Reframe mistreatment as a difference in perspective
Facing intolerance, disrespect or someone's hurtful behaviour, deliberately consider that they are seeing the situation from a completely different perspective — 'we each see the sun from our own point of view'. This is not excusing them; it's a piece of cognitive distance that reduces the personal sting and makes the experience more bearable to sit through.
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When another person behaves badly toward you, the hurt lands hardest when you read it as a verdict on you. A reframe puts distance between you and the behaviour: consider that they are operating from a completely different perspective, seeing the same situation the way each person sees the sun from their own point of view. Crucially this is not a way of excusing or condoning the behaviour — it stays wrong — it’s a stance you take for your own sake, so that experiencing someone else’s intolerance or disrespect becomes more bearable rather than less. The mechanism is simple: attributing the act to a difference in vantage point, instead of to something defective in you, lowers its emotional charge and gives you room to respond rather than absorb. It’s a useful companion to other distancing techniques (naming the reaction, observer mode) and it travels well into the situations where autistic people meet the most friction — being read as blunt, inflexible or rude when the real gap is that two brains are pointed at the same event from different angles.
