Your Therapist Reacts to “Autism and Tylenol”
Donald Trump asserted that Tylenol was a “cause” of autism this week.
In the battery of incredibly tone-deaf, demeaning, racist, inhumane, and just wrong things he’s said, this one broke through my (now) steady level of regulation, reframes, boundaries, and facts because - of course it did. I have an autistic son. I have a neurosparkly daughter. I am married to an autistic man. The things I love the most were factually misunderstood and maligned. Of course, my heart broke. In my ‘protection mode,’ I am triggered right and mobilized. I am also taking the time to slow down, write through it, and find my ground.
Please join me.
Let’s start with some facts. There is no proof that Tylenol causes autism. Correlation is still not causation. And as an aside, I did not take Tylenol while I was pregnant.
Zooming out further, let’s talk about diagnosis. The process of diagnosis exists in a system that leans on a statistical (not actual) reference source that eventually became the DSM.
Let me say that a different way: The DSM (manual of diagnosis) is a statistical reference text. The DSM was created to consolidate clusters of ‘symptoms,’ so that systems had a shared language to talk to each other. From a populations standpoint, this makes sense. It helps providers find and highlight trends, it helps providers find a common language, and it offers a (very limited) roadmap to better understand what a provider might be seeing when they encounter something or someone new. The DSM is a stereotyper, and a extra-biased one at that; the DSM’s language is deficit-based and it mostly functions to name symptoms. The DSM cannot assess any human being sitting in front of you and, frankly, that is not what it is built for. Remember, the DSM is a statistical manual. The DSM does not tell you who you are or what you have; it tells you what some clusters of symptoms *might* represent at only one moment in time.
Now, here is another truth: we, as humans, are not clusters of symptoms; we are years of variables, swaddled in our fallibility, swimming in misunderstanding, and brimming with hope. Diagnoses do not reflect any of that. They name deficits; they do not reflect resilience, grit, or survival. We, at the deepest and most intrinsic level, are survivors.
One clear problem with our deficit-based DSM paradigm is that one can’t have a “solution” without having a “problem.” So to diagnose, we first have to define the problem that needs to be solved. That’s what the DSM does. The DSM is not inherently good or bad, though. Remember, it is just a manual of statistics. Unfortunately, in reality, a lot of problems and symptoms actually represent responses to larger systems at play.
Over the course of my time in practice, I have come to recognize that all behaviors make sense in context. And this means we have to choose a different paradigm. Following this different paradigm requires us to ask different questions.
For example, if I’m working with someone who is possibly on the spectrum, rather than assessing that person for their level of eye-contact (or lack thereof), I might assess the level of that person’s nervous system right now. How sensitive is that person to touch and feelings in their body? How is that person’s breathing? These questions tell me so much more about how to support that person (maybe you!) in my therapy practice than a statistical manual ever could.
We have a labeling problem. Many labeling problems, if we’re being honest. And, in our push to understand things at the macro level, we have lost some of our ability to see the humanity of each individual at the individual level. If we are not careful, we can easily lose sight of the People who are right in front of us. Further, we may align so closely with the labels given to us that we run the risk of not seeing ourselves. We must never forget: each of us is a dynamic, resilient, magical, lovable, feeling, being.
Now, here comes the flip-side nuance (stay with me!): diagnosis and the care that follows save lives sometimes! We do not need to throw the DSM model entirely; it can be a helpful tool. But, diagnosing in that way is only a small piece of the puzzle.
Okay, let’s circle back to autism:
There’s nothing broken or wrong about my son. There’s nothing I’ve done wrong as a mother. And I have learned to hold a well of compassion for any misguided thoughts that might suggest otherwise - they do sometimes linger in my mind on harder days. I am human too. I am constantly being bombarded with messages around our personal and family otherness, around “failure,” around fear. I live in the same time, space, and culture as you with the same internet and the same level of intolerance.
I remember early on in my child’s diagnosis I fell deeply into the “what caused this?” trap. Did I eat too many eggs while I was pregnant? Was it because my husband and I were struggling in our relationship in early pregnancy? The truth is in the messy everywhere and the honest *nowhere.* There are things that likely contributed to my baby’s stress in the womb, as there are for *every single child* developing inside any mother. If we want to talk about “cures” for “autism,” maybe we should look at the way we handle stress in our society. The way that we trigger each other’s nervous systems into constant vigilance. The ways that we try to “fix” things that were never broken to begin with. The brokenness we see and feel is not in each other. It’s in a system that eschews true individuality and genuine humanity in the name of “order.” It’s in our policies that would prefer to take power rather than give relief. It’s in our fears that somehow this is all our (or someone else’s) fault.
Let me leave you with this: if you’re looking for a cause - I get you. I see you. That is incredibly stressful, and I’m sorry. I am sorry that we live in a world that asks you to choose between “fixing” your child, your partner, or yourself or risk forever being on the othered, “broken” side. These things are real and I know them to be so. They are also based on ideas that are fundamentally harmful and incorrect. There is not a single “right” way to be a human.
And yet, when we are targeted, when our identities are questioned, it can feel so vulnerable. We might get angry. We might climb into a bed of doubt. We might believe their lies or our own indoctrinated fears and false voices. We might wish things were different, or we might wish we were different. Because, how could we not? Suffering and othering sucks. Still, fundamentally, these things are not disease-and-cure problems; these things are compassion and understanding problems. We have lost the thread back to our own hearts and, by extension, each other.
When I slow down enough and think about what the problem *really* is, this is what I see. We have closed-off our hearts off due to chronic protective states and over-activation of our nervous systems. We are vigilant to even ourselves. We are hyper-boundaried because nothing feels safe anymore. On a visceral, body level, we do not feel held and okay.
Because it hurts too much.
But, it does not always have to. Community. Connection. Care.
Therapy. Nature. Movement.
Love.
Today my heart broke a bit. Not just for me, but for all of us. And I am okay. And, you will be too. I see you and I love you.
Let’s be in touch.
If you are curious about how our mental health therapy approach can support your mental and emotional health (or that of a loved one), you can book a cost-free, 15-minute Consultation with Jamie.
Jamie Van Auken, MA, Registered Marriage and Family Therapist Associate, E-RYT 500
Jamie is a nervous system-forward Registered Marriage and Family Therapist Associate who believes in bringing together the wisdom of the body with evidence-based therapeutic modalities to support genuine, sustainable transformation.
