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Discovering how autism affects you - strategy needed

kayaker

Hello, I am struggling with my identity as I don’t know where to start and how to record the information.  Do I take a book and write it down how it affects me using their chapters? That will work for the first book but further books the chapters will have different names. I need to keep it simple from the start, I feel overwhelmed and anxious before I’ve even started.

I would be keen to understand what strategies people have tried and what's worked for you please? I do have a personalised report with suggested reading but when it comes to exploring how autism affects me I'm struggling to know how to organise the information. I am quite old school so using word was going to be my first option.

Thank you in advance

Parents

  • Hello kayaker, here are a few thoughts that may help:

    kayaker said:
    I am struggling with my identity as I don’t know where to start and how to record the information.

    I'm assuming you are talking about your autistic identity so I'll work with this.

    I would start by looking at the list of traits that come with autism and see which ones you have that are noticable - write these down in a list (maybe use a word processer) and number them from 1 to, well whatever the last one is. The list can be found here:

    https://thespectrum.org.au/autism-diagnosis/checklist-adults/

    Next start a section for each trait - use the description as the title of that section and write out how it presents itself for you. Maybe give it a rating of 1 to 5 for how much of a problem if can be for you (1 = minor annoyance, 5 = disabling).

    Once complete, you now have more or less a snapshot of what autism if for you in a very rough form. It can be much more nuanced than this of course as some elements will affect others in positive or negative ways, but you at least have it all in one place.

    Next, to understand more about the most troublesome traits I would use a book like:

    Autism For Dummies (2025) - ISBN 9781394301003 (paberback); ISBN 9781394301027 (ebook)

    Which has a very easy to lookup format and saves you having to read loads of chapters to get to what you need. It should give you the most important info quickly.

    By the end of this you will probably be a bit overwhelmend so take a good break, save any files you wrote and come back to them when you have relaxed and go through them again.

    The last step I would take for now is to try to get a therapist who really understands autism, run through the list with them and ask for help in formulating a strategy to help. They will know how to ask the right questions and can often help you think of other things to add, then build a plan to help you work on yourself if that is what you want.

    Some people only want to vent, some want to be acknowledged, some to be pushed a bit into taking action and some want to get stuck in to the work - plus a few other variants. Your therapist should be able to identify this in you and adapt the therapy to suit.

    This is all in the opinion of some random person from the internet so don't take it as fact - do your own research and reach your own conclusions please.

    Good luck

Reply

  • Hello kayaker, here are a few thoughts that may help:

    kayaker said:
    I am struggling with my identity as I don’t know where to start and how to record the information.

    I'm assuming you are talking about your autistic identity so I'll work with this.

    I would start by looking at the list of traits that come with autism and see which ones you have that are noticable - write these down in a list (maybe use a word processer) and number them from 1 to, well whatever the last one is. The list can be found here:

    https://thespectrum.org.au/autism-diagnosis/checklist-adults/

    Next start a section for each trait - use the description as the title of that section and write out how it presents itself for you. Maybe give it a rating of 1 to 5 for how much of a problem if can be for you (1 = minor annoyance, 5 = disabling).

    Once complete, you now have more or less a snapshot of what autism if for you in a very rough form. It can be much more nuanced than this of course as some elements will affect others in positive or negative ways, but you at least have it all in one place.

    Next, to understand more about the most troublesome traits I would use a book like:

    Autism For Dummies (2025) - ISBN 9781394301003 (paberback); ISBN 9781394301027 (ebook)

    Which has a very easy to lookup format and saves you having to read loads of chapters to get to what you need. It should give you the most important info quickly.

    By the end of this you will probably be a bit overwhelmend so take a good break, save any files you wrote and come back to them when you have relaxed and go through them again.

    The last step I would take for now is to try to get a therapist who really understands autism, run through the list with them and ask for help in formulating a strategy to help. They will know how to ask the right questions and can often help you think of other things to add, then build a plan to help you work on yourself if that is what you want.

    Some people only want to vent, some want to be acknowledged, some to be pushed a bit into taking action and some want to get stuck in to the work - plus a few other variants. Your therapist should be able to identify this in you and adapt the therapy to suit.

    This is all in the opinion of some random person from the internet so don't take it as fact - do your own research and reach your own conclusions please.

    Good luck

Children