For those labelled high functioning, it can be incredibly difficult to get external support once diagnosed… High functioning is not how an autistic person experiences being autistic. It’s how society experiences the autistic person… While ‘high functioning’ is used to presume competence, ‘low functioning’ is often used to deny autonomy… Autistic people in this cohort are often exposed to abusive therapies, such as Applied Behavioural Analysis (ABA), to try to ‘normalise’ their behaviours. (Williams 2019)
