Edit: I don’t think I should’ve used the word invalidation. I didn’t think about the connotation it holds with validation, and said what sounded right. I think I should’ve just said understanding. Someone in the comments helped me with that one. Lastly, I don’t ever want to force anyone into accepting things, sorry if it seems like that. I just wanted to vent a little!

Like many autistic people, I truly feel my triggers are not seen as… triggers. Even when I explicitly draw the line, people will still cross it, whether it be intentional or not. I would give grace if it wasn’t intentional, but in the moment, my brain won’t let me do that, for now maybe.

For more context, I was diagnosed with Autism this May, and I’m 20. I’ll list off a couple and how they came to be. I won’t do all of them because this would turn into a college paper if I covered every single one…

Being called a kid, child, etc., or people saying things like “you’re just 20…”really sets me off. Ever since I turned 18, I’ve gotten a whole lot of “you’re just a child.” I don’t just not like this because of the indication itself, I don’t just not like it either. It goes way deeper than that. It makes me grind my teeth bc of the way this word was used around me as a child. My dad’s side of the family never really like children, and they were old school. They’re also alcoholics, so they would sometimes call me “child,” or “kid” instead of my name. They talked to me like they would never acknowledged me as a person. I still don’t feel like any of them have acknowledged me as a human being… that’s why those words are a trigger for me. Whenever someone older than me says this, I see my drunken father in them, the man that took his anger out of me and my mother. So yeah… real big one here.

When things that are supposed to be done out of goodwill start to feel transactional… I get suspicious and a little anxious. When I was in elementary school the kids in the class were forced to talk to me by their parents, who were forced to tell them to do so by my school, who were forced to pass this message along by my parents… I was told about this after I left that school. As I am now, I am able to make friends AND keep them, but I just start to question everything when the friendship starts to feel transactional, which will make those around me feel uneasy.

“Things will get better,” “You don’t feel that way,” “You WILL find a girlfriend,” etc…. Telling me what my future entails, or telling me what my own person feels, is quite dehumanizing. This is the one that no one will not be able to cross… bc it’s hard to stay in the present, and to think ahead, when things may be different. I don’t like to think about future me. Future me might be happier than current me, and for reasons I don’t fully understand, that makes me immensely sad. All I know is future me is a different person, and I’ll start comparing myself to them. I don’t compare myself to other people, but what about someone that’s technically, me? It takes all of my motivation away, and it makes me feel completely helpless. I want to stay in the present, reflect on what I need to, and keep moving forward. When I think about the future, I only think about how this polluted Earth will start to deteriorate, how I’m no no longer hopeless, but flat-out uncertain whether or not I’ll find a partner, how a population of people may or may not be gone, how the US may or may not become an Authoritative state within the next year, how, and… yeah I don’t like thinking about the future.

Pushing my triggers in order to make me practice resisting them. This was done to me all throughout elementary school. This isn’t even a practice, it’s torture and just flat-out cruel.

When others force me to accept things. It’s like how society works in a certain way, I say how I can’t do XYZ, I get a response from someone that goes like “well that’s how things work so… accept it!”

Well…

ur mom. Accept that!!

I don’t know if anyone understands what I’m saying or not, I type/write a lot, so I also want to apologize abt that. Btw I do have a friend or two that understand and validate my triggers, but it’s only two people. I don’t see them all of the time, and don’t expect to either. I just wanted to get this off my chest. Thanks for reading if you made it this far!