Where Every Scroll is a New Adventure
i hate when people say “mild autism” like b i’m the conductor of the autism train and you’re not even riding in it
Yesterday I was supposed to meet with my case manager, since we’ve never met. I had the address and even confirmed in the morning it wasn’t a Telehealth visit, like the additiona automated call I received the day before said it was. I arrived early and waited in the office. And waited. And waited.
Then I received a message from my wife saying that the case manager was at our house. She never said it was in home. I couldn’t handle anything else after that call.
I cried so much. I never ended up meeting her because I was 25 minutes away from home.
We will eventually reschedule.
Why is life so challenging?
I feel this
I’m diagnosed as autistic, but I don’t really struggle a lot with social cues. I pick most of them up naturally it just takes a while. I have trouble figuring out when I’m supposed to speak so I usually just don’t. And I can’t usually tell when to stop a conversation. But I’m pretty good at all the other social stuff. Can I still be autistic? Is there a chance I was misdiagnosed?
"I pick up on social cues naturally but it just takes a while."
That's not picking up in social cues naturally. That's reading them and interpreting them after you learnt them via study and masking. Allistics don't need a while. It's instantaneous.
Trouble figuring out your turn to speak and stopping a conversation? Autism.
And pretty good at social stuff or you're no longer a child and have learnt the rules and regulations around social interaction?
This is classic imposter syndrome and I can tell you that if you are diagnosed as autistic, you're autistic. We're all different, yes, so my struggles will be different to yours. But reading social cues like an old 1950s radio manual is not the same as allistic understanding of social cues.
*warm hugs*
Things to think about and ponder
fully personal opinion
see many autistic people online treat someone calling self “high functioning” as a red flag, and some view it more extremely as irredeemable and make immediate assumption about person.
and i don’t… fully agree?
like of course see where they come from. there definitely are autistic people who identify as “high functioning” (high functioning autism, HFA) or “aspie” to separate self from the other autistics because they look down on other autistics. others may even believe HFA is this new evolutionary goal and people with HFA and only high functioning autism is better than everyone else, allistics included. they are yucky.
i carefully curate n select my internet experience because know if get mad, won’t be able to step away. so i don’t see these people much at all online. also because of dominant views in online autism community, these aspie supremacy HFA people don’t really participate in online actually autistic community.
but the reason i say i dont fully agree is because….
for so long me as a higher support needs level 2/3 austistuc and my friends who are similar or have more support needs as me & may be labeled “low functioning”, we been spoken over in online autistic community. dominant view of autism in online actually autistic community say every autistic all the same just mask differently or stuff like that. can look at my other posts for more context.
so, i really do appreciate when… how to say… an autistic respond to my posts say “i’m high functioning and i agree/thank you for bringing light to issue/etc etc.”
like. call themself as “high functioning” to, yes, separate themselves from me, not in the “im better than you i worth more than you”, but in the way of “i acknowledge me being/being seen as high functioning means i have different experiences than you, and on higher support needs/level2 3/low functioning issues i don’t have the lived experience and i need to listen.”
like i fully appreciate the latter, you know?
it’s also okay to say like. “while i don’t identify as high functioning, i do acknowledge i am often seen as high functioning, and that means i get treated better than those called low functioning.”
anticipate some people will say “well there still are better terms out there, like low support needs.” and the thing is, high functioning, levels, and support needs may all be trying to describe similar things, but they don’t neatly translate to each other. they don’t exactly mean same thing. “high functioning” doesn’t necessarily always mean low support needs.
and it not my place to tell other people how to self identify!
also because, i do like functioning labels when voluntarily used as self descriptor.
so, TLDR, i do oppose professionals & other people forcibly labeling autistics with functioning labels, i do hate those aspie supremacist high functioning autistics. but i think there is more nuance (always more nuance) to the “call self high functioning = bad” conversation. sometimes really do appreciate when someone self describe use “high functioning” to note difference in autistic experiences.
idk just personal thoughts. idk make sense.