I took a call today at work from an organization that works with kids with disabilities/differences, and their families. The worker, if I recall correctly, hadn't ever spoken to this worker, but she had an extensive file on the case and insisted on telling me about it. She had hopes that I could direct her to services for the family, whose only insurance was Medicaid. (Medicaid is incredibly difficult to get therapy, medication, or really anything at all with.)
She got her recommendations. I got a lesson in misconceptions about autism. The case was a 10 year old boy, diagnosed autistic. In the last few years, he had been sexually assaulted. The worker told me, repeatedly, that the family felt his autism was a blessing, because he seemed somewhat unaware of the enormity of what had happened to him. Sexual assault is always traumatic, she hastened to assure me, but the family was of the opinion that his autism was sparing him some of the more horrible feelings and reactions people have to such an assault.
I held my tongue at the time, because it's rare for any family to appreciate autism, I didn't have the words to express myself at the time, and I didn't want to yell at her for trying to do her best by the family. She called to get resources to give the family, not to get a lecture.
But I should have given her the lecture, because the idea that autism protects you from trauma is the biggest bullshit I've heard this month, if not the whole year. If that logic makes sense to you, I beg you, keep reading, because everyone needs to be disabused of this notion.
Recently I accidentally dropped a 25 pound weight and the assorted contents of a shelf onto my foot. Now, I'm not a trained medical professional. I don't know the names of the bones in my foot. I don't know how many major veins and arteries there are in there. I don't even know precisely what made the puncture in my foot, because it was 1am and pitch black at the time.
Did the fact that I didn't know all that make the injury hurt any less? Hell no. My foot bled, bruised, and hurt like anyone else's foot. However, unlike most people, I didn't yell, cry, call for help, or anything like that. I just took my foot out from the pile of stuff, attempted to check whether I had broken bones (thankfully no), cleaned it, and bandaged it.
You know why I reacted that way? Because I think differently than most people. If someone saw that accident, and then saw my reaction, they'd probably think it wasn't that bad of an accident, and I'd seen something like this before or wasn't concerned about the accident.
But y'know what? My foot bled on and off for days, and kept oozing plasma for more than a week and a half. I was scared a lot of the time, even while I hobbled on it at work, because I've never broken a bone before and don't know what it feels like. I spent a lot of time wondering if I needed to go to the hospital or the urgent care room, and worried about whether my doctor would yell at me for not immediately going. And I spent a lot of time pretending my foot wasn't injured, because it really upset me to think about it. I need my feet to work. I don't have extra money to throw at medical expenses.
Would you see any of that if you'd watched me at work? Absolutely not. That's not how I naturally function. To all appearances, I was merely inconvenienced by my accident.
My autism did diddly squat to protect me from the trauma of smashing my foot. And as much as society likes to pretend emotional and mental illnesses and differences aren't the same as physical injuries, they absolutely are. The fact that you can't see them bleed, or see a cast on them makes them even worse. If people can't see anything wrong, they assume nothing's wrong, so you suffer in silence, alone.
That 10 year old kid who's been sexually assaulted? According to the case file, he's developing OCD-like behaviors and other anxious tendencies. You want to tell me he's somehow shielded from some of the awfulness that was done to him? Really?
No. Do not buy that crap. You don't need to know the size and speed of a foot-crushing object to feel every ounce of the pain. Autistic people are often even more sensitive emotionally than their neurotypical counterparts. That boy is suffering as much or more than he would be if he was neurotypical, and worse, he's going to suffer alone. His family is going to just keep thinking, "Well thank God for his autism, he's not showing the normal trauma reactions we expect victims like him, so he must not be suffering too much."
She got her recommendations. I got a lesson in misconceptions about autism. The case was a 10 year old boy, diagnosed autistic. In the last few years, he had been sexually assaulted. The worker told me, repeatedly, that the family felt his autism was a blessing, because he seemed somewhat unaware of the enormity of what had happened to him. Sexual assault is always traumatic, she hastened to assure me, but the family was of the opinion that his autism was sparing him some of the more horrible feelings and reactions people have to such an assault.
I held my tongue at the time, because it's rare for any family to appreciate autism, I didn't have the words to express myself at the time, and I didn't want to yell at her for trying to do her best by the family. She called to get resources to give the family, not to get a lecture.
But I should have given her the lecture, because the idea that autism protects you from trauma is the biggest bullshit I've heard this month, if not the whole year. If that logic makes sense to you, I beg you, keep reading, because everyone needs to be disabused of this notion.
Recently I accidentally dropped a 25 pound weight and the assorted contents of a shelf onto my foot. Now, I'm not a trained medical professional. I don't know the names of the bones in my foot. I don't know how many major veins and arteries there are in there. I don't even know precisely what made the puncture in my foot, because it was 1am and pitch black at the time.
Did the fact that I didn't know all that make the injury hurt any less? Hell no. My foot bled, bruised, and hurt like anyone else's foot. However, unlike most people, I didn't yell, cry, call for help, or anything like that. I just took my foot out from the pile of stuff, attempted to check whether I had broken bones (thankfully no), cleaned it, and bandaged it.
You know why I reacted that way? Because I think differently than most people. If someone saw that accident, and then saw my reaction, they'd probably think it wasn't that bad of an accident, and I'd seen something like this before or wasn't concerned about the accident.
But y'know what? My foot bled on and off for days, and kept oozing plasma for more than a week and a half. I was scared a lot of the time, even while I hobbled on it at work, because I've never broken a bone before and don't know what it feels like. I spent a lot of time wondering if I needed to go to the hospital or the urgent care room, and worried about whether my doctor would yell at me for not immediately going. And I spent a lot of time pretending my foot wasn't injured, because it really upset me to think about it. I need my feet to work. I don't have extra money to throw at medical expenses.
Would you see any of that if you'd watched me at work? Absolutely not. That's not how I naturally function. To all appearances, I was merely inconvenienced by my accident.
My autism did diddly squat to protect me from the trauma of smashing my foot. And as much as society likes to pretend emotional and mental illnesses and differences aren't the same as physical injuries, they absolutely are. The fact that you can't see them bleed, or see a cast on them makes them even worse. If people can't see anything wrong, they assume nothing's wrong, so you suffer in silence, alone.
That 10 year old kid who's been sexually assaulted? According to the case file, he's developing OCD-like behaviors and other anxious tendencies. You want to tell me he's somehow shielded from some of the awfulness that was done to him? Really?
No. Do not buy that crap. You don't need to know the size and speed of a foot-crushing object to feel every ounce of the pain. Autistic people are often even more sensitive emotionally than their neurotypical counterparts. That boy is suffering as much or more than he would be if he was neurotypical, and worse, he's going to suffer alone. His family is going to just keep thinking, "Well thank God for his autism, he's not showing the normal trauma reactions we expect victims like him, so he must not be suffering too much."
No comments:
Post a Comment