Often times, when you see a neurodivergent person acting outrageously unreasonable, it's because they're doing exactly what they were told is normal when it's done to them.
There was a time when I expected people to guide me through socializing step by step and got angry anytime they gave advice that I couldn't understand.
But that's exactly how I was treated anytime someone struggled with math. Because I was always good at math, I was expected to drop everything to help anyone who needed my help. And I was expected to feel honored by that.
But I wasn't born with a master's degree in teaching. I'm good at math because numbers have vibes to me and because I recognize patterns that most people don't. I don't do math the "normal way", so I wouldn't be good at explaining it the "normal way". Math is something that comes naturally to me, so I have no idea what causes people to struggle with it. I have no idea what goes through someone's brain when they try to do math. I also have a disability that makes explaining things difficult even under perfect conditions. So I'm probably the worst person to explain math. But still, anytime someone needed help in math, their problem became mine. When I was done helping one person, I had to help the next. And they were allowed to get mad at me anytime I couldn't help them, but I had to be fully patient with them.
And it wasn't just a few people treating me that way. It was everyone. It was my parents. It was my siblings. It was my classmates. It was my teachers. It was very hard for me to recognize it as unreasonable when that many people do it regularly and no one thinks of them as unreasonable when they do it. So it was also very hard for me to recognize it as unreasonable when I started doing it too.
It was very much unreasonable for me to expect people to drop everything and make my social struggles become their problem. Not only is it not their responsibility to solve all my problems for me, but they're also not going to know how to help me because socializing comes naturally to them so they're not going to know what goes through my head when I try to socialize. But even though I was being clearly unreasonable, I didn't recognize that because I was being more reasonable than how others treated me.
