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Nicole Filippone, Autistic Advocate & Author

@sensorystories.bsky.social

12K followers 16 following 3.2K posts

Advocating through science based education, validation, and empathy Nicolefilipponeauthor.com/my-links

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Nicole Filippone, Autistic Advocate & Author @sensorystories.bsky.social · May 7

If you recently discovered you might be autistic or you're a parent who recently discovered your kiddo might be autistic & you're looking to learn about autism through science and lived experience...

Hi... I'm Nicole! 👋🏻

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Nicole Filippone, Autistic Advocate & Author @sensorystories.bsky.social · 4h

But that's what I mean by internalized meltdowns.

When your brain and body are hijacked for survival. You're in distress. You need help. But no one sees any of it.

I sincerely hope this explanation helps. ❤️

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Nicole Filippone, Autistic Advocate & Author @sensorystories.bsky.social · 4h

At home, when the stakes are less urgent and the people around me love me and have room for my humanity, my distress does show up at times... but the truth is... now that I know what I need and have learned to simply ask for it... that is a rare occurrence these days.

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Nicole Filippone, Autistic Advocate & Author @sensorystories.bsky.social · 4h

Which means that outwardly, especially in high-stakes contexts (like work) people would have absolutely no clue I was experiencing any distress at all. I look completely calm (even though I am frantic on the inside).

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Nicole Filippone, Autistic Advocate & Author @sensorystories.bsky.social · 4h

I can't think. I can't breathe. I am basically mentally incapacitated. I start to hyperventilate, and I become frantic.

But... for me, this all happens internally. Because I have learned to internalize and hide my distress for social safety and survival.

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Nicole Filippone, Autistic Advocate & Author @sensorystories.bsky.social · 4h

So, if the trigger is there, I am instantly dysregulated and if I can't remove the trigger VERY quickly, that dysregulation turns into distress in a matter of minutes... sometimes seconds.

When this happens, my brain and body get completely hijacked...

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Nicole Filippone, Autistic Advocate & Author @sensorystories.bsky.social · 4h

Here's an example of what I mean. I'll stick with the simplest one for this post... sensory triggers.

There's nothing I can do to make my brain not react to sensory triggers.

And in most cases, they are extreme and intolerable from the outset. I don't have "mild" sensory triggers.

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Nicole Filippone, Autistic Advocate & Author @sensorystories.bsky.social · 4h

In other words, we do not and cannot control how our brains react to our triggers.

Which, again, are tied to unmet needs. HUMAN needs. (See my previous post on what autistic needs are for a lengthy explanation on this.)

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Nicole Filippone, Autistic Advocate & Author @sensorystories.bsky.social · 4h

A person MIGHT have the ability to mask how that reaction looks to others (by internalizing it)... but the internal experience (regardless of how it looks to others) is completely INvoluntary.

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Nicole Filippone, Autistic Advocate & Author @sensorystories.bsky.social · 4h

Meltdowns are also involuntary. It's the brain and body's automatic reaction to extreme triggers (even if those triggers seem "mild" to everyone else).

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Nicole Filippone, Autistic Advocate & Author @sensorystories.bsky.social · 4h

Which brings me to my next point...

Outward (visible) meltdowns are a cry for help. Not a manipulation tactic.

They come from a place of DESPERATION, not manipulation.

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Nicole Filippone, Autistic Advocate & Author @sensorystories.bsky.social · 4h

Meltdowns are tied to unmet needs.

Not wants. NEEDS.

And they happen when those needs go unmet for long enough that our initial dysregulation becomes much more urgent and turns into full blown distress.

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Nicole Filippone, Autistic Advocate & Author @sensorystories.bsky.social · 4h

So, internalizing our distress becomes a matter of survival and we internalize our meltdowns.

I'll talk about the internal experience of these types of meltdowns in just a minute, but first I want to make a few things very clear...

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Nicole Filippone, Autistic Advocate & Author @sensorystories.bsky.social · 4h

This happens when we (autistic people, often high masking) learn to internalize our distress so others don't see it...

Because having visible meltdowns in most contexts comes with severe social consequences. Which makes visible meltdowns unsafe for us.

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Nicole Filippone, Autistic Advocate & Author @sensorystories.bsky.social · 4h

Internalized autistic meltdowns, let's talk about them.

First of all, they can and absolutely do often look like they sound.

But they can also look like absolutely nothing.

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Nicole Filippone, Autistic Advocate & Author @sensorystories.bsky.social · 1d

Internalized autistic meltdowns. Anyone interested in a post on this?

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Nicole Filippone, Autistic Advocate & Author @sensorystories.bsky.social · 2d

What makes autism a disability is that we (autistic people) need support to get our human needs met.

And that our needs go unmet more quickly and more frequently than the average nonautistic person.

I hope this helps. 🙂

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Nicole Filippone, Autistic Advocate & Author @sensorystories.bsky.social · 2d

Which impacts us in significant ways and often impedes our ability to do important life activities without support.

Hence why autism is considered a disability.

BUT autistic needs... human needs... are not what make autism a disability.

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Nicole Filippone, Autistic Advocate & Author @sensorystories.bsky.social · 2d

So our dysregulation shows up more quickly and more frequently than it does for nonautistic people.

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Nicole Filippone, Autistic Advocate & Author @sensorystories.bsky.social · 2d

And based on everything I know about autism through psychology, neuroscience, and lived experience, I think the only difference between us and everyone else is that we have different thresholds of tolerance for when our needs go unmet.

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Nicole Filippone, Autistic Advocate & Author @sensorystories.bsky.social · 2d

So people are made to think our coping behaviors ARE our autism when really, they're just how our autism MANIFESTS when our needs go unmet.

This is why I believe all autistic behaviors (especially the ones they put into the diagnostic criteria) are manifestations of unmet human needs.

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Nicole Filippone, Autistic Advocate & Author @sensorystories.bsky.social · 2d

And what happens next?

What we do to regulate ourselves (whatever behaviors we demonstrate to self soothe or cope) becomes what they see and call autism... which then goes into diagnostic manuals like the DSM.

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Nicole Filippone, Autistic Advocate & Author @sensorystories.bsky.social · 2d

Because our behaviors seem mismatched to the situation.

Why? Because no one around us has reached their tolerance threshold yet.

So they think we're overreacting when they see us dysregulated and distressed.

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Nicole Filippone, Autistic Advocate & Author @sensorystories.bsky.social · 2d

All humans experience sensory overload if there's enough sensory overstimulation.

But autistic people reach their threshold of tolerance way sooner than the average nonautistic person.

And this stands out when it happens to autistic people for a very specific reason...

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Nicole Filippone, Autistic Advocate & Author @sensorystories.bsky.social · 2d

We don't have different needs from the rest of the world.

What we do have is different tolerance levels and thresholds for when our needs go unmet (this is backed by both psychology and neuroscience).

The simplest example of this is sensory overload...

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Nicole Filippone, Autistic Advocate & Author @sensorystories.bsky.social · 2d

So what exactly are autistic needs?

This is probably the most confusing aspect of autism.

I think the reason this confuses so many people (even autistic people) is that autistic needs are literally just human needs.

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