I think, in some ways, the Lemmy autistic community is the most reasonable and balanced-perspective collective of ASD folks that I’ve found online so far. It might be the only one that I can really say I’ve found in my own experience.

Other spaces seem to get overtaken by obsession and negativity to an unhealthy degree. Which, of course, I understand but sad to see it drown out positive posts all-too-often. It’s odd, because I figured it would require a lot of active moderating to achieve what we seem to have here.

Anyway, to the post topic.

I lived a life as a thoroughly miserable autistic person until I was 33, I’m 43 now. Once driven by a envious, misanthropic, self-toxic ego that was desperate to protect itself from pain and shame; I can understand how deeply entrenched your personality can become affected by negative patterns and to start from a position of very little effective supports. I now consider myself to be a pretty optimistic and resilient person. Context to understand my follwing thoughts.

What I need to live a good life:

1. I need to take responsibility for changing what I can within myself

This is really fundamental, and pretty difficult depending on what your starting mindset is. It’s true that a lot of the conditional aspects of life that give me difficulty are not my fault, but focusing on that to any significant degree will make it a barrier to self-change. In the simplest sense, blame of any kind is a blocker to taking responsibility and when my thoughts and words tell a story of blame (whether towards myself, others, the world) then I try to figure out how to use that story as a prompt to act responsibly.

2. I need one person who understands me and believes in me

A person. More would be nice, maybe, but one is all I need. I realize that’s still a pretty big hurdle given that practically all of us are living isolated kinds of realities, but its a numbers game. Do the work to meet other neurodivergent people in a way that might allow for a connection, expect nearly all of those interactions may be misses anyway. It doesn’t have to be neurodivergent people, but from my perspective it’s gonna save a lot of time. I never thought there was anyone in the world who was like me, part of what drove my misery, and finding someone similar and supportive helped me do difficult self-work and helped pick me up whenever failures and setbacks happened. A good fit in therapy can help here too, but thats its own journey to find the right person.

3. I need to understand my specific autistic needs and limitations

I started my self-work from the position of being undiagnosed. I didn’t really even begin to consider the possibility that I was autistic until the COVID pandemic, and I eventually got assessed in 2022. The pandemic really opened my eyes because all of the social changes that came about in society (lockdown, physical distancing, wearing masks, etc) came as a massive relief to my day-to-day instead as a painful imposition to endure. That offered me a lot of clues to investigate and led me to understand how my social and environmental needs are very different from the norm, effectivley matching the autistic template. Really, for the first time I could believe there was a framework and others out there with a shared kind of experience where understanding myself could be achieved. I think this is ongoing work for me, to understand myself and others like me, especially because I lived so much of my life trying to fit the neurotypical culture and behaviour template. When you don’t know you’re autistic, there’s a high risk of trying to mask as neurotypical beyond your capacity to do so. The burnout from that can be catastrophic and life-changing, but luckily I was able to draw upon items #1 and #2 from this list to heal and remake myself into a healthy person instead of it driving me the other way into (probably) my own end.

4. I need to accept that I am autistic

Again, fighting my societal programming here. I expect myself to easily be able to do a lot of things that are commonly in reach for most people but the list of things that I forgive myself for is growing. That doesn’t mean I abdicate my responsibilty to try or to work on those things, but understanding that there is a different path, a different level of support required, and a different definition of success for those things lets me take responsibility for them. It also helps me do the work of forgiveness more broadly. I forgive myself for the things that are totally out of my control, forgive others for their misjudgements and unfair expectaions, forgive myself for when I feel the old feelings again that once held me back.

5. I need to behave according to my actual values and needs

Figuring out what these are and putting them into practice is what taking responsibility looks like. Keeping a reflective and honest eye on myself to ensure that I’m not falling into the complacency of self-delusion that this kind of work should ever end. It’s easy to do that. To make significant milestone accomplishments that lead you to rest for too long, satisfied that becoming a relatively better person than you were is enough to carry you forwards indefinitely. No, I’ve learned that leads to a backslide. To be a better person, you must resist the idea that you are one and always work to become one… whatever that may look like, in all areas of life.

To wrap up this post…

Okay, so thats my thoughts on what I need for a good life. Of course there are specific actions that I take to make this a reality. Those actions are evidence of me taking responsibility and fulfilling my values and needs and, if you are starting from a place of negative blackhole self-esteem, doing so can bring you a healthy self and way of being in a world that seems to naturally discourage that for you.

I hope you are having a good day today.