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(Allistics reading these replies, did you know how many of us have to spend so much time reverse-engineering these social rules because literally nobody has ever explained them to us, just arbitrarily gotten angry at us for breaking them?) https://t.co/fX0GKP1Vu7
do you understand that we get upset when people around us have broken OUR rules? But that that is never ok for us to show that we’re upset, or we are “difficult” when we do. Do you see what a privilege it is to live in a society based on your standards? How this wrecks us?
Imagine internalizing from childhood that your default, intuitive, natural and harmless behaviors and needs are NOT OKAY, and will NOT BE RESPECTED, but that you absolutely have to respect the (often harmful!) behaviors of those around you. And if you complain, you’re rejected.
If you’re thinking “gosh that sounds like a kinda traumatizing way to live” then yeah, you get it. Autism means that you have an abusive, gaslighting relationship with your entire society. https://t.co/0I1E5bICWT
Yes. This. At the autistic research conference INSAR there was overwhelming demand from autistic participants to fund research into trauma and autism. Once you see it you realize: “difficult” autistic behavior is trauma-driven, not intrinsically autistic. That’s horrifying. https://t.co/MzYDOYvh0H
When you see us get angry at groups like @autismspeaks it’s not just because they’re helping @realDonaldTrump get ready to lock us up, it’s because they control most of the research money. Fortunes spent seeking a “cure” to this non-illness and no research on trauma. Imagine.
I’m doing a bad job managing this as a thread but I wanna make sure y’all see @enkiv2’s helpful response, outlining research and tips for understanding how these games work. NTs read this! You may be surprised at what you don’t know you know! https://t.co/uV5uCrCLSn
Yes. Not being heard and recognizing that there is no way you can be heard is traumatic. You may find yourself exhibiting one of the four trauma responses, fight/flight/freeze/fawn. “Freezing” is less damaging socially but horrific internally. https://t.co/ILIweXJErF
Yes! We have varying degrees of ability, and many of us build elaborate models of social interaction as a survival mechanism. As a reward, then, we can’t get diagnosed because we learned how to outwardly “pass”. Our suicide rate is 9x normal, weird huh? https://t.co/5VUozxpYdy
“Be more engaged! Not like that!” is a song many of us know by heart by now. https://t.co/Puesv2OH7D
Anyway. If you are #ActuallyAutistic and want to contribute to this thread please do and I’ll roll you in. If you’re not sure if you are, DM me for resources! And if you’re not, but curious, please feel free to ask questions and I’ll try to RT answers for group feedback too.
This ain’t just me, friends. This kinda seems to be most of us. https://t.co/bo7vCzUZ8x
Let me get Very Serious for a sec: This trauma is being weaponized. Autistics are being recruited by alt-right groups. We see it happening. School shooters are -groomed- and this is one population that’s easy to groom. They are going to demonize us. https://t.co/wLNZIEO5bt
🚨 YOU NEED TO KNOW 🚨 The founder of Autism Speaks, a bullshit charity that harms autistic people, is RIGHT NOW working with this regime to figure out ways to lock us up as a way to avoid talking about GUN CONTROL. I’m begging you, speak up when you hear people accept this. https://t.co/6hhWZuI0xB
Do you know how many of us spend years or *decades* in mental anguish, failing to thrive as self-actualized human beings, because society punishes is instead of teaching us the SIMPLE things we need to learn? https://t.co/zx358Ejlh2
Yeah. But it’s nowhere near as painful as it was when I thought I WAS THE ONLY ONE LIKE ME. We are an invisible diaspora, an entire PEOPLE seeing ourselves as such FOR THE FIRST TIME IN HUMAN HISTORY. We find each other by speaking painful truths. https://t.co/KfWwcLyQQ8
This! This is hugely important to understand! Autism is genetic, most adult diagnosis happens when a parent gets their kid diagnosed. Autistic families have their own “folk wisdom”, not all of it adaptive or healthy or useful. https://t.co/PHGbULfZnL
Worse: undiagnosed autistic parents who struggled their whole lives can be the least accepting of their own kids struggles. So a lot of time the family “advice” you get is some variant of ABA, rules to fit in, rigidly enforced, panic-driven but never acknowledged as such.
I’ve had this one happen. Pardon me for assuming that the thing you asked me for help with is the thing you want to accomplish, fuck me, right? Again, easy to recognize and clear up a miscommunication! Hard to recover from a rebuke. https://t.co/sNwIOMBucp
DO YOU SEE HOW LITERALLY MILLIONS OF HUMAN-YEARS OF CONFUSION, RESENTMENT AND SUFFERING COULD BE AVOIDED IF WE JUST ACCEPTED EACH OTHER?!?! https://t.co/3w7OQQcXen
Imagine feeling like you’ve never “gotten away with” a simple statement of fact meant to clarify a conversational flow. https://t.co/Fzaqwjgfk2
I have stretched this twitter lunch break as long as I feel like I reasonably can so I’m stopping here for now, but I’ll follow up on further replies later keep ‘me coming! NTs: imagine if you had to devote 40-80% of your brain to figuring shit like this out your whole life?
Honestly: knowing that these conversations help people like me have insights like this one makes this the single most important calling I have in this life. My people are a people and deserve to be free, in their own minds most importantly. https://t.co/MZj9DSeWOq
I’m such a liar. This is what it feels like. There are rules applied to me that keep me from expressing what I desperately need to express, it those rules don’t generalize - they ensure the NTs can express their every thought and whim. (Ok now work) https://t.co/4R19mGV3yB
(Btw, do you understand that all of these things combine to make us perfect victims for narcissists and abusers? Because that becomes _comfortable_ for us!!!) https://t.co/KMkHUMUbLD
Imagine a whole demographic of people who struggle with debilitatingly painful internal problems that are actually VERY COMMON but nobody talks about their struggles so you go decades before learning the names for the things you’ve fought your whole life? https://t.co/WtZubO1TAf
Do you know how many people go through life hating themselves because the world told them their beautiful, amazing self was wrong? https://t.co/nZCgtljS3j
*stares directly, piercingly into the camera, eyes changing intensity: the blue glowing into a beam or flame that cuts all it sees but defies naming* https://t.co/af5SfLdIpA
Do y'all understand, really understand, what the internet has meant for people like me? Have you ever felt like the only member of your species? Finding the others is coming out of the matrix. It's not necessarily fun out here, but finally it's real. https://t.co/SyYa8sv5Nc
We've all heard this trope, right? I hope any readers of this feed will know by now that this is factually incorrect in almost every case (though non-empathic autistics exist too!), and really painful and harmful for us to hear. https://t.co/9kkyOui1gc
Ah yes the "double empathy problem". We process and express emotions - including empathy - differently than y'all do. Historically modeled as a deficit, turns out it's just a difference. Ofc we are expected to accommodate ya'll. https://t.co/qRDZdJ2SNq https://t.co/uyfzjFTlS0
Huh! I don't think I have this but I do blank out sometimes. I've known a few people who struggle with nouns, often with humorous coping strategies. https://t.co/uB33xtQcSv
I do this. Masking is about trial-and-error and doing your best to make it very clear to those people around you that even if you're a bit weird you won't do anything crazy like ask them to respect your boundaries. You have to over-signal so strongly. https://t.co/cA19GSIhw4
I don't know this person but I believe them. We are expected to do all of the same things NT people do _but it doesn't matter how much energy it costs us_, it's expected, it's a baseline. Our choice is often: thrive as myself or suffer as someone else. https://t.co/GHlIQQgWcW
Tricks we each develop in isolation! I've found that prefacing responses with "I'm hearing you say..." is a great way to clear up miscommunications. In groups I try to ask questions of people who don't talk much, to avoid me talking. https://t.co/X03EUJyzqw
We turn this pain into introspection, into analysis, into a driving need to understand _why_ things are so weird, into haunting expressions of emotions we know others won't understand, into a passion for justice. https://t.co/9YT5B2d5Kx
Yup. Many of us model words and behaviors on fictional characters - or less socially awkward real people we know, which can be weird. I used to walk around with my arms behind my back like Morpheus from the Matrix! ;) https://t.co/lFis0OD6sO
Such a good point I wanted to mention this! NTs act like their social expectations are just universal norms but walk far enough in any direction and you’ll have different ones! I lived in japan for one very confused year, none of my masks worked. https://t.co/4mARwHo01w
There is a sense that learning to mask is actually pretty similar to learning a foreign language - but you don’t just need grammar and vocabulary, intonation encodes emotion, facial expression encodes intent, etc etc etc. We have to study and learn, and even then it SUCKS.
This. We are all walking around feeling like failures, hating ourselves for not living the lives we thought we would. What if instead we learned to accept this truth: that we're god-damned superheroes for doing as well as we are. https://t.co/Iqk9OyfSz3
"Why not just go get therapy?" Because autistic needs are different than neurotypical needs, but most therapists are working with the assumption that you have neurotypical needs. https://t.co/htmhngpb6M
"Just do more CBT!" Motherfuckers CBT is about desensitizing myself to negative thoughts, but if these negative thoughts are MY REAL UNMET NEEDS SCREAMING AT ME then do you REALLY want me to get better at ignoring them? HOW WILL THAT HELP ME?!
Let me put this a different way: when you feel rejected by the whole world, you'd do a whole lot for the one or two people who make you feel special. This isn't an autism thing, this is how terrorism always works. https://t.co/0clhUGhv29
Yes. And abusers know to look for this. https://t.co/gJpN8DmkKu
If the "fawn" trauma response is relevant news to you, please go follow @samdylanfinch which is where I first learned about it and then go buy a copy of Pete Walker's "Complex PTSD: From Surviving to Thriving" - you'll understand yourself so much better. https://t.co/M8yj4CNBkU
@samdylanfinch Stuff like being queer, or of being from a different culture - guess what! These things are also _invisible subjective differences_ that define entire lives but which most people can't see. Subjectivity is real! (is queerness a form of Neurodiversity?) https://t.co/oBge8VCObF
@samdylanfinch "Hey Myk, how did you develop such a rich and intuitive understanding of intersectionality so quickly after being exposed to the term?" Because it's been clear all my life that power is complicated in exactly these ways. https://t.co/8FreoqyAAn
@samdylanfinch (Oh shit, I have accidentally been tagging someone I referenced in an earlier tweet - is there any way for me to undo that? I'm so sorry @samdylanfinch I probably just killed your mentions by accident with this!)