amanda

“our difficulty interpreting social cues as maliciousness, our sensory sensitivities as pickiness, or our difficulty with eye contact as disrespect, they are likely to mistreat us—especially if our explanations are then treated as evidence that we can’t be trusted to report accurately on our own experiences.”
― Autistic Self Advocacy Network, Knowing Why: Adult-Diagnosed Autistic People on Life and Autism

“Many autistic people have differences in sensory perception. Noises, sounds, textures, or other sensory input unremarkable to others can be painful or aversive to us.”
― Autistic Self Advocacy Network, Knowing Why: Adult-Diagnosed Autistic People on Life and Autism

“People often wonder what the point is of identifying oneself as autistic in adulthood. The way they see it is, you’ve made it this far, what difference does it make now? What they don’t understand is how autistic people like me have only made it that far by clawing our way there, by struggling in silence, by turning ourselves inside out, and we can’t do it anymore.”
― Autistic Self Advocacy Network, Knowing Why: Adult-Diagnosed Autistic People on Life and Autism

“I’ve been surprised at how many autistic people I’ve chatted with who have had similar experiences with meditation, and I wonder if this is because of the way the autistic mind experiences the sensory world. Perhaps for us, to focus our attention on the present moment means that we let in a rush of unfiltered sensory information that is simply too much to endure...”
― Autistic Self Advocacy Network, Knowing Why: Adult-Diagnosed Autistic People on Life and Autism