as small as a world and as large as alone

7:57pm July 22, 2015

mulder-are-you-suggesting:

One thing that I think a lot of non-autistic people don’t realize is that, when an autistic person does something “weird”, it’s not necessarily because we’re lacking the Social Skills™ to know better. We might realize that what we’re doing is considered weird. We might know how people think we should be acting instead. But maybe we’re acting weird because the things we’re expected to do in order to be normal are things we can’t do, or maybe take up too much energy to be worth. Or maybe we’re perfectly capable of acting “normal” but we just don’t want to, because the weird thing we’re doing is harmless and we see no need to stop doing it if it’s not harming anyone. Or maybe the weird thing we’re doing serves a purpose. I remember how, in high school, when I’d experience sensory overwhelm, I’d cover my face with my hands. I knew people thought this was weird. People made rude comments and/or laughed at me whenever I did this. I didn’t like that they did that. But I still covered my face with my hands because being overwhelmed from sensory overload was worse than having people laugh at me for covering my face with my hands. Now, had I been diagnosed at the time, I’m sure I would have been sent to some social skills group where they’d try to teach me that covering my face with my hands made people think “weird thoughts” about me and that therefore I was obligated to stop doing so.

I mean, yes, sometimes autistic people do stuff that they don’t realize is weird, but I wish people would stop assuming that the only reason why we’d do anything weird is that we don’t know better. I think a lot of people have this idea that everyone wants to be normal, so anyone who isn’t acting normal just doesn’t know any better.

This is behind when siblings and parents of autistic people say “My autistic child doesn’t even realize he’s different, and can’t understand anything at all.”  Past a certain age, fat chance. 

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