“No Way Out Except From External Intervention”: First-Hand Accounts of Autistic Inertia
“No Way Out Except From External Intervention”: First-Hand Accounts of Autistic Inertia
This study, called for by autistic people and led by an autistic researcher, is the first to explore ‘autistic inertia,’ a widespread and often debilitating difficulty acting on their intentions. Previous research has considered initiation ...
This study is unique in considering difficulty initiating tasks of any type in real life settings, and by gathering qualitative data directly from autistic people. Four face-to-face and 2 online (text) focus groups were conducted with 32 autistic adults (19 female, 8 male, and 5 other), aged 23–64 who were able to express their internal experiences in words.
[...] Participants described difficulty starting, stopping and changing activities that was not within their conscious control. While difficulty with planning was common, a subset of participants described a profound impairment in initiating even simple actions more suggestive of a movement disorder. Prompting and compatible activity in the environment promoted action, while mental health difficulties and stress exacerbated difficulties. Inertia had pervasive effects on participants’ day-to-day activities and wellbeing.
This phenomenon, evoked by Too Much Shit Going On Around Me, is in some sense destroying my life.
I mean, the alternate path I've been on because of sensory sensitivity + autistic inertia has taught me a ton of valuable shit over the past half decade, so if I ever manage to get into a better situation I'll be so much better prepared than I ever was before, now that I understand this stuff... but I'm trading years of my life for the insight, years spent locked in by inertia for a great portion of almost every single day... plus a not-small measure of damage to my health from all the fucking drugs I have to take in order to not go absolutely insane, become completely dysregulated, be constantly highkey suicidal etc in such a scenario.
Also, a tangent, but I really wish there were fewer typos in this paper, this kind of research is utterly critical to getting a better living situation for millions of people on the spectrum, and the typos don't help that. K, done complaining about my pet peeve.