Untypical: How the world isn’t built for autistic people and what we should all do about it
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6%
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people go through life accidentally ignoring, belittling, mocking and hurting actually autistic individuals whose lives and brain architecture can’t be summarised in a thirty-second video online or a mediocre character arc in a sitcom.
Yasmin Stampe
This !! The oversimplification of what it means to be autistic is a huge reason why existing as an autistic person is so challenging. Whilst online videos did help me to feel "seen" and begin to understand myself pre-diagnosis, I also fear that people see a couple of videos and feel that they're either an expert, or come out with the classic line "we're all a bit autistic!".
7%
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Overall, I managed to survive quite well, really. I mean, it was extremely tiring, and I think I knew something, somewhere, was very wrong, but I passed through without anybody speculating that I was different, least of all myself.
Yasmin Stampe
Masking can be incredibly convincing, but I always had this "knowing" deep down.
15%
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Making eye contact beyond very fleeting micro-moments of direct pupil-to-pupil alignment is something we’d rather do only with those whom we’re comfortable to fart in the presence of.
16%
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Imagine if every time someone touched you it hurt, or if every light appeared dazzling and harsh, or if every sound came as a terrifying loud shock: that’s how being autistic can feel, much of the time.
18%
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masking is a very tiring thing, and we autistic people feel, for the most part, that we’re forced into it by a society who cannot accept us for who we are. It’s impossible to sustain forever, however, so there has to come a point where we drop the mask. And what inevitably happens when we do this? The answer is as predictable as it is depressing: we’re immediately reminded why we put it on in the first place.
Yasmin Stampe
The struggle of learning to unmask whilst knowing that the world would rather you didn’t.
19%
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For many years I’d no idea what they were, nor what caused them – I assumed they were simply tantrums, and that I had a bad temper or was particularly childish (it’s amazing how cruel a person can be to themselves when trying to explain behaviour caused by a disability they don’t know they have).
Yasmin Stampe
I feel so sad for my younger self thinking I was just “reactive”. So much self hate where self compassion should have been.
20%
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I’m old enough, and got diagnosed late enough, to have internalised whole heaps of ableism, and I therefore struggle to see my meltdowns as anything other than big adult tantrums.