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Understanding Autism Resources: Insights, Information, and Support
Autism is a complex and multifaceted condition that affects individuals uniquely, shaping how they experience and interact with the world. Gaining a deeper understanding of autism is the first step toward building empathy, fostering inclusion, and providing effective support. This resource collection is dedicated to exploring the fundamentals of autism. Whether you’re a loved one of an autistic adult, an educator, a therapist, or simply someone looking to learn more, these articles offer valuable insights and perspectives to help you better understand autism and its impact on individuals.
Recent Articles
Navigating Autism: How to Identify and Cope with Personal Triggers
Autism spectrum disorder is a neurodevelopmental disorder that impacts how an individual communicates and experiences the world. Autistic behaviors may include intense and limited interests, repetitive behaviors, sensory sensitives and difficulty recognizing and expressing emotions.
Autistic individuals may experience meltdowns. A meltdown is an intense and involuntary reaction to the challenges that autism presents, like intense sensory experiences, navigating tricky social situations and emotional dysregulation.
In mental health circles, a trigger refers to an event or feeling that causes a strong emotional response. Neurotypical and neurodiverse individuals alike have triggers, and everyone’s triggers are different. A neurotypical person may feel sadness or nervousness when being confronted with one of their triggers. For autistic individuals, however, being exposed to a trigger can lead to a meltdown.
Meltdowns are stressful and incredibly unpleasant to experience. For autistic adults, meltdowns will happen occasionally, but having a better understanding of individual triggers may help them prevent meltdowns when possible.
Autism in Adult Women: Why We’re Underdiagnosed and Undersupported
When you think of autism, who do you picture? Many people may envision a young boy—maybe he’s fixated on toys like model trains or rocking back and forth to stim. But what about a little girl playing out the same scenes with her dolls on a loop or a woman constantly playing with her hair?
There’s a reason these images don’t come to mind for many—men and boys are around 3 to 4 times more likely to be diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder than women and girls. This isn’t because of sex-based neurobiological differences, or at least not fully. Most researchers and advocates recognize that autism presents differently in women and girls than in men and boys. Autistic women are underdiagnosed because traditional models don’t recognize their traits as autistic, leaving huge gaps in support for autistic adult women and in broader awareness of their experiences.
Navigating Autism and Grief: Understanding and Supporting Unique Emotional Journeys
Grief is an intense and inevitable facet of life. Though the process is distressing for everyone, neurotypical people (people without autism) and autistic individuals will likely experience grief differently. Adults with autism spectrum disorder often have delayed and unexpected reactions to grief. Because of this, it is important for loved ones to recognize the signs of autistic grief and the unique support required for autistic adults during the grieving process.
