💖

I believe the term neurotypical was coined specifically to differentiate it from normal, which is both judgemental and bad science. We may eventually understand exactly how the brain is supposed to work if it’s finctioning precisely according to spec, but I doubt it. All brains differ in how they function, at least to a degree, and up to a point, it’s a matter of pros and cons: maybe a bit better here, or worse here, and even that is heavily subject to interpretation. Neurodivergent, from the discussions I’ve seen, means the brain developed differently enough in places that distinct differences are clear. Disorder is the historical basis because up until recently, the main purpose for mental health diagnoses was to identify the people are disordered enough to “create problems” for “normal” people. The notion of using mental health services to help “disordered” people function within society is a newer one, focused to the greatest degree on the learning disability model. The notion of mental health self advocacy and self education helping people who are noticeably atypical understand and manage themselves is VERY new. Each of these steps has either blurred or extended the edges of disorders and disabilities, and I think this has a lot to do with the increase in diagnoses. I don’t see that it is in any way a bad thing, BUT it has created a lot of conflict surrounding the issues of disability versus identity. I think it’s a process we have to go through, but we have a ways to go yet.

I was ridiculed by peers for being anxious, so appearing "calm" and shaming myself for being otherwise (the internalized ableism piece) became very important early on. I wasn't DXed till age 53 so there are decades of damage to remedy.

My sons been taken, sorry ive been removed from my house n not allowed to see my son for my struggles getting emotional concerns out to a public servant. I melt down because it's so hard to talk about something, n get angry.....but always without doubt I AM NEVER FRIGGEN HEARD

Thank you for your well done and helpful video. I struggle with not being able to respond quickly enough during conversations. I'm grateful that you've talked about it. Wishing all the best for you in your journey.

ADHD here. Even though I'm not autistic, I can relate to those speech issues. When I talk about something I am familiar with / passionate about, I am just unstoppable. I am a physical engineering student and I have a part time job as a private teacher for high school kids (I teach maths and physics). During my lecture I have to either remind myself multiple times to slow down, so the kids can keep up with me, or on the other hand when I encounter some topic am less comfortable with, I have to ask them for a brief pause to sort my thoughts in order to give them a coherent explanaition of the topic. I also have to stop myself from explaining every little detail of the topic, so my students don't get overwhelmed by the amount of information I am able to dump at them.

Yes Amanda!!! Thank you for this.

Im 6 min 47 sek into your video. Fantastic hornest relatable! I have stopped follow “algoritme rules” ect. I feel better ❤

Yep, just like society prioritizes right handiness over left handiness.

I would watch unmasked cooking videos!!! I can’t be the only one. No editing needed!

To be honest, I’m quite sure that almost all of my problems stems from the disabling from society. I’m not saying that this is the case for everyone with a disability, just me specifically.

man i want to like your content, it's refreshing to finally have found someone that shares my experiences, but all this "privilege" talk is so mega toxic that it makes it unwatchable. It basically tells people "if you're not in our group then nothing you have to say is worth anything and you're bad just for existing 😊", and I don't care how much of a minority you are in, that is NEVER the right response. If we want to get along with people whom we differ from, we must not ostracize them and use divisive and blaming language like this. The only thing that will do is make people dig in their heels and not want to hear anything we have to say. Because who is going to be open minded when you charge right in there with "well you inherently are a bad person because of how you were born" (and golly gee, doesn't that smack of discrimination?) I think it strikes a particularly bad chord with me because my parents have always used shaming language to control me, and it pisses me off to see people perpetuate that and try to shame whole groups en masse. It's scummy behavior and people need to stop doing it. They never will, because that's tribalism, but damn it is frustrating to see you perpetuate it when your channel is the first I've seen relate to my experiences with SDAM

Anyway, even if I have studied enough to know what many women like me never understood themselves and , of course this video has been edited, the feeling is genuin. It is an important video for people to understand each other. Nobody thinks the same way. Still we are human and try to figure out how to cope life and be happy about it. Not an easy task. Let us try to understand each others differences. Who are you allowed to be? That is not the quest ion.

Thanks for your incite, it was ahot day here in the Denver are it got up to 89 F.

Sounds like an opinion on others opinions on people in general. Seems like u had fun thinking about things

I love your livingroom! I too am hsp

That's exactly how I feel about my speech. You said it in the first 20 seconds of your video. People think I'm having memory issues due to my age and they don't realize it's my autism. I hate when people say get to the point of your story, hurry up. My ex used to say that to me all the time, it really hurt.

I could go and write a long comment about my experiences and all the ways I feel this video so much, but I’ll keep it short and just say this video meant more than you could know, thank you

I am not officially diagnosed with autism but it seems I may be on the spectrum and I speak with a monotone voice. Sometimes, I feel overly self-conscious about it because I feel people think I am not as emotional as they are due to my monotone speech pattern. I sometimes also would like to express more emotions through my voice or have a more flexible voice. Sometimes I myself feel restricted by the tone of my voice. It is a little challenging to have a monotone voice sometimes.

Thanks so much for helping me through my awareness process. Much appreciated.

I don't hunger cues either. AaHa! Thank you.

Omg! I was diagnosed in my 50s. Closer to 60 now I’m still learning. I had no idea about aphantasia. I struggle with the grocery store. I do like repetitive foods and emotional about things that don’t make sense to others and the depression!!! Ugh!!! Yes the pace and processing!!! I get it! Thank you! ❤

This hits SO hard for me. Thank you so much. I really hope you’re having a good day and people are being kind🙏🙂🤗

Nice video

Thanks!

Back again after a period of a bad patch. Thanks for your hard work, Amanda. Much appreciated.

I related to much to your anxiety about your outing with your friend! When you were breaking down the thought patterns around worrying about if you were going to have lunch or not, and comparing yourself to others who might not worry about such things. That's exactly the road my mind travels down! My autism brain needs stability, I need to know what's going to happen in order to feel "safe". I've never been a "play it by ear" kind of person, I need to know what to expect so I can be prepared. I don't like surprises! And I do compare myself to others. I get so embarrassed about my anxiety, because I think that the things I worry about are so "weird". So I won't talk about my anxious thoughts with anyone, because I fear what they might think about me. But then keeping it inside makes me feel even more anxious! The only thing I didn't relate to was that I have always known I am a highly anxious person even as a child.

Watching this gave me an apifanie(sorry for bad spelling) At night if my bedtime routine with my son and dogs is off I get very cranky and shouty and don't calm down till I'm laying in bed. I'm in the process of getting an adult autism assessment done and it hit me that this might be me melting down. It only happens if it's passed bedtime and I'm tired. Thank you ❤

May I suggest summarizing all feelings into two descriptive words: 1. comfortable (want to feel) 2. uncomfortable (do not want). Figuring out the specific emotion's name, can be VERY difficult for me sometimes. I hope this helps.

I didnt recognize anxiousness for decades. A psychiatrist would ask me everytime I saw them, how is my anxiety, and I had to ask them "what is anxiety?" I find out in my late 30's, I'm always anxious.

when you flap your hands do you feel a tingling sensation afterwards, to the point where you wanna continue? I'm sorry if its off topic

Just dropping a comment to acknowledge everything you are saying. It's too familiar and yes, this high-phased world can be very overwhelming at times. You be you, you are amazing. Anyone who reads this - you too, have a wonderful day <3

Your journey is where I am at now too. 47 years old, and finally know why I am who I am, physically and mentally. It was actually my synesthesia and hyperphantasia being discovered during EMDR therapy that led me down the path. Not even my therapist believed that I was autistic until we started putting everything together. Thanks to being an only child with CPTSD, I had no idea the level of masking I had achieved. I am just starting to unpack it all.

Wowww this is me too in many ways! Thank you so much for sharing.

At 30 I hit burnout and then was getting out of the Army after 12 years. Had anxiety and depression. I felt finally free. I kept saying, I finally get to take the mask off. That I don’t love the army. I get to discover my real identity and build my own life…. Then I finally start to look into adhd and autism and maybe the combination. Then it’s like oh, I think I’m neuro-spicy. It’s been an interesting journey the last 4 years.

OMG, Wow! I identify all of that. I'm doing my research about this subject because I suspect I have ADHD and some Autistic characteristics. My story is parallel on RU-vid: When I am trying to do a voiceover for my video and as soon as I press record I get wrapped around the axle and off on a tangent. Even when something is rehearsed I push the record button and I do something different because recording caused me stress. When I hear myself back, I hear a different speech pattern... like I am talking slower, almost sound drunk, weird because I am not. And I edit out the pauses too... but voiceover I can snip the audio and the audience won't even know there was a pause. So I see the pauses and choppy speech pattern in myself as well. And like you, I am processing everything while "trying" to talk and it takes a lot effort to push past it. I know that our world is so fast-paced and while you're trying to get it out ppl jump ahead and try to finish your sentences and assume you're saying the OPPOSITE thing... and then I get panicked and try to speed up and lose the track and get distracted on a tangent and I don't complete the thought and left out something important. When it comes back to me "You didn't tell me X" all I have to say is that I meant to tell you, sorry. I had a loved one tell me that I am sort of weird: That speak up and say things when I shouldn't talk, and other times I don't say things when I should. And it never occurred to me that it was anything unusual, it just said that maybe it was me being socially-stupid or not savvy about business situations and that I needed to learn how to deal with them, and that I'll learn. I am getting better. But I still over-communicate. Honesty can be a downside to my character. Lastly, I want to say Thank you... how brave it is for you to show what this is like. I hope others find this video comforting in knowing they are not along. I have a little tear in my eye just seeing this and feeling understood. Wow. I shared more than I normal do.

"I'm really wiggly today!" 😅 I totally relate.

This is incredibly well put, thank you.

Thank you so much for sharing, that was SO relatable!

Amanda! I love the captioning! I follow another autistic creator, Claire from “Woodshed Theory,” and she does a podcast with fellow autistic creators. I’d like to suggest she reach out to you if that’s okay?

5:38 I absolutely agree.

I recognise some of these things. And you always make me have some aha moments of my own. But the karaoke-like subtitles were distracting. especially since they had multiple colors. They are pretty, but the yellow was a bit irritating. I guess since I'm used to just plain white subtitles without the karaoke-like tracker.

Thank you for the very informative information and for being open and honest about this disorder. May Abba [God] bless you and yours- and your ministry. May you be a positive influence on many people.

Thank you for this video, I have felt the same, even though I don't know if I am autistic. I have always been slow to express my ideas and sometimes I just kept silence because I knew people wouldn't have the patience to listen or would interrupt me, many people also say my voice is "too low". Also sometimes I am processing a lot of information and just can't articulate my thoughts or share my perspective at the moment. At this time of my life I don't care anymore about others (I used to try to be what others wanted but I just couldnt fake it and made me feel worse about myself) now I enjoy being me and just share when I feel it or someone asks me and trully takes the time and space to listen. I loved to hear you in this video, so much that I had to comment and I don't usually do that. I love listening to long pauses and silence and you trully feeling what you share, thank you 🙏🏼

I was born [in South Africa] with a brain tumor that was diagnosed at the age of 17 [in 1989]. [But] on the day that I had my MRI my MRI and that of another patient's were switched and it is obvious that we each had the wrong patient's [brain surgery] and no help [whatsoever] in putting our lives back together after experiencing these nightmarish surgeries. The doctors literally split the two hemispheres of my brain with the first surgery and my tumor was located in the limbic system that is right in the center of the brain [for a reason- to protect it]. My life was absolutely shattered because of these surgeries and [I never recovered] deep down inside. But this other patient [is] some sort of a twin- in my opinion, even though we never met in person. The doctors [should have done something] to help us put our lives back together, such as occupational therapy of some sort that meets us where we needed it. To add injury to insult or insult to injury the man who I ended up marrying turned out to be [emotionally and psychologically] abusive to me for 10 years. But what hehas done for [nearly] 12 years and it was bad before the actual split happened was by far [so much] worse. He was extremely controlling and even now he is abusing the system with what he has done the past [nearly 12 years]. My youngest son was born needing his frenulum to be trimmed and he was [mis]diagnosed as failure to thrive before they bothered to check his frenulum. He had a feeding tube for about 6 weeks and [that] was very traumatic for me to have to witness and it was difficult to care for a newborn baby with a feeding tube. [And] the medical personnel were not careful or gentle with how they removed the tape that kept his tube in place. They carelessly pulled the tape from his [very tender newborn baby skin] leaving his skin raw in the process. It was agony seeing him suffer that way. It was excruciating for me to see him suffer. At the end of 2012 things got to [some final point] and my [now ex] forced me into intensive counseling where I was away from my two sons for most of the morning, getting back later in the afternoon. [And it was extremely stressful for me to have to hear about everyone who was in the class- all their personal issues]. My situation was not very similar to everyone else there, either. When I spoke of my situation the people who worked there idenified my environment as domestic [emotional and psychological] abuse and offered to give me a place of refuge if the need arose. I was wanting to wait until things got [as bad as I could handle it- or too much- but things had been {bad} for a long time]. When I got home my ex told me that he and my sons' pediatrician had been talking and things were [going to change]. The words [phrasing/phaseology] that he used sounded extremely intimidating to me. I called 911 and they helped my sons and I get to the women's shelter. But this was just the beginning of the end for my life as a mother. When my ex found out that we were no longer there he took legal action against me and found two lawyers who [prey] on getting custody away from the mother at [any cost] and he [my ex] definitely had everything on his side and I had [no] protection, whatsoever. The women's shelter had no legal help and they sent me to the court using [whatever] transport I could find on my own. When a friend [contact from our local church] gave me a ride to the court I felt so very intimidated and my ex had changed his tactics of how he abused me because we had spent the past year living with friends and [his] family and he had become more subtle with his [emotional and psychological] abuse so that other people did not become aware of how he treated me. He had my sons permanently removed from my care [and it was so very awful and shocking to have four huge police officers handing {me} a restraining order when he was the one abusing me]. To this very day it hurts [so much] because of how my ex twisted what even the judge said in the order and he still treats me to this very day as if [I] am the criminal. My sons were 5 years old and 15 months old when it all went down and they are now 17 years old and 13 years old and there has not been any amount of time that I have seen them for more than 5 hours in any given week. And for the first two years I only saw them 2X- total- for 10 minutes [or rather less] the first time and no more than 2 or 3 hours [on the day after] my youngest son's 2nd birthday. [This {man} is so evil]. It hurts so [so] much. With my history of the brain surgeries- I have never been able to find a [job] as so many people carelessly say to me all the time. I am now in my [5-0's] and [I really don't know what I can say to end this explanation of my life. But [thankfully] Abba [God] did send me a much more kind and understanding husband. We have been married for nearly 8 and a half years. [I really miss my mom, who still lives in South Africa]. My dad passed away nearly 5 years ago, just before the [Plan]demic. It isn't easy. My mom will be 80 years old next month. But the reason I watched this video is- with my history of what happened to my brain- what are the odds of me [not] having this disorder- on top of what happened to me? I have [never {fitted in}] and all manner of people have made it clear to me that this is the case.

Aw I hate those "Everything feels wrong" days :( My putting-up-with-discomfort items are some crew-neck tshirts with designs from my favourite video game. Crew-neck tshirts make me wiggly and twitchy, but at least they're not as bad as turtleneck shirts. I haven't worn a turtleneck since I was 4 when it was clear that I couldn't function in them and wasn't going to get used to them. Thank you for sharing this. I also have troubles around friendships, but the best way I can describe it right now is that at some point I inevitably feel like I've shown my "weirdness" too much, so I withdraw. Also, I have to work to pay rent so I don't have much energy left over for friendships. Gah!

thanks for sharing your therapy experience so we can know what to work on

Well, sadly just before You asked I thought "Oh, I can so much relate to that, damn!". If You want to make it worse, I can tell You how😉: Everytime You meet someone You like just think about very intensively "They will definitely find me too much". And then if they don´t react the way You expected and ask You to meet for a coffee or whatever sabotage it right in the beginning by telling them "I think I should tell You BEFORE that I am not the easy person You see in me now". Reaction: They will find THIS akward and not ask again, good job😫 😖Yep, that´s what I did before totally giving up and withdrawing from any social events and just staying at home with my cat. Not very smart, of cause, but I guess just some trauma response way to try to secure myself from getting hurt again "when they see how bad I really am and leave me then when I like them and it will hurt". But knowing about and now having an idea WHY helps, also hearing from You or others I am not alone with this. So thank You again for talking about😚

You have an EXELLENT hair day, Amanda! Am jelous about Your beautiful curls again😘

Autistic, ADHD, aphantasic (and oh my god I'm so glad I don't have your memory :o but I have synesthesia to compensate) and yes, generally YT prefers ONE topic. But thanks to you I find myself, for me you make the difference, what I learn makes the difference for my family. After an 8-year journey where my doctor told me that I am autistic, it took me a burnout 6 months ago to finally see myself as autistic and, by force of circumstances: to unmask. So I took a special interest in autism, obviously, and I learn about myself by watching creators talk about autism. But how can I learn from you all, if you hide? Please, take your time, take breaks, I don't have x2. (sorry if my English is bad) Sincères tendres pensées <3