I-ASC Blog
I-ASC BLOG: Belief in Our Non-speaking Autistic Self
We are delighted to introduce our new friends Mark and Max Eati. This poetry writing, siblings from Minnesota type to communicate using FC. Mark and Max joined us for our first Open Mic at the Neurolyrical Cafe and everyone was astounded by their deep and insightful poetry. They have honed their poetic writing skills through their work with poet and educator, Chris Martin of Unrestricted Interest.We are so pleased to welcome them as this week’s guest bloggers and are confident you are going to love their poetry and advocacy as much as we do.
~Elizabeth Vosseller
Autistics can modulate themselves fairly well considering their years of experience. However, the intensity of sensory experiences can be so dysregulating for some that the brain and body cannot stay in synchrony for extended periods of time. We strongly urge autistics to find a good and gentle balance between maximizing their brains and centering calm, while also being realistic about what they can do on a daily basis without attacking themselves or others. First and foremost, no one wants to hurt themselves or another person, but the intensity of brain and body challenges for people on the spectrum can be very challenging. We mask to considerable levels to hold up with societal expectations. The masked emotions start to turn into anger and distress. Also, an autistic may be overly active in some thinking processes and far less active in others. The gaps cause chronic stress, anxiety, and disarray, leaving us unfocussed and uncentered. The most critical thing for anyone on the spectrum is having supportive people who will hopefully hear, understand, and respect our wants, feelings, emotions and ideas. Also, please presume competence in us.
Please don’t blame us for behaviors, instead constructively support us. That is what we did when a friend of ours recently got upset. If our nonspeaking friend can use his day to really speak his mind he would be far less distressed. Hence communication is extremely critical, especially for nonspeakers. The society has lost its mind and threw FC or assisted typing out of the window. Communication is a critical basic right. Once we can put our voice to our hearts and feelings, we will still need to occupy ourselves in constructive ways, such as healthy schooling, rhythmic and poetic expressions of our heart, value add employment, and behavior counseling. Health and fitness and cohesive relationships. Enough sleep and rest, lots of healthy challenges and breaks. There is no other way out to stabilize any human.
Proper care was not taken to understand neurodiversity. We experience life like neurotypical people, but look at life through very granular lenses. We are highly intelligent and super-focused in our abilities to gain insights into ways the universe and life operate. We have sensitivities that lead to significant distortions to our inner self. We lose focus on daily living, unable to master how to stay balanced on every plane we experience. It makes us look and feel inadequate, but autistics are stronger contributors to the community than many understand or appreciate. Our life passion is to remind people not to focus on what we can’t and please support us with minimizing our struggles so we can maximize our contributions. If there is one community that can fully experiment and showcase to people the values of neurodiversity there will be far more recognition and healing for autistics. That’s why we collaborated and co-founded Autism Sibs Universe, a non-profit with the mission of simplifying the lives of people on the spectrum.
