When life is hard work: the problem with 'economic inactivity'

I haven’t written much in a while because life became hard work. Not in any significant way to ‘write home about’ but enough to make it hard to find the energy and time for writing. One positive thing that’s been consuming my energy is trying to build a housing co-op, the existence of which should make it easier for everyone that’s housed there to have the space and capacity to truly live. With our commitment to making the monthly rent as closely aligned to Local Housing Allowance as possible, and the substantial reduction in mental load that sharing responsibilities for cooking, cleaning and caring would create, I’m excited to see what living actually looks like for those involved and what choices we each make when we aren’t so alone in sustaining that life. 

Already there have been mentions of running different community spaces - from a community laundrette to a community garden to a community printing press! As a relationship anarchist I’ve been getting excited about having more people involved in my childrens’ and partners’ lives, as well as space to invest more care in the relationships outside of the housing co-op too. It being a predominantly queer space gets me excited about working together to campaign around lgbt+ rights, especially in the face of growing hate towards the trans community. And having experienced the toll that autistic meltdowns or mental health issues can take, as well as the way that physical ailments can knock you sideways unexpectedly, working collectively to cushion those kinds of reverberations for multiple people feels like a very productive use of time. 

Interestingly though, if any of us actually claimed benefits such as the housing allowance in order to pay for our rent we’d likely be classed as ‘economically inactive’ by the state. Which is kind of funny given the word ‘economy’ derives from the greek word meaning “household management”, and we’d be building a more sustainable and resilient household than most people will have the opportunity to experience in their lifetime. 

As part of my work at Collaborative Future I spent quite some time thinking about how to make work more accessible and equitable. Armed with the belief that everyone had something to contribute to the workplace, and deserved an opportunity to do work they loved, I have worked tirelessly with organisations to make them more flexible, open and less biassed and oppressive. The programmes we ran focussed on people who were unemployed and underemployed, and while it was much better than employment support that comes from a deficit based view of unemployed people, I’m beginning to wonder why I fight so hard to get employers to change their practices and beliefs when the real problem is society’s relationship with labour, and who should be expected to those forms of labour. 

The reality is that if you have a chronic condition that can flare up at any time there is no amount of flexibility from an employer or understanding from your team that is going to enable you to do your work in the ways that you want or need to (and don’t forget the grief processing time needed when you are reminded daily that your wants and needs aren’t the same thing). If you have to face microaggressions in most environments whether it’s going to the gym, visiting the GP or travelling on the bus, you’re going to be on edge in your work regardless of how much work your teammates do to dismantle their white supremacy or transmisogyny. If you are raising kids in an abusive relationship, no amount of money or education is going to get you out of that situation, it takes love and care from a community that you likely don’t have. 

For some of us, living is hard work in itself and we still fail to recognise that as a society. Partly because it requires us to entirely dismantle our capitalistic systems of labour, which those in power profit from and all of us depend upon regardless of how active or inactive we are within it. While I’ve got endless advice and guidance for organisations wishing to be a better employer, I haven’t yet got a big bright vision for a society where no-one is considered ‘economically inactive’ and where our economic freedom isn’t tied to our capacity to ‘earn a living’. Sure I’ve spent a lot of time in discussions about Universal Basic Income, but I fear the generic nature of it and our hangups about treating everyone ‘equally’ (without treating them equitably) will hold back the possibilities of it.  So here’s five things I’m trying to embed within my own life to help me decouple my economy and activity from our Economy. 

1. Rest (and pleasure) is resistance

“Bodies are not machines… rest, sleep, daydreaming and slowing down can help us all wake up to the truth of ourselves” - Rest is Resistance, Tricia Hershey (Founder of Nap Ministry)

After a decade of presuming that success was tied to how fast and how much I worked, only to repeatedly find myself simultaneously scrambling out and slipping back in to debt, I finally burnt out and faced a somewhat suicidal and occasionally psychotic state of affairs. Luckily I met a partner at this point in time who wasn't phased by my mental health challenges, and who showed me that one of the ways to overcome my demons was to allow myself to be consumed by lust and pleasure and post-sex naps. I remember how healing it was the times we sacked off work for an afternoon in bed, proudly declaring that the answer to all of the world's ills was more orgasms.

What I experienced for the first time was many things: being deeply loved, being in control of my body, feeling present, and enjoying extended space to rest my body and mind. As an occasional insomniac this same partner is also sleep obsessed, and spent a lot of time discussing the effects of my interrupted sleep from having small children. I would never have accessed this kind of support and knowledge from the healthcare system if I'd approached them for support with my mental health. 

And part of that is because if the answer to much of our problems is simply rest, how does capitalism continue to function? 

2. Knowing what is earned and what is a gift

It is a gift that I can choose to rest. And I also earn that rest. It is a gift because you exchange one or two details of my life and I might be in wildly different circumstances right now. It is a gift because it relies upon the people around me doing work on themselves to not be resentful of me resting when they can’t. But it is also earned, not because I work hard to “earn a living”, but because I work hard on thinking about how I want to and should exist in the world when so much of the world is set up to stop me from having to work on that. I could’ve made the choice to remain on a high london salary back in 2019 when I got pregnant with my second child - and that would’ve been the easiest choice to make in our society right now because I’d have something to prove my worth, and because I’d have no fear about where my income was coming from. I could’ve made the choice to stay in a marriage that wasn’t right for me and I would be told that I’d ‘worked hard’ at that relationship, but in many ways it’s been harder work to leave and exist outside of that normative structure. But it’s also a gift that I could make that choice, because it is impossible for many people to have agency over their own lives for reasons beyond their control. 

Being able to unpack for myself what has been gifted to me and what I have earned has enabled me to be more humble about where I am at and what I expect of others. And reminds me to make use of the power I have in the moments I have it, because that power can disappear just as rapidly as it appeared.

3. Community is strength

Since having kids I’ve heard far too many people talking about how they have no-one to help them with childcare, and as a result it feels like the next generation is being raised on fumes! Some of this is a Political issue - we don’t invest in affordable childcare within this country. Some of it is cost of living issue - many people have had to move away from family in order to afford rent or mortgage. But some of it is an issue of what we value and invest in as individuals. The support network for my kids grew exponentially when I chose expansive forms of love. Living an openly polyamorous life has meant I now have two partners and an ex who I co-parent with. As a result there’s more than two adults involved in daily life with the kids, and I get the love and care that keeps me steady as a main carer. But as a relationship anarchist, my ability to build intimate connections with many people regardless of levels of commitments also means that I have more friends and chosen family than I used to that want to show care for me and my family regardless of their ‘status’ within my life. 

But it hasn’t just been polyamory that enables me to create a stable support system. Running community events, hosting regular gatherings for friends, buying locally, supporting people with their ideas, being authentically me with those I work with and talking about my life openly has all led to an increase in the deep profound connections that shape my world. And as a result I no longer fear being ‘alone’ with most of the common questions we all face - “how do I do everything I need to do” and “how do I respond when shit hits the fan.

4. Rallying around those most affected / those best positioned to respond in crisis

With the genocide in Gaza it’s been hard to know as someone so removed how best to show solidarity. When we ate a palestinian restaurant we decided to leave a big tip because many of the staff would be sending money back home right now. This aprroach to solidarity feels more meaningful than a random donation on a charity website or angry letters to MPs who might then raise concerns in parliament just to be overridden by others. And it got me thinking about how as a society we rarely think about supporting those who are closest to those affected by a crisis. 

Some of us (me) have a saviour complex, which isn’t always helpful. When our local community farm flooded I felt great that I had the existing relationship with them to be able to jump right in and start clearing the debris, but if I’d rocked up to volunteer without being part of the farm before that point I would likely have just caused extra work for the team. So if I wasn’t affected by flooding, and I didn’t have any direct relationship with those who were, perhaps the most important thing I can do is pay attention to those who are able to offer direct support and fund them to take time off work to be able to respond / look after their kids /  fill their cup when they are exhausted and worn down. 

On the flipside some people believe that other people’s problems have nothing to do with them (unless of course it’s a pandemic and everyone is scared shitless that they could be next). If we were to build our society based on the knowledge that everyone is ’not yet disabled’, ‘not yet homeless’, and only one fascist leader away from violent forms of oppression - would we do more to care for those who are already subject to these things?

5. Working in a life-affirming way

When life is hard work, many people have to settle with soul-destroying forms of labour. Things that sap us further of any point of existence. But it feels like the opposite should be true. When life is hard, any labour we engage in needs to feel life-affirming. 

When I set up Collaborative Future I was tired of unnecessary bullshit. While it was partly created out of necessity, as the only form of employment I could access, it was also created out of a fierce desire for young people to be able to access their fullness as human beings, not solely as cogs in a machine, and in turn it allowed me to access my truth too. The mutual care we had throughout all of our work, and the decisions to always breathe more life into each other was profoundly important. Honestly one of my favourite moments during Collaborative Future was encouraging my co-founder to sack off work to go on a date - they fell madly in love and are living a beautiful life with that partner now. I'm not sure how to share things like this as career achievements but they mean more than anything you’ll see on my Linkedin profile.

For the past few years I’ve been doing what felt like a bit of a random mush of stuff, and it’s sometimes hard to know how to explain myself. I work with a bunch of health economists and health funders to be more thoughtful about how they address health inequalities. I organise workshops and gatherings about food, relationships, creativity etc. I facilitate team away days. I write about energy genitals. I facilitate community researchers to share practices with one another. I go to sex parties and dream of running my own. I interview people for reports about power dynamics. I write about autism. I raise two kids, and want to help more people raise theirs. I design more human HR policies. I train people to be better at holding space. I DJ when I can. I dream about being a boxing coach one day. Sometimes I pick and pack vegetables for veg boxes. I study to become a death doula. I run playfighting events. And there’s so many more spaces I want to venture into and feel the mutual expansion of myself and others as we explore possibilities.

When I listened to “Embodied Entanglements” episode on For the Wild where they talked about funghi, and “behaving in a way that likes life” I realised that’s the common thread through everything I do.  Because when life is hard enough work as it is, we don’t need to work in ways that make it harder.

Understanding autistic meltdowns

Before I understood myself as autistic I experienced overwhelming reactions to many layers of life on a regular basis. But because I’d been socialised in a world that taught me these were out of proportion / weird / dramatic, I learnt to hold my meltdowns in until I was in private. Internalising that energy slowly destroyed my body - to the point where I had bowel and fatigue issues so severe that I relentlessly pushed through my trauma around the medical profession in order to try to understand it. I truly believe that if I hadn’t learnt about my autism I’d be severely ill or no longer alive right now.

Learning to accept myself as autistic has meant learning to accept that my brain processes the world differently. In doing so, it has created space and safety for my body to do what it needs to do at times of overwhelm - and while meltdowns are painful and scary in their own ways (especially when I get repetitive meltdowns that affect me every day for a whole week) at least now I can begin to look at them for what they are and shape my life in ways that accommodates my processing needs.

Two of the most important things on my journey have been a) understanding that meltdowns aren’t necessarily a sign of something ‘bad’ and b) having partners and friends who are not afraid to move with me through meltdowns and reflect and learn about them together. So I thought I’d share more about what causes meltdowns for me, and tactics we’ve explored to help us manage/embrace meltdowns as part of normal life.

What does a meltdown look/feel like?

Every autistic person is unique. And not everyone will experience meltdowns. But for me meltdowns are very intense outbursts of physical and emotional energy, which can include things like screaming, punching my own head repeatedly and other sudden acts of self-harm. The meltdown itself can last anything from a minute to much longer repeated outbursts within a single day - though there are also ways my brain starts to fragment during the build up to a meltdown.

These days I can often feel a meltdown building, which helps me implement some coping mechanisms and communicate my needs. But, if a meltdown decides it’s arriving it is sometimes impossible to stop it entirely, so the build up can feel like a tidal wave or inevitable flood which sometimes creates more anxiety within me.

Once the meltdown is released, I can feel tired afterwards but I generally feel relief and return to relatively normal/calm state fairly rapidly. This can be a particularly confusing element for other people as there is often a misconception that intense expressions of pain mean there are more sustained / deeper feelings underneath, which is why it’s important to understand what someone’s meltdowns represent and where they come from specifically.

What causes a meltdown?

For me, meltdowns are caused by a variety of things. There have been times in my past where I have experienced more ‘typical’ forms of stress or sadness which have resulted in more ‘typical’ forms emotional outburst - but for me meltdowns are generally disconnected from levels of contentment within life / levels of ‘emotional stability’.

Some of the things that can lead to my meltdowns include:

• Overstimulation - this could be due to too much of something such as too much noise / too much touch. It’s important to note that this includes painful or pleasurable overstimulation. I can enjoy going to music gigs, or connecting with new people but it still cause an energetic build up within me that turns into a meltdown (yes being ecstatically happy and excitable can lead to a meltdown for me)

• Feeling misunderstood / feeling confused - this is probably not just connected to pure autism but perhaps more to the trauma of being autistic (which is  a whole other blog post). There are times where I cannot connect my thinking with other people’s way of perceiving and end up getting trapped in loops of misunderstanding which start to build up distress in my body. This is particularly hard when I appear to have caused someone else pain by saying or doingsomething I thought was completely uncontroversial. It’s often not always as simple as letting stuff go / writing something off as a difference of perspective for me (which is also a whole other blog post)

• Not being able to flow/ Not knowing what to do with myself  - Autistic people tend to have states of hyperfocus that can feel really enjoyable and aligned with how their brains work. When this is abruptly interrupted it can feel physically and mentally painful. In addition, we also have states of inertia where it’s hard to start the next thing we need to do, if I get trapped in this state it can start to build towards a meltdown if I don’t get space and support release that energy. 

Quite often people can get confused by how one day I might appear to have a meltdown over something like getting dressed or showering, and other days I’m completely fine. This is because for me the actual act itself is not necessarily the problem - it’s about where my brain is in terms of it’s processing state. If I’ve been overstimulated and then I try to shower it might take me a long time to get our of a state of inertia and that can then cause a physical meltdown. 

In addition, for me meltdowns are a result of built up energy. And this energy builds up at different paces depending on how your brain works and the context you are in. I might be completely fine attending a concert of my favourite band on my own because the songs are familiar and being alone reduces the risk of feeling confused by a friends plans. But I might have a meltdown at another concert with a friend because the music and lighting is unfamiliar and perhaps it is more overstimulating as a result, and I also have to work hard to align myself to someone else’s flow for the evening. 

I often describe this as a dripping or running tap that overflows my cup. Sometimes the overstimulation or confusion is just a slow steady dripping, other times it can run quickly and flood my brain. 

Adapting to meltdowns and reducing their harmful impact 

Unless we change the entirety of society my meltdowns aren’t going to suddenly disappear. In Atypical it really irks me when the mum celebrates the fact her son hasn’t had a meltdown in a month because, at best, it simply means he’s releasing the meltdown in less painful ways, or at worst he’s suppressing the meltdowns which will likely have a bigger detrimental effect further down the line. This is why rather than trying to figure out a ‘cure’ for meltdowns, I’ve arrived at a place of accepting my meltdowns as a reality of being autistic in a world not designed for people like me - and even if the world adapted around my needs my brain still might need to do intense releases at times. 

But it’s also not sustainable or healthy for me or others around me to simply let my meltdowns wreak havoc so I wanted to share a few things my community are working on with me.

Preparing for meltdowns

By finally coming to terms with meltdowns as part of my reality I’m able to work with my partners and friends to prepare for the impact of them. 

When I’m in meltdown mode it is not as simple as deciding you need to do something to regulate when it arrives. My brain and body are no longer mine - it lashes out in ways that I have no control over, and I can lose my memory almost entirely. Which is why we developed strategies such as having a ‘Brain Melt’ playlist I can listen to on repeat, or a box full of goodies and reminders that can give me options for activities (though I’m still trying to work out how to remember the box exists when I’m on my own and having a meltdown). 

One of my partners has also written me a letter to read when he isn’t there or struggles to be present within a meltdown. And I’m building up the amount of people that understand the intricacies of my meltdowns so I can return to others for co-regulation when I can’t move out of the meltdown state on my own. 

I’m still learning how to structure my life in a more flexible way that enables me to feel confident to cancel social or work plans as I can feel a meltdown building but I’m not there yet with anyone but my closest connections, plus I’m still processing an immense amount of grief around the idea that I have to make space for meltdowns in this way. 

Responding to the warning signs 

I’ve noticed recently that if we can catch the early warning signs we can do things to plateau my energetic build up, but despite a lot of attention paid to this we have also gotten it wrong many times and ended up simply delaying the meltdown because we haven’t created space for me to release.

One of the warning signs for me is what I call ‘broken glass brain’. My thinking starts to fragment  and often in a bid to explain the intense pain within my brain I will start to express anxious thoughts about core parts of me or my community that can be quite contradictory to how I usually feel. In it’s extreme this can become a form of paranoia - where my brain is in so much pain and confusion that my I begin to rationalise that experience by presuming that others are intentionally confusing me or fear around whether they care for me, or by turning in on myself and pointing out the parts of me that deserve to feel that way. 

And this can seemingly come out of the blue even in spaces where I feel loved and affirmed. I was recently at a queer bar with a good friend of mine, dancing away, when suddenly the music, space and all the new faces became unbearable. All it was was a form of overstimulation, but in that moment my brain wants to give me more ‘rational’ reasons for feeling that way and floods me with anxious thoughts. 

At this point many people will want to reassure me around my anxieties, which doesn’t work because the brewing meltdown was never about those anxieties - it was about energy build up that needs to be released physically. Instead when partners or friends recognises these warning signs they might squeeze my arms repeatedly to release the energy build up, suggest I go outside for a walk or rock with me back and forth with my headphones on. 

But while these acts can help lessen the effects of the meltdown I’ve found I need to do a lot more to take me right back down to a regulated state that can be sustained. Quite often this can be hard because it will likely involve cancelling social plans or work plans and spending a day decompressing / eating well / exercising etc if I want to avoid the meltdown building back up again. 

Avoiding worsening the meltdown

There are many ways that I and others have responded to my meltdowns in the past that have actually elongated them and exacerbated the harmful nature of them. And some of the examples of this directly link to the causes of meltdowns - by which I mean we can sometimes respond with things that were actually part of what caused the meltdown in the first instance.

For example, if feeling misunderstood can cause me to have a meltdown then the experience of someone being confused by meltdown will just make it worse. Or if make myself hold in my outbursts it’s a very explicit example of not being able to flow and therefore I get more stuck within the meltdown.

I also require others to shield me from unnecessary stimulation because when I’m not yet melting down I often overestimate my threshold. One of the most beautiful acts one of my partners did before either of us really understood me as autistic was that he took his noise cancelling headphones off and simply plopped them on my ears when we were on a busy tube because he could see me starting to get overwhelmed.

Giving in to a meltdown 

Sometimes no matter how much I look after my physical and mental health a meltdown will arise as a result of something unexpected. And I’m learning that feeling less embarrassed about how my meltdowns look to other people enables me to express them more quickly and safely, and other people can help with this too. 

Once I’ve started to fall into a head-banging space now one of my partners will often put his whole body weight on me if we are in a safe space to do so, or squeeze me with his whole body to keep me contained. The strength of him against me releases my physical sensations and I can sometimes almost ‘come to’ as if I’m an entirely new person that has stepped into my body. 

Another thing I’ve found once the meltdown has arrived is that I get complete time-blindness. I feel like I’ve been stuck in that sensation forever, that it will never pass. It’s why my meltdowns in the past have been known to turn into suicidal ideation, which can be really scary for someone that thought I was absolutely loving life just yesterday - because I was and still am, it’s just that something has overstimulated me and now I’ve lost all sense of reality in a way that I feel will never end. 

I’ve recently bought myself a visible timer which I’m going to use as I let out my meltdowns to enable me to know not to panic and that it will pass. I also find listening to music helps me to understand that it’s just a song or two until the feeling fades. 

After a meltdown 

Meltdowns are exhausting for everyone involved. Though quite often I find I personally spring back from meltdowns feeling more alive / focussed / capable than many people expect. Again this is because it isn’t a response to a form of depression or anything that is emotionally weighing on me on a daily basis. It is the energetic release that comes with a meltdown that frees up my brain to function again. 

So in the early days I would have recovered fairly rapidly, but my partner who had witnessed all of the harm would feel exhausted and confused. I’ve been learning to show care for myself and others in this aftermath rather than berating myself for causing inconvenience or pain to others. 

I also have times where multiple meltdowns can happen within a single week, so even though I come out the other side of the meltdown feeling much better I need to remind myself to take it slow and keep negative stimulation to minimum to avoid slipping into another meltdown soon after.

The other thing that occurs for me is I will lose my memory of most of the detail of a meltdown. If I’ve hurt myself during the meltdown I might forget why my head or hand is hurting, or if I’ve said anything during a meltdown it’s likely I won’t remember that either. My partner and counsellor both play a role in helping me to retrace my steps and understand what was going on for me so that I’m able to continue to develop my strategies for dealing with meltdowns going forward. 

The upsides of meltdowns

The reality is I experience meltdowns as a result of feeling the world very intensely. And this shows up in joyful euphoric ways as much as it shows up in painful ways. The other side of the way energy builds and fragments my brain, is the same process that occurs when energy builds in a way that creates magnificent creative connections within my brain. The way my body responds with losing all sense of time and having very physical outbursts, is the same process that is occurring when I have the most ecstatic mind-bending orgasms or whole body responses to beautifully stimulating food, touch or music. 

In addition meltdowns are a very visceral way for my brain and body to speak to me about what I need and should be paying attention to. The majority of humankind are so cut off from their somatic processing that they can be completely oblivious to the perpetual harm they are inflicting on themselves and that the system is inflicting on them. My meltdowns might be hard to navigate within a system that only values certain ways of existing / certain ways of communicating and expressing / certain forms of productivity, but it keeps me grounded in who I am and acts as a marker for the ways the system is in conflict with that… giving me an opportunity to be deeply conscious of the life I’m building and why that’s important and meaningful to me.

7 things I've done this week that you might not associate with autism

Trigger warning: This post does mention suicidality and mental health. However it may give you a fresh lens on what it means to experience feelings of suicidality.

I’ve had many highs and lows as I’ve started to understand myself as autistic over the last year. But this week I had some profound realisations about what my brain can do when it’s allowed to operate in the way it was meant to, and the ways my body reacts when it’s not allowed to operate in the way it needs to. I’d love to hear if any of these resonate with other autistic or allistic people!

1. Drawn what I was trying to say

Sometimes I feel like the English language was not made for Autistic processing or experiences. I can often feel like I'm both in constant translation mode and that my words come out faster than I've processed what I actually mean.

When I draw scenarios, feelings or ideas it offers more nuance around what I'm actually trying to say. It tends to communicate my intentions and experiences more realistically and clearly. And it is far more soothing and reassuring for me than talking.

2. Looked up at an actual visual thought

Sometimes my face does ‘weird’ things that in the past people have been confused or disconcerted by. What this has meant is that I often mask my autistic tendencies so as not to make other people feel uncomfortable, and in turn that limits the way my brain works naturally and makes me worse at conversation/problem-solving/brainstorming etc. In contrast I love working with people like my partner and those I connect with via Collaborative Future because I mask less in conversations. And it meant that as myself and a co-facilitor, Joel, were planning a workshop this week I was able to freely say “one second”, physically look up at the intricate visual thought that was going on in my head and then communicate with more clarity on how we should run an exercise within the session.

3. Asked to be squeezed

I LOVE being squeezed. Not only does it regulate me in times of stress but it also gives me huge waves of sensory euphoria (sometimes I reckon my body enjoys squeezing more than most ‘normal’ people enjoy orgasms). Both my partners now know instinctively how to squeeze my arms when I’m feeling rejected, how to squeeze my body when I’m feeling overwhelmed, how to squeeze my head when I’m all in a muddle and it has absolutely transformed my daily life and my capacity to keep going with things.

4. Made eye contact

For years the stereotype of autistic people not making eye contact stopped me from ever actively exploring autism as an explanation for my experience of the world. However there are two completely opposing situations where I make eye contact regularly. The first is when I’m feeling deeply uncomfortable and like I need to look as “normal” as possible in order to get through a situation and where I need to be hyper aware of people’s facial expressions because I don’t yet know what all of someone’s behaviours/intonation mean. This happened at a kids birthday party this week and I was super overwhelmed by the end of it.

The second is when I’m deeply comfortable with someone and I can get lost in them or lost with them. If I know someone so well (and it can take a good year or so of continuous interaction to get to this point - and continuous questioning of what their facial expressions mean) then I can easily sit and look at them as we talk and enjoy losing the need to think about either of our faces and just hear the words.

5. Talked avidly about the intricacies of Music

One of my most enjoyable and energising moments this week was when my partner asked me how a piece of music would’ve been recorded. I could instantly visualise the recording studio that I used to go in when I was studying Music Technology as a teenager and could imagine all of the layers building up with the piece we were listening too. I also really enjoyed it when he asked me to make a very specific type of playlist for his gym sessions because I could explore a specific genre that I hadn’t been familiar with for a while, along with a direction and purpose that helped me narrow down what songs to include.

Understanding the importance of autistic special interests has been profound for me. There have been whole chunks of my life when I’ve ‘lost’ my special interests because others have seen it as unimportant or because work/relationships/children have taken over but spending a short amount of regular time building my energy & exhilaration in this way can have profoundly positive affects on my brain.

6. Been suicidal

On Monday I was seemingly suicidal. Even though I’m technically the happiest I've ever been. Living in an allistic world with an autistic mind is draining and confusing and has, I now realise, caused me an immense amount of cPTSD as a result. (I recently joked with my partner to share something "normal" and I'll tell them why it's triggering) I also wasn't able manage the signs of impending burnout and overload that were occuring for me so eventually they had to explode out of my skin and brain in a very vocal and physical way.

While someone with allistic communication and "typical" ways of rationalising situations would've seen no reason for feelings of suicidality in this moment, the physical pain and mental burden that I experience at these times can mean the only way of communicating the immenseness and intensity of it is through the idea of death and the act of self-harm.

This may sound strange to some but my partner and I actually concluded with our counsellor that in moments like that I need to be acknowledged (i.e. Yes that’s understandable that you feel that way) and then left to my own devices so that I can be comfortable doing whatever physical stimming I need to do. And in many cases it has been known to pass as rapidly as it came on. In the past this switch has left some people confused: how I can be suicidal one moment, causing them absolute devastation and out enjoying myself the next. It’s because I’m not depressed. I’ve had an intense autistic meltdown where those are the only words that come close to describing what I’m experiencing in that very moment, but once it’s been allowed to be released my body and brain feels liberated.

7. explored hundreds of pasts & futures in 15 minutes

I misheard something my partner said to me this week as a rejection of us and our life together, and as a result my brain spent time rapidly processing everything I’ve ever experienced in the past that was connected to that one sentence, and every possible route through ‘what next’ in order to problem-solve myself out of the situation. I only noticed the sheer amount of experiences and the level of detail that my brain thought through on response to this one sentence because it turned out I’d misheard and we had to go back and redo the conversation in order to unravel the image I’d built up in my head. Now we all do this at an unconscious level. The difference I find with autism (and likely trauma) is that it is happening at a conscious level and I can sometimes feel like I’m literally experiencing all of those past and future scenarios all at once. It was so intense that it rendered me mute. What it made me realise is that part of the reason I probably struggle with some “executive functioning” and social interactions is because the level at which my conscious brain is operating is off the chart. It’s processing so many layers all the time - which is great in some scenarios (like spotting the intricate team dynamics in my work around DEI & organisational culture) and awful at other times when my partner thought we were just going to have a basic conversation.