Being around an autistic person…

I am the mother of 2 autistic children. I am autistic myself (in the process of obtaining an official diagnosis). I am therefore well placed to say that being around an autistic person is sometimes :

• Frustrating,
• Asking,
• Destabilizing,
• Discouraging,
• Exhausting,
• Annoying,
• Insulating,
• Shaking.

It :

• Tests our patience,
• Consumes lots of energy,
• Gets on the nerves,
• Tests our limits more than once un a week (day),
• Plays with our tolerance,
• Often makes us feel helpless and lost,
• Isolates us,
• Provokes us,
• Provokes questions,
• Often generates a feeling :
  • To be judged negatively,
  • Of shame,
  • To be inadequate,
  • To be rejected,
• Lower our self-esteem and self-confidence.

What the autistic person experiences

Tell yourself that it’s the ssame for autistic people. All of these elements that I have just named in the 2 lists above, autistic people experience it every time an allist (a non-autistic) :

• Make fun of him,
• Say :
  • “He is poorly brough up”,
  • “It’s a whim”,
  • “It’s a mental illness”,
  • “It’s the desease of the century”.
• Shows impatience and/or intolerance toward the autistic person,
• Refuses to put in place reasonable accommodations,
• Moves away, abandons and puches aside the autistic person under the pretext that the autistic person is :
  • Abnomal,
  • Disturbing,
  • Noisy,
  • Weird,
  • Etc.

Neurodivergent or neuroatypical state

Even though autism is included in the compendium of mental illness, it is not an illness. But a condition. Indeed, the brain of autistic people work differently. This is why we call it the “atypical brain” and why we define autistic people as “neurotypical” or “neurodivergent”. There are other qualifiers and there are big debates on the subject. Howerver, in general, autistic people prefer to just say “autistic”.

The “autistic”.brain  interprets certain elemets in a completely different way. Because of this, autistic people :

• Are unconventional,
• Are out of the norm,
• Do not have the same priorities,
• Have thoughts, understanding and vision on the margins of society,
• Have a focus and interests :
  • More restricted,
  • Amplified,
• Their feelings are amplified and the express them in sometimes strange ways,
• Their perceptions and meaning are amplified or diminished,
• Have difficulty communicating correctly and maintaining a “normal” conversation,
• Do not have the same management mechanisms.

Autistic people have feelings, needs and emotions like everyone else. Exept that it is more difficult for them to express them, communicate them and manage them.

The first thing to do when you are around an autistic person

If you are around an autistic person, take the time to talk to them and ask them :

• What put him in overload,
• How he reacts when he is overload,
• What to do and not to do when overloaded,
• Which helps him self-regulate and reduce/eliminate overload.

Next, be vigilant. You do not want to cause ar manage a “meltdown”, nor a “shutdown”, nor an autistic burnout (which is note managed at all in the same way as a professionnal burnout).

Don’t project your vision of normality onto the autistic person you meet. Autistic people have their own “normality” and this “normality” differs from one autistic persone to another.

Finally, welcome each autistic person as he or she is.