But You Don’t Look Autistic at All (Bianca Toeps’ Books)

by Bianca Toeps

A person who seems to manage in everyday life may be experiencing mental problems that make life nearly unbearable.

We close ourselves off to stimuli, and then get blamed for not having any empathy.

social reality is a construct, a set of rules that the players determine together.

According to the Markrams, more connections are being made in the autistic brain and brain cells respond more emphatically to each other. There’s a stronger response to stimuli, thoughts run rampant quicker. In short: the world is extremely intense for autistics.

The notion that people with autism might experience more stress due to a day that’s been planned down to the hour (because the more that’s been planned, the more that can go wrong) is lost on them.

I have things to do. But I’m tired.

Is an autistic you know stuck inside their own head? Maybe they don’t mind if you take charge for a minute.

It wasn’t my decision. And that was wonderful.

It’s weird, but my executive dysfunction doesn’t seem as bad when other people are around. When I’m working, I seem to tap into a different source. This source is fuelled by stress hormones, by adrenaline, and the adrenaline enables my executive functions to work like a souped-up engine.

Because washing up is quite intense for me due to the sensory stimuli, I do my washing up under running water, rather than in a basin.

Autistics who get better at learning how to “act normal” only end up spending more and more energy doing so.

So I don’t let things get me down, according to my dad. Most of the time, I didn’t really have a choice: a person has to eat, and I wasn’t on social benefits or had a partner with a money tree.

Are women better at camouflaging, or do they face more severe consequences if they don’t?

Sometimes I look at myself as if my soul has left my body and is floating somewhere above.

I’m not a loser. I’m a girl with an invisible handicap.

People who have recently been diagnosed with autism often don’t even know their own boundaries anymore; the uncomfortable feeling is so omnipresent, that listening to it seems like an impossible task.

Visual schedules create such a strong impression on us that if a change occurs, we get flustered and panicky.”12

all this research has shown is that people without stomach aches tend to be more pleasant. How pleasant are you when you’re sick? Exactly, just as I thought.

We didn’t want to bother each other, and as a result, ended up doing nothing at all.

If I know I can look things up, or how the timetable works, I don’t need a specified itinerary.

I find a plan that goes off the rails far more stressful than no plan at all.

Just staying holed up the whole time because you’re afraid something might not work out? That’d make you really miserable.

“Plus, if you stay home you still run the risk of a plane or a meteorite landing on your roof!”

So does that mean it’s easy for me to say, because I can say it? Because I’m intelligent, have a job and live independently? Those things certainly help. But they’re not necessarily a means by which to measure someone’s quality of life.

Every time someone tries to argue that people like Zjos and me have it easy because we’re “high-functioning”, I think of her brother. He would have been considered “high-functioning” too. But he’s dead.

As the Dutch saying goes: “Act normal, that’s crazy enough.”

For that reason, most non-autistic-looking autistics tend to be the people who experience the highest psychological pressure. Their brain is running non-stop on full capacity, their self-monitoring is so internalised the system can’t actually be turned off anymore. A constant flow of information (at best) or heartless self-criticism (at worst) leaves the owner of this brain overworked, burnt-out and depressed.

Stimuli – and that includes emotions – are often so intense for autistics that they have developed a defense mechanism.

Getting the right diagnosis is a very important step in improving the quality of life of autistics. You don’t gain anything by getting a diagnosis, but it does help with your self-acceptance and with finding solutions that work for you.