Autistics and Agency

It is wickedly important for autistics to celebrate, mark, stim, breathe, hide, dress, act, accept or reject social occasions or therapies, speak, react ... SOLELY THEIR OWN WAY.

The price for not doing terribly often is a mass of unrecognised and disastrous things such as:

☐ lost agency/choice

☐ impaired self-identity

☐ loss of perspective

☐ anxiety/depression

☐ reduced dignity/freedom

☐ halted progress/hope of a better life

☐ oppression through power imbalance

☐ lost minority-rights for all autistics

☐ dangerous ideation

☐ reduced longevity

If anyone was intending to attend something unwelcome, inappropriate, or requiring too many spoons, it could help to make a list of such things as those above and tick the ones you are willing to surrender or part-surrender.

It is not free to go, to mask, to do 'normal', to give up, to act against self.