Getting to Know Your Autistic Needs.
Image description: There is a white graphic placed over a purple background. The text reads “new blog post” and the title written in black text reads “Getting to know your autistic needs.” There is a picture of a red rectangle with the words “I am worthy” written on it. A text box reads “read more.”
Whether we’re talking about autistic burnout recovery or autistic self advocacy, one of the first things we talk about is the importance of getting to know your autistic needs. Why? Well, the simplest answer is that in order to advocate for our needs and to make our lives accessible we first have to know what our autistic needs actually are. But for many late diagnosed Autistics and AuDHDers getting to know their needs and advocating for those needs can feel challenging and even scary. The reality is that there are so many reasons why identifying and naming our needs can feel tricky, which is why it can be supportive to work on building our muscles of worthiness and receptivity. In this blog post I’ll share why getting to know our autistic needs is connected to worthiness and doable ways you can begin to identify, name and share your needs with yourself and others.
But why is it so hard to identify my needs?
Image description: Over a rainbow watercolor background there is a white box with the title written in black text that reads: “4 Reasons Why Knowing Your Needs is Hard.” There are four peach colored boxes with black text. The text reads: “you experienced physical or emotional neglect”, “you experienced traumatic invalidation and/or the shaming of your needs and experiences”, “you experienced unsafe conditions where it didn’t feel safe to have needs”, “you masked your needs to feel safe and/or blend in with neurotypical norms.”
Let’s go over a basic understanding of reasons why it might feel challenging to identify and advocate for your needs. If you grew up experiencing secure attachment you likely are comfortable identifying and advocating for your needs. As a wee baby you had the experience of having your needs met. For example: when you cried out for food or in discomfort you were tended to by your caregivers. But what if that didn’t happen? What if part of your history included things like:
Neglect (this could be physical or emotional neglect.)
Traumatic invalidation and shaming of your needs and experiences.
Unsafe conditions where it didn’t feel safe to have needs.
Masking your needs to feel safe and/or to blend in with neurotypical norms.
When we experience the above things we might instead go into a hypo response (freeze) or hyper response (fight/flight) around our needs. If you have a tendency towards a hypo response that might look like self denial. Self denial might feel like:
Not knowing your needs.
A secret sense that you and your needs don’t matter.
It feeling challenging to put yourself and your needs first.
Staying in dissatisfying relationships, work and environments.
Ignoring your needs. Ex: ignoring your sensory needs.
A hyper response might look like self-reliance or deviance. Self reliance and deviance might feel like:
Meeting all your needs yourself aka “no one can do it as good as I can anyway.”
Fear in abandonment, being let down.
Not reaching out for support.
Fear of needing others-even in healthy ways.
Addiction to food, substances, sex or love.
Escaping into unsafe or unhealthy things due to wanting your needs to get met.
But even if you’ve experienced traumatic imprints (such as neglect or traumatic invalidation) there is a path towards worthiness and knowing that your needs matter.
Bringing a late identified Autistic lens to needs.
It’s important to also bring an autistic lens to difficulties around identifying and advocating for our autistic needs. For many late diagnosed Autistics we might have gone our whole lives feeling different or like “something is wrong with me” but unfortunately not getting our autistic needs met due to simply not knowing that we’re autistic. Which means that we might arrive at our later in life diagnosis/self identification and feel like “I don’t even know what my autistic needs are or what types of support I could even have.” Often the path towards getting to know our autistic needs involves neurodivergent education, engaging with Autistic community and culture and exploring different types of support.
Another factor is that many Autistics and AuDHDers might also experience internalized ableism which can make advocating for their neurodivergent needs challenging. For us Autistics tending to our worthiness goes hand in hand with unpacking our internalized ableism.
It’s also important to note that identifying physical needs and emotions might be challenging for Autistics who experience alexithymia or interception difficulties.
Building our muscles of worthiness and receptivity.
Image description: There is a beige colored background with a title written in black text that reads “The Three Step Process Towards Worthiness.” There is a triangle with the numbers 1, 2 and 3 written on different colored parts of the triangle. There are 3 graphics and nder each graphic there is text that reads: “Sense and Identify: feel, sense and identify your needs”, “Advocate: speak, acknowledge and requesting your needs”, “Meet and receive”: meet, respond and receiving your needs.”
What would it feel like if you truly knew that you mattered and that your needs were worthy of getting met? It might be supportive to even just pause as you’re reading this and feel into: “what would life look like if I felt comfortable identifying, sharing my needs and getting them met?” If that feels challenging to imagine you might even ponder: “can I feel into the possibility of what that might feel like?” It’s okay if advocating for your needs feels like a long ways away, we’re going to go over small doable ways to build your muscles of worthiness.
The three muscles of worthiness and receptivity are:
Sensing and feeling your needs.
Communicating your needs.
Meeting and receiving your needs.
We’re going to focus on building those muscles one small doable step at a time. When I think of building worthiness muscles I remember the first yoga class I ever took. A downward dog felt so hard and tricky! But I kept coming back to it, I used modifications, got help from my yoga teacher and gave myself permission to just sunk into child’s pose when I needed to. Eventually I got stronger and the very pose that used to feel so challenging turned into a restful pose, a place where I felt comfortable and confident. It’s the same thing with building our muscles of worthiness. One steady doable step at a time, honoring our pace and celebrating each small steady step.
1.) Sensing and feeling your autistic needs.
The first step in identifying our autistic needs is to sense and feel our needs. But what if you’ve gone your whole life not knowing that you’re autistic and you have no idea what you needs even are? You start by exploring specific areas where you sense that you might have some unmet needs. I find that for many late diagnosed Autistics and AuDHDers it can also be really helpful to learn about neurodivergence, hear what accommodations other Autistics use and to try out different types of support. Perhaps watching a fellow late diagnosed AuDHDer talk about how they use noise cancelling headphones to support their sensory needs makes you think “hey, I think I need that support too!” You also might ask yourself these questions:
“Are there specific physical or emotional cues that let me know that a specific need isn’t being met?” Example: “Wow, I notice that I feel really exhausted. I think I need to focus on tending to my sleep hygiene.”
“Are there specific areas where it’s easier to notice that your needs are going unmet? Which areas are harder to notice your unmet needs?”
“What are some experiences and situations that I find disabling or challenging? What are my needs around those situations?”
“What are my sensory triggers and glimmers? What sensory needs do I have?”
“If I knew that I was so worthy and that there was full permission to get my needs met, what needs would name in the areas of ______________?”
Sometimes sensing and feeling our needs can feel tender, scary or nerve wracking. A small doable step might just be to sense your needs for the time being and to not worry (yet!) about advocating for your needs. Can you just notice what it’s like to feel your needs?
2.) Communicating your needs.
Once you’ve sensed and felt some specific needs the next step is to name your needs. Often the first step is just to name for ourselves “I have a need for….” It might be supportive to verbally name the need, to write it down or to see if you body wants to make a sound or movement that’s connected to that need. When we’re building our muscle of worthiness sometimes we might spend a lot of time just naming our needs and acknowledging that our needs make so much sense. If you’ve experienced invalidation around your neurodivergence it might feel incredibly healing to just name your needs and validate that those needs are valid and make sense.
Once we feel comfortable naming our needs to ourselves we can then ask ourselves: “would it feel supportive for me to meet this need myself or can I request for someone else to meet this need?” Sometimes we might feel called to both meet the need ourselves and by another. That could look like requesting a specific need from someone else or moving towards the right support that you need. For example, perhaps you’ve identified that there’s a need to feel seen and heard in your neurodivergence. Here are some ways you might meet that need both by yourself and with others:
Internal meeting the need to feel seen and heard: by journaling, validating your experiences and emotions or publishing on social media about your experiences as a late diagnosed autistic.
External meeting of the need to feel seen and heard: Ask a loved one to validate your experiences, share a story in an Autistic support group, tell a friend you have an unmet need of feeling seen and heard and see if they’re open to hearing your shares and offering loving reflections.
When we first start to request for others to meet our needs it might feel so tender and that’s why it’s doubly important for us to go to safe people. Over time we can grow our resilience and get to a place where if someone can’t meet a specific need we know that we can go to another person to get that same need met.
3.) Meeting and receiving our autistic needs.
Once you’ve mobilized to get a specific need met (whether by yourself or another) you’re now going to focus on receiving that need. It might be supportive to ask yourself: “what’s the most doable step towards receiving this need?” Perhaps that’s meeting the need by yourself and really noticing what it feels like to give yourself the care you need. If someone else is meeting a need can you really let yourself receive that care and fully let it in? You might ask yourself:
“Can I fully let myself feel how I tend to my sensory needs when I wear noise cancelling headphones?”
“What does it feel like to request a need and to fully let someone’s care and support really in?”
“What do I notice when I validate my own needs and experiences? What body sensations and emotions do I feel?”
“If someone can’t meet a specific need can I continue to seek out other people until I can get that need met?”
If it feels challenging to let yourself full receive support or care, that’s okay! You might start off just by validating that too: “Based on my history it makes so much sense that it’s hard to let support in.” You then could ask yourself : “what would be the smallest doable step towards receiving this need?”
Creating a steady foundation takes time.
Image description: Over a pink and beige background there is a pink square with the following quote: “what would it look like to take the time to create a steady foundation of worthiness and with deep trust that this foundation will support deeper layers of healing, unmasking and post traumatic growth?” There is a picture of a building foundation in the upper right corner.
Worthiness and receptivity is a core development muscle and it’s very common to feel like this type of work feels tender, scary or hard. For those of us with histories of neglect and traumatic invalidation, this work is hard. Sometimes the most loving way we can approach building our worthiness muscles is to look at like building a house. Building a house takes a LONG time and we start off with work that often looks like not much is happening. Land gets cleared, a cement foundation is laid down and then the outside frame of the house is built. What if you did that too in your healing? What would it look like to take the time to create a steady foundation of worthiness and with deep trust that this foundation will support deeper layers of healing, unmasking and post traumatic growth?
For some of us we’re really comfortable with sensing our needs but naming our needs feels hard, while others might feel really comfortable naming their needs but it feels challenging to receive their needs. It can be supportive to identify the area where you get stuck and to gently work on building your muscles of worthiness one small doable step at a time.
Resources consulted & further reading.
My knowledge of worthiness and the pathway towards building our muscles of worthiness and receptivity comes from Rachael Maddox’s ReBloom Coach Training. You can learn more about the ReBloom body of work in the book ReBloom: Archetypal Trauma Resolution for Personal and Collective Healing.
Thank you for reading!
I hope this blog post was supportive. If you’d like to share a bit about your own experience with worthiness-please feel free to share in the comments.
The information contained in this blog post is for general educational and informational purposes only and should not be construed as medical or mental health advice. The information provided is not a substitute for advice from a qualified professional who is aware of the facts and circumstances of your individual situation. We expressly recommend that you seek advice from a professional familiar with your specific situation.
Your autistic healing matters.
I hope this blog post was helpful in your own autistic healing journey. I truly believe that us late diagnosed autistics deserve autistic affirming healing and I hope you have the best practitioners, tools and support for your own healing.
If you’re seeking autistic support and healing, I’d love to support you in my 5 month program The Autistic Mentorship. It includes:
An intensive intake session & healing map to identify your goals and developmental objectives that we’ll work on in our program together.
Three (75 minute) sessions a month.
Lots of support & education: think recap emails + personalized practices sent to your inbox, neurodivergent workbooks and resources and two optional 30 minute check-in calls.
You can find out more about The Autistic Mentorship here.
Tiffany Landry is a queer autistic coach and trauma resolution practitioner. She works with queer and autistic clients in her program The Autistic Mentorship. Tiffany also writes a free newsletter on Substack called The Queer Autistic Newsletter.