7:34pm September 28, 2014

“It was like the devil came in the night and stole my child’s soul.”

Talking to the parents of children with regressive autism is scary but important (via dimyway02)

Try being the person with regressive autism.  Try standing there right in front of people while they say that your soul doesn’t exist, that you are not in your body, that you are a shell of your former self.  And wanting to punch them in the eye for having the nerve to act like you don’t exist anymore, but not being able to.  (Or doing so, and then being accused of having “unexplainable aggression” which goes more towards having “no soul”.)

NEVER talk about autistic people this way.

NEVER say we don’t have souls.

NEVER say we’re vegetables.

NEVER say we aren’t the person we used to be.

NEVER say you want the “old you” back.

NEVER say these things.

And never repeat these things as if they’re some kind of profound observation about what it’s like to be someone related to us.  Think what it’s like to be right there, with everyone and having everyone around you talking as if you’ve been stolen, as if you’re not the real you anymore, as if they need to go find the real you and bring you back, as if who you are is an empty shell, a vegetable, a vacant body with no soul.

This is not profound, it is disgusting and sickening.

Signed, a ‘regressive’ autistic who is still routinely treated as an empty shell with no soul or thoughts or emotions of my own

(via youneedacat)

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