Autistic Adults

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Autistic Adults - focused on those age 23 and older where the individual person has left the organized structure of school or military and is dealing with autism in adulthood. Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in adulthood.

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“No Way Out Except From External Intervention”: First-Hand Accounts of Autistic Inertia (www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov)

submitted 11 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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This study is unique in considering difficulty initiating tasks of any type in real life settings, and by gathering qualitative data directly from autistic people. Four face-to-face and 2 online (text) focus groups were conducted with 32 autistic adults (19 female, 8 male, and 5 other), aged 23–64 who were able to express their internal experiences in words.

[...] Participants described difficulty starting, stopping and changing activities that was not within their conscious control. While difficulty with planning was common, a subset of participants described a profound impairment in initiating even simple actions more suggestive of a movement disorder. Prompting and compatible activity in the environment promoted action, while mental health difficulties and stress exacerbated difficulties. Inertia had pervasive effects on participants’ day-to-day activities and wellbeing.

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[–] [email protected] 4 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

This phenomenon, evoked by Too Much Shit Going On Around Me, is in some sense destroying my life.

I mean, the alternate path I've been on because of sensory sensitivity + autistic inertia has taught me a ton of valuable shit over the past half decade, so if I ever manage to get into a better situation I'll be so much better prepared than I ever was before, now that I understand this stuff... but I'm trading years of my life for the insight, years spent locked in by inertia for a great portion of almost every single day... plus a not-small measure of damage to my health from all the fucking drugs I have to take in order to not go absolutely insane, become completely dysregulated, be constantly highkey suicidal etc in such a scenario.

Also, a tangent, but I really wish there were fewer typos in this paper, this kind of research is utterly critical to getting a better living situation for millions of people on the spectrum, and the typos don't help that. K, done complaining about my pet peeve.