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Can’t You Be More Positive for Autistics?

Last updated on November 26, 2023

Q: I read your blog and listen to the podcast, but you don’t mention any of the positives of being autistic? Where is your autistic pride?

I don’t have any autistic pride. That should be evident, as I replied to the parent asking me the question.

It isn’t that I don’t want to be accepted and accommodated, because I do want to participate in education, employment, and relationships.

It isn’t that I don’t understand there is a cultural aspect to autism, as there are with other marginalized communities. I appreciate and have worked with Blind communities and Deaf communities, for example. They have cultures and communities with clear identities, as does the Autistic community.

But, I am not “proud” to be autistic. Something led to autistic traits, someone applied the label, and on went my life. I feel very much the same about my partial paralysis, my vision challenges, and other medical conditions. They exist, so I compensate and work around them. I don’t celebrate them, nor do I discuss them outside specific situations.

I’ve tried before on this blog to explain that I don’t have a long list of autistic positives. Sorry, but I don’t want to mislead parents or younger autistics.

I’m 50 years old and my autistic traits, long before they were labeled as such, have rarely been beneficial.

I anticipate the response to that claim:

Surely your {sensory sensitivity | focus | pattern recognition | honesty | ________} is a gift.

I’ve responded to such prompts several times on social media and on this blog.

Sensory sensitivity hasn’t been an asset to me. I don’t have perfect pitch, I’m not a chef, little in my professional or personal life benefits from the constant sensory overload I experience. The resulting migraines and physical distress surely are not gifts. I’m almost always on edge, waiting for the sound, light, touch, vibration, et cetera that will push me past my ability to cope with the constant inputs. I’m always one input away from a complete collapse.

Sensory sensitivity is exhausting. I have always slept poorly. It disrupts travel. It makes social situations difficult. There’s almost no human activity that sensory sensitivity doesn’t negatively affect.

When teaching, I hear every squeak, buzz, crinkle, and tap in the room. I hear the hallways and what happens outside. The HVAC systems and the lights in many classrooms put me on edge.

You can focus for hours!

Often on silly, meaningless things. My wife will also tell you I dwell on things. For days, weeks, months, and years.

I might be able to focus overnight on a problem that could really wait until the next day. I have focused for hours on problems, especially technology problems. Computer programming and hardware repair become obsessive. When I’m writing or working on almost anything, my wife knows that I have a hard time stopping to join the family for dinner. I hate to break away from any task, no matter how minor the task.

Restarting a task, once interrupted? That’s an emotional experience for me. I recall all the frustration of stopping the task. I have to replay every step I had taken back in my mind. It takes much too long to get back on track than it should.

I put my phone on “silent” or “do not disturb” when I know I am doing something that would cause me panic to interrupt.

Okay, pattern recognition is a good thing sometimes. And it is something too many films, television shows, and books have suggested is a magical gift autistics share.

Patterns make me a pretty good coder, and a good database analyst. Patterns help me read, do math, analyze science, and study almost any topic. But, this very human desire for patterns and predictability that is heightened for some autistics can also be part of the disability. I hate when patterns are disrupted. The “cool” math problems involving no known patterns annoy me.

I’m not Rain Man. I’m not a human calculator. The patterns I recognize are often in languages. This makes learning programming languages a little easier, for example, but any good programmer develops a sense of language design.

Honesty is wonderful. 

Oh, yes, let’s give that a try.

Consider an extreme example: I have a deep, physical, painful reaction to most body art, especially tattoos. Do you want me to tell that to people? I have friends and colleagues with tattoos and I have to mask the pain I feel when I see them. Some of the people I most admire have body art. It’s difficult to ignore and not say how much I dislike it.

More problematic are the little white lies people tell daily, as part of social rituals.

“How are you?” people ask. I want to respond honestly. That would not be useful. “Fine, thank you,” I (usually) manage to respond.

When people say something I consider wrong, it is difficult, or even impossible, not to correct them. That’s not a way to make friends.

Lying makes me angry. Very angry. Rudeness, inconsideration makes me angry, too. I cannot resist telling people how bad lying and inconsideration are. You cut someone off in a line? I’ll tell you. Try to say you didn’t notice that person, that just angers me more. I’m always struggling to contain my outrage and human indecency.

Society should change.

Yes, it should, but humans are animals with evolutionary predispositions. I teach communications, rhetoric, and media courses (among other things). I know all too well the research on how quickly humans make up their minds about each other. Changing minds is more difficult than people want to believe. We want to believe those first impressions are fleeting and malleable. That’s not supported by science.

I’m a realist at 50, looking back on failed educational, professional, and personal situations. Remember, I’ve never had a stable career, and neither have most working adult autistics. Our autistic traits are a disability, regardless of any “gifts” they might offer.

Are you miserable?

No. I am not miserable. I have an amazing wife. I have two daughters we love and cherish. I have good friends and colleagues who patiently accept my quirks and challenges, though everyone I know does get annoyed with me from time to time.

My one success, my one genuine great thing, is my family. My wife, however, has made our lives together possible. We do our best as parents, and I want so much better for my children than what I have experienced.

The Autistic Me has friends and family to thank for what I do have, which is a good home life.

I love music, gardening, creating art, and writing. I love reading with my children. The things I love, the good things, however, are apart from and even sometimes disrupted by my autistic traits.

A friend I know who is Blind observed, “Hell, no, I don’t like being blind. I liked being able to see. But I love the Blind community and I enjoy my life as it is.”

That’s a pretty healthy attitude, in my opinion.

 

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