As an autistic adult, you face a journey filled with unique challenges. You may feel misunderstood. Perhaps you struggle with self-acceptance or find it difficult to locate the support structures that fully understand you. Autistic Heroes is a place where you can explore, understand, and celebrate your autism. Through regular articles, I will aim to shed light on common struggles and help you feel understood. Of course, you may have hesitations. You may have tried other resources without much impact, or you may worry that personal development isn’t achievable. However, if you are interested, please read on.
My name is David Derbyshire, and I can mentor you through this journey as a personal development coach with both lived experience of autism and a commitment to a positive perspective on it. I received a diagnosis on the autism spectrum late in life, in my 50s, and many things in my life made sense in light of this. As I reflected, I began to understand myself, my strengths, and my challenges.
Taking the initial step, such as exploring content on the Autistic Heroes website, can be an empowering way for you to move forward. You may even want to consider signing up for one of our personal development coaching packages. The first threshold, however, is often about realising that, in addition to the challenges, autism also brings a number of potential strengths that can assist you as you take the following steps in your personal development journey, which I will unpack in future posts.
1. Building Self-Awareness and Finding Balance with Autism
As an autistic adult, self-awareness can be a powerful tool. You may not be aware of how much your sensory and emotional needs differ from those of non-autistic individuals, from whom you have learned to navigate life. You may have completely misunderstood your own responses in situations and assumed you merely had a bad temper or disliked yourself for being unable to express your emotions appropriately.
One common struggle for many autistic individuals is that excessive sensory input, such as what you might encounter in a crowd or when the TV or washing machine is running at home, can sometimes overload your system and make you appear angry or upset. This is called an autistic meltdown. This problem is often compounded by the difficulty you have in recognising this in yourself due to a lack of insight into your own emotions.
Autistic Heroes will cover practical tools to help you avoid such overloads, whether it’s by taking a different route through town or dampening your input with noise-canceling headphones. We will also explore ways to refocus your sensitivities on your emotions or even those of others to gain deeper insight and overcome the natural autistic tendency towards egocentricity and experience empathy with others. Reducing some of these sensory and emotional inputs while increasing others can help you achieve a healthy balance.
2. The Path to Self-Acceptance and Embracing Your True Self
Self-acceptance is often difficult for late-diagnosed adults. You have spent your life being misunderstood and misjudged by others. As an autistic individual, you are probably more sensitive than most so these memories may be traumatic. Until now, you may not have realised that your brain is wired differently, which means that those judgments made about you were incorrect. Unfortunately, over the years, you have internalised those judgments and begun to believe you are angry or uncaring, but deep down, you know that isn’t true.
You have learned to present a facade to others to avoid being judged in these ways. For example, I would force myself to appear smiley and confident to fit in with my peers. You may hide some of your behaviours or interests because they have received negative responses from others. This act of “masking” takes much effort, while non-autistic individuals often come across this way almost effortlessly by comparison.
Autistic Heroes will provide tools to help you to explore and embrace your authentic self. Through reflection and reframing techniques, you can come to find and appreciate your unique strengths and realise that deep down, you are not the person others have claimed you are – you are not that “false self” you internalised. As you accept yourself and build your self-confidence and security you will learn how to safely experiment with dropping the mask despite your fears and doubts and begin to express your full self.
3. Discovering Meaning and Purpose as an Autistic Adult
Having a sense of purpose is important for everyone, whether they are autistic or not. Unfortunately, the misunderstandings and misjudgments you have encountered as an autistic person can create barriers to finding opportunities for meaningful and fulfilling activities. If you focus on your capabilities and communicating these to others then there may still be opportunities to step into your ideal job despite your challenges.
Feeling that you were “made for more” can lead to disappointment as the years pass if your life does not unfold as you expected, impacting your emotional well-being and mental health. You might find yourself blaming others and becoming bitter that people overlooked you. However, you don’t need to internalise that belief of not being good enough or that your dreams are unrealistic given your social and emotional challenges.
This is where a strength-based approach can help. It can make you aware of the real character strengths, aptitudes, and skills you possess. In future posts, I will suggest steps you can take to get unstuck from this situation. These resources will help you move into fulfilling activities that align with your interests and goals, whether in employment, self-employment, or volunteering.
4. Using Mindfulness and Meditation Tools to Manage Anxiety and Burnout
Mindfulness and meditation are ideal tools for helping with anxiety and burnout. As an autistic adult, you may be more susceptible to anxiety due to the challenges of navigating a world designed for neurotypical ways of thinking and socialising. Masking can be particularly exhausting, and you may need to make a special effort to focus to get things done, which can leave you vulnerable to autistic burnout.
Finding relaxation or grounding techniques that work for you as an autistic adult can be challenging. Some autistic individuals may take to mindfulness or meditation practices naturally, while others might be sceptical of anything that appears “spiritual”. You might also find some overstimulating and become disturbed by your heartbeat or experience muscle jerks. It is important to balance persevering with a practice with experimenting with more than one to find what suits you best.
In future posts, I will introduce the concept of mindfulness in more detail and outline practices that can assist you. You may find different forms of meditation helpful, including mantra meditation, which I regularly use. This involves repeating a word or phrase. You may also wish to try some self-reflection and self-observation tools. These methods have been shown to produce transformation and are especially helpful for autistic adults in improving your resilience to anxiety, stress, and fears and in regulating your emotions.
5. Strength-Based Approaches to Thriving as an Autistic Adult
At Autistic Heroes, we take a neurodiversity perspective on autism, emphasising that it is a natural neurological difference, which, like all such differences, has its own strengths and challenges. We also emphasise a strength-based approach, celebrating your gifts, aptitudes, and abilities as an autistic adult. This is not to minimise your challenges but to recognise that these strengths can indeed help you manage those challenges.
When you receive your assessment for autism, there is often considerable emphasis on your deficits—what you find challenging or what you cannot do as an autistic adult. This focus can lead you to start your journey with a very negative mindset. You may even have researched autism in this way to provide a clear explanation to your assessor. Unfortunately, this doesn’t equip you well for the journey ahead.
Autistic Heroes will help you thrive as an autistic adult by concentrating on exploring the many possible strengths that accompany autism. These might include:
– Patience and tenacity
– Forthrightness
– Predictability and stability
– Loyalty and reliability
– Thoughtfulness and reflectiveness
– The ability to hyper-focus
– Noticing patterns and details
Autistic Heroes will assist you in identifying your unique abilities and strengths, offering self-discovery exercises to help you understand yourself better.
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The aim of these blog articles on Autistic Heroes is to provide regular insightful content from someone who knows what it is like to receive a late autism diagnosis. The focus will be on offering practical guidance, helping you to understand yourself more fully and grow as a person. Transformation doesn’t come overnight; it occurs gradually through taking small, steady steps.
The more you understand about your autism, the greater the positive impact you will experience on both your personal development and your daily life. Please keep checking back on this blog to gain insights and tools that will help you navigate your challenges, celebrate your strengths, and create meaning and purpose in your life. Whether you seek one-on-one personal development coaching or prefer to read blog-based guidance, Autistic Heroes is here to support you every step of the way.