Bee.In.Harmony

11/18/2025

Rejection Sensitivity Dysphoria is a complicated topic;

On the one hand there is dysphoria, which means that there are times we are going to see rejection in situations where rejection is not taking place...

But it's not just during those moments, and that's what a lot of people dismiss about RSD, the reality of how we developed it in the first place:

From actual rejection.

Worse, it wasn't just a one-time rejection that engaged this defense mechanism, it was a series of events forming a pattern for our deep pattern recognizing brains;

It's why we struggle to lose our RSD, because we are triggered by new situations where we actually are being rejected, enforcing the pattern.

People will come up with a whole list of how to manage RSD, but what many people will rarely do is advise sitting in the feeling and assessing whether it's actually doing its job or not, which is a difficult task when neuronormative people (neurotypicals and high-maskers) refuse to be directly honest about their feelings and perceptions. Their indirection or even lies make their data compromised and therefore worthless.

It's why many people on their neurodivergent journey eventually advise others to associate more with other neurodivergents, especially for us other autistics / AuDHDers with neurodivergent communication styles.

Of course this is difficult to find even in most stereotypical neurodivergent communities; too many people are in the closet about their own neurodivergence.

So it's not enough to just surround yourself with people who are neurodivergent, they have to be open about their neurodivergence, be able to accept theirs fully and can therefore accept yours fully;

To attract those kinds of people to yourself you have to become that person; you need to address your own internalized ableism, and learn how to hold space for yourself.

It's not fair that this is the way the world is. We deserve better, so we have to go out and make "better" happen.

11/15/2025

For those of us who never can leave the "weird" or "quirky" status behind:

Origin of the word "weird": old English wyrd "destiny," of Germanic origin. The adjective (late middle English) originally meant "having the power to control destiny" and was used especially in The Weird Sisters, originally referring to the Fates, later the witches in Shakespeare's Macbeth; the latter use gave rise to the sense "unearthly" (early 19th century).

Embrace the narrative by changing it to reality: you ARE weird, thank goodness.

11/15/2025

"I feel like before I knew I was autistic I had amazing self confidence and although I wasn’t that successful at navigating interpersonal interactions I never felt less than. It’s only since this discovery that my reflection on past interpersonal relationships has caused me to over analyze everything I do and say to other people."

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Death of the ego is a natural part of the process of what it means to live and be human.

If this is your first, that's okay, and if it's your fifth, it's probably not going to be your last.

People who truly understand life is an opportunity to see an evolution of self tend to undergo more ego deaths and roll with the changes more frequently and easily.

There are some people who may experience the death of ego only a couple times in their life; whether or not they're the better for it is up for debate.

All this to say, you can eventually find your ground here too, just like you did when you were a kid becoming a teenager, when you were a teen becoming an adult, and you were thrust into a world you had no idea how to navigate but you faked it until you could figure out some kind of standing...

Except now you get to learn how to go through this metamorphosis with vulnerability rather than with faking.

It's incredibly humbling and scary;

And that's okay.

11/15/2025

11/14/2025

Happy F**k-It Friday!!!

What are the social norms you subvert either to accommodate yourself or just because they don't make sense to you??

I've stopped holding myself to a posting standard where I said to myself I was going to do a dopamine post every day; it's more effort than I have energy for, and I'd rather do it spontaneously and try to just hit the important ones, like Friday's!! 😛

11/13/2025

People are sometimes confused when I speak about how a lot of the neurotypical communication style is incredibly harmful for both neurotypicals and neurodivergents.

Here are some examples of indirect communication to the point of toxicity 💜

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John needs to feel loved by having a partner who voluntarily engages in texting regularly on a reasonable basis.

Saying "I love it when you text," or "I'm happy to hear from you," does not equate to "I need you to text me so I feel loved." Amelia wonders why their significant other, John, explodes later saying "you don't love me!" and Amelia's scratching her head saying "Of course I do, we went to Niagara last week and we spent the weekend being lazy in a hotel room watching our favorite show and being intimate, and I treated you to a fancy dinner??"

Miscommunication happens frequently in neurotypical to neurotypical communication, not just neurotypical to neurodivergent - and to be super clear, I'm really leaning into autistic communication versus allistic communication to drive home the lack of directive.

Amelia who is flabbergasted might not come out and say "I'm not sure where the communication is breaking down, can you please explain what you mean?" She's shouting back "of course you're loved, don't I do nice things for you?"

It's too easy for the blame and defense games to take place when one or both partners assume that their perspective is the correct one and to have their implied language reflect that.

Does it happen with neurodivergents? Of course. We're just more likely to have encountered ableism sooner where we're not allowed to assume the way we see things is the correct way - this is why many high-maskers often have implied communication styles as well; they have spent so much energy trying to fit in that being true to their needs would require a level of self-advocation they haven't prioritized or learned to do...

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"Dear, that looks uncomfortable for you to be lounging on the chair, wouldn't you be more comfortable reading on the couch?"

"Oh sure, yeah that does look more comfy."

Totally innocuous right? So how does it look when John responds in the negative:

"Actually I'm really comfy in the chair, but thanks for thinking of me."

Amelia is cross, fuming to themselves, not in a great mood but settles herself down on the couch: she was never actually prioritizing John's comfort, it's more that perhaps it might be a byproduct of getting Amelia's own need met to set in the chair, but instead of advocating for that, she uses people-pleasing to try to manipulate the situation instead of just being honest.

Then Amelia may bring it up later as an example where John "clearly didn't consider Amelia's needs" when she didn't advocate for them in the first place, not to mention expecting another person to read their mind is an incredibly toxic trait; we ALL have different lived experiences and perceptions, so it makes sense that we all don't think of the world the same way.

Actually what would make this all even worse is that during the followup disagreement Amelia doesn't have the language to talk about how the experience meant they didn't feel safe around John as a result of the breakdown, and if she DOES have the language that's just as bad because now she's weaponizing the concept of emotional safety and placing the onus of her safety onto the person who cannot meet the original need to begin with;

We are all responsible for showing up as our most accountable selves; we cannot hold ourselves accountable for things we don't know about, and we cannot hold others accountable for emotional needs that come from past trauma.

All we can do is ASK them to meet that need and yes, ask, we MUST. There is no implication in the world that would have communicated that Amelia needed her safety in the relationship confirmed by having her need to sit in the chair granted.

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Extras: What could John & Amelia have said to be direct in their needs?

John: "hey, I had a realization that in order to really feel loved, I need to be texted more without having to ask for it on a daily basis. Can we figure out an amount to text and would you be willing to prioritize it so that you set reminders for yourself?"

Amelia: "I should have been more specific - I actually really need the chair for my back, would you be willing to move to the couch?"

There are of course many other points in the discourse we can address, many potential fallouts and resolutions...

But none of that can start without the first advocation.

Some honey for thought - Buzz on Bees 🤗💜🐝♾️

11/13/2025

Happy Trans Awareness Week!!! To our friends,
we see you. We love you. We accept you. 💜

11/11/2025

Such an excellent phrasing of defining a cognitive disability over intellectual disability - no, it's not a DSM term, and frankly seeing it laid out like this makes far more sense than leaving autism as a developmental disability - sure, it "looks" like it affects kids and then they "eventually overcome much", but in reality we just got better at masking and collecting data to use for future situations.

Our autism did not change, and it doesn't leave us developmentally behind other people as adults - bullying, ostracization, trauma, etc., did that.

We just experience life differently and think differently - not less than.

ADHD could also be framed this way.

Other neurodivergences? I strongly suspect some of them as well.

11/10/2025

It's Missed Skills Monday!!!

And this is not one either of us are gonna like 😮‍💨

Eating in the morning is HARD; why are there so many different arbitrary rules out there about when you should eat, how you should, and why they exist... And some of these facts change every decade it feels like 🫨

To this day, I still can't roll out of bed quickly, let alone put in the effort to make a hardy meal before going out, so here are my tricks:

- preferred drink at my bedside at night so when I wake up I can take a sip so my stomach doesn't feel queasy and the thought of ingesting something

- a sleeve of crackers at my bedside so after that first drink has settled, I can have a cracker or two and wash it down

- if I feel prompted, then I go get some better food in me

The neat - terrible - thing about this trick is that it activates my systems enough to make me start craving non-cracker food, which means I'm less likely to spend time doom scrolling and more time moving forward on my day.

Are there days when I just eat half a sleeve and call it a day?

Yep, that's when getting some quick protein on the go happens - I always leave my lunch pail full of granola bars higher in protein plus a couple waters and a juice box. If I have some time I might slice up some cheese to put with an emergency sleeve of crackers in the pail. If I'm really ambitious I make a sandwich to go as well.

I hold myself to small expectations that are reasonable for me rather than trying to perfectly execute the ultimate eating habits that I'll fail for one reason or another.

So let me know: how do you manage food in the mornings if you find it difficult? How do you cope with the morning rituals?

11/10/2025

While these may or may not work for you, they'll absolutely work for someone.

And who knows? Maybe it will influence you to rethink a different standard or expectation in your life rather than taking it as an automatic necessity.

same here, my brain works like this too 🤯

11/07/2025

I see this conversation in reverse even more frequently, where when we point out that autistic people prefer saying "autistic people" for the generalization, the response is that we're not allowed to dictate what other people's preferences are 😮‍💨

Yes, we know.

Hence saying "generally" and using the royal "we", not to insist that every autistic person believes the same and not to insist that every autistic person has to do the same...

But to be aware that in general...

We've had meetings.

We've dissected the ableism in ourselves and around our particular community.

We came to a consensus that we prefer identity-first language for a wide variety of reasons.

We're not asking you to change the language for every autistic person, but rather to assume "autistic" in generalizations and to assume "autistic" for a specific individual unless that person says their preference is "having autism", or "being on the spectrum," or "being with autism."

11/07/2025

Managing the feeling of rejection is hard for most people.

And when your nervous system has experienced so much of it that it has a defense mechanism built in?

Trying to navigate that feeling feels impossible.

"Just don't care about what other people think, they don't matter!"

Well what about my friend who appears to be rejecting me, how am I supposed to not care about her?

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Here's our reality:

That feeling of rejection is never going to go away. Whether you're actually being rejected is potentially up for debate, but the frequency we are actually being rejected is significantly higher than neurotypicals.

When the rejection is occuring, I personally feel it's a case of either being silently rejected or openly rejected... and there's no getting away from it; we will always experience rejection from others because society places value on what I call "vibing empathy" over cognitive empathy.

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How can we manage those feelings then?

It's important to understand that rejection isn't always - in fact isn't often - about them saying we are "wrong."

It's about them saying we are "wrong for them."

Big difference.

The first is saying we should be ashamed for our existence, that we should not exist the way that we do, that we are harmful to others, that we should feel guilty for being our natural selves.

But the second is simply saying we should accept that not everybody is going to like us, that just because we are not meant for THOSE people doesn't mean we should change because there will be other people we ARE meant for.

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Here's my take: when we realize we are actually being rejected, it's better to assume that they are rejecting us because we are not for them, rather than because we are "wrong".

Because neurotypicals don't communicate what they mean, it's impossible to know which rejection they intend. We COULD ask about which, but frankly, why bring that misery upon ourselves?

We deserve to be happy.

We deserve to be with people who understand and accept us.

We deserve peace.

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If rejection is going to happen no matter what, then it's time to reject rejection, to accept that the feeling happens and to not accept responsibility for other people's perceptions of us:

"Other people's opinions of me are not my business."

Ripping those daggers out of our chest can take months...

And that's okay. Keep pulling at it.

Keep rejecting the poison.

Live YOUR best life 🤗

Bee.In.Harmony 💜🐝♾️