@actuallyautistic
I'm visiting family, and wow am I deep in autistic denial territory.
Some of my younger relatives have approached me, asking about neurodivergence because I've been so open about my experience as a late realised autistic person. They're wondering about themselves and their parents.
The older people though, are unable to have that conversation. There are jokey, sidelong half acknowledgements that "there might be something going on" with them, but otherwise it's High Masking At All Times.
What I find difficult to deal with is the rather toxic judgemental attitudes.
So-and-so relative is "so picky about his food, he thinks it makes him important" or "how ridiculous, he doesn't like the too bright light in the bathroom" and all the while I can see them struggling to deal with the exact same difficulties they're judging in others.
It's so ingrained, I don't know if there's a way for them to find self acceptance.
@Zumbador @actuallyautistic > "...otherwise it's High Masking At All Times."
Likely contributing source for older people ("older" in this context can easily be as young as 35-40, but it gets worse the older you are): massive amounts of social stigma with the term "autistic".
It took me two years since an official ASD diagnosis in 2019 before I could apply the term to myself, and even now, 5 years later, it's still not emotionally neutral, the way that saying "oh, I've got brown hair" or "yeah, I get migraines too" would be.
The main reason? Suspected (still unclear how definitive) "autistic" diagnosis in the early 1980s that *really* screwed up my family of origin, and led to a lot of misguided and actively harmful treatment from them (both senses of the word: medical and interpersonal) for years.
@Zumbador @actuallyautistic Some additional context, by age range:
If they're older than 40, they probably associate the term "autistic" with people who have to be shunted off into separate classrooms because they're too "fragile" for or "incapable" of dealing with "The Real World".
If they're older than 55 or so, they probably associate the term with people who don't even get the separate classrooms, but just get institutionalized indefinitely.
If they're older than 70 or so? Good grief, they actually personally remember the existence of lobotomies. (It's unclear how many autistic people were subjected to them, but I'd be astonished if the number was zero.)
@dpnash @Zumbador @actuallyautistic
I’m in my mid-sixties and I had mostly simply never heard of it. People were just R-worded back then, and as the term came to more common use, it just missed me, never came up.
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Should have, if my family had dealt with me, I guess.
My autism presents opposite to that. I have hyperlexia, taught myself to read by the time I was 3 or 4, was reading at an adult level by the time I was in 3rd grade. My school records all say I didn't perform to the level they expected.
I have a lifetime of being a disappointment.
@ScottSoCal @dpnash @Zumbador @actuallyautistic
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I didn’t hear and I think I bloody should have. Honestly, I’m claiming it now. 😈
I bought myself this shirt a few years ago. 🤣 Just kind of claiming it.
@ScottSoCal
Homer, right? “Something dear old Mom ised to say, and by golly, she was really onto something” 💔🤣
@ScottSoCal @punishmenthurts @dpnash @Zumbador @actuallyautistic I want. Multiple copies.
@ScottSoCal @punishmenthurts @Zumbador @actuallyautistic I was hyperlexic *and* good with numbers as a little kid, which at least made school easier than it might have been otherwise. But that was more than matched by not caring for most of the other things other young kids liked, with a bonus level of dyspraxia making otherwise common activities difficult or impossible. School was a pretty dang lonely place for a long time.
@ScottSoCal @dpnash @Zumbador @actuallyautistic
I’m good with letters too, less so with numbers. I never heard the R-word about myself.
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I’m actually looking at my report cards now, it was half about speech and numbers trouble early, then became what you say, a lot of, “if only he’d apply himself.”