Published on 12, July, 2020
During my autism assessment, the psychiatrist said that although my autism affects many aspects of my life, I was still able to communicate to her well and therefore only had it “mild”. I understand that I have low support needs and that other autistic people have different or more extreme struggles and need more support, but I was masking a lot in the assessment in order to answer the questions as clearly as possible, which completely exhausted me and impacted how I felt over the next couple of days. As Keedie said in the TV show “A kind of spark”, her autism only seems mild because ‘we make it so, at a great personal cost’. Autism has a huge impact on my life, even if no one else can see it, and especially if I’m purposefully changing my behaviour to fit in or adapt to other people. Just because it seems mild to you doesn’t mean it actually is to me. I feel like this is why the terms “high functioning” and “low functioning” are being used less in favour of “support needs” which I feel is more accurate and less diminishing of autistic people’s struggles. I’d be interested to know other people’s opinions too as I know some people don’t mind the word “mild”!
I completely understand you. I was diagnosed last year with autism- at 20 years old. Obviously my masking was effective enough for professionals and teachers not to have known, even myself. So I think I can understand this post. Although one may think that autism presents as 'mild' or 'high functioning' isn't the point- it's still autism, and the person still requires a certain level of support in life. It's labels like 'mild' that make me feel as though I'm 'not autistic enough' to fit into people's preconceptions and stereotypes.
Autism is a spectrum, but yet so many people see it as a linear scale from less autistic to more autistic. But this clearly isn't what this means. Everyone has different needs, different things that they are good at, so why do we feel the need to compare our 'levels of autism' to one another. I'm sorry if the label given to you made you feel invalidated.
Thank you for your response, I agree with you!