Transcript

Hi Everybody, NeuroRebel here and I hope you’re having a great week so far. This week I wanted to talk a little bit about supporting autistic people because sometimes people say, Oh, I love and support autistic people, but they don’t really, when you look at things, so let’s dive right in.

Unfortunately, there are often a lot of people who I see claiming to be allies of autistic people in the autistic community. However, I don’t see these allies doing what we need or what I would need real allies to do for me as an autistic person. So here’s my question for you:

When you see an autistic person having a meltdown or you see someone having a meltdown and you see someone crying and panicking and not okay. What is your gut reaction? Is your reaction to help or do you dismiss that person and say, Oh, that person is a mess or, Oh, that person is crazy. You know, what, what is your reaction? Are you helpful? Even if you don’t know that person’s autistic, that’s someone that’s got something going on. Do you have compassion for that person?

Or do you just see someone and they go, I’ll look, they’re freaking out what a mess. You see someone who is rocking or maybe covering their ears or talking to themselves, like I do very frequently. What is your reaction to that? Do, do you think, “Oh, this person is a weirdo”?

What, what do you think, honestly? What, what are you doing when you see someone doing this? Do you think, Oh, that person’s autistic. Oh, that person’s just a human or do you stare at them or do you try not to look at them? Are you uncomfortable with these types of behaviors?

Are you conscious when you go into a space, if the space you’re in is sensory friendly, does the thought even crossed your mind?

If the lighting might be too bright for someone in the room or could possibly trigger someone to have a migraine or other neurological event? Do you consider if you have way too much perfume on that could make someone physically ill when you leave the house and get ready? You know, are you thinking about these things in your day to day life, these issues that impact autistic and neurodivergent people.

Read and learn about autism – are you going straight to the source? Are you listening to autistic people when they are sharing their own experiences, sharing their life as autistic human beings and sharing their autistic experiences? Or are you sharing only medical journals and medicalized pathological information about autism that doesn’t do the autistic experienced justice and really just dehumanizes us.

If you’re an employer, are you employing autistic people in your workspace? Are you giving people reasonable accommodations so that they can be their best selves every day – whether or not they have an autism diagnosis? Because some of us may not have the privilege of being diagnosed.

And do you want to do more?

These are just some things that as an autistic person, If you want to help, if you want to be an ally. These are my suggestions, these are my tips. These are just a few things me rambling off the top of my head.

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So you don’t miss an update. I will talk to you guys next week. Bye guys.

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With gratitude, Lyric