Thread by @erikaheidewald

sometimes people assume i’m generalizing my experience of being autistic but honestly i don’t find my experience very representative - where i’ve learned the most is from the experiences other autistic people have that i don’t connect to, and delving deeper to find out why

the diagnostic criteria are biased & largely unhelpful & it bugs me how arbitrary they are - NT “experts” don’t bother wondering *why* some autistic people would demonstrate those traits. what do they mean? where are they coming from? what is a good reason for a brain to do that?

when i hear a lot of autistic people talk about an experience/trait i don’t have, i want to know more about it. how it feels, where it comes from. almost every time i have eventually seen how it relates to something within myself that seems different externally, but really isn’t

finding the common thread, the source for these disparate experiences shows what is actually going on - the processes and algorithms our brains are running on, the systems of our bodies and brains that appear to be a random dispersal of traits but are actually cohesive & logical

i always look for a good, logical reason a brain would function that way. “it’s broken” or “it’s slow” are not reasons, they’re arbitrarily value-laden characterizations. i go logically from one step to the next and usually there is a good reason. a rational, consistent answer.

i don’t expect to always find a good intentional reason a brain would work a certain way, so if i don’t find one, i look for a logical chain of events. sometimes i can’t see one until weeks go by, i learn something else, and suddenly i can see the pattern i couldn’t see before

when i find an explanation, i go challenge it. try it out on people. as i figured out more and more, the big picture started to take shape. all our eccentricities make more sense than i knew. our brains feel more intentionally made the way they are than i imagined.

so when i talk about how our brains work, i’m not talking about traits and experiences. there are so many other things that affect a human brain than its basic structure and processes and that’s why diagnosing by traits is so unhelpful and leaves so many people out.

i don’t expect everyone to see the processes i describe immediately reflected in their own brains. i didn’t see them all immediately in my brain. i figure if people like how i think, they’ll think about how the processes i describe relate to their own minds or not.

i figure if people don’t find my way of looking at their brain helpful, they’ll keep doing it their way. i want people to see just how truly differently brains can operate and appreciate what theirs is doing - to be able to see the rational, cohesive system at work

i think it’s really helpful to be able to see what is your brain and what is the result of what happened to it. i want you to be able to see how the whole thing works, if you want to, because that’s what i need. i can really see the big picture of our brains and what they do now

so i’m not generalizing my experiences, but i am using the skills of rational analysis and logical deduction that are native to my autistic brain so my ideas will be shaped by the way my mind works. it’s one worldview. there’s no way to ever objectively prove one worldview right

i know for sure, however, that it’s more accurate and realistic than the medical model. that thing is logic-free. it makes no fucking sense at all and it’s an intensely unhelpful and damaging way to see ourselves. that’s why i’ll keep looking for the truth it’ll never provide.