An Autism Self Discovery Checklist
A Roadmap for the Journey - Part 1
If you’re on a late autism diagnosis or self realization journey, how do you know when you’re done?
Is there a pot of gold somewhere at the end of a rainbow? An emerald city at the end of a yellow brick road? A finish line and a checkered flag?
Of course there isn’t, but wouldn’t it be nice?
If you got a certificate of completion, or a diploma, or something to show for all the effort?
Sadly, there’s no certifying body. No panel of judges or experts that have agreed on what exactly someone must do to complete their journey, or achieve full autistic self understanding.
Because each individual person’s journey is going to be totally unique. And learning and growing into your autistic self is a lifelong process.
I know that most people probably don’t even think about their autism self exploration along these lines, so why is this framing even helpful? What’s the point?
While I don’t think there’s ever really an end per se, I do think that there can be a roadmap of sorts. Some sign posts for the curious, dedicated, and self directed autistic person who wants to feel as complete as possible and leave no stone unturned.
Trying to piece together everything you “should” understand about yourself once you start to suspect you’re autistic is a very daunting prospect. There’s a steep learning curve not just about autism itself, but there’s so much to understand about the autistic experience from all over the spectrum. Now only that, but there’s internal work to be done, and external work.
The entire journey of:
Learning about autism
Understanding your own autistic traits
Unpacking the emotional toll that growing up without this knowledge took on you
Rewriting your life story to repair some of that damage
Understanding your needs
Self advocacy
Learning to cope
Getting support
That is what I call the autistic integration journey. Integrating an affirming understanding of your autism into your life in a way that helps deconstruct harmful narratives, and promotes support and wellbeing. And since your autism is part of who you are at your core, it becomes the foundation upon which you must begin to reshape your life and self concept.
It’s a huge undertaking. And I’ll be honest that it’s too big a job for most coaching engagements, which are only a few months. I wish I could promise this level of completeness to my clients, but there’s simply too much there.
But, I want my clients and anyone who engages with my content to have a picture of what autistic integration could entail from a birds eye view. I want to give you a roadmap of sorts to help guide you through this long and winding journey. Because importantly, this journey needs to involve more than coaching.
You may need to engage professionals such as therapists, occupational therapists, neuropsychologists, psychiatrists, body workers, somatic practitioners, and more in order to complete your journey. Or perhaps, to engage with their content and teachings if you can’t afford individual paid services. Read books and blogs, listen to podcasts, engage with autistic community online and off.
This roadmap is in the form of a checklist that broadly covers the essential elements of autistic integration.
It’s broad so that it can point you in the right direction, and you get to determine how deep or detailed you get in each area.
It’s a checklist so that you can use it as you see fit and skip over what doesn’t resonate with you. (and you get to decide when you check off each item, so you determine what “done” looks like).
I’ll be breaking the checklist up into sections as described above, and sharing them over time.
Let’s start with section 1: Understanding Autism
Here’s a list of topics to do some reading and research on in order to understand autism beyond just the basic DSM criteria. (Just imagine that there are check boxes next to each item)
Neurodiversity Paradigm
Monotropism
Intense World Theory
Double Empathy Problem
Theory of Mind
Synaptic Pruning
Bottom Up Processing
Sensory Processing Differences
Universal Values vs situational values
Pattern Recognition
Social model of disability
In addition, it’s important to understand how autistic traits show up for you.
If the DSM criteria don’t resonate, try searching for autism in women, high masking autism, atypical autism presentation, level 1 autistic traits, or engaging with the late diagnosis community online. Many people have created content about how autistic traits look and feel for them from an autistic point of view, not from the perspective of non-autistic scientists.
(You could also review my free course, Demystifying the DSM for Autism, for a breakdown of how the DSM criteria show up differently)
Happy researching!
If I missed one concept that helped you understand autism, please share!