By Heather L.E. McKay
When autistic people try to help parents of autistic children, we will often say something like: “the child is doing X as a trauma response”.
The immediate response from the parent is “I’ve never traumatised my child”, and then they become defensive and often stop listening. Please don’t do this – don’t take it personally! We were not blaming you for your child’s trauma response. We were trying to indicate to you that trauma is different for autistics then it is for typical people.
So, what DID we mean?
We meant that autistics suffer trauma from everything – and I mean everything!!!! Every single minute of every single day.
You do not need to “do” ANYTHING! For your child to use a trauma response to their environment. Our environment and the things occurring around us or to us is what causes trauma.
What can those things be?
· Lights too bright or loud noises
· Too many people
· Expectations to answer questions or use mouth words (when we are often suffering from executive dysfunction, situational non-speaking issues, or motor disinhibition, or apraxia/ dyspraxia etc).
· Expectations to do certain things in certain ways
· Expectations to say or behave or play in certain ways
· Not getting enough sleep, because most autistics have more than one type of sleep disorder
· Adults or peers not explaining “Why” in a way that we can understand and process, or accept (due to it not being logical to us, or it not being sufficient or valid to our way of thinking)
· Having to translate all NT language into ND language – and then back into NT language (all day every day); without being misunderstood, blamed, ostracised, and purposely misinterpreted, misjudged, and misheard. Which happens to us whether we use mouth words, AAC, writing or behaviour to communicate.
· Sensory overstimulation or understimulation
· Too much of anything
· Not having our safe foods
· Transitions or changes causing dysregulation
· People not giving them time to process, or too much time to process
· RSD
· Other co-occurring disabilities causing us constant pain and dysregulation
· Interoception not working and not letting us know that we are: hungry, tired, thirsty, angry, frustrated, need to pee etc
· Hearing the constant buzzing of electricity
· Too hot, too cold, clothes giving us sensory overwhelm
· Having to mask our language our stims, or anything else
· Etc etc etc
Basically everything we say/ don’t say, do/ don’t do, experience/ don’t experience- all contribute to us experiencing trauma. This is what we mean by trauma for autistic people. Our very real experiences of everyday ‘mundane’ life can cause us to use trauma responses, in order to stop these things, change these things – or to move away from them.
What are the trauma responses?
Flight, fight, fawn, flop, freeze, and flex (I write about “The Flex” in my book: Autism the Big Book Set of Help! Book 4: Tools and other information”)… the ‘flex’ can involve what NT’s call “lying” or being ‘too rigid’ or unyielding – it’s neither fighting (aggressive or violent) and it’s not freezing or running either. It’s a form of what ableists might call something like “non-violent defiance”, or “non-compliance” or perhaps obdurate or obstinate. But it’s yet another type of response to our traumatic causing environments.
We need those trauma responses to communicate our pain. Especially autistic children who may not understand what they are feeling is actually the thing that is hurting or harming them. Some autistic people often can’t verbalise what is happening internally – in a way that typical people will understand. And sometimes we confuse what we are feeling internally due to things like interoception issues.
What typical adults often see when a child is having what they call ‘challenging behaviours’ are things like aggression, violence, harmful stims, yelling, crying, meltdowns, “lying” (just to be clear – it’s not lying – it’s ‘flexing’ or being backed into a corner that causes this type of response), shutdowns, people pleasing, etc. We are showing you with our behaviour that something has traumatised us- something is literally causing us pain, and we are using trauma responses- because those things are actually incredibly traumatic and painful to us.
Believe a child when they are showing you the F responses to trauma. Just because you haven’t experienced their trauma, or understand it – doesn’t mean it’s not real or very very painful. We need those around us and especially those closest to us to believe us, support us and help us to remove those things – so we can stop being traumatised or triggered by them.
Once we stop being traumatised by things that cause the F responses – we stop displaying the F responses. Those displays are not indicative of an autistic person – or of stereotypes of autism- they are literally JUST signs of /and responses to trauma.
Do not conflate the two, do not blame the child for not being able to ‘control’ or subdue their trauma, and don’t gaslight us by saying something like “it’s not worth crying over”. Because your trauma is not more or less than anyone else’s. We all experience trauma from different things, and in different way. It’s not up to you or anyone else to decide what an individual feels, what is traumatic and what isn’t, or to inflict your opinions about how much trauma response they should or shouldn’t show as a result of that trauma. Just accept that the thing is- what the individual says it is – to them. And then ask them how they’d like to go about ridding themselves of or preventing further trauma.