Hello, and welcome…
I’m an Autist who lives in England (that should explain the domain name).
I was 60 years old when I finally got diagnosed. Getting an understanding of autism in general, and my autism specifically, is still an ongoing process for me. When I was diagnosed, I naively thought the information and knowledge needed to understand my autism would be readily available.
More fool me!
I’ve waded through websites, read books, read research papers, watched videos, and spent time in forums. It’s been a frustratingly slow process. There isn’t an autism ‘handbook’, or a single consolidated body of knowledge that I could find. My experience has been painstakingly seeking out pockets of information, spread far and wide. Encountering a surprising amount of misconception, misinformation and misleading opinion along the way. I also found a lot of repetition of superficial definitions of autism, which didn’t seem to have been informed by much (if any) actual lived experience of autism.
So that led to this website.
I’m hoping that in time, this website can become a useful resource for other autists, or their friends, partners, family…
It may take me a while. I’m not at my best. It took an epic breakdown for me to realise I was autistic. I really crashed and burned. Recovery is slow, often challenging, and I have setbacks along the way. But when I was functioning well, I was good at articulating concepts and knowledge.
All Autists have their own unique lived experience, but there is commonality when it comes to the nature of autism.
It is possible to have a common framework of understanding, which can inform both our own understanding of our autistic experience and our ability to articulate our autism to others. I want to share my developing understanding of autism and my 60-plus years of lived experience, so that others can avoid some of the frustration and wasted time gathering an essential understanding of autism.
About Autism…
We experience the world differently.
We process information differently and respond differently to stimuli.
Our lived experience is fundamentally different to that of people who aren’t autistic.
We tend to be good at some things that most ‘normal’ people struggle with.
We tend to struggle with some things that most ‘normal’ people find easy.
Imitating the behaviour of people who aren’t autistic is actually very damaging for us.
Most of us didn’t have access to the knowledge we would have needed to understand our autism properly during our formative years.
We struggle throughout our lives because of this.
Autistic children need to be supported to understand their autism, how it affects them, and how to regulate and manage their condition.
It’s a lot harder to reprogram your thinking and understand your true self after decades of misplaced rationalisation and cognitive dissonance as an adult.
Autistic children have a different and ‘slower’ learning curve when it comes to social interaction. However, they can usually process information and draw their own conclusions far better than other children in their age group. So, given access to the right information about autism and some sympathetic support, they will probably be able to equip themselves to lead a balanced autistic life and achieve their potential.
As a child, I could never understand why adults patronised me and tried to impose their opinions on me. I just wanted to process the relevant information and form my own opinions. Unfortunately, I had no idea I was autistic. If only I had known.
Now, as an adult, I’m struggling to develop an understanding of how best to recover from what can probably be described as arrested development. I developed some skills because of my autistic strengths. I was a high achiever in some areas of my life, but I was struggling, compensating, and faking it in other areas. Unfortunately, not understanding that I was autistic, I couldn’t understand how to regulate and manage my condition properly. I developed coping strategies, but given my ignorance about autism, they were flawed. I accumulated too many deficits, progressively undermined my mental health, and went into a downward spiral until my life imploded.
I have days when just getting up, toileting, eating…is about all I can manage. Talking to someone for 10 minutes will just wipe me out for the rest of the day. Even on my best days, I still have a lot to struggle with. I’m having to re-evaluate the world around me, get a fresh understanding of my place in it (as an Autist) and get my brain to re-map itself accordingly.
Some variation of that experience is common for late-diagnosed adult autists. And young or old, the challenges of living an autistic life are exacerbated by being surrounded by people who don’t properly understand autism.
A lot of that could be avoided if there was a more accessible and informed understanding of autism readily available in the public domain.
This site is my attempt to contribute towards that in some small way.