“If you tried a little harder…” – the worst words to hear when you’ve already been trying your hardest, did your best, and had nothing left to give.
I’ve heard these words repeatedly throughout my lifetime, causing me to believe my best would never be enough for anyone (not even myself).
Because people don’t understand the natural diversity within human brains, they fail to understand one another – falsely assuming everyone has the same world experience as they do. We do this to each other when we fail to appreciate the variance within human experiences.
Before receiving my Autism diagnosis at the age of 29, I used to think this way, too. I didn’t know my brain and experience of the world varied from that of most people.
When I didn’t know I was Autistic, I used non-autistic people as the standard by which success was measured.
I modeled myself after people with brains, unlike mine, mimicking their behaviors (often without understanding what I was mimicking).
Teachers who didn’t know I was Autistic would treat me as if I were non-autistic. I suffered because the expectations placed on me were unfair and impossibly out of reach.
I took every failure and shortcoming to heart as confirmation that I was a “bad,” “broken,” “failed” person.
When I would turn in an assignment or project that I’d worked extremely hard on, teachers would often say things like, “Imagine what you could do if you would just apply yourself,” or my assignment would be returned with red ink and a frowny face at the top with the words “try harder next time” scribbled across the page.
“Try harder next time!” – salt in the wound, especially when placed next to a low-grade and with a frowny face on top.
In reality, most people never knew how hard I had tried. They assumed my effort was minimal based on assumptions about what was hard for them (and the work they could do with minimal effort).
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