Thread by @erikaheidewald

this is me, and there’s a good reason for it - when i’m in an emergency situation, such as being injured, my brain goes into problem-solving mode. feelings are not useful so in that moment, i don’t have any. my brain is using all its power to assess the situation and fix it.

https://twitter.com/AutSciPerson/status/1379927609698574338

i only figured out the other day why i hate it when people try to comfort me when i get injured, so much so that it will make me angry - having people come at me with concerned voices and hands trying to touch me is literally the most overstimulating thing you can do to me.

when i broke my wrist in gymnastics in high school i immediately stood up and ran away. i ran around the track until i was able to come back and calmly tell them i needed to go to the hospital. i never understood why i react like this until i considered the cognitive processing

having people try to comfort me is the single worst thing they can do to me because 1) it assumes i have emotional needs i don’t have, and 2) overstimulates my brain so i can’t think straight and fix my own problem. i can’t trust others to help me so i must be able to think

neurotypical people think emotions are at the forefront of everyone’s minds all the time but they’re not and that’s ok. i do not need my emotions comforted, i am not having any. i have feelings and i will feel them later when the emergency is over and i have time to do that.

the expectation that i would express my pain emotionally makes no sense to me. the more pain i am in, the more my brain is trying to keep it together so i can survive. i am surviving. stop expecting everyone to think and feel like you do.

neurotypical people should be glad my brain works this way, because in an emergency situation i am the only one who can think straight and i have helped many strangers when their friends were frozen in panic. i don’t panic. i don’t freeze. i don’t cry. i just fix it.

so many people have thought i was a bitch and didn’t like me until they really needed help and i was the only person who helped them. you don’t want neurotypicals around you in an emergency situation, you want me bc i’m the only one who won’t be thinking about myself.

this isn’t always a great thing for me whatsoever. if someone else is in trouble and it seems bad enough, i can’t think about me. i’m not a person with wants and needs in that moment, i’m just problem-solving. i’ve had to learn to stay away from people who take advantage of that

this is why i can’t be friends with people who like drama, who don’t want to fix their problems, or who will put me on the spot and ask big favors of me more often than they actually need it. i need people who will care about the fact that i’m a person when i can’t.

this is one reason why it’s so cruel for allistics to insist that everyone has an ego and is selfish bc they assume everyone is looking out for their own best interest all the time and that’s not possible for me. they can’t shut off their feelings or their ego, ever. i get that.

my brain runs a whole bunch of processes individually and my feelings are just one of them. i can only process so many things at once and if i need to think and my feelings aren’t the most helpful or relevant process to run, my brain won’t run it. that’s not a choice.

none of that makes me unempathetic, robotic, inhuman, invulnerable, or selfless. it just makes me autistic. our brains process everything in a different order and manner from allistic brains. i have a self, i have wants & needs, but i don’t always feel them & that’s normal for us