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Autism Acceptance Month invites self-compassion and acceptance of autistic people.

An autistic person's experience is different, valid, and often takes more effort than others realize.

A person's past might make sense through an autistic lens, which helps them move forward with support.

April is Autism Acceptance Month, making it a great opportunity to more deeply accept ourselves and others as autistic people. It invites us to embrace autism as a different way of thinking, feeling, and acting, while raising awareness in the wider community.

Autism Acceptance Month can also help us focus inward and ask: What does "acceptance" mean to me as an autistic and neurodivergent person? Here are five ways to approach it.

Accept your experience as different and valid. It doesn’t matter how well you appear to function or how successful you are. If you’re autistic, getting to wherever you are has probably required a huge amount of effort. You may have had to develop creative strategies to manage things that feel very natural to most people, and you may have always realised that your experience seems very different to people who don’t struggle in the same way. Accepting that things are different for you helps you begin to embrace yourself at a deeper level.

Accept that it’s OK to have different solutions. Many of us spend a lifetime pushing ourselves in directions that don’t feel right or comfortable. We “fit in” to societal expectations, no matter how hard it is, and ultimately, we can reach a point of burnout and experience mental health problems. Accepting that you don’t want to do things in the way most people do, or that doing so is exhausting and stressful, can help you feel calmer and more empowered, which can help you feel better in yourself generally.

Accept that your past experiences are OK. When we look back, many of us have a checkered history in terms of jobs, relationships, and friendships. It’s easy to judge ourselves and wonder why we "didn’t do better." Why didn’t we stay in a job for longer than a year or two at a time? Why did we fall out with all of those friends? Why haven’t we had a long-term relationship, despite wanting one? When you accept that you are autistic, you can accept that things were just fundamentally harder for you. Looking at things through this lens means that you can accept that it’s OK if you haven’t got all the “markers” of what you might think constitutes a “successful” life. You were operating on a completely different playing field than most of the people around you.

Accept that things can be different. Discovering you’re autistic is a profound experience for many people, and, no matter how hard things might have been up to now, they can be different moving forward. Armed with that knowledge, you can make different, supportive decisions and learn to look after yourself in a new way. It doesn’t matter what age you are. You can move forward in a more empowered, informed way from now on.

Accept that you are perfect. Just as you are. I’ll finish with the words of Deena, who, after a lifetime of mental health issues, misdiagnoses, and low self-esteem, learned she was autistic at the age of 56. She told me, “I have always really disliked myself. From about age 5 or 6, when I was bullied and left out of things at school. I’ve always wanted to be better, do better. Learning that I’m autistic has allowed me to accept that I’m OK. And I’m even starting to learn to love myself—which is something I never thought would be possible."

Autism Acceptance Month invites self-compassion and acceptance of autistic people as we are. Acceptance doesn’t come overnight, but this Autism Acceptance Month, take a while to reflect on what self-acceptance means to you.

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