Autism & Trauma

It is widely understood that autistic children and young people experience higher levels of trauma than non-autistic child or young person. A research study by Berg et al (2016) found that autistic children reported significantly higher levels of adverse childhood experiences (ACE’s).

An autistic child or young person experiences the world differently and their daily exposure to stress is often higher due to:

• Sensory and cognitive processing differences
• Preference for consistency
• Autistic and non-autistic communication differences and barriers, sometimes leading to intense feelings of rejection
• Emotional overwhelm while navigating a world largely designed for a neurotypical majority

For a non-speaking autistic child or young person, having no appropriate means to communicate their experiences or distress, such as through an augmentative communication device (AAC), can result in them being left alone with their emotional experiences. The impact of trauma can manifest in an autistic child or young person as heightened anxiety, emotional dysregulation, shutdown and/or difficulties forming and maintaining relationships due to lack of trust.

When an autistic child or young person is functioning outside of their window of tolerance, fight, flight, freeze and fawn responses may be activated.

• Fight/flight may look like physical emotional outbursts directed towards self and others, seeking safety in a contained space or inability to leave home. Communication differences can create barriers to others understanding or interpreting an autistic child or young person’s behaviour from the autistic perspective.
• When a freeze response is activated in an autistic child or young person, this can be more difficult to identify. It may look like a quiet withdrawn presentation, indecisiveness and/or lethargic.
• Fawning for an autistic child or young person may present as compulsively compliant at the expense of their own preferences or desires. Masking is a common fawn response in an attempt to hide one’s inner experience or differences to fit in with the wider group. Masking can have serious implications for an autistic child or young person’s mental health and long-term can lead to burnout or withdrawal from everyday life and activities.

For many autistic children and young people, the sensory overwhelm and discomfort they regularly feel can be experienced in the body similarly to trauma. This can make the environments autistic children and young people spend time in feel unpredictable, unsafe and threatening.