October 4, 2018 – Cat McGill – Neurodivergent musician and author

Stimming

So here goes, the start of a self-exploration of what autism means to me. In this first blog I’m going to talk about stimming. The term ‘stimming’ refers to self-stimulating behaviours that are often used by people with autism or other developmental disorders. The most common one you’re likely to think of is flapping your hands – my son does this a lot when he’s excited! Some people rock, some people jiggle, hum, bang their head, make noises; there’s really no end to the variety of stims possible.

October 4, 2018 No Comments

Noise. (And a bit on music)

I’ve chosen noise as my next topic to explore as it’s one that fascinates me, and I haven’t quite got my head around it fully yet. I have a very mixed relationship with noise. I’m a musician by trade, and a music teacher. I LOVE noise. When I was teaching secondary music I could quite happily sit at my desk surrounded by a class of thirty kids playing keyboard while I marked my A level essays, and still be able to pick out the ones who were hitting the demo button instead of doing their work. My classroom was noisy and chaotic, and I loved it.

October 4, 2018 No Comments

Me and my autism

I have been thinking a lot lately about identifying as autistic, and why – especially as a person who thought I knew quite a bit about autism – it took me so long to realise that I have it myself. There are still a lot of misconceptions about what autism is and how it displays, particularly in females. When I was learning about autism in the late 90s, the lack of theory of mind was an essential part of diagnosis, and we were taught that autism is much less common in women, but much more severe. As I’ve been doing more recent research, I’ve found I don’t really identify with a lot of the prominent autistic female narratives that I’ve found in books or blogs. For this reason I’ve decided to explore this in a series of short blogs as I get a chance to put my thoughts down, partly as a way of making sense of it myself, and partly for any other women who feel different but don’t quite know why.

October 4, 2018 No Comments