Image text: @agnieszkasshoes: "Part of what makes small talk so utterly debilitating for many of us who are neurodivergent is that having to smile and lie in answer to questions like, "how are you?" is exhausting to do even once, and society makes us do it countless times a day."
@LuckyHarmsGG: "It's not just the lie, it's the energy it takes to suppress the impulse to answer honestly, analyze whether the other person wants the truth, realize they almost certainly don't, and then have to make the DECISION to lie, every single time. Over and over. Decision fatigue is real"
@agnieszkasshoes: "Yes! The constant calculations are utterly exhausting - and all under the pressure of knowing that if you get it "wrong" you will be judged for it!"
My addition: For me, in addition to this, more specifically it's the energy to pull up that info and analyze how I am. Like I don't know the answer to that question and that's why it's so annoying. Now I need to analyze my day, decide what parts mean what to me and weigh the average basically, and then decide if that's appropriate to share/if the person really wants to hear the truth of that, then pull up my files of pre-prepared phrases for the question that fits most closely with the truth since not answering truthfully is close to impossible for me.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CvPSP-2xU4h/?igshid=MzRlODBiNWFlZA==
Thank you for saying what I was trying to express and just couldn't. It hurts so much to be told "just act like 'normal' people so you don't seem to be 'disabled'". We're not disabled, just different!
I'm disabled. I can barely deal with normal amounts of noise. Banning cars and ads would go a long way to making me less disabled, but unfortunately I just have a lower tolerance for attention violence, and we live in a society of frequent attention violence.
I understand what you mean. I'm also extremely noise sensitive and have to wear ear plugs pretty much all the time. Being outside is so exhausting.
That's part of what I was trying to say though. This world isn't made for us and barely anyone cares to make it easier. In a different world we wouldn't be disabled. We have different needs than NT people and it's the world that disables us, not our being different.
❤️I swear we're gonna get this all sorted out. Maybe not in our lifetimes, but we're gonna help it get there. Just by having these conversations we're gonna make it happen