What LOOKS like ‘stubbornness’ in an autistic is really ‘an innate need to understand the request and its reason’ before unnecessarily expending precious mental resources, wasting time and possibly subjecting ourselves to emotional and sensory overload.

What LOOKS like ‘black-and-white thinking’ in an autistic is really ‘needing cold, hard facts so that we can form our own conclusions and a mental framework to make sense of it all’.

Changing variables (place, context, rules) without warning tears the framework (and us) down.

What LOOKS like ‘unusual and restrictive interests’ is really ‘following our passions regardless of their supposed normalcy, and a relentless drive to figure out how they work from the bottom up’.

If our interests are deemed useful and socially acceptable, they go unnoticed.

What LOOKS like an ‘aloof disinterest in other people’ is really an inability to understand and please them.

So we either lose ourselves trying to meet their standards, or lose ourselves in an interest that brings us peace and order.

What LOOKS like ‘laziness’ is often a culmination of anxiety, overload, executive dysfunction and a lack of coping mechanisms and supports.

Our bodies might not be moving, but our thoughts are racing.

What LOOKS like lack of empathy is really a struggle to mentally put ourselves in the someone else’s POV, AKA cognitive empathy.

We often DO have affective empathy and can FEEL the intensity of others’ emotions, but not understand the reasons or emotions themselves.

What LOOKS like an ‘unusual interest in objects’ isn’t that unusual, really.

It’s really that we find comfort in things that we can understand as they are, without the exhausting mental calculus and expectations that come with social interactions.

What LOOKS like a ‘high functioning’ autistic is more likely the result of expending a tremendous amount of effort to please other people, at the expense of our own wellbeing.

During and after the resulting autistic burnout, an individual may need more supports

What LOOKS like ‘low functioning’ is when an autistic individual’s needs are harder to accommodate within typical society.

This is a failure on society’s part, not the autistic who needs room to move or could communicate better with alternate methods.

What autistics *look* like has little to do with the lived experience of those who are #ActuallyAutistic.

#AllAutistics are wonderful individuals who should be seen through a lens of compassion and respect, rather than by the standards of abled and productive society.

Treat autistics as individuals, not as a data point on a scale of supposed normalcy.

link to comic that has alt-text imbedded: https://twitter.com/steve_asbell/status/1223428157434449921?s=21

I know I need to make new Stimmy Kitty comics ASAP, but in the meantime, you can find them here: https://www.steveasbell.com/comics 

I hope they help!

https://twitter.com/steve_asbell/status/1187724913282564100?s=21 https://twitter.com/steve_asbell/status/1187724913282564100