Separating autism and trauma

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I'm curious.
The therapist recently suggested that much of my behaviour which constitutes my inability to function is due to trauma. I initially dismissed this, but I am getting better at considering ideas which inherently seem like BS properly, and really investigating. There have been some instances which suggest they might actually be right.
Now I'm confused. I had always thought trauma had to be something significant - people returning from warzones, people who lost limbs in bad car crashes, people who were raped or kidnapped. Nothing like this ever happened to me. Some of my past has been less than ideal, but I assumed so had everyone else's. No one's life is perfect, it's something that, as an adult, you just shoulder and get on with things. And in some instances, negative experiences of the past inform positive aspects of who you are in the present. Plus I had always a rather derogatory view of people who claim to have PTSD from watching scary movies and such, as it trivialised the issues faced by people who had legitimate trauma from legitimate sources. I never counted myself among those people. My issues were not of the severity to cause significant trauma to a nonfunctioning degree, so I blamed much of it on autism.
For anyone dealing with the after effects of trauma, how do you discern what is due to trauma and what is due to ASD? Does it matter, since I assume the treatment for coping with the effects, from either source, may be similar?
Can someone end up nonfunctional due to trauma with apparently (again, according to me, but my view of this may well be incorrect) no significant cause? What is one supposed to do about it? I have a sibling who was raised in a similar way and as far as I know, has no trauma and lives a normal, adjusted, successful, comfortable married life. Are people on the spectrum more likely to be traumatised than our NT counterparts in the same/similar situations?
I am having a hard time being self-compassionate about this, and have always seen my inabilities as weaknesses on my part.

People with ASDs can suffer trauma from what NTs would consider everyday events.
The symptoms are the same as PTSD (flashbacks, nightmares, dissassociation, unwillingness to go places/see people/things associated with the trauma and panic/meltdown/shutdown if exposed, depression, suicidal thoughts).
I've had counselling for two such events.
They weren't life shattering (in the eyes of NTs) but they caused significant psychological distress that I was unable to function 'normally' and it was impacting significantly on my quality of life.
I would listen to your therapist.
Sounds like a good one.

Within our education we are taught to differentiate between the mental and the physical, and the result is that the "mental" simply becomes an act of conjuration of modern day magic.

Most people believe this axiom:

"I think therefore I am"

I don't, I say.

"Ideas exist within a physical space"

By referring back to this axiom my experiences are given dimension and substance and I can guard against predatory neurotypicals who want to claim the pain that I express as their own.

"Everybody hurts" "Everyone has problems" trite nonsense.

^Could you please explain what you mean by that?
I find your post confusing.

C2V, I relate to your post so very much. I was physically and emotionally abused as a child on a near daily basis and it manifested as anxiety, depression and self harm during my childhood and teenage years. For many years, I was so consumed by how sad, hurt, angry, hateful, disappointed and damaged I felt that it simply did not occur to me to think about the long term effects of the abuse on my personality, my behaviour, my thought patterns or my ability to regulate and experience uncomfortable emotions.

I think part of me was scared to find out how badly it affected me because it wasn't until that I went to university that I started to wonder whether I might have a form of post traumatic stress disorder. Like you, I thought that something horribly traumatic like seeing war or being kidnapped had to have happened to you in order to be mentally affected to the degree that I was.

I've never sought face to face counselling to deal with my PTSD. I have seen more than ten therapists in my life for all sorts of other unrelated issues - depression, anxiety and poor social skills mainly. Sometimes, I was forced to go either by family or teachers and sometimes, I sought it out on my own initiative. I've only ever had one therapist that I actually managed to connect with and who had both useful and practical advice to give me. The others were largely ineffectual and a couple were downright useless and even unethical. After all that I've been through in regards to counselling and therapy, I simply don't the inclination to seek it out anymore.

I've never been officially diagnosed with ASD and am not a hundred percent convinced that I have it. I think that it may be possible and I've taken some online quizzes that seem to think I fall somewhere on the spectrum but I'm not interested in pursuing an official diagnosis at this point. I am a fairly introverted person who has a quiet and reserved personality and I think many of my ASD symptoms can be chalked up to that.

As for how you differentiate symptoms caused by trauma and symptoms caused by ASD, it's hard to say. My trauma manifested in five main ways: regular flashbacks, hyper-vigilance, strict avoidance of triggers, lots of negative feelings about myself and an inability to remember certain things about the trauma. From what I've read, they all seem to be part and parcel of having PTSD but I can see how some of those symptoms could possibly transfer to ASD. Perhaps they'd be hyper-vigilant about avoiding their triggers or find themselves unable to remember or express exactly what's bothering them about something or feel low much of the time.

I was better able to manage my trauma and ensuing symptoms when I cut off contact with my abuser even though nobody else in my life wanted me to do that. As unsettling as some people may find this, my PTSD symptoms largely cleared up when I found out that my abuser died and for the first time in my life, I was honestly and truly safe and free from the possibility that they could hurt me again.

The only symptom that I've been kind of left with is negative feelings about myself and even then, it's been reduced a great deal. All this abuse led me to think that I was incapable of many things and that I was a flawed and damaged person who would always carry a heavy load of baggage with them. A combination of feeling safe and free to shed that mental image of myself and increased confidence in my abilities has enabled me to create a much more positive self image. It's also helped me to realize that I'm not as disconnected from other people as I thought and that they aren't as horribly untrustworthy as I once believed, for the most part.

I will never be a social butterfly but as I said above, I'm not sure how much of this is ASD and how much of it introversion. I don't love encountering new people and situations but sometimes it works in my favour and I enjoy the experience. If I prepare myself for dealing with the new person or situation beforehand, I'm able to tolerate it more easily. I'm not a cold, heartless person completely devoid of empathy or compassion. I do experience those emotions, I just don't wear my heart on my sleeve, as they say. I struggle with things like reading facial expressions and making eye contact but again - is it ASD, introversion or a symptom of experiencing so much fear as a child and adolescent?

I wonder perhaps if PTSD and ASD feed off each other in some ways. ASD people tend to prefer their own company and PTSD makes you so suspicious of people that it makes interacting with them more difficult. I'm sure that if I thought about it some more, I could come up with other ways that they might enmesh with each other.

I realize that this will probably end up being an awfully long post but I'd like to address the rest of my words to you. As I said above, I didn't think that I deserved to wear the PTSD label because I'd never seen war or been kidnapped or any of those other things that you mentioned. I've always known that my childhood was horrible because of the abuse that I endured but I spent much of my life not wanting to face it and what it meant for my life and desperately wishing that I could erase it from my mind so that I could feel happy.

Everybody experiences life differently. Your sibling may have been able to weather the trauma you're speaking out without any ill effects but you not being able to do the same does not make you a bad or flawed person. It simply means that the way you experience the world is not particularly well equipped to deal with that trauma.

Since many people with ASD are threatened, chastised and otherwise harassed about their atypical behaviour rather than being taught to adapt to different situations, in a way that they can understand, perhaps we/they are more likely to experience several traumas on a small scale that eventually build up into a much larger scale as experiencing a lot of mildly traumatic events can be just as bad as experiencing one hugely traumatic event. Trauma is trauma regardless of origin.

I hope that even a little bit of this post was helpful to you. Please feel free to contact me if you'd ever like to talk about this some more.

Trauma is caused by an event or series of events. It is your physical, mental, emotional reaction to the events. You develop defense mechanisms to keep yourself from getting hurt again. What is traumatic for one person might not be traumatic for another. Each person has an unique reaction to events.

I have trauma from being raised in a dysfunctional family. Other things have happened to me as an adult that have been traumatic. My symptoms are panic when in certain situations and avoidance behaviors (shutting down and going to sleep or acting out on several addictions that I have). I also think of suicide a lot as a way to escape.

My Asperger's is different. It affects the way I process information. I think it causes a lot of anxiety and depression as well because of getting overloaded.

There are treatments to help you move past trauma and deal with the symptoms of trauma. I don't really know of any treatments for autism.

I highly recommend the book: 'Healing From Trauma-A Survivor's Guide to Understanding Your Symptoms And Reclaiming Your Life', by, Jasmin Lee Cori.

The author shares personal experience with trauma and the healing process, which is highly apparent in the sensitive and understanding nature of her delivery. The book offered several exercises, in addition to the knowledge and support I obtained. I assure you that the book will profoundly affect you and your healing journey. I began to utilize a different book, initially, that I had to stop reading, as it was somewhat triggering and extremely clinical. Cori, literally became a companion of sorts and I cannot say enough about the effect this book has had on me.

Edit: A traumatic event can exacerbate, magnify and trigger ASD related symptoms and traits.

Best wishes to you -

I don't know how to separate those either - though my order is kind of flipped from yours. I came to understand my abuse much earlier than understanding my spectrum issues. How does all the gnarly abuse and family dysfunction that I remember, and healed somewhat from, that relate to now understanding that my whole lens was autistic?

For example, I shutdown more than meltdown; pulling inside extremely. I don't understand meltdowns, it feels like yelling or acting out would invite more abuse. And what is the half-remembered abuse about - is it cognitive strangeness or blocked memory? Lots of examples like that...

If you do find the courage to look a bit at the trauma with your therapist, you will probably find that the flashbacks and other problems start to fade back, and you can reclaim big pieces of your life.

I imagine there are important reasons why we'd want to separate the two, for treatment reasons. However, I feel like the main reason why I would want to separate them is based upon how I want to identify. Do I want to identify with ASD or do I want to identify as a victim of trauma. People with ASD are not technically "victims" because ASD is suggested to have biological basis. People with PTSD are victims, by definition.

I also highly recommend Jonathan Shay's book "Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character." Although the title suggests its emphasis on military experience, it is really a very comprehensive account of the varieties of PTSD and how they manifest themselves, and it's very well written. Shay emphasizes that the most treatment-resistant PTSD often results not from physical injury, but from social injury -- he calls it "betrayal of what's right," especially by people in authority.

I think people on the autistic spectrum are more susceptible on average to this kind of social injury, and so on average develop forms of PTSD more often that might be expected in the general population.

If you don't feel like past trauma is what's stopping you from socializing normally, and that it's more due to ASD, I would tend to believe you're right.

I was diagnosed with PTSD (due to rape) a decade before anyone figured out I was bipolar, and autistic. And for years I believed my problems in life were due to being raped. But then it finally occurred to me... Wait a minute. I'm married. I'm not afraid of sex, or men. I can talk about being raped, and it doesn't upset me. I can watch rape scenes on TV, and not get 'triggered' by them (as I used to). How exactly is this PTSD?

And that's when I realized something else was going on, and admitted that I'd had serious problems going back to early childhood, that I had never wanted to face. I wanted to believe I was a perfectly normal child whose life had been ruined by this trauma, but the truth was that I was screwed up long before then - and in fact I got into the abusive situation, because I was running away from the impossible, overwhelming expectations of my previous situation. The one in which I was an autistic, bipolar teen, expected to function normally, but utterly failing.

Now, decades later, I know for a fact that my difficulties in socializing have nothing to do with being raped, and everything to do with autism. I simply don't understand human behavior, and never did. And the signs were there since early childhood, but since being 'socially ret*d' is such a shameful thing, everyone in my life chose to politely ignore it.

I think in some cases they occur together.

I don't think what's relevant is the actual event that occurred. I think what is truly relevant is how much you suffered how much fear you were in, how much shame you felt

I have been hospitalized involuntarily and I would classify that as a traumatic experience because it was traumatic to me.

One caveat: don't let people tell you that something was traumatic when it really wasn't. Things that appear traumatic to outsiders might not be very traumatic at all to the actual victim. Things that appear trivial to outsiders might actually be very traumatic to you.

I do believe that chronic bullying for simply being different can cause complex PTSD in some people. Where thre isn't one obvious cause just a feeling of the whole entire world is against me.

I have thought about this a lot lately. Do I have PTSD instead of, in spite of, or in addition to Aspergers? Am I just delusional and 'perfectly fine' as my doctor says? So called experts seem utterly clueless but one counsellor did point out (as did my Fiancee) that I am always fast forwarding to the future and can't seem to just relax and be in the moment. No doubt this was a learned response to the horrific abuse (AKA bullying) I endured. I still suffer regular flashbacks to when I was bullied and utterly powerless and then get huge bursts of rage out of nowhere. I do know I am very sensitive and that made the bullying and exclusion ten times worse because I cannot forget what happened like most people can.