Autism, Uncategorized

I Don’t Have Stories, I Have a Medical History

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This is an image of Sara Luterman as a child. She is wearing a red sweater and leggings. She has brown hair and glasses. Sara is holding a basketball that is larger than her head. Four years ago, I was volunteering at the hydrocephalus center for a fairly famous hospital. I had been invited to sit in on an important meeting or procedure – I don’t actually remember which at this point. What I do remember is that I was going to be late. I remember the consuming sense of dread, rage and confusion increased with every passing minute I sat in my car. I couldn’t be late. I didn’t know how to be late. So I did the only thing that seemed sensible to me at the time: I turned the car around and went home. Then I didn’t speak … Continue Reading ››
Uncategorized

Advice for Therapists from a Neurodiversity Advocate

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Thanks to the success of Steve Silberman’s ‘Neurotribes,’ therapists and service providers have become aware of neurodiversity. On one hand, this is wonderful. A concept Autistic self-advocates have been celebrating for years has hit the mainstream. It seems that therapists and service providers are finally listening to autistic people speak. On the other hand, there seem to be many misunderstandings about what neurodiversity, and by extension allyship, entails. Therapy can only be enriched by neurodiversity, if therapists will let it.

A common misconception about neurodiversity is that we are pushing the idea that autism is not a disability. It's true that in general, neurodiversity advocates believe that autism is not a ‘disorder.’ You'd be hard pressed to find advocates who don't consider autism a disability, though. We know, through our lived experience, that autism is a disability. The world we live in was not built for us. Or at … Continue Reading ››
Uncategorized

Autism Self-Diagnosis is not Special Snowflake Syndrome

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Recently, 4chan-flavored trolls invaded the #autchat hashtag. For the uninitiated, Autchat is a bi-weekly discussion group for Autistic people. Past topics have included friendship, autistic representation in media and strategies for coping with executive dysfunction. The community is usually warm, welcoming and a great place to learn. Instead, participants were told to commit suicide or drink bleach to ‘cure’ autism. The source of their ire? An Autchat regular and middle-aged mother of two described herself as ‘informally diagnosed.’ Autism self-diagnosis is a topic that can evoke strong feelings in many people. It isn’t unusual for adults to self-diagnose. It also isn’t unusual to get a lot of push back or even violent threats for self-diagnosis. Why does self-diagnosis make people so angry? More importantly, why do people self-diagnose in the first place? The hostility directed at self-diagnosis is, fundamentally, based in ignorance of what factors lead to its existence: Healthcare … Continue Reading ››
Autism, Sesame Street

I See Amazing Potential in Sesame Street

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This week, Sesame Workshop launched a campaign, ‘See Amazing,’ to help educate their audience about autism. A new puppet, Julia, helps beloved characters Elmo and Abby Cadabby model how to interact positively with autistic children in a digital storybook. Parents and siblings of autistic children share their experiences and provide a glimpse into their lives. A new music video, The Amazing Song, stresses that people communicate differently and that’s OK. All children are amazing in their own way. The ‘See Amazing’ campaign is heartwarming and accepting. Full disclosure, I cried (in a good way) the first time I saw the video for The Amazing Song. Instead of asserting that alternative forms of communication and expression, like hand flapping, are wrong or pathological, they’re presented as simple difference. In videos that feature real people, autistic children communicate using augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) devices … Continue Reading ››
Election 2016, Mental Health

Bernie Sanders is Wrong About Roseburg

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This is a screencap of Bernie Sanders speaking about the campus shooting in Oregon on MSNBC This Tuesday, presidential candidate Bernie Sanders once again linked the recent mass shooting at Umqua Community College to mental illness. This wasn’t the first time Sanders has conflated the two issues and that makes me nervous. Mental health policy based on the assumption that mentally ill people are more likely to murder others is not only untrue, but heaps stigma onto an already vulnerable population. The day of the massacre, Bernie Sanders appeared on MSNBC. One of the first policy positions he took on the subject was that people who are mentally ill should not be able to own guns. Personally, I don’t have any desire to own a gun, but it’s utterly fallacious to lump disabled people and violent criminals together without even a pause. In the … Continue Reading ››