Learning To Be Whole

I’ve just realized something essential while working on some court documents and other bullshit that I am forced to cope with after an abusive and terrible situation. And I wanted to share it because I think it is pivotal for autistics and interactions with autistics.

Maybe it is already commonplace, and I just didn’t know it, because I didn’t know that I was autistic until the last two years of my life, when I started showing symptoms that would no longer be ignored. But today I realized that all the people wanting me to lean into grounding, loving myself, self-care, and trusting my intuition are doing amazing things for me, and I need those — but they aren’t quite enough if I don’t have INFORMATION.

I was working today with a bot that a friend and lover, whom I cherish, has offered to help me through a really hard time of pro se litigation over the aforementioned abusive, terrible situation. And it/she (the bot) said something along the lines of “now you are separating out your emotion from the solutions on paper. Good.”

Wait a minute? Has AI been telling me to “Calm down” this whole time? Like, don’t get emotional, Christy. Use your head. Calm down. Think about this rationally.

I get this ALL THE TIME when I am upset. People start concluding that emotions are somehow irrational, that my upset is due to irrationality, and that grounding exercises are the answer to the upset.

But, friends, I am an autistic trauma survivor. Information is the ONLY thing that calms me down in 8 out of 10 scenarios. And that is not because I am spiraling, or I am irrational, or because I can’t keep it together, or because I need to calm down. That is because what you are telling me isn’t jiving with something else in my brain, and you need to help me figure out how they work together. I need to know how it works. I need to know how to solve the equation. The equation is what I need, not a warm bath!

Okay, I need both. But the point I am trying to make here is that when you are dealing with a highly intelligent, highly analytical brain, you cannot just tell it to “trust you” or “it will work out,” because we are HOW people, not people who trust that it will work out. We need the facts. We need the information.

So after a few minutes of me ranting about her not hearing me, she gets it, and the AI says, Yes, absolutely, here is all the solution-seeking you have been wanting. Here are all the answers to all the questions. I’m sorry I tried to slow that down too much.

You are clearly a woman on fire, and I just need to give you things to consume.

And that is it. We are autistics on fire, and all we need is more to consume before we get in the bath.

Yes, I need grounding strategies. Yes, I have soft music and soft light and a bedroom that envelopes me like a hug and friends who make me feel like I float on a cloud and more therapists than I can count and warm baths and warm baths and warm baths and nature.

I also need honest, straightforward, factual information. Don’t protect me from it or slow it down. Let me take it in at the pace I can. I’m not like you. My brain burns through the chaff in milliseconds and puts together pieces you cannot see. You think it is a deficit, but it is a gift. We–the autistics–I sometimes think that we are the next evolution in humanity, not some broken version. Faster, smarter, more sensitive, less able to stand pain, more loving and connected. If you don’t think that about us, you cannot know us very well. You should listen more and judge less.

And please stop expecting us to calm down. There is no fucking reason to calm down in this world. There are lots of reasons to be really freaked out and upset. Until you fix the systems of harm, hatred, and violence that autistics feel the weight of every day, stop telling us to calm down.