30 Days of Autism Acceptance: Day 4

Talk about your family and support. Who in your life has helped you? Have medical and mental health providers served your needs? Do you feel like your family is supportive of you being autistic?

Generally my family is pretty supportive. They accepted my diagnosis very well and none of them have claimed that I can’t be autistic. They respect that I don’t really like people, or going out, or large groups and they usually let me skip out completely on busy-ish events (weddings, graduations, dinners with extended family). For events hosted at the house, they encourage me to make an appearance, even if only for 15 minutes or so, and then they’re fine with me hiding out in my room. Usually they’re cool with my stimming unless I’m making a lot of noise. The exception is my constant rocking which my mom says ‘drives her up the wall.’

Sometimes my parents get irritated with me about things that I really can’t help. I’m often berated about how I take things too literally or nitpick their use of language. And my mom frequently says things like ‘think!’ or ‘use your brain’ when I ask questions about things they think should be obvious. With me you have to be specific and they still don’t seem to understand that I need specific instructions. Vague statements like ‘the garbage is full’ don’t register with me as a task needing to be done. This is a very common interacton:
Mom: The garbage is full
Me: okay
Mom later: why haven’t you taken out the garbage like I asked?
Me: *confusion ??? Because you never asked me to.
I can’t tell you how long it took me to grasp that this was an instruction and not just an observation. Still, if I’m not really focusing on what they’re saying I’ll miss the hints about things.

Obviously, by the fact that I wasn’t diagnosed until I pushed for it at 22, there has been some oversight by the plethora of doctors and therapists I’ve seen been seeing since I was three. I attribute this partly due to me being AFAB and the reluctance of doctors to diagnosis autism in girls. However, other than my lack of diagnosis my therapists and doctors have been remarkably competent and helpful. I’ll talk more about my therapists/therapy on the 16th and perhaps 21st.