To avoid embodying this trope, Autistic people fold ourselves into all kinds of accommodating shapes. We do what we can to not seem difficult, cruel, or self-absorbed. We internalize the message that talking about ourselves and our interests bores other people, that we’re socially inept and bad at reading emotions, and that our sensory needs make us big babies who never stop complaining. For fear of becoming a Sherlock, we morph ourselves into Watsons: agreeable, docile, passive to a fault, always assuming that the larger personalities around us know what’s best.
