This is such a valuable point. Internal vs. external conflict.
External conflict requires a receiver who receives it as conflict, though, and I wish autistic spaces here were better at declining to take up the offense.
100mountains initially spoke primarily in first-person. It would be so fucking cool if first-person sentences at least got a full-on pass from masking. Let people describe their own perspectives on depersonalized things without any risk of someone self-identifying with those things enough to say OUCH! minus one point for aggression!!
(I don't want to have to caveat, but I will for clarity, that I am criticizing an aspect of social choreography that doesn't have to be this way, and not either of you personally)