Here is the revised version of my document of why I act autistic when I do.


Why some autistics do or don’t do certain things
It is not because we are incompetent at anything!
1. We tic because we are trying hard not to say something embarrassing, so we concentrate so much on it that we say it. And/or our tics are stimming.
2. We speak in a formal way to show others that we’re not losers, that we have our own culture.
3. We are good with computers because it’s easier to socialize on a computer… less
attention/energy needed, less dangerous, and we often use writing to explain what we can’t explain on the spot.
4. We may be easily peer pressured, because we are really sensitive and don’t want to hurt another’s feelings and know we can make ourselves like what they like.
5. Sometimes we are not easily peer pressured. We are smarter than our peers’ propositions. Either because we know a lot so we know it’s best for us not to take part, or because our special interests are “smarter”.
6. We have social anxiety because we don’t want to bump into evil, so we don’t look in people’s eyes… because we think that if we do, there is evil/deadness in them.
7. We are not physically fit, because in team sports nobody wants us on their team, and/or our special interest currently doesn’t involve physical fitness.
8. We dislike certain textures because it’s just hypersensitivity to what we touch and ingest… it’s a good instinct to have to avoid injury/poisoning!
9. Sometimes we don’t let others get a word in edgewise. We feel that what we are talking about is more important than talk about an overdue library book or a ski trip everyone found boring.
10. We learn to read and write early to show we have intelligence despite our shortcomings that get our caretakers so annoyed, and we also learn to read and write early to show we have our own culture away from the people who are trying to raise us.
11. We don’t blindly trust people. This is because we don’t look at their expressions to see if they can be trusted.
12. We don’t get others’ facial expressions/body language/tone because we don’t look, we don’t want to see their dead eyes, or we’re focused on something more stimulating than that, whether that stimulation is in or outside our heads.
13. We are hyper- or hypo-sensitive to pain. Sensitivity is good for survival provided it causes no mental trauma, and hyposensitivity is a “turn it off and focus on something happier” instinct.
14. We are often atheists. We don’t understand that WE could be hallucinating rather than the
people who have those near-death experiences with the afterlife. We don’t understand that other beings may cause us to hallucinate normality so we don’t see so-called supernatural things. When we believe, we can see where it came from; we need to know that if we believe something it’s obviously there in one way, because we believed it. Often we don’t know this, and often we have to figure it out for ourselves.
15. We don’t seem to have intuition. It’s different kinds of intuition a lot of us have.
16. We don’t lie, or we suck at lying, or both. We feel guilty about lying so we don’t try. The honest part of you will win over the need-to-deceive part.
17. We use strict routines sometimes because we are productive people, needing to do something or get it done or both, with no interruptions, especially if interruptions involve losing one’s train of thought.
18. We don’t remember faces/names/visual things sometimes. This is because we don’t pay attention, for many of the reasons above.
19. We stim because we need stimulation, and this gives us stimulation better than nothing when we aren’t provided with enough.
20. We have meltdowns or start skipping important things because again, we need to keep our train of thought and production up in the important things we are figuring out or doing.
21. We may identify with animals more than with people, because certain animals will be loyal to us no matter what, or don’t pick on us.
22. We are often the last to get the point of a joke, because we are not paying attention for various reasons, or because we have a whole lot of other stuff going on in our heads that we need to sort out before thinking about some joke.
23. Our minds are also often too busy to care what others think.
24. We often can’t explain ourselves on the spot. This is our fear of them thinking we don’t have a good explanation, or us knowing more than we are able to communicate.
25. Sometimes we say something that makes sense but wasn’t something we intended to say.
26. We often don’t make eye contact (fear of seeing evil in the eyes, social anxiety, not paying attention, etc).
27. We seem to lack empathy. (See the stuff I wrote in these lists about objects and animals, also let me add that we don’t get more empathy when you scold/shame/humiliate/scare/hurt us for lacking empathy… you doing that shows YOU lack empathy.)
28. It is hard sometimes for us to change because old habits die hard and our minds might be too full of other stuff we need to do or think out to concentrate much on changing. We are used to our old survival habits and simple mistakes that even though we know better or no longer have to or are forced to do these things, it’s hard to stop.
29. We don’t seem to learn from our mistakes. We don’t want to stop just because someone tells us to, even if we know they’re right because we know why we SHOULD stop. This is because we don’t want others to think we can be bossed/pushed around. It’s a poor way of showing it, admittedly… we should just ask why and we have the right to a truthful answer.
30. We don’t like change because we are faster, we need to do something constructive now, and there is no time to stop to change tasks. If there was no need to stop between tasks, and there was a perfect flow in it from one task to the other, then maybe we would find it easier to change tasks.
31. We are inattentive. We are understimulated, and/or just taking our mind to a place where it is better and/or we are treated better… like stimulated more.
32. We are clumsy… social anxiety is explained in the “weird moments” section, also “why we are inattentive”.
33. We sometimes don’t seem to show emotion for others. Often we were used to holding back because our mean caregivers didn’t deserve our affection, and so old habits die hard for us in this circumstance.
34. We are obsessed with fairness because we have bad luck more than usual and it seems unfair.
35. We sometimes have foreign accents when we aren’t foreign. Sometimes it’s because we’re pretending to be someone we would rather be.
36. We often refuse treatment for autism due to pride. Also, we don’t like them thinking autism is bad, and some treatments for it are abusive. Furthermore, we DON’T NEED TREATMENT… it is NOT A DISEASE OR DEFECT.
37. We often have obsessions, also called fixations or special interests. Because stimulation is needed, escape is needed, community where we’re loved is needed. Some obsessions have communities.
38. We repeat things seemingly for no reason because we are stalling until we can find something to say next. This is social anxiety. Other times we don’t think the person we are talking to is listening so we feel the need to pound it into their head. If we say something five different ways, it is to make sure the people we say it to understand what we meant.
39. We often don’t want to make friends or get noticed because when people talk about us, they talk about our embarrassing moments too. Then our friends remember them, and any new friends now know about them. Something we often don’t want.
40. We rigidly follow some rules. We are moral watchdogs because of the way we’ve been treated, especially by do-gooders.
41. We often dress weird. Sometimes it’s caring about the bigger things in or outside our minds, sometimes it’s sensory issues, other times we try to be different to punish the ones who tell us what to do or pick on us, other times we try to be different but have a system so we are seen as having art skills and not be seen as totally random. Sometimes it doesn’t seem to work.
42. We often have sensory issues with touch. Sometimes it’s sensory over-or under-stimulation, other times it’s hypersensitivity to what we touch and ingest (see the food section).
43. We love some objects more than we love some people. A cute teddy bear rather than the rage in a NT’s face, for example. Especially if the NT is railing that he hates autism! The bear is alive in a sense, and nice to look at.
44. We often can’t take some or all criticism. Often because it’s wrong or done by know-it-alls who think/do to us all of the awful things on this site in the “About the anti-autistics” section. Then we get criticised for not being nicer to them!
45. We sometimes can’t take compliments. We don’t want people to think we are arrogant.
46. We don’t seem to do well in life—school, work, friendships, family, etc. We are actually trying to devise a plan to be different from and better than the others and/or make up for lost time.
47. We are often picky eaters. Cravings and anti-cravings are necessary instincts so that we get what we need and don’t get poisoned, and are heightened with some of us.
48. We are embarrassed easily because we tend to do things different from how others are doing them and we might mess up what they are doing in the process. This causes them to scold/punish/shame us more than the average person is scolded/punished/shamed.
49. We are often paranoid, due to the crap happening to us that is in the “anti-autistics” part of this site.
50. We often talk too loud because we are lonely/understimulated and need to hear noise.
51. We have weird moments—social anxiety causing us to look at the door and then at the person and then at the door, going between fight/flee/play dead/reason, etc. movements, which seems disorganized… we also need stimulation sometimes so we will need to move, even if it seems weird at the time. Others move weirdly to relieve odd sensory problems (banging one’s head to relieve pressure, etc).
52. We often have such good rote memories. Because we have no life because we are rejected because we are autistic. What happens next is because not a lot goes on in the life, there is less to have to remember. So more space for our special interests. We also use this as a way of impressing people and making ourselves seem intelligent even though we think we are not. But we don’t want others to know that.
53. We also sometimes have non-emotional attachments to objects. Sometimes it’s security—“They won’t take THIS away!”—etc. so at least we feel like we have that one little right to keep whatever it is.
54. We sometimes have funny/different/“inappropriate” expressions and/or funny/different/“inappropriate” tones. Sometimes it’s a stim, other times it’s daydreaming/reading about something not related to the conversation going on in front of us.
55. Sometimes we don’t marry fast/young/at all (not trusting after others’ cruel rejection or our requirements for how we want to be treated not being met).
56. Others of us do marry fast/young/soon/at all (to prove we can do it, or because we are blown away by someone who is so nice and genuine after years of meanness and lies, or because we want kids because we’re lonely or want another autistic around, someone to understand and who will understand us.
57. We often aren’t interested in the same things as our peers. We may need more stimulation than them, or we’re already wrapped up in our own obsessions as they just start developing passions).
58. We are often ashamed of our diagnoses. We know a lot of people think autism is bad, so we don’t tell them for fear they will think we’re like THAT.
59. We often don’t know the same things as our peers. We aren’t interested (see the section about us not being interested in the same things as our peers).
60. We often get depressed and/or anxious and/or easily angry. We often get bothered every day by the things people do to us that I wrote on this site.
61. We often don’t respect authority figures. Authority figures often do a lot of the bad stuff I talked about on this site.



This is the revised version of my document about how as an autistic I do NOT want to be treated...


The anti-autism people

Traits anti-autism people may have



They get your assessment wrong, assuming you did something for this reason when it’s really another reason, not asking you for clarification even when they go by the word of one or more witnesses who got it wrong and are not you.





They blame everything you say/think/feel/do on your ASD. This is an insult. Why? Because they are saying we all have certain bad characteristics that they say is the ASD.





They think your ASD or ASDs in general are bad (especially if you identify as autistic rather than having autism… so you’re bad then?)





They think all autistics have the same one or more symptoms.





They say your ASD is not your fault but punish you for your symptoms. Even from their view it doesn’t make sense. The wonderful compensation they think someone disabled should get is cruelty and punishment?





They try to take away your coping mechanisms thinking that will take away the core symptoms.





They think your fitting in is more important than your coping mechanisms and your being yourself (example: they tell you to stop rocking, but you don’t know any other form(s) of stimulation that is good enough to replace it).





They think you are not responsible for your actions due to your ASD (ASDs are not stupidity, nor are ASDs not knowing or not knowing how).





They think you have autism when actually you are autistic, or vice versa. (Having autism is when your mind takes a boarder. Being autistic, or part of you being autistic, is different.)





They think you are less capable due to your ASD rather than capable of the same size load but a different load of things, or when they think you are different in some way due to your ASD but you are actually more normal than that.





They think they know you better than you know yourself, or when they think they know better than you what is good for you. Especially if they say it’s due to your ASD.





They think we shouldn’t be allowed to do certain things due to our ASD, when as a matter of fact our population is no more dangerous or incompetent than the mainstream population.





They think we shouldn’t reproduce (we are no better or worse than NTs).





They think it’s okay to use aversives on us, or that it’s okay to use aversives on autistics but not others. It’s hard enough not to be understood. When they give up on us due to not understanding us, it sucks… and when they torture us because they don’t understand us, that’s a form of giving up.





They think we don’t know or understand something just because we can’t or won’t communicate it or communicate that we know it.





They think it’s harder to deal with/raise/know/befriend an autistic than to do so to/with a non-autistic.





They think your ASD is more or less severe than it actually is.





They think you “improved” due to their or anyone’s help when ypou actually did it either on your own or with a different party’s help.





They lie intending to get you services you need but that often turns into help you don’t need which is often painful/humiliating.





They won’t let you speak for yourself about your autism.





Some of them write ambiguous things about autism and some more of them then interpret it in the most doom-filled, hateful way possible.





They rush to give you a false diagnosis, just so that someone can have closure, even though it’s the wrong diagnosis, which causes you to be treated in a way you dislike because it’s the incorrect way.





They expect us to always be the ones to change or conform, suffering for the majority, while the majority gets to be themselves and have an easy time.





When they call our interests privileges for when we’re “good” and act like NTs, while NTs’ interests are accepted as rights, and sometimes think it is ethical to do something that they know hurts an autistic just because it wouldn’t hurt a NT child.





They say we are just in a combative mood or oppositional, but we actually care about our points very much and genuinely believe in them. This is both insulting to us, and bad for our points that we are trying to express.





They punish us (it doesn’t work because it’s cruel)—one learns to be nice from others being nice to them, one gets suspicious when you focus on how you need to be forced in a negative way to do something, so they think you think it is bad for them because you think they would never do it on their own. So they get scared when you try to force them or say they need to be forced.





They think we SUFFER from an ASD. What we suffer from is times people think that because we are autistic we are pathetic or dangerous or stupid/crazy/bad.





They think that all autistics have the same skills or lack of skill in something (example: that all of us can fix a radio but none of us can read facial expressions).





They think you have one ASD when really you have another (I was insulted by my Asperger’s diagnosis, just because it wasn’t true. I didn’t have enough of the problems they said I had, though I did have some extreme. I was eventually diagnosed with PDD-NOS to replace it.)





They think you can’t have another disorder besides the ASD, so they let you suffer.





They believe false negative crap about all autistics or one or a few autistics, and then treat one, some or all of us accordingly.





They think all autistics are the same (that we all have the same personality, for example quiet and scared, or aggressive and oppositional, or worse yet, just a normal kid waiting for a cure).





They think we are hopeless, can’t learn, etc.





They say what we love must be controlled because it’s a perseveration, but what NTs love is love and must be encouraged. (Example: some of us may see feelings in animals that others don’t see, we see intelligence and rights.)





They say we can’t or don’t love when we just express our love differently, or have love that is triggered by different things, or simply happen to love when they aren’t looking.





They try to make us fake it and think that will make us feel better, when it will actually make us feel worse because we are lying and it doesn’t even work.





They contradict themselves about autism and/or various autistic traits.





They tell others who do not understand autism (even if they think they do) that you are autistic, without an explanation of what you really are like (many people mistakenly think we’re hopeless).





They make assumptions about autism (example: that we’re all hopeless at conversation).





They think autistics are more dangerous than NTs (we have just the same concentration of danger or dangerous people. Just like Jews, blacks, any ethnic group at all. Just because some blacks get sickle cell anemia, does that mean they need to be cured of their BLACKNESS, all blacks need to be cured of blackness?).





They assume that if they treat the autism all the other problems will go away (I’d get MORE depression from them thinking autism is a disease. Also, we have the right to have feelings independent from autism.)





When they think the reason we don’t understand something is due to our ASD when actually we have another reason or other reasons for not understanding.





When they force treatment on autistics (the autistics could lose coping mechanisms to a cure, or feel broken or like the anti-autistics think they’re broken due to them forcing a cure on them, etc).





They get off easily in the justice system for killing us because we’re “punishment enough”. (We have bad times where NTs have good times, but we can also have good times during NTs’ bad times… and too often this gets seen as lack of empathy too!).





They don’t take us seriously because we are autistic (we have the same concentration of intelligent, sane people as NTs do!)





They don’t care about our feelings/our thoughts/how/why… but they do care about our behavior.





They say we have no feelings, when actually we express their feelings in different ways or have different feelings.





They assume that different means wrong (I wouldn’t WANT to be friends with someone who thought I was bad or what I did was so wrong, so I’m not going to stop, say, stimming, for anyone!)





They trust the opinions of the doom-and-gloom autism professionals more than they trust the opinions of us autistics when it comes to autism.





They don’t, and sometimes they even refuse to, expose their autistic children to the idea of neurodiversity.





They think all autistics have the same reasons for doing something: for example, thinking I use computers to learn about computers rather than to socialize, when actually it’s the other way around!





They say we are obsessed with rules when really we create rules to follow because we believe in them and are good people.

53. They think autism is an intelligence spectrum, that all low-functioning ones are dumb, and all high-functioning ones are smart but not as smart as NTs… that, after all, they are still autistic!

This post was last modified: 07-07-2012 04:07 AM by Ana54.

Edit: thought I made a mistake, didnt.

This post was last modified: 07-07-2012 04:08 AM by Ana54.

Ana!!!! GREAT to see you posting again, I've missed you loads. *squeezes you*

How have you been my dear?

I will address a few of the points I disagree with, or feel are worthy of a more in-depth analysis, when I am not so tired and headachy.

Hey you're on WP again. I saw these posts there.

ROFL, Sinsboldly posted a longish post in one of my threads (just about the topic, mind you, not about me), but I'm still not banned.

Oh now I wanna see. I'll look for it.

Okay I couldn't find it. Are you sure it was her?

LOL! It wa her... it was ONE of my threads anyway... and then she posted twice in another that I posted in. Or was it twice there and one in the other? I forget.

11. We don’t blindly trust people. This is because we don’t look at their expressions to see if they can be trusted.

12. We don’t get others’ facial expressions/body language/tone because we don’t look, we don’t want to see their dead eyes,

I really liked these two points, Ana.  I found them very relevant to me, since I have face blindness, and am wary if a person's words don't make any sense.  As to the eyes, ooh yes!  My face blindness leads me to see all people's faces as a sort of paper cut out on a background, with two glowing black holes in the upper third and a hole in the botton lined with sharp teeth that opens and closes regularly.  I can't look at those black holes into nothing without feeling creeped out.  And yet, most NTs think I'm odd because I prefer not to.  Of course now I know that not everybody sees faces the same way, but I used to wonder why people could be so comfortable with such a concept.  
Alison

This post was last modified: 07-09-2012 02:44 AM by Alison.

Which thread was it in? It must have been under a different name. I know she has used a different name there because she used the same avatar and then her posts matched her sense of humor and also the fact she said "bite me" to someone. Now I am wondering if she has another name now. So what was the username she used?

It was Sinsboldly. I was Nurylon. Her post was quite longish.


I forget what thread. I know she posted in at least one of mine, tho.

One thing I noticed was speaking in a formal way-
I asked some people and they just said that they do it naturally. It's on some symptoms listings. Surely it's not a huge coincidence of people doing it on purpose to be "cool" or "cultural".

Some people, inc. NTs do it to seem non loserish or even attempt to impress people with it though.

When it's not "genuine" or only done as a preference I don't mind or anything, I just hate when people get arrogant or snobby or elite with it.

It was Sinsboldly. I was Nurylon. Her post was quite longish.


I forget what thread. I know she posted in at least one of mine, tho.

Was this recent? How long ago was it?

In my evaluation for autism, I was accused of having an overly formal way of speaking. Of course, that was because I was sincerely trying to "clean up my act" on that day, since I was being evaluated by a couple of classy, attractive, intelligent women. Conversely, when I'm with my friends, I'm a hell of a lot more casual, and use words like "hell". (I remember one instance during my autism interview when I said something "made my blood boil", whereas I normally would have said it "pissed me off".)

If anything, I was displaying situational awareness, which is a markedly un-autistic attribute.