Iām not very immersed in the autism community, and I was wondering if you could help me with some questions? Iāve seen that you and many others donāt like the terms āhigh or low functioning,ā and I was curious what terms I could use that wouldnāt be bad or offensive when talking about different severities. My dream is to become a therapist, and I want to respect my patients as much as I can! Iām super sorry if this is a bad question afhdgd Iām trying to learn šš
Hiya! I wouldnāt say thereās different severities. Itās impossible to put autistic people into catagories because we all experience things differently. For example someone might have really bad sensory issues but be able to socialize well and someone might really struggle with socializing but not have many sensory issues etc. Itās not accurate to have a line with high functioning on one end and low functioning on the other, the autistic spectrum looks more like this:
Instead of using functioning labels you could use support levels instead. @butterflyinthewell created this idea and I think itās so much better than functioning labels. I definitely suggest reading her post here about it!
