#AskingAutistics Does telling an allistic person you're #autisticever help improve communication? Over and over, I let people know I'm autistic in hopes it will help, but it never makes things better. It seems like no one wants to do the reading, or to make an effort to even meet me halfway. The main reactions I get when I disclose fall into these categories:
Ignore it entirely and just keep on like I'm not autistic.
Say I'm nothing like their 10 year old nephew who has #autism.
Assume that since we're friends it doesn't matter, because friendship is magic and will enable me to "overcome my autism" with them if I am just motivated enough, and if they aren't special enough for me to do that then I don't really value them as a friend.
Give advice on how I can mask better for their comfort and convenience, like I haven't spent my whole life becoming expert on that.
Try to be accommodating without taking the time to learn what is helpful and what is just going to make things worse.
Infantilize me and treat me like a child or an intellectually disabled person.
Give up on me because autistic people are too hard to deal with.
No reaction, because most people don't know anything about autism. They don't even understand that I'm doing all the work to bridge the communication gap, or that they could do anything to help, or even cut me some slack when I fail.
I do have a couple allistic friends who accommodate me enough to maintain a decent relationship, but they are rare and special. And we had somehow worked that out before I knew I was #ActuallyAutistic even, so telling them still didn't change much.
Has anyone had communication improve by telling someone you're autistic? Or is that just a fantasy?
Our microwave oven is a sensory nightmare for me. I always try to stop it before it reaches zero and begins beeping. I get extremely anxious over this.
Do my #ActuallyAutistic comrades ever find themselves overcome with sudden dread, sadness, or any other “negative” emotion and have NO CLUE where it came from?
@ratcatcher@danimo@actuallyautistic I have taken your suggestion and began tooting questions with #AskingAutistics so that those who don’t want questions can filter them out. Perhaps I will start using #AutisticThoughts for posts such as the above. But remind that filtering those out may cause people to lose acccess to some of the material that they’re looking for
The problem with using #AskingAutistics is that this hashtag is in general use and I would not want to filter it.
My suggestion was that you should invent your own unique hashtag specific to your questions so that those of us who are not interested can filter them. To be clear, I'm not suggesting that you stop using other hashtags or stop posting to @actuallyautistic - just include a unique hashtag that can be filtered on.