When a Lie Isn’t Just a Lie: Why Autistic Moral Rigidity Isn’t About Being Right—It’s About Feeling Safe

They say autistic people are rigid.

But what if our rigidity isn’t about being righteous—what if it’s about staying safe?

This essay explores what betrayal feels like in a neurodivergent body—how lies don’t just bruise our trust, they rupture our sense of reality. And how moral clarity, for some of us, isn’t a choice—it’s survival.

We don’t cling to truth because we think we’re better than you.

We cling to it because it’s the scaffolding we use to navigate a chaotic world.

Many autistic people develop what psychologists call a “hyperdeveloped moral compass.”

Not because we’re sanctimonious,

but because morality is how we orient ourselves.

“That means that honesty and authenticity is a central, core part of many autistic people’s identities… We don’t need to be normal. We need to be True.”

— The Identity Theory of Autism, Neuroclastic

When you can’t intuit social nuance—

or when the world feels disorganized and overwhelming—

truth becomes a lifeline.

Consistency becomes sacred.

So when someone lies,

it’s not a surface-level offense.

It’s existential.

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I Was Lied To—And It Shattered Me

A few months ago, someone lied to me.

I’m not going to say what the lie was—

because it’s not the details that matter.

It’s the rupture.

It wasn’t a misunderstanding.

It was deliberate.

It was sustained.

It was manipulative.

And it wasn’t until recently that I’ve finally recovered from it.

My brain spiraled.

My chest tightened.

My jaw locked.

I dissected every message, every gesture, every moment I should’ve seen through.

I stopped writing.

I stopped posting.

I stopped functioning.

The betrayal didn’t live in my mind—

it lived in my body.

I couldn’t think my way out of it because it wasn’t a thought.

It was adjacent to physical injury.

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I Forgave Them. But Not in the Way You Think.

Forgiveness isn’t about being the bigger person.

Not for me.

Forgiveness is about getting my body back.

It’s about regulating my nervous system

so someone else’s lie doesn’t calcify into a chronic injury.

I didn’t forgive because I wanted to reconnect.

I forgave because I wanted to reclaim space in my own ribcage.

I chose not to curse them.

And for me, that’s growth.

Autistic forgiveness isn’t about sainthood.

It’s about boundaries.

It’s about refusing to let someone else’s chaos set up camp in your spirit.

I’ve let people live in my bones longer than they deserved.

I’m no longer available for that kind of spiritual squatting.

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It Was Just a Lie—But It Reverberated Like a Slap

Years ago, I read a novel called The Slap.

It begins with one man slapping a child at a barbecue,

and the rest of the book follows how that single moment

ripples through everyone who witnessed it.

Different people.

Different reactions.

Different levels of moral injury.

That’s what this lie felt like.

Except I wasn’t just one person.

I was all of them.

• The part of me that raged.

• The part that minimized.

• The part that wanted revenge.

• The part that shut down completely.

• The part that begged for clarity.

• The part that pretended not to care.

• The part that still cared anyway.

Every fragment of me tried to metabolize the same moment—

and none of them could make it disappear.

It didn’t just break my heart.

It broke my structure.

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Sometimes I Don’t Even Know I Was Disrespected—Until It’s Too Late

Not all harm hits me in the moment.

Sometimes someone disrespects me—

subtly, quietly, in passing—

and I don’t even realize it happened until days, weeks, even years later.

And when it finally clicks?

The rage is instant.

My heart races.

My jaw locks.

My stomach drops.

And I spiral like it just happened.

Because to my nervous system—

it did.

By the time my brain makes sense of it,

the event is long gone.

The person is long gone.

The moment is unrecoverable.

But the injury is alive.

And I don’t know where to put it.

I ruminate.

I imagine rewinding time

just to say the thing I didn’t say.

Just to hold my boundary.

Just to reclaim something

I didn’t know I was losing in the moment.

And people call that overreacting.

But it’s not.

It’s remembering.

It’s reality catching up to the body

that felt it all along.

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Sometimes My Brain Flashes to Violence—Instantly

There are moments when I don’t spiral—

I snap.

Not outwardly,

but internally.

Like an emergency alarm

that only I can hear.

The other day,

I was standing in line

when a woman shoulder-checked me—hard.

She looked right at me as she did it.

No apology.

Just smugness.

Like she enjoyed it.

Like I was invisible

and she wanted to make sure I knew it.

And for five full seconds,

I saw it:

Me leaping over the railing.

Me grabbing her by the collar.

Me slamming her face into the cement.

The image wasn’t vague.

It was a high-definition flash.

A cinematic preview

of what justice might feel like

if I abandoned my humanity for just one moment.

And the part that scares me most?

Some small part of me gets satisfaction from that vision.

Not because I’m violent.

But because the violence feels like symmetry.

Like restoration.

Because nothing enrages me more

than someone going out of their way to be cruel.

I don’t do that.

I never have.

I couldn’t even if I tried.

And it’s not just when it happens to me.

If I see it happen to someone else—

the rage is immeasurable.

My body floods.

My fists clench.

My breath leaves me.

It’s not about ego.

It’s not about pride.

It’s about witnessing someone desecrate what I hold sacred:

dignity, decency, respect.

That kind of rage doesn’t come from aggression.

It comes from a deep, spiritual heartbreak.

From watching someone rip something apart

that I’ve spent my whole life trying to preserve.

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How I Moved It Through My Body

Because here’s the thing:

autistic people don’t just think pain—

we store it.

In our jaw.

In our gut.

In our throat.

In our behavior.

Here’s what helped me:

• Vocal release. I screamed into a pillow. Not a dainty, cinematic cry. A violent, guttural, vibrating scream. Until my throat buzzed and I could feel silence again.

• Cold water reset. I stood in the shower, letting cold water hit the back of my neck while whispering, “This is leaving my body.” Not once. Over and over. Until I felt a shift.

• Floor time. Belly-down. Palms flat. Letting gravity remind me that I exist. That I’m still here. That this lie didn’t kill me, even if it tried to split me open.

• Touch + containment. Weighted blanket. Wrapped in softness. Holding my own face like a ritual. Like claiming myself again. You’re mine now.

None of these things made the pain vanish.

But they gave it motion.

And motion is what allows grief to move

from being a wound

to being a scar.

You’re Not Overreacting. This Is Neurological.

“Simon Baron‑Cohen … explores how autistic people struggle with ‘theory of mind’ … while often excelling in systemizing, or creating rules‑based systems to understand the world.”

— Wired Magazine

That means when those rule-based systems are violated by deceit,

our brains interpret it as a kind of cognitive violence.

A moral rupture we can’t easily file away.

“When the anger is intense, the person with Asperger’s syndrome may be in a ‘blind rage’… sadness may be expressed as anger.”

— Tony Attwood

We don’t overreact.

We unravel.

Because the foundation we were standing on

crumbled beneath us.

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It’s Not Just Moral Rigidity. Sometimes It’s Trauma Rigidity.

There’s a difference between being guided by a moral compass

and being frozen in a trauma response—

but they often look the same on the outside.

Moral rigidity is integrity.

A refusal to bend

when it comes to truth, safety, justice.

Trauma rigidity is reflex.

It’s bracing.

It’s your body screaming this isn’t safe—before your brain catches up.

Sometimes, I don’t know which one I’m operating from.

But I hold the line anyway.

Because if I let go of it,

I might disappear.

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Memory, for Us, Isn’t Just Recall—It’s Rewounding

People say, “Let it go,”

as if memory is a cabinet

you can shut with enough willpower.

But for us?

Memory isn’t intellectual.

It’s somatic.

We don’t just remember.

We relive.

We re-feel.

We re-enter the moment

as if it never ended.

Even a voice. A smell. A sequence.

It’s not nostalgia—

it’s time travel.

That’s why betrayal doesn’t fade for us.

It loops.

Until we move it through the body.

⸻

Some People Lie—and Sleep Just Fine

Looking back, I still don’t get it.

How someone can lie so casually, so consistently,

and walk away untouched.

I do something wrong and it haunts me.

Even as a child—

I couldn’t face my own pain,

so I tried to face someone else’s.

I became obsessed with the suffering of children overseas,

because it was safer

than feeling the pain of the child version of me

still trapped under my stepfather’s roof.

I couldn’t save myself.

So I tried to save someone.

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The Rage That Changed Me

Eventually, I let myself get angry.

Truly angry.

I used to fantasize about him dying in a hospice bed.

Alone. Powerless.

Whispering cruelty back into his ears

so he could finally hear what he had inflicted.

I wanted revenge.

Because no one ever protected me.

Because I’ve spent my whole life trying to be good

in a world that feeds on cruelty.

And then I realized:

I couldn’t do it.

Not because I forgave him.

But because I couldn’t become him.

⸻

Even Fictional Betrayal Feels Like a Personal Injury

There are music videos I still can’t watch.

Sam Smith. Hozier.

Too real. Too close.

Too much.

The betrayal isn’t symbolic.

My body registers it as real.

Because my nervous system doesn’t separate fiction from feeling.

It just feels.

And I used to hate that about myself.

Now I understand:

This depth isn’t dysfunction.

It’s data.

It’s sacred.

⸻

The Social Cost of Being the Truth-Teller

“Being honest may not get you a lot of friends, but it’ll get you the right ones.”

— John Lennon

I used to think being honest made me brave.

That it would earn me respect.

Sometimes it just gets you removed.

When you name a pattern before others are ready to see it—

you’re not celebrated.

You’re resented.

You become “too much.”

Too intense.

Too serious.

Too soon.

You get pushed out of the group chat.

Not because you were wrong—

but because you were right

when they weren’t ready to admit it.

Being autistic means you often sense the rupture before anyone else.

And still get punished for naming it.

⸻

Justice Isn’t a Virtue—It’s Survival

This is what I need you to understand:

When someone disrespects me—

lies to me, shoulder-checks me, mocks me—

it doesn’t just hurt my feelings.

It fractures me.

People say autistic folks have a “strong sense of justice”

like it’s a personality quirk.

It’s not.

It’s how I stay rooted in reality.

It’s how I tell safe from unsafe.

It’s how I breathe.

Justice isn’t abstract for me.

It’s somatic.

It’s spiritual.

It’s the thing I reach for

when everything else feels like it’s falling apart.

Because if there’s no justice,

then anything can happen.

And if anything can happen—

I’m not safe.

And if I’m not safe,

I’m not here. Not really.

So yes, sometimes I flash to violence.

Sometimes I fantasize about symmetry.

Not because I want to destroy.

But because I want to repair.

Because I want truth to mean something.

Because I want to live in a world

where cruelty doesn’t walk away smiling.

Where the weight of their actions is finally—

finally—returned to their own hands.

⸻

Affirmation

I do not belong to the lie.

I do not belong to their denial.

I do not belong to the cruelty they made casual.

I do not belong to the silence they expected from me.

I belong to truth.

I belong to repair.

I belong to the body that screamed this is wrong.

I belong to the spirit that still rises after the rupture.

I belong to myself.