New Vocabulary

Some introduction / what is neurodiversity?

I am autistic, which means that I do not operate on the same mental and emotional wavelengths as most people.  My brain is literally wired differently, so I naturally think and act differently.  This has made my life difficult, and continues to do so, because most people expect others to think and act the way they themselves think and act.

This seems absurd, perhaps, to the casual reader.  After all, we have many differences, backgrounds, religions, cultural heritages, economic levels, etc.  And that\’s true, humans are a varied species.  But I\’ll also tell you that, at least in the United States, there are certain expectations that are shared across pretty much all those categories.

For instance, you look at someone when they\’re talking to you, but you don\’t stare, so you glance away every now and then.  The percentage is about 85% eye contact, 15% glancing down or to the side or at whatever you\’re talking about.  I know this percentage because I do not automatically want to look at a person when I\’m talking to them.  Looking a person in the eye is uncomfortable, to the point where it can feel like getting hit in the head by a baseball bat.  Yet I am still expected to take that baseball bat to the head every time someone talks to me.  That\’s the rule, and it\’s one that everyone takes for granted: when someone\’s talking to you, you make eye contact without staring.

People on the autism spectrum, and people with other brain differences, are called neurodiverse, or neurodivergent.  The movement for acceptance of people like me is called neurodiversity.  In essence, it\’s basically calling for a \”live and let live\” mentality when it comes to people whose brains, and thus thoughts and actions, don\’t entirely match your own. 

A metaphor / the social contract

This movement is kind of like saying that people with iPhones and people with Android phones can live and work together, if we just put in the effort to accept each other.  We may not entirely \”get\” each other all the time, or even be able to do all of the same things on our phones, but our phones are still phones.  Apple\’s App Store has far fewer apps than the Google Play app store, but they tend to be less buggy and better put together.  However, Apple\’s iPhone won\’t let you play with most of its settings and really customize how the phone works, because Apple\’s motto of \”it just works\” doesn\’t work so well if everything isn\’t cookie-cutter.  Android, on the other hand, will let you stick your fingers into all the settings and customize practically everything, but if you break it, you\’re probably stuck trying to fix it yourself.  Some of the popular apps, like Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, etc, are for both types of phones, but sometimes an app is only for one phone or the other.  Without that app, the two phones don\’t have matching functionality, even if the other phone finds a similar app. 

Get the idea?  Now imagine the whole world is iPhones and you\’re an Android phone.  Depending on how much time, patience, resources, and effort you\’ve put in and others have put in, you may have some of the popular apps that others have.  People on the autism spectrum must often teach themselves or be taught social skills, and once those rules are learned, can then blend reasonably well into neurotypical (normal) society.

As an autistic person who focused very intently on learning social rules and expectations, and then literally studied psychology to learn them even better, I qualify as \”better blended.\”  Unless you know better or are a very astute observer, you would likely think me perfectly normal if you passed me in the store or had a 5 minute conversation with me.  Because I had supportive parents, enough observational skills, and presumably an aptitude of some kind, I learned through hard work what most people know intuitively.  Some autistic people learn these things via therapy, or books, or by lots and lots of experience.  But we don\’t automatically know most of it, because it\’s not innate for us.

When I\’m not at home alone, I spend most of my time \”acting neurotypical.\”  Because neurotypical people tend to expect certain things, like eye contact, I have to make a lot of efforts to make sure I provide those things.  If I don\’t, I tend to get labeled \”rude\” or \”weird\” and avoided or called out.  So I\’m constantly needing to keep details like eye contact, facial expressions, small talk, and rules of politeness in mind when I go out.  If this sounds exhausting, that\’s because it absolutely is. 

Essentially, I have a bargain with the world at large: I act the way your arbitrary social rules expect me to, and you treat me like a human being.  I like being treated like a human being, and unfortunately this is, thus far, the only (mostly) predictable method I have of being treated like a human being.

But sometimes, I slip up in my \”neurotypical act\” or am exhausted and can\’t hold that act together, or I think it\’s safe to be a little more myself, and it bites me in the butt.

Then someone ticked me off, again

Therefore, meet the words…