Activity: How you experience being autistic

‘How you experience your differences’

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

Let’s take some time to explore how you experience the environmental triggers and what are the differences you have 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
  • Light
  • Touch
  • Other
• Movement
• Other

We are going to use a few tools to create a few documents to help on the journey into employment.

It is important to understand you strength and weaknesses, what makes you effective and keep you functioning at your best and what prevents you from being effective. 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.

You can download the template now.

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

It will be reused later in the All About Me profile.