02/05/2021
Trauma Geek is on point as always! 🎯
Healing developmental trauma does not make an autistic person more typical.
If I do trauma therapy while living in an environment that is unsupportive of my autistic body’s needs, I may experience trauma. (This applies to any type of trauma therapy, including nonverbal treatments like Safe and Sound Protocol or Craniosacral therapy.)
It is important for us to reduce the symptoms of autistic trauma, but if we try to do that in a space where connection and acceptance is systematically denied from us, we will have an intensely painful experience of rejection.
Being denied connection because of our differences is a core trauma wound for most autistics. For many autistic people, our trauma blocks are protecting us from this pain we have experienced so many times before.
When we remove the protection of our trauma blocks, we must have appropriate support. Appropriate support for an autistic person requires an identity affirming approach as well as accommodations and support for disabilities.
If trauma interventions are offered to autistic people from within the medical/pathology/cure model, we are simply setting autistic people up for re-traumatization, fragmentation, and increased mental health problems.
Living on the right side of this list is not sustainable long-term for any autistic person. The symptoms of autistic trauma are a significant threat to autistic health and survival…. When autistic people seek help with trauma symptoms, it is important for care providers to know that healthy autisitic people can have significant support needs. A reduction in trauma symptoms does not mean a person will become more independent.
This reality is scary for many of us because society measures our worth by our independence. Since that isn’t going to change tomorrow, we need refuge spaces where we can interact with other autistic people and experience acceptance are essential for trauma recovery. We also need non-autistic people to help us advocate for better social supports and policies that meet us where we are.
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**An additional note about masking and why I use the word “subconscious” in this poster -
Masking may seem like a choice, but the hypervigilance in masking is because our nervous system is sympathetically activated when we subconsciously perceive lack of safety and acceptance. We aren't *choosing* to be hypervigilant or self-critical - our nervous system is engaging that level of hyper-attention to the details of our behavior to protect us.
We can't just cognitively decide to unmask either... Our bodies know that without our mask, we risk rejection, retaliation, or abuse. When we have safety & acceptance as autistics, our nervous system will naturally drop the protective mask and allow us to interact with the world in a more connected way.
**Identifying with column B does not necessarily mean you’re autistic. Many who identify with column B are not autistic but have complex PTSD and some other type of innate neurodivergence such as ADHD or HSP. Complex PTSD on top of any sort of neurodivergence tends to look like column B.
Update: additional explanation can be found on my blog https://www.traumageek.com/polyvagal-neurodiversity-blog-project/autistic-traits-and-trauma
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