For me personally, the worst is peer/family alienation. Always having others assume the worst when they don't understand one of our peculiarities. And facing the inevitable social consequences, regardless of how innocent our motives may be.
Having our passionate interests treated as an mere annoyance by neurotypicals. Needing to participate in meaningless jibber-jabber that holds no relevancy to what has our particular interest in the moment—which is just as much of an annoyance to us.
Inability to catch subtle jokes, sarcasm, and other put-downs often until it is far too late to address them without looking and feeling like even more of a social misfit than many of us already feel like. And as a consequence, we often are left with little option but to bottle up all that hurt that never seems to heal.
The inevitable criticisms of those who accuse us of being “insensitive” when we are anything but. And these same people are the ones just as likely to accuse of of being “too sensitive” whenever we are faced with a social or sensory trigger. It's all about forced conformity. To speak personally here, this is what destroyed my relationship with my own mother. She's as neurotypical as they come. “Do and feel as I say” were her watchwords as I grew up. If I got upset unbidden, I was in for it. If I didn't react with the conventional words, expressions, and gestures, I was in for it. To this day, she refuses to believe I even have autism even though every other person I talk to who knows about autism thinks I do. Now I must pay $2k get formally diagnosed, otherwise she'll just continue with her flap-happy life thinking she did no wrong, and assuming I'm just an attention-seeking drama queen--and those would be her kinder words. Needless to say, I am no-contact with her. But the wounds remain open and painful.
That is my most brutal truth about ASD! It's like everyone else is presumed innocent until proven guilty; for many of us including myself, society reverses those keywords. As a consequence, many of us are loners; but hardly by choice.
No comments:
Post a Comment