Featured Photo by Tim Gouw from Pexels
As I have said in some of my previous blogposts on Autism, life for a person on the Autism Spectrum can be difficult, especially in later life, people with high-functioning Autism may realize they are lacking behind others and unfortunately this can lead to depression and a sense of worthlessness, but it isn’t our or their fault, it is just the way Autism wires the brain to act and think, it is not like that of a neurotypical person, I like to compare it to the call of a whale, depending on the species of whale they each have their own unique call, for communication such as finding mates and so on, so if their call for their specific species is off, through no fault of their own, they will find themselves isolated as the other whales with normal calls don’t understand them. That is kind of how it works with Autism and the difference with how our brains work to that of a neurotypical human, just as the whale with a different call to its species will struggle to connect with others of its kind, it is the same story for us, it requires more work and understanding.
Today I am going to go through five different aspects of life that people with Autism will naturally, most of the time, have a more difficult time at accomplishing.
Number 5 – Strong Social Connections
Pretty much everyone knows that people with Autism have huge social anxiety and difficulties in most cases and is the main knock-on effect to pretty much every other struggle that people with Autism have in lives, alongside simply just understanding things or having to learn things in different ways to others.
People with Autism enjoy having a lot of alone time and find it very difficult to be around a lot of people, especially if they are being noisy or even, in school perhaps, misbehaving or just acting in a stress-inducing manner, these situations can very quickly overwhelm people with Autism and send them into a breakdown if they can’t find a way out of it quickly.
But the above does not always mean we don’t want friends or some social connections, it is just that sort of stuff puts us off a lot of the time and makes it harder to form connections, as well as that, people with Autism have a hard time recognizing social ques which can easily to lead to mistakes in communication, which can make both the person with Autism and the people or person they tried to communicate too, feel awkward or uncomfortable, mistakes like these that people with Autism are susceptible to making will often lead to having a lack of confidence in social communication and bonding with others and so will often choose to just forfeit it completely instead of facing anymore social situations, leading to hitherto continued lack of social experience and making strong social connections. A lot of this is also true for people who simply just have social anxiety in general, not along with Autism itself, but for people with Autism it is much more prominent.
Even if we get to the part of making some friends or connections, they often won’t last for too long, or won’t develop on much further, due to people with Autism not knowing how to make their current friendships have deeper meaning and connection, and so the relationships they do have with others remain shallow and this leaves them in danger of drifting apart easily in later life. As well as all that, people with Autism normally have a comfortable routine from day to day life and disrupting/changing that with social stuff can be a daunting task.
All in all, for people with Autism, social life is a touchy and anxiety inducing subject that is difficult to grasp and form and the problem of social disconnect can often relate to many other problems that people with Autism face in life.
Number 4 – Education Struggles
The Education system is often another point of struggle for people with Autism, both due to again, the socialness of it all, the crowds, the noise and also outside of that, the way we perceive and understand things, we often don’t learn things in the same way others do. We may need more time or a different way explained to us to help us understand, outside of a Special Needs school this sort of stuff can make life in education very difficult for someone with Autism, teachers in these institutions may not have the know how or even the patience to help someone with Autism understand.
People with Autism can also face increased bullying for being weird and different and that can then lead to mental breakdown and spending time off school, due to the stress of bullying or even due to certain teachers who make it harder for them because they don’t have the patience to deal with someone with Autism not understanding the work, or let’s even say in a Drama class for example, not wanting to speak out openly in front of others, personally I had a Drama teacher in a school I went to (before I got into a Special Needs school) who made me write “I need to learn how to speak” in my school planner, just because I was too overloaded with the situation, it is a horrible and dehumanizing way of dealing with a person with Autism. Back to this leading to time taken off to recuperate, can lead to suffering grades.
Getting into a Special Needs school can also be a challenge in of itself, requiring a statement of disability/mental health to allow attendance, unfortunately I didn’t get mine until after primary school, since for me primary school was not too bad my mum thought I would be able to handle secondary school, sadly this was wrong and I ended up missing a year and a half of education while the Education Board messed us around. Lots needs to change in the system to make things easier for people like us to fit in.
College is much of the same problem and unlike schools, higher education does not have much special institutions for people with high-functioning Autism. And so, this can lead to getting little in merit for working our way up to a good career.
Number 3 – Working Life
Photo by rawpixel.com from Pexels
The problems faced with education can also create knock-on effects to working life, again due to socialness and also lack of good educational grades and merits.
For one, finding jobs now a days, especially ones that may suit us, isn’t easy, networking plays a big part in it and without a strong previous social life people with Autism won’t often have much in the form of networking, which makes it harder to find jobs. Having to send out dozens of work applications each day as well, can prove overwhelming.
Again, lack of educational merit due to the struggles of education can leave us with little options, entry-level jobs for example, such as working at a fast-food place, is stressful enough for a neurotypical person, let alone someone who has Autism, that would be a sure-fire way to a complete mental breakdown which can lead to serious repercussions to their mental and physical health in the long run.
Sadly the suicide rate for people who have Autism is higher than it is for neurotypical people, which is of little surprise due to how stressful adult life can be for them, if they are stuck in the same entry-level job, with no or very little emotional support, feelings of depression and hopelessness can be overwhelming and it is a very sad situation, although systems to help people with Autism have improved over the years, much more still needs to be done to help guide them through working life, enabling them to understand the system, create connections, emotional support and counselling and so on. Both improvements to education for people with Autism and programs to help them with adult life are, in my opinion, very much needed.
It is very unfortunate that most people with Autism do not actually have a job, just due to the anxieties of facing it are so high, and that when they do, they will often be stuck in a low-level job that is extremely stressful and leads to little more in life.
Number 2 – Obsessive Behavior
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder can often be something that comes along as a package with Autism, OCD is where you cannot help but do tasks or certain activities over and over again until it feels just right or that you feel content with the end result, this can be anything from cleaning, to having to have objects in just the right spot or as it was for me, having to touch objects around me over and over again until it felt right.
The cause of OCD is that if you don’t do what your brain is telling you to do, then you are either incredibly uncomfortable, irritable or you think that something bad was going to happen if you didn’t do it, for me it was thinking something bad would happen if I didn’t touch objects around me until it felt right, or in the correct pattern, or for example walking through a doorway in the exact right way, I was scared, for some reason, that if I didn’t do it, something bad would happen to me or a close family member.
OCD can also involve on obsessing over others or your own health and wellbeing, so for me I had very bad health anxiety, for example I always kept thinking I had a Deep Vein Thrombosis or things like cancer or that I was going to have a heart attack or even that I thought I was getting ALS, the latter being triggered by the ALS Ice Bucket challenge, back when that was popular. I would also obsess over my mum’s health and wellbeing while she was out, such as at the shops or while I was away, constantly scared something bad might happen to her.
For people with Autism OCD conditions are very common and can make day-to-day life stressful for them and also others around them, such as family and friends. For me it annoyed both me and my mum and was just getting worse and worse. Now though it is hardly as bad, I have managed to get a good grasp on it by re-training my brain to not think in that way or just doing things normally, over time the thoughts of something bad happening faded, now and again I still get the feeling of wanting to restart it, and from time to time I may partake in doing little bits again, but for the most part it is much more under control than it used to be. That is practically the only way to beat it, is by ignoring your brain and just full pelt working through it.
Number 1 – Emotional Control
People with Autism can struggle to effectively control their emotions, such as anger and sadness, in the correct and more healthy way. It can lead to them and sometimes also others in the way or causing the emotional outburst, to get hurt either mentally or physically. Suppressing these emotions is much more difficult for us.
When a person with Autism becomes distressed, angry, sad or so on it is often best that they are put into a more comfortable zone say that we can calm ourselves down, remaining in the place where we for example, lost our temper or became sad, only makes it worse, meanwhile for neurotypical people, they are normally able to suppress any anger or sadness they get from something small that happened.
Even the smallest things, of what others may consider silly, can upset or make a person with Autism angry, such as disruption of a routine, sudden change, loud noise, crowds or something just not being exactly right. People with Autism also often do not have a lot of patience and so if something goes wrong, they can quickly become upset or lose their temper. Explaining things can also be difficult for us, so we may not always be able to say or accurately explain what is making us angry or upset, which can be particularly troublesome for everyone involved.
All the above can have knock-on effects to social life, relationships, jobs, education and so on, so being in the right environment that knows how to handle these more unique problems can be something that would be very helpful to most with Autism, sadly though this is often not possible, especially in adult life.
Thank you for reading this, if you were looking for answers to Autism then I hoped that this helped with some of your questions, or if you have Autism, I hope this can help you relate to others with the condition and know that you are not alone. Hopefully as time goes on the system will become improved in ways of making life easier for people on the Autism spectrum, or even people in general with mental health problems, much more still needs to be done.
If you have any queries please Email me, you can find my Email in the Contacts & Community section. Please also follow The Weekly Rambler on Twitter and Facebook which you can access through the buttons at the bottom of this website. You can also use the social media buttons under each blogpost to share with your family, friends and associates. You can also subscribe to Email notifications at the right-side of this website to know whenever a new post goes up (you can easily unsubscribe from this at any time through a button in each Email notification), or alternatively you can use an RSS Feed Reader. Please also join my FB Group The Weekly Ramblers Readers Group where readers can more easily talk with each other and also with me whenever I am on, you can also find it in Community.