Status Updates From Late Bloomer: How an Autism...

I wish neurotypical people would put in as much effort into their interpersonal skills, understanding and communication as most Autistic people do.

James: I suppose the 'outsider’ perspective has led me to question a lot of stereotypical behaviour that tends to go along lines of gender and sexual orientation, especially since I have tended not to pick up the social cues that would have told me what behaviour was expected of me.

…defining trait for me and others. I feel that this feeling of being different to others was exacerbated by the fact that my peers were quite difficult to relate to. I didn't understand why girls behaved the way they did, or why boys behaved the way they did towards me just because I was assigned female. Because of this, I feel my neurology and gender are linked, and I am unsure which one is the driving force.

Shadia: I definitely think that being autistic has given me a different perception of social norms and helped me be true and authentic to myself. As a child I was a bit of a 'tomboy'; I wasn't affected much by society's binary views of male and female. When I worked out there was a name to describe my internal experience of gender, I realised that I do not view myself as gendered: I am just me. Gender is not a…

…let the collapse happen. In fact, the more I try to hold it in, the worse the meltdown will be. Part of learning about myself after the diagnosis was allowing myself time to fall to bits when it all gets too much, and to be patient and kind when it happens, instead of angry.

…spinning, and then I have to start again from scratch. Each day is its own new challenge. I think on the outside I can look like I'm functioning. I can get up, go for a run, see a friend and go grocery shopping, but internally there can be a war going on, an anxious pressure building up. I'm a little bit better at managing this anxiety, but sometimes it is simply unmanageable, and I have to…

Tegan: I don't think I feel like I'm ever 'functioning' and I'm not sure I ever will. Every day I'm burdened with the responsibility of having to manage myself as if I were a second job. No single task, no interaction feels automatic. Everything is a deliberate effort and takes its toll. I do have good days, or even good weeks where I seem to be on a roll, but it never lasts and I'll drop all the plates I've been…

…my brain starts shutting down functions in ascending order of 'essentialness', much like the instruments in an aircraft that has lost power in an emergency.

James: When my routines go undisturbed, people communicate with me clearly, give me instructions that are consistent and unambiguous, and I am in nice, quiet, safe, predictable environments, I 'function' pretty effectively, albeit still with an affect that could be read by careful observers as Autistic. Under stress, however, or in difficult environments, I feel as if…

Jessie: On a 'high functioning' day you'd see me as friendly, warm, thoughtful, on the ball, funny and relaxed. On a "low functioning' day I'd struggle to get out of bed, look very pale, be very drained, or have a good old case of the irrits. Most people would be surprised to see me on a 'low functioning' day. I'm not the Jessie they know – I'm quite scattered, quiet and tired…

…I am overwhelmed or overloaded by a busy schedule, many of these basic daily tasks become very difficult. When there are too many disruptions to my routine, sensory issues, or other pressures, my anxiety will usually increase which affects my ability to read my internal states. These are times where I may go into overload, shutdown, or meltdown.

Shadia: My levels of functioning or support are very context dependent. Not only do they vary day to day, but certain environments and life events can also contribute to differences in functioning. For example, while I am on holidays and less 'cluttered in my mind about anxiety surrounding university or work, I have more space in my executive functioning for cooking, cleaning, walking, and so forth. However, when…

…spend a long time in my bedroom afterwards, curtains closed, in order to recuperate. My room is a little oasis of calm, and I'm very happy in it.

Tegan: My sensory issues are numerous, and can be both a blessing and a curse. I can't seem to habituate to background noise, so I hear everything all at once and with equal volume, and this is pretty exhausting if I'm in the wrong environment, but exciting if I'm in the right one. Usually after I go out in public, or I spend too much time on my computer, I have to…

Timothy: I am hypersensitive across all modalities, so incoming information is intense and uncomfortable in visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory and gustatory stimuli. I have sensory overload and anxiety issues surrounding sensory input as these can be very uncomfortable and at times distressing.

…the floating stairs have huge gaps in them that make me feel like I'm going to fall through them and die? Am I ‘incapable’ of holding down a ‘real’ job, or does the modern open-plan office design create sensory overload?

I often wonder how much of my anxiety and depression was a normative response to existing as Autistic in a neurotypical environment, particularly as it intersected with work and the associated notions of ‘functioning’. Do I feel anxious and panicked in the library at university because there's something wrong with me, or because the carpet is ridiculously patterned, the walls are glass, and…

…nightmare.
In 2011, I took a short-term contract, working at The Age to help with the online entertainment content. Despite having the support of a great manager, and my editor being an old friend, the office environment was a sensory nightmare…
Towards the end… I could only cope by coming in early—6 or 7 am—and burning through all my work before the floor became busy, then escaping home to recover in bed.

I've experienced shame, both self-inflicted and societal, when I've been ‘unable’ to work in traditional office environments. The modern open-plan office (or as I like to call it, the hell forest) can be very difficult for some Autistic people: the lack of privacy (particularly audio), the unregulated temperatures and lighting, sometimes (in the case of ‘hot-desking’) even the lack of a secure workspace can be a…

…girls do? Was it both? There's an interesting frisson when I think of myself As A Woman, even as an Autistic one: like thirty-year-old me hissing ‘No, JON Snow’ at Comic-Con—I am happy to live as a woman until someone perceives me as one… I swing wildly by wanting everything, and nothing, to have labels… I may never know how to describe my gender, but I know I have Autism to thank for its many facets.

When I think about my own gender, it is impossible for me to separate Autism from my sense of identity. The two are plaited together so tightly that sometimes it's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. Was I having a meltdown about my hair being brushed because I'm Autistic and it was sensory overload, or because I resented the notion that my hair needed to be brushed because I was a girl and that's what…

Music was both special interest and stim, the alpha and omega, an all-consuming passion that left precious little brain space for anything else.

…understanding of the notion of completeness. Complete just means a reasonable balance of protein, carbohydrate and fats with vitamins, minerals and fibre, not trying every food on earth. There are plenty of countries in which a comparatively ‘limited’ variety of food (comparative to, say, the entire innards of WholeFoods) is eaten and children thrive.

Of all Autistic behaviours, food habits seem to be one of the most troubling to the casual, non-Autistic onlooker… This obsession with eating a wide range of foods seems to be twofold: there is the perfectly reasonable attempt to comply with government nutritional guidelines, but there is also a particularly Eurocentric notion of broad grazing, of ‘trying something new!’, of a complete diet being a very literal…

…doesn't understand the context or meaning, I can hurriedly explain that it is a joke from a movie. In the sage words of the Red Hot Chili Peppers on The Simpsons, everyone can enjoy that.
Of the many things that diagnosis has given me, it's this UNDERSTANDING of my own behaviours that has been the most mind-expanding.

Whatever enjoyment or emotional regulation I may find in reeling off a favourite quote or borrowed colloquialism, I am acutely aware of the embarrassment that follows if the listener stares at me with blank eyes, unable to parse what I've just said. Leaning hard into movie quotes has been, in a way, a defence mechanism: I am hiding my stimming, my echolalia-ing, in plain sight. If the person I've just quoted at…

…also reassurıng.
Delayed echolalia is, for me, often a type of stim: self-stimulatory behaviour that Autistic people use (depending on the situation) to express themselves, calm themselves, or regulate their emotional state. Most people think of stims, in an Autistic context, of behaviours like spinning on the spot or flapping one's hands. But echolalia itself can also be a stim.

…textural pleasure. I suppose it's contextual to respond, while watching the daily Victorian government COVID-19 press briefing and hearing an epidemiologist refer to ‘recent data’, by saying ‘I'm worried, Ray, it's getting crowded in there and all my recent data points to something big on the horizon’—but it's also just fun…
Which brings a third aspect into the picture, beyond contextual meaning and enjoyment: it's…

…the actor's original performance. There is satisfaction in becoming a human tape recorder; it's rewarding, and soothing.
That seems to be one of the deepest mysteries of Autism, from a neurotypical and clinical mindset: WHY are they doing that? The thought that a behaviour might be pleasurable or even necessary never seems to occur to the experts.
Sometimes, it's a combination of the two: contextual meaning and…