An autistic woman has replaced her local community mental health team with the edgy middle-aged men who have been propping up her emotional wellbeing since she was a teenager, it has been claimed.

Krista Shure, 35, has given up on ringing her local non-emergency mental health number who short-circuit whenever she mentions she’s autistic, and has instead resorted to listening to the sort of music that used to make her parents worry about her.

Shure said: “I used to get bullied for listening to this stuff, which, to be fair, did stop people bullying me for the autism. Now, I’m still considered a bit weird for listening to this, but you won’t catch an emo telling me to go for a walk at 11pm or list what I’m grateful for until the meltdown goes away. They say helpful things like ‘Put all the shattered pieces of me back together’, ‘You can’t kill me ‘cos I’m already dead!’ and ‘WOAHohWOAHohHOH!’, which gives me a lovely bit of perspective.”

“The thing about my World-Eating Jimmies, Chemical Romances and Fall Out Boys is that when I was younger, they probably did fuel my out-of-control emotional turmoil in an entirely unregulated way, but now I’m an adult who’s done some therapy I feel like they’re reaching out to me across the void with a healing riff and a ‘Na na na’ of validation.”

A spokesperson for the local mental health services said: “We’re trying to work out how to restore service users’ faith in what we offer, but we’re not allowed to rebrand ourselves to ‘The Black Parade’.”

Like what you’re reading? Make us your new special interest! Help us grow The Daily Tism by sharing our articles, following us on Instagram, Bluesky, Threads and Facebook, shouting us a coffee on Ko-Fi or joining our bonus-content-packed Club for Terrible Autistics by subscribing to our Patreon. We also now have merch! Check out your favourite headlines in comfy wearable form over on Teemill.

Our audio sitcom by and for autistic people, It’s a Superpower?? is out weekly wherever you get podcasts! Binge the whole season early and ad-free on Patreon.

You can also watch episodes one and two of our sketch show, The Daily Tism News, in collaboration with Turtle Canyon Comedy, or listen to episode three in audio form – and tune into our podcast, Autistic Women Oversharing to find out WAY too much about our writers.

We also now have merch! Check out your favourite headlines in comfy wearable form over on Teemill.