As #AutismAcceptanceMonth winds on, I've been thinking a lot about healing - specifically, how hard it is for autistic folk to access support for trauma and the self-destructive patterns of behaviour that so many of us carry, and even just simple learning about what we are.

The information handed out by public bodies and charities remains full of toxic language and assumptions about us that just aren't grounded in fact. It's common for autistic kids to be called 'defiant', for example, or for adults to be told we lack empathy.

Autistic people are already wary. We've usually suffered multiple rejections, bullying, exclusions. We're more likely to have been abused as children, and we're more likely to be in abusive relationships as adults. We *know*, in our bodies, that the world is dangerous.

And yet seeking any help often brings us into direct contact with the things that are dangerous to us. If I turn to the most prominent autism charities for information or support, I might be turning to an organisation that has often argued for a 'cure' for autism.

Or an organisation that has invested in research that will lead to in-utero idetification of autstic foetuses, which we fear will lead to us being terminated before we're even born.

Or that organisation that has a record of abusing and neglecting austistic adults and children in its care. We don't have a safe place to turn to for help.

If I'm seeking some kind of therapeutic support to improve my day-to-day experience, where do I turn? Effective support is barely even researched, & whether I access the limited mainsteam options, or the more diverse alternative or holistic therapies, it's a minefield.

For a start, it's nearly impossible to get any support through the public health system *at all*. Waiting lists run into years. Options are rarely even offered, or are sticking plasters for immediate crises rather than developing longterm coping strategies.

I have no way of knowing whether any given practitioner will actually know what autism is, regardless of what they claim. I have no way of knowing whether I will be treated with respect, or patronised. I have no way of knowing my trauma won't be increased by the interaction.

So many issues here: will they respect my aversion to touch, or see that as needing to be overcome? Will they listen to and believe my experience, or impose a neurotypical filter over it? Will they let me set my own boundaries, or insist on assuming that they know best?

If I sign up to a group workshop, what attitudes will I come across in the other participants? If I dig around the practitioner's social media, will I find links to the various gurus who claim that I'm the result of a refridgerator mother or of repressed memories of abuse?

Everyday, public-facing me can handle this stuff being out there, but I'm wounded by it. Private, vulnerable me who seeks help and care can't handle it. I shouldn't have to. It is not safe.

This is what I keep thinking over and over this month. How do we even start to heal as individuals and a community?