As we probably all know, autistics people have difficulties with being taken seriously. This is apparently because non autistic people pay more attention to body language and tone of voice than to actual words and our body language and tone of voice usually don’t express our emotions, so other people just assume that it’s ok to ignore what we are saying.

Funnily enough, this is happening even if we’re speaking to people who are aware that’s how we present – if they want to, they will still ignore what we’re saying and only focus on how we’re saying it. It is possible they do that because they just have an agenda and are focused on getting what they want no matter what, and they would ignore non autistic person point of view as well. So this way it’s not a disability discrimination, yet it is a game that we don’t know how to win.

In the past I had plenty of troubles with that. Once I was in the situation when, during official negotiations over a certain issue, I explained I can’t accept solution A, I can only accept B. The other person said they can only deliver A, B is not an option. Even though I explained why coping with A is going to be difficult for me they refused to make any changes.

‘Ok, if you’re going to do A, I’m going to do X’ – I said, knowing X doesn’t suit them.

‘Fine’ they said.

Shortly after that I informed them I managed with my X. ‘How dare you?!’ was the response I got.

‘What you’re talking about? – I asked. ‘I told you I’m going to do that and you said fine.’

‘But I thought you’re only saying that’ – the person admitted and they looked really confused.

I really hope I looked angry on this particular occasion, although being autistic I really do not know.

And the thing is that alerting our body language to express how we feel is really not an option. We can’t control our body language well and would still not know how we’re being percived so it’s pretty much waste of our precious energy.

Yesterday, during the time of intensive thinking about this and that, I came up with a different idea about how to get your point accross and be heard: say what you have to say and if the other person doesn’t want to hear you, get up and leave. Don’t give them any hope that talking to you is going to get you to change your mind.