The Amygdala (a word I really struggle with), fear and ignorance.

So fear is a big part of Autism. Fear of things Neurotypicals (NT) presumably, take in their stride, and thats really the purpose of this post, but we'll come on to that later. Like many of my pastimes I've become somewhat obsessed with learning more about Autism and how to address my new niggle, helping people understand how comments like;

"We're all a little Autistic", 

"Everyone is on the spectrum" 

"Autism is a western misconception" (yes, I have had this said to me). 

are unhelpful, incorrect, unsympathetic and actually unconsciously ignorant. Turns out comments such as these are known in Neurodivergent circles as 'ableist' and are as offensive to many Autistic folk as Racism is to ethnic minorities.  But why? 

Well first let's address what Neurotypicals are trying to do. By playing down our differences and dismissing them as inconsequential, one can only assume that by likening them to their own peculiarities, their motives are, presumably, to make our conditions feel more normalised or trivial. Surely, what people are saying are, 

"Don't worry about it"

"You're just as crazy as the rest of us"

"Don't feel weird, it's no big deal"

That's got to be the purpose of these phrases, right? But that's not what these phrases do, they alienate Neurodivergent (ND) people further, they illustrate that as a society we're really in our infancy of educating ourselves on Autistic difficulties and that the public understanding of what it is, how it affects us and how challenging life actually is, really isn't appreciated at all. As well as the psychological differences between NT's and ND people, there are physical differences also. Our brains differ in their structure and also the right hand side of our bodies, possibly due to an imbalance of testosterone in pregnancy tend to develop at a different rate to the left. The Amygdala, the part of the brain that manages the fight or flight response, fear, anxiety and stress (and memory associated with those emotions) is either under or over developed depending on the types of fear the ND individual suffers. This is really new research, but what it illustrates is that physical differences in the size of this part of the brain whether it's too big, or too small do exist and that the knowledge we have, is still incomplete. 

But what does that mean? Well, for starters, meeting new people for many ND individuals is fear inducing...

"Yeah but I get nervous meeting new people"

Perhaps you do, but the definition for Autistic people is that we have repeated behaviour and social difficulties, and my belief is that this needs reviewing too. These are both true, but repeated behaviour is only half of the problem, it's the repetitive thoughts that trouble me the most. 70% of Autistic people suffer with sleep problems. The meeting I have in less than an hour (which I'm escaping thinking about by writing this post) has been on my mind for the past week, since it was originally organised. Logically, I know the lady, it will likely be very productive, I'll probably tell her about my recent diagnosis (at least that is part of the preparation plan) but the worry of it, my damn Amygdala has been giving me this worry 'feeling*' for the past week. If I awaken early morning, the thought is there straight away, I can't escape it. Do I wake my wife and tell her I'm worried about a meeting with the lady I already know quite well. No, I have 'mild' or 'high functioning' Austism, so I 'mask' it, and no one knows, I am anxious stressed and uncomfortable. The thoughts will only go away in 2 hours or so after the meeting, and exhaustion will inevitably follow. 

So unless this describes your thought process the same as mine, we are not really suffering in the same way, and all Nuerodivergent individuals would appreciate it if you simply accepted this and helped us limit these events. Because without an Amygdala transplant, more of these meetings aren't going to make me fear them less. That will never change. It's only the people I meet regularly and I am closest with whom I am comfortable meeting. If we don't meet regularly, I will be anxious. 

If there was an operation to stop myself from these challenging thoughts, if the Amygdala could be fixed, I would do it like a shot. I don't know whether that would also affect my ability to obsess and hyper focus on things, whether it would kill my desire to fixate on specific subjects of interest, whether it would make me less of a logical or lateral thinker or if it would affect my empathy score or emotional instability, and neither do I think anyone else would know. But it would would certainly have made the last week a bit easier to cope with. 

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* to be clear, there are no actual logical or rational thoughts of harm. I read a piece that said we don't know what Autistic people are thinking to be afraid, but it's not an actual specific concern, it's just fear of danger or harm. To quote every character in Star Wars "I've got a bad feeling about this". It's like that.