Created: 2024-02-08 12:24:27 - Touched: 2025-01-14 16:41:40 - Status: In progress

Language About Me

I'm Autistic. I am an Autistic person. I'm not someone with Autism, as I cannot accidentally leave it at home. Nor am I a person who has Autism, as if it were the flu. I am not on the spectrum, as if it were a colorful bridge. I certainly do not suffer from Autism as if it were a knife stabbed into my flesh. I have no interest in a cure, nor do I care about an understanding of the circumstances that give rise to neurodivergent brains so that they could be prevented (both the circumstances and the resulting divergent brains).

I am Autistic. I am an Autistic person. This is not something I need to overcome. I do not need to avoid "letting my Autism define me." Autism is a neurotype, a structural difference in neurology. It is integrated into the way that I think, that I feel, that I experience and interpret the world around me. It does define me, in so far as my fundamental experience of personhood. I can no more experience myself and the world without those filtering through the lens of Autism than I can experience my vision without light moving through the lens of my eye.

Communication and Social Connection

I have differences in the way that I communicate with others. I tend to be more direct, use less subtext and implication, sometimes struggle with analogies. Autistic Disturbances: A Review has some interesting ideas about some of the primary differences and how Autistic communication can be poetic.

I struggle with analogies and other non-literal communication mechanisms sometimes.

I made a flowchart that shows what the process is for me to communicate with someone face to face (or over zoom) with audio. I call it a trombone flowchart because it is shaped similarly to the slide on a trombone. It has around 95 states, and each state is something that requires at least 50% cognitive conscious control to manage. For example, the muscles that position my tongue in my mouth to produce an L sound when speaking is something I have to manually do. There are no automated shortcuts. I literally do the statistics for some of these steps in my head. It's no wonder that communicating for me is exhausting and I strongly prefer media like asynchronous text.

Trombone Flowchart

Communication differences often present an additional barrier for me when I'm trying to make friends or build connections with people. Accounting for differences in communication patterns and bridging the ND-NT double empathy gap takes considerable energy to accomplish. Because of this, I tend to be selective about who I choose to invest that energy in, and often end up with a very small group of very close-to-me friends. When Gathering, I usually try to keep the group small so that it's easier for me to follow and participate in conversations, and hold them in accessible locations (including online).

Sameness/Adventurousness

I have a need for sameness and consistency and routine, but I also crave novelty and have a difficult time focusing on mundanity or things I'm not already interested in. Openness to Experience.

There is a lot of debate among Autistics and non-Autistics around the question Is Autism a disability? As one might expect, the cost of having to meet neurotypical expectations, plus by the indifference of the society that inflicts it, can cause a lot of damage. Existing in this world causes Autistics a lot of Trauma. The cost and the damage can be further compounded by commonly co-occurring conditions, like ADHD and PTSD.

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