, ASD or whatever label you want to call it. If we find a pattern to life we can be people and have a life, I think.   . These are things I have always understood in some ways but I have other issues which confuse a lot of things. So I didn't realise how much th...

I got my first assignment back and I PASSED!!! I only had minor things wrongs things like grammar and choosing the wrong words. Now I have to do my second assignment which is now done. (As of 15/03/18). In both I had to do a self-reflection, the only way I could do them was answered them was logically especially the ones where they asked how I felt. I know the questions are for the majority but they would have thought of things that mean people with ASD, especially people on a different part of the spectrum would be to a minimum and that they wouldn't be stumped by things, even if the wording is changed for them. That isn't always the case I have been figuring out. The tutors each have different marking ideas and the book has a rough understanding as well. So both together will make your mark. I am lucky enough to have an understanding of both sides of that coin it fair to say most with ASD won't understand both. I have a study buddy now, they seem quite good at looking ...

I handed my first assignment yesterday. I think it was all correct. Next chapter now I had a quick look at it and my idea of how society get made and remade really needs to change. I also looked at the assessment it's an extended version of the first. Let's hope I've answered the first correct or I might be able on the wrong foot, I'm not sure it will be I guess its my right foot. Although could be and really bad foot and start with a hand.  The more I study introduction to social sciences the more I realise that most people with autism are in built with the idea that we are part of society but the patterns that everyone does are so predictable- in the larger cogs of society. That's why we watch people. Most of us like patterns- I'm more partial to pretty lights.  Even so the patterns are there we notice them more or they bother us more, that bit I'm not too sure about. But we see thing in such different ways that we make everything 3-Dementional it o...

Note to anyone that reads this- I take most things literary so you can laugh at what you read. I have to.  I got all the things to study my course- Psychology BSc (Hons), near Christmas time so it was like a Christmas present from the Open University. When my Course had officially started read the chapter I needed to and TMA1 over and over and made a plan even before the Module Introduction. As soon as I went to the introduction I realised everything was ahead by a bit well... a lot- all three parts don't to the word (roughly) just needed to type it up. When it got to typing up, I realised that I had encrypted my assignment- thanks Autism. This meant I had to unencrypt it word by word hoping it made sense. Some how it did but the word count was lagging but at least it made sense. So far the main issue I have with the course is how society is made and remade- my first idea is buildings get knocked down and new ones get put in their place apparently not as simple as that. No...