The light and shadow of autism
How one couldn't exist without the other :: ORIGINALLY POSTED on MARCH 17th 2023
The way that I relate to my autism is as a canary in a coal mine.
As in, my autistic brain and nervous system (I do not believe I have an exclusively autistic brain, rather that I have a whole-body autistic nervous system too), gives me the power to sense danger before everyone else does. But that also means that I die first, on behalf of the whole.
I do not want to die myself in order to warn everyone and have them all saved if I’m being frank. Perhaps I wanted this when I was younger, which one could also admire the selflessness of, but I have since learnt to include myself as well in my advocacy endeavours. I would like to also be saved thanks to my sensitivity, instead of being killed by it.
Long ago, I worked with a very Jung-like in nature psychologist for several years. I had a phone appointment one night, and I took the call near a window, pacing back and forth, sitting on stairs nearby in between strides. I still remember the color of the walls and the shade of the wood railing of the stairs that led upstairs and the view through the window- flickering street lights turning on as the winter evening took a hold of us all - when I said the sentence,
But why do they hate me for the same thing they love me for?
The therapist said, “Now, that is a question that illuminates everything.”
It was one of those moments that feels like exists outside of linear time, something atemporal, inspired by my past self, orchestrated by my future self, living in a horizontal way through time bound to the linear event that was the evening with the street lights and the precise shade of grey on the wall, yes, but also non local and everlasting.
I was realizing at the time how many structures in my life were reflecting back that my shadow was not acceptable and that the only thing of value was what my light brought. Back in this day, I also did not understand fully myself how my light and my shadow could not exist without the other. I was largely consumed with trying to make my shadow go away and only keep the light, convinced I could attain the unattainable if I tried hard enough: a perfectly healed, squeaky clean, genius version of myself. Someone I have not been for one day in my life, by the way. Didn’t stop the fervent desire to somehow get there anyway though.
Here’s some containers it showed up in:
· My family loved how wise I was. I would often be recruited to hold emotional space by way of validating and affirming someone’s experience, make sense of complicated issues, and advise the best way to reconnect to self by seeing the person’s essence, their unmet needs and what felt intuitively like the right next step to regain wholeness between different parts of the being. Yet, when I would have panic attacks or become consumed with fear, worry or doubt, often revealing some dysfunction that had a real-life basis in the world or in the family system itself, my family medicated me instead of attuning to me. So, they both loved my sensitivity when it solved their problem but hated it when it created a problem. Yet one could not exist without the other.
· At the time, I had a lot of work environments, whether that be work contracts as a speaker, clients, courses, etc that wanted me to use my sensitivity to speak to the unseen factors that were happening in the body politic of my generation, amongst other things, however, when I needed accommodations because of the exact sensitivity that made me unique and valuable in their own eyes, I was rejected for that same thing they wanted so badly. My employers in the various forms I mentioned expected me to show up as a very gifted individual as if there is not a shadow side to that – usually extreme and very hard to manage sensitivity that leads to a myriad of issues. It has only been recently – as in the last handful of years - that I have figured out a way to articulate that I matter too, and I cannot do the work unless I attend to the shadow of the light of the archetypes I work through.
· Thankfully, at the time, my partner really valued my sensitivity, and would tell me things like; the reason you’re able to do the extraordinary things is because of this thing you also struggle with. It was in this relationship that I was able to understand that my experience of being autistic was literally illuminating the expression of two sides of the same coin. Why wish the shadow away when with it, it would take the light?
· This phenomenon, although not much present in the relationship I just mentioned, showed up in other relationships and social settings as time went on. Looking back, I have written most of my poetry collections about this specific thing: being loved and hated for the exact same thing – trying to find my way through the separateness and finding wholeness. It has showed up in so many different ways, so many different times.
As I was starting to understand that what was happening outside of me - people only being comfortable with my light and not my shadow – I noticed that this was also happening within me; that I too was more comfortable not having any requirements for my sensitivity. I realized I wanted only the benefits of it as well and I was just using my sensitivity without having respect for it. Things started to change outwardly as I began to change the way I was internally relating. Although it was shocking to realize the internalized ableism that went on inside of me and how it acted as a reinforcing feedback loop between how I was mirrored and related to and then how I treated myself in turn due to that, and then what I expected from the world because of how I felt about myself.
To keep it simple:
I truly loved my sensitivity but I also deeply hated it.
And not just hate me in a general like catty sort of way, like I hate that Emily!
Like also real disgust, real repulsion, real feelings that my existence is a burden. That I am not easy to deal with; that owning my body is not the easiest of life paths.
Yet, if we made the shadow go away, so would the light.
I would never be able to do my work in the world, and contribute and have people write things they write for my WORD ON THE STREET page if I wasn’t extremely sensitive, if I was not autistic.
This is why I contemplate in my book, Can You Turn The Lights Off, if someone or something of the greatest power were to offer me an autistic free existence, would I take it? And the answer ultimately ends on no, I wouldn’t.
So, it’s a no, but the reality is it is still hard to care for an autistic body and mind. It is extreme amounts of work. To deny that, and focus too much on the light of autism is denying the shadow once more.
The extreme amount of work in my case falls on the laps of myself and my care giver(s), which happens to be my mom. It also means I cannot have a lot of the things my peers have, in the same way, on the same timeline. Some days, I have felt like the lack of belonging makes me crippled on its own. I have to be careful to not ‘other’ myself so hard that I end up feeling entirely separate which fuels dysfunction in my life - to think of myself as separate is to think of myself as though I was not, or am not, an interdependent and interconnected being. I do not like to agree with ableism when I can help it. Like I wrote in the book, it demands a very creative outlook on life so that it can be enjoyed, but it is possible.
That is the sacrifice that the shadow demands, in order to access the light of its archetype. If I were to ignore what the shadow demands, I would never have access to the light of my autism.
This is only one dimension of how autism in my opinion exists as a part of an initiator to healing – both personally and collectively.
The fact that my mom for example has willingly decided in both a soul perspective, and in a human conscious perspective, to be my care giver is beautiful. She literally deals with the shadows alongside me, for the world, and herself, to have the light of the gift of the autism.
I often deal with severe feelings of burden-like guilt that can go into suicidal ideation, especially when I feel the shadow is bigger than the light, and my mom reflects back to me how funny I am, how smart I am, how special I am.
She reminds me that she is the luckiest person to be with and around someone who is so intelligent, who asks her to grow and sees and illuminates the way. How silly, she says, it would be, for her to ask me to not be sensitive when she benefits in terms of literal soul advancement from this sensitivity.
I can’t think of a better person, to be honest.
Now, if I run into a person who really hates the shadow of my sensitivity, I have learnt to see that person as a projected part of my own shadow and ask myself where and how I agree with them in order to integrate the shadow and be conscious of it. Usually as I do this, either the relationship falls apart and we go our separate ways because we are no longer compatible (we don’t agree on something so fundamental), or the person without my conscious or direct intervention, begins to realize that my sensitivity and the shadows of it is what enables both of us to grow so fast, and so amazingly because of the light it creates too.
I think many people are scared of autism for multiple reasons too complex to get into here and some of them, I will write more about in due time, but one that feels the most accessible for me to expand on in this moment is that autism forces us to be in integrity.
It forces me to be in integrity all the time, or else I get sick and quick.
And being in integrity is fucking hard. Both for myself on behalf of myself and then also when I just exist and people are asked to get into integrity around me, because the same thing happens to those in my field as it happens to me, if I am or they are engaging in dysfunction, my body gets sick, the shadow of autism takes a hold.
In this way, I am directly the canary in the coal mine - serving to sense the poison before the others do so we can all (hopefully) avoid being taken out by it.
If me and those in my immediate field are not in dysfunction, there is barely an issue. Or less of an issue at the very least, because the more health there is in the field, in the environment, and in the system, the less the shadow takes a hold.
Is this easy though? No, it’s fucking scary. You have so little leeway for just having a careless time. You know who likes a careless, let’s just fuck around vibe but can never have one? This girl. It’s really demanding. Because as soon as you are not aligned with health, the body, the brain, of the autistic, begins to tell you. There are immediate consequences to not being in integrity with health, which also means there is little to no belonging in mainstream society available to me because most of the systems of the way we do life at the moment collectively, are not healthy.
And I am not talking wellness capital H Health - as in the wellness industry attempting to sell perfect health as a meter for self-worth, I am referring to health as in living our lives according to values that keep us and the planet alive, instead of exploiting each other and her. When I say to be in integrity with health, something I believe autism pushes us and those around us to do, I mean to refrain from being driven by things like insatiable greed, never being satisfied and always wanting more more more, selfishness, investing and believing in separateness, consumption without reciprocal or sustainable relation, war, being against nature, and humanity.
This is why, in my opinion, we reach things like severe burn out. The general working world based in exploitation is not in integrity with health. We sense it and we feel it quicker and then we are no longer compatible with the environment.
Here is what I mean in an even simpler example…
Is it really healthy for us humans to be eating processed foods the way we are?
Probably not…
Well, maybe a non-autistic person can tolerate processed foods for a longer period of time without having a reaction. An autistic person has a reaction fairly immediately.
Give an autistic some processed foods and we will throw that shit up, or shit it out, immediately. We have so many food allergies, but I notice that most of them are to foods that aren’t actually good for us you know as humans?
There are a bunch of diets for mums of autistic kids to follow as to reduce the symptoms of their child, and most of them are literally pretty simple: they are whole and alive foods.
Spend time with an autistic person outside and notice that their symptoms reduce in severity… I’ve seen accounts of or blogs or books about parents who just start to have time outdoors with their autistic kid and the child does great – they are still autistic, but they are not suffering with meltdowns or insomnia and they become more verbal because they are less overstimulated. These parents sometimes report being happily shocked. But it’s obvious no? Nature, and co-regulation with nature, is good for us humans.
I myself as a child thrived when I spent my days outside, and I slept every night, whereas I would suffer greatly when I would be indoors and trapped in schooling lighting, often only sleeping a few hours after long hours of insomnia riddled with nightmares all the time if I did fall asleep. It is still the same now as an adult.
It’s really basic stuff that reduces autistic symptoms, but the toxic stuff is so normalized in society that we treat autistics as being completely wild for not being compatible with the toxicity or be able to tolerate it in large quantities before reaching a symptom.
We are blamed, and honestly, I am sure a lot of us, blame ourselves for reaching a symptom too quickly.
And also within that limit, within those limits, what a gift!
Autistic people, if we look at it from a spiritual perspective of like, why the hell did my soul decide to incarnate into this body and brain at this time, like what is the purpose? I would say, one of the huge ones is that our bodies and brains are the keepers of health. We are very very very sensitive to anything that is not healthy.
Our bodies reflect what is amiss by reacting to it very severely. The canary in the coal mine thing.
Are we, as autistics, keeping the secrets of what will keep our species alive by way of extreme sensitivity expressing what works for us as a whole and what is killing us slowly collectively because there is not a lot of time between the introduction of a toxic element and our ‘intense’ reaction to it? Is our existence a way for the warning signs to be listened to? Are we the select few who can feel them without being able to ignore them?
If the autistic people are well, could it mean that the planet would then too… be well?
If the autistic people aren’t well, does that mean we are letting evil win?
Is the archetype of autism, and the way it manifests, a bridge to seeing what we have become hardened and dissociative to as a collective?
If the world is being destroyed by a lack of sensitivity, could it be that when we ostracize, stigmatize and misunderstand or refuse to even learn more about autism, are we doing something devastating by letting go of a valuable opportunity to study what exactly the canary is reacting to?
It does not seem like a coincidence to me that when the sensitivity of autism is respected, the shadow is acknowledged, the gifts that follow are quite literally endless. And that when the shadow is repressed, pathologized, told to not exist anymore, overly or unnecessarily masked or medicated, the gifts run out and it’s only the shadow that rules.
To me, autism is a metaphor for the planet’s needs manifesting in the bodies of a certain group of individuals who have chosen to reflect this truth and hopefully have others catch on and solve the mystery of it all.
I know for me personally, being autistic has allowed me to stay and search and lean into health over and over again, something I probably wouldn’t have done if I wasn’t forced to live such suffering if I wasn’t doing so. For those around me who have not rejected me for my shadow also, they too have gained higher connection with health that they wouldn’t of had access to without the archetype of autism – in other words, they too benefit from the gifts because they respect the shadow.
Autism doesn’t let us lie to ourselves about our complicity in all of the multiple ways that we are killing our planet, and our hearts, and our bodies. I think autism is scary to most people for that reason – it forces us to see and act on the ways we are out of alignment much quicker with our true nature via our free will, or else we do not get any benefits and things get very unmanageable very quickly, and therefore, I also think it serves as an amazing liberator of our time, for the exact same reason if we are willing to engage with it as such.
BOOKS AND WRITING AND WRITERS I LOVED THIS WEEK(Ish):
I LOVE CONNECTION! If you liked this letter, please press the HEART button below, send me a message telling me why you liked it, or forward it to a friend. It makes me feel like I am not talking to a void and makes me feel like we are in reciprocal relationship which I really appreciate and it makes me want to write! xx
In books: I realized that I like sharing what I am reading with you because it’s a way of allowing what I am being influenced by to be named as a source of inspiration about what I am noticing in the world and in my myself. I have spent the past month reading and immersing myself in Paul Levy’s work - Dispelling Wetiko: Breaking the curse of evil + Wetiko: Healing the mind virus that plagues our world
Thank you to Rae who recommended it to me!
I read This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub in Fiction, which is a time travel novel. I really love time travel novels since childhood. Alice is turning 40 and she is sad and lonely as her dad is passing away, and wonders if she did her life right as she compares herself to her friends. She goes to a bar, and then sleeps in a shed beside her dad’s (and her childhood home) house, and the next morning, she’s 16. Will she change everything?
I have been really influenced too this winter by Gabor’s (one of my main teachers in this lifetime) new book - The Myth of Normal. Really recommend as perhaps the top 5 books to read this decade (?! feels really important to read). I love how Gabor does not do the toxic authority thing where he does not make himself vulnerable as a writer. He shares from first person account too, and I really admire that about him.
I’ve been reading several writers on substack including Anna Fusco with her newsletter “unsupervised”. I’ve been loving how Anna is writing about being in relationship to her boyfriend T. and all the honesty of a new relationship forming and what it brings up in us is really wonderful - so little of us dare to write or speak about this universal experience that feels so lonely when you’re in it, and Anna does it with humor - and devotion - so wonderfully.
I have also been into binging several Charles Eisenstein essays early in the morning. I feel it’s productive for me to read this counterculture philosopher.
I have been reading Sophie Strand’s words a lot and finding great comfort in them - especially this essay.
I have been devouring Devany’s substack as she writes about autism!
I really enjoy Sarah Wilson’s writing as always and am glad she’s writing essays on substack:
Bold words for living in an uncertain world....from author Sarah Wilson