Listen now (66 mins) | In today’s episode, Matt and Angela tackle the problematic language of the DSM-5 on autism and share ways it could better reflect the autistic experience.
Angela mentions stimming with and smelling a piece of bumblebee jasper briefly in this episode - please be careful because it contains arsenic and sulfur. You're probably fine but just be aware that it might be dangerous if you get it wet. Yours might be coated in something protective or could also be a fake made from a different mineral dyed yellow.
Hey, Sami here (the new content manager for The Autistic Culture Podcast)! Thanks so much for bringing this up—I really appreciate the heads-up about bumblebee jasper! That’s such important information, especially for anyone who stims with it or keeps it around. I’ll make sure to pass this along to Angela and look into it further. Your care and attention mean so much—thank you! 💛
It was definitely wild as an abolitionist therapist who thinks the DSM is a pile of carceral capitalist white supremacist garbage to go in for an autism assessment. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the flying frog book test. I thought it was surreal af, and from what I could tell, my response to being interrupted by the examiner was the actual test itself and not my narration of the pictures.
Hey, Sami here (the new content manager for The Autistic Culture Podcast)! Wow, I feel this on so many levels. As someone who’s also skeptical of the DSM and its roots in carceral capitalism, the whole autism assessment process felt surreal to me too. The flying frog book test especially—it’s like stepping into this strange world where the real test is how you interact, not what you say about the pictures. I’d love to hear more about your experience if you’re open to sharing—this is such a rich conversation to unpack!
Thanks! The meta-awareness was really intense, to the level of inducing serious imposter syndrome! I know you're supposed to go into it with minimal ideas of what to expect, but that was impossible since I'd read assessments for clients of my own, so every time I "did an autism" for the assessor (i.e. deliberately unmasking, letting myself stim, not pushing a bunch of extra inflection into my voice, etc) it felt like a performance. There are still times when I'm like, did I just method act autism really well, am I really autistic even? And then of course going into it knowing that the majority of the tests are deeply unscientific added to the sense of surrealism. I think I read on reddit that the flying frog book test was based on really shitty research with a minuscule sample size. So it kind of felt like there was a whole lot of wink-wink-nudge-nudge we are all pretending this is real but we really know it's a bunch of BS. Plus knowing the IQ testing is super biased and racist made it feel even more pointless. I actually didn't even get an IQ result because there was a 55 point difference between my verbal and spacial logic scores so it apparently invalidated the test? And what's that about, because a quick google told me that's common in our community and indicates NVLD, so shouldn't they expect it and know how to interpret it? And then of course knowing how corrupt the most recent DSM-V task force was and how tied everything is to getting insurance to pay for services just makes it seem all the more fake and hollow.
Getting the report back itself was also surprisingly daunting. Even working with an assessor who tries to use a nonpathologizing model, they still had to justify the diagnosis, so there was just page after page detailing the decades of struggles and failures. It was also a massive relief, though! I fully support self-identification but there's a kind of permanence and legitimacy to a formal dx that doctors seem to need to take us seriously.
That was a bit of a rant but hopefully it made sense.
Is echolalia include the repeating of words and phrases internally? I am not sure as you either jump back and forth pronouncing it echo-lal- ye- ah and echo -lo-je-ah. And my google search to confirm the internalized isn't bringing up what you spoke of.
I was smiling ear to eat this episode laughing. Also it made me think you should do an episode on "Beauty". I was told by multiple assessors I couldn't be autisitc because i was "too pretty" (and we're the "rude" ones lol) like yah, makeup and nail polish are my special interests! Angela I'm pretty sure you've got a thing for shoes, yes?
Angela mentions stimming with and smelling a piece of bumblebee jasper briefly in this episode - please be careful because it contains arsenic and sulfur. You're probably fine but just be aware that it might be dangerous if you get it wet. Yours might be coated in something protective or could also be a fake made from a different mineral dyed yellow.
Hey, Sami here (the new content manager for The Autistic Culture Podcast)! Thanks so much for bringing this up—I really appreciate the heads-up about bumblebee jasper! That’s such important information, especially for anyone who stims with it or keeps it around. I’ll make sure to pass this along to Angela and look into it further. Your care and attention mean so much—thank you! 💛
It was definitely wild as an abolitionist therapist who thinks the DSM is a pile of carceral capitalist white supremacist garbage to go in for an autism assessment. I'd love to hear your thoughts on the flying frog book test. I thought it was surreal af, and from what I could tell, my response to being interrupted by the examiner was the actual test itself and not my narration of the pictures.
Hey, Sami here (the new content manager for The Autistic Culture Podcast)! Wow, I feel this on so many levels. As someone who’s also skeptical of the DSM and its roots in carceral capitalism, the whole autism assessment process felt surreal to me too. The flying frog book test especially—it’s like stepping into this strange world where the real test is how you interact, not what you say about the pictures. I’d love to hear more about your experience if you’re open to sharing—this is such a rich conversation to unpack!
Thanks! The meta-awareness was really intense, to the level of inducing serious imposter syndrome! I know you're supposed to go into it with minimal ideas of what to expect, but that was impossible since I'd read assessments for clients of my own, so every time I "did an autism" for the assessor (i.e. deliberately unmasking, letting myself stim, not pushing a bunch of extra inflection into my voice, etc) it felt like a performance. There are still times when I'm like, did I just method act autism really well, am I really autistic even? And then of course going into it knowing that the majority of the tests are deeply unscientific added to the sense of surrealism. I think I read on reddit that the flying frog book test was based on really shitty research with a minuscule sample size. So it kind of felt like there was a whole lot of wink-wink-nudge-nudge we are all pretending this is real but we really know it's a bunch of BS. Plus knowing the IQ testing is super biased and racist made it feel even more pointless. I actually didn't even get an IQ result because there was a 55 point difference between my verbal and spacial logic scores so it apparently invalidated the test? And what's that about, because a quick google told me that's common in our community and indicates NVLD, so shouldn't they expect it and know how to interpret it? And then of course knowing how corrupt the most recent DSM-V task force was and how tied everything is to getting insurance to pay for services just makes it seem all the more fake and hollow.
Getting the report back itself was also surprisingly daunting. Even working with an assessor who tries to use a nonpathologizing model, they still had to justify the diagnosis, so there was just page after page detailing the decades of struggles and failures. It was also a massive relief, though! I fully support self-identification but there's a kind of permanence and legitimacy to a formal dx that doctors seem to need to take us seriously.
That was a bit of a rant but hopefully it made sense.
Is echolalia include the repeating of words and phrases internally? I am not sure as you either jump back and forth pronouncing it echo-lal- ye- ah and echo -lo-je-ah. And my google search to confirm the internalized isn't bringing up what you spoke of.
I was smiling ear to eat this episode laughing. Also it made me think you should do an episode on "Beauty". I was told by multiple assessors I couldn't be autisitc because i was "too pretty" (and we're the "rude" ones lol) like yah, makeup and nail polish are my special interests! Angela I'm pretty sure you've got a thing for shoes, yes?