Aaliyah Willard

The "man or bear" conversation was never about believing every bear is safer. It was about the reality that many women weigh risks based on lived experiences and fear of s*xual violence.

When people ask why women choose the bear, the better question is: What has made so many women feel that way?

There’s a lot of sh*tty things about being autistic, this is another one: the inability to feel negative emotions safely.

Frustration can turn into self injury, confusion can turn into a meltdown, and irritation can turn into hitting and throwing.

It's well known that autistic people can experience emotions more intensely…which seems unexpectedly poetic when joy turns into euphoria.

But the flip side is that some people’s nervous systems experience a genuine crisis every time they feel disappointment.

Really sit with the implications of that.

Maybe you accidentally tear your art project for the second time in a row and you feel so immensely upset that your body hurls itself onto the floor screaming.

People will say it’s a discipline issue, and generally those people are wrong. Some autistic folks truly live with a nervous system that cannot safely contain the intensity of what it feels.

That said, it is absolutely possible to learn coping strategies and build more control, but that often takes years of practice.

The takeaway is that “extreme emotions” in autism are usually the result of what someone cannot control, not what they’re trying to do.

When you cannot safely experience distress, it can cost jobs, can cost housing, it can cost relationships. And as someone who is autistic and works with autistic people, in my view, that’s one of the most disabling aspects of autism 🖤

New studies have come in from parents of autistic children