First off I want to say that I’m glad I’m autistic. 20-30 years of struggle & humiliation before developing decent enough social skills, but in return I get to be very good at computer. I would choose this again.
I want to write about a lesson I think I’ve learned about myself which might apply to you too, and I’m interested in what you think about it. It has to do with intentions and how we feel when we say something that makes someone else feel bad. This happened quite often growing up. I would say something insensitive, a person would get mad at me, and my immediate reaction was that I was blameless because I had good intentions but (due to the autism) it didn’t come out right.
The hardest lesson I’ve had to learn is that this story isn’t true. It’s just 100% false. It relies on an incorrect belief that we possess full self-knowledge and don’t need to learn about ourselves. You do need to learn about yourself. Your self is somebody who will become more known to you as you age and see how you react to different experiences. You will realize how mercurial & weird you can be. And you will realize you are not inherently, axiomatically, a good person with good intentions.
Autistic people are even worse at knowing what’s going on inside themselves than others. The reality is you didn’t necessarily have good intentions, and your rush to forgive yourself was to miss a moment of possible personal growth. Because you are fully capable of, intentionally, being an asshole.
I agree with this. The times I’ve grown the most and increased my social skills were when I did some self-crit and I really try to analyze how something I say might make someone feel. Initially this led to overthinking and rumination which led to severe social anxiety and I was almost mute as a kid, but this ironically served me well as a survival mechanism, since I never said shit to anybody so I never had beef with anybody. Even funnier, I was voted prom queen in senior year because of that lol.
Once I alleviated my anxiety and used all of what I learned from careful observation, my masking reached a whole new level. Yet still I had some serious rejection sensitivity from years of misunderstanding. I had formed this cocoon of innocence, that I’m fundamentally a good person, and if someone doesn’t understand that, that’s a them problem, not a me problem 😎.
It was politics that made me realize how harmful one can be, out of arrogance and ignorance. Where your intentions don’t really matter, it’s your actions that do. Once I realized I was a child of empire, a racist liberal in the imperial core: that little cushion collapsed. My communist awakening sent my rejection sensitivity into overdrive. I was putting myself on trial and I was guilty and bad. It was very emotionally rough for me. But I like to think that I came out stronger. I think I reached your same conclusion: that we can’t just say we’re good and take that for granted. We must always look deep and make sure we’re really doing the best we can.
Also: I’m glad I’m autistic too! I don’t think I would have ever found communism without it.