When You’re Still Carrying the Past: How Trauma Shapes Autistic Adults

1. The Past Doesn’t Stay in the Past

They say the past is over.
That it stays locked in some treasure chest under the sand.
But mine never learned how to stay buried—
like it must’ve held the world’s most sought-after jewels.

It lingers like smoke in the walls,
leaving behind that stubborn yellow stain.
It clings to my breath like the very worst halitosis,
seeps into the hollows of my bones—
a dull ache that never quite goes quiet.

It’s never loud, like a voice over a megaphone,
but like the murmurs of strangers on a crowded subway car—
ever-present.
Not gone in a puff of smoke,
just repackaged into something socially acceptable.

I flinch at echoes no one else hears.
Brace for sudden, invisible impact when the room is still.
Smile while I’m unraveling,
because that’s what I was taught:

To be palatable.
To pack my overwhelming feelings into a lead-lined box.
To be polite.
To not ruin anyone else’s vibe.
To disappear in a way that looked like grace.

They called me sensitive.
Fragile.
Weak.
Feminine.
Over-dramatic.
Manipulative—
because showing my feelings must mean I’m trying to control them, right?
(As if that ever had anything to do with it.)

But they never saw the years I spent twisting myself
into something more acceptable.
More tolerable.
Less me.

What they called overreaction
was my body remembering what it means to not be safe.

Because trauma doesn’t always arrive with sirens—
though I had my share of those, too.
Sometimes it comes like a swarm of mosquitos in the night—
draining you slowly, quietly, until you’re left raw and bleeding.

Maybe it’s a slammed door that leaves you empty,
abandoned.
Maybe it’s a classroom laugh when you vibrate with joy.
Maybe it’s a touch I didn’t ask for.
(And no—I don’t want to dwell on those.
Touch has always been a complicated thing.)

Sometimes it’s the silence that swallows you whole—
and you live there, in the belly of the whale, for years.

It imprints itself like frost on a winter window—
faint, but unmistakable
when the light hits just right.

And now,
even when the danger is gone,
even when I know the house has had its exorcism
and the spirits have been freed of their pain,
my body still walks with the ghosts.

2. Trauma in Disguise – The Autistic Experience Misunderstood

The thing about being autistic
is that the world doesn’t often call what happens to us trauma.

Being forced to “endure” situations that cause extreme physical discontent—
while everyone else shrugs and calls it normal—
is, of course, overlooked.

There are no headlines for a thousand microscopic cuts.
No diagnosis code for being misunderstood your entire life.

They see a meltdown and say,
“Looks like someone needs a pacifier and a nap.”
They see withdrawal and call it rudeness—
or better yet, pompous.
They see hyperfocus and call it obsession.
Or dedication.
They see burnout and call it laziness—
just a character defect.

They don’t see the child who wanders away during recess,
because the playground sounds like a metal concert in a small room.
They don’t see the teenager spending every ounce of energy
just holding it together—
pretending to be okay,
just to sit at a lunch table
and not eat alone again.

No one talks about the trauma
of being forced to act like everyone else:
to mimic eye contact,
to laugh at the right moments,
to dampen your pure joy,
to quiet and lock away your pain,
to erase your self
so thoroughly
that even you forget what it looked like.

And then, when we break—when we collapse—
when our nervous systems finally say enough—
they still won’t call it trauma.

They call it “overreacting.”
Or “a life crisis.”
Or “pretending and looking for sympathy.”

But it was trauma.
It is trauma.
It’s just wearing a different mask—
and the creator of many more.

3. Growing Up Out of Sync

I’ve always felt like I was half a second behind or just a bit too early—
like I was dancing to music no one else could hear.
(Though to be fair, there’s always music playing up there, so maybe I actually was.)

The choreography of childhood never made sense to me.
I watched how other kids talked, interacted, argued, and had fun—
hoping I could mimic them closely enough not just to be accepted,
but maybe, one day, even invited.

But no matter how carefully I studied each little nuance,
how closely I mirrored their steps,
I still got it wrong.
Or just a little off—
forced, unnatural, like the rhythm was just out of reach.

I was too enthusiastic. Too energetic.
(Still am. Sitting still has always felt impossible.)
Too blunt—correcting others when they misstated something,
calling out injustice, or offering knowledge that no one asked for.
Too shy—especially in small talk, which never came easily.
Too loud.
Spoke with odd cadence.
Too literal.
Too odd.
Too weird.

So I learned to mask.
Not because I wanted to lie—
God, I can’t lie. Ask my favorite human; I have tells a mile wide.
It feels icky anyway.

No, I think it was instinct.
The brain trying to keep me safe.

Deep down, I thought maybe—just maybe—
if I could get it “right,” I’d finally be let in.
I’d finally have connection.

I thought the problem was me.
I’d been told that if it’s everyone else, it must be you.
I thought I was broken. A misfit toy.
And I thought if I could just fix the way I was,
maybe everything would stop hurting so much.

But it wasn’t that I didn’t belong in the world—
it was that the world never made space for someone like me.
It always told me to shrink. To hide.
To make myself easier to digest.

And when you grow up that out of sync,
you start to believe the silence between you and everyone else
is your fault.

You start to confuse invisibility with safety.
You start to believe that love is conditional—transactional, maybe—
and the conditions are clear:
Don’t be too much of yourself.
Be useful.
Keep producing.
Stay small.

4. Trauma Responses That Look Like Personality

Some of the things people have praised me for
are the same things that nearly destroyed me—
chiseling away at every fragment of self
until the marble cracked.

My reliability? That’s just disguised hypervigilance.
My politeness? A fawn response.
My ability to stay calm during crisis?
Extreme dissociation dressed up as grace under pressure.

For years, I thought I was just being the responsible adult—
doing life the way I was told.

Be mature.
Be selfless.
Take care of everyone else before you even think about yourself.

But really, I was just scared.
Scared to upset anyone.
Terrified to be a burden—
to make someone expend even an ounce of energy on me.
Scared that if I ever stopped being useful,
I’d be tossed into obscurity, never to be seen again.

People have called me emotionally intelligent—
but really, I was just scanning the room.
Always scanning.

Who might blow up.
Who might become a threat.
Who I needed to become
to keep the peace.

A counselor.
A secret service agent.
Anything but myself.

And when you do that long enough,
you lose track of who you are beneath the shape-shifting.
You start to confuse survival strategies with personality.

I wasn’t born agreeable.
I was a stubborn kid—
still hear the stories.

But I became agreeable to stay safe.
To stay liked.
To stay.

They don’t tell you that masking can look like maturity.
That people-pleasing is often a trauma response.
That silence can be self-defense.

They don’t tell you that what they admire in you
might be the very thing that’s eating you alive—
from the inside out,
like the world’s deadliest parasite.

5. The Cost of Never Being Safe

When you’ve never really felt safe—
felt like nobody ever has your back—
your body forgets how to rest.

Even in stillness, something stays braced.
The muscles always hold a little tautness,
just in case they have to spring into action.

Even in silence, something stays alert.
The ears scan the room like satellites,
listening for signals sent from a distant world,
hoping to catch evidence of life elsewhere.

It’s not anxiety.
It’s memory.
It’s learned patterns.
It’s conditioning.
It’s the way your nervous system has been sculpted
by years of walking on shards of glass—
all the while being told the floor was clean.

Safety becomes something completely theoretical—
a word you understand,
but can’t quite find the proper translation for.
Like hieroglyphics written on the cave wall.
You get the picture,
but meaning slips through the cracks without a key.

And the cost?

It shows up in your sleep—
or your inability to sleep at all.
In your digestion—
the constant “tummy bubbles,” the IBS, the bloating.
In the clenching jaw,
the ever-thumping heart.
It shows up in chronic, unexplained pain.
In short fuses and long shutdowns.
In the way your body begs for peace—
but has no idea how to greet it when it finally arrives.
Maybe even chases it off like an unwanted guest.

You stop expecting gentleness.
Maybe you start to believe it doesn’t exist.
You flinch at kindness—
because it feels too foreign to trust.
You prepare for abandonment
before anyone’s even left.

And you call that normal.
You build a whole life on it.
You believe this is how everyone else lives.

But a life lived entirely in defense—
sculpted only to survive—
is not the same as living.

I’m learning that now.
That it’s not just not living—
it’s the quietest form of giving up.

6. Naming It Is the First Step to Healing

There is something quietly cathartic
about calling it what it is—
about finally placing a label on it.

Not “quirks” or “oddities.”
Not “a phase I’m going through.”
Not “yet another overreaction—why do you have to be so sensitive?”

But trauma.
Loss.
Grief.
Utter survival.

To put a name on it is to give it shape.
To say: this really happened.
To whisper to your nervous system,
in the most gentle and caring tone:
You weren’t imagining it. You are not broken. You are not the problem.

And maybe that’s where healing begins—
not with fixing (there is nothing to “fix”),
not with “getting better” (for I am not deficient),
but with finally believing yourself.

For knowing.
For giving yourself grace.
For honoring your limits
without apology.

Because for years, I gaslit my own body and mind.
I still do, sometimes—
but the frequency is less.

I’ve told myself I was just being dramatic.
Overthinking.
Tired.
Lazy.
Overly sensitive—crying at every little sign of beauty or sorrow.
That if I could just try harder, I’d stop feeling this way.
That I would finally feel “normal.”

But I was already trying.
I was trying so hard just to hold it all together—
to be someone they would accept,
to keep the peace, to still the waters,
to disappear in a way that looked like stoicism.

Now, I am beginning to learn a new way:
To sit with what’s real, even when it hurts.
To speak the words I was never allowed—or brave enough—to say.
To listen to what my body has been trying to tell me all along.

It’s not quick.
It’s far from linear.
It’s not always brave.

But it’s honest.
And it’s mine.

7. Closing Reflection – We Deserve to Heal

Healing doesn’t mean the past disappears.
It doesn’t mean we forget, or “move on.”
And maybe that’s something people all over the world are forgetting right now.
Because remembering matters—
how else can we avoid repeating what once caused so much harm?

Healing doesn’t mean tying it all up in a clean, pretty package
with a little bow.

It means we stop blaming ourselves for bleeding
after years of walking on glass.
It means we stop twisting our pain
into some kind of artistic masterpiece—
something others can more easily consume.

It means we start treating ourselves
with the tenderness we never received.

I am still learning how to do that.
I’m still early in this journey.

To rest without guilt.
To say no without explanation—
without fearing it means I’ll be abandoned.
To tell the truth
without apologizing for the shape of it.

Sometimes healing is quiet.
Sometimes it’s letting yourself cry
when the old ache returns.
Sometimes it’s standing your ground
even when your legs shake
like you’ve just run ten miles.

But always—
it starts with believing we are worth saving.
That we are worthy simply for being alive.
Not someday.
Not next week or next month,
when the “timing is right.”
Not when we’re better.
Not when we’ve earned it.

Because healing is not something to be earned.
It’s something we deserve.
Now.
Just as we are.

We were never broken.
We never were “too much.”
Only carrying more than anyone could see.

And we deserve to lay it down.
We deserve peace.
We deserve to heal.

If this resonated with you:
You’re not alone. So many of us carry things we were never meant to bear—and healing can feel impossibly heavy when you’ve spent a lifetime in survival mode. But it’s not selfish to rest. It’s not weak to feel. And it’s not too late to begin again.

If you’d like to share your story, your thoughts, or simply be witnessed—I’d love to hear from you.
You can subscribe, comment, or reach out directly.
We may be healing in quiet ways, but we don’t have to do it alone.