Autistic Signaling

Growing a business focused on disability and being an autism advocate, sometimes my blogs will be rants about certain topics. Let me know your thoughts in the comments.

Autistic signaling is when an autistic person or family member points out an issue within either society or the autistic community that needs to be resolved. This is great to raise awareness for issues. However, it comes across as whiny behavior that in the end does not help anyone. A lot of social media "autism" influencers have gained massive notoriety being signalers. However very few actually come to the table to help resolve them.

An example being is that they complain about autism organizations not including autistic individuals but don't try to actual join. And once you have attacked someone as being wrong, you really think they'll consider you joining them? Does not matter how right you are. Back in 2021, this was a huge topic. I saw it everywhere and it infuriated me because, to me, it's a simple fix. Just join and work from the inside to create the change you want to see. I am also a problem solver, so I did that in my area. I chose to start in my area because, I believe we must change our area to change the world. I joined an organization whose rules at that time were to include one autistic person on their board. At the time this was implemented, it was very progressive. However, by the time I joined it needed to change because due to whatever reason, there seemed to only be one autistic person on the board at any given time. This made it feel tokeny. Knowing the people on and around the organization, this was far from the truth. While still helping this organization on their mission, I made it my mission to get as many qualified autistic people as possible on the board that I could. In the first year, I had tripled the amount of autistic board members. In my third year on the board, I became the boards first autistic chair and had grown the autistic representation to 50%. I also help found an initiative in 2021 with an ABA company to employ autistic individuals and not just recruited but also vetted the individuals for specific jobs within the company. I am proud to say that the first two I recruited are still employed with that company.

So how do we get from signaling to solving? 
Ask questions. Most people know there may not be a solid solution and just need to be heard so asking questions that entice the individual to think deeply about the subject.
Listen. I mean truly listen. Again its more than likely just frustrating bottling up.
Ask reflective questions. Make sure they know you heard them. That goes farther than you think.
Share your opinion if allowed. This opens dialogue to figuring out if there's a solution.
Take action if action needs to be taken. When I first went to therapy, one of my biggest lessons was to know when I could take action versus when I could not. A lot of times we can not actually do anything in our position and while we can still care, thinking about it only makes the feelings worse.

Till next time- Dr. Mark