Lightbulb Moments: Being Autistic

A blog for the community
By Laura Buckland Mason

When you first started to consider that you may be Autistic, or when you received an autism diagnosis, you may have learned a lot about the diagnostic criteria for autism but not heard much about Autistic people’s lived experiences. 

We wanted to make ‘Lightbulb Moments’ to show some of the less commonly discussed aspects of being Autistic. It’s important that Autistic people have the opportunity to see that many of their experiences are shared by others – particularly as Autistic people may feel very different to those around them. Having opportunities to connect with other Autistic people – whether online, through the Discovery Programme or elsewhere – increases people’s sense of belonging, connection and confidence as shown in our Discovery Evaluation Report.

In order to make ‘Lightbulb Moments’ our team of writers spent time discussing our own experiences as Autistic people, finding things which many of us shared but which were not commonly portrayed as being part of the Autistic experience. The Discovery Programme’s live workshops also had a constant theme of shared experiences – “I thought it was just me!”. When developing our ideas for the animations we came up with more things than we could possibly include in our animation, so we narrowed our ideas down. 

Seemingly small experiences, challenges and ways of being – including those which can be summarised using two sentences and a short animation, as seen in ‘Lightbulb Moments’ – can have a massive effect on Autistic people’s lives and play a significant role in how we feel about ourselves and our abilities. 

We were keen to portray a range of experiences in our animation, ranging from some of the less well-known challenges that many Autistic people experience, to ways of perceiving the world which help to make us who we are.

One of the aspects we show in the animation is a challenge which is experienced by many Autistic people – Autistic inertia, or difficulty starting and stopping tasks. This is not something which is widely spoken about, but is something which I personally struggle with immensely. I benefited hugely from finding out that it is something that I share with many other Autistic people. Knowing that I’m not the only person who experiences these difficulties has made me feel less alone.

When we first started to develop the ideas behind ‘Lightbulb Moments’ we hoped that it would resonate with other Autistic people, and help them feel less alone. While working together we discovered so many shared ways of being and had some “lightbulb moments” of our own – I hope that other Autistic people will also experience this when they watch our animation.