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Oyez, oyez! Calling all "high functioners"!

Deleted User

...Autism is a spectrum and everyone is different. What characterises a diagnosis of autism is if it has an impact on ones daily life. I am classed as "high functioning" but currently do not know what this means.

Overload as a result from doing less than what someone who is not autistic can do. This means currently bare minimum of activity because intolerance and sensory input cannot be regulated. 
Working hours are reduced because of the struggle to cope with full time even though preference is to work more. The load is primarily from executive function difficulties which also include the social aspect and sensory. Fatigue on a daily basis which impacts everything.

So, when people make throwaway comments like "we're all a bit autistic" or "I think my dog is a bit autistic" (yes, I was present), or labels like "high functioning", or someone gets imposter syndrome thinking they are "not autistic enough", just remember - the difficulties faced - on a daily basis - which many people do not face.

I'm not saying no-one else has problems, but they are of a different kind.

Parents

  •     I have heard dismissive, casually cruel, clueless and marginalizing terms bandied about all my life. I have been guilty, myself of it when I was younger, and still mentally prone to fall back on the tropes passed down to me by those whose job it was to 'raise' me.

        Many times I even referred to myself with this learned behavior. It is learned behavior. It can be unlearned.

        I believe most people want to be sensitive to others but they do not have the tools. Indeed, they are given and taught ways to avoid being sensitive. Often as an alternative to cultivating critical thinking life skills. Once they do cultivate them they generally can see and catch their own slip back into dismissive tropes.

         They need an opportunity and a reason to evolve past it, is all.

       Now, when I catch it happening around me I try be gentle: these tropes have often calcified into part of the speakers value system,  sometimes unconsciously ,which is something that they have to face, but gently, lest they feel threatened and lash back.

         Values are like possessions for most people and they cling to them beyond their, as it were,  extirpation date.

    So,  I try to tread lightly when I try to help them past it. Some times I am the wrong person for the job and I can only walk away. Sometimes I do breakthrough to them.

       I will not repeat some of the instilled in my young mind but I will say that the violent, early days of school integration taught me a great deal by observation and independent thinking.

       Everyone can only think for themselves. Let us hope we are NOT so lazy as to simply collect a few handy tropes and cling to those.

           May we all, always, be expanding into ever more fully aware individuals.

       

Reply

  •     I have heard dismissive, casually cruel, clueless and marginalizing terms bandied about all my life. I have been guilty, myself of it when I was younger, and still mentally prone to fall back on the tropes passed down to me by those whose job it was to 'raise' me.

        Many times I even referred to myself with this learned behavior. It is learned behavior. It can be unlearned.

        I believe most people want to be sensitive to others but they do not have the tools. Indeed, they are given and taught ways to avoid being sensitive. Often as an alternative to cultivating critical thinking life skills. Once they do cultivate them they generally can see and catch their own slip back into dismissive tropes.

         They need an opportunity and a reason to evolve past it, is all.

       Now, when I catch it happening around me I try be gentle: these tropes have often calcified into part of the speakers value system,  sometimes unconsciously ,which is something that they have to face, but gently, lest they feel threatened and lash back.

         Values are like possessions for most people and they cling to them beyond their, as it were,  extirpation date.

    So,  I try to tread lightly when I try to help them past it. Some times I am the wrong person for the job and I can only walk away. Sometimes I do breakthrough to them.

       I will not repeat some of the instilled in my young mind but I will say that the violent, early days of school integration taught me a great deal by observation and independent thinking.

       Everyone can only think for themselves. Let us hope we are NOT so lazy as to simply collect a few handy tropes and cling to those.

           May we all, always, be expanding into ever more fully aware individuals.

       

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