My Autism Tattoos

TW: photos featuring old, faded self harm scars, brief mention of pet death, and brief mention of discrimination due to disability.

Back in 2022, I made a post about tattoo ideas to celebrate autistic identity, exploring some of the common ideas and then some more unique and/or abstract ones that people have gotten. I also shared some ideas of what I thought I might get as a tattoo to represent my autistic identity, having wanted to get a tattoo since I was about fifteen. I still like a lot of the more unusual ideas that I shared in the post – and I have actually ended up with a whale tattoo, inspired by the story of The Loneliest Whale – but inevitably I found a lot of different ideas in the years since I uploaded that post…

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I think it’s probably safe to say that all of my tattoos are connected to my being autistic in some way because all of my tattoos are inspired by things that I love or that are important to me and I think that that response and sense of connection is ultimately due to the autistic lens through which I experience the world or because of events or moments connected to my autistic experience. For example, I have a tattoo of my cat, Lucy, who I got just before I was diagnosed and so she had seen me through that whole journey until she had to be put down last year. But there are definitely degrees to which my tattoos are related to my Autism and so I thought I’d shared the ones that are most deeply connected…

The tattoo of mine that most directly relates to Autism is my Tangle tattoo. Tangles are my favourite of all the fidgets I’ve tried and I find them so helpful for regulating myself – if any object represented Autism to me, it’s my favourite Tangle so it made so much sense as a representation of Autism. I got it in the summer of 2025 to celebrate ten years since my Autism diagnosis (and everything that I’ve done and achieved and survived in that time) and I went to an artist in London who had already shared flash designs of Tangles but then personalised the one I liked most to look like my favourite Tangle. We also placed it on a part of my arm where the skin moves as I use my arm so it kind of looks like it does when I play with it; I really liked that as an added element because the whole point of Tangles are that they’re not static, that they can be twisted and turned and fiddled with. I really, really love it and sometimes when I’m anxious, I find myself tracing the lines of it and that actually helps me to regulate better as well.

(My Tangle tattoo, designed and tattooed by Gaia. // My whale tattoo, designed and tattooed by Dani.)

Maybe the next most Autism-related tattoo that I’ve gotten is, as I mentioned earlier, a whale inspired by The Loneliest Whale. This whale became such a special interest that I wrote a song called ‘The Loneliest Whale,’ which I released last year on my EP, Too Much And Not Enough, Vol. 1, an EP that delves into some of my experiences as an autistic person. It was so crucial to making sense of my autistic identity, both before and after my diagnosis, that getting a whale tattoo felt very fitting to me.

The first tattoo I got was of a daisy, which was inspired, in part, by my biggest special interest fictional character, Daisy Johnson from Agents of SHIELD. She is my favourite fictional character ever and so many of her storylines resonated with me: her search for her biological family, building a chosen family, trying to figure out her place in the world, struggling with and then learning to live with trauma, etc. One of her biggest story arcs explores her development of vibrational abilities, her struggle to understand and harness them, and her journey to understand her heritage as an Inhuman (a term that the Inhuman community created for themselves) and advocacy for this community that she now feels at least somewhat responsible to. While it’s not a direct parallel moment for moment, I resonated (ha!) with so many of the themes of her personal journey and so much of the emotional processing that she has to do (and sometimes avoids doing). She’s kind of an invisible string throughout my life, from my Dad and his love of superheroes, to my journey with my mental health and neurodivergence and disability, to getting my Autism Assistance Dog, Daisy, who is (of course) named after her. And after I told my therapist about all of this, she brought the story of Daisy and her powers into the work we do and it’s helped so much; she’s become so much more than a special interest and become a tool to help me in my life. But the connection to my Dad is so, so important and that’s why it was my first tattoo because I wanted to have him with me forever, through something that we both love so much.

(My daisy tattoo, designed and tattooed by Dani. // My tattoo inspired by my Autism Assistance Dog, Daisy, designed and tattooed by Teddy, courtesy of Spectrum Ink.)

And earlier this year, I got a tattoo for my Autism Assistance Dog, Daisy (yes, as in Daisy Johnson from Agents of SHIELD). As a part of Spectrum Ink’s second series, I got a tattoo of Daisy’s paw print (complete with vibrations and a couple of daisies) on my leg, on the side that Daisy usually walks at her approximate height (and where she will lean on me when I need emotional support while standing or if my lap is inaccessible to Daisy). It’s our primary touch point when she’s working and it means that I have her with me even when I don’t physically have her with me, which makes it very special to me.

As I said, all of my tattoos feel connected to my Autism, like my music related tattoos, given that songwriting is possibly my biggest special interest, like the tattoos that my Mum and I got together because she has been all in with me on this very intense journey around my health, like the tattoos I have that make me feel connected to my Dad. I love getting tattooed – I find it incredibly regulating (and I haven’t self harmed since I started getting tattooed) – and I think that that is really connected to my neurodivergence.

The actual tattooing process is much more enjoyable than it has ever been painful for me and I’ve actually fallen asleep while getting tattooed because it was so relaxing. I might write a post about the experience of getting tattooed because it’s my experience – admittedly anecdotal experience – that many neurodivergent people seem to experience getting tattooed differently to neurotypical people and I’m sure there’s something interesting behind that, whether it’s to do with the processing of pain or whether it has a similar effect to a self-regulating behaviour (i.e. stimming) or whether it’s something altogether different. I do think it’s worth saying that I’ve had mostly good experiences with tattoo artists and working out accommodations for my being autistic (and sometimes other disabilities) but I have also had a few less than pleasant ones, including a very distressing one. I haven’t written about that because I’ve been trying to find a way to resolve it, probably not for me at this point but to hopefully make that studio an accessible space for their future clients (after all, they do market themselves as a safe space for everyone), but maybe I should write about it – not to name and shame (as a primary goal at least) but to make people aware of that kind of discrimination and how to manage it and/or get through it. I don’t know. I’ll think about it. Let me know if you think that would be useful.

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I do, of course, have more tattoo plans. I had more tattoo plans from the moment I booked my first tattoo. I have so many music related tattoo ideas but I also want to get one for my little soul dog, Izzy, and an hourglass to represent getting through a really tough experience. I love getting tattoos and how each one makes me feel and how they’re helping me to feel more comfortable in my skin – not constantly but it’s progress. Maybe I’ll be back in the not too distance future with another Autism-inspired tattoo…