"Compared with adults in the general population, autistic adults are more likely to experience poor mental health,10,11 which can contribute to a greater risk for suicidal ideation, self-harm, and death by suicide."
Mantzalas, Jessica, Amanda L. Richdale, Anjali Adikari, Jennifer Lowe, and Cheryl Dissanayake.
"What Is Autistic Burnout? A Thematic Analysis of Posts on Two Online Platforms." Autism in Adulthood 4, no. 1 (2022): 52–65. https://doi.org/10.1089/aut.2021.0021.
Some people who read the description of this blog were wondering what I mean by "burnout." So I thought I would take this time to explain autistic burnout and my experience with it.
Autistic burnout, I'm pretty sure, specific to people with level 1 and 2 support needs. Here's why. People with level 3 support needs usually have very obvious disabilities. Having level 3 support needs means you probably need help with most aspects of taking care of yourself. An adult that I know who has level 3 support needs is unable to use the toilet, needs help bathing, is unable to communicate except by nodding or shaking her head, and generally just needs round the clock supervision in order to be safe. A person with level 3 support needs would not be told that they need to go get a full-time job and support themselves. There would be no question that the person has a disability.
For autistic people with level 1 and 2 support needs though, there is a lot of pressure, beginning in preschool or elementary school, to just blend in and act "normal." Autism might be the only disability where there is so much pressure to appear and behave as if you don't have a disability. The most common therapy for autistic children is ABA, the purpose of which was originally to make children "indistinguishable from their peers." The goal was always that if an outsider walked into a classroom, they would not be able to pick out which child was autistic.
Really, autism is the only disability I know of where people who have it are pressured to act like they don't have it. If someone has cerebral palsy and needs a wheelchair to move around, would they be told that they need to start learning to walk so that nobody can tell they have cerebral palsy? If someone is blind, would all of their therapy be centered around fooling people into thinking they're not blind? Of course not. That would be ludicrous. But that is what happens to most level one and level 2 support needs autistic people.
Of course, people with other disabilities hold jobs also. But certain allowances are usually made for their disability. For instance, if the bagger at the grocery store has Down syndrome, customers might automatically be a little more patient with him. (In fact, many people with Down syndrome have the opposite problem... People treat them like they are small children that cannot make their own decisions or take care of themselves, even if they are actually very capable.)
I think that there are two things that make it more acceptable for autistic people to be pressured to act like they're not autistic. First of all there are no physical characteristics of autism. When a baby is born there is not really any way to tell that they're autistic. Some forms of autism don't even become apparent until the child is two or three years old.
Second of all, autism doesn't necessarily come with an intellectual disability. Most autistic people have normal or higher IQs. There've been plenty of autistic people with level 3 support needs, who weren't able to talk, that everybody assumed had severe intellectual disabilities. But when someone was able to find a way for them to communicate, it turned out that they were actually quite brilliant. They just didn't have a way to express everything they knew. I'm not saying that's the case for all autistic people with level 3 support needs. I'm just saying that autistic people can be very, very intelligent, and still find it extremely hard to get by in the world.
So when people know our intelligence level is normal or higher, they expect us to be capable of doing anything that your typical person could do. Obviously everybody has different talents and abilities, but in general adults of average intelligence are expected to find something they can do well, and then do that thing for at least 8 hours a day in order to get money. When people meet someone who has average or higher intelligence and has working arms and legs, they expect that person to have a career.
But autism affects different areas of the brain. The things we struggle with include being overwhelmed by sensory input, misunderstanding social cues, misunderstanding others expectations, difficulty communicating, trouble focusing attention on command, organization, time management, dealing with changes in routine, etc.
Because of our intelligence we are sent out into the world expected to behaving perform like everybody else.
Since this blog entry is getting long, I'm cutting it into two pieces for the sake of easier reading. You can either continue to Part 2 now, or read it later.
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