6 Mistakes Neurotypicals Make

Neurotypicals often make these 6 mistakes when dealing with autistic people. Since we live in an ableist society, many neurotypicals have misconceptions and ideas about autistic people that inform how they interact with them. When neurotypicals do these things, it makes autistic people feel disrespected and distant. In an attempt to bridge the gap, this video summarizes the most common mistakes and how they can be avoided.

[@AstroWinter931]

As always please like and subscribe! Comment your thoughts!

[@LD-pv5ol]

Neurotypicals sometimes can’t stand it when you correct them when they get a fact wrong. It’s frustrating.

[@AstroWinter931]

Yeah, I think to them correcting someone is more about establishing your place in a hierarchy than just trying to fix something, so they think you're talking down to them.

[@stoicstrawberries]

Omg yeah people used to always accuse me of being a smartass 😅 like I’m just trying to share my knowledge ! :(

[@yaboykirby7789]

What annoys me is when it's not even correcting it's literally just asking for clarification. Like idk wtf "slavolop" is, I know what "Sebastopol" is though and I think that's what you are referring to? But like I need to make sure? So like

[@Decaymaker]

The motivation/intentions thing… it’s such bullshit. I could point blank tell someone in full honesty something, and they’ll still believe the opposite even though I’ve TOLD them it’s false. It’s self sabotage.

[@rosevalety3408]

Hi ! I'm an undiagnosed AuDHD person, and I'm surrounded by neurotypical people (There is my brother though, who shows signs of ADHD but isn't diagnosed or aware either and we face the same struggles towards keepings tasks straight and life chores in general). What I struggle the most with is people judgement, especially my loved ones because they live with me, that I am not doing my best at all times, that I'm wasting my time or not putting enough energy in the 'things that matter'. I've always been considered a gifted kid. My mother would always tell about how intelligent I was, how I was priviledged to be so smart, but my parents never suspected I could be trouble growing up. See, since I was doing well in school and my mother was a teacher, I was everything my parents wanted or something. I was the last kid, a girl, always being praised about how well I was doing in school and my mother not so subtly comparing my brothers and other kids to me. Paired to the fact I learned my accomplishments would bring me my parents' (my mother's especially) love, I actually didn't understand how to interact with people. I remember I was bullied when I was 3 by a bigger girl, but mostly I kept with the 2 girls I knew and made friends with because we had the same nanny. Wherever they went I went, I didn't know how to talk to other kids, but with those two (my first childhood friends) there wasn't anything weird, we were almost being raised together as we spent all our time together. Thing is, and I don't know why, my mother never asked for me to be in the same class as any of the friends I made thoughout the years, so I spend my whole scholarity being thrown in classes in which I had to constantly find my place and try to make friends. While my friends I could only meet with them during breaks and not even lunch since our schedules were often unmatching. I know I unconsciously associated having friends and engaging with them outside of school as 'being a bad student' therefore, I just pushed people away, because mother being a teacher I associated being a bad student with being a bad person. And this resulted in 'any people having friends and not great marks are a bad person'. I remember vividly her threats of public humiliation, like spanking me in front of everyone, when I wasn't behaving like a calm quiet kid in boring situations like my mother starting talk for what felt like hours (probably 15-20 minutes in reality, but that's long for a turbulent kid) in the supermarket, and the shame I felt when my family told me I needed to learn humour and that stuff I didn't understand I was supposed to laugh at when I didn't even understand what was supposed to be funny. Today, shame is part of me and I still don't know how to make people laugh, and I rely so much on positive feedback anything I do I'll subconsciously search for any sign of recognition in other people, even if I don't know them. I guess that's just how masking works in itself : to model yourself after the perveived impression you make on the world to get people to like you. Throw away the things that get negative feedback, reinforce on the positive, even if it hurts you because rejection/abandon is worse than the pain you inflict on yourself. Probably because you've lived with it for so long you don't even realize you're hurting all the time. All in all, what I felt was that I had to learn how to survive school by myself. From 3 years old to today, socializing had been self-learning as an autistic kid, and well... Thatd idn't go very well. I wanted to be one of the 'popular' kids because everyone wanted to be their friend (or to me everyone was because I desperately wanted them to notice me, both from adoration and hate that they didn't when I was doing my best for people to praise me). Maybe I was 'neglected' as kid. But sadly, I was also the one receiving most attention of my siblings (I think), but my father was absent in everything we did (I can count on my finger the good memories of my father actively doing things with us, my mother had to deal with my big brothers shenaningans, leaving me doing my homework alone because I was smart enough to do so, playing alone cause nobody wanted to play with me (I was turbulent and noisy, I get that), and being rejected by my brothers (mostly my big brother) because of that, and then, struggling at school with people my age I thought they were dumb and bad people for not being good students. That and I was really weird for them. I liked the taste of grass so I was called a cow, I was spending my breaks alone watching insects so kids would come and crush them in front of my eyes, I was weirdly obessed with breaking rocks with a bigger rock and watch the shiny bits inside glitter in the sun, overall couldn't stay in place and had to have so many hobbies all the time, constantly turning over and over. I remember I had a weird obsession with the smell of old books and the town's library became one of my favorite places, it was also the time I started drawing from books. I was just... A lonely weird kid. Depression crept when I was 13 to 15 (maybe at was already there since I was 10 actually) when my brothers went to higher education (and no contact) and moved from our house and my parents were divorcing, so I just went from one house to another to see my parents, feeling like I had a duty of being there for them as my brothers could not and I could feel my parents were sad. At 15 I tried to unalive. Somehow, there wasn't any real signs for others, I was just myself then boom. With my insight today, I was masking really well my emotions because I had learned how to do it and the feeling of loneliness had always been here for a long time anyway. I just had reached a breaking point at that time. Then it was just up and downs and heartbreaks and thinking you've got your redemption but hit lower a bit later... Today I'm 24 and it's... The 'lowest' point I've been. Not going to do anything rash, I've made the promise of never going that far again, no... No today it's been a little more than a year since I know I was more than a gifted kid falling out of grace. Today I'm diagnosed with bipolarity (cyclothymia exactly, though that part is also self diagnosed), because... That's what being undiagnosed autistic+ADHD kid does to you : Mental Illness and depression. Neither 3 will ever go away, and it's probably the reason I'm still greiving my childhood today. Because the way I was raised and treated as a kid made me who I am today, and I hate who I've become, someone weak, someone who hurts the ones I love because I can't regulate my emotions, because my pov is always blurry about 'what is real' and 'what is my bipolarity acting up', 'are my needs really needs or am I asking for too much again', 'is it the depression or do I really need to rest in the middle of the day', 'why can't I remember simple things', 'why am I so anxious'... And I can't talk about it, I can't ask my loved ones to be careful around because they feel like it's me 'manipulating' them. That it's not the world that is the problem... It's me, and it hurts, because I never wanted to not be able to deal with things, I never wanted to be different or to struggle on simple tasks or to have mood swings make my life miserable and be not be aware enough of what others are feeling. I just wanted to be loved for who I am. So... yeah, sorry for the book sized comment. Guess I needed to vent as much as to have a written checkpoint of who I am and why. Take care of yourselves friends, be safe out there.

[@AstroWinter931]

@@rosevalety3408 Hey, thank you for sharing your story. It really means a lot to me. I don't think you are weak at all. If anything it's the opposite. Even just typing this out would be hard for many people, and I know I'm just a random KZbinr but I like when people share their experiences because it isn't just my audience that can learn from them but I can learn a lot from them too. I'm sorry you had such a traumatic childhood. I don't think anyone who goes through that is weak. Please take care and hope things get better for you!

[@FlamingCockatiel]

1. Asking other people questions about autistics versus the autistic person himself. 2. Assign motivations and intentions that aren't there, using doublespeak, rather than using direct speech. 3. Treating autistic people the same. 4?. Use of the r-word. Not sure what that is. 5. Expecting autistics to read between the lines and getting frustrated when they can't. Don't do hints! 6. Get defensive when they're called out for saying something ignorant, rather than doing self-reflection. Interesting video. My one nitpick is the use of upspeak when you should be declaring. It makes you sound uncertain.

[@AstroWinter931]

@@FlamingCockatiel Thank you for your feedback! Watching it myself I notice it. I will try to keep it in mind in the future.

[@BouXIII]

4. is the word Retard.

[@tomasvoldrich]

4. search oligophrenic and it will became obvious

[@BouXIII]

@@tomasvoldrich 4. i just tried to write the word, my comment got deleted. I could have forseen that. I might be a bit oligophrenic.

[@tomasvoldrich]

@@BouXIII Do not be so harsh on yourself. YT sometimes leaves me write any comment and on a bad day i have to rewrite one comment in several ways to not to be deleted. Sometimes waiting a day is enough to not be deleted.

[@thegreatpigeon8999]

I am not autistic and my main problem with communicating with autistic people is that they often don't give me any social cues at all, that or the wrong ones. We don't read each others minds, and we don't expect autistic people to read ours, we read social cues and since people on the spectrum often struggle with those, both reading and giving them, it causes many errors in communication. It's like being asked to name all the colors in a picture when you are completely color blind, but this goes both ways, the person on the spectrum doesn't understand the social cues given by the one that isn't autistic, and the neurotypical somewhat relies on social cues for a lot of communication if that makes sense, sorry for the long comment.

[@cosmolosys]

That makes a lot of sense. I like the comparison to colorblindness. If more people would be are aware of it that way, maybe this communication problem would occur less often. It can be interesting to learn to communicate in different ways. For example I like communicating with deaf people even though I can't use sign language the way they do. I also like communicating with animals. When we become aware of our differences and shortcomings we can adapt to one another, although you really can't make a colorblind person see the colors, or a deaf person hear your voice, or some autistic people know your specific social cues.

[@AstroWinter931]

@@thegreatpigeon8999 Thanks for sharing! I do think you described this clash between communication styles better than I did. Like you said, it's not so much that NT people "read minds" as it is they rely a lot on nonverbal social cues and subtext as a form of communication which, to us, can be confusing and overwhelming to try to decipher. So when we struggle to read those cues or give them, it gets taken the wrong way by neurotypicals. We just don't use such cues nearly as often because we rely mainly on our words.

[@MrPug-fx1bz]

Great video❤

[@AstroWinter931]

Thank you!!

[@Knowthyself-zf3fy]

They think we are lower than them.. but they arent

[@Knowthyself-zf3fy]

Sorry... but we aren't

[@Decaymaker]

@@Knowthyself-zf3fy thanks for saying it so I didn’t have to lol

[@IgotproofimblessedASD]

Omg I hate when people talk about my kids in front of them my son Ozzy understands everything he's smart. I get so mad

[@AstroWinter931]

I would feel the same!

[@ladycaissia1547]

Neurotypicals 🤣🤣🤣🤣. There are none left. Everyone is autistic now.

[@d-s3464]

OR there’s more information available than ever and people are starting to recognize that BOTH genders can be on the spectrum (afab people have been heavily underrepresented up until a couple of yrs ago, and also misdiagnosed) It’s not necessarily that there is more autistic people now than previously but more people are finally getting recognized as autistic and we are learning more of what it means to be autistic (it is a broad spectrum after all, and not every autistic person displays the same traits just as no neurotypical person is the same)

[@wormrocket]

you know, once being left handed became legal, the reported number of left handed people began to rise… it’s almost like it a very similar situation……. hmmmm……

[@Decaymaker]

True lmaoooo, everyone started being affected by gravity ONLY after newton discovered the laws of gravity. Crazy I tell ya. It’s those science influencers, making everyone think they’re affected by gravity lol.