Yeah, that whole psychology article reads like something from the old days honestly. The language and just how demeaning it is sounds like the shit I read from when they used to say autism was “child psychopathy” and stuff like that.

This whole “appear to be articulate, thoughtful…” crap is just straight up ableism right? It’s missing the entire point, which is not that autistic people are pretending to be positive characteristics but may be abusive behind closed doors. The point that seems obvious here is that the NT and their friends don’t understand masking and fluctuating capacity. The point is that the general public still need a lot more education around autism… but instead they’re just like nah let’s just turn autistic people into the abusers, that’s easier. 🤷‍♀️

Yep, pattern recognition can be fun at times but the other side of it is actually really hard when it’s important stuff with big and harmful consequences.

Personally, I find my pattern recognition on a lot of things is put down to anxiety, trauma response etc. Sure, maybe that does affect it but that shouldn’t be an automatic dismissal/trivialisation. Discussions are good to have and when someone goes with “that’s your anxiety talking” it doesn’t encourage discussion, it shuts it down. Explore the thread of thought and the pattern collaboratively. Even if you don’t agree all the time, I think even just talking respectfully without those instant shutdowns through trivialisation, is a more productive way to go.

As soon as people give themselves permission to dismiss something that another person said just because “anxiety/trauma/autism/any other characteristic” we lose a LOT of voices - which sadly, is the exact society we do live in. Where it’s too easy to find reasons to not even engage and just erase certain people from important discussions.