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Some people apparently think that special interests are only experienced by autistic people. Not the case, anyone can experience them but being autistic can correlate with having special interests more intensely or more often. Special interests or circumscribed interests are not exclusive to autistic people but autistics generally tend to display an affinity towards having these interests essentially.
I think people also forget that even with autistic traits, non autistics can have them. Like sensory issues, socialising differences, etc. Can exist in non autistics to the same extent. They may just not consider themself autistic, may only have one type of autistic trait but not be autistic, may have a different neurodivergence that overlaps with autistic traits, or literally any other good faith reason.
And acting like its only autistic people who experience these things, or acting like all autistics experience every single one of these things, does not help in neurodivergent liberation or inclusivity.
Bold of you to assume “It depends” or “I need background noise so that the random ambient background noise does n’t drive me up the wall” aren’t options.
[ID: a screenshot of a tweet by Richard (Jeep era), handle @halkyardo, reading:
“Are you "I must have background noise at all times” neurodivergent, or are you “background noise drives me literally insane” neurodivergent?“
The tweet was posted at 6:51 PM on 2022-03-16, and by the time of the screenshot the tweet had 1,650 retweets, 3,291 quote tweets and 30.5K likes. /end of ID]
[ID A threads of 23 tweets by Sara Gibbs (@ Sara_Rose_G)
If you’re not autistic, please read: here’s how the cycle of autism misinformation works:
Neurotypicals (parents, researchers, autism professionals) decide to do something to “help” us. Usually it’s something distinctly unhelpful 1/
For example, a book or movie about what they imagine our inner experiences are, usually getting it completely wrong & also usually received with feverish butt-licking praise from the non-disabled community, who tend to think it’s “beautiful” or “brave” 2/
Or perhaps a research project, again claiming to “help” but showing no signs of how it plans to do so beyond studying us like zoo animals with a potential view to “curing” us or maybe even making sure we’re not born in the first place 3/
Celebrity ambassadors are wheeled out to the media - almost exclusively parents of autistic kids. Now, this all sounds reasonable enough, right? Isn’t autism a disease? Aren’t autistic people unable to speak for themselves?
Well no and, for the most part, no 4/
1) autism is a neurological difference. In many ways it’s a disability. In many ways it’s our personality.
There’s nothing wrong with who we are. It’s just communicated to you in terms of our deficits. Think of all of your personality traits presented in a pathologised way. 5/
Imagine seeing a list of your character traits skewed in negative terms to make you sound disordered:
“Inexplicable enjoyment of large social gatherings”
“Rigid adherence to confusing unspoken social rules”
“Excessive need for eye contact” etc.
You’d sound disordered too 6/
Now - there are some things about autism that can be disabling - sensory processing disorder springs to mind. But instead of focusing on, say, developing a drug to help us cope or adapting society to give us better access, they treat our whole character like a disease 7/
2) can we speak for ourselves? A lot of autism misinformation focuses on the idea of “mild” to “severe” autism, often focusing on whether or not we can speak, which doesn’t chime with the experiences of actually autistic people. 8/
Link to the article attached in the original post.
Some autistic people are non-speaking. Some have other comorbid disabilities, chronic illnesses & pain conditions. Sometimes these things come together to form a complex picture with high support needs. However - whether or not we can speak is one part of a much bigger picture 9/
Not all non-speaking people are unable to communicate. Some communicate through AAC devices or in writing. And not all speaking autistics experience their autistic traits “mildly”. I am a highly verbal autistic person with moderately high support needs, for example 10/
So what does all this have to do with the unhelpful helpers I started my thread with?
The unhelpful helpers announce their benevolent, charitable autism project. They feel sorry for us. They think we’re diseased & need fixing. They think we can’t speak & need translating 11/
Except we aren’t diseased & we can, for the most part, communicate. Not all in the same way but many of us can.
So we speak up & tell the unhelpful helpers they’re being unhelpful. You’d think as they want to help us so much they’d listen, right? Well, no. 12/
It’s all smiles & sunshine & self-congratulation - until the autism community speaks up. Then it gets ugly. We’ve challenged their view of themselves as good Samaritans. If I were to pathologise NT behaviour I’d say they’re prone to cognitive dissonance 13/
They need a way to discredit us pronto. Either it’s challenging our autistic identities (if we can speak, we must not be autistic enough, therefore what we say isn’t valid) or patronising us (if we can’t speak, we must be confused & what we say isn’t valid) 14/
The media is often complicit in this, either exclusively focusing on parents, researchers & autism professionals instead of asking an autistic person or having us on their shows to sanitise a non-autistic person’s autism project 15/
I have my own stories to tell about the latter & one day I will but now isn’t the right time.
Anyway given that these art & research projects focus on trying to find out what our mysterious inner worlds could possibly be, autistic voices present a problem 16/
Because what’s the point of lucrative neurotypical projects that study our mysterious inner worlds if you could JUST FUCKING ASK US??!!! 17/
The autism machine, the media & the public absolutely love back-patting projects. They love autistic people & want to help us. They love us & want to help us until we talk back. They love us & want up help us all the way to the bank while silencing & demeaning us 18/
If you’re neurotypical & have read this far, THANK YOU. Listening is the first & most important act of allyship.
So what can you do to help the potentially up to one in thirty of us who are your autistic friends, colleagues, family etc. to be heard? 19/
1) when you see a project like this, ask questions. Are autistic people involved? Is the autistic community behind it?
2) if not, who is being allowed to speak on big platforms? Where are the autistic voices of dissent?
3) complain. We can’t make a big enough dent on our own 20/
4) read, watch & listen to books, shows & art BY AUTISTIC PEOPLE. Preferably ones that haven’t been through a massive neurotypical filter.
5) amplify autistic voices, online & elsewhere
6) don’t treat us like we’re diseased & need a cure. We’re not & we don’t. 21/
And finally please don’t believe sickly sweet people with patronising saccharine smiles who claim they’re helping us while shouting over us & ignoring us entirely. Don’t believe our tormentors because they look & sound convincing. Don’t disbelieve us because we’re angry 22/
That’s it for now - thank you for reading all of this & if you’re neurotypical, your autistic pals need you. Please share this or other threads on our exploitation. Please help us the way we’re asking us to be helped. Then you can pat yourself on the back & mean it. End/
End ID]
I’m sitting in that nebulous area where I’m pretty sure I’m neurodivergent, not exactly sure how, and not able to see a psychiatrist consistently enough to really figure it out. ADHD, autism, or both, or something else altogether? I’m not sure.
Anyway, around 15-ish years ago, I remember stumbling across various blogs and small sites (i.e. Geocities or AngelFire sites) for young adults with autism, especially students. They were full of life-hacks, study tips, etc. that really helped me out. Enough that I didn’t need to keep visiting them, and didn’t really bother preserving my bookmarks or anything.
I fast forward about 8 years and I was having a rough time in college, so I went looking for those. But most of those blogs and small sites were gone (often because the entire hosting site was gone). I found tons of new autism websites and blogs! …almost exclusively geared for the parents and teachers of children with autism. At most, ones for high school/college students were about self-advocacy. Which is useful, don’t get me wrong, just not what I needed and not what I remembered seeing before. All the advice for just day to day coping and strategies someone with autism or neurodivergence can use for themselves were gone.
In retrospect, those older blogs and small sites were probably written and created by people with autism. The blogs and sites that got popular enough to be the first 10-20 pages of search engine results later on were…most definitely not.
It’s like suddenly, the Internet couldn’t fathom the idea that someone neurodivergent could exist outside of what an abled person can do for them.
Image description: A rainbow (and another, fainter, rainbow above the first one) in a cloud of water spray at the bottom of a waterfall at Yellowstone National Park.
I had a literal emotional breakdown when I got my diagnosis. It was quite literally life changing for me.
Before diagnosis?
I was plagued with a feeling of brokenness — why does it take me 10x longer to learn concepts than it takes my peers, even when I’m attempting to apply all the same strategies? Why is it so dang hard for me to commit to a single project, and why do I spend weeks obsessing over a project only to suddenly lose interest and never touch it again? Why do I have such a visceral reaction to the smallest, friendliest amount of criticism? Why does that person keep making that tiny paper noise while I’m trying to complete my exam — wait, what was the question asking? Let me re-read itAGAIN.
After diagnosis?
Validation! Holy cow is the validation game changing. I no longer had to blame myself for just not trying hard enough. I was trying plenty hard; however, the tools and strategies that work for neurotypical brains don’t necessarily work for my brain! And that’s perfectly okay. As well, I discovered that my anxiety and depression were symptoms, and as I treated my ADHD and developed coping mechanisms around it, I no longer wanted to die.
Of course, the armchair psychiatrists among my friends and family do sometimes try and chime in to tell me that Adderall is bad(derall), and that’s certainly infuriating; however, f*ck em. I don’t care what they think – they’re clearly not thinking rationally if they see me taking Adderall carefully as prescribed (which they see as me ”basically doing meth” – a deeply misguided and inaccurate view) as worse than quite literally trying to kill myself, and they don’t deserve to have a say – it’s my body and my mind, so I can do what I want.
So… yeah. I’m a big advocate for getting assessed for ADHD if you think you may have it. Does a diagnosis mean you have to medicate? Absolutely not. I prefer not to medicate unless it’s absolutely necessary – my Adderall crash is always draining, so I am nevermotivated to abuse the medication. But when I do take it? All of the internal thought-clutter calms to a hush, the world comes to me more clearly, I am able to find a calm within myself that I never before knew existed, and I can just be. Like, I can just think without interruption. Wow! Clarity of mind is the most incredible feeling. It’s not even a high. It’s just… absence of chaos.
In today’s episode of “Nobody asked you to be my armchair psychiatrist…”
(Yet again) receiving unsolicited “advice” from a recreational cocaine userwithoutanymedical professional qualifications comparing getting assessed for ADHD to recklessly doping one’s self to the point of total cognitive dysfunction just for funsies.
Did I askfor your medical input? No? Then don’t offer it.
As an autistic person, I can tell you that the best think you can do for the autistic community is to be tolerant and kind. I’ve only ever been harmed by organizations that claim to help, such as the NDIS.
Don’t donate to anybody. Don’t put a bumper sticker on your car. Don’t put anything in your bio or pfp.
please stop treating the word neurodivergent like it means the overlap between autism and adhd
i dont know how to articulate this well but some of you act like neurodiversity starts with adhd and ends with autism. you talk about “the neurodivergent experience” and everytime you mean “the overlapping experience of adhd and autism.”
please remember us when talking about neurodiversity. ocd, dyslexia, dyscaculia, personality disorders, tourettes, intellectual disabilities, schizo-spec disorders, etc. all fall under neurodiversity.
please stop saying neurodivergent when you mean “autism and adhd.”
this post is okay to reblog but do not clown on it
I don’t know who needs to hear this but I REALLY REALLY hope you guys realize neurodivieristy doesn’t just start and end up with Austim and ADHD
Like it’s great people are become aware! And learning more about this But it seems that people only pretend these are the only two and if you don’t have these two then I guess you don’t count??????
remember the rest of us and stick up for each other when we can
I was talking to a friend about being somewhat between hyperfixations and feeling very aimless, and about the fact that I’m starting to get my brain function back from the New Job Transition stress but don’t know what to DO with all that potential ability to do things, and it struck me that I could, you know, Schedule My Days To Include All The Things That Make Me Feel Like I Had A Good Day and then do them according to the schedule, which immediately sounded TERRIBLE
Except
Then I realized
That is how you get to be Lan Zhan in a ScarlettStorm modern AU
which is, obviously, the absolute pinnacle of neurodivergent life goals
They don’t hate you. They don’t hate you. They don’t hate you.
Probably. I think. Perhaps. Maybe.
Probably have stuck around all these years Out of obligation. As if they signed a legally binding contract When they entered the friendship Breaking it is punishable by death!
You might not want to hear this but people with anger issues and/or violent impulses need social accommodations. And no by accommodation I don’t mean walking on eggshells around them, actual accommodations for people with these issues comes down to giving them a space away from what’s triggering them to process their emotions and calm themselves down same as what kind of accommodations people who get sensory overload or just any kind of overwhelmed. There is no moral value to having anger issues or violent impulses, people with them are deserving of accommodation the same as everyone else.
I had severe anger issues growing up, and the only way I was ever taught to deal with them was deep breathing. For some reason, deep breathing just triggers me to get angrier. But it’s the only coping skill I ever got taught for it. Here’s a few better ones.
Go and exercise. Get all of that energy out and away from the people you love.
Get a hang of when you’re winding up to a rage and learn to tell people that you need to step away. I will warn you that the first time that someone refuses to let you go once you learn this skill will spook the hell out of you if you don’t have a backup skill, so figure out ahead of time what you’re gonna do if they won’t let you leave.
Learn to set boundaries. One of the best things I ever did for my anger issues was tell people that I can’t deal with people stealing food off my plate. Second best was when I’m mad, telling people not to touch me. I spook easily when I’m already angry.
Get a pack of pencils and if nothing is working, break one. Sometimes you really do need to break something in order to feel better, and pencils are cheap.
Don’t cook with a knife when you’re mad. If you get too much adrenaline, the knife can slip and hurt you.
If you have anger issues that pop up without any seeming reason and frighten you, I would strongly recommend going over the situation and over your mental health. If there’s anything consistent with a mental health condition or with something particular happening to trigger it, seek to eliminate the trigger or treat the issue. Depression, anxiety, trauma, you name it, it can probably present as anger issues under the right circumstances.
Some quick notes for people without anger issues that want to help someone who has anger issues:
Fear transmutes into anger really, really well if someone’s fear response is “fight”. One of my guesses for why so many men have anger issues is that we’re told we’re not men if we have any other response to fear. However, this issue is far from exclusive to men.
Don’t box people in when you’re arguing with them or soothing them. If someone is backed up against a wall and upset, then getting closer to them without permission is a bad call for your safety and for their soothing, because that removes the ability to get away from you. Ask before getting close. This goes double if someone is injured or otherwise vulnerable.
Teaching angry people that are distressed about being angry the pencil trick on the spot is really easy and works more often than you can think.
Respect people’s requests and boundaries. A lot of people think that some of the boundaries I set up are silly or that once we’re pals, they can ignore them. No, because a lot of my boundaries are related to trauma, and crossing them will trigger me and bring up my anger.
All of this goes for children with anger issues as well. I was a child with anger issues, and a lot of disrespect for my boundaries and needs was because my anger was dismissed because I was a child. Respect children’s anger.
Walking on eggshells is not and will never be a good way to treat anger issues. Recognizing that people with anger issues deserve to have their boundaries respected and to be treated like human beings is.
An end note: Anger issues are not the same thing as being abusive, because emotions are not abusive. Someone with anger issues can become abusive if they take them out on people, but so can someone with suicidal thoughts who takes them out on people. The issue is targeting another person in order to feel better, not having a mental health issue.
An end note for people with anger issues: It really can get better. You can find coping skills and perhaps meds that help cool you down and settle you. You can find people that will accept that doing that one weird thing spooks the fuck out of you, and will let you leave if you’re scaring yourself. You can gain control of yourself without shutting down emotionally. It’s achievable.
Other people have probably written about this, but the intersections between neurodivergency and being aro/ace have been on my mind a lot since I found out I’m neurodivergent. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about how the different types of discrimination I face play into each other.
I’ve been infantilised for pretty much my whole life because of my neurodivergency. The way I tend to act, and the things I tend to struggle with, mean I get treated like a weird excitable kid who doesn’t understand how the world works. The fact that I’m also aromantic and asexual is viewed just another facet of this “immaturity”. So the idea goes: of course Iwouldn’t be interested in romance and sex. How could I even understand such adult topics? I’m just a kid who gets distracted by butterflies and likes to infodump about history. Isn’t my innocence so endearing?
Instead of my orientation being taken seriously, it’s belittled and taken as a confirmation that I’m just childish and strange. This has led, on several occasions, to people assuming it’s just a symptom of my neurodivergency that needs to be medically addressed.** Aromantic and asexual people already face excessive questioning about our orientations and get told the cause must be [insert diagnosis or symptom of diagnosis here]; being neurodivergent makes this exponentially worse, because the underlying assumption is that I can’t have the agency or the self-knowledge to identify this way. After all, I’m just a weird kid, aren’t I? I need other (read: neurotypical and allo) people to explain everything, even my own experiences, to me.
This infantilisation made it particularly hard for me to come to terms with my orientation, because I didn’t want to prove everyone that they were right. For years, I pushed back against the way I’d been treated by seeking out the one thing that would make me an adult in others’ eyes - a romantic and sexual relationship. It hurt to realise I didn’t actually want that deep down. It felt like being told I really was that weird kid, tolerated but ultimately babied. It’s taken a lot of work to accept that the way I am doesn’t make me any less mature and deserving of respect.
There isn’t really a conclusion to this - mostly I wanted to post about my experiences as someone who is both neurodivergent and aroace, and the issues I’ve faced because of it. If any other aro/ace neurodivergent people would like to add to this or share their own perspective, I’d love to hear it.
**A lot of neurodivergent people do consider their experiences of attraction to be linked to their neurodivergency, and that’s obviously cool and valid. That’s not what I’m talking about here. My point is the systematic pathologisation of aromanticism and asexuality and the denial of my ability to define myself.
This is (perhaps unfortunately) a very relateable experience. It’s not something I really accepted personally until recently, but in hindsight, many of my interpersonal conflicts stem from others misreading my neurodivergence. My arospec and acespec experiences are furthermore dismissed because they are assumed to be part of my neurodivergence.
It’s definitely hurtful, especially because (for me) some of my beliefs about relationships maybe influenced by my neurodivergence. Parts of how I experience my identity are probably tied into my neurodivergence. And other parts of it seem entirely separate. I think those are both valid experiences, but both of them are belittled for different reasons.
Thank you for sharing this; I’m glad I came across it and had the spoons to add on. (Hopefully that’s all right - I can always make my own post.)
This is very interesting for me to read, and I’ve had a very different experience with the way people treat my orientation and neurodivergence. I think there are three big reasons why I’m treated so differently. First, I’m AMAB, large, and hairy. Second, while I’m aro, I’m not ace, and I’m partnering and romance-favorable and have had a lot of partners. Third, my neurodivergences manifest a bit differently from either of yours.
I’ve never been called immature or infantilized for my orientation or my neurodivergence. I’ve been called a lot of demeaning (or intentionally demeaning) or dismissing things, but never that. I think it’s worth examining why, because femme AFAB people especially receive a lot of that kind of thing that masculine people don’t. I think stories like this, from marginalized people, reveal depths to the insidiousness and harmfulness of misogyny that may not come up with straight white able neurotypical gender-conforming women.
What I have been called, both because of my orientation and my neurodivergence, is unmasculine, unaggressive, stoic, uninvolved, unemotional, uncaring, unsupportive, detached, and aloof. While those first two are absolutely true and accurate adjectives to apply to me, they were intended to be bad and insulting, but to me they are big compliments. The rest, though, aren’t even remotely true, and anyone who spends any time getting to know me at all knows I’m the opposite of all of those things. But because of my neurodivergence, I don’t express being highly emotional, deeply caring, and intensely involved the ways that neurotypical people do, and this comes up in intimate relationships quite a lot.
Interestingly, I also get complimented a lot because of these same traits. I’m often called wise, “an old soul”, observant, patient, and eloquent because I see things from an outside perspective and take time to think before expressing my thoughts. People ask me for advice about romantic problems frequently and tell me my advice is particularly insightful, even though most of the time it can be boiled down to one of three things: “Have you asked directly for what you want?”, “Have you expressed your feelings directly and clearly?”, and “Have you explicitly discussed that together or are you making an assumption?” Neurotypical alloromantic people get really wrapped up in the social scripts of romance and expression and forget to be direct and clear, and that can give people like us some big advantages in communicating and building relationships, at least if we can convince the neurotypical alloromantic people in our lives to challenge their own assumptions and take what we say about ourselves and our own experiences as true and literal. We can ask them to do that, and if they don’t, that’s their failing, not ours.
combined experience here - I relate strongly to the narrative before me, except - I’m treated as an old, wise soul only until my neurodivergency can be used to ignore my self perception on topics people don’t like. The second that the conversation becomes what I want, which is a topic I struggle to express, my identity as aro (and not ace), and as genderqueer/genderfluid (and goodness knows I’ll never tell these people that I do think being neurodivergent has influence on my each) become “oh how cute. you’re so smart about others but you clearly can’t see your own feelings!”
I’m aware that others often view me as a particularly paradoxical serious and yet highly emotive individual (most translate that to emotional, but whoops I learned to exaggerate expressions at a young age) and I find it interesting that both extremes are applied to me being aro. “Oh look at you, putting school first, taking the logical route just denying yourself happiness” etc. And folks aren’t surprised to find out that i’m neurodivergent - unless they spoke to me in a serious context, despite that being a significant component of how I’m viewed.
(this is all just, stream of consciousness more or less, no particular points)
Other people have probably written about this, but the intersections between neurodivergency and being aro/ace have been on my mind a lot since I found out I’m neurodivergent. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about how the different types of discrimination I face play into each other.
I’ve been infantilised for pretty much my whole life because of my neurodivergency. The way I tend to act, and the things I tend to struggle with, mean I get treated like a weird excitable kid who doesn’t understand how the world works. The fact that I’m also aromantic and asexual is viewed just another facet of this “immaturity”. So the idea goes: of course Iwouldn’t be interested in romance and sex. How could I even understand such adult topics? I’m just a kid who gets distracted by butterflies and likes to infodump about history. Isn’t my innocence so endearing?
Instead of my orientation being taken seriously, it’s belittled and taken as a confirmation that I’m just childish and strange. This has led, on several occasions, to people assuming it’s just a symptom of my neurodivergency that needs to be medically addressed.** Aromantic and asexual people already face excessive questioning about our orientations and get told the cause must be [insert diagnosis or symptom of diagnosis here]; being neurodivergent makes this exponentially worse, because the underlying assumption is that I can’t have the agency or the self-knowledge to identify this way. After all, I’m just a weird kid, aren’t I? I need other (read: neurotypical and allo) people to explain everything, even my own experiences, to me.
This infantilisation made it particularly hard for me to come to terms with my orientation, because I didn’t want to prove everyone that they were right. For years, I pushed back against the way I’d been treated by seeking out the one thing that would make me an adult in others’ eyes - a romantic and sexual relationship. It hurt to realise I didn’t actually want that deep down. It felt like being told I really was that weird kid, tolerated but ultimately babied. It’s taken a lot of work to accept that the way I am doesn’t make me any less mature and deserving of respect.
There isn’t really a conclusion to this - mostly I wanted to post about my experiences as someone who is both neurodivergent and aroace, and the issues I’ve faced because of it. If any other aro/ace neurodivergent people would like to add to this or share their own perspective, I’d love to hear it.
**A lot of neurodivergent people do consider their experiences of attraction to be linked to their neurodivergency, and that’s obviously cool and valid. That’s not what I’m talking about here. My point is the systematic pathologisation of aromanticism and asexuality and the denial of my ability to define myself.
This is (perhaps unfortunately) a very relateable experience. It’s not something I really accepted personally until recently, but in hindsight, many of my interpersonal conflicts stem from others misreading my neurodivergence. My arospec and acespec experiences are furthermore dismissed because they are assumed to be part of my neurodivergence.
It’s definitely hurtful, especially because (for me) some of my beliefs about relationships maybe influenced by my neurodivergence. Parts of how I experience my identity are probably tied into my neurodivergence. And other parts of it seem entirely separate. I think those are both valid experiences, but both of them are belittled for different reasons.
Thank you for sharing this; I’m glad I came across it and had the spoons to add on. (Hopefully that’s all right - I can always make my own post.)
This is very interesting for me to read, and I’ve had a very different experience with the way people treat my orientation and neurodivergence. I think there are three big reasons why I’m treated so differently. First, I’m AMAB, large, and hairy. Second, while I’m aro, I’m not ace, and I’m partnering and romance-favorable and have had a lot of partners. Third, my neurodivergences manifest a bit differently from either of yours.
I’ve never been called immature or infantilized for my orientation or my neurodivergence. I’ve been called a lot of demeaning (or intentionally demeaning) or dismissing things, but never that. I think it’s worth examining why, because femme AFAB people especially receive a lot of that kind of thing that masculine people don’t. I think stories like this, from marginalized people, reveal depths to the insidiousness and harmfulness of misogyny that may not come up with straight white able neurotypical gender-conforming women.
What I have been called, both because of my orientation and my neurodivergence, is unmasculine, unaggressive, stoic, uninvolved, unemotional, uncaring, unsupportive, detached, and aloof. While those first two are absolutely true and accurate adjectives to apply to me, they were intended to be bad and insulting, but to me they are big compliments. The rest, though, aren’t even remotely true, and anyone who spends any time getting to know me at all knows I’m the opposite of all of those things. But because of my neurodivergence, I don’t express being highly emotional, deeply caring, and intensely involved the ways that neurotypical people do, and this comes up in intimate relationships quite a lot.
Interestingly, I also get complimented a lot because of these same traits. I’m often called wise, “an old soul”, observant, patient, and eloquent because I see things from an outside perspective and take time to think before expressing my thoughts. People ask me for advice about romantic problems frequently and tell me my advice is particularly insightful, even though most of the time it can be boiled down to one of three things: “Have you asked directly for what you want?”, “Have you expressed your feelings directly and clearly?”, and “Have you explicitly discussed that together or are you making an assumption?” Neurotypical alloromantic people get really wrapped up in the social scripts of romance and expression and forget to be direct and clear, and that can give people like us some big advantages in communicating and building relationships, at least if we can convince the neurotypical alloromantic people in our lives to challenge their own assumptions and take what we say about ourselves and our own experiences as true and literal. We can ask them to do that, and if they don’t, that’s their failing, not ours.
Other people have probably written about this, but the intersections between neurodivergency and being aro/ace have been on my mind a lot since I found out I’m neurodivergent. Specifically, I’ve been thinking about how the different types of discrimination I face play into each other.
I’ve been infantilised for pretty much my whole life because of my neurodivergency. The way I tend to act, and the things I tend to struggle with, mean I get treated like a weird excitable kid who doesn’t understand how the world works. The fact that I’m also aromantic and asexual is viewed just another facet of this “immaturity”. So the idea goes: of course Iwouldn’t be interested in romance and sex. How could I even understand such adult topics? I’m just a kid who gets distracted by butterflies and likes to infodump about history. Isn’t my innocence so endearing?
Instead of my orientation being taken seriously, it’s belittled and taken as a confirmation that I’m just childish and strange. This has led, on several occasions, to people assuming it’s just a symptom of my neurodivergency that needs to be medically addressed.** Aromantic and asexual people already face excessive questioning about our orientations and get told the cause must be [insert diagnosis or symptom of diagnosis here]; being neurodivergent makes this exponentially worse, because the underlying assumption is that I can’t have the agency or the self-knowledge to identify this way. After all, I’m just a weird kid, aren’t I? I need other (read: neurotypical and allo) people to explain everything, even my own experiences, to me.
This infantilisation made it particularly hard for me to come to terms with my orientation, because I didn’t want to prove everyone that they were right. For years, I pushed back against the way I’d been treated by seeking out the one thing that would make me an adult in others’ eyes - a romantic and sexual relationship. It hurt to realise I didn’t actually want that deep down. It felt like being told I really was that weird kid, tolerated but ultimately babied. It’s taken a lot of work to accept that the way I am doesn’t make me any less mature and deserving of respect.
There isn’t really a conclusion to this - mostly I wanted to post about my experiences as someone who is both neurodivergent and aroace, and the issues I’ve faced because of it. If any other aro/ace neurodivergent people would like to add to this or share their own perspective, I’d love to hear it.
**A lot of neurodivergent people do consider their experiences of attraction to be linked to their neurodivergency, and that’s obviously cool and valid. That’s not what I’m talking about here. My point is the systematic pathologisation of aromanticism and asexuality and the denial of my ability to define myself.
This is (perhaps unfortunately) a very relateable experience. It’s not something I really accepted personally until recently, but in hindsight, many of my interpersonal conflicts stem from others misreading my neurodivergence. My arospec and acespec experiences are furthermore dismissed because they are assumed to be part of my neurodivergence.
It’s definitely hurtful, especially because (for me) some of my beliefs about relationships maybe influenced by my neurodivergence. Parts of how I experience my identity are probably tied into my neurodivergence. And other parts of it seem entirely separate. I think those are both valid experiences, but both of them are belittled for different reasons.
Thank you for sharing this; I’m glad I came across it and had the spoons to add on. (Hopefully that’s all right - I can always make my own post.)
Also people act like autistic people would have been, like, left in the woods to die or something as kids for most of history, but as i said i’m researching islamic saints and in both islam and christianity there’s an awful lot of just, like, “Yeah that guy decided to go live in a cave by himself and wore one (1) article of clothing and sometimes he would walk around and scream randomly, it meant he was closer to god than everybody else”
I’d have to research this, but I kinda feel that, what with how much the eugenics movement pervaded everything for a huge chunk of recent history, our narrative of how disability was for much of history has gotten a little warped.
I feel like I always heard “yeah they assumed people were possessed by demons Back Then” but actually researching religious history? I’ve found a lot more of people seeing a person showing signs of (what we would call) neurodivergence or mental illness and being like “hm. yea that’s god.”
It’s also definitely like…in the US anyway fundamentalism has absolutely decimated a lot of AWARENESS of what Christianity specifically can look like.
american evangelicalism is based a lot on Belief in your religion as axiomatic Fact and at the same time a very buddy-buddy view of god where Jesus is like, your cool dad. Both of which are not very good for allowing the numinous and divine “mystery” to exist
So I think we assume people throughout history would default to “things I don’t understand are of the devil.” when very often they would instead be “things I don’t understand are of God.”
and they would see someone speak in strange sounds or move his body strangely or respond differently to the world and see something divine in it, and there are instances of this across many religions
@invisibleoctopus There’s this fascinating book about the cultural aspects of how mental illness presents called Crazy Like Us by Ethan Watters that is not without its flaws, but that (among other things) discusses how schizophrenic people do significantly better in cultures where there’s a precedent/religious or spiritual explanation for people ‘hearing voices’ and such, because for one thing, they’re not treated as social outcasts for it. Those environments are better equipped to help and accommodate those people on the basis of being able to keep them integrated into a community. At least according to the Ethan Watters guy.
The thing about imagining that autistic children would have been left to die for most of history is just… it’s so lazy. And it betrays a huge failure to understand what autism looks like for autistic people and what daily life looked like in history at the same time. It’s very frustrating.
There’s this weird idea that autistics only develop special interests in this very narrow stereotypical STEM-field domain of life, also, which is total nonsense. Of course religion autistics are a thing. Judaism, too, has a lot of room for autistics: you develop very deep spheres of knowledge, about which you argue constantly, and prayer is sung and you get to move back and forth during it rhythmically.
The other thing that gets me is that it’s not just that there’s historical room to interpret weird behavior as Godly, it’s that autistic people are relatively likely to come up with unusual ideas about people and how people do and should work. If you’re talking about any theological tradition that involves contextual study and argument, you often find a very autistic sort of perspective writing the theology.
Also, just as a general data point: my stepdad, who is in his mid-70s, grew up in a rural farming community, and was never diagnosed with anything, is Obviously Autistic to anyone who knows what autism is.
He can only tolerate about 2 different fabrics against his skin.
And can only eat about 5 foods for obvious food texture reasons.
He hums softly and continually.
He never looks at people.
He has a bunch of other people-related sensitivities, like the inability to tolerate a lot of sounds and nearly all perfume smells.
He has about 3 topics of conversation, which are a) tractors, b) agriculture, and c) Rottweilers.
And you know what? He has had a nice long life of being a Rural Farmer and gets along great with other old farmer dudes who want to talk dogs-tractors-farming with him.
I mean, it’s generally understood that he is Weird, but also that he knows Really A Fucking Lot About Tractors. Which counts for everything in a rural farming community.
It goes beyond lazy into a type of downright cruelty. No matter how autistic people did or did not fit into their communities in the past, chances are someone loved them. When they were little, someone found the clothes they could tolerate and food they would eat and something they could do that matched their interests and abilities. And people married some of them and had children with them. Maybe not all of them, but some of them at least were loved.
We know this because archeology shows over and over again a great level of care and because these traits are still present - they had to get passed on somehow. And we know it because we too feel love for others, despite them constantly failing to live up to any ideal whatsoever.
Anyone who approaches other people with this attitude is only seeking to perpetuate an excuse to be cruel to them. It has nothing to do with what happened in the past and everything to do with what they hope they can get away with in the future. They discount the love that must have existed because it can’t be used against us.
A lot of the “weird things” neurodivergents do would have had really useful and perfectly acceptable outlets in other times: a lot of essential jobs are really “stimmy”, and a person who wants to do them all the time is extremelywelcome to them.
Spinning with a drop spindle? Very much like a fidget spinner
Weaving? Has elements of rocking, arm flapping, and toe tapping, as well as a lovely soothing audio rhythm.
Weeding? Delightful for those who enjoy categorization and sorting.
I had a fatigue flare-up a few weeks ago on the day we were scheduled to clean out the garage, and I couldn’t stand up for more than about 10 minutes. And I thought how fortunate I am to live in an era where most jobs don’t involve manual labor. But then I brought my knitting out, so I could keep my spouse company at least, and you know what? Fuck that attitude. Any society in all of history would have been fucking THRILLED to have someone who is willing to never leave the house, is happy to eat only bread, and just wants to make textiles every waking hour of every single day.
Every society, in every era, needs many different things done. If different people like doing different things, this is to the benefit of everyone in the community. This idea that there’s only one “right way” to be a human, and that anyone who doesn’t fit the mold is “broken” and “wrong” is a very recent invention, stemming from hamburger management and Fredrick Taylor “Scientific Management”, NOTan inherent part of human nature.
As someone who is autistic, I look at most of the monastic Rules, and I think “hey, someone was designing communities for us”. Unvarying structure from day to day, week to week; regular transitions between activities which are well marked; low levels of social interaction; strictly regulated social environments… it’s a wonderful lifestyle for someone who has problems dealing with the whole business of “too many people, too much stimulation”.
Heck, I figure the religious fundamentalism in my mother’s family (they’re Christadelphian) came in via a very canny autistic ancestor, who realised the whole business could be used as a wonderful cover for any strangeness about them. I mean, when you’re part of a religion which discourages eating at the same table as someone who doesn’t believe the same creed as you (and which also gets picky enough about “same creed” to make that capable of meaning “is not part of the same Christian sect or the same ecclesia”), demands you live strictly by biblical rules and so on… well, it’s a wonderful cover for a person who just doesn’t want to deal with other people, and who has a few quirks of their own they want to cover up.
(I have my suspicions about Jean Calvin, the theologist behind all the various Calvinist sects of Christianity, too. Mainly because the theology behind Calvinism is beautifully thought out, logically consistent all the way through, solves the problem of “redemption via good works” quite neatly… and turns into ninety different types of hell the moment it gets run through neurotypical brains).
I am no expert, but as an historian by hobby I don’t think we quite realize how very different our modern concepts of everyday life and of work are from the pre-industrial revolution times and how utterly anti-neurodivergency our lifestyle is nowadays.
Chances are most autistic people would have barely registered as a bit weird.
Like with fabric sensitivity. It’s a noticeable symptom today when we are expected to have a decently big wardrobe and follow fashion trends. It wouldn’t have really registered as an issue when you used to own one or two outfits.
Same with food sensivity. The huge choice of foods available today make sensitivities stand out as problematic. Eating the same few things over and over was just everyday life for peasants.
Neurodivergency and mental illness are still defined in relation to society and society is an ever evolving beast. The kind of behaviors we consider 'ill’ and 'aberrant’ very much depend on what behaviors are considered 'proper’ and 'desirable’.
Don’t forget that today’s schizophrenics are yesterday’s saints and before that oracles and prophets.
Anybody who knows about fabrics want to weigh in?
I have a hunch that home-made clothes would be less hostile to the senses than most clothes bought nowadays. For one thing, they don’t have tags in them.
But with like, a home-made sock, you wouldn’t have such awful bunchy seams at the toes, would you?
Yeah, for most of human history, clothes were made at home by you and your family, or if you had the money, by servants and craftspeople. The point being they were customized to the individual, making it very easy to point out details such as a scratchy seam, and have it altered to be more comfortable.
Now I’m not an expert in historical textiles, but I do have some general knowledge on the subject. People often assume fabric worn by the masses in Ye Olde Times would have been roughly made, but I think you’d be surprised at the quality of craftsmanship. There’s only so many hours you can spend doing something without getting very good at it. If an adult woman has been spinning and weaving several hours a day since she was 10, you can be damn sure she knows how to do it well.
While there are certain common materials that have the capacity to be irritating against the skin, ultimately I think the way they were used probably minimized that quality. For example linen. It’s one of the oldest known fibers, and appears in many cultures across vastly different times and geographic areas. It’s incredibly tough, and is often a bit stiff and scratchy when new. However it can be broken in to create a much softer textile.
For centuries it was the go-to material for lightweight clothing throughout Europe. Prior to the introduction of cotton everyone wore linen undergarments. Heavier materials like leather and wool were usually limited to outer layers. Since undergarments acted as a buffer against sweat and oil produced by your body, they needed more frequent cleaning. So basically, those tough fibers were getting beaten into submission in the nearest river on a regular basis.
TLDR; Yeah textural sensitivities were probably easy to accomodate, even if you didn’t have access to fine silks and the like.
growing up being autistic but not knowing is just *hiding in room while people are over* *getting tired and needing to recharge after the smallest chores* *getting called a gifted kid* *knowing that you’re “weird” because people are making fun of you but not knowing how to stop being weird* *having adults tell you how “mature” you are* *getting in trouble for not doing work* *convincing yourself that you’re just lazy and stupid because you can’t make yourself do work* *getting really invested in “weird” media*
I need you to know that growing up autistic and knowing is pretty much the exact same except some adults were nicer to me about those issues.
what you need to understand about recommending a show to me is that no matter how much we both know I’ll like it, I can’t watch it until the Neurodivergence Department in my brain approves it. I don’t know when that will be, and I don’t have any more control over it than you do.
i wish all “body language experts” on youtube, tiktok, and all social media a very Die
not only is it a stupid pseudoscience that is based on ableism and western centric ideals, these people are ghouls who latch onto every controversial subject or person in the spotlight in order to churn out content about how someone’s quick blinking means they’re really a monster with 590492341 mental illnesses (which is what makes them inherently a monster), passing off their vibe and clout farming as Scientific Evidence. they literally salivate for a new person to be at the center of controversy so they can make millions of view and thousands of dollars over their babbling that their new target is a Narcissistic Abuser. and you literally cannot convince these people’s fans that this is utterly fake and also abbhorent behaviour to farm money and fame over others’ misery. they + these social media “therapists”/doctors/health and legal professionals who do the same online are utter scum who are gleefully making money off suffering. but i have a special kind of hate for the body language experts.
and this isn’t just about the heard/depp trial either. these fuckers have been doing this in True Crime TM communities for a while now. they’ve also been the ones boosting the harassment of random people on tiktok like the couch guy and that trans woman who was just dancing in her basement. they make money and clout off all of this. they push so many ableist, racist and transphobic ideas onto people who just drone on about how body language PROVES somebody is lyuing or a serial killer. they ruin lives.
i wish all of them a genuine and heartfelt very die
There’s a popular post going around that’s like “well tone indicators are helpful for people for anxiety because some people need stuff like “ /nm (not mad)” or “ /nbh (nobody here)” and I absolutely get it because I have an anxiety disorder but like. You can very much add that on the text of a message itself and it will be way more clear and accessible than expecting them to memorize this whole new fabricated code.
Which one do you think will be clearer, faster to understand, and more direct to the point:
“oh my god someone is pissing me off /nbh”
“oh my god someone (not from this server, don’t worry) is pissing me off”
or
“have you done the dishes? /nm
“have you done the dishes? don’t worry, im not mad, just wondering”
You can be mindful of someone else’s needs and talk to them in a way that is respectful and understanding of those needs. The key is communication. Expecting people to memorize a lot of abbreviations is like the contrary of accessible.
I personally don’t like them because they’re at the end of a sentence - I’ll have already read “did you do the dishes?” in an interrogative tone, but only putting the tone indicator at the end means I’m already annoyed in response by the time I get to it.
These two issues are why I prefer ye olde tone indicators from the late 90s/early 00s. If you enclose your sarcastic comment with fake HTML tags such as <sarcasm>This is a sarcastic comment.</sarcasm>, then your readers already know the tone of voice before they’ve read the statement.
I’m really bad with the modern Twitter /nbd tone indicators at the end of a sentence, especially anything more complicated than joking or sarcasm. Half the time I simply don’t see them, and the rest of the time I can’t remember what they mean.
