
I am a member of a private yet abundantly populated Facebook group named Autism Inclusivity. In my opinion, this group has a nice balance of showing empathy for othersâ shared struggles, providing advice to those wishing to learn more, and humorous or light-hearted content shared just for fun.
One such post used this âself-love hippoâ to provoke fellow autistic members to simply list âthree things you like about yourselfâ in the comments. I responded to this post myself, including the traits of âcreative,â âpassionate,â and [continuing] âgrowth.â Then, as I curiously scrolled through othersâ comments, I noticed several of the same themes emerged over and over again. Furthermore, many of these themes or terms are in stark contradiction to how the general public perceives autism. Itâs no secret that many (most?) non-autistic people harbor false and harmful perceptions of what autism really means. So terms conveying confidence in âparentingâ or âempathyâ are ones that may strike cognitive dissonance in a lay audience, perhaps cracking open a door to future learning and social justice advocacy.
The patterns I recognized, just by scanning the positive traits of the adult autistic community, inspired me to generate a word cloud to help further visualize the trends, both for my own curiosity and for anyone elseâs. I used a freely-available web-based software to produce the following graphic:
For any STEM-minded folks, Iâll mention that this result was based on 220 terms shared by approximately n = 70 participants. By the comparatively larger text, we can see that âhumor,â âcreativeâ and âheartâ are three of the most frequently mentioned traits. Not too far behind are âresilience,â âkindnessâ and âempathy.â For anyone raised to believe that autistic people lack empathy, are inflexible, or donât think abstractly â I challenge you to grapple with this harmful contradiction. For anyone who is actually autistic or is an authentic ally, what are your âthree things you like mostâ about yourself or your autistic loved one?
source https://www.programage.com/news/What_Autistic_People_Love_About_Ourselves_1624399250326191.html
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