“Autism is a spectrum” doesn’t mean what you think (2019)
I was diagnosed over a year ago and have yet to &quot;come out&quot; for fear of the exact things the author describes (&quot;but you don&#x27;t seem autistic&quot;, &quot;yeah we&#x27;re all a little like that&quot;, etc.). It&#x27;s hard to understand what someone struggles with when they&#x27;ve spent their whole lives being trained to hide it.<p>Imagine having tremendous back pain since birth, so that multiple times a day you need to lie down for an hour. You tell people about it and they just say &quot;you don&#x27;t look like you&#x27;re in pain&quot;, or &quot;yeah everyone has back pain&quot;, and they imagine you weak for being so affected by it. As a child you were raised that it&#x27;s taboo to manage your back pain, so you often have to make up excuses to go secretly lie down.<p>You even believe yourself that you are just a failure for needing to do this when everyone else can soldier on. You have to turn down hikes, trips, even relationships; if a friend invites you over you need to make sure there&#x27;s an exit strategy, or at least a place you can secretly take a break if you have a spike.<p>This is what my life is like. I have been trained to look like I&#x27;m not in pain -- to hide my shutdowns and meltdowns and hypersensitivities, through willpower or through physically removing myself. It affects my work, my relationships, and my daily life, but the worst part is just the pain itself.