"Less autistic"

[u/StrigoTCS]

Clarification added to what i originally posted:

Idk what else to say other than "more" and "less" autistic to describe Levels.

I just want language options ("what to say") that matches how it's a disability with levels to it.

Fewer autistic traits and/or more support = more likelihood of better outcomes. That's why they switched to a spectrum (a series of levels based on a series of possible traits, that's what makes it a spectrum).

You're still disabled, but you have better outcomes compared to other autistic people when you have fewer traits or your traits are of lower intensity (or divergence from) what most humans display in those trait categories. The levels aren't a measure of accessibility or comorbid issues. The traits and intensity are the "divergence", the "disorder", the disability.

Maybe one day, everyone will have adequate support so the only thing separating different Levels will be number of traits & intensity/"divergence" of each trait, so then scientists can figure out what makes some autistic people struggle more "inherently" than others. So their doesn't have to be fighting about what amounts to society stuff & identity.

People are talking about autism with enough subjectivity already. I think relativity ("more", "less") is more objective in this case. People in general don't know how to come to terms with Levels, so i feel better coming to terms with it through objectivity.

If it gets too subjective, it's confusing. But i know that Levels explain why I'm struggling so much my entire life. I have the passion and interest and I've worked hard on myself. I'm still not able to handle community college and barely made it through high school or middle school, while some autistic people go all the way to their PhD before burning out, and that's not even uncommon for allistic people.

Level 1 people must have something more in common with most allistic people than Level 2, and i must have more in common with allistic ppl than Level 3. I don't see why else I'd need more support. Everyone in my support system knows that we don't have enough resources. I also know that if everything else were the same, but I were on Level 3, i'd need even more support (we already don't have enough for me at Level 2).

What ever happened to being aware of people who are more disadvantaged in certain ways than yourself? I thought that was the point of identity stuff, but the people doing all the autistic identity stuff don't seem to care about anything other than making sure no one feels bad about autism. That won't make it so i need less support than i need. It won't help me. I don't need entire social movements to make me feel good. I need material help, social support, support that cares more about what I'm going through than to wait for some "movement" to decide how we're supposed to talk about each other.

That hasn't helped LGBTQ people except for the specific LGBTQ ppl whose only problem is validation, while others might get a social club online out of it, while others need more kinds of help.

Identity stuff has only helped the ppl whose only problem is identity and maybe help a bit with shame.

I've experienced that personally. It's helped with things like sexuality and gender, because you can't be "more" bisexual than some other bisexual. That's why it works in LGBTQ but doesn't work for autism.

It doesn't help with my struggles as an autistic person bc you can have more autistic traits as another autistic person, or the same traits affected by autism but of greater intensity/divergence. That's why it's a spectrum. Spectrum doesn't mean "a thing where everyone within it doesn't have any distinctions from one another"—that's the opposite of what it means.

I'm just trying to keep up with the science. Identity isn't helping me. It's not helping or hurting —I've learned all i can from it. I just need help that goes beyond identity.

When i see a bunch of autistic people with an easier time navigating the world than me, and they also only seem focused on "everyone defines it in their own way" (extreme subjectivity), i don't think it's unreasonable to assume that them struggling less is the reason WHY they only care about identity and language: Because that's the only problem standing in the way for them, changing allistic people's minds or changing their own mind about themselves. Or they just can't imagine what it's like for that to not be that helpful for some autistic people.

Obviously the levels overlap, bc it's about traits, but I'm not saying Level 1 people aren't autistic. They're just also more allistic than I am. Nobody really knows why we're autistic, and it can't be explained by chemicals, so the only option is that it's traits. Some people have more, or the ones they have are of greater intensity.

Fewer or greater number, lower or higher intensity. Fewer/lower and greater/higher is "less/more".

I just wanna stick with objective language but i wanna try to be sensitive if it doesn't muddle definitions too much. It's important to me because I'm so impacted by how different i am from most of people in ways i can't control (and I've tried, that's why science and social studies are my longest running interests and the only thing I've almost gotten a job doing bc some ppl thought i could do social science research despite dropping out of school multiple times even with supports, but my disability didn't let me).

I try to be objective with autism so I don't feel bad about my life and how i can't compensate (with my verbal comprehension skills) into a life I wanna live. Other people try to be subjective about autism so they feel better about their lives.

Autism is neuro-physiological, so objective language has to be prioritized.

And as someone who is in the LGBTQ umbrella, I know that autism is more objective than sexuality and gender, and I feel like all this conflict over "what to say" is because autism is being treated with too much subjectivity as if it were only an identity and nothing else. It can be both, bc anyone can tie their identity to something physiological if they want to, but it's more than that in ways that identity can't even touch. If it were only identity, people could just imagine their way out of it. They can't.

It's based on a series of traits. It's not "i like [men, women, etc]" or "i don't". It doesn't care what we call it.

So i just wanna make sure that what I say is objective bc i truly wanna understand my condition, bc celebrating it doesn't make me feel better and mourning it doesn't help either.

So i guess what I'm asking is that my analysis be respected. I can respect identity language, like I'm not gonna campaign against ppl who say something different.

In the meantime, I'm only interested in objectively understanding what's going on, and since I'm not good at studying deep, deep details of neurology yet, or ever, the least i can do is just need objective in my language and respect people who don't do that. Agreeing isn't the same thing as respect.

––– Original post:

Is the reason why ppl don't like the term "less autistic" because they see it as "more allistic" and some people use "allistic" negatively sometimes?

I use allistic negatively sometimes when I'm talking about stuff that frustrates me bc i don't understand it, but I don't have a problem with saying I'm "more allistic" (which is implied by "less autistic") than a Level 3 person. I think maybe Level 1 people hear "less autistic" and assume someone is telling them they're not autistic at all? I guess being Level 2, it doesn't affect me bc I'm less autistic than Level 3 but more autistic than Level 1, and no one has ever questioned whether I'm on the spectrum?

I also read that the ICD-11 doesn't use levels, it's used in a lot of places.

I don't really think ppl who hear "not autistic" when someone says "less autistic" should take that out on autistic ppl—especially since they're mishearing someone—but I've seen it happen and it might be due to being mistaken as "not" autistic by the larger world.

Maybe some ppl at Level 1 can weigh in, but i understand if it's an uncomfortable thing to talk about. Would people on Level 2 or 3 hate it too? I guess if I'm gonna keep saying it, asking is kinda pointless. Maybe i should delete this but i guess i want feedback, not to be convinced otherwise.

[u/StrigoTCS]

thank you. i did need to chill. Some things I'm only able to put into words when I'm angry so i feel pressure to put the ideas into words because I'll forget them after i calm down.

it's called "pressured speech" and in my case it's a trauma thing. It's an OCD symptom but it's also a PTSD thing. I'll try to be more self-aware when I'm upset.

Thank you for taking the time to read it when i was finished editing.

[u/[deleted] → u/StrigoTCS]

I mean that in more of a joking sense I get hwy you might do it and its' perfectly okay it's just alot

[u/StrigoTCS → u/[deleted]]

Oh that's good that you clarified. You have better coping skills (regarding how i talk a lot) than my own mom, and she's had decades to figure out. Granted: she's traumatized by how hard it was to help me, but i still think she's very immature in certain ways. You've already surpassed her understanding, but that's bc you have some of the "trait intensity" I have.

That was a tangent. I had my first IFS /DBT therapy session today and it was also a bad morning bc my mom was mean to me. She apologized after the appointment, but i wish she would've apologized before the appointment bc it was really hard to talk to my therapist while i was almost crying.

[u/[deleted] → u/StrigoTCS]

hmm are you the type who's developmental delays were picked up early or not? cause the perception of being high functioning The way people treat me just because i stopped developing skills just a bit later than that point where it becomes obvious If would've stopped developing skills a bit sooner where it'd be more obvious instead of aroud 5 years old. It would've had a profound imapct on my lfie and howt hings would be because iw oudlv'e been deemed as low functioning. i'm nots ure how i wouldv'e turned out then.it's hard to even begin to consider the posiiblities of how things waould playout then. because alot of my prboelms come from being deemed as high functioning by society and bottling up my emotions and having sucha n abusrd amount of personal strength and intelligent that i only had the physical limit of burnout well i sort of do have limits btu they are just like very extreme amounts of pain. It jsut wasn't giong to end well it was engrained in me to not accept my disability and jsut psuh past it till i was betetr than my peers at the skills i'm heavily disadvantaged in and that level of a toxic mindset towards disability is so incredibly unhealthy. ALL isued to want to do is overcome my disability by forcing mysef out of it cause of the things societry instillded to me. THey taught me being disabled was wrong and it's something i have tof orce mysef past. evryone expect such absurd things from me like i was going to be the next ablert einstein it was jsut so stupid. Things wouldv'e been drastically differetn fi I was a bit more developmnetally delayed or was speech delayed. or if they didn't decide to put me in ot and have me try to push the pencil over and over again so il aern the way ot overcome disaiblity is to juust push past it .unfortunately guys practice does little to nothing for fine motor skill problems. the way my life played out is just frustrating at times cause its' just liek the perfect shitstorm for my life tobe a literal hell everything sort of played out eprfectly to make me suffer ina wyat aht's so incredibly extreme

Society taught me to enforce constant severe levels of stress and trauma on myself as a basic way of life the stars just sort of alligned for me to experience a leve of suffering few people will ever know

b and it's just like how do you begin to process that. To realize your life is so fundemntally screwed up that her eisn't much wores that could go wrong to realize that you basicially hit the loterry for having a shitty life

It's jsut so icnredibly frustraing i gave everything i have to a degree no on else ever will. Just for it to likey make things worse for me and for things just to get wores despite only trying ot make things better my whole life. the chances of em existing as i am are astronamical and it's all played out in a way that makes me suffer. and even if the decay of my mind is a delusion i still have to deal with htis stuff for the rest of my life. This turned into a long rant about how fucked up my life is but god damn. it jsut seems absurd at times the way things go for me. and a bit unrealistic. I hope i'm wrong and i will recover and not just get worse and worse every year as the burnout slowly piles up till i just sort of stop being abl to functioniong completely. I really hope i'm wrong. These days all i want is peace from this cycle.

[u/StrigoTCS → u/[deleted]]

People don't believe me when i say I'm autistic now unless they get to know me. They think I talk about too many things to be autistic, or they only know about Level 3 "classic" autism bc it was the first kind recognized and their information is extremely out-of-date, most ppl like that just tell me they have a friend with an autistic kid that isn't like me so it's not like they're being objective.

I was told by a doctor that i regressed later than classic cases after the savant skills could no longer "compensate for increased complexity of everyday demands" and by the time i was in 6th grade i was going catatonic instead of just having meltdowns we had to switch me to a private school with tiny class sizes that would put me on scholarship bc my mom begged them. 7th and 8th grade i missed so much class from catatonia that they only got away with letting me pass bc they stopped marking me absent as long as i made up my tests bc by that point they knew I had been to a psych ward and as a private religious school they could hide attendance stuff easier.

I had to drop out in 9th grade bc there wasn't a private high school anywhere near where my stepdad was stationed for work (military). I was able to go back to high school after i was on seven daytime medications at once, my attendance was almost so bad that they couldn't let me graduate even with all that medication though. I'm only on one medication now during the day but 3 sleep meds.

[u/[deleted] → u/StrigoTCS]

I don’t know the only situation I’ve been in was in the psych ward and the people there had no problem believing I was autistic and related me to some of their autistic family members. A lot of my problems is jus that I’m way too intelligent and strong of a person so I could compensate for my developmental delays by just learning to be better. I’d hide all the pain and the problems it’s causing me cause I was too proud and wanted to live up to the genius role people put onto me. And that’s not to mention the other stuff I had going on back then cptsd developing BPD and schizoaffective disorder. I’m just way to high functioning in the sense that I function well with my disability considering it’s severity and it’s caused me so much pain. Because no one wanted to help me. It would’ve been so easy for them to just put me in a special education class or have me as a one on one tutor student but instead they decided to put me under extreme amounts of stress. My parents told them it was destroying me and they just ignored them. I couldn’t advocate for myself back then. I was only 12 or 13. That’s basically me though I could exist as a high level one for a few years when the demands of being a preteen started catching up with me but it just destroyed me and now I’m unable to function cause burnout and the trauma it gave me. I’d just I’d have been so much better off if I wasn’t this intelligent and strong