megaitcouldbeworse-help:

butterflyinthewell:

Dear neurotypical people and allistic people…

Autistic people get crap for not asking for help “sooner” when we’re found floundering around in frantic, frustrated confusion. 

The irony is when we do break down and ask for help or clarification, we get told “you should know that already”, or that “it’s silly that you don’t understand something so simple” or, my personal non-favorite “I already explained that to you!”

Or we see you roll your eyes, hear you sigh, hear your voice get that annoyed condescending tone and have to listen to you talk to us like we’re the most unintelligent things to grace your presence.

Can you stop doing that shit to us?

Some examples of questions I might ask someone may be:

“When you say smaller, do you mean shorter or narrower or literally smaller in scale with the same proportions?”
“Do you want the shade of purple lighter and closer to pink or darker and closer to blue?”
“If you say a lot of that, do you want 20 copies or a higher number of copies?”

Luckily I’m mostly around people who know I think in specifics and will be specific for me, but during my teens I had the opposite. It messed me up for asking for help as an adult.

Many autistic people are terrified to ask for help when we really need it because it’s a huge hunk of emotional labor and oftentimes the payoff doesn’t get us the answers we need to do something we’re expected to do.

Just answer the questions we ask even if it’s the 902834092834th time we asked about it. I know it’s annoying, but we want to do our best and how can anybody do their best if the help they seek makes them feel bad about themselves or question their intelligence?

Holy shit, I’m not the only one that thinks like that…