Donna *)

if you read The Jumbled Jigsaw
you’ll find I don’t believe there is any ONE thing called autism
that its essentially the developmental impact of a combined range of underlying conditions, a kind of ‘fruit salad’ and if we identify each piece, we can reduce the challenges associated with that piece which then has some reduction in exacerbating the impact of the other remaining pieces on the whole.

It’s a holistic model, perhaps you’re not used to that given much of the autism INDUSTRY promotes the idea there is one condition and hence one MARKETABLE ‘cure’, ‘treatment’, ‘therapy’, ‘approach’.
Even the culturalist movement promotes the ideal there is a single condition called an ‘autism spectrum condition’.

Anyway, trust me to differ

so how does reducing visual perceptual challenges impact on anything else in the fruit salad?

lets say a fruit salad has lemons in it and one kids lemon content is a rating 5, another kids its only a rating 1 and another its a zero and another its an 8 in terms of the exacerbating impact on the combined whole of the ‘fruit salad’ factor.

clearly addressing the lemons is going to have a far greater impact for the kid with the 5 or 10 rating than the one with the 1 and no impact at all for the kid for whom lemons don’t figure in their fruit salad at all (the zero kid).

so, for me, visual perceptual disorders were a pretty biggie in my fruit salad. I had many things in that fruit salad (I write of this extensively in The Jumbeld Jigsaw) and some were 5s, some were 8s, some were only 3s and then there’s some things in the fruit salads of other folks diagnosed with autism that are zeros in mine and vice versa.

So visual perceptual stuff was about a 5 for me. It CONTRIBUTED to social anxiety, information overload, involuntary self protection responses, bonding issues, reduced receptive language processing and exacerbated impulse control disorders (tourette’s tics and OCD).

Removing much of the visual perceptual challenges DIDN’T completely remove any of these OTHER things, but it reduced some of the added information processing drain, freeing up what was left, and if reduced general stress and anxiety load.

So beyond the obvious of better reading, not distressed by faces, movement or overhead light so much, more open to physical contact now I could actually see people as a whole, feeling safer with new environments which weren’t like mosaics so much…

yes, I was still pretty ‘autie’ and the ways I addressed the FAR BROADER variety of challenges in MY fruit salad is addressed in the 10 published books I’ve written so its important never to see any ONE thing that helped ME as applying to ALL my progress nor applying it to all people with a shared diagnosis who may or may not have that particular challenge in their fruit salad.

For your info, in Autism; An Inside Out Approach and in The Jumbled Jigsaw I gave many examples of SIMILAR looking behaviors which very different underlying causes. So its important to consider that two people can look like they share an issue, yet the underlying issues are actually quite different.

Donna Williams
http://www.donnawilliams.net

good luck.

Donna *)

Jam Jar is available as far as I know, from Fresh Film, UK. Try this site:
http://www.freshfilm.co.uk

as for online, no, not yet.

Donna *)