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When I care about something someone is saying, I won’t look at them. Why? Because I’m listening.

When I care about something someone is saying, I reply my favorite catchphrases. Why? Because that’s how I express my emotions. When I care about something someone is saying, I relate it to my special interests. Why? Because that is how I understand the social world around me.

As Autistic folks spend energy smiling, nodding, forcing eye contact, and suppressing stims in order to "prove" that we are listening, we lose energy to actually process spoken information.* (Steward, M.A.) We generally can't listen as well as we could be our Autistic selves.

I show that I care by echoing people’s words or by dancing or clapping. I might go up to a person share a fact that I discovered after researching a topic they told me about several hours or days before.

Every person, Autistics included, has a unique way of communicating nonverbally. Still, many Autistics express ourselves through stimming, echolalia & catchphrases, succinct speaking, and follow-up conversations (after processing time.) This differs from many non-autistics.

Body language is defined as “movements or positions of the body that express a person's thoughts or feelings” (Learner’s Dictionary). Autistic bodies move differently from non-autistics.

Many Autistics are accused of a lack of empathy. Perhaps we are accused of this, not because of the depth of our actual feelings, but because of societal expectations to “look” like we care.

There is an expectation that Autistics follow non-autistic social rules in order to show that we care. Rarely does a non-autistic person express their care for me in ways that I more easily understand.