Understanding yourself & how Autism affects you: My Autistic Charter

I'm hoping that the idea below helps other people at varying stages along the journey that we are all on.

My journey through struggle, realisation, diagnosis, and post-diagnosis (underway) has, as for most people I expect, included periods where autism generally and my autism specifically is all I think about, as well as periods where it seems that I've almost forgotten about it all (until office chatter happens, or the TV is too damned *excited* about everything, or I need to touch a wooden spoon!).

My memory doesn't seem to have enough spare capacity to carry around everything that I've learned so far about all of this, and this means that a) I fail to realise the benefits of this learning and b) can easily (as happened in my Autism evaluation!) be completely caught unprepared if someone asks me "So, what does autism mean to you?".

So, I created something that I'm calling my "Autistic Charter"; a single page description of the challenges and strengths that my autism brings, and what I resolve to do about it to have the best life that I can. I want to share it in case the idea helps others (i.e. you could make your own version), but also to see how people react to what I've written about myself. I'm taking a risk here that some will say "Pah! is that all you have to deal with?" but at least I will have a sense of where I fit on the landscape that we call "the spectrum" & whether I have close neighbours or live in an isolated spot at the edge of the village.

By the way, I'm also currently reading "The Nine Degrees of Autism" which complements these thoughts perfectly & I would thoroughly recommend.

Here goes:

Parents
  • This is absolutely fantastic. I am in a terrible situation and have been telling my psychiatrist for ages that I would prefer we communicate by e mail rather than face to face as I am autistic and your structure shows exactly this.

    I am struggling to conquer suicidal ideation and this has been my life’s focus for 7 years now . It is also a common cause of autistic deaths and your structure does I believe show why . As we can’t stop thinking about how we have failed and try to overcome it but as we continue to fail become increasingly hopeless 

Reply
  • This is absolutely fantastic. I am in a terrible situation and have been telling my psychiatrist for ages that I would prefer we communicate by e mail rather than face to face as I am autistic and your structure shows exactly this.

    I am struggling to conquer suicidal ideation and this has been my life’s focus for 7 years now . It is also a common cause of autistic deaths and your structure does I believe show why . As we can’t stop thinking about how we have failed and try to overcome it but as we continue to fail become increasingly hopeless 

Children
  • Thanks DaveAsperg! I've also struggled with (or simply "experienced") suicidal ideation and I can trace this back to the first time in my life that I first had to deal properly with people, resolve conflicts, and take full responsibility for my own life by making some big decisions (up until that point, I had been sheltered by the fact that I drifted pretty effortlessly through the milestones of young adulthood). That was about 20 years ago now and those thoughts have resurfaced many times but not been constant.

    The other factor for me is that my  self esteem was founded on my academic achievements, and I had no sense of self worth founded in the world of people. Now that I'm in mid life, and "conventional wisdom" tells us that it's time to focus on friends, family, relationships and doing good things for the community, I find myself at a loss; my accademic achievements are no longer in huge demand (my analysis skills are, but are employed in solving puzzles that should never have existed in the first place), I have never had a "warm, fuzzy feeling" from family, never made friends easily (and now rationalise that I don't need to or want to), and fail to comprehend that I could do anything for the community (which would also involve new random people and interaction).

    So I sometimes think that I've had enough. I developed a gambling addiction too, and the anger that I directed at myself when I had big losses was close to getting me making plans. Thankfully, the shock of ideation tipping close to planning was enough to shake the illusion of fun enough that I haven't gambled for over a year and haven't looked back.

    But the sense of "what's the point?" remains.

    "The Nine Degrees of Autism" offers some hope; it's written by several wise autistic people who have made it to the far end and now feel a sense of achivement and purpose. When I've read it all, I'll be back to the forum with more thoughts I'm sure!

    With your psychiatrist, I wonder if the "traditional" couch arrangement would help? I tried this once, and it means that your psychiatrist is out of sight, so all of the pressure for eye contact etc is absent.