In this episode, I go over the most common responses I get to telling people I'm autistic, along with what NOT to say and why you shouldn't say it.
In this episode, I go over the most common responses I get to telling people I'm autistic, along with what NOT to say and why you shouldn't say it.
One that I forgot is - never tell someone they don't look autistic. Autism does not have a look. People seem to think it is like Downs Syndrome when it isn't.
hello so today I'm going to talk about some things that you should never say to someone who's neurodivergent and especially not to someone who's autistic.
And so these are all phrases I've heard pretty much throughout my life even undiagnosed. So I was undiagnosed for 26 years until through systematic analysis of my entire life I figured it out, went to a psychiatrist with all the boatload of evidence, childhood videos, etc., and then finally got diagnosed.
Um, but the reason I say that is you don't necessarily need to be diagnosed to go through harmful comments throughout your life and I think that this is something I really wish neurotypicals understand. There are a lot of comments and a lot of things that neurotypical people will say trying to be helpful and then it actually isn't helpful and doesn't really capture what we're going through.
So I'm going to start with a few of these comments and add on as I can think of others.
So the first comment to never say to an ND person is never say, "You're too sensitive."
You're too sensitive is kind of a form of gaslighting because it basically means that just because I experience this at a lesser intensity than you do that this inherently means that your experience is invalid.
I'm not too sensitive. In fact, I have greater functional connectivity between my orbital frontal cortex and amygdala. I would love to go back in time and tell that to every person who ever said that I'm too sensitive.
If you say you're too sensitive, it's not really empathizing with our situation at all. In fact, all it really does is just distance yourself from us because it shows a) that you don't understand, b) that you can't relate, and c) that you're not really trying to be nice.
Um, I know that sometimes people will say you're too sensitive or you're oversensitive or something like that because they think that it's like a condition to have. I guess they're trying to be nice in some cases, but most of the time when people say you're oversensitive or you're too sensitive, they're not doing it in a nice way.
The second thing you should never say—so suppose you meet someone and they tell you that they are autistic, things you should not say, number one off the list is, "Everyone's a little autistic."
So when you say everyone's a little autistic, logically I understand that you can relate to me a little bit in certain ways, but here's the difference: people who are not autistic are not experiencing these aspects in disabling ways.
So when you say everyone's a little autistic, it makes me want to ask:
Does everyone struggle with facial blindness where they can't recognize people sometimes?
Does everyone forget things so often that they have to write every single thing in their life down for hope of remembering it?
Does everyone have to reread sentences of a book and rewatch, rewatch videos just to try to remember what was playing two minutes ago?
So basically, you say everyone's a little autistic, it basically shows that you do not understand the experience of struggling in this way.
And so a lot of people will say everyone's a little autistic to make it sound better because they think that the word autistic itself is like something terrible. I think that the whole reason that people say this is because the word autistic has such a stigma associated with it that people can think of nothing else except for some vegetable person who can't live their own life, who can't take care of themselves, who can't have a job, you know, all these things. All these negative stereotypes of little white boys who throw temper tantrums and don't ever grow up.
But that's not what autism is. That's not what it's like. Are there little white boys that are having a meltdown? Of course there are, but autism comes in all cultures, in all ages. It's not something that just happens once and then goes away, and we're not defined by our worst moments in a meltdown, so there's that too.
Okay, so second thing you should never say—don't say, "Is there a treatment available?" or don't—don't say anything about like curing autism.
First of all, you can't cure autism. It is a fundamentally different wiring of the brain, one that does not need curing. We aren't here to try to cure and become neurotypical. In fact, it's kind of ironic because neurotypicals are the ones that really want to conform. Obviously, not all neurotypicals are like that, and if you're listening to this, you're probably not like that, and for that I appreciate the analysis and everything.
But when—when people say that, they think that you should be treated for it. First of all, like what does that really even mean? If you look at the history of abuse and programs like Autism Speaks and ABA and everything like that, what treatment really means in this context is conformity. It means not being quote "weird" enough that people will notice. It means being able to mask so well that no one notices that you're any different.
And this is not a standard that we should hold ourselves to as autistic people, because first of all, if you're autistic you're perfect exactly the way you are, and I'm here to tell you that if you're not autistic you're still perfect exactly the way you are, and I'm here to tell you that too.
But when we hold ourselves to unobtainable standards based on other people and the way that they have told us that we should be, in a way, it sets us up for failure. Because suppose you're able to meet those standards, does that make you a more superior human? Or suppose you're not able to meet those standards, does that mean you're an inferior human?
I would—I would advocate that neither is superior or inferior, and that when we say—when people say with sympathy, "Oh, we should try to cure autism," what it really—what I really hear from that is that they want to put everyone in a box and make them behave exactly the same so there's no variance. And that is just simply not a healthy thing in general, let alone for a whole society built on expansion.
And it really makes me question why they feel they need to say that. And so I think that they say that because their perception of what autism is is little—little white boys crying and having a meltdown, so they think that that's all autism is, and so then they want to cure that.
Is it important to be able to improve emotional dysregulation issues? Certainly. But autism is so much more than that, and I think that because of the stigma associated with autism, people are either not aware of any of the strengths that it entails, or they think that the weaknesses outweigh the strengths, which is something I don't believe. I really don't.
I think it's kind of a blessing in disguise in so many ways to be able to see life from a different perspective and be unwilling to conform with anyone else except for who you are. I think that's a great strength, one that even people who are neurotypical can learn to do. Autistics do it naturally because we don't see any of that information.
But please never say, "I hope you get treatment," because there's no treatment there, and it doesn't even make sense. And the treatment that you're even thinking of as treatment a) wouldn't work, b) doesn't exist, and c) even if it did, would be traumatizing and abusive to us. So please never say this.
Other things you should never say to someone who is autistic or neurodivergent is, "You're using your disability as an excuse," "You're using your autism as an excuse," "You're using your ADHD as an excuse."
No, this is wrong on so many levels. If someone has enough trust with you to tell you that they're autistic, or to tell you that they have ADHD, or to tell you that they have any disability or anything, they inherently trust you and they're expecting you to empathize at least a little bit, or—or maybe be willing to understand a little bit, or—or just to hear them, hear what they're going through.
When you say, "You're using your disability as an excuse," all it does is shut us down. It makes us not want to talk to you ever again.
Is there an extremely small portion of people who could use their disability as an excuse? Sure. But I would say that that is the exception, not the rule. And most of the time when people are telling you that they have autism or are autistic or have ADHD, or if they're telling you something about it, it's because they want you to understand why they did something or said something different. They want you to understand that the things they do are not always easily controllable.
So to give an example: if someone who's neurotypical is late for something, it indicates in our society that they don't care, that they don't want to be there (unless it's for parties, which the 30-minute rule usually applies—you're supposed to be 30 minutes late to parties to give the host time to set up, which has never really made sense to me, but people are always late so you just got to flow with it).
Anyways, if typically if a neurotypical person is late, it means they don't care. If an autistic person or someone with ADHD is late, it means that they're suffering from some kind of dysfunction, like executive dysfunction, ADHD. Maybe they forgot what they needed at home and they had to drive all the way back to go get it. Autism, it could be the same thing. It could be that they forgot to get gas. It could be for so many reasons, you just don't know.
But there—I can think of zero times in my entire life, zero, when I've ever been late for something because I didn't care about being on time. In fact, I care about being on time 100% of the time. Does that mean I'm always on time? Unfortunately, it does not, because I have this bad habit of overestimating how much time that I have left to do something, and so then I try to get as many things done in that tiny little time slot before the next thing, and I just shove too much in there, and then I'm late for the next thing.
So what I'm saying is, please, if someone is willing to trust you with their diagnosis, don't just say that they're using it as an excuse. If you think that someone is using their disability as an excuse, instead of saying that to them, I want you to go online and read on Reddit. Reddit is a great place to read people's accounts of what it's like in different disabilities. I want you to read what life is like from the perspective of the person with that disability.
If someone only had one leg and couldn't climb—climb stairs because of it, you wouldn't say, "You're using your only one leg as an excuse not to climb stairs." Like yeah, is it—is it an excuse? I guess technically if you look at the definition of excuse you could say it is, but it's absurd. Like they don't have another leg, they can't climb the stairs, there's no leg there. No one would say this about physical disabilities, so why do we say it about mental?
And I think it's the stigma attached to being willing and vulnerable enough to admit that I am wired differently or that I have a disability. Because hell, even the word disability is stigmatized. It really is. Like it's insane how many people will hide their disabilities sometimes because of the stigmas associated with them.
This applies to so many different things, and I—I think that basically if you're not a neurotypical white male, then—then you have at least something to deal with. And, you know, surely everyone has something to deal with, but we can be kind to people and we can be—we can be okay with vulnerability.
If someone is vulnerable to me and tells me about something they're going through, I'm going to listen to it and I'm going to let them speak without judging them. And I think that's exactly what we should do instead of trying to cure them, instead of trying to help them when they don't need help, instead of trying to force them to be like me. I'm going to listen to what their experience is, I'm going to listen, I'm going to try to understand as much as I can. I may not always be able to understand, and if I can't, I will tell them that.
But I think it's really important to develop this sense of compassion for self and community, to be willing to allow people around us to be vulnerable. And I believe that this kind of vulnerability can only happen when you're comfortable and familiar enough with yourself to be vulnerable in that aspect.
Other things you should never say to someone who's autistic: they say, "Hey, just so you know, I'm autistic," and then the other person says, "Really? You seemed so normal to me."
Don't say this. Please don't say this.
So first of all, normal is entirely subjective. Normal is based on the majority, and it's kind of stupid to be measured by the "normal" standard, because what is normal anyways? Is normal average? No. If—if someone had the average height, weight, finger length—if—if someone had the average everything, that would be absolutely acceptable, they would no longer be average if every single aspect of who they were was average. That's kind of a—kind of a statistical miracle, and that would not be normal either.
And so my point here is that there is really no normal. When you say, "Oh, you seem so normal," it just reinforces the fact that masking is a necessity for us. So when you say, "Oh, you seem so normal," with such a positive tone, it basically implies that anything that is not normal is inherently negative, because people have a tendency to fear people who are different from them.
Which is really difficult for us to deal with, because you have—you literally have a group of people, autistic people, who are interested in truth, interested in pattern recognition, interested in analysis, interested in life, interested in stimulation, interested in so many things, and then you're going to frown on them because they're not normal? It just doesn't make any sense. You need some kind of variance in society. If everyone was exactly the same in this society, not only would life be incredibly boring, but nothing would get done.
And when you say "normal" like that, it shows us that you understand that normal is something that everyone should try to achieve, that it's somehow more valuable than being authentic, which is what I disagree with. I think authenticity is the most important thing, doing the things that work for you and the ways that work for you. I think that being authentic should be more celebrated than conforming to a specific social standard, and I think it's ridiculous that our society holds this quote "normal" standard in such a positive light, and I'm here to change it. That's why I'm making this podcast, to bring these issues up.
And so that's another thing never to say to us: don't say, "You seem so normal to me," because it just reinforces the harmful behaviors that we have to do to exist and survive in this society, like masking—which by the way can cause autoimmune diseases, fun fact. Um, also can cause autistic burnout, which can take years to recover from.
So when you say, "You seem so normal, I never would have guessed you're autistic," what you're really telling us is, "I like your mask more than I like the real you," and that's not—that's not okay.
Another thing you should not do is say, "Oh, you're autistic like Sheldon from The Big Bang Theory."
Look, people are not defined by their ability to produce and to create. I am not more valuable because I'm able to hyperfocus and get eight hours of work done in four. Is it a great skill to have to be able to hyperfocus? Certainly. Am I maybe more or less a musical genius? People have referred to me that way before, and I'm not going to debate it. But the point is that people are more than just what we can produce.
I am as—as valuable and worthy as any other person in this world, including those level three autistic people who can't say a single word. And in fact, those are the people that we need to be advocating for the most, because these are the—the people, the kids, the adults—yeah, they get some support, but they're trapped in a place where they can't even voice their life experiences. And they're put—so many level two autistic kids are put through these harmful therapies where they're traumatized, and it's literally building up trauma in their brains, because sensory issues are from increased functional connectivity. So these people trying to force autistic kids into a box will simply keep playing these loud sounds over and over and over and over and over and over again and tell them to just deal with it.
That's another thing you shouldn't say: "Just deal with it." If someone who's autistic or someone who has ADHD is telling you that something is too loud, or something's too bright, or something hurts them, please listen. We're not just making this up for attention. We're literally not. We're trying to have a conversation about our life experience, which is fundamentally different from yours.
And I—I don't think that people should be defined whether or not they can be a savant. If you're a savant and you're autistic, congrats, that's really awesome and I'm happy for you. But that doesn't mean that you're better than everyone else. And does it mean that you're worse than everyone else if you can't speak, if you're level three autistic, you'll need support for the rest of your life and who knows what else?
No, you still have worth. You still have value. You have value as a person that is fundamentally separate from your ability to produce. And I—I really want to emphasize that. I think all the stigma that we—we have in the society around disability is because there is this false understanding that if you can't produce that you're not worthy, which is an incorrect assumption and understanding.
And then I think the last thing that I want to talk about, things you should never say to an autistic person, is, "Oh, I'm socially awkward too," or "Oh, I'm XYZ too."
Like, that is just really not helpful, because it doesn't adequately show us that you understand the impact of what it's like dealing with a world of people who are different from you. It really doesn't.
I understand that a lot of people will say, "Oh, I have XYZ issue too," because they're trying to empathize with me, and I don't take offense to it because I know they don't mean it. But the truth is that unless you're autistic or have ADHD or neurodivergent in some way, you can't understand. You can't.
And having—having ADHD or being autistic is not the same as simply having time blindness, just like forgetting the time every once in a while—that's not time blindness. Uh, messing up something socially every once in a while—that's not autism. There's a huge difference between struggling to remember faces and forgetting someone once, one time, once in your life. There's a huge difference between having to drop a pin every time you park anywhere just to find your car again versus forgetting where you parked one time in your life. There's a huge difference.
And so some people—everyone experiences their autism differently. For some people it's really disabling, for others it's not.
What I advise you to do if you want to be an ally is to listen to our experiences without judging, without projection. So if you want to be an ally for autistic people and neurodivergent folks, what I recommend is you ask.
Someone says, "I'm autistic." Okay:
"How does that impact your daily experience?"
"How does that impact your life?"
"What does that mean for you?"
"I'm not familiar with this, can you tell me more about it?"
Or ask questions.
Most of the time people will be pretty kind in response to that. They'll tell you what it's like going through whatever they're going through, and asking questions shows us that you're able to withhold your projections and your judgments and assumptions about the way that we are, and you give us the freedom to be the way that we are without a judgment or a filter over it.