For me autism has always been the sort of thing that was a double edged sword. The allergies to milk and wheat plagued me for most of my life until I accepted my intolerance to them and their hold over my health. Once I eliminated the things from my life that had negative influences on me and my behavior, I took control of myself and my life. I sincerely believe this post will help someone in their quest to understanding how to make autism work for them. As individuals we are all unique and what works for me will not solve everyone's problems. Still, my experience is valid as is yours and I look forward to hearing your feedback in some form or another.
Gluten-Free Dairy-Free
The GFCF diet literally changed my life. I went from being an adult with echolalia, disturbing stimming behaviors and allergies to being a focused, down to earth human being after 6 months of gluten-free dairy-free living. My seizures were significantly reduced, my thoughts were clearer, I could feel things in a more articulate way and I gained significant muscles mass. These are only a few of so many positives. On top of that it worked immediately. The first two days I felt it and you could see a new look about me-an aura of health that was naturally who I was all along.
Deprogramming
A lot of people on the spectrum experience a constant influx of negativity about their person.
"You are a freak."
"Why can't you be like your sister?"
"You are a troublemaker."
Hearing messages like these (or worse) all your life will stay with you if you do not take measures to cleanse them from your mind and body. In my life I had to eliminate toxic people in order to stop being toxic. When we surround ourselves with people who respect us and admire us, we take on the crystalline shape of well being.
Some messages may not be obvious-maybe you or your child have hundreds of unspoken subliminal messages bombarding you on a daily basis and you have spent so long blocking them out that you think they cannot hurt you. This is wrong. Taking the time away from toxic relatives and people who do not have the capacity to appreciate you and/or your child is the only way to pave a new life for him or her-a life of freedom and self acceptance. Only spend time around others who build you up.
Focus on Strengths
The great thing about character strengths is that everybody has them! Even the most challenged individual can choose to focus on strengths. As a parent there is good news for you-you can choose to focus on your child's strengths and encourage them to fix their weakness-all in one! As an adult on the spectrum you can recall all the things in your life you were good at and build on them. Temple Grandin encourages children and parents to focus on strengths and hone skills that can become useful later in the workforce or during apprenticeship. As an individual with autism, I found focusing on my many strengths to be of great service to myself and others-something that was as natural to do as breathing. Entrepreneurial skills enabled me to start my own company and begin writing books, not to mention other endeavors. The fact that many spectrum users are already gifted in one area or another means focusing on strengths should come naturally.
Advancement and Adaptation
Because of my obvious differences, normal life experiences like driving a car and having shallow friends did not have the same appeal to me as it did to others. Some autistic people may go through long periods of time where their sensitivities to loud sounds, inability to tolerate small talk and other senseless (but quite necessary) rituals and rackets along the way limit their daily life experiences and make them a ghost to others. I have gone through long periods of isolation simply because it made sense to me because the activities that others considered normal did not enrich my life (and I consider myself to be fairly outgoing when I want to be). Adaptation, however is imminent and earplugs, for instance have made things possible for me that were otherwise impossible such as going to a movie, seeing fireworks and surviving the loud noise of city sirens. When it comes to advancing myself and enriching my life I have a piece of advice that someone very dear to me has always said: "It's easier to ask forgiveness than permission." Don't worry-he's not a complete psychopath. What my friend is trying to say here is that there is always somebody who will tell you that stuff is SO hard and that it takes SO much time to accomplish until you decide not to even try out the plan you had in the first place. I was told learning languages was hard, sewing was hard, entrepreneurialship was hard, blah blah blah. People want to make things seem harder than they really are and make you afraid to try new things. Why? We can give them the benefit of the doubt and assume they really mean us well but in the end it doesn't matter. Nay saying is damaging. When you want to advance yourself then do what you want to do and not what others think you are good at. If you know your aunt says negative things like "if you start your own company you might not sell anything" or "you need a permit for that" when she obviously know nothing about what she is saying then save the drama and tell her after the fact. It will be harder for her to say something negative about your endeavors once you have succeeded-why? Because people love to follow.
Recently, after years of intimidation I finally got the nerve to buy a sewing machine and start butchering some fabric-it was very therapeutic to me to find another skill to enhance my life with. Now making my own clothes and other items is a skill I can build on to further enrich myself. If only all those years I hadn't talked to myself the very way I heard others talk. The fact is that I can learn new skills and keep mastering them, one by one!
Having autism for me has a lot of advantages. For one realizing that things that other people think is hard is not so hard has instilled me with more personal confidence than what I might have had without autism. Adaptation has helped me to plan ahead of events and take better care of myself so that I can enjoy the same things in life that other people do. Advancement has given me an outlet as I am very high energy and require many different sources of stimulation.
I plan to share much more about myself and my life in the coming posts to this blog and hope you enjoyed reading this as much as I enjoyed writing it. Having touched on the physical, emotional, mental and social aspects of autism I have to say that it is a never ending journey for me that is a constant challenge. However, once you have gotten past a thorn on the stem of this beautiful rose I can only encourage you to keep climbing. Autism is meant to survive and I accept it-thorns and all.
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