In my first year of getting my Master's in Social work program, my internship was in an inner city family homeless shelter, and I would see my first therapy clients during this internship, and I was. I worked with adults and and children alike. In, in that shelter. In that shelter setting, residents were all families, like there was no individual single people there.
And part of the residential programming was for all families to receive clinical services by the interns. And that's what we as interns were there for. Along with pro, providing some basic like social work services, like sort of obtaining housing vouchers, obtaining food, bank connections, employment, stuff like that kind of thing.
And I was one of about five or six other interns from different sociable programs, social work programs around the area. And it was cool to get to know like the different students and the different types of programs. And we were all in the same very overwhelming academic and placement kind of boat. And traditionally in any two year full-time master's program or part-time doesn matter, um.
In counseling involved being placed as an intern to provide therapy services in some kind of clinical agency or some kind of like social work setting. Um, if, if it's a master's in social work, there's all kinds of masters in clinical, um, counseling and there's a whole bunch and we were all very unskilled.
We were all very green and we were, it's like you're typically thrown to the wolves, meaning like, here's your caseload, here's the people. Just go do therapy. And that's kind of how it works for good or bad. And it's, it's wild. It's problematic and it's like, did you see goodwill hunting? Get in there. And uh, the experience that I came in with that I had already been working in childcare for about three years.
And before that I had also sponsored some other adults in a 12 step program. So in some ways I had more experience than the other students 'cause I had actually done some face-to-face kind of work. And while it was hard, it totally wasn't foreign to me. Um, and despite being green, we all kind of did okay for the most part.
And it was like a full trial by fire placement. Like most mental health placements kind of are. So, however, I saw stuff with families in that place that was extremely activating and heartbreak. Game and in psychology, there's this old school idea called Counter transference. Counter transference, which is the concept of what comes up for the helper or the therapist in the therapy room.
Most not all of the parents behaved like they weren't in a shelter. Often actively using substances covertly and consistently neglecting their kids, eventually requiring the state child services to step in, which we had to sort of like file the paperwork to get that ball rolling, which was super hard.
And some adult residents, it had experienced homelessness and their childhoods. So there was all of that meaning like there was generational trauma, socioeconomical trauma, trauma, like on top of trauma. And as a helper it's sometimes hard to be removed. Yet available to parents who have all of that going on.
Um, and a bit of a trigger warning of going into what, what a, what this whole video is about. And the title of this video is, my Point to all This is a very strong memory I have of a 9-year-old. Who came into the shelter with their single parent and a sibling, and they came in around the time when I started there, at that internship.
And I now say that the, the child's parent was struggling with a personality disorder. Um, I might have not known that at the time, but the parent was highly eccentric. They were dismissive of the reality, and they were extremely neglectful of their children. Um, this particular parent had put their kids in a car.
With pets and traveled across the country without money or resources to connect with a potential romantic partner relationship that had developed online but had never materialized, and I don't think they ever met. So there was a strong deficit in judgment, in parental functioning and maturity in this parent.
And if you feel like I'm judging the parent in context of healthy child development, I am judging the parent. And there is good and there is bad judgment. Um, they had been picked up by services, by police as this child that I mentioned was seen in an alarming shape, like severely neglected and begging for food outside of a fast food restaurant.
This child and the sibling were significantly neglected. The child I'm focusing on had extremely cut up and chapped lips that required medical care, but they didn't get it. And this was the first thing you noticed, aside from hygiene neglect. Um, while I didn't know it at the time, I now understand that that lip biting can be part of something called stemming, which is, which is often an autism spectrum disorder trait.
The second thing was the child's emotional affect and facial expression. Body language and social interaction, which was not typical. And it was like you were half there to this child and the child was hard to read. Like most would mistakenly interpret the child as angry or intense, which is more about us as sort of neurotypical people than it was about the child.
The child was behaving along with the mother like they weren't in a homeless shelter. Neurotypical children in such an environment might be afraid or cautious or shy or maybe exhibiting shame about their or their situation. And this child wasn't, and I'm not judging the child here. This is simply like what I observed when they came in.
It was clear that the child was different, and we can describe that now as being neurodivergent, meaning not neurotypical. And the memory I have of this first interaction was the child was drawn to this computer room at the shelter where kids and adults could go in and get some basic computing done, picture like 10, barely working, donated PCs in a row in a room.
And this child got on one of the computers just to play a game, and they were being in the middle of an intake or something like the staff needed to shut down the room or go home and I can't remember, remember what it was, but the child. Couldn't be in there, but then no one could get the child out. Um, and it could have been late in the evening and it was probably chaotic getting this family set up in shelter.
Um, and the child ignored all communication from the adults didn't matter who. They didn't acknowledge or make any significant, significant eye contact if the child did communicate. It felt aggressive to the adult. Both verbal and non-verbal communication was somewhat muted or pointed. And this was offputting to the staff and there wasn't a sense coming from the child of being aware of the newness to staff or the transition that this child was in.
I hope that that makes sense. Meaning there wasn't a typical communication or relationship exchange, um, which can be a sign of autism, and there wasn't a conversive back and forth known as relational reciprocity. If there was, if there was, say, a neurotypical child in the room, they might interpret that child as intimidating on purpose or a problem, which is problematic.
And I think as a male, I was asked to assist like an old school, like kids listen to male voices kind of a thing. I'm just trying to give you a, a picture of the culture of this shelter at the time. Um, and out of. Out of staff, say like maybe there might have been 10 people staffing this place. There was really only one licensed clinician sort of as a resource for the place.
So that's kind of what I mean about the culture or the setup. We were eventually able to get the child out of the room after like a half hour by me, like sort of pulling the electrical plug on the power strip to the computers and just shutting the whole thing down. And everyone was frustrated, especially the child.
I've worked in a lot of therapeutic programs that due to various reasons of collective stress weren't therapeutic staff, including me, failed at all the suggested methods when working with those who are neurodivergent and are identified as having, um, autism spectrum disorder. We didn't know what we, what we might know now in the, and it's also that the family was so new to us.
And often places like this are rooted in survival and not exactly rehabilitation, which sucks, but there is a time and a place for everything in mental health. Like some people, you know, when you think about the, um, a psychiatric unit is where that, I think that the function of that is primarily sort of like.
Stabilization, but a lot of people, they're not totally wrong, would assume that it would include rehabilitation, which that isn't the case. So that's what I mean about that time and a place for everything. So think about that whole scene that I'm talking about, and we often only see the person in the moment and not where they came from, especially under intensity or stress.
So here's where I'm going with this. A 9-year-old having. An abusive, neglectful parent with mental illness, drive them across the country in hoarding like conditions within the car with a pet in the car as well, experiencing chaos, hunger, poverty, homelessness, only to end up in a totally foreign homeless shelter and just wanting to maybe get away from people to play with, like some Microsoft paint or whatever.
Only to be met with opposition from adults. That you don't know and they don't know what you need and are just focused on getting through their day or the, or the therapeutic milieu of the environment. That's what kept me up at night due to this kid's situation and I still think about it and it's probably triggering me back to my own situation at the time.
Some way after one or two months of working in environments like this, you leave places like that, maybe wanting to drink heavily, it does something to you and you can't imagine what it's like to be. The clients or the residents, if it's, if it has that effect on us. In addition, if that child was neglected like that already, what experience did they have prior in say, school systems?
Um, for, from neurotypical kids only seeing the child as alien from teachers who only interpret the intensity of say, opposition. Childhood trauma such as this on top of the world, not accepting you or understanding you neurologically in severe ways is a lot.
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Um, and in addition, you can also go to my website to do some childhood trauma e-course work that I offer there, including a recent webinar recording that discusses working on childhood shame triggers. Through an inner child exercise called dialoguing. If you follow this white ball kind of up here or up here, I don't know, um, that'll take you to the courses.
You can also get in touch with me through my website, and you can also connect with me over at my Instagram or my TikTok, and I will have all the links in the description to this video. So about autism spectrum disorders. In 2013, the DSM five changed the five major categories of autism. They took three of them and they g lumped it into one category called Autism Spectrum Disorder.
Autism is primarily known as a neurodevelopment disorder in areas of social, communicative and behavioral differences, it affects roughly about one in 50 children in the us. It can be approximately between 40 to 80% hereditary and symptoms manifest on a non-linear spectrum. Um, that's a linear spectrum, but the way that it's formulated is different.
So like with A DHD, there is a higher prevalence of. Boys that carry the diagnosis as opposed to girls and girls are usually underdiagnosed. There's an interesting social theme going on there about neurodivergence. Autism can be diagnosed as early as between 18 and 24 months of age and early intervention and support yields a really good impact on long-term outcomes.
Some people with autism need support with activities of daily living, such as bathing, dressing, and some just don't. Here is a bit about autism and some symptoms and some viewpoints. Um, one way to present a picture of autism is looking at the social, the communicative, and the behavioral differences between neurotypical and neurodiverse.
I'd like to point out, even for myself as I'm still learning, is that those with autism are simply different humans, and they interpret social and internal behaviors of humanity differently. I think the major cause of trauma. In general is telling a child that they are different. So therefore I'm trying to watch my own neurotypical bias in this video and not describe such differences in the tone of being deviant from the neurotypical majority or, or sort of sort of saying that these things are negative.
So here goes for the sake of time. I'm not gonna cover each item, but give kind of a general idea about symptoms socially. Those with autism have difference in affect. This is something we'll come back to throughout the video. Affect is simply to me, does the inside emotions match the outside facial or body language expression?
It helps affect, helps humans read each other emotionally, and a neurotypical person may read a person with autism. As cold or distant or mad when that is not the case. A person with autism may be different socially in terms of reciprocity of conversation. They are different in terms of the back and forth and flow to conversations such as taking turns.
A person with autism may be also be different socially by engaging in something called masking, which is attempting to be as neurotypical as they can to hide their neurodivergence or hide their differences. And we'll come back to this later as it's a major overlap with childhood trauma. In terms of communication, a person with autism can sometimes kind of info dump in conversation or overshare or unders share or miss certain cues and have a different tone or communicative posture.
Incidentally, so can those who grow up in childhood trauma and in terms of behavior. There can be high sensory sensitivity, there can be something called stemming, which is a repetitive self-soothing kind of activity. There can be having. High specific interest in being very intense in that interest, there can also be a strong need of downtime, even likening, uh, darkened rooms after being social or when they're stressed, and they can even have a marked objection to neurotypical norms such as gatherings or dressing a certain way or even the norm of greeting somebody.
Here is a better infographic from an expert on autism. This is a spectrum wheel that I discovered and wanted to share it. This is from a psychologist named Matt Lowry, LLP, and I found this to be genius, and Matt is a bit of celebrity on TikTok, yet he's not on TikTok. Matt really says something and I will have his website in the description below that You can, you guys can check out.
This is really well thought out. Pause the video and focus on. Ex Interoception, proprioception, and interoception. These all involve awareness. Awareness of our outside, awareness of our body, and awareness of our internal physical needs when it comes to childhood trauma. We can use these same terms to file them under the umbrella of dissociation.
Perhaps the major differences between a SD and childhood trauma. Could be about the how and the why. We are dissociated in different specific ways with autism spectrum, having more neurological, brain-based etiology on dissociation and childhood trauma, having more situational etiology. And yes, there is overlap of both.
You can have both. So what I mean by that is sort of neurologically based sort of dissociation just comes with sort of. Being on the spectrum, um, as opposed to growing up in childhood trauma where it's situational where things are happening to you that cause the dissociation. So here's me on this. As I think, and I assume, and this is my opinion, that to be on the spectrum is to carry some kind of childhood trauma unless the child is being raised in a totally safe.
School environment, a totally safe and understanding family, or very informed family, and very informed school, and a very informed and understanding
Like I've done here on Matt Lowery's infographic. The term spectrum is misleading and. Usually in my videos I'll give a range of symptoms looking at the symptoms from a like sort of from a mild standpoint to a severe standpoint, usually left to right and that isn't how autism works. And each person's differences are highly unique to themselves.
The linear idea of being on a spectrum fame from something like high functioning to low functioning doesn't work in this, and it's actually terminology that is no longer used related to that. Here's a brief case example about sort of the circular spectrum that we saw in those infographics. As a musician, I took an interest in this old sixties song by a band named Canned Heat.
I think the song with the song is called Going Up the Country. You probably had heard of it in some point, and you know, um, you'll know it when you hear it. And there was an incredible blues guitarist in that band named Alan Wilson. Um, he might've been the focus of the band, and this band played at.
Actually, they actually played at Woodstock and they had a significant contribution to sixties roots base rock, blues rock. Um, Wilson was thought to have Asperger's and related to how each person will have a unique spectrum map. Being in a band on on stage is a highly social thing to do. However, Wilson's bandaid and the people around him notices the diff notice.
Differences in him that Wilson didn't engage in the typical hedonistic neurotypical stuff of the 60th at the time, and he would often sleep outside away from the band with a sleeping bag, or if there was parties going on or whatever. And they reported that he was also intensely focused on environmental conservatism and while environmentalism was ex was an exploding topic around that time, historically, Wilson was said to be hyper-focused on that work and seemed to be so in an extreme way.
Why I say all this is learning about him and hearing interviews with him, we see a highly sensitive person with a specific. Focused speech pattern, who could be in a band for the most part, but also needed to socially separate himself to soothe, or we assume. He also struggled with depression, anxiety, and suicidality, which led to a hospitalization.
He had a habit of twisting his hair, which we now would know is stemming. And he was hyper-focused on the despair about the environment and con and concerns. He also had some sleep disturbances so much that he started to self-medicate for those sleep disturbances. And I wonder. I wonder about the pressure of being a autistic person in a neurotypical world and loving an art and being successful in an art that required you to be visibly seen and socially engaged, but yet you really.
We're probably overly stimulated by it. So what I mean by that is there are all different types with all different levels of strengths and weaknesses when it comes to being on the spectrum. Um, and I say all this as there are usually stereotypes and stigma around autism where degrees of functioning.
Are misunderstood and I will have a Wikipedia link that you can read about him. He's actually kind of a fascinating sort of person. Um, and definitely sort of check out, check out the song, um, going up the country. Now let's look at some overlap with childhood trauma and a SD. Like with the video I did on A DHD, I struggled separating the two issues as there is so much overlap.
On the left, we have some traditional A SD symptoms and the most extreme difference I've listed here is actually somewhat vaguely. Social atypical with issues such as stemming eye contact, sensory atypical, and demand avoidance, orbiting the grayish area of of the overlap. And on the right I've listed traditional childhood trauma symptoms such as body memories or flashbacks if you like, guilt and shame, which a person with autism may not be overly focused on.
I've also listed attachment problems and put hypervigilance as something that orbits in the gray area. And of of the overlap. So the overlap here goes affect reading. What I mean by that is both of these issues can misread the emotions of others and give off affect. That seems incongruent and we'll come back to that.
Masking both issues cause individuals to hide their authentic selves and to do their best to seem normal low frustration tolerance. Sure. On the childhood trauma side, it might be more about being triggered to trauma issues and on the a SD side, it might be. Potentially more about triggers around sensory things that cause the, the frustration or the low frustration tolerance, isolation, they'll do that to self-soothe or also what I call being somewhat siloed and walled off.
And again, the reason for it might be different, but I think both issues are about. Being exhausted by others, and both issues affect our ability to do intimacy with others. Next up is needing control, needing things a certain way for trauma survivors. I think that there is more of a narrative about things as opposed to a SD being rooted in fixed preferences.
A trauma survivor might get controlling even over the mundane, like. Yeah, I don't know if you like if you cook pasta with olive oil in the water, and that's a severe nodo, but their control would be about them being triggered to memories where things got ruined because people didn't listen to them or how things won't look like and being rigid about it, or being stuck with something that may not be fully enjoy, enjoyable.
There is a narrative in all that as opposed to a SD, just being about sort of fix fixated preferences. Next up is dissociation. Like I mentioned earlier, this is a huge overlap, but I think a SD is more about a neurological brain trait. Where childhood trauma is more about conditioning to leave our body due to not being safe in our body as children.
Next up is repetition. Trauma survivors can eat the same thing for lunch for months, as well as those with autism. But the etiology from trauma might be the. Fear of being dissatisfied or making a mistake in food choices or choices can be limited, but they're safer. Similar to a SD, you know, childhood trauma survivors can be highly routined and potentially obsessive, which is a function of subconscious hyper vigilance and coping, which creates a lack of spontaneity.
Reciprocity, which again is the flow to conversation in a SD. I think it's more neurological, like missing cues, but this is a big one in terms of overlap. Wounded inner children have beliefs about being seen, being heard, or feel. Pressure or intense fear about getting through to someone. So they might talk un unconsciously, but pressure, or they might be freaked out due to shame about the floated conversation and come off somewhat bumpy, bumpy or overly apologetic, and it's just kind of a, an awkward experience.
Um, next up is communication problems. Again, for different routes of both issues, it can be about struggling how we come across. How we say something hating small talk, hating social norms, just for different reasons. Now let's look at a closer view of some of those overlapping issues. While a lot of this overlap is not thought of as traditional signs of trauma, I believe it is, let's look at three of these overlapping issues and how, um, these issues can share specifics.
All three are related to each other. The first up is masking. In autism, this is known as camouflaging one's, neuro one's neurodiversity, or difficulties to assimilate better in the neurotypical world. This isn't just an a SD specific thing. I think, um, many other psychological issues probably do a similar behavior as well.
And I also think it's simply like a human one, like coming up. Um, with an inauthentic self to survive, to fit in, to hide, to self protect for trauma survivors. I think that that's pretty much the same thing. Perhaps we can also name masking as, say things like codependency or people pleasing or being conflict avoidant or some something like imposter syndrome.
I think it's all rooted under not being comfortable in our own skin. And I wonder if childhood trauma survivors are more focused on creating an identity that got lost in trauma as opposed to someone with a s. D who might be more, who might not be really that interested in creating a whole identity. I'd like to know what you think about that.
I'm not, I'm not clear on that one myself. But for diagnostic overlap. It is tricky. I think someone with autism might mask more about the neuro neurodiversity differences, um, where someone with just childhood trauma will be masking about the trauma narrative, such as, um, you should always say yes and be available to others, otherwise you're a bad person.
Something they picked up from their family or something they created themselves in context of their family. Both are rooted in the assumption that the real you is unacceptable, so you kind of have to fake it till you make it. And yes, someone with autism can mask due to both neurodivergence and trauma.
Such as say there's a difference between, um, if I don't come across as atypical, it will be awkward and people will know I'm different. That's one thing, as opposed to if I don't come across as atypical, I'm gonna get hit again and punished. Do you see what I mean by those differences? Um, so next, moving on the third thing, which is that I wanted to talk about the major overlap is affect.
So. Like telling a joke from an over serious and flat expression, like pretending to be more together than we let on. Um, like saying provocative or blunt or unintentional things. Those are all involve how people read us. Reading our body language, reading our facial expression, reading our tone, reading our energy.
I'm fascinated by the idea of affect and like does the inside emotion and thoughts match what what the outside is expressing? And it's funny as I think about this, but there is so much neurotypical kind of authority in what we think is appropriate affect. And the neurotypical world kind of says this, um, you're talking about something you're super into, but your eyebrows aren't going up.
Um, your speech is kind of intense and pointed about what you want, but you say you're not mad. Um, you're giving me nothing to go on and kind of freaking me out because I can't read you. These are all things that both childhood trauma survivors and someone with a SD might hear from others from the childhood trauma lens.
Most abuse kids grow up, grow up in a, in a siloed vacuum, and they don't, they don't get good modeling. They don't get consistent mirroring from healthy people, from healthy parents to help them match up what's the inside and the outside. That's what mirroring does say. The dog dies and the family is very shut down.
Or repressed, or they're angry and they deal with it all by just gritting their teeth and moving on and telling the kids to forget it. Kids learn that big emotional experiences aren't actually that big, which is a huge human disconnect. It's a huge. Disconnect from their feelings. It's like when you think about like, affect is a sign that the person is kind of connected.
Um, that person grows up into adulthood and their partner is confused by their dismissive affect. Um, that they don't have big feelings when they have the birth of a new child. Um, affect about big emotional things being shut down is actually an affect. It's a vibe. Um, it's being flat, which is off-putting to neurotypical people.
Someone with a SD might process, say the loss of a pet in a different way that is neurological. That does not say coming from the family of origin, dysfunction and abuse conditioning, like shutting down or being shut down, they're different. The major differences are childhood trauma and affect are about the conditioning and trauma while a s.
D Um, the affect differences are neurological. It's part of the uniqueness of the spectrum. And yes, someone with a SD can often be very traumatized, but if they didn't grow up in trauma, they would still be neurodivergent around affect. I think for childhood trauma survivors, good treatment for trauma can often alleviate or correct some problems with affect.
So some final thoughts. Um. Some comorbid issues with autism there is, there is as high as 85% probability that there is shared diagnosis with the most common ones being a DHD. Epilepsy GI issues, depression, anxiety, and bi being bipolar. I also wanna make a point that a SD shouldn't be confused with something like cluster B symptoms in this world right now where everyone is a narcissist.
A SD is more of an inward experience, while cluster B is more of an outward experience relationally, and I think NeuroD neurodivergent affect. Communication and missing cues are misinterpreted as not being empathic and overly self-focused. That's where maybe the disconnect happens there, given that therapy and assessments are expensive and hard to find.
I often see lay people thinking or even accusing someone with childhood trauma that they might be autistic. And I'll also see the assumption that being on the spectrum is something that doesn't involve trauma. Um, it just is difficult when both of those things are wrong. The major point I think is being neurodivergent in this society is often traumatic by itself.
Think back to the child that I mentioned at the beginning of this video. Think back to your own grammar school experience where you were, or you saw very vulnerable kids and different kids being horrifically bullied or placed into a special needs environment, which alone says to those kids, you're different.
You're not like the others. And I'm saying, I'm not saying all services like that are bad, I'm just saying that's an experience that is difficult. How much trauma comes from all that, even if some W with severe symptoms don't appear to notice. I think it's still kind of in the air. My only real recommendation about this video is primarily getting adequate psychological testing for a SD with an accredited autism clinician or service, like I mentioned earlier, such as Matt Lowery.
Um, you can check out the link in the description of this video for him, and, uh, if you can't afford it, you can't get therapy. I totally get it. A really good resource that I found during the creation of this video is a YouTube channel, um, called Asperger's from the Inside, by a gentleman named Paul. He also self-identifies as having it, which is super helpful, getting the idea from that inside perspective.
As always, I hope this video is helpful to you and I would love to know what you. Think, what was your experience? Is there something that I missed that you wanted to share in the comments? Please do so for the
A SD and childhood trauma. Woo. That's a lot of letters. So I will see you guys next time. And as always, may you be filled with loving kindness. May you be well, may you be peaceful and at ease, and may you be joyous. Take care, and I will
