Autistic Traits vs Autistic Trauma
This Blog has been republished with permission from Trauma Geek.
This list is based on my personal experience, with edits to my original list made after hearing from other #actuallyautistic people. I continue to be open to feedback from the autistic community regarding this list, and I will update or edit this post to reflect that feedback.
I’ve been healing from C-PTSD since 2016, and I now find myself mostly on the left side of this image. A few months ago I did a trauma intervention called the Safe and Sound Protocol, and I was not at all prepared for the increase in emotionality, stimming, and support needs I experienced. I wanted to get clear on the differences between my trauma and my genetic neurodivergence so that I can carry less shame around my evolving self as I continue this healing path.
Column B may be true for any neurodivergent person who has trauma, not exclusively autistic people. I hope to share more soon about my journey moving from Column B to Column A.
What does it mean to say, “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 autistic 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 neurodivergent 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.
What are the 3 Core Traits of Autism?
The 3 core traits of autism are: hyper-connected neurons, monotropic thinking, and bottom-up processing. All the other commonly recognized autistic traits come from the interaction of these 3 core traits with our environments. Like disability, meltdown is a normal part of being autistic in an overwhelming world.
With the realities of modern society, an autistic person will demonstrate traits that might not be expressed if we had a different type of society.
I consider these to be autistic traits in a sense. Meltdown and disability* are unavoidable aspects of autism in modern life even though they are not core traits of autism.
*According to the Social Model of Disability, we are disabled by lack of support rather than by our differences or impairments.
A note about masking and why I use the word “subconscious” in this list
Masking may seem like a choice, but the hypervigilance in masking is because our nervous system is sympathetically activated when we our neuroception (a subconscious biological process) perceives 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.
Is Dysautonomia always a trauma response?
There are 15+ different types of dysautonomia. Some autistic people have genetic dysautonomia that will not change after trauma integration. Many more autistic people have secondary dysautonomia.
Dysautonomia can also develop secondarily to a primary medical condition such as Complex PTSD, EDS, MS, diabetes, viral infections, or mold exposure. I consider this type of dysautonomia to be a trauma response because it is a direct result of inadequate or inaccessible medical care for a primary condition.
Why is meltdown in column A and shutdown in column B if they they are both signs of distress?
I like to make a distinction between stress responses and trauma because there is a wide range of healthy ways to vent stress energy before it becomes traumatically overwhelming.
Meltdown is a healthy way to vent stress energy. That may sound controversial, because venting our stress energy outside of very narrow set of behaviors is socially unacceptable. But meltdown is like a biological pressure release valve. The nervous system uses meltdown to protect our system from overwhelming energy.
Meltdown is a sign of extra stress energy that the nervous system needs to release. Society’s intensity causes meltdowns - they are not caused by a lack of self-regulation.
I define self-regulation as the ability to stay connected to oneself during our feelings, not the complete absence of uncomfortable feelings. It is actually possible to be self-regulated in that sense while having a meltdown.
Shutdown stores the stress energy inside us, which is often safer than meltdown in the short term, depending on our environment. Many of us have been punished or rejected for meltdowns, and the body remembers, so it goes into shutdown to protect us. But shutdown is also the definition of trauma - it is the storing of overwhelming stress energy in the body to be processed at a later (safer) time.
After several years of somatic therapy, my meltdowns no longer turn into shame spirals. I previously thought all meltdowns included severe shame and self-hatred.
As I worked through my trauma around how people treat me when I’m melting down, my inner mentor became able to hold my inner child for the duration of my meltdowns.
I still lose control over my body and there is crying or yelling or big body motions like stomping or collapsing to the floor, but throughout this loss of control over my body, I am able to stay compassionately connected to my emotional experience and not go into a shame spiral or trauma response to the meltdown.
Meltdown is a huge release of energy and I can’t say it ever feels good in the moment, but I do feel less overwhelmed and less stressed after a meltdown is over. My recovery time after meltdowns has drastically shortened as well (from several days down to 1 to 2 hours).
