#actuallyautistic
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I mean, I’d never heard of Autism or neurotype, I didn’t know I was, “masking,” I just knew there was all this shit everyone has to do, school, work, marriage, and I was slow getting onto all of it, but I thought I’d managed it, had a job and a family and a house and a mortgage, despite not being made for any of it, it was all hard. I never knew why, but I always knew that nothing came naturally to me and the only thing that got me through was a three digit IQ - that’s neurotype, isn’t it, nothing automatic and a great deal of mental energy is spent navigating a world you don’t have the keys to.
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But I thought I found a way, I thought I’d made my way in that forever foreign world, and I took some pride in that.
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But learning late in life that not even family knows me, or understands anything I say, finding out that language doesn’t work from here to there, how are you supposed to deal with that? For me this the end of the flowchart, there’s nothing to be done, nothing to try next.
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All I can think about is that, that WTF are you supposed to do with no communications? 💔

@punishmenthurts Strong relate. Much of what my family said was necessary and basic, and easy to do, I struggled, I was behind in learnign to speak, drink, eat, sleep... I still cant get my body to complay to the ways that society said I should act and behave.

We have communication.... there seems to be a breakdown between us the autistics, and them the typicals.

I wish there was a recognition that our autistic language is different than the typicals.

So much in language that's incompatable

@GreenRoc @punishmenthurts One of the basics of communication is the Cooperative Principle, which says that parties trying to communicate have to both cooperate to make it happen, which includes making allowances and adjustments for how the other party communicates. Most people understand that intuitively, and get upset when the other party is uncooperative. I wonder if some of the difficulty is that we use different non-verbal signaling than allistics do, so we each appear to the other as not cooperating because we don't see them using the right non-verbal signals. Then each side thinks the other is being uncooperative, and things break down. Hmmm, gotta think about this one some more.

@joshsusser @GreenRoc @punishmenthurts

We communicate differently from them, both in words, and also in non-verbal stuff, body language, and so on. We do it *all* a little differently.

Autists communicate well with other autists; allistics communicate well with other allistics. But when we cross neurotypes is when the confusion begins.

@PatternChaser @joshsusser @punishmenthurts A Communication breakdown between both neurotypes, yep yep.

I get along great with most other autistics. No hidden messages!