 You only go into meltdown or you only go selectively mute when it's convenient for you. Your directness and honesty is just being cold and heartless. Autistic you doesn't understand this complex social situation so you need to be quiet and let the people who understand what the situation is talk. Due to high levels of trauma low self-esteem mental health and stereotypes of autism we can sometimes be conditioned in life to take on the perceptions of other people and treat them as gospel. If someone says that you're acting a little bit weird in a social situation or you're saying the wrong thing you're more likely to take it on because in the past you've really struggled to to understand social situations but there are some things that you do understand. When you try to tell people that you do understand those things they will tell you that you don't. This is the idea of autistic gaslighting something that perhaps you may have heard of in terms of gaslighting in like narcissistic relationships where the person tries to make you think that you're crazy you don't know what you're talking about so of bashing what what reality is is actually affecting you bashing exactly how you're feeling and thinking just because they think that you're something else. This can be an absolutely horrible toxic thing because it can leave you feeling inadequate can leave you a very low self-esteem can leave you open to being controlled to being manipulated and gaslighting in the context of autism it's pretty much the same except it's more socially acceptable. Gaslighting in terms of like a solid idea of what it is that the solid definition it's the manipulation where someone tries to get others to question their reality memories and perceptions so if you were saying perhaps that I saw you take that last cupcake and they say no I didn't like are you crazy or something I remember when you said that you don't you don't feel that way I remember exactly how you said that you must be remembering wrong like has that never happened oh but yeah yeah I don't think you really get that like I don't see that at all and I think your perception of that is wrong I don't I don't value your perception of that so listen to me this is the idea of gaslighting autistic people are more vulnerable to toxic and manipulative people this is because our social differences focus on direct communication not necessarily words if they're non-verbal but it tends to be straightforward communication without all that sort of difference in the way that you say things difference in your facial expressions your body language all of that kind of stuff that indirect things they tend to be they tend to take a bit of a back place to the actual information that the other person is saying the issue with this is that it's very easy to manipulate someone who trusts what you say rather than how you say it it kind of makes it a bit more simple because all you have to do is lie with your words or you have to do is say things even if you don't mean them and even if you say them in a way that looks a little bit suspicious we will still take you up on that we'll still believe you because you've told us this makes us absolutely well it makes us pretty vulnerable to nasty people to people with dark trade traits to nasty people who could really scrub your life having this focus on direct communication it's a beautiful thing it's great it's simple it's easy and the people who you give your time to and you have that direct communication it's it's so much easier of a friendship it's so much more clear out in the open and direct and you don't have to do all of these crazy mind games to try and figure out why someone's saying it or in what way they're trying to say it because they'll tell you how they feel and they'll tell you why and they'll tell you what happened and they'll tell you the actual things that have been going on when you have someone who's a bit more indirect in general they'll be able to pick up on that stuff and they'll sort of get a vibe as people say and we do get vibes and I get vibes and I get more of those vibes because I've done so much to try and understand non-autistic people and work on my sort of indirect communication skills my cognitive empathy but there still is a little bit of a window for people to take advantage especially if you are currently in a in a bad mental place because we put that focus on the words we can also sometimes let their words take more precedent than how they're acting you know they may say that you're really really great good friends but they never talk to you they don't really care about you that every time that they talk to you they're only talking about themselves they're only trying to get attention from you you know it's it's a little bit more tamer the situation because I don't really want to go into like some really complex perhaps unfriendly thing to the youtube harvaker heaven so this means that we easily brush off these signals of manipulation of deceit even if we can see them we exist and we communicate with the world in our own way and sometimes it's more comfortable to go with that and sometimes we expect other people to feel the same way but a lot of people don't I suppose this video could be kind of split up into two areas you know someone that you don't really know someone that you kind of lose friends with says something about about you in in context of the group maybe you have an opinion and they know that you're autistic and so they they kind of gaslight you to thinking that you don't understand or that your way of thinking about the situation is inferior to the way that they do just going about the fact that you are on the autism spectrum the other side of that would be more intimate relationships things like family things like friends things like partners this is a little bit hard it can be a lot more difficult you know the other situation may be encompassing more of kind of like a bullying dynamic but in this situation it can be really really harmful and manipulative you know you may have clicked on this video for a number of different reasons maybe you do like experience this in in normal daily life at work and at school or like anything like that but there will be a section of you who have come to this video because you have been gaslit by people people who are really close to you and it's had massive effects on how you view yourself how you view the world how you view the other person and how you view the view the relationships like the quality of the relationship that you think you have maybe actually pretty bad so first in these sort of intimate circumstances it's a little bit different to to sort of the transient ones and I think there's a lot of different pathways that you could go down in terms of bullying and in terms of you know things to do of work you could you could raise it with somebody that someone's being discriminatory in actual relationships friendships family partners first you need to ask them for clarity they should be able to somewhat what they're trying to say in a few sentences and if you if you are in in some sort of friendship relationship familiar relationship and you ask them for clarity and they just never never ever seem to get to the point they may use this thing called word salads which is basically just a combination of different words accusations feelings that they have all mashed up into one sentence that really detracts from what you're actually trying to ask them and for autistic people this can be really damaging because it can make us feel like we don't understand things because it takes advantage of our lower processing times so it can leave us in quite tricky situations in these situations would be particularly vulnerable so getting clarity that's a really really important thing you need to speak to multiple third parties that aren't involved the person or at least loosely involved you know they don't have a relationship with them in any way so you get a really honest sort of idea of what they think about the relationship that you have just make sure to include both sides and if there are some things that you're not doing the best in that relationship then say them because that usually gives them a little bit more confidence that you're actually speaking to them for advice rather than asking them for emotional reassurance another thing is write down your experiences you can collect evidence you can do this in any way that you like it could be through therapy sessions it could be through actually just writing it down or making a note of things and collect evidence in order to advocate for yourself now if you are in like a narcissistic relationship you need I think the best part of call is to actually research into it there's a great channel called Dr Ramani who does a lot of stuff around narcissism and it's really really eye-opening and has been helpful to me in in different sort of relationships that I've had in my life if you can advocate for yourself I would if it doesn't work I think the best idea is to go to one of these channels learn what what the things do and try and transition out of that relationship if you feel at all like you are at the threat of physical violence if you feel like you just can't do it for the life of you then maybe you need to get some professionals involved maybe you need a mediator maybe you need to call the police if it's a really really bad situation maybe you need to contact your friends and family there's a whole host of different things that you can do I don't think I'm the person to tell you that I think you should definitely go to some experts who have PhDs in psychology and like have been researching and understanding this for a long time but I think this can kind of give you a good framework because if if you've tried these things and you've advocated for yourself and you've tried to get to the bottom of what they're trying to say and you just come up sure every single time and you just don't seem to be able to exit the situation those people can be really helpful so you can call you you know you can call them out for their manipulation if you want they're never going to admit it if they're horrible people it's just the nature of of toxicity you know they're not going to take take responsibility for their actions and behaviors and the words and you know the autistic gas lighting you can assert your space to process complex situations this is more more along the lines of autism because it can be really hard even if you have a set script to go by to actually function in these situations especially when you've been hit by word salads especially when you've been hit by lots of different things and lots of gas lighting about things that never happened and things that ways that they interpreted that there was completely right and your ways were wrong it's it can be such a messy complex situation so being able to have it out is very important so maybe do it in public mold your day around so that you don't always have to be in their vicinity and you can actually get out there you can go to the gym or you can exercise or you know you can do all of those kind of things the last thing is if they don't change and they continue to gaslight you and make you feel horrible for being autistic make you feel just horrible in general then you need to leave it's not safe for you safe for you for your own sanity there may be situations where you are legally tied to somebody or situations where it's very very difficult to cut them out of your life but there are other strategies that you can use things like grey rocking things of that nature that you can look up definitely on one of the more specialized channels as I said when in doubt contact professional or the police if needed I can offer my own personal advice based on what I've experienced in life different different individuals but I'm not a licensed professional I'm I'm I don't want you to follow my advice the T I want this to be the ignition for you to research more into it and take information from from people who are well versed in the in the idea of toxic people and maybe add in the stuff that I've been telling you that's perhaps a little bit more autism specific but I hope this video has been an eye opener and I hope this video has helped you and I truly hope that you are doing well whatever situation you are in and I'll see you in another episode on the Thomas Hanley YouTube channel see you later folks