AUTISTIC BURNOUT: In Conversation with Transforming Autism - Dora Raymaker
Summary
TLDRThe discussion delves into the phenomenon of autistic burnout, a syndrome resulting from chronic stress and a mismatch of expectations and abilities, without adequate support. It manifests as long-term exhaustion, loss of function, and reduced tolerance to stimulus. The research, conducted through qualitative studies and community engagement, highlights the impact of autistic burnout on health, independence, and quality of life. It emphasizes the importance of acceptance, social support, understanding autistic needs, and self-advocacy in preventing and recovering from burnout. The conversation underscores the significance of raising awareness and promoting a supportive environment to mitigate this pressing issue within the autistic community.
Takeaways
- 📚 Autistic burnout is a recognized syndrome within the autistic community, stemming from chronic life stress and a mismatch between expectations and abilities without adequate support.
- 💡 The syndrome is characterized by long-term exhaustion, loss of function, and reduced tolerance to stimuli, typically experienced over three or more months.
- 🧠 Research into autistic burnout was conducted through qualitative studies, involving interviews with autistic adults who self-identified as having experienced burnout.
- 🌟 The causes of autistic burnout are multifaceted, including life stressors, masking (hiding autistic traits), societal expectations, and disability management challenges.
- 🤦♂️ Autistic burnout can lead to severe outcomes such as loss of work, independence, and in extreme cases, suicidal behavior.
- 👥 The feeling of being dismissed or not understood by neurotypical individuals exacerbates the impact of burnout on autistic individuals.
- 🤗 Acceptance and social support are crucial in helping individuals recover from and potentially prevent autistic burnout.
- 💪 Self-advocacy, understanding autistic needs, and utilizing autistic strengths can help mitigate the effects of burnout and empower individuals.
- 📈 Early diagnosis and self-knowledge can aid in recognizing the signs of burnout and implementing strategies to address it.
- 👨👩👧 Parents of autistic children can support their kids by accepting them, fostering self-understanding, and advocating for a more inclusive and supportive environment.
Q & A
What is the definition of autistic burnout?
-Autistic burnout is a syndrome conceptualized as resulting from chronic life stress and a mismatch of expectations and abilities without adequate supports. It is characterized by pervasive, long-term exhaustion, loss of function, and reduced tolerance to stimulus, typically experienced for three or more months.
What are the main areas of findings from the research on autistic burnout?
-The main areas of findings focus on four research questions: whether autistic burnout is a distinct issue, what characterizes and defines it, what causes it, and how it impacts people's lives and what might relieve or prevent it.
How was the research on autistic burnout conducted?
-The research was a qualitative study involving interviews with autistic adults who self-identified as having experienced autistic burnout, examination of public internet sources where the community has been discussing the issue, and analysis of themes across the sources to understand the phenomenon better.
What are the three themes under the characteristics of autistic burnout?
-The three themes are chronic exhaustion, loss of skills, and reduced tolerance to sensory input. These themes reflect the intense fatigue,退化 of previously acquired skills, and heightened sensitivity to sensory stimuli experienced by individuals going through autistic burnout.
What are some life stressors that contribute to autistic burnout?
-Life stressors include transitions such as starting a new job or going to college, mental health crises, expectations from family, society, school, or work, masking or hiding autistic traits, and disability management which refers to the challenges of living in a world not set up to accommodate one's functional needs.
What are the impacts of autistic burnout on individuals?
-The impacts include effects on mental and physical health, reduced capacity for independent living, decreased quality of life, and negative self-image due to lack of empathy from neurotypical people. These impacts can be profound and lead to serious consequences such as depression, anxiety, and suicidal behavior.
How can acceptance and social support help in preventing or recovering from autistic burnout?
-Acceptance and social support validate the experiences of individuals with autistic burnout, reduce feelings of isolation, and provide a safe space for them to express their struggles without judgment. This support can come in the form of one-on-one assistance, community resources, and peer connections, all of which contribute to a healthier recovery process and prevention strategies.
What are some strategies for self-advocacy and self-knowledge to avoid or mitigate autistic burnout?
-Strategies include setting boundaries, asking for help, maintaining good health, recognizing patterns in one's life, and using that understanding to make strategic decisions. Early recognition of burnout signs can lead to timely interventions, and self-acceptance can reduce the pressure to conform to neurotypical expectations.
How can parents of autistic children help prevent future burnout?
-Parents can provide acceptance, accommodate the child's needs, help the child understand their strengths and challenges, listen and believe them when they express overwhelm, and foster a strong sense of self-esteem. This support and understanding can empower the child to develop self-advocacy skills and resilience.
What is the significance of having an autism diagnosis in relation to autistic burnout?
-An autism diagnosis can provide self-understanding and access to disability accommodations which may help in preventing or managing burnout. It also allows individuals to connect with others who have similar experiences, normalizing their feelings and providing a sense of community and belonging.
How does the research on autistic burnout contribute to the broader understanding of autism and mental health?
-The research highlights the unique challenges faced by autistic individuals, particularly in managing stress and expectations. It underscores the importance of recognizing autistic burnout as a distinct issue and addresses the need for societal and environmental accommodations to support autistic individuals' mental health and well-being.
Outlines
🧠 Introduction to Autistic Burnout
This paragraph introduces Dora Rae Maker, a researcher and professor at Portland State University, who is autistic herself. She discusses the concept of autistic burnout, a phenomenon that has been a significant topic among autistic adults for years. Autistic burnout is described as a response to chronic life stress and a mismatch between expectations and abilities without adequate support. It is characterized by long-term exhaustion, loss of function, and reduced tolerance to stimulus. The academic Autism Spectrum Partnership in Research and Education (ASPIRE) conducted research to define and understand this issue better, highlighting its severe outcomes such as loss of work, independence, and suicidal behavior.
📚 Research Findings on Autistic Burnout
In this paragraph, Dora Rae Maker shares the findings from her research on autistic burnout. The study involved qualitative research methods, including interviews with autistic adults who had experienced burnout. The research aimed to understand the characteristics, causes, and impacts of autistic burnout. Three main themes emerged: chronic exhaustion, loss of skills, and reduced tolerance to sensory input. These themes were integral in defining autistic burnout and understanding its profound effects on individuals. The research also explored the causes or attributes of burnout as reported by the participants, which included life stressors, masking, expectations, and disability management. The findings underscore the importance of further research and understanding to address this issue within the autistic community.
🌟 Impacts and Experiences of Autistic Burnout
This paragraph delves into the impacts of autistic burnout on individuals, as identified by the research. The impacts were categorized into five main themes: mental and physical health deterioration, reduced capacity for independent living, negative self-image due to lack of empathy from neurotypical individuals, and the exacerbation of secondary mental health conditions. The experiences of burnout were often centered around high-stress moments or significant life transitions. The paragraph emphasizes the seriousness of autistic burnout and its potential long-term effects on an individual's well-being and quality of life.
🛠️ Strategies for Prevention and Recovery from Autistic Burnout
The paragraph discusses various strategies that can help prevent or aid in the recovery from autistic burnout. These strategies include acceptance and social support, attending to autistic needs, formal supports like disability accommodations, self-advocacy, and self-knowledge. The importance of understanding and accepting oneself as autistic, setting boundaries, and having the ability to ask for help are highlighted. The paragraph underscores the significance of community support and the role of early recognition in mitigating the effects of burnout.
💡 Supporting Autistic Individuals and Future Considerations
In the final paragraph, Dora Rae Maker offers advice for supporting autistic individuals who may be experiencing or are at risk of autistic burnout. She emphasizes the importance of acceptance, understanding, and empathy. The paragraph also discusses the role of parents in helping their autistic children develop self-understanding and self-advocacy skills. By fostering a supportive environment and promoting self-esteem, children can be better equipped to handle challenges and reduce the risk of burnout in the future.
Mindmap
Keywords
💡Autistic Burnout
💡Chronic Life Stress
💡Mismatch of Expectations and Abilities
💡Qualitative Study
💡Community Support
💡Self-Advocacy
💡Sensory Overload
💡Disability Accommodations
💡Mental Health
💡Self-Understanding
Highlights
Definition of Autistic Burnout
Chronic stress and mismatch of expectations as causes
Symptoms include exhaustion, loss of function, and reduced tolerance
Qualitative research methodology
Interviews with autistic adults from diverse backgrounds
Public internet sources as research material
Themes of chronic exhaustion, loss of skills, and sensory sensitivity
Life stressors and barriers to support as contributing factors
Impacts on mental and physical health
Effects on independent living and quality of life
Lack of empathy from neurotypical individuals as an impact
Acceptance and social support as recovery strategies
Importance of attending to autistic needs and unmasking
Formal supports like disability accommodations and mental health services
Self-advocacy and self-knowledge for prevention and recovery
Early recognition of burnout as crucial for intervention
Support for avoiding and recovering from burnout
Transcripts
dora rae maker is an assistant research
professor at portland state university
in oregon
autistic herself she's one of the very
few researchers into the phenomenon of
autistic burnout
dora for the benefit of anybody who
doesn't know
can you outline what autistic burnout is
and and
how it's experienced by somebody who
goes through it
yeah so uh autistic burnout is an issue
that's been a really big part of
discussion among autistic adults in the
community for many years
and it gives people a lot of the stress
and they report it leading to really bad
outcomes like lost work lost
independence and even suicidal behavior
but it hasn't really been researched so
the academic autism spectrum partnership
in research and education aspire which
is my research group that i
that i co-direct um we did some research
and we came up with this as a definition
so the definition that we came up with
is autistic burnout is a syndrome
conceptualized as resulting from chronic
life stress
and a mismatch of expectations and
abilities
without adequate supports and it's
characterized by a pervasive
long term and by that i mean typically
three or more months
of exhaustion loss of function
and reduced tolerance to stimulus and
i'll talk
more about how we came up with that
definition and how people are
experiencing it as
as we go along so you really
it's really i guess for the person who's
experiencing it
it feels very much like all their energy
is depleted
they can't carry on with what they were
with what they were doing previously
would that be a fair summary yes
so tell us about the research itself
yes excuse me
so with the the research it was a
qualitative study
so it was uh looking at people's stories
and experiences their words
we did 10 interviews with autistic
adults in the united states from a
relatively wide
demographic backgrounds and all you know
different geographies
who had self-identified as having
experienced autistic burnout and
we didn't define it because we wanted
people to define it for us
so that we just said autistic burnout um
and then we also included nine
interviews from a skilled employment
project
where people had brought it up
spontaneously
and then we also examined 19 public
internet sources
because like i say the community has
been talking about this
for years this is not some new thing
that's just happened
um and we recruited people uh it was a
us-based study
we publicized on social media we did
word of mouth
and we used community connections you
know people talk to their support groups
that kind of thing and then we analyze
the data by like looking at the themes
across the sources so we kind of took
what people said at face value but we
also considered a little bit of deeper
social context and we looked for what
like what people were saying really
strongly
and throughout all of the stories and
that that's what you're kind of looking
at is this weight of
of meaning that people are saying over
and over again and you you interview
until you reach
theme saturation which is when people
start you start hearing the same stories
over and over and over again
and then that that emerges into your
theme so it's a very exploratory
qualitative way
of understanding something that hasn't
really been
looked at before
and so i guess that doing that research
actually helped you to come to the
definition that you that you shared at
the beginning
what were the main findings of the
research so the findings
focused on four research questions so
one the first one
is is autistic burnout a distinct thing
from any other distress people might be
having and if so what characterizes and
how might it be defined so that's
that's where the definition came from
and i i gave you the definition at the
beginning but as we continue talking i
think that's going to unpack a little
bit more into what people were saying
so the second question was what do
people attribute
autistic burnout to what are they saying
cause did in their lives
the third question is how did it impact
people's lives
and then the last question that we were
really focused on in the findings was
what did people do that might relieve it
or that they felt could have prevented
it
so those are the the main areas of
findings so for the characteristics
um the first there were three themes
under that that were
go you'll you'll see these referencing
back into the the definition so
the first was chronic exhaustion which
was just a
overall like you you were just
you had nothing left and and i've i've
got some quotes from people
to to share so that people can
understand what this really felt like
and the the quote for that um
which is also ended up being the title
of the paper we just had published on
the study so there's there's a research
paper and
which has a lay summary if people want
some more information on this
um and somebody said that it was like
having all of your internal resources
exhausted beyond measure
and being left with no cleanup crew
so the second characteristic was this
loss of skills
which was things that you used to be
able to do
which could be you know doing your
laundry
or doing your job or
it could also be talking or being able
to
have a social interaction with someone
um so there was this loss of
of skills um lost uh difficulty
remembering things
they were cognitive level sensory levels
so there was like this
kind of a lot of loss of skills and
this is again a quote from one of our
participants said
the way i describe the way i define
burnout is a regression of skills
for me the really really scary part of
burnout is you don't know whether or not
you're going to get those skills back to
the point you had them
where you were before the burnout
and then our third characteristic that
people talked about was this reduced
tolerance to sensory input
which is a definitely something that
differentiates it
from it
job burnout or work related burnout and
um and also depression and some other
things
is this this sensory input piece
and that was uh
so the quote about that is
many routine noises have become quite
painful
therefore very difficult and taxing to
access public spaces shopping errands
parks and social gatherings
many artificial scents have started to
make me mad and i've had to make a
handful of foods off limits due to
texture
and this was people were comparing this
and saying that prior to their burnout
they were able to
tolerate a lot more sensory
input than they were after you know
during the burnout and sometimes even
after
did you get a sense from the research of
uh
what the causes of autistic burnout what
leads to it
yeah so i can't that the term cause
is it's a you know tricky in research
and i can't really talk about what
causes autistic burnout because the
study wasn't set up to answer that
question
but i can very much talk about what the
attributes were
what participants said was um
causing that which is you'll see this is
also became part of our definition
there's a diagram i sent you um that i'm
gonna
kind of walk through because this is
what people
people talked about over and over again
is happening and and this i can say not
everybody listed every single thing in
here
but it was again that weight of
theme saturation people were saying the
same thing over and over so on one side
what people talked about was life
stressors
and these some of them are stressors
that
can happen to anyone like you know
transitions a mental health crisis going
to
college just starting a new job but some
of them were a little bit more specific
to to autism so one of those stresses
was definitely masking so pretend
trying to hide your autistic traits
trying to hide if you were having a hard
time with something
trying to pretend to to be
normal whatever that is another stress
was expectations from from family
society school
work expectations to do things
again in very normalized ways
or to meet an expectation a
developmental expectation that couldn't
be met
and then there was disability management
so we we used that term to
to talk about um you know the functional
functional impairments or functional
issues
of uh like just having to manage the
fact that you can't do the things that
the world was set up to do right so i
mean i come from a very socio-ecological
model of disability where disability
occurs because there's a
mismatch between a person and their
environment
so what's going on here is you're having
to manage
living in this world that isn't set up
to accommodate
your functional needs um so all of that
is creating this constant like
cumulative load
on what you're having to deal with every
day
and then on the other side is a whole
bunch of barriers to getting support for
that
so uh one of the really big important
things that came out of this was that
being guest lit or dismissed was a huge
part of it people would say you know i'm
not
i'm really struggling here i can't do
this i can't keep up i need a break and
and people just say oh no you know
everybody feels that way
or well you're just being lazy or you
know those types of things
really um made it difficult for people
to take
a break or to take the time they needed
to relieve some of those pressures
um there was also you know we are
because we're marginalized a lot in
society
um there's a lot of history of abuse
and the types of things that can make it
really hard for people to have good
boundaries
or to feel like they can speak up for
themselves because they've been crushed
so many times
so uh there are also people who are
afraid to speak up i can't tell my boss
i need a break or i'll get fired i can't
you know tell my parents because they
just get mad at me
or people had never really learned those
skills
uh there was the inability to take a
break and then
sort of a lack of external resources or
support or services
like needing somebody to come in and
just clean up the house
but you can't access that service
because you're not considered disabled
enough
those types of things so that's like the
inability to obtain relief
so you've got this huge load that's
building and then every avenue in trying
to relieve that load starts getting
cut off and at that point the world's
expectations completely outweigh
your ability to ever meet them and the
result
was the autistic burnout and that's
that's what people talk to us about
it makes sense and i guess i'm wondering
is there any
did you detect any that any particular
groups were more susceptible i'm
thinking particularly of
maybe people who aren't or haven't been
diagnosed
as autistic until later in their life
because they will have been
um less able to have a sense that they
it'd be a good idea to slow down because
because they don't know that they're
autistic
and they think well i just need to try
harder and match what other people are
doing
so so some people did say that they felt
an earlier diagnosis
would have provided them with
self-understanding and the ability to
get disability accommodations
to help avoid it but there really were
also a number of people in our study who
had been diagnosed as children and they
had the same experiences of burnout
so i think my guess on that
is that those dynamics that i described
for how this happens can occur whether
one has a diagnosis or not
um although there are some tools a
diagnosis could help with
i think more research would have to be
done to really understand those
differences
uh but i will when you're when you're
asking me about
anyone who's particularly more
susceptible to it
when people related stories of when
their
burnouts occurred the first burnouts
were usually
identified at early transition points so
puberty or graduating from high school
or going to college for the first time
so i think that there are points
i don't know like that our study pointed
out to particular subgroups of people
and again it was qualitative it wasn't
set up to count numbers or do statistics
there's limits on that but but just from
the stories it wasn't
it didn't feel like there were people
with particular demographic
characteristics
who had these experiences more it was
more that the experiences tended to
center around high stress moments which
of course makes sense
because those are the times when when
expectations
ratchet up or when there's big changes
plus expectations ratcheting up and um
so yeah i think that that may be worth
noting but in terms of impacts so the
themes that we found for that the the
big main themes there were
five of them so the first was that there
were a lot of
impacts on health so this was mental and
physical health this was
um people
became became depressed or anxious or
had secondary
mental health conditions that occurred
because
of the state of burnout or they had
trouble taking care of themselves and
their physical health started to suffer
the second big impact was their capacity
for
independent living really
it took a toll on that so this is like
their ability to perform
instrumental activities of daily living
taking care of
taking a shower getting food
maintaining their employment sustaining
their employment sustaining important
relationships all of that
it had a big impact on their quality of
life not being able to do things that
they had previously enjoyed not being
able to
maintain the things that people need to
do
and then interestingly there was also
people talked a lot about the impact of
lack of empathy from neurotypical people
or non-autistic people
um that they were going through this
terrible terrible thing
and other people were brushing them off
or not
relating to it or telling them oh
everybody does this just
you know up and deal and that
impact had a really profound effect on
people's
self-image and um their mental health
so that was an interesting
extra impact that people might not
really be thinking about
um with this so i just have a
i guess it was the four those four
themes and i i have a quote here
of kind of an overall what that impact
was like
so this person said my situation became
way too much
after i quit my job i found it
increasingly difficult to speak to
people i didn't know and became very
depressed
i was unable to work for several years
after this experience and attempted
suicide
spent time in the mental hospital before
being able to get my life back
in order so that the impacts of this
art can be quite serious based on
what we're we're talking about so
so now let's talk about how to how to
make this not happen
another build for a case for why we
really need this to not happen
um so you had asked what people could do
to avoid it
as a starting point and people in our
study talked about
things that they thought could have
helped avoid it but they obviously
hadn't avoided it or they wouldn't have
yeah in our study um but
um many of those things were actually
the same things that people
said helped them recover from it so okay
maybe we can
talk a little bit about that the first
big theme in that is around acceptance
and social support
so people talked about getting
individual one-on-one support
from other people um and they also
talked about
community support having a
community and um in particular peers
people who had
been through this before talking to
other autistic people who had had
similar experiences
if only to just validate what they were
feeling
um but that individual support and
community support was also
it was very centered around acceptance
like
not making people feel bad for being in
the state or for not being able to do
something or for not being able to do
something
in a seemingly neurotypical way so there
was sort of there was a
a big kind of support and acceptance
from in a social sense um the second
point is
being autistic so um people talked about
first of all attending to autistic needs
you know stimming and
do doing your special like spending time
with your special interests
um doing the things you need to do to
keep yourself
regulated even if it looks weird um
unmasking being yourself and using
autistic strengths so
doing the things that you're actually
really good at instead of fighting
against your own nature
to try to do things that are in ways
things in ways that other people
expect um and again that's also related
to that whole acceptance piece you can
imagine that when you're told that
the way you are is wrong and bad that's
going to
make it lead to some of that
load that you're having to carry around
so the third
thing was formal supports so disability
accommodations
being able to have flexible work
schedules being able to take more breaks
being able to do things in your ways
instrumental support someone to come in
and do the dishes someone to come in
and clean your house and mental health
support
so there were all of those secondary
mental health conditions that followed
so getting help for that
also helped relieve some of the burnout
um reduced load so time off
breaks social withdrawal um reduced
activities
those are and these are things that
people talked about helping
get over it but there were also things
that people talked about
potentially having helped prevent it
like if i had
asked for more breaks if i had you know
if i hadn't
had to do quite so much if i had
time to work on my special interests
more
if i had been able to stim at work um
so there there was that's where that
like prevention
uh relief thing
uh dovetails so
uh i'm almost done with them there were
luckily a lot of
a lot of good ideas in here um the next
was self-advocacy
and health so this was about learning to
set boundaries
learning to ask for help keeping
yourself healthy
because you have more energy when you're
eating well
those things all of that self-advocacy
stuff
how to how to feel okay going to your
boss and saying hey
i need this week i need an extra day off
um or your teacher or
or your your mom i just can't do chores
today
and then the last big strategy category
was around self-knowledge
and this a lot of people said that early
recognition
of the burnout could have helped it
either be avoided or not be as bad so
there were people who were like well i
had no idea what was happening to me
and there were people who actually got
their asd diagnosis
because of a burnout
and they talked in retrospect about how
if they had been more aware that
autistic burnout was a thing or that
could happen
they might have noticed when they were
starting to feel the edges of it
and been able to implement some of these
strategies to
either avoid it or make it not as bad
this was a place where they said having
a diagnosis
was helpful yeah you could find peers it
was self-understanding it was
self-knowledge
people talked about understanding the
patterns in their lives and using that
to make
strategic decisions so for example
knowing like
well when i start feeling this way it
means there's too much on my plate and i
need to
or when i start you know if i start
talking
too much and really feeling up very
agitated then
i know that i need to like i'm getting
overstimulated and i need to go chill
out so
so all of that self-awareness and
self-understanding
was was the last kind of big
point um and this is
all of these are written up in detail
with people's quotes
in the paper we just have published but
it's also you'll find it again
a lot in the community resources
now that's great and and you did the
whole thing about
having a diagnosis or knowing that
you're autistic
it sort of takes away that sense of
confusion
that sense of well i just need to pull
myself together and be like everybody
else
um and it really increases the potential
to to accept ourselves
um because it sounds like a massive part
of what you're saying about how this can
be avoided and how it can be recovered
from
is just to say i am who i am and to
accept
myself and to ask others to accept me as
i am as well
yes um and that's that's sort of all of
it isn't it
it's a good buffer against that that
kind of gaslighting too because it's
very validating you can say
you know no i'm not just being lazy yeah
there's
something real going on here so if you
um if somebody knows somebody has
somebody close a friend or a partner or
or someone close in their family who
they feel is heading towards or might be
in autistic burnout
what can they do to help i guess the
acceptance here is a real huge part of
it as well
yeah absolutely um providing that
acceptance the social
support the instrumental support
accommodations and i think just
general understanding you know there was
that
that big theme in the impacts of not
of non-autistic people not understanding
and not having empathy for
the the experience um
so if if friends and family can have
some empathy for what the person is
going through in recognition of its
validity
i think that that would be i mean right
there you're eliminating one of the
one of the terrible impacts of this um
so yeah being empathetic not dismissing
the person's experience it might not
seem like they've been under a lot of
pressure
but that doesn't mean that they haven't
been and then
i'd also say by reducing expectations
because everything is about that
you know the expectations getting out of
control
um although i want to caution i'm
talking about expectations i'm not
talking about opportunities
so it's more reducing expectations about
how or when we might achieve our dreams
it might take more time it might need to
be done in a way that looks
different from how non-autistic people
would do it but don't
don't reduce your expectations that we
can have or achieve our dreams
right any dreams for any person
so that's expectations of how
and how long and in what ways not
expectations for being able to have a
full life
so it's actually taking the pressure off
and allowing those
those dreams to be fulfilled in a more
natural and fulfilling way than
under a lot of pressure absolutely
absolutely because dreams are a
wonderful
you know they're they're a part of of
your self-acceptance
and your boy right
yes because we all have a right to
dreams i guess yeah
and finally dora um
a lot of people watching this will be
parents of autistic children who are
very young
and after listening to the conversation
they may well be wondering
what can we do now to ensure that our
child to do the best to ensure that our
children
20 years in the future or 10 years or 30
years in the future
don't become victims of autistic burnout
how can they help
um how can they help early age a lot
that they can do so i the first thing
that you
you've pointed out a few times which is
so so important is accept us
for who we are even if that may look a
little different
that acceptance is is an amazing gift
let us do things that in the ways that
work well for us
use our natural abilities hope fight
ableism and autism stigma and work for
disability justice or you know whatever
term you prefer
um in the community because if others
accept us
and are accommodating as well then
that's that community
support community acceptance and support
so
parents can also work on the people
around them
um help us understand ourselves
right that self-understanding piece was
so important and as parents you're
helping your children to understand
to understand themselves too um help us
understand
what works for us and what doesn't work
for us not
how it should work for non-autistic
people or how it should look normal but
like to really understand how we get a
result
how do we get an outcome that is
worthwhile
that doesn't have so much
i guess overhead to it uh listen to us
believe us when we say we're getting
overwhelmed
and then finally i just you know what
you're gonna do anyway which is love us
and give us a strong you know give us a
strong foundation
of you know sense of self and
self-esteem to
deal with it when the rest of the world
starts to push back
um so that we have those self-advocacy
skills and the ability to ask for help
and the ability to set boundaries
as we get older and and you're not
around to help us do that
yeah dora thank you very much for
joining us uh it's been really
interesting yeah yeah thank you for
thank you for having me and for talking
about this it's um it's so as
you know we know it's so so important uh
to the community
that this is uh
brought more into the public
consciousness so that we can start
working to
make it a whole way yeah
yeah to have it recognized and and taken
seriously an action can be taken
thank you
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