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ASPartOfMe
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11 Oct 2025, 8:35 am

glider18 wrote:
The way I view it, "Everyone's a Little Autistic" could be seen as referencing the traits and characteristics of autism. To be diagnosed with autism, one needs to meet a certain criteria associated with the traits. But may neurotypicals may experience one or two of the traits, not meet the autism criteria, but still show similarities to those of us on the spectrum. It then might be said, "a little bit autistic." But of course, that's not accurate because to be autistic one needs to meet a certain number of those traits. Maybe a better way to say, "everyone's a little autistic" is to say, "Everyone (or most everyone) exhibits a trait(s) shared with those on the autism spectrum."

And vice versa, "Everyone's a little neurotypical" because a person on the autism spectrum might have trait(s) shared with the neurotypical population. Many on the spectrum enjoying socializing and don't feel that awkward about it.


^^^^
This

NT's are often not literal. When a person says "I'm feeling depressed because my team lost a big game" most understand that person does not have clinical depression.


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lostonearth35
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11 Oct 2025, 3:29 pm

If everyone's a little bit autistic, then why do *we* get treated like garbage for things like having special interests, or not making eye contact, or not wanting to go to crowded, noisy, boring places, or always ordering the same foods, or only wearing clothes that don't make us want to tear our own skin off, and on and on and on? :x



Huckleberry Finn
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11 Oct 2025, 7:48 pm

@glider18
True: many of us love socializing.
For me, it depends: because doing so takes away a lot of my energy.
So yours is an important concept: because it dispels the stereotype of "they're all the same." Or another stereotype, "they're all geniuses."
We're all different, if we evaluate this statement differently, if there are forums where everyone writes different things than the next autistic person, if a 14-year-old paints Van Goghs, if by accessing the Internet I find video comments or real-life initiatives of people I know, while I don't participate... and, and, and,
Thrice exceptional.
If, If, If, But, But, But...
§

The sentence about traits you wrote... there's actually a word for it.
I wrote it in another thread. It's called *Subclinicality*
§
You know, Glider18, a friend of mine, a CNR researcher with whom we exchanged many ideas and countless emails, once wrote me something: "You'll be surprised by what I'll write. Many neurotypicals exhibit very intense autistic traits." That is, without being subclinical, but they're only considered neurotypical.

That is, this sentence completely reverses the concept.
They, too, are actually a little autistic (the range is narrow, but it happens, I assure you).
§
There are people with whom I can't communicate at all: I call them "Hyper Neurotypicals."
Because they have such clear characteristics that they radically belong to that condition.
To communicate with them, you have to be perceived as their equal.
Perceived that way by them.
I've often had to deal with this type of person.
They don't do it to be mean, but they are like that; they have super rigid mental schemas.
While we autistics have them, for example, in our ways of thinking, or, as in my case, it's difficult for me to be convinced of something I don't believe, even if I'm ready to change my mind, but to succeed, I have to be effectively and logically demonstrated that a certain thing, fact, event... is not what you think it is.

The interesting thing is that not all of us, but most of us, albeit in our own unique ways, accept that others are different from them.

While for NTs, we are something wrong, affected by (affection = abnormal condition due to a pathogenic cause).

But we are not affected by anything pathogenic; we are just like that. Some, like me, accept it, even if it's frustrating not to be able to communicate, for example.
Or having to repeat the same concept over and over, when for us only once would have been enough.

You know what?
I didn't go through that diagnosis alone, but with a special person.

She knew full well that I had Asperger's. It was, among other things, one of our first conversations when we met. And she seemed to understand and accept it: she told me I was an indigo child.
A concept from the New Age subculture that describes children with "special" or "supernatural" traits and abilities.

The term was coined by psychologist Nancy Ann Tappe, who saw an indigo blue aura around these children, describing them as a new species of human beings come to bring about positive change.
They are described as endowed with sensitivity, empathy, intuition, superior intelligence, willpower, and an intolerance for authority and imposed rules.

The person I'm writing about has exceptional talents herself.
In many areas.
In some, not: in fact, when I talk about numbers or mathematics or statistics, she seems to mentally refuse to understand them.

What bothers me is that every time something related to my autistic issues happens, I have to hear absurd conversations about my lack of attention to things, objects, and so on, or even issues that are directly related to my autism dysfunction.
<>


So I have to explain that it's not what you assume.
Yet you know very well what it is.
Even the diagnosis: he was with me those months.
He even read the entire diagnosis.

And yet he tells me things like: we're all autistic to some extent.

But he does it with the wrong way of thinking.

It's not what you assume.

And it's very different and embarrassing and stressful to have to realize, in fact, that I'm not understood by someone who, despite knowing my condition very well, doesn't accept it.

Sometimes my calmness leads to arguments.
You're too calm.
I wonder: is it a bad thing to be so?
I could answer: that we're all a little calm.

The reason we're all a little autistic may be a refusal to actually understand what autism is.
And that we're dealing with people, not pillars of salt.
Sometimes, I feel like I'm in the picture of Dorian Gray.
The Picture of Dorian Gray is a gothic philosophical and horror novel written by Irish author Oscar Wilde.
You like horror films and stories, if I'm not mistaken.
Although there's variety, let's say, in that work.
Events aside: they don't fit with my life.
The point is that sooner or later I'll destroy that painting and disappear with it.
In the painting was my beauty.
The beauty of being completely autistic, or rather: very autistic, not just a little!
The Fear of Numbers is a film that will soon be awarded.
Short film.
"We are not different, it's the others who are all the same"


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kuen
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13 Oct 2025, 10:03 am

Somebody said this to me in the context of a job interview.

I didn't parse it correctly: I thought it was a statement of solidarity, a clumsy but sincere attempt to say something along the lines of 'it's okay to be different' or 'we all have our own challenges'.

Not a bit of it! What they meant was that they expected me to mask all the time and any attempt to initiate a discussion about challenges or potential accommodations would be shut down. (Lesson learnt: have this conversation *first*. Put it in writing. "This is my diagnosis, these are my challenges in the workplace, these are some accommodations I have requested in the past.")

If I hear it again I am going to assume it means the speaker does not have a solid grasp of what autism is and that if for some reason I require their understanding, I will need to get very granular.



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17 Oct 2025, 10:23 am

When someone tells me that, I tell them that everybody's also a bit of a tool.


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Lizaloop
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14 Nov 2025, 3:34 pm

babybird wrote:
It's one of the main reasons why I keep my diagnosis to myself

It's like having your struggles completely invalidated when people say that

It's rude

To me it's like saying to a person in a wheelchair: "oh we all have days when we can't be arsed walking"


I have to admit that I've used this sentence. I think I'm trying to connect with NT's. I'm saying, let's explore the ways we think and how we perceive the world so we can find some common ground. Yeah, some people use it to say, "Suck it up, we're all struggling." That's invalidating and rude. But there's no hard line between neurotypical and neurodivergent. The important issues are how much each of us has to struggle to survive and thrive and whether we can empathize with each other.