People downplaying autism

My experience of suffering from neurological disorders per se (abi + autism) is that most people do one of 3 things in response to my displaying or description of my symptoms.

1. Trivialise “oh but you’re not THAT bad, I mean you can still do X”.
2. Normalise “Oh yeah, me too, I do that ALL the time”.
3. Invalidate “I think you’re making out it’s a lot worse than it is”.

I still haven’t managed to work out which one is more annoying

I'm pretty sure it's usually meant well, as a way of expressing solidarity / support, but it does *so* minimise what's going on:

Me: "I struggle to remember things that my brain doesn't naturally attach importance to": Other: "Yeah I know! It comes to us all as we get older!"

Me: "I can't bear to touch fine emery paper": Other "Yeah feels rough doesn't it " (Or, "Don't be silly!" - mother and ex-wife, separately and often)

"I can't hear what you're saying with all this noise in the background" -> "Yeah my hearing's getting like that a bit - age again!"

"I'm 95% sure I'm autistic" -> "I think we're all a bit, in one way or another"

"I've been diagnosed as autistic" -> "You're still the same person though & you've achieved so much! / You're coping really well / (It can't be that severe then)" (Yeah it nearly killed me)

"I find interacting with people face to face exhausting. I've always wondered why I can't do superhuman hours at work like others do" -> "Yeah those meetings do drag a bit don't they?"

"Now I've realised what's going on and given myself permission to be kind to myself, I've reached a level of stress that feels low to me but I now realise is the normal healthy level. Things like not travelling for meetings" -> "That's good, and who knows, you might be able to travel again one day! (get back to the normal person we knew, when you've recovered from your autism)"

"I'm feeling much happier nowadays mum, now I know what's going on; I understand why I hate travelling and interacting with people, and love my daily routine." -> "That's really good, we were *so* worried about you! Maybe you will come [hundreds of miles] and see us soon?"

"Could you please wash up as soon as you've finished cooking that [disgustingly smelly teenager food]?" -> "You don't have to be full-on Aspie all the time just because you've been diagnosed!"

I'm sure there are more. I'm thinking of writing a phrase book "Don't take it to heart, they mean well!" :-).

I’m sure they do ‘mean’ well but sometimes I just want people to ‘get’ it not to try to rationalise it. I’ve even had it with professionals that I know personally, that work with autistic people, I’ve had to spend such a long time explaining how something ‘really’ affects me because their first reaction is always to try to rationalise it according to the non-autistic perspective!

This is interesting as people often say I'm "difficult to read" or they have "no idea what I'm thinking or feeling" and I'm never quite sure what they mean. Obviously they don't know what I'm thinking? As it's only me who knows that? Wouldn't it be kind of creepy if people could hear your thoughts? 

Replying to Plastic's last here but don't want to go too deep on the nesting / threading as all replies here are relevant & interesting!

I find Empathy as a subject quite fascinating. I believe that I have good cognitive empathy but poor affective empathy, so I've experienced at least some of the aspects of empathy. 

One thing I find fascinating is that people with ASD seem to have effective empathy with *each other*, and people without ASD seem likewise to have empathy with each-other, but there are difficulties between the two groups - which is the part relevant to this thread, i.e. the double empathy problem, and the difficulty that NT people have to tap in to / "feel" the experience of people with ASD.

If I read your reply correctly Plastic, I think you're right that *some* things that laypeople consider to be empathy are little more than "This is how I would feel in your situation, therefore that must be how you feel" (which easily fails to be accurate when the two people are very different) - but I do think that there are things going on in the affective / intuitive domains that I don't experience and hence can't quite fathom that are nevertheless real and genuine(?) nonverbal connections between individuals. Some of it is to do with emotional contagion, which I do get a bit. But this is starting to touch on Philosophy; what is "real"? Is experiencing something that appears to be helpful and true enough to make it real? People taking recreational drugs have reported all manner of weird things that seem to be helpful and true, e.g. the illusion of telepathy.....

Fascinating stuff.

Replying to Plastic's last here but don't want to go too deep on the nesting / threading as all replies here are relevant & interesting!

I find Empathy as a subject quite fascinating. I believe that I have good cognitive empathy but poor affective empathy, so I've experienced at least some of the aspects of empathy. 

One thing I find fascinating is that people with ASD seem to have effective empathy with *each other*, and people without ASD seem likewise to have empathy with each-other, but there are difficulties between the two groups - which is the part relevant to this thread, i.e. the double empathy problem, and the difficulty that NT people have to tap in to / "feel" the experience of people with ASD.

If I read your reply correctly Plastic, I think you're right that *some* things that laypeople consider to be empathy are little more than "This is how I would feel in your situation, therefore that must be how you feel" (which easily fails to be accurate when the two people are very different) - but I do think that there are things going on in the affective / intuitive domains that I don't experience and hence can't quite fathom that are nevertheless real and genuine(?) nonverbal connections between individuals. Some of it is to do with emotional contagion, which I do get a bit. But this is starting to touch on Philosophy; what is "real"? Is experiencing something that appears to be helpful and true enough to make it real? People taking recreational drugs have reported all manner of weird things that seem to be helpful and true, e.g. the illusion of telepathy.....

Fascinating stuff.