So tired of lateral ableism coming from autistics and ADHDers who have symptoms that aren’t severely debilitating. Like just because you don’t need meds or accommodations to function or you can conform well/adapt to NT society to a certain point doesn’t mean other autistics or ADHDers will also be able to?
This post brought to you by a group of people getting frustrated at us for being unable to keep up with a game, us saying “sorry I didn’t take my meds today” and them ALL glaring at me and scoffing about how well they haven’t been on ADHD meds for years. Every single person in the room (there were more than 2 other people). Like ok, good for you, I NEED them to function?? (and even then, I still can’t “pass” as NT.)
We feel so out of place even around other people who are also autistic and/or ADHD. Because so often the other(s) will show just enough traits to seem a bit quirky/odd to NTs, but not get read as visibly ND (except maybe under unusual circumstances, but generally speaking, they can mask effectively enough that NTs wouldn’t perceive them as “having something wrong with them”) but we’re noticeably “slow/r-worded” in a way we’re frequently, under normal, non-extreme circumstances, unable to hide. We’ve heard so many things about how other autistics and ADHDers found other neurodivergent folks and finally felt safe and comfortable after a lifetime of being judged in NT-dominated social circles, and we wish we could relate to that, but honestly we don’t feel any safer with someone just because they’re also autistic/ADHD, because in our experience they’re just as likely to be ableist to us as NTs. Sometimes even worse, because at least NTs can’t say “well *I* can handle (insert task) and I’m autistic/ADHD too so what’s YOUR excuse?”
But yeah. Some of y’all hate to acknowledge that autistics and ADHDers with higher support needs than you exist and you’re quick to throw the rest of us under the bus just because you’re so desperate to make autism and/or ADHD seem more palatable to NTs. Moderate-higher support needs neurodivergents shouldn’t have to beg lower support needs neurodivergents to have solidarity with us.
I need non autistic people to realise meltdowns are a real debilitating thing that has a serious effect on your mental and physical health NOWWWWW!!! The way its been trivialized and lessened pisses me the fuck off. It's not a tantrum and it doesn't come from "being too weak-willed" it's painful and it's embarrassing AND MOST OF ALL IT'S INVOLUNTARY!! Don't claim to be an ally to autistic or disabled people and then make fun of people who have meltdowns. Literally get the hell out of my sight
ok so you support the disabled, disordered, and mentally ill. but are you normal when someone takes long to respond to you? or if they have a hard time listening to you? when someone has a hard time giving you their attention? or when their manners aren’t perfect? or when someone makes mistakes that may be obvious or simple to you? or when someone talks loudly or “causes a scene?” are you normal when people have to think really hard to explain things? or when they have a hard time putting their thoughts into words?
are you normal when people’s hair is unkempt or oily or visibly unbrushed? or when their face might be full of acne? or when they don’t have deodorant on for one reason or another? how about if their clothes are dirty?
are you normal about disabled/disordered/mentally ill people when they make you a little uncomfortable?
As a medium/lower support needs autistic who works with young higher support needs autistic:
We all matter. We all have the same diagnosis. We all deserve to be treated with dignity and respect.
But we are not the same.
I can mask and might be seen as 'odd' or 'weird' in public. The students I work with are seen as 'dangerous' and 'practically little kids'.
I can go to university and work with accommodations. The students I work with likely will never live independently and a few might find jobs that support them but still pay them less than an abled worker.
I have full control of my finances. The students I work with aren't allowed to make independent financial decisions, even if capable.
If I say 'no,' I'm making a choice. The students I work with can't say 'no' without being labeled as defiant and difficult.
I can feed myself, bathe myself, and take care of myself with extreme challenges. The students I work with are unable to take care of themselves without high levels of support/one on one support.
I had an IEP in high school but was mainstreamed in classes. The students I work with take separate classes and some rarely get to interact with their abled peers.
Our experiences are fundamentally different. Higher support needs autistics will experience a specific type of ableism I never will, and can never fully understand.
Lower support needs autistics need to stop saying we understand what higher support needs autistics are going through and then present autism as only being disabling because of society/lack of acceptance because that is dangerous. We need to stop saying every autistic person is capable of everything if given the right support because that leaves out huge parts of our community who will never be able to do certain things, regardless of support.
We are worthy of existence regardless of our abilities.
Autism is a spectrum. It is not the same for every autistic person. Autism acceptance and advocacy has to come with accepting, acknowledging, and listening to our higher support needs peers.
sometimes i feel like people forget autism is a disability. and that’s not a bad thing! i’m all for disability acceptance, im proud of my disabilities. but i feel like we forget autism can hurt.
it hurts that i have to put more time and energy into socializing than others.
it hurts when i need to move so bad, usually cause im overwhelmed by either my surroundings or emotions, that i thrash and hurt myself.
it hurts that i cant be in places that are too loud or too bright, which on bad days can be as simple as a small, quiet noise or dim lights.
it hurts that i struggle to tell when im hungry, thirsty, tired, etc. so i can’t properly take care of myself. it doesn’t help my insomnia and i get very nauseas and get UTIs.
i 100% believe in autism acceptance. i don’t want a cure. but i also want us the acknowledge that it can hurt. it doesn’t mean my entire life will hurt, but some parts will. and i want a community where we can see both sides, see the hurt, and celebrate it anyway.
Today my therapist introduced me to a concept surrounding disability that she called "hLep".
Which is when you - in this case, you are a disabled person - ask someone for help ("I can't drink almond milk so can you get me some whole milk?", or "Please call Donna and ask her to pick up the car for me."), and they say yes, and then they do something that is not what you asked for but is what they think you should have asked for ("I know you said you wanted whole, but I got you skim milk because it's better for you!", "I didn't want to ruin Donna's day by asking her that, so I spent your money on an expensive towing service!") And then if you get annoyed at them for ignoring what you actually asked for - and often it has already happened repeatedly - they get angry because they "were just helping you! You should be grateful!!"
And my therapist pointed out that this is not "help", it's "hLep".
Sure, it looks like help; it kind of sounds like help too; and if it was adjusted just a little bit, it could be help. But it's not help. It's hLep.
At its best, it is patronizing and makes a person feel unvalued and un-listened-to. Always, it reinforces the false idea that disabled people can't be trusted with our own care. And at its worst, it results in disabled people losing our freedom and control over our lives, and also being unable to actually access what we need to survive.
So please, when a disabled person asks you for help on something, don't be a hLeper, be a helper! In other words: they know better than you what they need, and the best way you can honor the trust they've put in you is to believe that!
Also, I want to be very clear that the "getting angry at a disabled person's attempts to point out harmful behavior" part of this makes the whole thing WAY worse. Like it'd be one thing if my roommate bought me some passive-aggressive skim milk, but then they heard what I had to say, and they apologized and did better in the future - our relationship could bounce back from that. But it is very much another thing to have a crying shouting match with someone who is furious at you for saying something they did was ableist. Like, Christ, Jessica, remind me to never ask for your support ever again! You make me feel like if I asked you to call 911, you'd order a pizza because you know I'll feel better once I eat something!!
Edit: crediting my therapist by name with her permission - this term was coined by Nahime Aguirre Mtanous!
Edit again: I made an optional follow-up to this post after seeing the responses. Might help somebody. CW for me frankly talking about how dangerous hLep really is.
you have to go to work so you can pay for your doctor, who is not taking your insurance right now, and if you say i can't afford the doctor's you are told - get a better job. it is very sad that you are unwell, yes, but maybe you should have thought about that before not having a better job.
(where is the better job? who is giving out these better jobs? you are sick, you are hurting - how the hell are you supposed to be well enough for this better job?)
but you go to the doctor because you had the nerve to be hurt or sick or whatever else. and they tell you that it is because you have anxiety. you try your best. you are a self-advocate. you've done the reading (which sometimes pisses them off worse, honestly). you say it is actually adding to my anxiety, it is effecting my quality of life. so they say that you are fat. they say that all young people have this happen to them, isn't it a medical marvel! they say that you should eat more vegetables. they say that you probably just need to lose a little more weight, and that you are faking it for attention.
(what attention could this doctor possibly give? what validation? that's their fucking job, isn't it?)
there is always a hypochondriac, right. someone always tells you about a hypochondriac. or someone who is unnecessarily aggressive during the worst days of their life. or someone looking "for a quick fix". or some idiot who wasn't educated about how to properly care for themselves who just abandons their treatment. and again, the hypochondriac, the overly-cautious hysteric. these people don't deserve to be treated like humans (right), and since you might be one of these people, you also don't get treated like a human. because those people can really fuck with the system, you now have to pay for it. and besides. you're actually probably faking it.
(more often than not, you find a 2:1 ratio of these stories. for every "hypochondriac", there are 2 people who knew something was wrong, and yet nobody could fucking find it. the story often ends with pointless suffering. the story often ends with and now it's too late, and it's going to kill me.)
you are actually just making excuses. someone else got that procedure or that diagnosis and he's fine, you should be fine too. someone else said they watched a documentary about other inspirational people with your exact same condition, maybe you should be inspirational, too. you're just too morbid. your pain and your experience is probably just not statistically concerning. it is all self-reported anyway, and you're just being a baby.
(once, while sitting down in the middle of making coffee, you had the sudden, horrible thought - i could kill myself to make the pain stop. you had to call your best friend after that. had to pet your dog. had to cry about it in the shower. you won't, but that moment - god, fuck. the pain just goes on and on.)
you know someone who went in for routine surgery and said i still feel everything. they told her to just relax. it took her kicking and screaming before they figured out she wasn't lying - the anesthetic drip hadn't been working. you know someone who went in for severe migraines who was told drink water and lose weight. you know someone who was actively bleeding out and throwing up in the ER and was told you're just having a bad period.
in the ER there are always these little posters saying things like "don't wait! get checked today!" and you think about how often you do wait. how often the days spool out. you once waited a full week before seeing the doctor for what you thought was a sprained wrist. it had actually been broken - they had to rebreak it to set it.
but you go into the doctor. the problem you're having is immediate. the person behind the counter frowns and says we're not taking your insurance. you will be paying for this out-of-pocket.
they send you home with tylenol and a little health packet about weight loss or anxiety or attention deficit. on the front it has your birthday and diagnosis. you think about crying, and the words swim. it might as well say go fuck yourself. it might as well say you're a fucking idiot. it might as well say light your money on fire and lie down in it. and the entire fucking time - the problem persists.
it's okay. it's okay, it's just another thing, you think. it's just another thing i have to learn to live with.
This autism month please remember those of us who:
need verbal prompting (someone telling us each single, small step to a task) or hands on help for things like showering, getting dressed, cooking simple meals, using a toilet ....
who struggle to go outside alone or cant do it all, not out of fear or no motivation or anything but because we keep getting lost and cant find our way back, because the outside world is like a blurry maze that never becomes more logical no matter how many times we have walked that street, because we need help with mobility aids, or can not understand that cars are dangerous, other people can be dangerous, ...
whose bodies dont listen to what our brains tell it to do. Whose bodies throw things when we didnt tell it to, told it to stop. Who hit our head against the walls while wishing we could stop. Whose bodies freeze when we tell it to move. Not just for a task we are unable to start, but any movement at all. I dont mean when i'm stuck scrolling through my phone thinking about how much i should do that task but cant, I mean when im sitting on the kitchen floor and staring into space for an hour unable to even lift my hand to scratch my nose.
Those of us that will never work a job outside of sheltered workshops, if at all.
Who drool and scream and jump and hum and rock in the waiting room at the doctors office, on public transport, ...
I honestly can't think of where some of y'all are getting this idea from, that people faking being disabled is a huge problem. In my close to 37 years of life now I've yet to run into a single case of an actual person faking a disability.
I can come up with at least a dozen reasons off the top of my head at any given moment for why disabled people are so often not believed, and disability fakers ain't one of them.
i think a lot of people miss out on this but spending time with diverse groups of disabled people makes you realize that people's needs will constantly contradict each other. if one person stims, tics, speaks, breathes, etc. loudly, then there will be at least one other person who can’t stand the sound of it. they need to be able to leave if they need it. the loud person cannot be forced to stop being loud but the one who is sensitive to loudness cannot be forced to tolerate something they can’t either. maybe there’s a person who needs aromatherapy to cope with or reduce problems that their disability causes them. but there may also be a person who gets seizures or migraines from strong scents. you cannot deny that coping skill but you cannot let it trigger someone either. someone who struggles to sit might need a standing desk, someone who needs to sit will need a chair, some people might need alternative seating or flexible seating, and all of those options need to be available. one standing desk in the corner isn’t going to cut it most of the time and people need to be able to accept that and do better.
i could give endless examples of times when people's needs will contradict each other. most of which i’ve seen happen in real life spaces. physical, processing, communicating, everything can be contradictory to someone else's need. everything. a truly accessible space will try to accommodate to all those who exist within it.
good morning!!! this is a PSA that yes, ambulatory mobility aid users exist!! no, they are not faking their disability because you saw their leg move and no that doesn't give you the right to then harass them over it. and actually, you never have the right to comment on someone else's disability. leave off, it's nothing to do with you!
it’s okay if getting better is taking longer than you hoped to. if getting better doesn’t mean getting cured. if somedays are better than others. if others seem to heal faster. if it’s exhausting. if your illness is chronic and progressive. it doesn’t mean people won’t love you as you are, it doesn’t mean you don’t deserve help, it doesn’t mean that you can’t ever be happy. you still deserve care, love and kindness when you’re suffering, and i hope you find it within yourself to feel compassion towards your own body, even if some people might not, even if it doesn’t work in the way you wished it would, even if it’s different.
Shout out to fat people with chronic pain. Use that mobility aid, get yourself a tasty treat, and don't give a fuck what anyone else thinks. Your body deserves love and care no matter what!