 Good day, fellow human being. Welcome to the Thomas and the YouTube channel. The home of autism, mental health, neurodiversity, self-improvement-related content. Today we're going to be talking about the seven stages of autistic realisation. What exactly is that, Thomas? From start to finish, the experiences that you may go through, the different stages that you may go through on your autism journey. We're going to cover that all here, but before we get started, let's have a look at some of the caveats for this video. This will not cover everybody's experience, of course. And this is something that will probably stay in the caveat section for pretty much all of my videos, because a lot of it can be very subjective and experiential. A lot of other creators have characterised their own stages of an autism journey, own stages of realising that you might be autistic and sort of going through all the stages of accepting it and researching it and things of that nature. But today I want to give you my own idea of what going through an autism journey might look like. Hopefully this will motivate you to move through the stages, understand where you are in terms of your autism journey, and hopefully it will be somewhat relatable to you people out there. And I would really love to hear down in the comments what you guys think of it. This is an overview looking at the seven different stages that I've characterised. Awareness, so you're first becoming aware of what autism being a part of the world, you may just be part of general knowledge, knowing what autism is. You might be part of a gaming community which use a lot of autism related jokes. You're aware that it's that. Stage two is the relatability aspects of it, you actually start to find that you do relate to a lot of the experiences that autistic people have. Stage three, you start to educate yourself a little bit more on what autism is, listen to the experiences of other autistic people too. Self reflection, so looking back at your own life, looking back at the way that you behave, comparing yourself perhaps to other people in your life and seeing if that's something that's apparent to be different. That's kind of self reflection. Sages of grief that you can go through once you realise that autism is a very, very real possibility and you've kind of accepted that. It can be quite difficult, a lot of mixed emotions coming up, a lot of past experiences that you've got to delve into, uncover all of that. Then moving on to perhaps a little bit more of a positive stage which is kind of like growth, doing some work to improve your life and eventually getting to the point where you reach acceptance, self-acceptance. Maybe advocating for yourself a bit more, making even further adjustments, you know, you could advocate for yourself in a lot of different scenarios, accepting the way that you are, maybe moulding your life in a way that's a lot more suited to your strengths and kind of avoids your weaknesses. All of that lovely stuff. Let's get into the first point which is stage one. Awareness. Open your third eye people, be ready to digest some sick autism content. What is the awareness stage? Well this is a state that a lot of people will find themselves in where they have some level of common knowledge about autism. They know that some people do require full-time support and care. They know that some people perhaps are a little bit nerdy, a little bit kind of socially outcasted, perhaps a little bit strange in the way that they behave and speak. They have these kind of loose ideas of what autism can look like. You may have seen some programs on in the mainstream, may have seen some news articles, you may know it from a certain streamer that you might watch and it can be possibly clouded by a lot of stigma and stereotypes, like a lot of things related to autism. There was a lot of stigma about what it actually means, a lot of ideas that are just wrong, like we're lacking empathy, a lot of stereotypes in terms of what we might look like, what the things that we might be good at, the way that we might speak, our kind of competency in different areas of life, you know, people might assume that we're all mass geniuses and coders and things like that, and definitely not. You might know what autism is a mean, as I said in the gaming community, it seems to be just thrown about all the time, autism this or to them that. It's kind of funny now and again, like when it makes sense, but a lot of people use autism to like say that they've done something badly. I'm like, man, you don't understand autism, like use it properly if you're going to make a joke out of it, you know, repeating the same action over and over again on RuneScape for about three hours. I'd probably call that a bit autistic to be honest, but hey ho, and if you do happen to be autistic, you may feel that you're not disabled, or you feel that your struggles in life are just regular things that all people find difficult, and you're just a bit worse at dealing with it, that could be the case. So that's stage one, it's when most people will find themselves starting off their autism journey. Stage two, relatability, now we're getting into the into the rhythm. You get me? You find yourself drawn to autistic characters, whether it's fictional or people in real life, whether canonically confirmed or not, you just find that these characters just seem to speak to you in a way that other characters don't, and they might happen to share a lot of autistic traits. You have experienced social rejection in your life, a difficulty understanding other's behaviors. You might feel like socializing as an act, you know, that's very common for a lot of undiagnosed individuals to mask their autism as a way to compensate for their differences. Whether you look online for medical info or consume some autism content, just loosely, you know, you might see it pop up on your feed now and again when it comes to YouTube or on Instagram, and whenever you do see it, you do find it oddly relatable in some ways. It depends what content you're watching, but you do start to kind of get a thought in the back of your head, you know, what it actually is, this autism, you know? I kind of do feel a bit like I relate to it, but I don't feel disabled, I don't feel like I need support, you know, I don't need benefits, anything like that, I don't need adjustments, you know, but what watch is it? It is somewhat dawn on you in kind of the back of your head, it's kind of a niggling fall in the back of your head saying, man, I could be autistic, it could be a possibility, and that leads us on to the next stage, stage three, education. You start educating yourself on the formal criteria. You might have even done a few online tests in your time, having a look at whether you score highly on the test traits or not. Just for everybody's knowledge, I score pretty lowly on a lot of the autism tests in adulthood, so I wouldn't hold this to a very, very high standard of being accurate, but it can be something to talk about with a professional or another autistic person. So you might have done online tests, you might have consulted a professional in the field, you might have consulted an autism advocate, sort of picked their brains, asked them about different aspects of autism, you might have watched some YouTube videos, read some Instagram posts here and there to inform you on both the experiential and the formal kind of scientific side of autism. It feels more and more that autism could be a strong possibility, but you do want to explore other options, so you might look at things like ADHD, you know, very highly crossover with autism, but overall you are kind of learning about autism in a scientific and experiential lens. Autism stereotypes and stigmas start to dissipate a little bit more, so a lot of those preconceived preconceptions of what autism is in your brain might be somewhat challenged and it might start to become a little bit more relatable, a little bit more possible that you could be autistic. You might be here for a while and a lot of people do spend a lot of time in this stage really trying to understand exactly what autism is, what it isn't, can take a while for people and that's okay, but moving on to stage four, that's three, stage four. Self reflection, something that a lot of people need to engage in within our society. You may be fully convinced that you're autistic at this stage, you may have got a diagnosis, you may have decided not to, you analyse your traits, your behaviours in solitary sort of areas of life, isolated places and you get the opinions of other people in your life on your behaviours and your thoughts and the way that you see life. With this knowledge comes a lot of self reflection, you learn a lot about autism in the education stage and so you try to think about experiences that you've had in your life and try to reframe them in the lens of autism to see if they make a lot more sense. If you are autistic they tend to make a lot of sense. This can be really liberating in some respects, but really painful, really difficult to delve into in other ways. You may even start asking yourself, am I masking? Like who actually am I? If you know if I've just been hiding who I truly am then what truly is my identity? All very good questions. Stage 5, grief. You've gone through a lot of heavy stuff. You've started off having a lot of stigmas and stereotypes about autism and not really feeling like it really applies to you to something a bit relatable, learning a bit more about it seems even more relatable. You start reflecting on your life and you're like, oh, damn, I hit home. That gets some feelings inside of me. Makes me feel weird about the life that I've lived up until now. At this point you may go through a very heavy self-reflective stage and with that self reflection your whole identity can be up for grabs. You can feel like who you are just kind of dissipates. It's almost like having a second adolescence where you're learning so much about yourself that you just can't really comprehend it, you don't know how to process it. Quirky and unique things that you might have loved about yourself and said like, oh, this is a defining quality about me that no one else has. Or even the bad experiences that you may have might actually just be reflected in a lot of the autistic people online, or at least it was for me. And that can in turn make you feel less special. Sure. Also makes you feel a little bit less alone and gives you a bit more hope for getting through things. You may go through all the stages of grief at this time. I mean, you're pretty much questioning every single part of who you are as a person and what you've been through and sort of reframing things in the lens of autism. Very, very intense. You're likely going to have a lot of mixed feelings when it comes to this stage, particularly. So we all know these kind of defined stages of grief. We know that these stages don't necessarily come one after another and can kind of bounce about and go to each of them. You may find yourself denying the possibility that you're autistic just because you don't want to face it. You might find yourself quite angry at yourself for not picking up. Your parents for not picking up, the school for not picking up, the people in your life for treating you badly when you're different. Can be a lot of anger there. Could be bargaining. Be thinking, okay, well, maybe I'm just a different person. I'm not autistic and you could be thinking about all the different ways that you could try and explain your behavior, which isn't autism. You can go through depression. You can feel sad about things, like your world has collapsed and the things that you've experienced in life had been pretty grand injustices done upon yourself. That can fill you with a lot of depression and make you feel really sad about the state of the medical system that they just didn't pick up on you. That they didn't catch you and get you at a point in your life where you could have integrated this part of yourself into your identity, into the way that you live your life. A lot of things to feel quite sad about, I would say. And of course, the stage after that, which is acceptance, but we are going to go on to that at some point. You will find yourself kind of bouncing between these kind of states of being. It's a very intense thing to go through. Not a lot of people can say that they've been through sort of like a second adolescence where they've just reflected on every single part of their being and their ideas of how their life has gone and why things have happened just kind of dissipate and become something else. It can be very, very difficult, very hard to go through. The next stage is growth and you may have come to a point where you kind of accept that and you're like, okay, I'm autistic. I've got a diagnosis. I know what it means. I can understand my life, but what now? I understand all this stuff. I processed it. What's happening after? Growth is the answer, hopefully. You've processed this new reality. You've integrated it into yourself. You've understood your past experiences in a different lens. Now it's time for change. You understand your autistic needs better and make those set adjustments and that could be in the workplace. It could be at home. It could be sensory supports. It could be reminders, could be support, could be help in lots of different ways. You make those adjustments to make your life better. You may inform others in your life and this is very up to whether you want to do it or not. I know particularly a lot of people can have some very annoying, quite difficult reactions to you telling them that you're autistic. Brave through it, we've all been through it. You may ask for reasonable adjustments in the workplace, which could be beneficial. I would always put a big bold maybe at the top because even disclosing autism can sometimes not be a very good decision. I would love to live in a world where people just adjusted for autistic people and didn't just fire them because they couldn't be bothered. That would be great. That's not the world that we live in currently. You formulate your own opinions on autism sociopolitically. Now I talk a lot about the traits and the more medical and science side of things, but the social, political side of autism is very, very strong. You may have your own opinions on certain concepts and that is all cool, all good in the hood. You're very welcome to have your own opinions as an autistic person. Getting involved in this aspect of things I think is quite a rewarding part of being in the autistic community. It can become a little bit more complex, but I think it's a very worthwhile area to stay up to date with at least. You could find your tribe and this may involve letting people go. Some people may just naturally drift away from you when you start to be more yourself, to talk about autism, to accept yourself, to try and grow in different ways. People might just see it as a step back, see it as something negative, possibly. This also means that you might be in a better position to find some people who really do get the real you. You really do like the real you. This could be an opportunity to find some really, really good friends who really understand your experiences in life. So this is the stage of growth and I want to round up this kind of more positive slide by talking about stage seven, which is acceptance. The least that you want to get to, you've been working yourself through the stages. You're kind of somewhat of a light at the end of the tunnel in this sense. You start really accepting yourself for all your perceived flaws and your perks, meaning that you see yourself quite neutrally in terms of autism. Some things are difficult, some things are easy. You recognize that, you adjust your life in order to better fit your needs, the things that you're good at. Maybe you start even advocating for your own needs and preferences to other people, to organizations, to businesses. You may start being proactive in advocating and supporting for others in your day-to-day life. You see someone who's having a hard time at a party, you might go over and have a chat with them, make sure they're okay. You may see other people within the workplace who are really struggling and they seem to stir a lot of autistic traits and you want to make some connections, see how they're doing. The thing is with this stage is that learning is definitely not over and there is always going to be new perspectives, new takes, new pieces of information from both the medical, scientific and socio-political worlds. So learning is a constant process, there'll likely be a lot of terms that you come across within your autism journey that kind of open up a new way of looking at things and perhaps that allows you to better understand yourself a little bit more. You may start the unmasking process to become your more authentic self and there will be a video about that at some point. If you are looking to understand a little bit more about autistic masking, highly recommend one of my previous videos. Same style as this video kind of goes into what exactly masking is. Eventually I'm going to get to a big kind of long unmasking video, give you some ideas on how to implement that, what exactly is your masked behaviors, things like that. And of course if you do want to learn more about autism and you find yourself in perhaps some of the more early stages, I highly recommend this video. Covers pretty much a lot of the really core key concepts to autism, some things that you might not have heard of even if you are in the later stages. So give it a watch. And I hope you have enjoyed this video and I will see you in another one very, very soon. See you later guys.