Physical restraint, shame and humiliation are the best way to treat autism…

Claire
6 min readSep 27, 2023

…says specialist centre somewhere in the world.

Photo by Orlando Allo: https://www.pexels.com/photo/broken-brown-wooden-wall-2273521/

I just saw a post on Instagram highlighting abuse of people being ‘treated’ for autism and/or other intellectual disabilities. I think there is a video but I didn’t scroll. I read the blurb instead.

I may have had a panic attack, at least an anxiety attack, the ‘impending doom’ feeling usually used to differentiate between the two was felt, but not for my survival, more for the “if this is the world I am in, what’s the point” and I could not see one.

I reached out to some counsellor friends to see if anyone was available to ‘talk me down’. I didn’t quite know how that would be, and was able to feel a little reluctance to asking because it would be sharing my distress with them and trusting they could handle me/it/themselves. I was in such a panic though I felt the best thing was to ask for help.

After a minute or two (I know, this age of instance gratification is problematic! but this was mini-crisis territory) I realised I was going to have to sort myself out, allow myself to calm down, bring myself back into my moment holding onto the fact that I was safe, there was nothing I could do immediately to make any change to the situation I had discovered, that it was…

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Claire
Claire

Written by Claire

Observations of people and life through an autistic lens.