Autistic ADHD’er 🧠 | LGBTQ 🏳️🌈 | Writer ✍️ | Dreamer ✨ | IG and TikTok: @ autistic_callum_
Joined March 2021
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Many autistic people fear being misunderstood because a lot of us have experienced being held to a higher standard and given less grace in various situations, and have come to realise that even a seemingly small misunderstanding can have a significant impact on …
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… how we are perceived, which can in turn impact our relationships and potentially other important aspects of our lives as well.
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Someone: “If you didn’t understand you could’ve asked me to explain instead of trying to guess”.
Autistic me: *truly thought I understood, as I felt no confusion about what they said. I now see I processed it differently than they intended, but I couldn’t have known that before*
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The autistic experience of bending 80% while others bend 0%, and then being labelled rigid, difficult and demanding for not bending the other 20%.
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A lot of autistic people’s experiences can be thought of as heightened versions of common experiences. For example, something that *tires* a lot of people may *exhaust* us.
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The autistic urge to finish a point with “if you know what I mean” or “if that makes sense”, because you’ve encountered many situations where you’ve been misread or not fully and/or accurately understood that …
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… nowadays you often fear your communication will not be received as you intend it to be received.
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The autistic experience of being misperceived as complaining when you’re just nonchalantly describing something you’ve experienced.
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Autism: let’s keep everything the same…forever!
ADHD: let’s change everything!
Autism and ADHD: let’s keep things the same but different.
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The autistic urge to choose the most precise words when you speak - so there can be no confusion - only for some people to pay little attention to your words and pay more attention to your atypical facial expressions, tone and body language, and still end up misunderstanding you.
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The autistic experience of keeping to yourself because you need some extra time alone and/or don’t have the energy to socialise, but being misperceived as ‘stuck up’ and ‘looking down’ on other people.
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Autistic people can be very self-aware; many of us are highly analytical and analyse ourselves often and extensively.
I think the high level of self-awareness many of us have can come as a surprise to some because …
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Social expectations can at times not be intuitive for us and/or not be feasible for us to meet (for example, due to feeling overwhelmed, overstimulated and/or exhausted), so we can find ourselves trying hard yet aware that our efforts may not be well-received.
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So, we can be very self-aware yet not understand what other people expect and/or not be able to meet their expectations (for various reasons).
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Most people: Wow, I did that! Let’s celebrate!
Autistic and ADHD me: I know I achieved something and other people celebrate such wins, but it’s no big deal for me because everyone does it/it was easy. Plus, there’s still more I need to do on this, so it’s too early to celebrate.
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As an autistic person, just because it can take me longer to process my emotions and identify how I feel about something, and I can be succinct in how I express my emotions, that doesn’t mean I don’t feel emotions. I feel emotions deeply.
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Autistic people may appear to ‘overreact’ to ‘small’ things, but often such things are not small to us. For example, sensory overload can be very distressing, and it can be so unsettling when a beloved food/product is out of stock if it brings much-needed familiarity and comfort.
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