The Worst Kind Of People For Autistics To Deal With

They’re just awful, and I’m going to explain why

Navigating the world as an autistic can be challenging. Indeed at its worst, it can be a terrible ordeal.

Systems and institutions feel like they’ve been purposely designed to make ours far more difficult than they should be and drive us up the wall.

Let’s face it. As a group, most people are indifferent to us. They just don’t care.

This indifference pushes us to the margins of society. It ensures that we are not included in what goes on in the way we might like to be. It effectively turns us into a group of social exiles.

This obviously isn’t great.

But the indifferent are not the worst people for us to deal with.

Some people are openly hostile to us.

They will try to bully. They will hurl jibes. They will mock our autistic traits among themselves and to our faces. Sometimes they will even throw punches.

Again, this isn’t great.

But as bad as this can be at times, these hostiles still aren’t the worst kind of people for autistics to deal with.

With both these aforementioned types of people, at least we know where we stand with them to some degree.

In that at last we have a modicum of certainty in which to anchor ourselves amid the unremitting chaos that is society.

And in an odd kind of way, both have their merits.

The indifferent, for example, mostly leaves us alone to do our own thing.

They don’t harass us. They don’t go out of their way to bug us. They don’t try to force us to do things that we don’t want us. They don’t try to impose things that will send our neuro-wiring haywire.

They don’t care enough about us either way to do that.

And funnily enough, even the openly hostile have their merits.

Hostility that is in the open may not be particularly pleasant or fun to deal with. But you do know what you’re dealing with. You can’t help but notice it. It’s right there in front of you gesticulating and saying horrible things.

Dealing with a problem, even an unpleasant one, is much easier to do when you actually know what it is.

So, who are the worst people for autistics to deal with?

Well, let me tell you.

In my experience, they are the people who think they understand autism properly but quite evidently do not.

Outwardly the may appear to be helpful, they may appear to be allies, but in reality, they are nothing of the sort.

Perhaps they will have read up a little bit on autism, and perhaps they will even know a few people who are on the spectrum.

But they will mistake their understanding a little with understanding the bloody lot.

They will assume that other autistic people are exactly like the one other autistic person they know.

In essence, what they will do is make lazy and ill-thought-out generalisations.

All sorts of nauseating nonsense will be extrapolated from what is an infinitesimally small data set.

Their unearned confidence in their own opinions will lead them to believe that they understand the lived experience of an autistic person better than they do.

This means that they will casually disregard what individual autistic people say about what the world is like for them.

The biggest issue with them is the way that they treat autistic on the basis of their own misconceptions.

The way in which they treat autistic people is maddeningly patronising, which is annoying enough in itself.

But they go further than that.

Instead of asking autistic people what they need, they will loftily decide and then attempt to impose it.

These types usually say they are actively listening to autistic people. They make a point of nodding along when we speak and making the right kind of noises.

But then when it comes down to it and when word is meant to turn into deed, they will totally ignore what the autistic person has said and contravene their wishes entirely.

Of course, if the autistic person objects, resists or otherwise points out this major discrepancy, then they are branded as an awkward and ungrateful troublemaker.

They are told that they don’t understand, that they are lacking in capability and that they are the ones with the issue.

In this kind of situation, autistic people will essentially be gaslit. They will be told how lovely, warm, helpful, friendly and inclusive everyone is and how grateful they should be.

The fact that these claims are contradicted by the real lived experience of the autistic person is considered immaterial.

The upshot is that these types can have a much larger negative impact on the mental health of autistic than the indifferent and the outwardly hostile.

Dealing with them is tricky and difficult. The very nature of the way these people behave creates unsettling uncertainty that is utterly corrosive.

True allies are a wonderful thing for autistic people. They are to be cherished.

But fake friends are far worse than foes who operate on open ground.