It's Become Personal

When I first got involved in autistic rights, it was mostly an intellectual feeling of wrongness. I suspected I was autistic, and later knew for sure, but it didn't personally affect me much. Most of the contact I have with overtly anti-autism people is generally a) on the Internet, and b) initiated by me (I have plenty of contact with people who have no clue about autism, but are generally willing to take my word for it, though). The few overtly anti-autism people I've met since leaving school in grade 7 I am usually fairly able to defend myself against. They aren't that big a problem for me.
So at first, I was arguing on intellectual grounds, with little emotion. Not to say that I didn't care, I did, but in an intellectual way. The autistic people I advocated for were abstract to me.
But then I started volunteering with disabled kids. First, I participated in an ABA gymnastics program, with autistic kids and neurotypical kids. But ABA tends to keep you distant from the kids. Next, I volunteered with a program helping autistic kids train their own dogs, as assistance animals. But that didn't last long. Recently, however, I've been volunteering with a variety of disabled kids (though the program coordinator prefers to pair me with autistics) in a physical activity program.
In volunteering, I've met autistic kids. I've also seen the harm people do to them with good intentions. The worst example was twins with separation anxiety in the ABA program whose mother was used as a 'reward' (really, it was temporarily stopping a punishment). Another example, that I actually did more to help, was an autistic boy being gently restrained and redirected for hand-flapping. I certainly convinced them not to require me to do that, and I think I probably convinced them not to do it either by example.
The thing is, now it's not so intellectual. Now, I read things written by a parent of an autistic kid and imagine the parents of the kids I've met saying that. I read about murder of autistic kids and instead of just seeing a wrong, I see a child who died. I read stuff by professionals working with autistics and see the children they work with being treated in the way they advise. One professional said, in a book I read, that 'being teased is what happens when you act weird' and I imagined a young autistic bully victim hearing and believing that. (She actually said this to an autistic boy.) I read stuff by autistics who hate autism and my heart cries out with the thought that the kids I know may feel the same way.
It's still intellectual, because I still have reasoned arguments and logical conclusions. But now, it's also emotional. I realize more that real people are being actively hurt by these attitudes, and I feel intense empathy for them. To those who say 'spend time with an autistic child and their family and you will see how terrible autism is' - I have spent time with them. And rather than seeing a terrible disability, I see a terrible society.

Counselors for Neuroatypical People

I'm autistic and also have PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder). The latter is something I've often received counseling for, but sometimes the fact that I'm autistic and most people aren't gets in the way.
There are two kinds of problematic counselours when it comes to me being autistic - those that think they know autism and those that don't know anything about autism. The first group is by far the worst.
I had a counselor like this. She was a hard of hearing woman with much experience counseling autistic people. She was firmly of the opinion that anyone who was different in any way should try their best to conform. (One of the first signs of this may have been when I innocently commented, upon her saying she was hard of hearing, that I'd noticed she had a slight hint of the 'deaf accent'. She seemed dismayed.) She kept nagging me about stimming and decided my biggest current problem was that I was homeschooled, and she must find me a special education placement. I spent my entire time with her arguing and treating her like an embodiment of one of my teachers.
It's been noted by many autistic people that autism 'experts' really don't have a clue about what it's like to be autistic. The worst thing is that they think they do. So if you try to tell them they're wrong, they often won't listen. They'll sometimes even try to tell you how you feel, as opposed to how you really feel. In my experience, also, they're prone to view autism as a problem, rather than accepting that I really am fine with being autistic.
The second type is much preferable. This is the type I usually have. Generally, they are people who specialize in trauma or more specifically sexual abuse, who, unlike autism experts, really do understand the people they specialize in treating (because the literature on trauma and recovery is much more informed by actual trauma survivors than the literature on autism), and though they know even less about what it's like to be autistic than most autism experts, they know they don't know. This means they are teachable, because they accept that I actually know more about what it's like to be autistic than they do.
However, with the second type, I spend far too much time trying to teach them, and every bit of advice they give is generally aimed at neurotypical trauma survivors, and therefore may not apply very well to me. The biggest problem is that I don't always know how to tell if it applies or not right away, and if it doesn't I can't necessarily explain why. I found it very difficult, for example, to explain why cognitive behavioral therapy does not apply at all to me (I tried to explain why in this post).
Oh, and by the way, here's a survey about emotional experiences:
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Planning for Support or Avoiding the Pain?

Quite awhile ago, I decided to write a post about the horrible Autism Every Day video. It was really upsetting me, but as long as I was watching and writing responses I barely noticed my feelings. Then we had to go, and I left it unfinished, planning to finish it shortly afterwards. As I posted soon after, though, I had a meltdown that night because of all the unhappiness I'd been pushing down.
This was in summertime. It's almost 2007 and the post I planned to finish at my next opportunity is not finished, and many other posts have been made. What happened? I decided to plan for emotional support. Thinking of that meant that every time I considered finishing that post, I'd anticipate how much it would upset me and put it off.
Recently, Amanda Baggs posted about a video by the Judge Rotenberg Center. I considered watching the video she discussed, but didn't have the time. Since then I've had time to recognize how much the JRC reminds me of my first school, only worse, and just how terrifying it is. They directly attack the ways I survived in my first school. I thought to myself 'they can't kill me' whenever I was heading for a big confrontation. I also knew I'd get sent home to understanding parents. The second is how that movie would trigger me.
Once, to my father's outrage, he was told they should treat me worse so I didn't want to get sent home. If I knew my parents would react to me describing how I'd hidden under a table to get away from my teachers and they'd dragged me out, hurting and terrifying me, by saying 'can you talk about something good about the school?' I have no idea how I'd survive. Running away, trying to kill parents/teachers, or pretending I can no longer see, hear or move come to mind. However, I might not be able to escape, and my dislike of hurting others means that killing someone is not something I'll do, and if I did get so desperate that I could bring myself from imagining killing someone to really killing someone, no doubt they'd be able to stop me. And as for the last, 'noncompliance' would be punished, and a punishment causing unbearable pain would be intolerable.
It's like acknowledging that something will hurt has given myself permission to avoid doing things that are important to me. I don't like this. We're home today, me and Mom, so I asked her if she could be there for me while I watch the rest of the Autism Every Day video. Mom told me she couldn't handle it today, but in a couple days she can.
I'm scared that I'll put it off again, that I won't be able to bring myself to do it. I'm worried that maybe Mom is really saying she doesn't care about me enough to put up with me needing support, and she'll put it off again (unreasonable, but try telling my emotions that). I really want to do this, but I'm scared.