Patreon members and YouTube channel members had access to this video on September 7, 2022. The video’s public release will be November 9, 2022.
Transcript:
Hi, everyone -welcome back…. and if you’re new, welcome! I’m really glad you’re here. My name is Lyric. I am a late discovered Autistic, ADHD, adult. I’m also non-binary, and I use they/them pronouns… and I am openly Autistic.
Being openly Autistic does not come without some risks. If you’d like to know more about these risks, I invite you to stay tuned.
As I’ve said, I’m openly Autistic, and I’ve been openly Autistic since I started this blog, almost six years ago now. At this point I can’t “put the cat back in the bag”, so to speak. It’s now forever out on the internet. If you Google my name, you will find out that I am Autistic, ADHD, trans, and all of these other details, that I can no longer hide from people.
That’s a real thing to consider, about being openly Autistic: how open do you really want to be?
While this has worked out well, for me, there are risks to being openly Autistic.
First, I wanna talk about one of the risks that I, personally, didn’t have, but it is one that many of my readers shared with me. Reasons they either did not feel safe seeking an autism diagnosis, or were trying very hard to keep the fact that they were Autistic a secret was: parenting and custodial conflicts, where child custody might come into question, and a person’s NeuroType might be used against them in a situation such as family court, or when trying to adopt, or dealing with foster care system.
Unfortunately, this is something I have heard from multiple Autistic People, that had their significant other, or another person, use their being Autistic, or NeuroDivergent, against them in some type of child custody situation. That’s a really big fear.
Another one: I have had people tell me that they’re worried about officially getting diagnosed Autistic, because they have parent or guardian who they feel might use this against them, to say they don’t have competency to take care of themselves, and they’re worried there might be ending up in a custodial situation, where they may be denied the ability to care for themselves, if they were to have this diagnosis.
Look at Britney Spears, for example, if a celebrity with that big of a profile, is able to be put into this type of a custodial abuse situation, Autistic People, who do not have the celebrity power, are even more vulnerable to this type of abuse, so this is another consideration some of my readers shared with me.
Another one that is a major concern, is if you’re having a public meltdown, for example, and that is used to call your competency into question by police, or maybe a medical professional, or mental health professional.
Where then, the police are asking, ” You seem very agitated. Are you right?” And they’re asking questions, maybe even making it worse, and then you get, mental health services called on you, and you end up getting locked up for having a meltdown in public.
You better believe that, even though I am openly Autistic, I am gonna dial up the NeuroTypical anytime I am in a police situation.
My medical phobia is so bad, I just don’t go to the doctor, even if I think I might be dying, because… yeah; that’s a whole nother issue altogether, that we could do an entire video on, talking about why I have medical phobia, from just so many bad medical situations.
There is real danger in being in those situations where people might step over you and say, “this person doesn’t know how to take care of themselves, or this person is, is a danger to themselves, or this person shouldn’t be on their own”, where people who have authority might step in use that against you.
Even just acting Autistic… before I knew I was Autistic, as a young person, got me beaten up, and abused, and bullied, and picked on, by other kids, teachers, and even authority figures.
I was punished for not being able to air quotes, “act normal” and I didn’t even know what normal was, or that I was acting any other way, other than how I acted.
I didn’t know I was Autistic and nobody else knew I was Autistic either, and simply displaying Autistic communication, body language, and any kind of Autistic air quotes, “coded behavior” got me picked on and harassed by people.
Even without the autism labels, just being different and standing out in society in itself can be very dangerous.
Fast forward to many years later, when I entered the workforce, and landed what I thought was my dream job.
When I started trying to hold myself to the same expectations of my colleagues and peers, and my NeuroDivergent traits kept coming up on my behavioral reviews, it really started to demoralize me. Add to that, that I was on the recruiting and hiring team, and as a newly diagnosed Autistic Person, had just discovered that all of the traits we were hiring for were basically NeuroTypicalism, and any Autistic trait was scolded, penalized, and what we wanted to avoid in our hiring pipeline.
In addition, I had noticed a pattern, before I was diagnosed Autistic, that anyone I seemed to get along with, or related to, or was a bit like me, would fail in this organization. They would either leave, quit, or be let go for “not being a good culture fit”, air quotes. Those people, I loved the most, were the people that never saw it coming.
That really hurt, because it made me realize, to be successful in the organization that I thought was the dream job I’d always wanted, you had to be not like me. I knew I was not the expectation, and I tried really hard to mask, and compensate, and be what I knew they wanted on their team.
I tried so hard to be NeuroTypical it broke me. It broke my mental health. It broke my physical health. I wasn’t sure how much longer I’d be able to survive at that point. Everything was beginning to feel so incredibly hopeless. Then I was diagnosed Autistic, at the age of 29, when I hit this crisis point.
I had to hit this crisis point, where that mask, that camouflaging, because I had been camouflaging for so many years, and so hard, it just broke. It cracked, and I couldn’t do it anymore, and people around me expected me to be able to do it, and those skills that I had built, were just failing.
Being openly Autistic, as far as your career and employment goes… I used to get many calls back, because I have a decent resume, and since coming out openly Autistic, only one thing on that resume has changed, with the exception of also having more work experience, which means the resume is stronger than it was before… is that, when you Google me, you can now see that I am openly Autistic, openly ADHD, openly trans all, of those things I mentioned in the beginning of the video, that I cannot take back.
Now, when I apply for jobs, it is much harder to get a call back from someone who doesn’t already know me and my capabilities, because they see Autistic, and they don’t really understand what’s needed to support me, and instead of asking, they just rather hit, skip and move on to the next candidate.
In addition, some of my readers have told me that being openly Autistic in the workplace has led to them either being discriminated against, pigeonholed, or even locked out of certain careers, that they wanted to go into, because those careers wouldn’t allow an Autistic Person into the training required to get into those careers.
So these are real risks, and considering that Autistic People are statistically more likely to be under or unemployed, we don’t need to add anymore risks for a lot of us. It’s a really major thing to consider.
Now, if I was going through the job interview process with someone, most likely, wouldn’t disclose the fact that I’m Autistic until after I had a job offer in hand, or we were much further along in the interview process… but now people see it before I even get a chance to explain myself.
I’m openly Autistic now because I can’t hide anymore. I started to lose that ability six years ago, and I suspect that many of us lose those abilities as we age. I can no longer hide the way I once could, and being open, for me, is now my only choice.
Now that I look back on it, I actually suspect my mask wasn’t as good as I think it was, because people seem to always cloak me, even if they didn’t have a word for what it was that they were spotting. When you’re made to stand out, it’s really hard to blend in, and the effort that blending in took me was a lot.
All right, everyone, thank you so much for hanging out with me this week.
This is the end of the video. So if you made it this far, hit that thumbs up. Let me know. I didn’t lose you, because as an ADHDer, it’s really hard to go from point A to point B. My brain wants to go B, C, TREE, 5, 9, 9, 7.
It’s going all over the place, so let me know if I kept it on topic, cuz that’s really hard for me, and that’s one of my biggest goals right now, when I’m doing these videos, is to keep it on track, Lyric. It’s easier said than done.
Thank you so much, everyone who watches these videos. I put out new videos each and every Wednesday. So if you’re one of the ones who is new, please subscribe, follow, and turn on notifications, so that you never miss an update.
Thank you so much to everyone who is here watching, giving feedback, sharing your own experience.
I’d love to hear if you have any thoughts about some of the risks of being openly NeuroDivergent, or openly Autistic.
Obviously, if you have personal experience with that, you might not be able to share in an open public forum, unless you have an anonymous screen name. That’s not tied to you, yada, yada.
Safety first, be careful. Don’t out yourselves here on my account, but if you are able to share, I’d love to hear your thoughts and perspective, as always, I am grateful for those, because I never want this to just be only my story and my experience.
I like to tell my story, and share my experience as a launching point for other NeuroDivergent and Autistic conversations. I like to show that we have a vast variety of experiences,, as Autistic and NeuroDivergent People, and we’re not all the same.
Thanks everyone. Also, of course, before I go, thanks to the Patreon subscribers, YouTube channel members, Facebook supporters, and now the Twitter super followers… and also I think I’ve got someone who subscribed on Anchor. Thanks everyone; for that, for that little monetary subscription.
You make this blog possible… transcriptioning software for the laptop, close captioning software for the iPhone, the technology with what this blog is filmed on… the website hosting that I use, so that I can post transcripts for all of these videos.
None of that would be possible without the help and support of you, the readers and viewers, so I am always eternally grateful for each and every single one of you.
I will see you all next Wednesday. Bye!
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With gratitude,
– Lyric