Considering Weaponizing my Autism

Alright, my people.  My initial idea was to bring it up with the group facilitator (not the rude guest) at the next meeting, but I'm open to the advice to write an email directly to the guest, who is an ASD Specialist (case manager) in the same autism support organization.  Below is a draft.  I'm laughing at her needing to read all that and address my concerns.  It's so autistic lol.  But seriously, the point isn't to be vindictive.  They are valid concerns, and after seeking considerable therapy for abusive relationships, one thing I learned is to not let anyone be dismissive or rude without pointing it out because that's how manipulative people slowly push boundaries, so I'm actually following through on the skills I learned during post-narcissistic abuse recovery therapy.  In a sense, this letter is a long-winded way of saying, "No," which is the main lesson we learn in recovery when we have a history of being abused.  Actually, just writing the letter without  even sending it has already been helpful to my emotional state and self-esteem.  I'm proud of myself 

The email:

Hello [her name],

Intro
I am writing because I would like to understand my experience of last week’s [Autistic Adult Group] meeting. I would first like to share my appreciation for your concern and work to help the general population understand autistic people better. It means a lot to me that there are people working hard to help autistic and neurotypical people relate, which ultimately helps everyone involved. I also appreciate that you came to our group to collect information directly from us rather than seeking the information second-hand. Secondly, I want to be clear that I am attempting to be as respectful as possible with this email. I mean no animosity nor critique. I solely want to understand to get a better sense of how I perceive and navigate social interactions as I have just recently (three months ago) learned ago that I am autistic. To address this, I will only state facts, my personal internal experience, ask a few questions, and open it up for discussion. So, I hope that we can take this opportunity to help each other out since this email could provide information on how at least one autistic person perceives social interactions.

Facts
At the group meeting, you asked us for experiences with masking. I shared my experience, and felt dismissed because you didn’t really engage in my comments nor asked to elaborate. The focus of the group was on other group members, asking them specifically by name to elaborate. This portion of the group lasted for about 30 mins, in which I was able to contribute a unique perspective for maybe 1 min max. You also asked for interviews so that you could obtain direct quotes from us for your presentation. I was excited to provide input in a dyadic setting allowing me to freely share without interruptions or distractions that are not available in a group setting. At this point, I posted in the chat that I would be happy to be interviewed. You did not accept nor decline my offer. Finally, you gave out your email so that we could contact you to share our interest in an interview because your enthusiasm for hearing our experiences exceeded the group setting’s limitations. I emailed you sharing that I would like to be interviewed to discuss masking. I did not receive a response to this email as well. Thus, from my experience, someone asked me for support with their work three times, yet despite three attempts to engage in the request, my attempts were dismissed. I would like to acknowledge that sometimes my episodic memory can be incorrect as I become anxious in social settings, especially when meeting new people. If I stated anything above that was incorrect, please let me know how you remember it so that we could work with the same facts.

Personal Experience
I felt dismissed due to the lack of acknowledgment for my attempts to support your work and a matter that is deeply important to me during a setting established specifically to support said matter. In my experience, formalities in professional settings encourage individuals to acknowledge and respond to offers for support, especially when they are requested. I want to specifically point out that I am referring to the acknowledgment of an offer, not the acceptance of an offer. I believe that it is entirely within norms to decline an offer. In fact, I believe it is a healthy boundary if someone declines an offer they do not wish to accept.  A simple, "No, thank you.  I have what I need." would be appreciated.  As a side note, I congratulate people when they place a boundary with me because not only does it help the relationship, but I’m also proud of them for establishing their limits.  I love when people say, "No." Moving on, I also understand that individuals that want to support another person’s work would feel seen and respected if their attempts are acknowledged. Accordingly, if someone's prompted offer to help goes unacknowledged, they feel unseen and inconsequential. If you believe I am misunderstanding professional formalities or how people generally react to being acknowledged, please let me know.

Furthermore, being autistic has lead to a lot of social difficulties in my life, to include being dismissed, blamed and accused of intentions that were completely incorrect. As such, I have experienced significant hardships, so this topic is of deep interest to me, which affects me even more so that if we would have been discussing something less significant to me and the group as a whole. Overall, the experience has left me confused wondering if I did/said something insulting or if the forum is a safe place to be openly autistic. Lastly, it has affected my attitude towards the group and organization as a whole to the point that after sharing my experience and intentions with a friend (“I tried to participate, but it didn’t really seem like anyone was interested. I was just there.”), they had to convince me to continue attending the regular forum. At the same time, I have had a great experience with my ASD specialist, [my ASD specialist’s name], thus far, so I’m hopeful that this whole thing is just a misunderstanding that you could warmly clarify.

Questions
As stated above, I would like to better understand the experience to ensure that I am not misinterpreting what occurred, so I have a few questions:

1) Did I say or do anything that was offensive or rude which would cause someone to avoid engaging with me? If I did, given the setting and purpose of the group, I expect that a person whose role is to help autistic individuals would bring attention to it so that the autistic person could address it, improve their social interactions, and have the ability to contribute to the main matter.  A simple, "When you said/did [whatever] made me feel [however]," would have been enough for me to quickly address and move on.  Is this expectation of mine inappropriate for the setting?

2) Is there something about me that makes others believe that my contributions are not valid nor valuable?

3) Am I misunderstanding professional formalities where acknowledging a person’s multiple offers to support is expected?

4) Is there something else that I have not discussed that I may be missing, or anything else that you would like to address?

Again, the purpose of this email is solely to learn from the interaction so I could better navigate the world as I am currently confused on how to understand what happened.

Respectfully,

[My name]

It's a good first attempt but it needs to be about half the length. Neurotypicals can lack attention span. She's very likely to 'skim read' that letter and not get what you are talking about.

Some points

• Often the more you labour that you are being respectful the less respectful people feel you actually are.
• Try and express your 3 main points in one or 2 paragraphs at the start before elaborating. A kind of 'pre summery' of what you will say.
• I would say your 3 main points are:
  1. On 3 different occasions she asked for input on masking in autism which you offered and she seemed to ignore you.
  2. When she ignored you she did so in a dismissive way with out acknowledging your voice or explaining why she didn't need / want your input.
  3. You would like her to explain exactly why she thinks your point of view is not a needed contribution to the conversation around masking.
• There is no need to write whole sentences explaining that your memory is imperfect or that you are stating things from your point of view. You can meaning preface sentences with expressions like "as well as I can remember" or "from my point of view." The same thing probably applies to being respectful.

It's a good first attempt but it needs to be about half the length. Neurotypicals can lack attention span. She's very likely to 'skim read' that letter and not get what you are talking about.

Some points

• Often the more you labour that you are being respectful the less respectful people feel you actually are.
• Try and express your 3 main points in one or 2 paragraphs at the start before elaborating. A kind of 'pre summery' of what you will say.
• I would say your 3 main points are:
  1. On 3 different occasions she asked for input on masking in autism which you offered and she seemed to ignore you.
  2. When she ignored you she did so in a dismissive way with out acknowledging your voice or explaining why she didn't need / want your input.
  3. You would like her to explain exactly why she thinks your point of view is not a needed contribution to the conversation around masking.
• There is no need to write whole sentences explaining that your memory is imperfect or that you are stating things from your point of view. You can meaning preface sentences with expressions like "as well as I can remember" or "from my point of view." The same thing probably applies to being respectful.

These were great critiques!  I really appreciate them.