How is autism actually treated? You hear people saying the diagnosis changed their kids life or it’s important to be diagnosed early, but how?
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Autism is a way of living. I can give an analogy of what happens when you aren’t given support as a highly masking autistic person.
As someone diagnosed in their late 20s, it’s like being born with all your joints angled outwards by 15 degrees. You naturally walk different, you naturally hold your pencil different, you naturally sleep and stretch in different positions, your joints and muscles hurt and injure easily, and activities that other kids might enjoy, like catching a ball, might hurt your fingers easier, except you’re a kid and you don’t know how to communicate that everything hurts all the time when you try to fit in and act like the other kids. You communicate in different ways than normal and no one is trained in how you communicate, so frustration, overwhelm, and pain can lead to meltdowns which is good for no one. You get admonished for things that seem natural to you for no reason and learn to bury/suffer the pain internally.
As you age up, fitting in is important, so a lot of mental energy goes into monitoring your body all the time – are my legs turned inward, are my feet in the right position, am I holding my pencil right. That’s a lot of mental and physical energy that should be spent with the world around you, and that’s a lot of pain you’re forcing yourself to suffer through, because everyone else seems to suffer through it. This causes long term internal damage – mental, emotional, and physical. And no one tells you that your joints are rotated out by 15 degrees – you think this is how everyone is, and you’re pathetic/weak/wrong/different for struggling.
You also lose out on learning about how *your* body works. When you should be given support to learn things like: the best way for *you* to walk and sleep and exercise and run; when you’ve been hurt or injured; when to take a break; how to soothe sore muscles and joints which might be sore from just going to the store; how to prevent injuries and pain in the long run; how to safely exercise and stretch; what supportive tools might help you; how to cope when you might need to turn your joints inwards for a short period of time (let’s say you love to play the piano) – you’re just constantly invisibly inflicting pain and damage on yourself.
And if the people around you don’t understand? You’re going to get yelled at for walking weird, running slow, for having worse hand writing than your peers, etc. That’s not healthy either when other people don’t accept and understand you, and it hurts when you’re already in pain. That’s why masking in autistic people leads to suicide ideation and aggravation of mental illness/poorer mental health.
Support from the start can help you cope with the world around you by finding the right tools that are designed to teach you the skills you need, to live a happy life free of distress, in a way that works for you. Being taught “one foot in front of the other” doesn’t work if your legs and feet are angled outwards.
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