October 16, 2021

I'm two paragraphs away from finishing it. 

Started early - my brain works better then.

Think I will have something to hand in tomorrow after all. This feels slightly disappointing - I was hoping for a more exciting result, like the complete disintegration of my outward persona.

After blogging last night I saw a timely autism thread on Twitter.

I'll quote the bits that hit home hardest:

Today was the first day in my life that someone, to my face, told me that I have experienced some sort of trauma. And I've realized that maybe to most people, it probably doesn't look like trauma. It probably looks like encouragement.

These are the phrases I have heard throughout my life (and still as an adult sometimes) which often trigger me: 

You'll be fine! 

You're an expert at this! 

You can do this! 

You deserve it! 

Don't worry about it, it's not a big deal. 

Don't be so negative! 

You're so smart!

When you're told you don't need support or that you're so [good quality here], you "learn" to get by without support when you need it. You learn not to ask for help. You learn to do things on your own....

People talk about how when you do something a few times it gets easier. For me, some things never ever get easier. They never do. It's the same anxiety every time.

"Practice makes perfect." "If you keep doing it you'll get better, it'll be easier." 

Even growing up, I knew this was a lie for certain things in my life... I couldn't explain why but I knew it was a lie. I got told it wasn't over and over again.

Even as an adult I think the people around me will hate me if I fail... It's not a rational feeling. It's a feeling my body learned growing up and continues to learn. 

This might sound silly, but I never knew that failing was an option. Only in college did I start actively trying to be less perfectionist than I was, to intentionally not give 100% when I knew it didn't matter. I could barely do it. I'd try to be proud of myself when I did.  

But even though I'd try to encourage it myself, it's not like anyone else would be proud of me for that. No one congratulates you if you get a B on a paper, or if you turned an assignment in late (which I only did once in high school, and yes I was proud of it).

If I fail my dissertation defense, I want a failure party. I want an "it's over" party. I want a "good job surviving that trauma and coming out alive" party. Perfection shouldn't be the meaning of life.  

Being autistic inherently means being unlikeable and abrasive in our current society. That's what it means to be myself. To be brutally honest, too much, annoying. Perfectionism was all I had that people congratulated. So failure wasn't an option. I want it to be an option.

What I didn't hear in my life - 

It's okay to fail! 

We'll be here no matter what happens. 

I'm here if you want me to listen to your concerns. 

It's okay to feel anxious/worried/scared about this. 

It's okay if things don't go well.      

Oof. As someone who veers wildly between giving everything I've got, or just not bothering at all, the encouragements I've received when doing well during those rare periods of application have always felt completely false. Insulting, even. I've never known why. I sort of understand now.

As someone in the replies said, "Those responses of "encouragement" always felt empty to me. I wanted actual support, and it felt like they were expecting something from giving me nothing."

And:

"In my experience, each of these ['encouragements'] tend to precede conversations where it either becomes clear I have failed to meet the expectations of the other person, or that the other person has no regard for my own boundaries & limits, which I have learned through great difficulty."

And:

"I never realized that it was okay to hate this sort of "encouragement" which always feels like telling me I'm a failure up front."

And:

"Always sounds like 'if you were different, you'd be better' to me."

And 

"Everything we hear is lip service. Which is why all those "encouraging" phrases are traumatic: they're what people tell us as a way to not engage with us when we try to surface our problems."

And:

"I can't even allow myself to feel proud of the fact that I'm doing well, because now all I can think about is what will happen the first time I make a mistake."

By putting vague, uncomfortable feelings into word form so I could recognise them, Autistic Twitter has helped me more than any living person in my life. I wish we could all get together and have a big, socially uncomfortable, "fuck these feelings of inadequacy" party.

Today's (Only) Photo: Halfway