Autism, From Someone Who Is On The Spectrum

Autism and Judgement (March 2020)

"You do not look Autistic" will always be painful to hear. Many of us who hear it regularly used to be heavily bullied and criticized for our behaviors and personalities while growing up. At some point, we discovered that people treated us differently if we were less of who we were and acted more like them. So, we learned to mimic other people's behavior to make our lives more bearable. We taught ourselves to modify our entire personhood as a survival mechanism to feel safer around others. The thing is, the safer we felt around others, and the more we felt the need to be ourselves. This would result in people criticizing us again, going back to past traumatic dynamics. We were stuck in never-ending cycle of masking our true selves to feel safe but never being able to feel safe enough to unmask. To many of us, our Autism diagnosis was life-changing. It filled many blank spaces of our lives that were not letting us move forward and allowed us to be more compassionate towards ourselves. Many were able to find joy and take pride in who we are, for the first time in our lives. When you tell us we "do not look Autistic", you are essentially making us take a painful walk down memory lane. You are making us relive the many times people made us feel like we were not enough to exist as we are. Coming to terms with the fact we have been hiding our true selves all of our lives to survive is not an easy task. It takes a lot of courage to go through some of the most traumatic events in our lives to see ourselves with this new information and start healing past wounds. All we want is to be valued and appreciated for who we are. However, some of us are still trying to figure that out because healing is painful. We can only do it in short bursts without having the memories impacting negatively on us. To protect ourselves from further damage, we may still mimic others and suppress who we are to feel safe. This does not mean we are suddenly less Autistic or not Autistic at all. It just means we are purposefully making our behaviors less evident as a survival mechanism while we heal and find comfort in who we are."-The Autistic Life

Over the years, I have hear the "you do not look Autistic" including having family members tell my parents that I am not autistic. Year ago, I had an aunt who had seen me in about 10-15 years and told my mother, that there is no way I am autistic and I hear that conversation. My mother makes joke about it on the regular basis, if "I do not look like an autistic, while you do not look ignorance but here we are". Over the last couple years, I have been make sure that overcoming the damage of that comment is.  

The comment is not just hurtful in the moment but it devalues the experience that person on the spectrum went through to get this point in their lives. I have heard this more times than I would like to remember. But it does more damage to the person on the spectrum because we convince that if we hide the characteristics that make us autistic. 

As autistic, we learn hide those characteristics to fit into the world but those characteristic are what actually make us, who are we are. But we need people in our live that will not outcasted us if we admit that we are Autistic or if we make a mistake in a way that they will not hold against us.     

"Autistic people have to live in constant fear of being outcasted or punished if we accidentally offend or even simply annoying someone by trying to be funny. Meanwhile, when allistic people make joke at our expense, we are expected to 100% tolerate it because they are "kidding". Autistic people are expected to go out our way to avoid talking about our interests in a way that bores other people. Meanwhile, if we do not want to take part in other people's conversations, we are rude. Autistic people with special skills are expected to always be willing to help other people, and continue to help until the problem is solved, even if they do not explain what the problem even is. Meanwhile, when an autistic person has a problem, allistic people can just give the most vague advice and even refuse to believe that the problem even exists, while expecting praise for it. If an allistic person is good at something, what they are good at is enough. Meanwhile, if an autistic person is good at something, we are expected to also be just as good at everything else. So I have no idea where this belief of autistic people using their disability to get away with things comes from. Autistic people are held to higher standards, not lower."-The Autistic Life 

Please be aware how hard that comment hurts someone on the spectrum. It is not easy to know whether or not someone in our life will believe that we are on the spectrum. That belief makes us be able to valuation the rollercoaster of events in our live, we dealt with to get where we are now.