I feel like the saying that autism is a difference and a disability applies here. Some autistic people are more affected by differences being mistaken for disabilities, and feel disability language undercuts them. Some autistic people are more affected by disabilities being mistaken for differences and feel difference language undercuts them. My thought is that both sides need to acknowledge both sides.
I’m au-dhd, and the person in the middle paragraph sounds like they both have one of my ADHD symptoms and are also a jerk. I try to remember that only my ADHD friends like to play interrupting tag, and while I’m bound to screw up elsewhere, I try to treat it clearly like I’m screwing up because it is an understandable default to let people finish their sentences.
deleted by creator
This may be unrelated to you, and only a me thing, but I had a couple of people in my lifetime that were great to me usually but would also tell me sometimes that other people were talking about x or y, or that I did something wrong and everyone was just being polite in a particular situation. So I began to rely on those people’s impressions of other people’s impressions of me to dictate my behavior. It took me years after those people were out of my life (it is exhausting to be someone’s conduit to humanity), where I was hyper-vigilant in every social situation wondering who is judging me, as those people had assured me they were but I could never tell, that it really just wasn’t happening… This lifetime insanity of thinking everyone wanted to shame me had to do more with the insecurity of a few people. And yea sometimes people did overtly point things out that they just thought was weird or “wrong” and that factored into the shame as well, but these people are also isolated voices and not part of a chorus, and I think the well-meaning ones did more damage. Just shooting my own stuff into the dark in case it sticks.
deleted by creator
When I reach level 2 I feel like I’ve ascended, but I often get stuck on 1.