Lesson 2 – How do you experience being autistic?

This lesson we are going to look into what autism is, what it isn’t, and consider how it affects you. After this, you will then start to build your personal autism profile.

Activity 1

Forum Discussion

• What is autism?
• What does autism mean to you?

Please go to the following forum link to consider, and answer these questions: https://ndsa.uk/forum/threads/what-does-autism-mean-for-you.178/

Activity 2 – How you experience your differences?

Autism cannot be considered separate from the individual, and the social model of disability states that it is not the condition itself, but the environmental barriers that are disabling. Regardless of whether you consider yourself disabled with having autism or not, we want to emphasise the impact of external environmental triggers on you, and how you experience your various differences due to autism itself.

Let’s take some time to explore what environmental factors may trigger either a negative or positive feeling for you due to autism…

The following list will help you to consider various areas of difference:

How I experience my differences:

• Organisation
• Communication
• Social
• Sensory:
  • Sound
  • Sight
  • Touch
  • Smell
  • Taste
  • Proprioception
  • Vestibular
  • Interoception
• Movement
• Other

We are going to use a variety of tools to create documents to help on the journey through the project phoenix course.

It is important to understand you strengths and weaknesses, what keeps you functioning most effectively, and what prevents you from being at your best. We are going to explore this section by section and capture in the ‘All About Me document’ – your personal profile.

We are going to start with ‘How I experience my differences’. section.

Please turn to page 3 in your NDSA Project Phoenix workbook to complete the ‘My differences and how I experience them‘ page.

Think carefully about your answers, as we will use them as starting points for later exercises in the booklet.

Filling in this profile will help with progressing through the programme and in setting your goal. It will also help you to build self-awareness that in turn, will help to develop strategies for success.