Alt text: Silhouette of a person wearing a hoodie looking at the sunset over the ocean in India.
Photo by Rahul K Suresh from Pexels
The available audio has been created using OpenAI’s text-to-speech function
Before I begin, I should explain what I mean by neurotypical rejection. I define neurotypical rejection as any invalidating, ableist, and/or exclusionary behaviour toward someone’s autistic identity.
One example I can give is when I was once explaining my low empathy to a peer. I explained that my low empathy can sometimes make it hard for me to support others through challenging times because I need to rely on learned cues on how to best react. In response, the neurotypical peer casually said, “maybe you’re just a bad person.”
I tried to make clear that it wasn’t something I choose to do, it’s just a limitation I have. The peer wasn’t convinced and said “being autistic doesn’t excuse you for being a bad person.” Yikes.
Neurotypical rejection sucks. It’s just plain awful. I don’t think I really need to go into detail about why it sucks; we’ve all had our own painful experiences. But how do you deal with it?
I think addressing neurotypical rejection is split into two pieces: dealing with present rejections, and tackling scars and trauma from rejections from our past.
Present Rejections: React Wisely
When you’re rejected in the moment, the first thing you need to focus on is how you react or respond to the rejection. For me, I find the best route is to respond calmly and in a manner that distances me from the rejection as soon as politely possible. Though I may sometimes want to respond aggressively, it may only feel good in the moment. The consequences of acting aggressively may not feel so great afterwards.
Sometimes I also want to defend myself; this could work sometimes, but most of the time I find it’s no use. People who intentionally engage in neurotypical exclusionary behaviours often are not open-minded to begin with. If they were, they wouldn’t be rejecting you! If they’re not open-minded, it’ll be nearly impossible to explain yourself. It’s often better to save your energy for people who are worth your time.
Present Rejections: Distance Yourself
How to calmly distance yourself from the rejection is a bit of a tougher thing to explain. There are probably many ways to do this (feel free to share your methods in the comments!).
For me, it may involve bringing up a reason to leave, such as “It’s getting pretty late, so I’ll talk to you later.” If it’s an opinion-related rejection, I act indifferent and encourage the person to move on, such as “I guess we have different opinions, it’s not a big deal. Anyway, let’s talk about something else.” These methods are not fool-proof but neurotypical people often get the hint and give you the space you need.
Present Rejections: Validate and Self-Care
Once you’ve gotten far enough from the rejection, it’s time to focus on yourself. Aim to validate and feel your emotions in a safe and healthy manner. If you want to cry, cry. If you want to scream into a pillow or just be annoyed, do so. Suppressing, denying, or ignoring your emotions isn’t a good idea because it will just stay bottled up inside of you. Those negative emotions will leak out in other ways (e.g., depression), or eventually explode into something unhealthy or dangerous. It’s not weak to feel your emotions; the strongest people are the ones who aren’t afraid to face their emotions in their entirety.
At some point, you will likely feel tired of feeling upset or angry. Once you’re done feeling your emotions, you should try to focus on recovering from the event. Focus on self-care, such as:
- Journaling
- Treating yourself to your favourite shows, movies, or sweet treat
- Talking about what happened with a friend, family member, significant other, or psychologist/therapist
- Engaging in calming activities, like baths, walks in nature, or meditation
Overall, you want to focus on caring for yourself. During this time, it may be good to also engage in positive self-talk. While it may be hard to believe in the moment, it is good to remind yourself that:
- Other people don’t define your worth
- One rejection doesn’t mean you are not wanted in this world
- Their rejection is their loss, not yours
- Their rejection makes room for more loving people to take their place
Unfortunately, some rejection can take time to heal from. With enough love and patience, hopefully you can bounce back from rejection and become more resilient over time.
Past Rejections
I find past rejections to be much tougher to deal with than present rejections. It’s not just tackling one specific event; it’s likely a culmination of events and experiences that have developed into something more permanent and painful in our lives. Because of this, it’s much harder to give advice on how to address them.
There are some suggestions I can give. This may be obvious, but it should be said: don’t run away from your past. Don’t ignore it, don’t deny it. The longer we fight against our past, the longer it will continue to affect our present and determine our future. Painful pasts don’t just leave hurtful emotions; they can adapt into multiple life challenges. I admit, it is so hard to face our past and work through what we’ve gone through, but that’s because the healing is beneficial in so many parts of our lives.
When working through past rejections, consider going through it in smaller bits. Reflect on one instance and try to understand it deeply. What happened? What upset you? Why did it upset you? Reflecting doesn’t guarantee you’ll address your past, but it may give you clues of what the root of the problem is.
Addressing past rejections doesn’t happen in one day. It can take quite a lot of time. Of course, it can be much more effective (and safer) to work though past rejections with a psychologist, therapist, or other counselling support.
Conclusion
Rejections happen to everyone, even neurotypical people. I hope you can find comfort in that, and even be a little easier on yourself when you face rejections. Is there anything that you find helps when dealing with rejections? Please share them in the comments below. Next time, I’ll be discussing another tough topic: Making friends
Alt text: Infographic titled “Dealing with Neurotypical Rejection.” It outlines coping tips for “Present Rejections” (Calmly Distance, Feel & Validate, Recover & Self-Care) and “Past Rejections” (Don’t Run Away, Take Small Bites, Seek Safe Support).
The available infographic has been created using Gemini’s nano banana pro
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