For a lot of people, their primary method of expressing sympathy is to find common ground. If your experience is genuinely similar to theirs, that's very effective and helpful -- It helps people to not feel alone.

But sometimes, there are huge differences between your experience and the experiences of the person you want to comfort, and those differences are what makes their experience so negative. If you talk about common ground despite that, you are saying that the differences aren't important, when in reality they are everything. It's erasing their experience. It's a horrible thing.

For #disabled people such as myself, this is a frequent problem, and it's very draining. I want to be able to talk about my experiences, but when so many peoples' first reaction is to downplay my experiences while thinking they're helping, it starts to feel like a quick way to ruin my day.

#disability #depression #chronicfatigue #actuallyautistic