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Did being autistic make you more tolerant?

Cece

Hi.

Long before AS was a thing known to me, I have always been different, didn't quite fit in, always felt like something just wasn't right or natural to me in life.. this was an underlying feeling that I have always had in life which was really somehow lifted (or rather validated) when I learnt of AS.

But I think that this different feeling contributed to my lack of bias towards a certain group of people. I.e., I have always understood people are different and was ok with that, managed to live life without too much intolerance to cloud it.

Can't help but wonder if being different is the only way for people to be tolerant towards other difference ( colour, race, religion, sexual identity or orientation etc)

That is of course not to say that all autistic people are unbiased or that all NTs are biased... I just think feeling different helps a person understand that others can be different too!

What are your thoughts?

Thanks.

Parents

  • When my OCD hit me, in my late teens, it absolutely made me more tolerant, in some respects. My brain felt like it broke overnight, I was no longer in control, and at the mercy of unrelenting guilt and shame.

    Hard not to go through that and be more tolerant, at least, seeing that there is no separation of mind from body, greatly limits what one can expect of people (naivedualism i feel is the cause for a lack of empathy in many, or st least, in myself previously). I feel like I decide what to think, OCD made it very clear this was an illusion.

    Whether autism itself has a similar effect, maybe. It's hard to adopt a naive viewpoint of "just make yourself do xzy" in others, when you struggle to do abc yourself. Some degree of tolerance through awareness must occur.

    Then, it may very well be that we naturally fall prey less to these kinds of distorted thinking, because we aren't so readily accepting of "social truth", or "common sense". 

    There maybe other factors pushing in the other direction  ountering this, but things such as this seem important.

Reply

  • When my OCD hit me, in my late teens, it absolutely made me more tolerant, in some respects. My brain felt like it broke overnight, I was no longer in control, and at the mercy of unrelenting guilt and shame.

    Hard not to go through that and be more tolerant, at least, seeing that there is no separation of mind from body, greatly limits what one can expect of people (naivedualism i feel is the cause for a lack of empathy in many, or st least, in myself previously). I feel like I decide what to think, OCD made it very clear this was an illusion.

    Whether autism itself has a similar effect, maybe. It's hard to adopt a naive viewpoint of "just make yourself do xzy" in others, when you struggle to do abc yourself. Some degree of tolerance through awareness must occur.

    Then, it may very well be that we naturally fall prey less to these kinds of distorted thinking, because we aren't so readily accepting of "social truth", or "common sense". 

    There maybe other factors pushing in the other direction  ountering this, but things such as this seem important.

Children
  • in reply to BlendedSpob

    Hi BlendedSpob,

    Thanks for sharing this.

    Do you consider that "common sense" and "social truth" to be the same thing?

    Curious as to me, common sense transcends society, for example it is common sense that you shouldn't eat food with dirty hands because it can spread illness but based on the culture within your society, that could mean use a fork or wash your hands and dig in.

    Subtle difference but it just adds another layer to how easy we accept these things and how flexible we should be at accepting changes.

    Just curious to your thoughts