Read on Twitter
My life long head fuck, the ultimate ‘what happened to you’ is that people led me to believe I was traumatised rather than autistic. Which is not to say I have lived trauma free, and some experiences do play in to who I am and how I am. https://twitter.com/drsmcinerney/status/1355311263560179713
Convincing someone they are the product of what happened to them, even if they can’t remember what it is that happened to them, is an almighty head fuck.
And the thing is, even if I wasn’t autistic, even if there wasn’t a thing that explained who I am and how I am to me, I can’t see how the constant trauma assumption could ever be helpful for someone who doesn’t acknowledge it.
What if there was some trauma I was protecting myself from. Also what if there wasn’t. What help is it to me to have someone else’s ideas that are not personally relevant used to frame my experiences.
It then becomes a question of power regarding whose version of me prevails. Which is the exact thing the ‘what happened to you’ crew campaign against. Not just to other people, but also to myself.
If I am not holding the frame through which meaning can be created and interpreted, I am reliant on the one with the frame to show me what is possible.
I think the hardest thing about my life pre diagnosis was having no language to describe what I experienced. So I was given the language of panic attacks and trauma which was always a clonky fit.
