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Indistinguishability isn’t a moment though […] it is unending
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[…] That’s reasonable […] The same can be said of a lot of professional situations.
Teachers, for example, are usually expected to be more emotionally expressive and intuitive of their students than a stranger on the street would be.
The problem is, for a lot of people with flat affects or atypical body language, we’re expected to keep up that mask of extreme and regulated emotional expression at all times, and around all people.
Not just the people we’re working with or the people under our care, but our peers, friends, and family.
And worse, we’re expected to keep it up around the people who should, by rights, be taking care of us: parents, bosses, cops, and yes, even doctors and teachers.
The constant demand to perform emotions in ways that aren’t natural to us at all times leads to genuinely destructive problems with our abilities to self regulate.
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I fear your excitement over my As and my Bs. Like a giant bird, it clutches and carries me too close to the sun.
Beneath the height of your As lies the abyss of your Fs.
Autism: Explorations 