Recovery is predicated on aligning your life with your values, and you aren’t going to be able to align anything until you know who you are.”

Dissociation is also a means of controlling the social and sensory data we’re taking in, ignoring inputs that have become too intense.

Autism is associated with a deliberative processing style.

Maskers tend to get very distressed when people are unhappy with us, because disapproval has been so dangerous and painful for us in the past.

We’re not a monolithic group, and our individual journeys shape how we express our identities to the world.

Thankfully, Angel’s family and care team figured out that his lack of verbal communication wasn’t caused by an inability to express himself, but by an Autistic need for nonverbal methods of self-expression.

Conversely, an Autistic person can function in one (or many) realms of public life, while being significantly disabled in others. Furthermore, some people don’t “function” independently in any area of life at all, and that shouldn’t detract from their value and the respect they receive, either.

That word irrelevant is also particularly striking—it’s

In fact, Autistic traits can manifest in downright paradoxical ways.