different-not-bad

[different-not-bad]

Insight on the Autistic Experience

Disclaimer: This post thread couldn’t possibly cover every facet of every possible autistic experience. Everyone's experience inside their own brains is unique and autistic people are no exception. This is just meant to give insight into traits that are common among a large portion of the community in order to gain a better understanding of the autistic people in your life.  

            So, the topic of Autism just became an important thing in your life. Maybe your child just got diagnosed, a family member, a friend. What now? Well this is the post for you! As an autistic person, I know all too well that the unknown can be overwhelming, so let’s take baby steps :). In this post, I’ll be going into the negative perception of Autism and how language contributes to it. There will be more posts to this thread that expand more on different topics, for now this is the one we’ll be focusing on. 

            Autistic behavior has been demonized since autism's addition to the list of diagnosable conditions. What do I mean by “autistic behavior”? I mean high energy movement (e.g. swinging arms back and forth forcefully, making loud sounds, injuring themselves (”DSM-5″)), clunky socializing (e.g. taking things literally or at face value, not seeming to reciprocate emotion in conversation; or the opposite, sharing their emotions in a potentially overwhelming manner (”DSM-5″)), the stereotypical things someone might come up with when asked what Autism “looks” like. These behaviors tend to appear as strange, abnormal, or off putting by people on the outside who don’t experience the situations causing said behaviors, and because of the lack of understanding, they became a “bad” thing to do. Also to come out of that lack of understanding of Autism is the concept of "high functioning”, " low functioning", and a deficit based way of looking at the autistic mind. No one functions poorly across the board, autistic or not, some people just need more help with some things than others. No one functions well across the board like that either, everyone needs help and support sometimes (”Yo Samdy Sam”). Generalizing autistic skill sets and only comparing them to the very best of "normal people" functioning ignores all of the things that we can do reliably that others can't (”Agony Autie”). We can connect dots that others might not, we can hear, see, and feel things that are unique to our experience, and so much more. It's dehumanizing and really, a shame, to keep that side of humanity under wraps. What can you do to help this? Well, instead of framing things in that deficit mindset, try changing your language. Try "Certain noises really upset Abigail, like how nails on a chalkboard bother me" instead of "These aren't bothersome noises to me, so Abigail needs to get over it". 

            That's it for this post! Thank you for reading, and hopefully you gained some insight from this. These Autistic creators (as well as the DSM-5 to some extent) whose platforms I’ll link to below for easy access are a great way to gain further knowledge on the autistic experience and double as my sources for some of the opinions expressed in this post. 

[Agony Autie, DSM-5, Stephanie Bethany, Yo Samdy Sam]

                                                   Works Cited

“Agony Autie.” YouTube,          https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCN9fwImPnx16e8-eThlKCWQ. Accessed 23 February 2022.

“Autism diagnosis criteria: explained (DSM-5).” YouTube, 8 May 2020, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1yva4RZW_s0. Accessed 28 February 2022.

“Autism in girls - I was wrong.” YouTube, 13 March 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAhQJ08bzgs. Accessed 28 February 2022.

“Autistic traits are HUMAN traits: depathologising the autistic experience.” YouTube, 30 April 2021, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hr7YFJ8iBL8&t=707s. Accessed 23 February 2022.

“DSM-5.” Lane Community College Library, https://alliance-primo.hosted.exlibrisgroup.com/primo-explore/fulldisplay?docid=CP71184749890001451&context=L&vid=LANECC&lang=en_US&search_scope=lanecc_alma_summit&adaptor=Local%20Search%20Engine&tab=default_tab&query=any,contains,Diagnostic%20and%20Statis. Accessed 28 February 2022.

“Stephanie Bethany.” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/user/YoureAGreenLlama. Accessed 23 February 2022.

“Yo Samdy Sam.” YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/user/AtheistRockstar. Accessed 23 February 2022.

#autism #autistic spectrum #autistic experiences #autism education