Aspie Anger

We aspies often seem to have this deep-seated anger. It's usually entangled with, and comes out of, our pain, our confusion, our shame and our negative experiences of the world. We live in a world that doesn't like us, accept us, understand us, or, for the most part, seem to even want to. We are demonised, called a disease, an epidemic, brain damaged, a burden, a trial, something to be eradicated, or cold, arrogant, selfish, egotistical, rude, and anti-social to list but a few things. We are frequently bullied, harassed, abused, assaulted, reviled, ridiculed and rejected. Our families sometimes don't like or accept us, we struggle at work or school or home. And then we're told it's all our own fault.

So it's perfectly understandable, our anger. It's also understandable how it's often inseparable from our hurt and shame and confusion, and our feeling that we are somehow 'bad', just for being our autistic selves. We thrash around in it, not knowing whether to get mad at others, or to beat ourselves up. We tend to flip-flop from one to the other, sometimes not having the courage to express our rage at others because we don't know if we're in the right or not, or we're scared of them, or feel like we need them, or don't deserve better, and so on and so forth.

Often, our rage and pain become so bad, it leads to what I call "F*#k The World" syndrome. This is when the whole world seems like some ghastly, confusing merry-go-round, and all we want is to get off the ride, find some hole to crawl into and pull the cover over ourselves, screaming at the world, even if it's only in our heads, to LEAVE. US. THE %*#@. ALONE. We hate the world, and hate people, at times like that. This is understandable, and undoubtedly necessary at times, but in the long term, it's not a good place to stay. Our loneliness, fear, shame, isolation, confusion and misunderstanding of others, the tendency to 'go off into our heads' too much, get mad, lose it, and then recoil again in even greater shame and confusion and self-hatred... all these skyrocket when we're in that state, and just add to the whole mess.

I don't have any magic bullets for all this. But I do feel it's possible to change our lives. The most important thing is to accept and embrace our autistic selves, wholly and completely. This can be hard when we get so many negative messages, but sooner or later we have to free our heads from all that. This can only really be done effectively with the support and understanding of other autistics, who can provide feedback - "No, you're not crazy, I feel like that too, I've had that happen too, you're fine as you are, they had no right to do that, here's what I did", etc, and help you learn how to set boundaries with others, if need be.

The second thing is to accept, even embrace, our anger. Given how we've been treated, our anger is legitimate. We have the right to be angry, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise. It's kind of amazing, really, that we're all still alive to tell the tale. Own your anger. You have a right to it. Know that feeling anger is fine - what matters is how you express it. If you just lash out, the result is almost always bad. Channel it into self-empowerment instead.

If our anger demands it, we can get into advocating for autistics in general, to try to change the world, not just our own individual lives. This is not for everyone of course. Not everyone has the stamina or interest or ability to do this. But we can and need to come to some kind of self-acceptance. I'm not saying it will solve all our problems. But for sure being able to reject all the crap that gets shovelled on to our heads on an almost daily basis, has to go a long way. Having friends who understand, because they've been there, done that, and are often still there doing that, experiencing that, is a treasure beyond price. And actively rejecting all the anti-autistic crap, and expressing your anger in some constructive way, is even further beyond price.