This guest post is by Phoenix Pederson, a young individual who was diagnosed with autism at 10 and who has been accepted to California State University Sacramento. Phoenix is applying for the Spring 2023 Making a Difference Autism Scholarship via the nonprofit KFM Making a Difference started by me, Kerry Magro. I was nonverbal till 2.5 and diagnosed with autism at 4, and you can read more about my organization here. Autistics on Autism: Stories You Need to Hear About What Helped Them While Growing Up and Pursuing Their Dreams, our nonprofit’s new book, was released on March 29, 2022, on Amazon here for our community to enjoy featuring the stories of 100 autistic adults.
The road to an autism diagnosis can be quite bumpy, and it varies person to person. My path to an autism diagnosis was a rocky one. I remember I was in middle school when I started seeing a counselor and a psychiatrist, both who thought I had ADHD. I had begun taking a type of ADHD medication called Concerta for a while. While it helped for a little bit, after a few years, I noticed the effects of the medication beginning to wear off. This was something I didn’t understand at the time. Looking back at it now that I have done my research, Autism is often misdiagnosed, which is what I think happened to me.
I was 10 years old when I received my autism diagnosis. At the time, I knew very little about autism and I remember being nervous about what the testing was going to be like. For an autistic kid, anything new can be absolutely terrifying. My grandma was the one who took me to my testing sessions. I remember when it was time for the first session of testing, I sat in the car remaining completely quiet. When I stepped out of the car on a chilly San Francisco day, I glanced around my surroundings. It is always important for me to get a sense of my surroundings when I am in a new environment. We walked into the building together and we checked in to be brought to the person who would do my testing.
I remember being hesitant to open up to the person, which was always the case whenever I met someone new. I believe this was because of autism and the trauma I experienced as a child. Now I cannot remember what the testing actually looked like, but I remember bits and pieces about lots of patterns. There were patterns of numbers and colors, but it’s hard to recall because of how long ago that was.
That day of testing felt like it was going to never end. Hours passed and it felt like I would never get to leave. Eventually the session was over and I was thrilled to go home. I remember this testing being tiring for my young brain. I attended several sessions for what felt like months, but I’m sure it was only a few weeks. We waited a while to get the results and found out that I met the criteria for an Aspergers diagnosis.
It took me a while to come to terms with the fact that my autism diagnosis was normal. I grew up thinking there was something wrong with me and that I was some form of a freak. I didn’t fit in with normal kids and I often felt left out because I had different social skills compared to everyone else. On top of that, kids in middle school were loud and screamed all of the time and that was very overwhelming for me. Loud noises were something I could not handle and I often had to walk away from my friends without saying a word because I was shutting down due to how overwhelmed I was.
One of the biggest challenges of being autistic for me is the feeling of shutting down when I’m overwhelmed or overstimulated. The feeling of being overstimulated causes me to completely shut down and often go non-verbal. Going non-verbal is something that I personally don’t like, as I am an incredibly social person and love to talk to those around me. So finding that I can’t talk to them because of being overstimulated always makes me really upset. Though I know everyone responds to stimuli in their environment differently, as I’ve been told by my many autistic friends, at the end of the day we all have similar triggers for overstimulation and we build a sense of community on being able to understand each other and provide support.
I will be a first generation college student and would like to make my family proud by showing them that despite my disabilities and other setbacks, college is achievable and that I am capable of success. Being able to achieve my dream career and be able to take care of myself without relying on anyone is my biggest desire. I yearn to be successful and to hit the ground running when I become independent. Independence is important to me because I want to be self-sufficient and I want to be able to take care of myself without ever having to rely on someone to help me out.
One career I’m considering is becoming a special needs counselor to help kids who have had similar experiences in schooling as I have. Getting the support I need as an autistic teenager with a learning disability has been a struggle. Advocating has always been difficult for me as I have a fair share of anxieties, but whenever I did advocate for myself, it felt like I never got what I needed. I have found it hard to connect with the people on my support team because they’re non-autistic so they don’t have a full grasp of what I am going through. I would like to be a disabled special needs counselor so that kids can really connect with me. I think having someone who knows what you are going through can offer you the best advice because they have had similar experiences with getting accommodations through IEPS. Our voices deserve to be heard when we are advocating for support in school. By becoming a special needs counselor, I will fight on behalf of the students that would be on my caseload and I would make sure they get everything they need. I will be their biggest advocate.
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My name is Kerry Magro, a professional speaker and best-selling author who is also on the autism spectrum. I started the nonprofit KFM Making a Difference in 2011 to help students with autism receive scholarship aid to pursue post-secondary education. Help support me so I can continue to help students with autism go to college by making a tax-deductible donation to our nonprofit here.
Autistics on Autism: Stories You Need to Hear About What Helped Them While Growing Up and Pursuing Their Dreams was released on March 29, 2022 on Amazon here for our community to enjoy featuring the stories of 100 autistic adults. 100% of the proceeds from this book will go back to our nonprofit to support initiatives like our autism scholarship program. In addition, this autistic adult’s essay you just read will be featured in a future volume of this book as we plan on making this into a series of books on autistic adults.
