Autism Isn't a Life Sentence

Quite often when a person (or a parent’s son or daughter) is diagnosed with autism or anything else that’s medically termed a disability, sympathy is expressed as to how hard it must be for the parent or the person themselves.

It is true that a few challenges may come along with autism (which is mentioned in this blog because I myself am autistic) including anxiety, autistic meltdowns, and difficulties with cognitive and processing skills. Yet we are still essentially happy with living the way that we do.

Almost all us have a special interest of some sort (we may even have more than one of them). An autistic person’s special interest is often termed an obsessive interest or a fixed interest. Though I personally prefer the term special interest, as the word obsession indicates that it’s not mentally healthy, and the term fixed interest indicates that we have absolutely no care for anything else.

Every person has a topic of which they prefer above any other. Yet for an autistic person, the case goes a lot deeper than usual. Whenever we’re doing anything that relates to our special interest/s, we get thorough enjoyment from a certain fascination within us. This intense fascination propels us to have the desire to study the topic immensely while giving us an internal spark of energy at the same time. We also use our special interest as a means of temporarily escaping whenever we experience anxiety.

My own special interest areas are the Harry Potter series, Lego, and writing. I experience severe anxiety, though I feel relaxed (without needing additional medication) after engaging my mind for a while on any of those three topics. Whenever I get anxiety from doing something more stressful like answering various emails, I find that taking short breaks where I engage in any of those topics helps to refocus my mind on doing the emails (or any other boring and/or stressful task).

At times, it’s also wrongly stated that autistic people can’t form friendships. That is definitely not true. There are many people who I get along well with who are autistic, neurotypical, non-autistic with another disability, non-autistic with anxiety, and (in particular) people who are likeminded or have similar lives to me.

Everybody (autistic or not) develops friendships in that kind of way. Personalities amongst us all are various. So there will definitely be people we come across who are the right kind of people for us. There will indeed be people who we don’t get along with. But that’s the case for everybody and it doesn’t always mean that the person is unfriendly or mean. It’s just impossible to be liked by or to get along with everybody, again given the fact that the personalities amongst us are various.

Even though there is still much to learn about autism, diagnoses are increasing at a steady rate each year with both children and adults. As such, society is much more aware of the condition in comparison to a decade ago (that’s also from personal experience).

It’s also essential for everyone to be aware that being different from most people doesn’t make us broken, less worthy, or a person to feel sorry for. We are still able to live enjoyable and productive lives, and it’s very important for us to be supported for the ways we go about achieving those things. This in no way means that we have to be given our own way all of the time, or to be given the right to never try in life. Everyone has to try hard at certain times and that should be equal to us all (taking our individual abilities into account).

All that is necessary is for everyone to be aware that there are many different ways of living and enjoying life, and in regards to that there are none better or worse than another. This is a situation that fits the phrase “everything is relative.”