"Being high functioning can feel like climbing high above the imprisoning walls of autism, only to see what you can’t quite have."

At our Push for Action reception in parliament earlier this month, we heard from two people affected by autism. Sam spoke about the challenges she had faced trying to get adequate support for her brother, Indi. Chris then told us about his own experiences, pre- and post-diagnosis. Read his incredible story, beautifully told, below:

"My name is Christopher Goodchild and I have an autistic spectrum condition. 

"I might look quite ‘normal’ to you but it has taken me many years to acquire the skills I have now. My adapted skills were acquired through necessity and refined through adversity – a matter of sheer survival.

"Imagine being able to see, feel, taste and touch the world around you with such intensity and longing, and yet for the most part, this very world remaining beyond your grasp. Like being in the desert and led to a well that you cannot quite drink from.

"Being high functioning within the spectrum can feel like climbing high above the imprisoning walls of autism, only to see what you can’t quite have and most others take for granted. The truth can be so humbling when it’s just beyond your reach. Depression was for me an inevitable consequence of aching to be part of this world that has forever been an enigma to me. I spent my childhood feeling misunderstood by my family, teachers, and doctors. School was meaningless to me – I was labelled as having learning difficulties and was isolated from the rest of the class. Like many people on the autistic spectrum I process information in a very different way to the average person. 

"I was institutionalised as a teenager because I was severely ill with depression. Being told daily I was odd, abnormal, and weird or just plain mad. High-functioning autism (HFA) was not common knowledge then.

"Self-harming, cutting my arms, was my way of putting on the outside what I felt on the inside, externalising the inner torment of not being seen and understood. The cost of concealing my inner world so convincingly as to appear so ‘normal’ was always paid for with depression. I experienced great loneliness and extreme anxiety and was constantly confused and overwhelmed. I was crushed by the cloud of unknowing why I was the way I was, I could not move forward until I knew what held me back.  When I was finally diagnosed with ASD in 2007 it was like being given a pair of gloves and being told, “Here, I think you will find these are a perfect fit” – and they were. This was a turning point in my life, whereby for the first time I was able to handle myself with care, living more creatively within my limitations and more abundantly through my gifts.

"The NAS supported me in finding a private evaluation for HFA, as there were limited options available for me, and also provided me with options for post-diagnosis support. Diagnosis was not a label; it was a moment of enlightenment. It gave me my dignity and the chance to live a more dignified life. It saved my life. The facts are kind. The denial of the facts can be very unkind indeed.

"My first book, ‘A PainfulGift – The Journey of a Soul with Autism’ published within two years of my diagnosis, outlines my life and explores how autism through being a hidden disability, can so easily render us invisible  people. We can become invisible people because our presence is ignored and our behaviour misunderstood.

"My role as Ambassador for the NAS is to help raise awareness of this on-going struggle, alongside the enormous gifts and insights that we on the autistic spectrum can offer the world. Autism is not just about suffering; it’s about being alive in an extraordinary way and is as much part of humanity as the capacity to dream.  Autism is about having a pure heart and finding a way to engage with this heart within a world that often seems so cold and distant.

"Whilst I may have found grace through suffering, many with autism and their families have been crushed by it. It is for this reason that I am here before you today and that all my writing is dedicated to those with autism and those who are less fortunate than myself."