To understand that Autism is NOT a mental illness?

[Oxfordblue]

Just that really, someone posted that autism is a mental illness.
I understand autism to be a different way of thinking/perceiving etc. Not an illness that one may or may not recover from

(My daughter is waiting for an assessment for autism & I would hate her to feel that she 'has a mental illness' & actually find that statement so disempowering. The world needs people to think differently, to challenge ideas that maybe set in stone & blur the idea that one size fits all.)

I give up.

For what it’s worth Battleax I get what you’re saying, and you’re right.

It’s a neurodevelopment disorder isn’t it?

Also just starting the diagnosis process with my daughter so all new to me right now!

Oh dear. I wandered off for a while, it’s all humour and zombies. I come back and it’s idiots calling it a personality disorder and yet again NTs telling us they know best because they gave birth to one of us. Being a mum of someone with ASC doesn’t mean you understand it as well as a person with ASC. You can’t feel it from the outside. Yet the NTs tell us we have no empathy.

@Notevilstepmother oh thank fuck, it’s not just me!

It's a disability. Not a mental illness.

Notevilstepmother - This thread has been an utterly depressing read (but then most threads about autism are) but you've just brightened up my day with this brilliant line "yet again NTs telling us they know best because they gave birth to one of us"
It's a serious topic matter I know, but that slayed me. So thank you for making me laugh on an otherwise rubbish day.

Btw there is no longer any such thing as as Aspergers. Quite rightly so in my opinion. I know plenty of people who are autistic with additional learning difficulties and they cope with meeting me and get on with me in a way they don’t get on with and can’t cope with NTs, becuase they know somehow that we are the same. I have an innate understanding because of how I am. I don’t expect an NT to understand because they just don’t in my experience. Why would they?

Thank you 😊

I know it sounds mean, but it’s true and frustrating.

Possibly the fastest increase in autism diagnosis is mums getting diagnosed after their children. There's a reasonable chance that many 'NT mums' being written off are also autistic...

It's also pretty arrogant to assume that sharing a diagnosis with someone else's child gives greater insight than actually living with and loving them 24/7.

It’s pretty arrogant as a NT person to repeatedly and deliberately dismiss and minimise the experiences of an autistic person.

So, here we are.

It goes both ways, Unicorns.

I am autistic btw.

I know! It was a response to equal the last line of the last post.

We’re never going to change this, it’s never going to work. We’ll always come behind, because the alternative is that we’re heard and it benefits some people to stop that.

So tell me, what’s the fucking point? If we’ve to stay in the shadows, be forced out of our homes because of bullies, be scared to send our children to school?

What is the actual fucking point?

Some mums may well be autistic too. However if they are, they’d understand and not say stuff like that.

You can love someone as much as you want, you don’t necessarily get inside their head. It’s a different way of thinking and a different understanding of the world. It’s knowing how it feels that (some of) those that love you don’t really understand or see things the same way.

Thanks sodding.

NTs telling us they know best because they gave birth to one of us.

Exactly not

I mean; “Exactly @Notevilstepmother“

Why do you say autism is not a mental health condition TerfsUp ?
Mental refers to the working of the mind which is one of the functions of the brain which is neurologically different from a NT brain.
The diagnostic criteria for autism are found in the manual of mental disorders.

@HardAsSnails
@SoddingUnicorns
@Battleax
@Notevilstepmother

High (Aspie) fives.

Teggun here's an argument for why autism should not be classified alongside mental health conditions:
www.larry-arnold.net/Autonomy/index.php/autonomy/article/view/CO1/html

I find it fairly frustrating that someones whose experience of autism is reportedly living in a household of aspergics and having some autistic friends who have learning disabilities,

Are you conflating not and I into one person?

@ThistleAmore high five right back

zzzzz you won’t get allies by silencing autistic people. That’s a fact.

Thistle, I'm not an 'aspie'.

*@HardAsSnails
@SoddingUnicorns
@Battleax
@Notevilstepmother

High (Aspie) fives.

✋🏼

Neither am I, but I appreciated the sentiment.

You accuse us of not being staunch allies without a trace of understanding that it is you who are alienating us, along with everybody else!