Things for curebies to keep in mind (add to the list!)

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1. We are suicidal and angry because we are being forced into this "autistics are diseased people" crap, NOT the other way around.
2. We are not stupid.
3. Just because we can't communicate doesn't mean we can't think.

And more from here: http://shareesevilate.wordpress.com, below:

Truths about autism

WARNING: By “we”, I don't mean all of us, but many of us. By “them”, I mean some of the people that discriminate against us.


Academics
We don’t seem to do well in life—school, work, friendships, family, etc. We are actually trying to devise a plan to be different from and better than the others and/or make up for lost time.
Anger
Anger isn’t just a feeling that is part of the “autistic brain”. For some of us it is; other times we actually have triggers, like abuse from before, or we have something just happening to us now that makes us angry.
Animals and affinity to them
We may identify with animals more than with people, because certain animals will be loyal to us no matter what, or don’t pick on us.
Anxiety
Anxiety isn’t just a feeling that is part of the “autistic brain”. For some of us it is; other times we actually have triggers, like abuse from before, or we have something just happening to us now that is scary/ nerve-wracking for us.
Tips for those with social anxiety

1. Chances are, there are opportunities to talk about others’ good and bad points. When you want to, do it as often as you want to do it!

2. Chances are, they do it to you. Also remember that each one has it done to them, so they are not as bullet-proof and/or perfect as you may think.

3. If someone intimidates you, imagine the person with an unflattering appearance, poor hygiene, a small and thin stature and no self-defense skills, an embarrassing reputation, something else that makes them vulnerable to you, whatever else fits the situation best.

4. Usually you should look at people, especially their faces and especially their eyes. Do so without trying to pretend not to do so because you think they can feel your intent and become intimidated and attack you.

5. Watch people’s hands—and feet, especially if you are male—especially if it’s dark/deserted/otherwise dangerous in “that” way. Stay thirty feet away from all people and vehicles and otherwise stay safe. You will be less scared.

6. Talk with everyone like they’re your best friend/beloved identical twin/other like you or that you like/feel safe around.

7. Think of all the people uglier/grosser/dumber/crazier than you who have friends. If they can do it, so can you.

8. Remember that it’s possible that your enemies might have been your friends in different environmental circumstances.

Attention deficits

Some of us stim (self-stimulate in any way that works) because we need stimulation, and this gives us stimulation better than nothing when we aren’t provided with enough.

Some of us can be inattentive. We are understimulated, and/or just taking our mind to a place where it is better and/or we are treated better… like stimulated more.

Aversives

I never had the following happen to me or to anyone I know, but these days many people with my diagnoses have, so from where I'm standing it's too close for comfort.

“Aversive therapy” doesn't take into account that the person could be doing certain target behaviors because 1) they can't help it, 2) they need to for their survival, 3) they don't know they're doing it or 4) they don't know why it's not right to do it. Aversives don't take into account all the unspoken, unwritten good the person does, like just being a friend and deserving a hug ( which many consider a reward) for that reason. Aversives, unlike simple restraint, are meant to get the better of someone and hurt them “for the greater good”. Really, it's insulting, them thinking they can and should hurt others, and often that is what hurts the others. True aversives are done by a person who is not feeling love or happiness.

To sum it up, any part of you must beware those who think autism is truly bad.

Bipolar disorder

A bipolar person can be manic, going deep into their obsessions and not stopping, or depressed. A bipolar person could get an obsession from being so manic into and about something. Or they can be depressed. Or a person can just plain be autistic and bipolar.

Communication

They may think we don’t know or understand something just because we can’t or won’t communicate
it or communicate that we know it.

Culture and arts
Some of us sometimes have foreign accents when we aren’t foreign. Sometimes it’s because we’re pretending to be someone we would rather be.

Some of us often dress weird. Sometimes it’s caring about the bigger things in or outside our minds, sometimes it’s sensory issues, other times we try to be different to punish the ones who tell us what to do or pick on us, other times we try to be different but have a system so we are seen as having art skills
and not be seen as totally random. Sometimes it doesn’t seem to work.

Depression

Depression isn’t just a feeling that is part of the “autistic brain”. For some of us it is; other times we actually have triggers, like abuse from before, or we have something just happening to us now that is depressing for us.

Diagnosis

They may assume that if they treat the autism all the other problems will go away. (I’d get MORE depression from them thinking autism is a disease. Also, we have the right to have feelings independent from autism and have them recognized as our feelings independent from autism.)

They may tell others who do not understand autism (even if they think they do) that you are autistic, without an explanation of what you personally really are like (many people mistakenly think we’re hopeless).

They may contradict themselves about autism and/or various autistic traits.

They may think you can’t have another disorder besides the ASD, so they let you suffer from the other disorder and/or its symptoms.

They may think you have one ASD when really you have another (I was insulted by my Asperger’s diagnosis, just because it wasn’t true. I didn’t have enough of the problems they said I had, though I did have some extreme. I was eventually diagnosed with PDD-NOS to replace it.)

They may rush to give you a diagnosis and thus give you a false diagnosis, just so that someone can have closure, even though it’s the wrong diagnosis, which causes you to be treated in a way you dislike because it’s the incorrect way.

They may think all autistics have the same one or more signs/symptoms.

They may get your assessment wrong, assuming you did something for this reason when it’s really another reason, not asking you for clarification even when they go by the word of one or more witnesses who got it wrong and are not you.

Diet

Some of us are often picky eaters. Cravings and anti-cravings are necessary instincts so that we get what we need and don’t get poisoned, and are heightened with some of us.

Education in general

Sometimes the autistic student (or any student) may feel the need (and rightly so) to see the point in certain things they are required to learn. Forcing a kid to learn to play basketball is not necessary. Learning to clean is.

“Floortime” is a good educational method when combined with other non-aversive stuff. Floortime is when you let them learn and talk about what they want. It really should be coupled with someone spinning what they like off into something else they’ll love that is 100% related to the thing they are obsessed with. Example: someone obsessed with cooking pies might want to learn how to make the dough itself so that he can cook pies but also other, healthier things with it.

Empathy

They may say we don’t have empathy for anyone, but that they have empathy for everyone. The truth is, if they are like that, they have empathy for only their own kind; and us only for our own kind, if we’re like that.

They may say we can’t or don’t love when we just express our love differently, or have love that is triggered by different things, or simply happen to love when they aren’t looking.

Some of us love some objects more than we love some people. A cute teddy bear rather than the rage in a NT’s face, for example. Especially if the NT is railing that he hates autism! The bear is alive in a sense, and nice to look at.

Some of us seem to lack empathy. (See the stuff I wrote in these lists about objects and animals, also let me add that we don’t get more empathy when you scold/shame/humiliate/scare/hurt us for lacking empathy… you doing that shows YOU lack empathy, and us reacting negatively to that shows we have empathy because we understand how you feel about us.)

Some of us sometimes don’t seem to show emotion for others. Often we were used to holding back because our mean caregivers didn’t deserve our affection, and so old habits die hard for us in this circumstance.

Some of us also sometimes have non-emotional attachments to objects. Sometimes it’s security—“They won’t take THIS away!”—etc. so at least we feel like we have that one little right to keep whatever it is.

Family life

They may think we shouldn’t reproduce (we are no better or worse than NTs).

Some of us don’t marry fast/young/soon/at all (not trusting after others’ cruel rejection or our requirements for how we want to be treated not being met).

Others of us do marry fast/young/soon/at all (to prove we can do it, or because we are blown away by someone who is so nice and genuine after years of others’ meanness and lies, or because we want kids because we’re lonely or want another autistic around, someone to understand and who will understand us).

Friendship

Autistics may more easily make friends in structured/institutionalized/supervised settings, but this is not necessarily because they are unable to make friends; it may just be that they feel they need someone close by to make sure they are not abused.

Many of us understand, unlike many non-autistics, that one good friend is better than infinite fake ones. Often we got to understand this by being picked on and/or having an obsessive interest in justice, where it is rare to find a friend into morality as well because the interest is so rare in some places.

Honesty/morality

Many of us don’t lie, or we suck at lying, or both. We feel guilty about lying so we don’t try to, at any rate. The honest part of us will win over the need-to-deceive part.

They may say we are obsessed with rules when really we create rules to follow because we believe in them and are good people. Though sometimes we may take a rule too far, where it defeats the purpose of the rule. This is because we are busy thinking and doing other stuff, just like anyone else who makes mistakes!

Housing choices

Just because a person is “low-functioning” in many areas doesn’t mean they need to live in a supervised capacity at all. The skills they have that are developed might be their independent-living skills, so if you take that away the person may seem like they can’t do anything at all, since they may not have other skills. This will likely traumatize them.

Hyperactivity

It is actually a craving sometimes, a craving for either physical activity, stimulation or both. The same goes with hypertalkativity.

Hyper-and hyposensitivity to sensory input

Some of us may dislike certain textures because it’s just hypersensitivity to what we touch and ingest… it’s a good instinct to have to avoid injury/poisoning!

Some of us are hyper- or hypo-sensitive to pain. Sensitivity is good for survival provided it causes no mental trauma, and hyposensitivity is a “turn it off and focus on something happier” instinct.

Some of us often have sensory issues with touch. Sometimes it’s sensory over-or under-stimulation, other times it’s hypersensitivity to what we touch and ingest.

Some of us often talk too loud because we are lonely/understimulated and need to hear noise.

Intellect

They may think autism is an intelligence spectrum, that all low-functioning ones are dumb, and all high-functioning ones are smart but not as smart as NTs… that, after all, they are still autistic!

They may think all autistics have the same reasons for doing something: for example, thinking I use computers to learn about computers rather than to socialize, when actually I learn about computers so that I can use them to socialize!

Some of us may speak in a formal way to show others that we’re not losers, that we have our own culture.

Some of us may learn to read and write early to show we have intelligence despite our shortcomings that get our caretakers so annoyed, and we also learn to read and write early to show we have our own culture away from the people who are trying to raise us.

Sometimes some of us may say something that makes sense but wasn’t something we intended to say.

Some of us often have such good rote memories. Because we have no life because we are rejected because we are autistic. What happens next is because not a lot goes on in the life, there is less to have to remember. So more space for our special interests. We also use this as a way of impressing people and making ourselves seem intelligent even though we think we are not. But we don’t want others to know that.

Either “low-functioners” aren’t stupid, or they are not low-functioning.

They may think the reason we don’t understand something is due to our ASD when actually we have another reason or other reasons for not understanding.

Intuition

Many of us don’t seem to have intuition. It’s different kinds of intuition a lot of us have.
Sometimes we know how to feel out a situation, but don’t know that we have to.

Law, criminality and responsibility

The anti-autistics and others who kill autistics get off easily in the justice system for killing us because we’re “punishment enough”. (We have bad times where NTs have good times, but we can also have good times during NTs’ bad times… and too often this gets seen as lack of empathy on our part too!).

They may think you are not responsible for your actions due to your ASD (ASDs are not stupidity, nor are ASDs not knowing or not knowing how). They do not hold the same standards to “normal” people.

Logic

Some of us don’t seem to learn from our mistakes. Sometimes it’s because our minds are too busy.

Other times some of us don’t want to stop just because someone tells us to, even if we know they’re right because we know why we SHOULD stop. This is because we don’t want others to think we can be bossed/pushed around. It’s a poor way of showing it, admittedly… we should just ask why and we have the right to a truthful answer.

Some of us are obsessed with fairness because we have bad luck more than usual and it seems unfair.

Loyalty

Due to our morals overriding our other morals, some of us might defend our abuser to the death because we see the good in him and decide he has potential.

Medication

Some medication will make a person stimulated or happy enough to be able to search for more stimulation or happiness.

Meditation

The kind of autistic who turns off and lets their mind wander to escape unpleasant reality is actually doing a form of meditating without trying to.

Movements/tics

Some of us may tic because we are trying hard not to say something embarrassing, so we concentrate so much on it that we say it. And/or our tics are stimming.

Some of us may have weird moments—social anxiety causing us to look at the door and then at the person and then at the door, going between fight/flee/play dead/reason, etc. movements, which seems disorganized… we also need stimulation sometimes so we will need to move, even if it seems weird at the time. Others move weirdly to relieve odd sensory problems (banging one’s head to relieve pressure, etc).

Obsessions/ special interests/fixations

Some of us often have obsessions, also called fixations or special interests. Because stimulation is needed, escape is needed, community where we’re loved is needed. Some obsessions have communities.

Some of us aren’t interested in the same things as our peers. We may need more stimulation than them, or we’re already wrapped up in our own obsessions as they just start developing passions.

Some of us often don’t know the same things as our peers. We aren’t interested (see what I wrote about us not being interested in the same things as our peers).

They say what we love must be controlled because it’s a perseveration, but what NTs love is love and must be encouraged. (Example: some of us may see feelings in animals that others don’t see, we see intelligence and rights.)

Obsessive compulsiveness

Sometimes it’s this: When you lose control of how badly you do, you decide “well, I do have some control and can do damage control by at least controlling as much of it as I can.” Hence the special number, which is the number of times the person is humanly able to do whatever compulsion it is.

Often some repetitive movements can be mistaken for obsessive compulsiveness (as in, “I have to do this”) when really it's just stimming or anxiety.

Oppositional defiant and antisocial disorders and behavior

They may say we are just in a combative mood or oppositional, but we actually care about our points very much and genuinely believe in them. This is both insulting to us, and bad for our points that we are trying to express.

Panic disorders

An autistic might panic when he sees something going on that isn’t supposed to or doesn’t exist in their mind, something they thought was impossible. They might think as a result that there is no logic in the universe if this thing exists, therefore everything must be chaos and nonsense. This may panic the individual and traumatize them.

The individual’s triggered panic, in another circumstance, might be written off as just a nonsense thing with autism when it actually is because of a trauma such as abuse in early childhood, etc.

Perception differences

Some of us may not see something someone else sees, but we may see something just as important that they do not see, so why treat us differently in a negative way?

Personality disorders and issues

There should be, as one person told me, an Autistic Personality Disorder, since “disorder” doesn’t necessarily mean something negative. It’s often part of you the same way a personality disorder is.

Phobias

A phobia could actually cause symptoms of autism by making a person retreat into themselves either to distract themself or come to terms with the fear, or become hyperactive to distract themself.

Physical health and fitness

Some of us are sometimes not physically fit, because in team sports nobody wants us on their team, and/or our special interest currently doesn’t involve physical fitness.
Some of us are clumsy… social anxiety that is explained in the “wierd moments” section, also “why we are inattentive”.

Politics/activism/media representation

They may trust the opinions of the doom-and-gloom autism professionals more than they trust the opinions of us autistics when it comes to autism.

They may try to make us fake it and think that will make us feel better, when it will actually make us feel worse because we are lying and it doesn’t even work.

They may believe false negative crap about all autistics or one or a few autistics, and then treat one, some or all of us accordingly.

They may think we SUFFER from an ASD. What we suffer from is times people think that because we are autistic we are pathetic or dangerous or stupid/crazy/bad.

They may think they know us better than we know ourselves, or they think they know better than us what is good for us. Especially if they say it’s due to our ASD.

A group of them are currently trying to develop a genetic test that will ensure that nobody autistic is ever born again on this planet. Even if it is meant to simply plan for the child’s life, the truth is that there are a lot of ignorant people out there who will abort their children or fetuses after learning they are autistic.

They may think all autistics are the same (that we all have the same personality, for example quiet and scared, or aggressive and oppositional, or worse yet, just a normal kid waiting for a cure).

A lot of them also don’t let all autistics speak for themselves, and claim to speak for autistics even though they themselves are “neurologically typical”, but they will not let autistics speak for other autistics (let alone neurotypicals, whom we shouldn’t be allowed to speak for anyway in general), saying we can’t speak for them.

They may expect us to always be the ones to change or conform, suffering for the majority, while the majority gets to be themselves and have an easy time.

They may think we shouldn’t be allowed to do certain things due to our ASD, when as a matter of fact our population is no more dangerous or incompetent at them than the mainstream population.

They may try to take away your coping mechanisms thinking that will take away the comorbids (comorbids are bad things that can come with normality, or with autism, or with anything).

They may punish us in a cruel way (it doesn’t work because it’s cruel)—one learns to be nice from others being nice to them, you get suspicious when another focuses on how you need to be forced in a negative way to do something, so you think they think it is bad for you because they think you would never do it on your own. So you get scared when you try to force them or say they need to be forced.

They may say your ASD is not your fault but punish you for your signs/symptoms. Even from their view it doesn’t make sense. The wonderful compensation they think someone disabled should get is cruelty and punishment?

They may think your ASD or ASDs in general are bad (especially if you identify as autistic rather than having autism… so you’re bad then?)

They may blame everything you say/think/feel/do on your ASD. This is an insult. Why? Because they are saying all autistics have certain bad characteristics that they say is the ASD.

Some of us often can’t take some or all criticism. Often because it’s wrong or done by know-it-alls who think/do to us all of the awful things bad to us due to our autism and/or our label of autism. Then we get criticized for not being nicer to them!

Some of us are often ashamed of our diagnoses. We know a lot of people think autism is bad, so we don’t tell them for fear they will think we’re like THAT.

Some of us often get depressed and/or anxious and/or easily angry. We often get bothered every day by the things people do to us due to our autism and/or our label of autism.

The corporate greed is the reason some organizations exist. They want us to think there is a crisis to direct our attention away from their scam. We are not a tragedy. They use this stuff to get our attention away from the bigger issues… THEM. Also, they want us to believe we are a tragedy so that money can be made for or given to them to erase us from the world, plus really they want that money for themselves… corporate greed.

They often don’t care about our feelings/our thoughts/how/why… but they do care about our behavior.

Some of us often don’t respect authority figures. Authority figures often do a lot of the bad stuff I talk(ed) about in this list.

There’s a parable in the autistic community that goes like this: A man is smart; he becomes a geneticist. He swears he will destroy this horrible disease called autism. He is passionate about being a geneticist. He does an experiment one day involving human hairs, submitting his own hair in the “non-autistic” group. Then upon further testing he finds his hair has the autistic genes… and that he is autistic. He is filled with remorse, as now parents will be aborting their babies who are like him.

They may think we are hopeless, can’t learn, etc.

They may think autistics are more dangerous than NTs (we have just the same concentration of danger or dangerous people. Just like Jews, blacks, any ethnic group at all. Just because some blacks get sickle cell anemia, does that mean they need to be cured of their BLACKNESS; all blacks need to be cured of blackness?).

Some of them don’t take us seriously because we are autistic (we have the same concentration of intelligent, sane people as NTs do!)

Some of them write ambiguous things about autism and some more of them then interpret it in the most doom-filled, hateful way possible.

All this in these lists has directly to do with how we want to be treated.

In “PDD” (in which the PD stands for Pervasive Developmental), that last D is for “disorder”… not dysfunction, disease, delay, disability, defect, deficit or damage.

They may call our interests privileges for when we’re “good” and act like NTs, while NTs’ interests are accepted as rights, and sometimes think it is ethical to do something that they know hurts an autistic just because it wouldn’t hurt a NT child.

They may make assumptions about autism (example: that we’re all hopeless at conversation).

Many of them don’t, and sometimes they even refuse to, expose their autistic children to the idea of neurodiversity.

They may say we have no feelings, when actually we express the same feelings they have in different ways or have different feelings.

Some of them won’t let you speak for yourself about your autism.

They may think your fitting in is more important than your coping mechanisms and your being yourself (example: they tell you to stop rocking, but you don’t know any other form(s) of stimulation that is good enough to replace it).

They may think you have autism when actually you are autistic, or vice versa. (Having autism is when your mind takes a boarder. Being autistic, or part of you being autistic, is different.)

They may think you are less capable due to your ASD rather than capable of the same size load but a different load of things, or when they think you are different in some way due to your ASD but you are actually more normal than that.

They may think your ASD is more or less severe than it actually is, in general or in this or that area.

They may try to censor and shut down people who are pro-autism, using a double standard. (They told me to say nothing if I had nothing positive to say about their organization. I tell them to say something positive about autism. I didn’t, however, tell them to not speak if they had nothing good to say about it, just that they should not spread FALSE propaganda that autism ruins lives and marriages and families, that autistics are hopeless without their treatments (some of which are abusive). If a family or relationship is that fragile, it was like that to begin with… not the kind of situation you would have wanted to be in anyway. They also threatened to sue at least two autistic people (one who made a parody of the organization’s website and another who made a t-shirt saying he didn’t need the organization because he was autistic and could speak for himself). The two people came out triumphant, however… there’s this little thing called fair use that includes parodies and comments.

Post-traumatic stress

Some of us may get PTSD from seemingly lesser things, but that doesn’t mean we can’t handle bigger things. It simply means we get PTSD from DIFFERENT things, not necessarily lesser things.

Practical everyday skills

Some of us have meltdowns or start skipping important things because again, we need to keep our train of thought and production up in the important things we are figuring out or doing.
They may think that all autistics have the same skills or lack of skill in something (example: that all of us can fix a radio but none of us can read facial expressions).

Psychosis/paranoia

Some of us are often paranoid, due to the crap said about and done to us by anti-autism people.

Religion

Some of us are often atheists. We don’t understand that WE could be hallucinating rather than the people who have those near-death experiences with the afterlife. We don’t understand that other beings may cause us to hallucinate normality so we don’t see so-called supernatural things. When we believe, we can see where it came from; we need to know that if we believe something it’s obviously there in one way, because we believed it. Often we don’t know this, and often we have to figure it out for ourselves.

We often try to figure out how the universe works and the why and how of why our lives are so miserable, so that we can try to change it.

Sameness/routine/rituals/stereotypicality/rules

Some of us rigidly follow some rules. We are moral watchdogs because of the way we’ve been treated, especially by do-gooders.

Some of us repeat things seemingly for no reason because we are stalling until we can find something to say next. This is social anxiety. Other times we don’t think the person we are talking to is listening so we feel the need to pound it into their head. If we say something five different ways, it is to make sure the people we say it to understand what we meant.

Some of us don’t like change because we are faster, we need to do something constructive now, and there is no time to stop to change tasks. If there was no need to stop between tasks, and there was a perfect flow in it from one task to the other, then maybe we would find it easier to change tasks.

Some of us use strict routines sometimes because we are productive people, needing to do something or get it done or both, with no interruptions, especially if interruptions involve losing one’s train of thought.

It is hard sometimes for some of us to change because old habits die hard and our minds might be too full of other stuff we need to do or think out to concentrate much on changing. We are used to our old survival habits and simple mistakes that even though we know better or no longer have to or are forced to do these things, it’s hard to stop.

Savant skills

If a person is not stimulated enough by their surroundings, they can go into themselves for stimulation, or find something in their surroundings to focus on and help it along perhaps with stimulation from inside. Then they may get so wrapped up in it that it returns stimulation to them (like if they join an online community about it) so even if other things become stimulating again, this obsession is more stimulating so the person sticks with it. This can be an interest and often interests come with skills. They aren’t idiot savants; they have simply become inattentive to their other surroundings.

Social skills

They may assume that different means wrong (I wouldn’t WANT to be friends with someone who thought I was bad or what I did was so wrong, so I’m not going to stop, say, stimming, for anyone!)

They may think it’s harder to deal with/raise/know/befriend an autistic than to do so to/with a non-autistic. This is not true of us as a group; as in, with every autistic.

Some of us may be easily peer pressured, because we are really sensitive and don’t want to hurt another’s feelings and know we can make ourselves like what they like.

Some of us are not easily peer pressured. We are smarter than our peers’ propositions. Either because we know a lot so we know it’s best for us not to take part, or because our special interests are “smarter”.

Some of us have social anxiety because we don’t want to bump into evil, so we don’t look in people’s eyes… because we think that if we do, there is evil/deadness in them.

Some of us don’t let others get a word in edgewise. We feel that what we are talking about is more important than talk about an overdue library book or a ski trip everyone found boring.
Many of us don’t blindly trust people. This is because we don’t look at their expressions to see if they can be trusted.

Some of us don’t get others’ facial expressions/body language/tone because we don’t look; we don’t want to see their dead eyes, or we’re focused on something more stimulating than that, whether that stimulation is in or outside our heads.

Some of us don’t remember faces/names/visual things sometimes. This is because we don’t pay attention, for many of the reasons above.

Some of us are often the last to get the point of a joke, because we are not paying attention for various reasons, or because we have a whole lot of other stuff going on in our heads that we need to sort out before thinking about some joke.

Some of our minds are also often too busy to care what others think.

Some of us often can’t explain ourselves on the spot. This is our fear of them thinking we don’t have a good explanation, or us knowing more than we are able to communicate.

Many of us often don’t make eye contact (fear of seeing evil in the eyes, social anxiety, not paying attention, etc).

Some of us don’t want to make friends or get noticed because when people talk about us, they talk about our embarrassing moments too. Then our friends remember them, and any new friends now know about them. Something we often don’t want.

Some of us can’t take compliments. We don’t want people to think we are arrogant.

Some of us are embarrassed easily because we tend to do things different from how others are doing them and we might mess up what they are doing in the process. This causes them to scold/punish/shame us more than the average person is scolded/punished/shamed.

Some of us have funny/different/“inappropriate” expressions and/or funny/different/“inappropriate” tones. Sometimes it’s a stim, other times it’s daydreaming/reading about something not related to the conversation going on in front of us.

Some of us take things literally when the tone is neutral because we don’t know the person well enough (for reasons I mention here in this list). For example, one young boy apparently asked his mother to teach him how to cross a street when his mother says “No, you stay with me; you don’t know how to cross the street.” What she actually meant was “You don’t pay attention”… not literally “You don’t know how.”

Special education

Some kids will be embarrassed to be in special education, not because they think anything is wrong with being different, but because they know others will think there is something wrong with them if they are in special education.

Speech

Sometimes an overstimulated person might talk very quietly, sometimes too quietly to be understood, because they don’t want to create even more noise for themselves. The opposite is sometimes true for a person who is understimulated.

Spirituality

An autistic will often take the long way round if something is not explained to them in a way that makes sense to them. They will figure out their meaning of life and even their religion using their logic.

Sports and teamwork

It’s a catch-22 in gym class for some autistics who are not popular in school. They don’t want everyone to know that nobody wants them on their team, but they also don’t want to sit out and get attention that way, and fail besides. The same goes for other classes, where the autistic may pretend to want to work alone and choose to work alone.

Talk therapy

An autistic may have problems but not recognize they need to or be too embarrassed to or not have the words to talk about it… or all three.

Technology

Some of us are good with computers because it’s easier to socialize on a computer… less attention/energy needed, less dangerous, and we often use writing to explain what we can’t explain on the spot.

Therapy (other, or in general)

They may think treatment is the only chance for certain, most or all autistics to lead a productive/meaningful/functional life, when some people who are severely “low-functioning” grow up to be extremely “high functioning” with NO help whatsoever.

We often refuse treatment for autism due to pride. Also, we don’t like them thinking autism is bad, and we know that some treatments for it are abusive. Furthermore, we DON’T NEED TREATMENT… it is NOT A DISEASE OR DEFECT.

They may think it’s okay to use aversives on us, or that it’s okay to use aversives on autistics but not others, or some kinds or levels of autistics but not others. It’s hard enough not to be understood. When they give up on us due to not understanding us, it sucks… and when they torture us because they don’t understand us, that’s a form of giving up.

They may think you “improved” due to their or anyone’s help when you actually did it either on your own or with a different party’s help.

They may lie intending to get you services you need by saying you need services you don’t need. But that often turns into help you don’t need which is often painful/humiliating.

They may force treatment on autistics (the autistics could lose coping mechanisms to a cure, or feel broken or like the anti-autistics think they’re broken due to them forcing a cure on them, etc).

As a matter of fact, I never got any therapy except talk therapy and medication (and nothing for autism, just for comorbids like depression)… and I thank God for that too, because anything else would have been an insult to my intelligence. The insultingly basic twelve-session social skills group was insulting to my intelligence, but that was all. I went there to socialize with others with social anxiety, who were open-minded… I didn’t go there to learn anything.

Vocational training

Some autistics naturally gravitate towards vocational training. Sometimes it’s for the usual general reasons, other times it’s because they have ADHD and don’t want to sit down all the time.

Even by my admission, the post above was too long. You could have just posted a link to the Autism Truths article on what she calls "Shareese Cazenovia's second international incident instigation initiative".