Shutdown and meltdown: understanding autistic crises
In the collective imagination, an autistic person is someone withdrawn, exceptional at math, calm, and rocking back and forth. What…
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Autistic burnout: when the body says stop
Autistic burnout, in a few words, feels like a long-term complete shutdown. It often follows sensory, emotional, or cognitive overload…
When love becomes sensory overload
A former friend once asked me how I perceived being in love. I replied that it was “a whole lot…
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When Everything Becomes Funny: Humor During a Manic Episode
I recently wrote about humor in autism. What becomes particularly fascinating is seeing how a manic episode can transform the sense of humor of people with bipolar disorder, including those who are autistic. Mania can profoundly change behavior, including the way someone laughs and what they find funny. For some people, it brings intense euphoria, disinhibition, and racing thoughts, completely altering their perception of what is amusing. The relationship between mania and humor can therefore become especially striking.
Autistic Laughter: Why Does It Seem So Different?
People often told me my laugh was “strange” throughout my school years. Muffled, choppy, sometimes almost out of breath. Years later, during my autism assessment, I began to wonder whether my laughter might be atypical too. The answers I found were far more nuanced than I had imagined.
Pause — Autisticisms #4: The Day I Burned My IQ Test
I’ve explained several times on this blog how capable I am of treating a rule like a sacred creed. One of those rules came from the countless times my father scolded me for losing important documents. “Scan it”, “How many times have I told you to scan things?”, “You’ll have to learn to scan your documents.” And countless variations of the same message eventually got through to me.
Autistic Burnout: How Can You Recover?
Today, more and more definitions of autistic burnout can be found online. Researchers are beginning to take an interest in it as well. Yet the question most often asked by the people experiencing it is rarely addressed: how do you recover from it? I asked myself this question after my diagnosis, and I have seen it raised countless times on social media. It therefore seemed natural to explore it in detail.
Autistic Masking: When the Mask Leads to Burnout
Many autistic people spend years appearing to function normally in the eyes of others. Yet this apparent normality often relies on an invisible effort: autistic masking, also known as social camouflaging. This mask can sometimes help a person adapt more easily to the outside world, but it comes with an often underestimated cost: chronic fatigue, overload, and sometimes autistic burnout. In this article, I explain what masking really is, why it appears so early for some people, and how it can eventually become a trap.
Ordinary Criticisms #1: When I’m Criticized for Being Autistic
Autistic people are often confronted with the same criticisms: lack of empathy, avoiding eye contact, bluntness, meltdowns, rigidity… In this article, I look back at these common remarks and what they actually feel like when you are autistic.
Autistic burnout or depression: how can you tell the difference?
Many autistic people have experienced — or will experience — at least one autistic burnout in their lifetime. For many, it becomes a diagnostic turning point. Professionals, often poorly informed on the subject, frequently misdiagnose it as depression. To their credit, the phenomenon is widely known within the community but still remains poorly explored in the scientific literature. Yet autistic burnout is a very different syndrome from depression.
Symptoms of bipolar disorder: quick guide
Bipolar disorder is considered one of the most severe and disabling mental disorders, as confirmed by the WHO in its ranking of the most disabling diseases. This article serves as a guide to describe the symptomatology of this still largely underdiagnosed condition.
Manic Obsessions vs Autistic Special Interests
What is the difference between a manic obsession and an autistic special interest? On paper, the distinction seems simple. In reality, it is not at all. This confusion is common, including between bipolar disorder and autism (ASD), even among healthcare professionals. I have experienced it myself from the inside.
Double-edged creativity: when autism and bipolar disorder intertwine
This article follows the one describing graphorrhea. In August 2019, the manager of Nintendo-Master.com (which I had completely redesigned and then left five years earlier) calls me for help: the site is collapsing in terms of traffic, plagued by a whole range of bugs, and needs another overhaul. I have just been hospitalized for the first time and have developed a full manic episode. Out of love for the site, I jump at the opportunity: it’s time to put my skills to use again. En garde!