Do you get accusations of laziness??

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I feel this may a common accusation that those of us with ASD/HFA have to deal with, that neurotypicals will call us "lazy" due to misunderstanding our "default operating system" or based on unwillingness to openly discuss the reality that we're impaired in emotional-intuitive faculties (as mental disorders are big-time stigma/taboo).

So using the "lazy" label becomes a more emotionally palatable and convenient label for them - the paradox is THEY'RE the ones being lazy for not wishing to probe any further, they just want the path of least analysis, the explanation that's the most "comfy" for them

I believe this pejorative may come about for a variety of reasons...to think of a few:

1) From a large percentage of ASD folks being chronically unemployed, or under-employed;

2) People passing value judgements that, by a certain age, you should have certain behaviours under control or "mastered" like a normal person. If you don't, it's because you didn't "try hard enough".

3) IN some situations, like in the workplace or even as adult living with (step-)parents, you may be assigned a task and then ask them for clarification e.g. "When you ask me to do X, does that mean I also need to do Y?" - some people may interpret this as subtly defiant, or passive-aggressive, or that you KNEW that OF COURSE it bloody means Y as well, a "normal" person would have intuitively have known that, ergo you must be lazy
When more objectively speaking, NTs need to more clearly communicate as it's a two-way street.

4) When you make silly mistakes that go against the grain of "common sense"; but again, sometimes these events contain a good dose of irony b/c often (at least I've found) I expended MORE effort than what they were expecting, not less, yet sometimes they may still throw the "lazy label" at you out of that convenience we talked about (i.e. this way, they don't have to concede the reality that you have a mental disorder, b/c at least laziness isn't a mental disorder so it's not a taboo topic).

5) Based on what psychologists called "learned helplessness", or the fallout of the victim mentality and precursor to passive-aggressive personality: NTs may give us advice that seems lame and we retort with "tried that, didn't work" or something of the sort.

Another trigger for the "lazy label" may be the fact that us ASD folks frequently feel exhausted from trying to process the channels of communication on a daily basis on reconcile them to an accurate message that we accurately respond to, and then dealing with the angst of ridicule and contempt that follows. I read something like this on Quora recently.

Yes. I do get accused. The times when I have done far more then others have get ignored due to the times when I am on a go slow or stop which are much more noticeable to others... So the fact that I have been far more productive does not come into it and it is only when I burnout and leave and everyone else has to work so much harder is when they start to realize how much I had done.

There is a pattern in my past where I was made to feel like I was lazy and not appreciated, but when I left they often had to employ two people and in one case three people to cope with the amount of work load to replace the position that I had been in.

One place I worked in went from being in the top ten retail stores within that company in the UK which was surprizing due to the size of the store and the population that it served, and the Christmas before I left we broke all previous records for the history of the company and all stores within that company and probably (As it was the UK's leading company in its field) all records of that line of work. I had a burnout soon after. Handed in my notice. The store went from being in the top ten to going down to be the last but one in the country out of a company with over 150 stores. I left there with almost 500 hours of overtime owing to me which I was never paid.

I am lazy.
Usually when I've got to do something I don't want to do, like wash my hair, I think "I can't be bothered, I'll do it tomorrow".

If you suffer from Autistic fatigue / burnout
you may actually be forced to be intentionally lazy
so as to not hurt yourself

yes, it is easier for NTs, especially those who are uneducated in ASD to automatically label others as lazy
without a good understanding as to what these people experience on a day to day basis.,

It is taken me 40 odd years to come to terms as to why i am the way that i am.
I am now starting to understand why i suffer from exhaustion most days.

When before, i really didn't understand why i was, and there was no one to give me the answers that i look for.

Yup. I get called "lazy" all the time, even though I have to expend a lot more effort than other people to do simple things, and am a lot more eager than the people I know to learn new things. I just can't finish or learn tasks that fast, nor can I handle continous small talk or multiple social events. Both things make me "defiant" and "lazy".

I've started to stop caring since people who say this bull are never going to understand. The more I get insulted, the less and less I talk to and help that person now. If they want to whine about that, they can. I'll just keep avoiding them more.

People may think it, but I have not heard it said. I like to think a lot before I act, and it can save me time overall. When Henry Ford wanted a V-8 engine, it was considered impossible to produce as a single casting. V-8s had always been expensive exotics. He chose the laziest guy in the foundry to figure out the easy way to do it, and gave him time to tinker.

I'm my worst enemy in this.

Although people have been really anti-me just cos I used to live with parents (I was living with parents in my 30s) or cos I couldn't get a conventional job.

Now I keep calling myself lazy for stuff like not getting all my house cleaned until the very last day of the week.

But I am just learning!

I need to stop doing that!

Autistic inertia can look 'lazy' too. If you're doing a lazy thing for hours. But remember, you can have intertia with work/active things as well! (and please don't listen to inertia when it comes to not going to the toilet when you're relaxing or when it comes to working out past your breaking point - physical health is important)

Autism isn't a mental illness & I feel like the people in my life know that.

I got accused of laziness quite a bit by my teaching assistant in primary school.

Yeah, part of the problem is I just can't work 40 hours a week. Now that I am in law school, and have an easier time of things (my insane logical abilities make things easy for me... I studied maybe 10 hours for the LSATs and got a really high score... so yeah), I don't really have to work 40 hours a week outside of finals time, and then I can just rest immediately afterwards, but I don't know what I will do when it comes time to get a job and jobs will all want me to work far more than 40 hours a week.

When Xerox was a little company, they had a staff lawyer who didn't have much to do. Then, they got a letter from a government bureau about their latest advertisement, which claimed that their new model could make a copy on any kind of paper. This would be rather expensive to try to prove, given the infinite variety of paper, and it looked as if the lawyer's easy days were done. He just took that letter, copied it onto an ordinary paper bag, and sent that back to the author. They never heard from him again.

^^^ LOL

My Executive Function Disorder or General Anxiety Disorder or something makes for a messy house and avoidance behaviors so my NT dad and sister think I am lazy. My AS-like mom complained about my mess but never judged me. At work I am socially "lazy". Otherwise, I'm the "H" in ADHD so don't get called lazy often.

As I was cleaning today, I was having auditory flashbacks of my mum calling me lazy as I struggled to stay on my sore legs for as long as I did. I've been accused of being lazy many times by that same person.

"While Necessity may be the mother of Invention, Sloth is definitely its father." -- Me

I get this accusation all the time, constantly being told that I'm lazy, don't care, and/or just don't want to do something. I've realized that my dad's tirades about me being such actually probably qualify as verbal abuse All it ever did was teach me that my best is never good enough, no one ever believes that it actually is my best.

Sometimes, but never directly. Among family it comes in the form of "you're so smart, if only you'd apply myself," and so on. The few times it has happened at, say, work, it's usually in the form of an open question? "Why wasn't X done? So and so can do X in less time blah." They usually don't dare though because I upend my week constantly covering their shifts and because I am always working when I'm on the clock. Sometimes I just struggle, especially in kind of "practical" hands on work because I'm clumsy, and sometimes a bit dumb with common sense stuff. There were definitely some people at my last job who thought I wasn't trying, when in truth I was so overwhelmed I couldn't concentrate.

I actually don't believe that "laziness" exists. When we see laziness it is pretty much always a symptom of some other issue. Someone may have a health problem, have ADHD or autism etc, depression, anxiety, feel unappreciated at their job and many more reasons. The concept of laziness is just a way to quickly assign blame and move on while leaving underlying issues unaddressed.

I’ve been accused of being lazy—and I am lazy.

It’s take a lot sometimes for me to get off my butt.....fortunately for me, I usually succeed.