I have a lot of other symptoms like overstim/hyperfixation/please let me sit alone in a dark room for like three hours sometimes to decompress from the trauma of interacting with another human being/etc
I think generally speaking autistics treat language more as a tool to convey raw information and allistics treat language more as a tool to influence outcomes
me a six year old on the playground telling other kids I'm literally a wolf demon cuz I wanted to look cool and getting offended when they didn't believe me
i know i lied as a kid all the time (and still sometimes do though i try not to) just because it felt like a faster way to get through the conversation than trying to explain things properly
I remarked just recently again abt how rping Reaper lying was easy because she just says whatever comes to mind and whether it's true or not isn't even really a factor and that is basically what talking to child me was like. the process of learning to lie less had to go through a very long detour of first agonizingly trying to learn to lie BETTER
have you also had the experience where in like a group setting someone asks 'who did [x bad thing]' and you're like 'not me' and then you're instantly internally like 'oh fuck they're gonna see through my lie and catch me' BUT YOU ACTUALLY DIDN'T DO THE THING
like it'd be one thing if it were like 'I learned to lie to protect myself,' there's def stuff that falls under that umbrella like I also laugh a lot in person as a nervous response and to cover up that I don't know how react otherwise etc
my experience with this is that autistic people struggle like hell to grasp how neurotypical perceive lies because they either take the idea that lies are a betrayal of trust deeply sincerely or they just. like. lie all the time because lies are how they learn to make people respect them
anxiety is "oh god everyone will know i'm fake, and a liar, and i'm doomed" and also "oh god what if i [stop lying] then everyone will see that i'm a fraud and nothing"
塔露拉·雅特利亞斯
explained this well. for some folks, lies become social tools to leverage your likeability. I don't know many autistic folks who use lying to avoid repercussions? shrug??
the brave little toaster fucked me up i genuinely do not remember literally anything about it. i have blocked out, like, most of my memories from before roughly 16 years old for other reasons but just hearing the fucking name of the movie triggers my fight or flight reflexes
i am the poster child for "frightened child to horror fan pipeline REAL" and i've gone back and rewatched a lot of the movies that fucked me up as a child with new appreciation but man FUCK the brave little toaster, that put a hole in my soul that can never be repaired
(◍•ᴗ•◍)🌻 BIZ
: oh no I absolutely used lying to avoid repercussions a lot. I was literally that tv sitcom character who pretends to be sick to get out of going to school
if my ability to eat weird foods sometimes (unless they're very specifically meat, or pickled) takes away my autistic card i haven't even officially earned yet, then fuck
on the one hand i don't remember lying a lot as a child on the other hand one time i begged my mom to let me stop working in the yard because i felt sick and faint and she wouldn't let me stop working so instead i fell over and passed out and i was able to guilt her for years afterward over that time she almost killed me while i had undiagnosed pneumonia
gawd someone in one of my adult autism groups on facebook's comfort foods are mashed peas and mashed potatoes and every time she posts a meal we pretend to slap her autism card away.
re: faking sick to get out of school, as a response to both 'faking sick to get out of school is valid because school is traumatizing' and 'I pretended to be sick but I did it badly,' every time I faked sick my mom would ask if I was faking but then she would still let me stay home.
I thought this still meant I was caught because I can't remember her ever asking if I was faking when I was legitimately sick, but later it came up in a conversation she was like 'I mean I asked but you genuinely seemed really pale and unwell so I did actually think you were sick'
i can eat mushy foods but like. strictly on a "i'll tolerate this because i was told as a child that if i don't eat what i am given i am personally slighting the starving people in africa" basis.
i'll eat literally anything at least once but the sensory profile whereby my mouth perceives something inside it as slithering is. absolutely not. i don't want that.
I love how autistic people can unite under the banner of Absurd Food Preferences. Autism! Come for the predictable sensory experience of eating highly processed foods, stay because you struggle to navigate social spaces and don't know how to politely leave.
I don't have food sensory issues to the point where I have things where if I put them in my mouth I feel like I'm dying but I do have food sensory issues to the point where I just think food is bullshit
shout out to the kid I did big sister/little sister stuff with a few years back. she ate only crispy lettuce. she wanted to become a rabbit. we drew cute art together of her rabbit fursona and on graduation day she ate a whole slice of pizza like a champ.
but yeah, re: untruths when you're autistic. I don't think that could invalidate any diagnosis just because there's so much that falls under the spicy neurodivergent umbrella and our reasons for untruthing stuff are usually predicated on lived experience and how we wish to be perceived by others.
re: lying i once harassed my grandma into telling her sister she blamed her for a bad thing happening bc i was Fixated On The Truth and that probably further ruined their relationship but lol
I have enough other autism symptoms that I do just chalk up the lying to like everyone's symptoms are a little different, but I do also think that the lying is more of an innate quality than a learned one and that it's like, fully me mechanically working differently from a majority of other autistic people starting from the processing level
basically I'm the sort of person who never faked sick to get out of school until i HAD MY GREAT GRANDMOTHER GET ME A FUCKING TAXI SO I COULD GO TO SCHOOL THE DAY AFTER MY MOM DIED and then just, realized not going to school was a legitimate option? i then missed SO much of third grade.
RE: toy story, i don't think it affected me quite as much as the brave little toaster but i think that's purely because the brave little toaster got there first. by the time toy story happened i was already terrified of the idea of my toys being real and hurting them if i threw them away.
weirdly i really like lotion but i also just have other wacky sensory things like "wearing gloves often causes me to want to wiggle myself out of my skin"
because we had to wear gloves, and a hair net, and masks, and also i had to keep track of so many things i didn't have to keep track of before, and also my awareness of germs was Increased To An Anxiety Inducing Level so i just
actually wait bc Moelle brought up sexuality stuff in hers. one other thing. this is not 'I feel less autistic due to this' it's more like 'sometimes my probable autism collides with other people's autism in a way that makes multiple people have a bad autism day,' as you do
but I've learned that the gender and aromanticism discussions in the autism community these days (or maybe more like the autism discussion in the gender and aromaticism communities Idk either way) will just send me right the fuck to space
to talk more on the romance side of it cuz that's punched me in the face way more recently, it's become like 'I think I have identified these boundaries for what a standard romance is meant to entail and so everything outside of that which I actually relate to is not romance but some other kind of love'
but this means that I would sometimes on twitter see discussion which identified 'here is a kind of love which I as an aromantic autistic person have identified as non-romantic' and it would be like slamming my face into a wall of YOUR VERSION OF ROMANCE DOESN'T COUNT BECAUSE IT'S NOT STANDARD ENOUGH
romance can be whatever i say it is FOR ME, and if an aromantic person doesn't see this as romance and they like it for that reason then that's fine for them
romance is linking a video of a dude saying he'd never break your heart but he would break your bones and the exchange going "this is me" "yeah this is why i follow this guy"
i genuinely do not remember literally anything about it. i have blocked out, like, most of my memories from before roughly 16 years old for other reasons
but just hearing the fucking name of the movie triggers my fight or flight reflexes
slitheryslitheringis. absolutely not. i don't want that.