When my son was younger, he was diagnosed with ADHD almost immediately by our primary care doctor. He had a hard time sitting still in her office, and his answers to the questions she asked were often all over the place. Shortly after that, we took him to see a counselor for an unrelated concern, [...]
I am currently on an extended leave from my job due to neurodivergent burnout and trying to recover by doing research...on neurodivergent burnout. You can take the girl out of academia, I guess? What is neurodivergent burnout? The quick skinny is that autistic or neurodivergent burnout is a long-term condition that is caused by the [...]
Last week, researchers at Princeton University published a groundbreaking research study about autism. There are a couple of things that make this such exciting news for anyone wanting to learn more about or better understand autism: They were able to group behaviors and traits of autism into four distinct subtypes of autism. This will likely [...]
Before I started thinking I might be autistic, I had several incidents that I thought were panic attacks. When I talked to my doctor and psychiatrist about these, they were a bit mystified, since panic attacks don't often have triggers as specific as mine. (They definitely can, it just tends to be somewhat rare.) These [...]
Author note: There is a similar, previous post to this one about making events neurodivergent-friendly, but since I had a specific event in mind for that (college orientation), I left that as is and am writing a new, more general post. I can't tell you the last time I went to a meeting or event [...]
You may have seen someone pacing, flapping their hands, playing with a fidget toy, or doing some other sort of repetitive behavior and wondered what they were doing and why. They were most likely engaging in a behavior called "stimming." But what exactly is stimming, and why do we do it? Stimming, which is a [...]
Happy Pride Month! 🌈 Pride is not just a month to celebrate our queer community, but also to advocate and support them. Why is this important to me? Not only do I identify as queer, but there is a significant overlap in neurodivergence and queerness. Autism and sexual orientation In a 2021 study on autism, [...]
We all know I'm a big reader by now, so it's no surprise that the moment I thought I might be autistic, I turned to books for the answer. And I found plenty of answers. Though I feel like I've barely cracked the surface in reading about autism — especially with more new books coming [...]
As someone who loves colorful hair, I spend a lot of time in hair salons. As a neurodivergent person, I've definitely had my fair share of negative experiences in salons, too. There are both things that salons and stylists can do to make their services more neurodivergent-friendly, as well as things that neurodivergent folks can look [...]
Maybe you've never heard the term "AuDHD," or perhaps you've heard it and have no idea what it means. AuDHD is the shorthand those of us who are both autistic and have attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, or ADHD, use to identify ourselves - a simple combination of those two terms. This is a relatively new [...]
