The Stupid Child Who is Always in the Wrong
I have spent the past year or so approaching various ‘others’ with a view to re-organising my life, moving home, changing my job (basically, giving up one and not finding another), seeking help and advice with regard to employment and finances. ‘Armed’ with a diagnosis, the AS Report and its recommendations and ‘reasonable adjustments,’ I have felt confident that in telling people I am autistic I would receive the understanding and help I need.
Not a bit of it! Forget it!
You may as well stay silent and carry on struggling against impossible odds until you finally sink!
People in the main haven’t got a clue what autism means, other than the autistic person is a bit ‘funny’ in an odd and incomprehensible way. They tend to take your revelation as something of a confession of oddity and eccentricity on your part, which involves no expectations of accommodation or changed behaviour on their part. Like the old Proverb says, "The most beautiful girl in the world can only give what she has." And, trust me, most people you deal with are much less than pretty. They are what they are, which is pretty uncomprehending. Which is what I was too, two years ago, when my doctor suggested the possibility of AS to me. I told her that I didn’t really know what that was and she advised me to go away, study the information she provided, and report back in two weeks. I did that because I had a direct interest. Most people, beautiful or otherwise, don’t have the time, the interest, and the inclination.
So this is what happens:
In search of help, patience, and understanding, you tell others that you are autistic.
In response, they express sympathy.
Does it help?
No.
Because the expression of sympathy is a ‘normal’ and expected response, something that is expected of people in typical social situations. Sympathy is neither empathy nor understanding and neither involves nor requires approriate changes in behaviour on the part of others.
And sympathy isn’t always forthcoming in any case. Sometimes it is not even feigned. Your revelation is treated as an admission of cluelessness and backwardness on your part. It makes people edgy and nervous, as if not knowing how to speak to a ‘special needs’ person who is slow and hard of understanding.
By telling people that you are autistic, you are seeking their help, patience, and understanding. Instead, many people take it as an admission of backwardness on your part; they treat you as a stupid child who is always in the wrong. On at least two occasions I have had this this past six months I have been proven to be right, the errors were with the people treating me as stupid. One at least had the good manners to apologise. I hope they may have learned something from the episode. The other …? People who are employed by companies deliver all that the job requires and nothing more. I doubt they have given the issue a moment’s thought beyond our exchanges. The ugliest functionaries in the world can give only what they have. Which isn’t much, beyond the pain, misery, and frustration they afflict on people who find the courage to open up to the world and seek the help they need.
It no longer gets me down. I have developed a hard casing that protects me against the opinions of others. And a confidence and a certainty – frankly an obstinacy – in my own judgments, having been proven right in face of incompetent and uncomprehending others time and again. Montaigne would famously say ‘what do I know?’ To this, I would add ‘what do they know?’
Have the confidence to trust your own instincts and judgements: you are often smarter than you may know (and others are invariably more stupid than they even suspect).
