There’s this blog group that I love that I’ve followed for about a year now. It’s one of those groups about a specific dog, and of course the dog has been anthropomorphized beyond all recognition. He’s funny, loving, stubborn, clumsy, goofy, and dumb as a rock, but he’s very endearing. He has built up quite a following.
Obviously, all the posts are written by the dog’s owner. I mean, it might be easy to forget, but I’m not a dope. Sometimes she writes them in her voice, describing her dog’s crazy antics in a way that make me laugh so hard that I cry, and sometimes she’ll write them from her dog’s perspective.
She does seem to be more sensitive about cyber-trolls than the average social media celebrity. Some fools seem to get rather offended when she describes her dog as dumb, claiming that she shouldn’t hurt her dog’s feelings like that, and that she’s a horrible mother. It’s all so stupid. He’s a dog. He’s not reading the posts. She’ll let these trolls get to her, and respond defensively. She feeds them. It’s a bit sad. I hate those posts.
But on this day, she wrote a post that I can only assume was a response to some troll, but it hit me kind of hard. It was in her dog’s “voice”. Her dog, whom I’ve come to love. And it made me like him a little less for the first time. To paraphrase, he said that having a mental illness is not an excuse to be a shitty person. He went on to say he was sympathetic to people’s struggles. He’s had his fair share of trauma. But he said that trauma, diagnosis, and going through stuff doesn’t erase the damage you do to others. And this part I’ll quote directly:
You can be unwell & still be wrong.
You can be hurting & still be toxic.
You can be damaged & still cause damage.
Being mentally ill is not the problem.
Refusing help, refusing accountability, and expecting everyone else to absorb your bullshit indefinitely is the problem.
A reason is NOT the same thing as an excuse!
Here’s the thing, Dear Reader. I agree with all of that in theory. And oh my God, did everyone agree strongly in the comments! And yes, I 100% agree that if you’re capable of acting right, you should act right. If you’re capable of behaving within social norms, then yes, get your shit together and do so.
But I get so sick and tired of people assuming that all people who are acting like an asshole are mentally ill, and that all mentally ill people are automatically assholes, and that all mentally ill people who are acting like assholes are necessarily actively choosing to do so and can always stop behaving that way at that point in their mental health journey. And the implication that people who are out of control, by definition, are automatically refusing help, refusing accountability, and expecting everyone else to absorb their bullshit is, well… bullshit.
A lot of out-of-control people desperately want help, but don’t know how to ask. Or they have asked, over and over and over again, for years, and it has gotten them nowhere. Or, hello? Have you considered this? Their out-of-control behavior is their cry for help. Or they’re so far gone that they don’t truly understand how they are impacting those around them. And heaven knows that the services available for mentally ill people in this country are thin on the ground. It’s not like you can go to MentalHealthMart and pull your solutions off the shelf, run them through the self-checkout and come out looking like Wally Cleaver.
The constant societal pressure on the mentally ill to just snap out of it, straighten up and fly right, and get with the program? Yeah. Not helpful. Not at all. Most mentally ill people are not enjoying their lives. It’s not a lifestyle choice. Don’t you think we’d all like to make life easier on ourselves in that way if we could? Don’t you think we’d much rather not be bullied, not be ostracized, not be treated like freaks and social pariahs and people to be afraid of, if we could?
Also, there are some cycles in some mental illnesses, where you reach a point where you truly are out of control. When you are in the throes of a full-blown meltdown, or in the middle of a paranoid delusion, it’s not like you can go, “Okay, let’s do something else.” It’s more like you are strapped to the front of a roller coaster, and you are stuck there until the freakin’ ride is over. Expecting you to do the driving at that point in time is absurd.
As I read through more and more of the comments on that post and saw everyone putting the burden on the mentally ill person to just conform, already, and stop making excuses, I was looking right at part of the reason that it is so hard to break some of these cycles. I think the vast majority of mentally ill people are fully aware that change needs to happen, and they are often trying or dying to know how to make that change. I think mentally stable people have no comprehension of how hard that road can be.
Most of us are not expecting the world to stop for our struggles. But the complete lack of compassion from those around us on a daily basis can knock the wind out of us, and make it a lot harder for us to move forward. Perhaps, rather than getting irritated by those who aren’t fitting into your neat definition of how the world is supposed to work, you should consider giving them a helping hand, or broadening your perspectives about what acceptable behavior looks like. Who cares, for example, if someone rocks back and forth in their chair, if they’re not hurting anyone?
I think the reason that post struck so much of a nerve for me today as that someone whose opinion matters very much to me has been telling me quite a bit lately that I’ve been using my autism as an excuse. And damn, when he says that, I feel like I’m being slapped in the face. To me it sounds like, “Oh, for God’s sake, snap out of it, already! Just get over yourself! Just act normal! Have the energy, the comprehension, the coping skills, and stop being so paralyzed and acting so overwhelmed all the time! Get off your lazy ass and stop being so negative! Because you being you is really irritating. I want someone else!”
Well, gee willikers, why didn’t I think of that? Thank you so much for solving my autism! You really need to package that up and sell it to millions of people around the world. We’d all be fixed, and you’d get the Nobel prize.
First of all, I only learned I was autistic 3 ½ years ago. Basically, 95 percent of my life, I had no idea. So I’m only learning what makes me tick myself. So now that I’m starting to get the answers I’ve so desperately wanted all my life, I’m excited. When I bring up my autism, I’m not using it as an excuse, I’m using it as an explanation. An explanation that, to me, is like water that I’ve finally found in a desert I’ve been wandering through my whole life. So to have it derisively dismissed like that, like I’m using it as a way of getting out of doing things or a way to continue to behave badly, frankly makes me want to scream until I run out of voice.
I was talking to people in one of my adult autism groups about this. Apparently this “autism as an excuse” thing is one of the many ways that neurotypicals trivialize autism, and it gets hurled at us when we can’t simply put our invisible disability on the shelf and stop being so annoyingly autistic, the same way a child who is slouching at the dinner table can sit up straight. As if we want to slouch, and are using a weak back as an excuse.
One theory is that people equate intelligence with capability and neurotypical function, and it rattles or annoys them when we’re intelligent but we don’t possess those things all the time. Because, dammit, we look like we ought to be able to, so stop making excuses.
They also like to say, “Everybody is a bit autistic,” or “everyone is on the spectrum” as a way of dismissing us. Because if everybody were a bit autistic, and most people can cope, then of course those of us who really are autistic should be able to do so as well. It trivializes our challenges and puts them on par with a neurotypical challenge, which makes us look petulant for not coping. (For the record, only about 1 – 4% of the population is autistic. At least that’s the current thinking. While that number may go up, it will never go up to 100%.)
Some people in that group posited the theory that neurotypicals are just jealous that they can’t come up with an excuse to get out of whatever thing they want to get out of. That made me laugh. But that would imply that we really are using autism as an excuse, and I genuinely don’t think I am. I just think I’m not masking as often as I used to, and people around me don’t find me as pleasant to be around, and would greatly prefer that I just go back to push, push, pushing myself to conform, which causes me to be constantly agitated and miserable, until I have a breakdown. Nicer for them, but hell on earth for me.
Tough cookies, everyone. After 58 years, I happen to find unmasking a massive relief. So maybe it’s time all of you get over yourselves, for a change.
Another good point that came up in the group is that boys grow up being allowed to act however they want to because “boys will be boys”, but girls grow up having to justify every little action that may look ‘weird’, so we actually have to verbalize our struggles and justify them, but then it’s considered “just an excuse.” That definitely resonates with me.
Also, some neurotypicals think that all autistics can only be “genuine” if their behavior is so extreme that it’s always obvious. Those of us who can almost “pass” can’t “really” be autistic, so it must be an excuse.
Or, perhaps, they make excuses all the time, so they assume that others do as well. Regardless of the reason behind the whole “autism as an excuse” trope, it’s clear that I’m not the only one who has a problem with it. But if you’ve ever uttered that sentence, or have had it hurled at you, here’s an interesting article, entitled When Is Autism Used As An Excuse And When Is It An Explanation? that will give you more professional insight on the subject. Check it out.
I think the next time I’m told I’m using my autism as an excuse, if I am, in fact, not using it to continue behaving in an intentionally hurtful way that I can learn to change, I’m going to think that the accuser isn’t really interested in understanding me, because my autism is a big part of who I am. So I’ll say, “Well, then, I think I’ll use my autism as an excuse to end this biased, trivializing, and woefully unenlightened conversation.”
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