Invalidation Trauma

Invalidation Trauma is when an Autistic person proceeds to self-advocate by expressing their distress induced by a person who, say, rearranged or used their belongings without consent, and then in return gets gaslighted, ignored or accused of attention seeking.

Essentially, invalidation trauma sets in when an Autistic person's attempts to explain their needs and boundaries are met with ridicule, apathy, gaslighting or accusations of overreacting or being oversensitive.

Just because you can't understand why a person is in distress, this does not make the person's distress any less real.

Just because certain of your actions aren't usually harmful to most people, doesn't mean they won't be harmful to SOME people.

If someone tells you that what you have done upsets them or distresses them, your go to response should not be to accuse them of overreacting, accuse them of oversensitivity or justify your actions by saying, "but my intentions were good", or, "all I did was X. Maybe you should get over it?"

This is gaslighting and invalidation. Both of these traumatise an individual, as it conveys to the individual that they have no worth, that their needs don't matter and that they deserve to be punished.

Fear of invalidation makes self-advocating impossible for some Autistic people, for who wants to feel shamed for being who they are - at a time one is at their most vulnerable.

It's no wonder so many Neurodivergent people apologise all the time. The apology stems from the mindset that it is they who are the perpetual inconvenience.

If you've upset someone, you've upset someone.

When you understand that the Autistic experience differs vastly to that of the Neurotypical, only then will you understand that there is no such thing as an overreaction, and there is no such thing as an objectively harmless gesture.