#Autism
Sometimes useful, sometimes not
Sometimes you want to disclose – hey! I’m autistic – and have your problems/misunderstanding melt away
But you quickly find that the label is itself misunderstood, or unrecognized, and your journey to adequate support begins with awereness/education.
It makes self discovery a lot more of a survival tool – you must know more about yourself to be able to guide others on how to support you, knowing fully well that without this support, you’re a train with no breaks at full speed, heading for a broken patch of track
When I first recognised that I might be autistic, I spent weeks in shock and disbelief, vehemently muttering under my breath that “I can’t be autistic”
If I was paying attention, I’d have recognised the real problem sooner – but I wasn’t
I eventually came to terms with it, navigated the worst of the identity crisis with the help of my friends (who are very amazing, by the way) and started to look at how to structure my life differently to help myself based on what I now knew about my brain wiring
And that’s where the issue got complicated
You see, in neurodivergent forums, all I had to say was “I’m autistic” and whatever I was saying or doing at the time would be regarded in its proper context and I could access relevant recommendations and workarounds etc.
But in the real world, the labels don’t work. They hurt
– Jane OLUWADARE
Leaning in to a label is subscribing to the other party’s biases and interpretation of that label, leaving yourself at the mercy of whatever education they might have had on the subject – a dangerous foray at best, and career suicide more often
You might be able to do some damage control by attempting to educate them, pushing awareness etc., but even that has several problems:
- it only works if they are empathetic/compassionate to begin with
- it is stressful work that only pushes you closer to burnout
- it makes you a lot more vulnerable to being gaslit and exploited
I sort of get the corporate guys who don’t disclose, not even for the sake of accommodations, and those who bend over backwards to do perfect work all the time to take advantage of capitalism’s obsession with only rewarding “deserving” workers
So yes – labels work
They just don’t typically work in the way that you think they should 🙃