Autistic Julian Bashir in ep 1.12 “Battle Lines”
The screencaps don’t do a good job of showing it, but Julian’s words have slowed down and become carefully enunciated for these lines.
“She neeeeds treat-ment. I’d like my medical case – if. you. don’t. mind.”When in intense situations where he needs to keep in control, Julian often talks like this – I do the same thing when I am upset or nervous and need to be understood. I talk deliberately and slowly to make sure my words don’t come out garbled and incoherent.
Tag: autism
Autistic Julian Bashir: makes use of echolalia (in this case repeating Dax’s words) as a way of communicating / processing information
Something that may come as surprising to folks whose needs and comfort levels are already catered to by the world around them, is that “coping” is exhausting.
There are a great many people who are perfectly capable of adjusting to certain situations, be it a matter of social interaction, or physical disability, medical conditions, or whatever the case may be. Through trial and error we have discovered tricks and methods that allow us to function in a society that wasn’t created with us in mind, and we’re very good at making it look like we’re getting along just fine.
But it’s tiring. Always, constantly having to be vigilant and on-guard while everyone around us takes everything in stride, and then no one understands why, at the end of the day, we shut down. Because we were able to “get by” throughout the day, suddenly our unwillingness or inability to cope is no longer valid.
It’s like carrying a 20 pound weight all fucking day long. Just because you can doesn’t mean you don’t need or deserve a break. And then when you finally put the weight down, everyone around you scolds you and chastises you, accuses you of being lazy, insists that you’re just “faking because it’s convenient.”
This is why it’s so fucking unbearable living in a home where everyone chooses to disregard your limits and your comfort levels. Family members will say, “I’m not going to cater to your needs, because the ~real world~ won’t cater to you and you need to get used to that.”
Consider: People who struggle and cope through everyday life are already painfully aware that the “real world” doesn’t give a fuck about us. This is why we develop coping strategies that allow us to function. This is why when we finally come home, when we are FINALLY through with the “real world” for the day, we just want some goddamn compassion. We just want the people we live with to place value on our needs, comfort levels, and limitations. We want the people who say they love us to demonstrate that love through doing whatever small thing they can do to ensure that when we’re in the comfort of our own homes, we can actually be comfortable instead of having to continue carrying around that weight that we’ve been forced to hold up all. day. long.
“If you can control yourself at work, you can control yourself at home”
Well, nope. I can control myself at work BECAUSE I can let go at home.
Is that !
having to ‘normal human’ for a few hours at a time is fucking exhausting and not being able to relax when i get home is the reason for half my melt downs.
Routine is like GPS in my brain. I know my routes, but it’s still nice to hear them “declared” at the right times. But instead of destinations, it tells me what I need to do next in my mind.
“Approaching leave bed protocol.”
“Enter your computer chair from the left side.”
“Now you may proceed to enter and leave your computer chair from the right side.”
And so on and so on.
Then my routine gets changed. GPS gets stuck.
“You performed the shower protocol early. Recalculating… recalculating… recalculating…”
And it can’t give me the altered route until I’ve completed the “right” steps at the “wrong” times if, say, I have to shower a day earlier than I usually do for an event taking place on the actual shower day.
Then I can proceed more or less as I normally do until the day of the event comes. Then my mental GPS needs the times I should be ready to leave and when the event starts to help me calibrate a protocol.
“It is 2:30pm. Time to prepare to leave. You should be ready to leave by 3:00pm. (Usual “get dressed” instructions here.)”
Those extra 30 minutes of “nothing” is time I use to finish up whatever I was doing and be ready for transitioning to leaving the house. My usual protocol when I reach a destination is find and use the bathroom there. I get super cranky if I can’t, because my body is a thing of habit and it’s not fun to do anything when your body is screaming at you that it has to pee.
Now, when my routine is already shuffled to hell, and somebody throws info at me that tells me my routine is going to get even more messed up, all I can think about is my brain will be saying “Recalculating… recalculating… recalculating…” to me for two days instead of one. I can’t make those pieces fall into place in my brain.
When my brain can’t put something together, it crashes in a meltdown.
Part of that confusion is I have to figure out my “disconnect from x activity to prepare for y activity” when a disruption is approaching. Throwing more stuff at me means those calculations get thrown to hell. I try to calculate my transition times in preparation for disruptions in routine.
Telling me more disruptions are coming breaks my mental GPS. I freak out thinking I will forget to recalculate because I’m still recalculating for another disruption. I get stuck on the recalculating more than the actual disruption.
That’s why I have meltdowns over “insignificant” changes in routine, such as people not checking with me and telling me I now have to wake up at buttcrack o’clock in the morning for a technician to come check out why my internet keeps cutting out. This weekend is already so chaotic with stuff happening that I would’ve told my mom to wait until Monday.
That is the one autism thing my mom just doesn’t get: I cannot handle a ton of changes in routine in a row. I just can’t. I had a burnout in 2016 because literally every day in December broke some part of my routine at the last minute. I stressed out so bad that I collapsed and barely recovered in time for Christmas.
And it’s not that I don’t try to handle it. I do. I write stuff on my calendar and everything. It’s the mental recalculating and knowing I have *more* to recalculate that turns my brain into radioactive soup.
Yo this is a very good metaphor I’ll have to use this later
This describes what happens perfectly.
Ok but consider:
Julian is overwhelmed/excited and without realizing it he starts rocking/bouncing/flapping his hands and when he realizes he’s doing it he gets self conscious. He remembers his parents grabbing him and shouting at him to sit still and he feels bad that he couldn’t control it.
But his friends don’t look mad or bothered at all. Garak’s giving him the fondest smile, Miles just rolls his eyes and smirks because that’s just another thing lovable ridiculous Julian does, Dax tells him it reminds her of one of her previous host’s kids.
I feel like when Julian was taken to get “fixed”, they just enhanced him. They didn’t remove the autism. They just made him “better”. (You can try and tell me he’s not autistic but not only does he show traits of being autistic, but it’s pretty heavily implied in a few episodes.)
autistic hearing
“I’m sorry, what?”
“… I still didn’t catch that.”
“please say that again, I really can’t understand what you’re saying”
.
*distant, vague noise*
“the fuck was that? what do you mean you can’t hear that”
.
“it’s raining. no, it’s like, just a super light drizzle, but it’s definitely raining”
*5 minutes later, drizzle becomes a thunderstorm*
“I told you it was raining”
.
“I know I’m like 2 feet away from you and you’re speaking at a good volume, but I seriously have no idea what you just said and I’m sorry”
.
*floorboards creaking faintly, in the the periphery of your hearing*
“someone is coming”
.
*more than one person speaking at once*
“PLEASE SHUT UP”
*silence for one second and then everyone proceeds to ignore you*
.
*3 am and someone has been blasting music two blocks away, but you still can hear the bass*
“this is fine”
The price of Autistic masking, or Let there be stims!
Autism and Emotional Labour – Ada Hoffmann
What exactly is an autistic/autism burnout? I think it might apply to me but I’m not sure. I’ve always masked my autism & traits, and survived, but when I went up to high school in year 7 and it was such a big change with so many more people and so much more sensory issues, my health got worse and worse. I ended up leaving mainstream school due to these health issues (which was diagnosed as CFS/M.E. but me and my mum don’t think I had that) along with severe social anxiety.
I’m sorry you’ve had such a rough time. It’s hard dealing with health issues.
Autistic burnout is when the stress in your life outpaces your coping skills in such a way that you are no longer able to handle the things you once were. This often results in the loss of abilities you once had, either temporarily or permanently. It can also result in an increased frequency or intensity of autistic traits. For instance, if you are normally verbal, you may find yourself going nonverbal more often or find yourself semiverbal all the time. You may suddenly have more difficulty with everyday tasks due to an increase in executive dysfunction. Further, sensory issues tend to become worse.
Burnout is typically exhausting and can mimic chronic fatigue, depression, and/or anxiety. Burnout is a lack of resources to deal with the demands of life. For more info, check out the following links:
-Sabrina
What is the difference between autism, ADHD, and asbugers ( forgot how to spell that sorry)??
Asperger’s and autism are the same thing. Asperger’s was a diagnosis used to separate out those who spoke before three years of age but was in practice mainly used for white boys. It has since been phased out by the DSM and incorporated under the autism spectrum. Some diagnosed with Asperger’s is autistic.
As far as the differences between ADHD and autism the following is a breakdown taken from this awesome post by autpunk:
more ADHD than autism:
- impulsivity
- getting distracted
- constantly forgetting what you were just doing or thinking
- being unable to sit still ever
- hyperfocusing randomly
- hyperactivity
- losing every object. always
- forgetting plans and appointments and everything really
- addiction to distraction and entertainment
more autism than ADHD:
- sensory hypersensitivities
- sensory hyposensitivities
- the bliss that stimming is
- the overwhelm of sensory overload
- auditory and visual processing difficulties
- trouble with verbal communication
- trouble with nonverbal communication
- being unable to figure out social rules and conventions
- relying on sameness, rules, schedules and rituals
both autism and ADHD:
- needing to fidget or stim
- special interests or hyperfixations
- living in a fantasy world
- trouble with socializing
- appearing eccentric
- appearing childlike or younger than you are
- executive dysfunction
- reactions to over- and understimulations
- meltdowns / shutdowns
- developing anxiety or depression
- creativity and unconventional thinking
- daydreaming and spacing out
- getting caught up in a task
I hope this helps!
-Sabrina
This is a good breakdown.
It also irritates me to literally no end when doctors/teachers/parents lump ADHD and any other comorbility under Autism as if it was a giant umbrella diagnosis and then don’t properly treat the comobility as the separate diagnosis that it technically is.
Does autism influence them? Of course because autism influences literally everything. But especially when doctors and teachers do this, it confuses the heck out of parents and actual autistics on what is what.
Not every autistic has ADHD. But a lot do and many aren’t having their ADHD addressed properly.
There's a Mirror on the Wall 