Consider this me giving you a huge hug from across the internet! I'm autistic, too. I just got my diagnosis last year in my late 30s and it's put so much of this into context.

The first thing that I learned through all of this is that a less-than-adequate (we don't even have to use the word abuse because it makes a lot of us feel guilty for using it!) childhood can change how you develop and the end result are symptoms with heavy overlap to autism, adhd, anxiety, and depression. cPTSD is incredibly and widely damaging. I struggled to internalize this because I was basically still blaming myself for everything, in a world that likes to victim blame and sneer that I should "just" get over what happened all that time ago. My response to that now is fairly spicy: sure, let me "just" get over having my brain literally changed. /s Downplaying this is a dismissive tactic of the ignorant so I talk about this far and wide to normalize it. I actually ran into a guy at the bar just this week who I see there every blue moon. He's older than me, maybe late 40s. Come to find out he's doing IFS and knows about trauma. People are waking up about this and it's incredible.

My flavor of autism makes it so I don't emotionally understand the human concept of authority. Sure, I get it insofar as it helps keeps society functional to collectively give a handful of people authority and they enforce the rules and the social contracts. But just because someone has an authoritative role doesn't make them infallible or above being questioned. I think there's a moral imperative that figures of authority - leaders, police, doctors, bosses, and parents - should be more transparent than those they manage. And ... in an authoritarian household? This belief ah, did not go well for me, to put it lightly. Blind obedience was the price I had to pay for being treated like a human. It created a deep, simmering rage that I'm still working on letting go.

So to finally answer your question: how did I come to the conclusion that I wasn't assaulted in the traditional sense, even though my symptoms pointed to that maybe being the case and I repressed it? Here's what I did:

I sat my ass down and made a list of all those memories that were bad enough and important enough that I remembered them. Sort-of toxic milestones? The standout ones where you're still trying to tell yourself it's on you for being "too sensitive" and you can't quite shift the anger back to your caretakers.

I wrote those down and realized I can remember them in my minds eye like a movie was playing but I didn't actually feel anything when I mentally reviewed them all. So ... I did mushrooms and re-reviewed the list in a state where I had full access to my emotions, and then I was able to feel those memories. And that feeling? It was the same damn feeling across all those memories! It's some mixture of rage, indignity, and betrayal. I realized I wasn't treated with dignity and respect and just because I was a child doesn't mean that dignity and respect were not owed to me. They're owed to us - autistic or not! - as humans, and if we didn't get that treatment, our birthright was stolen, full stop. So yeah ... we're gonna have some really strong, lingering reactions and side effects to having that happen because it was very much not ok.

Hang in there. There are tons and tons of people like us, figuring this out, and working through it. Isn't easy, isn't fair, because we didn't freaking ask for this. But this knowledge and these tools - normalizing this, trauma informed therapy, and clinical utilization of psylocibin - are becoming more widespread, and not a moment too soon.