As an autistic adult, there is a tendency to be naïve and hearing everything that is told to me at face value. For autistic people, it can be hard to understand what is true and what is not. As such we are often led to believe things that may be untrue. This can open the door to additional issues that are challenging for autistic people, especially as they age.

Throughout my life there have been several instances that just because someone has told me something, because I had their trust and they had mine, I was led to believe things that were not true. This has set me up for many instances where I have reacted negatively because I did not know the whole story or what was indeed supposed to be true when it was not.

 As an autistic person, it can be hard to read other humans to fully understand whether what they are saying is true. Just because we are told certain things or led to believe certain statements, they may be the opinion of the other person and not totally what should be. Continuing to preach this or made to believe that something should be the way that it should lead to many other factors to be experienced including victimization, trauma, and many other factors.

Sadly, there are many things that are out in the world today that are very deceiving and because we as autistics do not fully understand everything that we are told and only see what can be perceived as the good, we are often led to believe that we are doing the right thing when in fact we are not and as such sends up down a very negative path that can have some pretty bad recourse.

And even as we are sent down these negative paths in our life because there are many out there that see the naivety that we exhibit and will do things that are scrupulous for the personal gain of others at the expense of others simply because we are led to believe that certain things are true because we sometimes do not have the cognitive understanding of being able to understand that things are just not supposed to be the way that they are.

I do have to say that there has been a great deal of work in educating autistic folk the unwritten rules in life so that it is easier to believe what is in fact true so that they are able to advocate for themselves when they know something is too good to be true or they are led to believe things.

However, there are still many things that are hard to understand and that is where the struggle exists to be understood. It is sad that the world that we live in needs to be more cautious than open and willing to let others into our lives. Nonetheless, constant education is key in making sure that autistic individuals are made to understand that there are times when they must understand that they cannot believe everything they hear.