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Photo © Mariana Zanatta | Flickr/Creative Commons

[image: Hand-drawn black-and-white outlined block letters spelling “anxiety”

on a background of “anxiety” written repeatedly in black & filling all space.]

Christine Motokane

www.workingthedoubleshift.com

It is well known that individuals on the autism spectrum are likely to have co-occurring mental health issues such as depression and anxiety. However, mental health is a less-discussed topic surrounding autism, compared to behavior and social challenges, etc.

As an autistic young adult with anxiety,  I can give personal insight on this high prevalence. A big part of our susceptibility to issues like anxiety has to do with how we were slowly socialized, either implicitly or explicitly, to believe that an autistic lifestyle is something that is defective and therefore needs fixing. A recent Independent article sums up the strong link between lack of autism acceptance and the development of mental health disorders in autistic people: Research shows that lack of acceptance externally from others and internally from the self significantly predicts depression and anxiety in young adults with autism.

Yet mental health, and having a positive relationship with an autistic identity, are not usual priorities for helping autistic people. And if mental health issues are mentioned with regards to autism, they are are addressed in a pathological way. In this post I am going to write about my experience as someone on the spectrum who lives with mental health issues.

I have written about my struggle with anxiety in an earlier post. However, in that post I talked about some of the symptoms of how my anxiety manifests. I have never written that extensively about the root cause of my mental turmoil being related to lack of acceptance of my being autistic. Although I come across as a “confident self advocate” when I speak about my life experiences, the truth is that I struggle with deep self-confidence issues, and sometimes actually doubt some of my own advice. There is a “monster voice” in my head that constantly tells me, “I am wrong,” or that “I am not deserving of support,” and other negative scripts. I constantly say, “I’m sorry” to my family or others whenever I feel that my autistic mind takes over. My monster voice is always constantly bringing me down by saying that I am not “entitled to my feelings because I am autistic,” and battles with my positive voice or the voice of confidence. I am so hard on myself and I blame myself for all the challenges that life brings me.

Lately, I have been wondering: how did I become this way, or how did I develop such negative thinking which resembles mental self injury? I then realize that the negative scripts and inner anxiety that I developed in my head today were the result of years of growing up, and slowly realizing that disability is something that needed to be fixed. Unlike the children growing up today with the neurodiversity framework, I did not come of age at at time in which autistic advocates were respectfully regarded as the “true experts.”

As much as I hate to blast some of my lovely support people like my therapist or my family members on this blog post, they unintentionally—through no fault of their own—contributed to my negative script that I have for myself. Before I go ahead and critique some of the interventions that I received, I want to be clear that I am thankful that I have gotten interventions that enabled me get to the point where I am today. The social skills, emotional and self-advocacy skills that I learned during my adolescence enabled me to be the strong advocate I am today. But for autism intervention, there is always room for improvement.

Throughout my school years, I was taught to camouflage my symptoms in order to blend in and function in the mainstream environment. This was reinforced through behavioral therapy and the school system. A few examples that I can remember include that I was pressured to join clubs, and also sit with a group of kids because that is how typical high schoolers socialized. I was discouraged from socializing with adults such as the other aides at school, or the computer teacher in middle school, because it wasn’t considered appropriate. I was socialized to learn about  the fashion and other interests that teens through social groups that my behaviorist made (e.g. the “cool” or “not cool” chart) in an attempt were to make me “fit in” better.

All these experiences and others have taught me that I should camouflage and suppress my natural self because I should appear normal. Friends were chosen for me, because people wanted me to be more social. I went along with the recommendations of my support people and parents, and pretended to live as a neurotypical, because I thought they knew best. I tried all I could to suppress my natural way of being—at the expense of my self esteem, and acceptance of my unique neurology.

What the people who helped me didn’t realize at the time were the future implications of my mental health as an autistic person. This was because their focus was on making me as self-sufficient and socially adjusted as possible, and by the time I reached adulthood nobody ever considered that what they were doing could unintentionally affect my self-identity and self esteem. But all my energy spent camouflaging myself in order to appear “normal” became mentally exhausting. I started second-guessing myself, and internally beating myself up, over minor social infractions. This is a big part of my anxiety in living as an autistic person.

My experience with special education and ABA demonstrates how the dichotomy of interventions that are designed to optimize the quality of life for individuals on the spectrum can also adversely impact their mental health, and also their self-acceptance of an autistic identity. This is why so many autistic self-advocates are concerned about behavioral modification programs: because of the long-term effects they can have on autistic people’s mental health. This is why we need to preach autism acceptance, and center self advocates in developing appropriate supports for autistic people. That means we need to take autistic people’s insights, feelings, and desires into account, instead of dismissing them.

Acceptance means training mental health service providers to look at autism and other disabilities as a part of a person’s identity, rather than a problem that needs to be fixed. Acceptance means helping to create a world where autistic people don’t have to camouflage themselves as neurotypical. Acceptance also means giving supports and accommodations to autistic people of all abilities and support levels when it’s asked for and needed. If the world becomes more embracing of the autistic lifestyle, I believe the severity of the mental health problems autistic people have can, in many cases, be lessened.

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This article was originally published at redefiningnormalayoungwomansjourney.blogspot.com.