What ways are you autistic?
My autism effected my functioning on these 14 levels:

communication, (receptive and expressive)
sensory perception (meaning from my senses),
sensory processing (organising my senses),
sensory sensitivities (how I experienced my senses),
body messages, (processing)
relationship to body, (identification)
emotional processing (processing and recognising feelings),
emotional tolerance (being able to stand having feelings)
social interaction (including the processing of simultaneous self-other),
capacity to socially adhere (motivation to stick with a social connection or group)
real time information processing, (as opposed to delayed processing)
learning, (integrating, retaining, applying and extrapolating that learning)
experiences of belonging, inclusion, equality (or lack there of)
dissociative, identity, personality, mood, anxiety, compulsive fallout from all these things that we could put into a mental health file.

DEGREES

The degrees to which my autism impacted each of these areas changed over the years.
So the impact on communication would have been severe, then moderate, now relatively mild.
Sensory perception, sensory processing and sensory sensitivity would have been severely-moderately effected and now I’d say relatively mildly. Capacity to process body messages, emotions and to identify with body and tolerate emotions would have been severely effected and now relatively mildly. Social interaction fluctuated from being moderately effected to only mildly effected but simultaneous processing of self and other was severely effected and now relatively mildly effected but capacity to socially adhere is still quite weak. Real time processing was severely-moderately effected and now relatively mildly. Learning on all levels was moderately effected and now fluctuates from moderately to mildly, often depending on things like physical and mental health challenges more than sensory perception and cognition now. Experiences of belonging, inclusion, equality are probably objectively much better than in childhood, teens and young adulthood, but perceptually and emotionally I’m traumatised by the lack of those things in those times. The mental health impacts of my autism journey (which includes the damage of the non-autistic social environment) have gone from fluctuating between severe-moderate to being relatively mild these days, though I’m still traumatised by how overwhelming those experiences were and the damage of the ways the non autistic social environment overwhelmingly added to those issues.

For more information please visit http://www.donnawilliams.net/347.0.html

Polly Samuel (aka ‘Donna Williams’)
Author, artist, consultant and presenter.
http://www.donnawilliams.net

I acknowledge Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people as the Traditional Owners of this country throughout Australia, and their connection to land and community.