Three things about neurotypes should be known about autism

I’m in a rather airtight echo chamber and talk to dozens, if not hundreds, of people every day. Within this environment, it is easy to forget that most people don’t know much about autism, and that what they know is often informed by outdated or bad cultural stereotypes.

I’m here to deal with non-automatically and tell them that it will take time to learn about us, in the hopes of crushing stigma, saving friendships and building bridges between neural types.

We are not “all spectrum”

Often when we tell someone we are us autismthere is a short pause while the people we are saying calculate their reactions. More often than you would guess, the response is, “Well, we’re all somewhere on the spectrum.” This reaction is inaccurate and is actually very harmful. If everyone was on the spectrum, it would be useless to tell anyone else that they have autism. Being on the spectrum is, “Hey, I wonder what it is, I’m human too!”

When you’re given the news that someone in your life is autistic, you’ll disable the news you’re hearing by saying, “We’re all on the spectrum.” It’s a way to take away the cognitive tension of trying to understand your friends with a new lens. It’s a depressing response to encountering it, as it doesn’t invite any further conversations, but simply shelved what you said so that the conversation can return to the stock market and sports.

Misunderstanding as ineffective is a chronic problem with autism. The outlook for these things will repel us from the people in our lives. When you say “We’re all on the spectrum,” most autism is pulled back for your own safety. They protect themselves from you and protect themselves as they move forward.

Autism has a thorny profile

The concept of pointy profiles is something autism tends to perceive and is what they want to be deautomated. Simply put, pointy profiles tend to change in a surprising way compared to neuronal development, and thus refer to the various strengths and challenges of people with autism. We are great in some things and can come across as newcomers in other ways. Of course, this ultimately relates to arbitrary standard. It is based on the idea of ​​a “balanced” person whose current ency in one area predicts the current ency in another domain.

A pointy profile means you can see your autistic friend, family, or colleague working very well in their tasks and very well in other tasks. You can see them devour books, solve equations, or speak and write in a clear and erudite way, but then misinterpret the conversation, have a general meltdown, or ruin something at work. When these juxtapositions occur, we usually do “You know better than that!” But honestly, we often don’t.

The spiny profile explains our position “on the spectrum.” The spectrum is there to tell you that we present in many ways. And thorny profiles are the specific way in which our autistic characteristics are embodied. If a friend or loved one tells you that they are autistic, you need to understand that your perception of that person should not be aware of your reaction to this information. What I mean is, don’t compare this person with an autistic person in your life that you think is an autism template. Your cousin, uncle, grandma, or coworkers who may have shown more apparent autistic characteristics are not the norm to generalize for all other autism.

We are a marginalized group of crisis

In many cases, even therapists say, “I don’t know why accommodation and diagnosis are needed. I’ve come this far!” But they only saw what we showed them. It’s called masking This is because it has the fundamental difficulties of living as a person with autism in a neurotypical world. They are tears, effort, panic, anxietyor the fact that we feel like we’re falling apart. We’ve made ourselves nervous to “go this far” and we want to ease the tension.

The number of late-diagnosed autism unemployment is difficult to pinpoint, but estimates do not draw happy pictures. Some articles estimate that 40% of us are unemployed, while others estimate that with an unemployment rate of 85%. Even at low end, it’s 10 times the average unemployment rate. When autism is at work, they often have a hard time maintaining it. They struggle to fit, feel comfortable, manage workplace relationships, but are all relatively blind to the influence of social classes, a combination that is unstable in the current system.

Come to me and say, “Everything was so good, my luck was so good, I thought I had to be autistic!” It is usually a pattern of problems at work or at home, which brings me autism. Coaching. It’s not just work. depression The rate is high, the anxiety rate is high, suicide 9 times more likely to take a life of autism after diagnosis than a neurotypical life. It’s not a biological handicap. It is social and can be corrected by social changes. But we rarely encounter people trying to make those changes.

Autism enriches our lives and can make it beautiful and attractive even during common activities. But we rarely sit and enjoy it. We are very busy trying to catch up and hide. We hope that non-automatic educate ourselves and we will make a sincere effort to help change environment In this small percentage, we just want to be accepted and understood.