Hi :)

Hi, I’m Ava! I’m 22 years old and I found out in January 2022 that I’m autistic. — I made this blog in hopes of finding some people I can relate to, as well as to catalogue my journey from here forward. — In addition to autism, I have ADHD, CPTSD, OCD, anxiety & depression, and probably some other shit I’ve yet to comprehend. — Feel free to send asks/message me and to interact with any of my posts! — I follow from @turnleftaticela :)

[avaisautistic]

If you’re autistic, take my survey

[yourlocaladhder]

Ya'll read this thread ! It's not something I have actively thought about but I think they make a great point here.

[autism-adhd-information-blog-de]

This is very interesting!

Rebloging for awareness.

Autism

[slippery-minghus]

adding the rest of the thread because WOW. if that isn't it tho

[avaisautistic]

Honestly, I don’t think autistic people are bad at small talk; I think it’s that we don’t need it.

The point of small talk is to judge whether or not you vibe w/ someone without having to be direct about it and thus risking hurting their feelings.

But autistic people don’t need that. We’re naturally wired to take people as they are and be honest about what we think & feel, and we tend to prefer the same from others.

So our struggle with small talk isn’t because we’re lacking a necessary skill, it’s because the skill is irrelevant to our natural social experience.

[mx-fee]

As someone with half a diagnosis, this is one of those things that makes me feel like a bit of an impostor. My psych told me at age 36 that I was autistic and we were starting the formal process when my department at work shut down due to Covid and I was transferred to a lower paying role, and couldn't afford the psych any more...

Anyways. Rambling. That's my ADHD bit.

When I see people talking about things like being perceived as bad at small talk, I can't relate to it. I can do small talk just fine. Is it because I'm not really autistic or is it because I have over 30 years of masking and worked in customer service for nearly 20 years?

[avaisautistic]

I think probably the latter. Autistic people can definitely be good at small talk. I personally am good at it and can even find fulfillment in it sometimes when it involves getting to know the other person.

It could also just be cultural differences. I’m speaking as a 22-year-old, and I can’t do small talk with my own generation at all. I’m only good at it with people older than me. I think younger people tend to be more judgmental and that’s probably why I find it hard — I could never do it in school or anything.

Getting diagnosed late will also do a number on you — the later it is, the more used to masking you get. I was diagnosed at 21, and I actually find myself pretty good at stuff like eye contact and emoting. And I make friends easily. (Keeping them is another story, but that’s for another post.)

It’s a complex subject and my original post didn’t go into a lot of nuance. But if you’ve been diagnosed and felt strongly enough about it to comment on this post, odds are you’re autistic.

[avaisautistic]

Honestly, I don’t think autistic people are bad at small talk; I think it’s that we don’t need it.

The point of small talk is to judge whether or not you vibe w/ someone without having to be direct about it and thus risking hurting their feelings.

But autistic people don’t need that. We’re naturally wired to take people as they are and be honest about what we think & feel, and we tend to prefer the same from others.

So our struggle with small talk isn’t because we’re lacking a necessary skill, it’s because the skill is irrelevant to our natural social experience.

[stayoutofitnick]

As someone allistic afaik, with anxiety and an extrovert. I don’t think this is the point of small talk; I don’t think there is ONE point of small talk.

Small talk can be a way of acknowledging without taxing

hi, how are you, fine, comment on weather says to me: hi, I see you. I don’t want to invade on your day or thinking but I’m acknowledging and interacting. It basically all means hi. In theory we could repeat hi back at each other 3 or 4 times or wag tails or wave and it would have a similar effect. But this is less repetitive and more human since most of lack tails. I’m not gathering information about the person I’m interacting with other than that they are acknowledging me and vice verse.

hi nice to meet you, question about job/how do you know x/what do you do for fun days to me: hi! You are a new person to me, and some details would flesh you out as a character. Depending on the person asking and context, these can flow differently but that’s the overall goal. Think of when a character is in media. Knowing that they are a firefighter or know the main character from summer camp tells us context. If they immediately walked in and said here’s my entire backstory that would be an info dump and overwhelming for many viewers and for the other characters. I think this is a form of small talk that can easily go wrong, but at its heart is to provide a small tag to distinguish a human.

More on weather/sports/etc this is more casual interaction. Just wanting to interact without investing. It is comparable to sending a meme or links with no context or using gifs to communicate. The goal is to say we are two people who share a thing at least theoretically ms can lightly connect without going deep.

I think that last bit is the key to all of these. I do not want every interaction to be deep. I believe that other allistics don’t want that but I may be wrong. My goal with many social interactions is to acknowledge kindly but I don’t want to talk about my feelings or passions or interests every interaction or even most of them. I just want to acknowledge and be kind.

[avaisautistic]

That’s interesting, thank you for the addition!

[five-thousand-loaves-of-bread]

controversial opinion maybe but i have no interest in learning about ABA from non-ABA survivors

[five-thousand-loaves-of-bread]

this absolutely includes autistics who are not ABA survivors. this post is actually directed at them.

ABA can be extremely abusive & traumatizing even today 100%.

but most ABA survivors i hear from will tell you there more nuance than that. more nuance than screaming “ABA is abuse.”

sometimes there is no “other option,” no “other therapies.”

sometimes the options for parents are: ABA or have your kid taken away, AKA choose between be called abusive by non-nuanced autistics (who oftentimes have no personal connection to ABA tbh) or be labeled as neglectful by agencies like CPS and have your kid taken (guess which one worse?). which. disproportionately affect BIPOC families especially Black families.

for BIPOC families, even being wrongly called abusive is dangerous, because even that gives agencies like CPS a reason to take their child away.

expecting a child to work (be in ABA) for 40 hours a week can be incredibly inhumane. but sometimes that is only form of childcare available to family. especially single parents, low-income families, parents who need to work multiple jobs to keep mouth fed and bill paid, families who are exhausted but don't have access to respite care and support workers, many of whom are BIPOC families...

sometimes there is no "other option" because insurance don't cover them and states don't recognize them and families can't afford them. did you know many "alternative" therapies so many autistics list--speech, OT, etc--are very connected to ABA/behaviorism because behaviorism as a field as a science is everywhere in psychology? did you know popular ADHD tips like these with the sticker reward system is actually behaviorism (not saying the sticker reward system bad because it behaviorism but am encouraging people to think critically about behaviorism)?

sometimes parents don't know better. sometimes they do. sometimes they do but they can't do anything about it.

the experiences of autistics labeled as level 1 is not going to be the same as those labeled as level 2 or 3. yet so many autistics speaking about ABA are labeled as level 1 and non ABA survivors.

-

ABA as a field has changed since the beginning. but so much have also not. both true at same time.

some ABA survivors are traumatized by ABA and/or have PTSD from it. some aren't, actually. listen to both experiences.

for some, autistics or their families, ABA helped them, some even call it life-saving, because it reduced/redirected/stopped their self-injurious behaviors, stopped/reduced eloping, increased awareness of basic safety, allowed them to do more bADLs than before, and taught them how to communicate (notice how i didn't use "speak" here). they're given naturalistic learning and play learning.

for others, they are abused, forced eye contact, suppressed ALL stimming, given discrete trials and drills, have their favorite comfort items and activities used as reinforcers, have food reinforcers, forced and prioritized speech over all other communication, purposely triggered meltdown to reshape their reactions, forced to mask...

for many, both are true at the same time.

-

ABA doesn't exist alone. ABA exists in a racist ableist bigoted system running exactly how it's intended to run. ABA didn't just pop into existence. getting rid of ABA won't get rid of the system that allowed it to exist in the first place and kept it alive and thriving for so long.

for autistics of color, especially Black autistics, masking keeps them physically safe and alive despite the psychological toll. many don't have the privilege to just unmask or never learn how to mask.

being forced to mask is abusive. ABA is abusive. all true. but existing in a White supremacist system as a BIPOC is also abusive. talk about that when you talk about ABA, too.

you don't get to learn any of this if you don't listen to ABA survivors and people with personal connections to ABA.

for the record i'm not defending ABA (if it isn't obvious). but if me simply providing more nuance to the ABA conversation makes you feel like i'm defending ABA, maybe rethink why, especially if you’re white and/or not an ABA survivor.

just because you are autistic doesn't mean you understand and can speak for all autistic experiences, even the ones that are not your lived experience.

[five-thousand-loaves-of-bread]

because ABA is unavoidable for some families, it's absolutely important to advocate for harm reduction ABA and trauma-informed ABA. it's important to do your research as much as you can and set boundaries with the ABA therapist as much as you can. can't emphasize this enough.

harm-reduction and trauma-informed ABA can save lives (if you can't avoid ABA).

(edit to add: pink colored large text description: harm-reduction and trauma-informed ABA can save lives (if you can’t avoid ABA).)

set boundaries!!! if you are a parent, sit in as the ABA therapist do therapy things with your kid as much as you can! tell the clinician you refuse to use food reinforcer and force eye contact and suppress stimming etc!!!!!

(don’t have spoons so a really quick addition)

[silentdreamystars]

Med-high support needs autistics saying that they would trust a parent of an autistic child over the low-support needs actually autistic “advocates” says a lot. You know a lot about your autism but you don’t know about my own. My autism isn’t like your autism it’s more then sensory differences and social struggles.

[birdofmay]

I absolutely trust my parents. I trust the parents of the other nonverbal higher support needs autistic I was in therapy with too. They know what's important, they're good parents.

I don't trust one (1) single autistic who says "There's no such thing as severe autism!!!!" to take care of me for a single evening. I'd constantly fear to be misinterpreted, talked over and not being taken seriously.

[five-thousand-loaves-of-bread]

^ exactly what birdofmay said

so when i first reblogged, wildly misinterpreted OP (sorry OP), mistakenly thought OP meant mid/high support needs autistic trusting parents more than lower support autistics is bad and betrays lower support needs autistic. because... is actually a sentiment i saw before made by some late diagnosed lower support needs autistics.

(mid/high support needs abbreviated as higher support needs from now on)

in online autism spaces it often boil down to "autistic people good know everything, parents of autistic kids/people bad bad ableist evil." but this extreme dichotomy not always true.

both parents of high support needs early diagnosed autistic or parents of late diagnosed autistics can be abusive, yes, my parents one of them actually, but when talk about "autism parents," often mean the parents of early diagnosed autistic kids because, ya know, kids depend on adults, parents advocate for kid, in order for parents to explicitly advocate for autism for kid, kid has to be identified as autistic early.

yes there are ableist autism parents out there who plays victim and see self as saint and all that.

but also, an overwhelming amount of autism parents of early diagnosed high support needs autistic kids (like those labeled “severe,” “low functioning,” nonspeaking, intellectual disability) want the best for their child in any way possible. they spend every waking day fighting the school the insurance, fighting for clinicians who actually know how to work with their kid (because surprise to late diagnosed lower support needs autistic, most clinicians also don’t know how to work with nonspeaking high support needs autistic with behavioral issues, they get tossed from one clinician to the other), all while burnt out without support for themselves as parents without respite care.

many of these parents understand how even though all (most) behaviors are communication and all communication are valid, not having functional communication severely limits one’s quality of life. they understand what it’s like to need help on every single basic life task like bathing, feeding, keeping self safe, toileting/changing incontinence pads and diapers, hygiene. they understand what it’s like to maybe never able to live independently or hold down a typical job without help. and how that’s different from struggling with lots of psychiatric comorbidities and still able to take care of self most days/on good days, hold job, live mostly independently, etc.

do most lower support needs autistic understand these?

meanwhile most lower support needs autistic tell me they can speak for me because we are all autistic we are all the same. when we are not. from “higher support needs autistics are the reason why autism aren’t taken seriously” to “i am like you because my worst day is just like you in my eyes” to “there are no severe autism we all struggle the same amount” to making fun of and attacking higher support needs autism for their autism to speaking over high support needs autistics and taking over our spaces and tags and words. these are not the minority, these are not extreme exaggerations. these are things higher support needs autistics see on a daily basis while in online autistic spaces.

just like OP said, most lower support needs autistic "advocates" know a lot about their own autism. but don't know a lot about higher support needs autistic's autism.

so yes i trust the average parent of autistic kid over most lower support needs autistics any moment. lower support needs "advocates" can fight me over it

to the lower support needs autistics whom i have heard the complaint from (AKA the complaint i misinterpreted OP to making): maybe instead of complaining about higher support needs autistics, you start thinking about why we feel this way

[avaisautistic]

Honestly, I don’t think autistic people are bad at small talk; I think it’s that we don’t need it.

The point of small talk is to judge whether or not you vibe w/ someone without having to be direct about it and thus risking hurting their feelings.

But autistic people don’t need that. We’re naturally wired to take people as they are and be honest about what we think & feel, and we tend to prefer the same from others.

So our struggle with small talk isn’t because we’re lacking a necessary skill, it’s because the skill is irrelevant to our natural social experience.

[avaisautistic]

I think this is also true. I think it’s both at the same time. Allistic people want to talk to each other, but they’re scared of not vibing with each other, which is why getting into deep stuff right away makes them uncomfortable. So they use the small talk to navigate that middle space

[avaisautistic]

Honestly, I don’t think autistic people are bad at small talk; I think it’s that we don’t need it.

The point of small talk is to judge whether or not you vibe w/ someone without having to be direct about it and thus risking hurting their feelings.

But autistic people don’t need that. We’re naturally wired to take people as they are and be honest about what we think & feel, and we tend to prefer the same from others.

So our struggle with small talk isn’t because we’re lacking a necessary skill, it’s because the skill is irrelevant to our natural social experience.

[avaisautistic]

Anybody else have foods that you do genuinely enjoy eating, but you avoid them anyway because they’re too much of a mess to deal with? My big ones are pico de gallo and anything spreadable

[turnleftaticela]

I wish autistic people would realize we’re all allies. If another autistic person does something you don’t like, even if it’s harmful to the community, dismissing them as “one of the bad ones”/“not representative of the community”/etc. is just going to impede autism acceptance as a whole. We need to understand that everybody’s story is relevant to our experience and there’s a reason for all behavior, even harmful behavior — because more often than not, it’s behavior that never would’ve happened were autism more widely accepted and supported in society.

I know we’re all traumatized as fuck and it’s an instinct to react defensively when someone seems to be painting a bad picture of what we are in society’s eyes, but if we shun those people, we’re only going to end up excluding the people who need inclusion the most. If we can just take the time to try and understand autistic people we dislike or don’t agree with, I guarantee we’ll find that we can relate to them more than we can relate to any allistic in this world. And once we’re there, we can start educating each other, sharing the knowledge that’s keeping us apart and working towards mutual understanding.

Yes, it will take a hell of a lot of time, patience, and effort. But if there’s anything truly worth directing that effort towards, it’s here. We’re in this together, all of us, and the sooner we realize that, the sooner we’ll be able to make real progress as a community.

[butts-bouncing-on-the-beltway]

I was talking to a client today about "how to identify masking" as part of the process of learning how to shift masking from a reflexive coping strategy to a voluntary and conscious one and I feel like it led to a really important shift in framework FOR ME about masking and social distress.

Paraphrasing, the ideas we came to are as follows:

One of the reasons masking can be so difficult to recognize is because, essentially, masking is the act of performing "yourself" as a mirror for the other person you are interacting with. It's this idea of "I will micro-manage my own mood, affect, behavior, mannerisms, and environment in order to reflect back to you whatever version of "self" you need from me because if I don't there will be consequences". So because masking is essentially performing "mirroring" as selfhood by amplifying or minimizing aspects of yourself based on what you think the other person wants to see in you, it varies significantly from one context to another. The major commonality is that it takes up an INCREDIBLE amount of energy, mental and emotional resources, cognitive processing power, etc. So you don't identify masking by specific behaviors so much as by the feeling of "having a significant amount of your mental/emotional resources be occupied by the act of social interaction" to the point that it doesn't leave enough left-over for other cognitive tasks, or leaves you feeling exhausted and worn out, or basically by the impact that masking has on you during and after.

In this framework, part of why we get so anxious about new or unfamiliar people or situations is because we don't know how to mask in that context yet, and so until we get there and figure it out, we're basically just terrified of what could go wrong since we don't know what we're walking into.*

*This is the underlying framework of anticipatory and obsessive anxiety as well. Anticipatory and obsessive anxiety functions as the mechanism by which we conduct both predictive reasoning-basd advance planning and review/self-correctionof our mental predictive model.

Autistic aversion to uncertainty has a lot to do with our need to be able to use predictive reasoning-based advance planning to cope with "social deficits" aka how much harder it is for us to interpret subtextual/nonverbal cues, learn/meet social expectations, and work through/around disordered sensory processing. That predictive reasoning requires us to be familiar, in advance, with the stable constant factors that influence decision making in social contexts. If we aren't familiar with the constant variables than we can't plan, if we can't plan than we are more likely to make noticeable social mis-steps, and if we take notable social mis-steps there are consequences. It becomes necessary for us to be hypervigilent to observable patterns in other people's behavior in order to try to reverse engineer the social interaction playbook on the fly. That ends up making us more likely to assume personal responsibility for predicting and managing the emotional regulatory needs of people around us at all costs, replicating the behavioral/cognitive impacts of chronic traumatic stress due to the activation of our sympathetic nervous system from chronic hypervigilence.

Essentially, masking is a cognitive defense mechanism to severe and/or persistant traumatic interpersonal stressors. As the neurological impacts of chronic traumatic stress heal, we mask less frequently. But in order to heal from chronic traumatic stress, the human brain requires a safe environment that does not trigger a retraumatization episode or replicate feelings of helplessness/fear for safety. In other words, reducing/terminating masking safely requires us as autistic people to have consistent access to social environments in which we are able to utilize autistic interpersonal boundaries without fear of consequence or chonically unmet need. This requires the people around us to be able to respect not only autistic interpersonal boundaries, but also autistic self-expression/advocacy modalities and mediums.

I feel like a lot of the pieces of this framework have been rattling around in my head for a while but the flavor of words hit just right today and all the connections snapped into place.

Anyway, I'm still sort of sorting through the clinical implications of this framework but I think it's a direction I want to keep exploring for sure.

[turnleftaticela]

Hey autistic people you should take my anonymous 9-question Autistic Life Survey to help me with my autism research. I’m gonna put the link in the reblogs so this post shows up in the tags

[turnleftaticela]

Autistic Life Survey

This anonymous survey contains 9 questions about your life as an autistic person. All of them are optional. Some questions contain multiple

Here’s the link

[avaisautistic]

Allistics: Autistic people are deficient in “theory of mind,” meaning they struggle to conceptualize other people having distinct, separate perspectives from their own.

Also allistics: Why don’t you understand what my vague, ambiguous, elaboration-less sentence is supposed to mean? I shouldn’t have to explain myself to you, it’s just common sense.

[avaisautistic]

As an autistic person, I really hate the “autism is a disability” narrative.

I get why people use it, to justify their differences as inherent to their biological makeup and not just a personal choice, but that makes me sad — can differences not be biologically inherent without being a disability?

In today’s world, aspects of autism can certainly be disabling. But personally, I don’t consider myself at all disabled by my autism, because it doesn’t get in the way of me living the life I want to live. I socialize exactly as much as I want to. The people around me support my special interests. My sensory sensitivities only come up occasionally and are easily remedied when they do. Hell, on a daily basis, I’m more disabled by my allergies.

Is my experience common? No. Am I incredibly lucky? Yes. But what exactly is the lucky part? The specifics of the way my brain is wired?

No. The lucky part is my environment.

My family is open-minded and understanding. My parents have enough money to support me without me having to get a job. I have the time and freedom to get to know my own needs and plan accordingly. 

And that’s really all it takes for me to live the life I want to live.

It might sound like I’m gloating here, but that’s not my intention at all. What I’m trying to say here is, disability is a social construct. It’s entirely dependent on a person’s circumstances and environment. If I lived anywhere else with anyone else, life would be a hell of a lot harder for me. And what this means is, disability is not an immutable fact of life. It’s an active process — a disabled person is actively disabled by the world around them. Autistic people don’t disable society; society disables autistic people.

I just want other autistic people to know that an experience like mine can and does exist. If you have to leverage your disability status against people who otherwise won’t listen to you, that’s absolutely valid. But I just want you to know that being autistic doesn’t make you broken or incompetent, and it doesn’t make your experiences less valuable than anyone else’s. The way your brain is wired to operate is a valid way of life, and it’s society’s fault you don’t have full access to that life, not your brain’s.

[ifihadmypickofwishes]

That logic works up until people do have symptoms that get in the way of their life regardless of circumstance.

Some people have sensory issues that come from feedback from their own bodies. That's not society's fault. It's just what happens when your brain processes sensory information in a jumbled way.

I have meltdowns, sometimes for no reason. This has been the case since before I was old enough to form memories. Sometimes when I have a meltdown, I hit myself. There is no society in which that is an adaptive response. There is no society in which that doesn't happen, because it's not provoked by the environment. My family and friends cannot stop my brain from doing that. Neither can a different job, or a different apartment, or a different grad school.

My brain is not broken, and my experience is not less valuable. I am disabled, though. Deconstruct the idea that an intrinsic disability would cause someone's life and perspective to be less important.

[avaisautistic]

Wait I keep thinking about this and I want to say also: I do have sensory issues. My point is, they’re not disabling for me (i.e., they don’t limit my activities within the life I want to live) because I have the time and resources to account for them and plan for them. I’ve been able to get to know my body and self well enough that they rarely come up unexpectedly.

My sensory issues are also worse when I’m stressed, overwhelmed, unhappy, don’t have time to focus on my personal interests, etc. Everything is more tolerable when life is more tolerable. If we had a society that was kind to autistic people, I’m not saying autistic problems would go away. But I just think they wouldn’t be quite so limiting.

When I say the word “disability” I’m not thinking about what that means to society, just about what it means to the person who identifies as disabled (as someone who used to identify as disabled). Knowing your limits is essential, I’m not saying to ignore your own needs or anything like that, I’m just saying certain things might not feel disabling if life in this world was just generally better and easier for all of us.

I hope this makes sense. If I’m misunderstanding the definition of “disability”/“disabled,” please let me know. My only intention is to make people feel more validated, not less. I just want to work towards a better world for all of us.

[avaisautistic]

As an autistic person, I really hate the “autism is a disability” narrative.

I get why people use it, to justify their differences as inherent to their biological makeup and not just a personal choice, but that makes me sad — can differences not be biologically inherent without being a disability?

In today’s world, aspects of autism can certainly be disabling. But personally, I don’t consider myself at all disabled by my autism, because it doesn’t get in the way of me living the life I want to live. I socialize exactly as much as I want to. The people around me support my special interests. My sensory sensitivities only come up occasionally and are easily remedied when they do. Hell, on a daily basis, I’m more disabled by my allergies.

Is my experience common? No. Am I incredibly lucky? Yes. But what exactly is the lucky part? The specifics of the way my brain is wired?

No. The lucky part is my environment.

My family is open-minded and understanding. My parents have enough money to support me without me having to get a job. I have the time and freedom to get to know my own needs and plan accordingly. 

And that’s really all it takes for me to live the life I want to live.

It might sound like I’m gloating here, but that’s not my intention at all. What I’m trying to say here is, disability is a social construct. It’s entirely dependent on a person’s circumstances and environment. If I lived anywhere else with anyone else, life would be a hell of a lot harder for me. And what this means is, disability is not an immutable fact of life. It’s an active process — a disabled person is actively disabled by the world around them. Autistic people don’t disable society; society disables autistic people.

I just want other autistic people to know that an experience like mine can and does exist. If you have to leverage your disability status against people who otherwise won’t listen to you, that’s absolutely valid. But I just want you to know that being autistic doesn’t make you broken or incompetent, and it doesn’t make your experiences less valuable than anyone else’s. The way your brain is wired to operate is a valid way of life, and it’s society’s fault you don’t have full access to that life, not your brain’s.

[ifihadmypickofwishes]

That logic works up until people do have symptoms that get in the way of their life regardless of circumstance.

Some people have sensory issues that come from feedback from their own bodies. That's not society's fault. It's just what happens when your brain processes sensory information in a jumbled way.

I have meltdowns, sometimes for no reason. This has been the case since before I was old enough to form memories. Sometimes when I have a meltdown, I hit myself. There is no society in which that is an adaptive response. There is no society in which that doesn't happen, because it's not provoked by the environment. My family and friends cannot stop my brain from doing that. Neither can a different job, or a different apartment, or a different grad school.

My brain is not broken, and my experience is not less valuable. I am disabled, though. Deconstruct the idea that an intrinsic disability would cause someone's life and perspective to be less important.

[mistress-specksynder-deactivate]

Yet, we have no choice to participate in society unless we go off into the wilderness. I will always have to deal with sensory pain from cars and sirens and dogs due to going to university, and I will have to deal with them even in future jobs. I will always encounter a stranger at least once in a while where I can't communicate with them.

I can't not be disabled because I can't ever disengage from society, I can't ever get away from cars and the sensory pain caused by them.

[avaisautistic]

Yeah :( I used to have similar circumstances. It’s awful and I’m sorry. I guess the point of my post is that it shouldn’t have to be that way, and society needs to change a whole hell of a lot.

[mistress-specksynder-deactivate]

That's completely true, too. I'm sorry if I came off as rude

[avaisautistic]

Not at all, I’m sorry if I invalidated you!

[avaisautistic]

As an autistic person, I really hate the “autism is a disability” narrative.

I get why people use it, to justify their differences as inherent to their biological makeup and not just a personal choice, but that makes me sad — can differences not be biologically inherent without being a disability?

In today’s world, aspects of autism can certainly be disabling. But personally, I don’t consider myself at all disabled by my autism, because it doesn’t get in the way of me living the life I want to live. I socialize exactly as much as I want to. The people around me support my special interests. My sensory sensitivities only come up occasionally and are easily remedied when they do. Hell, on a daily basis, I’m more disabled by my allergies.

Is my experience common? No. Am I incredibly lucky? Yes. But what exactly is the lucky part? The specifics of the way my brain is wired?

No. The lucky part is my environment.

My family is open-minded and understanding. My parents have enough money to support me without me having to get a job. I have the time and freedom to get to know my own needs and plan accordingly. 

And that’s really all it takes for me to live the life I want to live.

It might sound like I’m gloating here, but that’s not my intention at all. What I’m trying to say here is, disability is a social construct. It’s entirely dependent on a person’s circumstances and environment. If I lived anywhere else with anyone else, life would be a hell of a lot harder for me. And what this means is, disability is not an immutable fact of life. It’s an active process — a disabled person is actively disabled by the world around them. Autistic people don’t disable society; society disables autistic people.

I just want other autistic people to know that an experience like mine can and does exist. If you have to leverage your disability status against people who otherwise won’t listen to you, that’s absolutely valid. But I just want you to know that being autistic doesn’t make you broken or incompetent, and it doesn’t make your experiences less valuable than anyone else’s. The way your brain is wired to operate is a valid way of life, and it’s society’s fault you don’t have full access to that life, not your brain’s.

[ifihadmypickofwishes]

That logic works up until people do have symptoms that get in the way of their life regardless of circumstance.

Some people have sensory issues that come from feedback from their own bodies. That's not society's fault. It's just what happens when your brain processes sensory information in a jumbled way.

I have meltdowns, sometimes for no reason. This has been the case since before I was old enough to form memories. Sometimes when I have a meltdown, I hit myself. There is no society in which that is an adaptive response. There is no society in which that doesn't happen, because it's not provoked by the environment. My family and friends cannot stop my brain from doing that. Neither can a different job, or a different apartment, or a different grad school.

My brain is not broken, and my experience is not less valuable. I am disabled, though. Deconstruct the idea that an intrinsic disability would cause someone's life and perspective to be less important.

[mistress-specksynder-deactivate]

Yet, we have no choice to participate in society unless we go off into the wilderness. I will always have to deal with sensory pain from cars and sirens and dogs due to going to university, and I will have to deal with them even in future jobs. I will always encounter a stranger at least once in a while where I can't communicate with them.

I can't not be disabled because I can't ever disengage from society, I can't ever get away from cars and the sensory pain caused by them.

[avaisautistic]

Yeah :( I used to have similar circumstances. It’s awful and I’m sorry. I guess the point of my post is that it shouldn’t have to be that way, and society needs to change a whole hell of a lot.

[avaisautistic]

As an autistic person, I really hate the “autism is a disability” narrative.

I get why people use it, to justify their differences as inherent to their biological makeup and not just a personal choice, but that makes me sad — can differences not be biologically inherent without being a disability?

In today’s world, aspects of autism can certainly be disabling. But personally, I don’t consider myself at all disabled by my autism, because it doesn’t get in the way of me living the life I want to live. I socialize exactly as much as I want to. The people around me support my special interests. My sensory sensitivities only come up occasionally and are easily remedied when they do. Hell, on a daily basis, I’m more disabled by my allergies.

Is my experience common? No. Am I incredibly lucky? Yes. But what exactly is the lucky part? The specifics of the way my brain is wired?

No. The lucky part is my environment.

My family is open-minded and understanding. My parents have enough money to support me without me having to get a job. I have the time and freedom to get to know my own needs and plan accordingly. 

And that’s really all it takes for me to live the life I want to live.

It might sound like I’m gloating here, but that’s not my intention at all. What I’m trying to say here is, disability is a social construct. It’s entirely dependent on a person’s circumstances and environment. If I lived anywhere else with anyone else, life would be a hell of a lot harder for me. And what this means is, disability is not an immutable fact of life. It’s an active process — a disabled person is actively disabled by the world around them. Autistic people don’t disable society; society disables autistic people.

I just want other autistic people to know that an experience like mine can and does exist. If you have to leverage your disability status against people who otherwise won’t listen to you, that’s absolutely valid. But I just want you to know that being autistic doesn’t make you broken or incompetent, and it doesn’t make your experiences less valuable than anyone else’s. The way your brain is wired to operate is a valid way of life, and it’s society’s fault you don’t have full access to that life, not your brain’s.

[ifihadmypickofwishes]

That logic works up until people do have symptoms that get in the way of their life regardless of circumstance.

Some people have sensory issues that come from feedback from their own bodies. That's not society's fault. It's just what happens when your brain processes sensory information in a jumbled way.

I have meltdowns, sometimes for no reason. This has been the case since before I was old enough to form memories. Sometimes when I have a meltdown, I hit myself. There is no society in which that is an adaptive response. There is no society in which that doesn't happen, because it's not provoked by the environment. My family and friends cannot stop my brain from doing that. Neither can a different job, or a different apartment, or a different grad school.

My brain is not broken, and my experience is not less valuable. I am disabled, though. Deconstruct the idea that an intrinsic disability would cause someone's life and perspective to be less important.

[avaisautistic]

Yeah, I could’ve worded this better. Thank you for the addition.

I guess my main worry is that when people say “autism is a disability” this means they consider the social aspects disabilities as well, which could then lead to the mindset that allistic socializing is the “right way” and that we need to be accommodated while we try to operate within those bounds, as opposed to just being allowed to speak our own language. I worry it would be like an American calling a French person disabled just because they don’t speak their language.

That’s why I said the thing about perspectives being important; I was really just talking about the autistic way of socializing being seen as a “limiting” thing rather than a way of life. I should have made that more clear, and I apologize. It was never my intention to imply disability perspectives aren’t important — if anything, they’re more important.