What is Autism

Autism is a neurodevelopmental condition that affects the way a person communicates. While autistic people share some similar characteristics, there is no ‘typical’ autistic person. Every autistic individual has their own strengths, differences and needs, their own life journey and their own unique story. If you are autistic you are likely to be living, learning and working independently, but may have learning differences or other health conditions that require specialist support.

Autism means your brain works in a different way to other people’s. It is not a medical condition with treatments or a “cure”. Autism is a processing difference that can have an impact on many areas of a person’s life.

How does autism affect people?

There are some behaviours and ways of communication that you may use if you are autistic, but these aren’t universal. The characteristics of autism vary from one person to another, but there are three main areas of difference when compared to ‘neurotypical’ people.

Autistic people have differences in the way they communicate, understand and use language. If you are autistic, you may engage in social life from a different perspective. This leads to differences in how you interact and develop relationships.

You may find socialising and social interactions difficult. If you are autistic you might find it a lot harder to interpret both spoken language and body language, which can make communication more difficult. There are lots of unwritten rules that we use when talking to someone else, and if you are autistic you may find these rules confusing because they aren’t always applied in the same way.

As a result, social interactions can often be tiring for autistic people and they can have difficulties ‘reading’ others.

Sensory differences experienced by autistic people include hyper (high) or hypo (low) sensitivity in relation the eight senses of sight, hearing, touch, taste and smell, interoception (internal sensations), balance (vestibular) and body awareness (proprioception). These differences will vary from person to person and can actually fluctuate depending on a number of different factors, for example the time of day, situation or the environment.

Autistic people can have differences in their attention, interests and how they learn. If you are autistic, you may have noticed that you can be very focused on particular interests. You may also feel safer and more comfortable with routines and structure as this lessens uncertainty. Autistic people can often find it hard to understand abstract concepts and language such as sarcasm and metaphor. If you are autistic you may tend to take things literally and prefer to use language that is exact and specific.

More than one in 100 people are autistic and there are around 700,000 autistic adults and children in the UK.

Autism commonly co-occurs with other conditions, including learning difficulties, ADHD, OCD, epilepsy, or mental health needs.

Further information:

www.autism.org.uk

Autism – NHS (www.nhs.uk)