I’m what’s known as a “good with words” autistic person. Not all autistic people take on language as a special interest and focus, but those that do often end up eloquent and compelling.
It’s because we studied and mastered communication while the rest of you were absorbing it.
Why?
Because y’all don’t understand us when we express ourselves in ways that are unusual to you.
So we work to learn your mannerisms and ways of thinking and speaking, and often it works well.
But there’s a cost. I am constantly translating in my head, it takes work.
When I am out of spoons my communication suffers. I start using words or phrases carelessly, and opening myself up to miscommunication and misunderstanding.
What absolutely sucks, though, is that with allistic people if I’m not translating no translation happens.
It feels bad, then, when someone misunderstands me. I blame myself, because I internalized that it’s my fault when I’m not understood.
But all of this is just internalized ableism and disability. If I can’t work very hard to communicate I can’t communicate. I’d love support.
But how do you ask a whole allistic society to ask “what do you mean?” instead of “how dare you?!”
It’s the fact that I get “how dare you” whenever I’m not doing 100% of the emotional labor around communication that bums me out.
A few more thoughts here.
Someone asked, "What does 'how dare you' look like?"
It takes a lot of different forms.
Most often it's someone understanding me to be saying something that would be out of character or harmful. It makes me feel erased.
I don't want to entirely sidestep all aspects of accountability here. As I've heard my whole life, "words mean things" and the fact is that if I use words differently than other people then I really can't expect to be understood.
This work/effort isn't optional.
If I mean to say something kind and something that's hurtful comes out instead, _that really happened_ -- and my intention doesn't change that fact.
Maybe someone is now triggered, or maybe they feel like they trust me less, or see me as a bit more toxic. That's real.
So like, it feels a bit like I have to be constantly translating not only to be understood but to avoid hurting people and damaging relationships.
Is it fair that that is mostly on me?
No, not at all. But I had to let go of "fair" to start healing and living my best life.
I had a good friend in college who would always be surprised when I said something kind or did something nice for someone. As a result, she was surprised a lot around me.
I never understood why the default assumption she had was that these were exceptions to my character.
But being misunderstood often feels like that.
It feels like "Oh, wait, you mean you think I'd say something like that? Really? You've known me for how long? We've worked together for how long? You're my family and you think I'd say that? HOW?!"
and I think as I type this out I'm realizing there's actually a second trigger there. Every time I'm misunderstood in this way I am given to understand that the people around me model me very, very differently than I model myself, and always to my detriment. Feels bad, yo!
But, to get back to the original point, here are some other ways that "How dare you!" manifests:
- strangers assume I'm angry if I don't perform what feels to me like over-the-top jovial friendliness.
- people with authoritarian tendencies always feel like I'm poking them.
- people will hear me speak a whole paragraph and then latch onto exactly one word in that paragraph while ignoring the rest, challenging my decision to use it and telling me what it must mean about my character.
- people will pretend to understand me and then totally whiff.
- people have told me my whole life I'm arrogant, that I have a superiority complex, etc. I'm not, but if I speak in a way that's natural to me that's how I'll be interpreted.
- broadly speaking, people will simply lose patience with me due to lack of shared context.
This, sadly, is also true. When someone fundamentally doesn't believe you about your own lived experience it's not safe to have that person in your life.
Allistic students will project all of their insecurities on you if you use words they don't know or if you speak in a weird way or if you move funny or are in any way different.
"In the real world you have to learn to get along with people."
"Well of course people beat you up you're really obnoxious"
My PTSD remembers you assholes.
I've read that today's kids are much better than this.
Certainly anecdotally the kids I know go to a Montessori school where they say there's no bullying, and mean behavior is met with compassion and care from everyone.
Proposing “We Didn’t Start the Fire” as the official anthem of process metaphysics.
(Process metaphysics says, “there are no things, only one long ongoing verb that we create things out of as suits us but which we mistake for real when really they’re just models. So any thing is composed of past process output. There’s no vacuum.)
Drat missed the closing quotation mark but not the closing paren, now I can’t fix it!
The more time I spend on tiktok the more I see clearly autistic people talking about how they have ADHD and not mentioning autism.
Look friends, when you have sensory issues and social challenges and emotional challenges and you see the world as one giant relation that’s autism.
There’s a ton of overlap with adhd but most adhd people don’t stim, don’t get sensory overload and while they may struggle to participate socially it’s not because they don’t understand what’s going on.
I feel increasingly like ADHD social media is erasing autistic experiences.
“Myk these lines are blurry”
Look I promise I know that, I guess I’d just like to see a little bit more blur.
Stim dancing in a blind react saying it’s your adhd just feels weird to me. I don’t want to police anyone, but like.
Not to pick on @ai_action but this is exactly what so many abled people think.
Why would you think that you understand my own capabilities better than I do? And why would you assume that based on that understanding you can ignore my boundary?
It may 100% be absolutely true that some people can do more than they think they can, with X cost under Y condition.
It's also NOT YOUR JOB to "help" them get to that point, unless they specifically ask you.
If you push a disabled person in this way they may feel pressure to collapse their boundary (because this happens constantly, and it's hard to maintain boundaries against resistance) and you'll think you've "helped" them when you don't know the cost.