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 actually got a diagnosis of just having autism without specifying the extent, I went to college, I had a few friends, and I would go on solo trips, and if you think it's mild, yes, but last semester, just Because I failed a class, I locked myself in the dormitory, yelled, and kept shaking myself. Finally, I called my mother with tears in my eyes and asked her to take me home right now (I finally sat three hours train ride home) and then I had to ask my mom to write an email for me because I was totally devastated. Although it turned out in the end that it was indeed the professor who lost my homework, and he couldn't be blamed on me. I got points but was also asked why I wasn't even communicating with him. So maybe I'm just hiding this side of me that's really affecting me