Autistic brains can be in danger of overload while grocery shopping. When that happens autistics needs a quiet space—fast. But there are usually none in big stores.
Category: sensory
The thing about PDA or “Pathological Demand Avoidance” is that there are a lot of reasons why someone would resist doing something, and it’s often more complex than it appears on the surface.
Every time I find a new ear protection tool, I am more and more amazed as to how other people can believe that we’re hearing the same thing.
Retreat isn’t just a quiet room, it is an explicitly neurodivergent space. Nothing about us without us, right? It’s a place to stim freely, drop the mask a little, and find some neurodivergent kinfolk.
Sound dampening a space, especially at home, can be helpful for a lot of reasons: Many autistic people have auditory sensitivity, and sounds can be a reason for sensory overload.
Autistic people process our senses differently, and that’s okay! Autism makes us who we are, and sensory processing is an important part of being autistic. People should try and understand autism and how it makes us different, instead of trying to change us.
At any given time, I have to pause and give serious consideration as to whether or not turning a light on or off, or walking to a different room, will be worth the discomfort. I think for most people, this can seem like a minor thing, but in the course of a day, even minimal differences with lights can add up to a substantial impact.
Dyspraxia is when you have a lot of trouble with motor planning, which is our ability to learn new movements. So it’s not the practicing part of it, it’s the learning part. When you’re introduced to [a new movement], how smoothly can your brain understand what the demands are and get your body to do that?
For people with sensory access needs (like reactions to scented products), accommodations are not acts of good faith or favors, they are our rights!