Published on 12, July, 2020
I am keen to open a discussion about how significant trauma and autism overlap. I'm picturing a Venn diagram.
I suffer from complex PTSD and have often wondered, in a chicken-or-egg situation: Have I encountered more trauma in my life because I am autistic? Have my autistic traits made me more of a target for bad *** to happen to?
I am a member of online groups for people with CPTSD and also for women with autism and very often if you obscured the title of the page they're posted from, you wouldn't be able to guess which post is for which topic, they seem to be, often, almost interchangeable.
Anyway, probably best we don't go into graphic detail but here to share stories with anyone else struggling with this or a similar condition. It's tough out there. More power to you.
I definitely feel like some of the traumatic events in my life happened because I'm autistic- I was bullied really badly at school and while not all of it was because I'm autistic (I was also poor AND queer, so a target regardless) a great deal of it certainly was.
I've read that some of the autistic traits looked for in diagnostic assessments might actually be trauma responses or reactions to extreme stress and they're just considered inherently autistic because society is designed for NT people and we're all constantly under enormous pressure. I don't know how true that is. For me personally, I only stim when I'm very upset, so on an individual level it does feel like there's something to it.