This guest post is by Jacob Buntyn, a young man on the who was diagnosed with autism at 13 years old and has been accepted to the University of North Texas. Jacob 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.
Stress always controlled my motivation to be successful. Consequently, I had horrible weekly stress attacks beginning in 5th grade, and they came to a peak in 7th grade after completely debilitating me. I was constantly sick to my stomach, suffered from migraines, and terrified of school assignments and school failure in general.
My first major stress attack occurred on an average, cool, October evening. I was away from home attending 5th grade outdoor education camp. I was resting in my loft bunk thinking about my English essay that was due when I returned. I was dreading the assignment, and I was worried I would not be able to finish it. I couldn’t sleep knowing that I had not started on it and the assignment was looming overhead. My mind drifted to the extremes, and I kept thinking I was going to fail and be expelled from school. Before I knew it, my head felt funny, I felt a sharp constant pain in my stomach and the air was burning and freezing at the same time. “Am I dying?”, I thought to myself as panic took hold. I scrambled out of the loft onto the floor gasping in agony. The world was hazy around me, and all I could register was pain. One of the counselors saw me and rushed to aid me, he tried to calm me down but I could not think straight. I was lost in the moment of fight or flight response. The parent chaperone called my parents and told them my situation. They soon realized that I was having a panic attack. After about thirty minutes of talking to them on the phone, they convinced me to move back to the bed and lay back down. As I stood up, my head felt as if it was melting and my stomach churned. I had never felt anxiety of this magnitude before. I climbed back up, and lay down battling for every movement. The fight between my mind and body was terrifying, and hard to process what was happening around me. The moment my head hit the pillow though, the exhaustion gave way to sleep. The pain had eased enough to close my eyes and drift to sleep.
For the next two years, these stress attacks occurred frequently. Gradually, my fear of the anxiety grew. I would do anything I could to avoid the feeling. The stress came to a head in the fall of my 7th grade year. I could no longer control it, and I felt quite out of control. I was taking a heavy course load of honors courses and a foreign language. The assignments piled up, and with poor organizational skills, my habitual procrastination, and poor coping skills I was overwhelmed. The stress attacks came back with a vengeance, and this time I could not stop vomiting.
It took months to unravel the puzzle behind the stress attacks that were making me so sick. My physician worked to prescribe new and different medications to help. My school worked to help me by evaluating me. I was diagnosed with anxiety, dysgraphia, and an autism spectrum disorder along with my ADHD. Through the course of the evaluation, school professionals came together with several recommendations to help me recover. I was allowed to have extra time to complete my assignments. I was able to use technology to type instead of write as I struggled with illegible handwriting. Most importantly, I learned how to manage my anxiety, reduce my stress, and still get things done.
My parents taught me strategies for organizing myself and planning for assignments. I learned to identify precursors to my stress attacks, so they could be managed earlier without me losing control. I began using a visual stress scale in order to identify my different levels of stress and learned coping mechanisms for each level. Slowly, I learned how to trust myself and my organization process rather than rely on the anxiety to motivate me.
The anxiety never went away completely. However, I learned that I am stronger than the stress attacks. Rather than fight them, I am now able to manage them. Just thinking about school used to trigger a stress attack. Now, when I think of school, I think of it being more of a social opportunity and I feel calm. I learned to be self-reliant. I learned that my own desire to be successful was enough, and I didn’t need constant stress as a motivator. Ironically, I used to believe stress was a way to manage myself. However, it was actually holding me back from success.
Even if I could go back in time and talk to my thirteen year old self about anxiety, I was too hard headed to have listened. I know now that sometimes you have to walk through painful experiences to grow from them. Because of this, I do not regret having these experiences. I am now proud to know that I am capable of managing my anxiety.
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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.
