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ASPartOfMe
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09 Sep 2021, 9:09 am

How an autism diagnosis changed Clem Bastow’s world for the better

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Being inside Clem Bastow’s head is, at times, like living in a horror movie. While most of us have moments of anxiety, her imagination takes it to the next level. The Melbourne-based writer says it’s a trait shared by many autistic people.

“We are uniquely talented at imagining the worst-case scenario. It’s so innate to me I don’t realise it is shocking for other people to hear about it,” she says.

It’s one of the most startling revelations in her new book, Late Bloomer. ”Disaster, catastrophe, strangers murdering my dog, blunt-force trauma, rape, torture; this is the daily texture of my existence,” she writes, in one of many such insights.

At night, Bastow has what she calls “Roland Emmerich dreams” after the director of Independence Day and Godzilla, who creates end-of-the-world nightmare visions.

“It’s because you don’t understand your place in the world you inevitably see yourself as defective. You think, ‘I must be wrecked’. That’s a reason people seek diagnosis later in life… it’s constantly there,” she says, adding that most autistic people suffer from anxiety.

The memoir traces her life from childhood until now, liberally accompanied by research into autism. It’s illuminating, funny and accessible – the best kind of non-fiction, which reads like a novel. She lays herself bare, relating major difficulties growing up, in relationships, at school, in the workplace, dating and socially – with anxiety a common thread through it all.

A journalist by profession, she’s “a free-ranging hen” work wise. Writing music reviews was her starting point, then entertainment journalism, including a stint in LA, and then several years as a columnist for Fairfax, writing feminist commentary. In Late Bloomer, she sees the irony of offering dating advice when she did not enjoy the process herself, was often ambivalent about men and later came out as queer.

The book makes a political statement, reclaiming ground as per the #OwnVoices movement. “Autistic people are often the objects; we don’t get to tell our own story very often. It was a way of saying ‘look at all of this data that exists about us - and not by or for us.

Treatment for autism has revolved around extincting – that’s the medical term – autistic behaviours. Early diagnosis may have meant Bastow was subjected to this process, as well as other questionable practices. “How do you feel about two-year-olds being confronted with terrifying things, just to see if they have different responses to other children?”

The title was inspired by Bastow being diagnosed at 36. Cue a massive deep dive into the subject. “That’s one of the things about me, which I think is representative of the autistic engagement with the world, finding something out about something, and then having to know absolutely everything about it,” she says.

Despite difficulties at school, Bastow was considered gifted in the subjects she was interested in. Maths was not one of them; one teacher memorably contacted her parents to ask if there’d been a death in the family that caused her to be so bad at it and so disengaged. She dropped out of university several times, finding it too difficult to navigate, so much so that when she completed her Masters in Screenwriting in 2017, “I felt like I’d used the cheat card”.

Now a teacher of screenwriting at Melbourne University, she is doing a PhD in action cinema and autism at RMIT; she is a co-host of Superfluity on Triple R.

Part of diagnosis coming so late – “the nice version” – is that at home she was loved and accepted for who she was. “At home we were all pretty eccentric and many of our friends were too so, in the context of that world, I didn’t seem that different. It was ‘that’s just Clem’s thing’.”

Being diagnosed was a huge moment, “really a planets aligning thing”. “There are next to no adult supports in Australia, no specialists who diagnose and it’s really expensive,” she says. “If you are not Rain Man – a straight, white 30-year-old guy – that process becomes more and more difficult.”

To people worrying about getting assessed – or having children assessed – who fear they might be labelled, Bastow says what you end up being labelled, whether in the playground or the workforce, is far worse. She reached crisis point: “Things in my life were going to become untenable if they weren’t already.”

“You spend so much energy over a lifetime suppressing these behaviours, it gets to make or break. I was having these experiences that I just couldn’t understand, I didn’t have any explanation for them.” Initially super positive, she then went through “almost like stages of grief but in reverse”. “Then there’s this process of unpacking, if only I had understood this earlier, what would life have been like.”

Bastow argues as a society we need to understand the autistic person’s perspective, to accept differences rather than trying to bend them into a particular mould

Bolding=mine

I don’t know about all autistic people but the part about shocking people by imagining the worse case scenario has been true for me. Since we are two days away from the 20th anniversary of 9/11 this example is apropos. When the first reports of a plane crashing into the World Trade Center happened most peoples initial reaction was “What an idiot”. The when it became apparent it was terrorism utter shock and disbelief. My initial reaction was terrorism because it was a clear day and a big landmark. I can’t say I envisioned that exact scenario but that it was a big attack was no surprise to me. My reaction was I can’t believe it took so long. Even with my less than average body language reading skills it soon became obvious that my lack of surprise is not what people expected or wanted to hear and I shut up. This catastrophizing is less since my diagnosis but is definitely still there.

That part about getting a worse label sans an Autism one is so true. While I do believe not having a label telling me what I can’t do helped me, this is why I can never fully grasp the “I don’t want a label” feeling.

The ‘extincting’ autistic behaviors term mentioned is right out of ABA. I am surprised to see it used by an Australian, I was under the impression that ABA was mostly an American phenomenon. While I acknowledge that ABA is a lot “better” than it used to be their use of that term convinces me that all the talk by ABA defenders about how we are just trying to get rid of dangerous behaviors not core autistic ones is gaslighting.


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Professionally Identified and joined WP August 26, 2013
DSM 5: Autism Spectrum Disorder, DSM IV: Aspergers Moderate Severity

“My autism is not a superpower. It also isn’t some kind of god-forsaken, endless fountain of suffering inflicted on my family. It’s just part of who I am as a person”. - Sara Luterman


cyberdad
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11 Sep 2021, 1:44 am

ASPartOfMe wrote:
The ‘extincting’ autistic behaviors term mentioned is right out of ABA. I am surprised to see it used by an Australian, I was under the impression that ABA was mostly an American phenomenon. While I acknowledge that ABA is a lot “better” than it used to be their use of that term convinces me that all the talk by ABA defenders about how we are just trying to get rid of dangerous behaviors not core autistic ones is gaslighting.


My wife and I are both ABA practitioners. Lot's of people trained in ABA down under here. There is the ever present lingering thought about whether ABA was necessary our whether spontaneous developmental changes in the brain lessen "undesirable behaviors". I guess we will never know.