An Autistic trauma mood is that when I have a disagreement with someone and I'm pretty sure I'm not wrong

1. I'm convinced I missed some weird neurotypical social code

2. Trauma brain hits "is this gaslighting?!" and dumps a bunch of panic neurochemicals in my system

3. The panic neurochemicals make it harder to figure out if I did miss some neurotypical social code

4. I /also/ have trauma from a lot of...getting in trouble for being a smartass or whatever when I was honest just confused? So time for more panic neurochemicals why not

5. I would like to distract myself until the panic juice wears off and I can actually think in complete thoughts, but...

6. This disagreement is now All I Can Think About

7. Now I am probably in a panic spiral about whether I actually said what I was intending to convey or if there's some hidden meaning I don't know, so I am frantically looking up phrases on like Urban Dictionary or polling my friends and asking them what it means if I say X

8. Eventually the panic juice subsides enough that I remember that it helps if I get an outside perspective, so now I'm trying to figure out which of my friends might be available and sending them texts like "hey do u have the bandwidth to talk about this conflict I had?"

9. But also I am retyping my texts to friends about 80 times, because all the Discourse about social scripts for setting boundaries with friends plus the panic juice plus the initial conflict has made me worried I don't know how words work

10. Basically 99.9% of the time, whoever I eventually text with is like "obviously you were not wrong, this other person is a jerk"

11. I still ask at least one other person because what if my friend was just saying that to be nice??

12. Now there's a feeling of relief that it's settled, and either I know why I was wrong orrr I know that I was correct this whole time and I did not secretly miss some hidden neurotypical social code

13. Now I have to decide how to deal with the person who I had the initial conflict with, and usually I will either make a mental note that we might have this kind of disagreement, or quietly distance myself if this kind of conflict is part of a pattern...

...after all this energy, I usually don't have energy/words to actually discuss the conflict. If I do make the effort, it's usually either because I really value the friendship or the initial conflict involved something that I feel is really important to address

Also to be clear, this is for situations when I am pretty sure I'm not wrong

Generally if it's something like "someone from a marginalized group that I'm not a part of tells me that I messed up", I assume they are correct and I just need to do research so I understand why

I really appreciate people who post tweets that are like "how to actually apologize without being a jerk" and "what to do if you get called out"

Because it makes this process much much easier than it used to be

I don't really have a point in sharing this, other than I've been thinking about it awhile and this tweet made me think about it https://twitter.com/SNeurotypicals/status/1250661240633831425?s=19

Also with time and experience and realizing I'm Autistic and having words for "the feeling that there's a hidden set of rules that everyone understands but me", /most/ of the time I can jump more directly from "panic spiral" to "recognizing it" to "texting a friend"

[Abuse]

Unfortunately, a relatively recent relationship involved A Lot of Gaslighting and I'm still working on the new batch o trauma, so my brain is really generous with the panic juice

[Abuse]

This is also why it really annoys me when AITA commentors are like "oh this [clearly abusive] person must be Autistic"

Like

Do you realize how much energy I spend scrutinizing whether I accidentally was a total jerk so I can avoid it in the future or

Also if the conflict is happening in real time, usually the person is trying to talk to me while my brain is full of panic juice

So I'm basically nonverbal and processing none of what they say, and the words that come out of my mouth are...not representative of my feelings

So it has been *incredibly* good to know I'm Autistic and have longer processing times/trouble with words

Because then I can ask for time to process what's happening, and then actually be able to figure out what I feel and how to express that with words

Instead of what happens when I'm approaching overload, which is "say whatever might get the conversation to stop, like I'm mashing the X button in a video game when I accidentally engaged in dialogue and the character won't stop talking, except now I'm on a quest somehow?"

Anyway, to my old psychiatrist who was like "why do you want to be diagnosed with Autism? It's not like I would do anything different with your meds"

This *gestures at thread* is why it's important I can actually name my experiences, cope better, and stop feeling like I'm broken

Also if you read this and it seemed really familiar but no one ever mentioned Autism to you

Maybe check out this thread (which is not diagnostic, but is good information for deciding whether this is indeed a thing you might want to learn more about) https://twitter.com/steve_asbell/status/1232060938301431809?s=19