Autism Society of Oregon

Love these people and the work they do. They’re responsive and fun to talk with

It started out great - but after I was known by the staff I felt owned/used/abused. I joined one of their support groups but am self-diagnosed on the spectrum and a senior. I was told "Our goal is to connect with others, support each other, and make new friends. This is not a skills or therapy group but simply a chat to connect." I took the bait - but then things switched to become not supportive of where I am at on the spectrum. TAKE A BREATHER program led to me being dropped after I participated in that. They had me fill-out a form and through this means found-out my age, address, phone number, and that I am self-diagnosed. I was just given excuses for the poor treatment when I applied - despite an admin staff person there at ASO the whole time for weeks, responsible for the program who ignored me. Very insensitive & stressful to be kept hanging after you supposedly "connected" through one of their SUPPORT groups. I was not understood as far as my spectrum medium "meltdown" during this and the next support group meeting I attended tho, found me dealing with being ignored more by a very cold facilitator all of a sudden, who catered to getting the new attendees to feel welcome & supported. I felt the burn. The new ones did not speak or show their faces - their chat/typed not spoken was distracting and many times off-topic. This led me to overstimulation & then social overwhelm. Very disturbing as the facilitator treated a lot of what I said nicely, with micro-aggressiveness and passive aggressiveness. She always says it is a "safe space" to say anything in. I was so uncomfortable after the meeting that I spent a lot of effort trying to process how all of that all of a sudden made me feel. I wrote the facilitator who ignored my two emails about it. I had even been called by the wrong name for the whole hour - despite it was typed and there correctly written under my camera image. I have no connection with the facilitator now and felt unwelcome and "bad" after giving honest feedback about participating in the Take a Breather program. It was supposed to be a safe place (the support group), but the leader called me by the wrong name, favored other people more, generalized about/ judged me for the part of Oregon I don't even live in or visit, made a snide remark about a cute joke I told, and used asking me open ended questions so that I would talk a lot unwillingly (without her caring about what I was saying) and she could multi-task with the other chatters & her home environment. ---- ASO is now a disappointment - very much not a place that is set up for supporting autistic people like me really & does not help them avoid social barriers common to neurotypicals but not ideal for the autistic. Trying to navigate asking for their help or being valued for the right reasons is stressful & just like being among those they should be acting better than. They should not be financially rewarded for or helped with volunteers if they can't be more sensitive to ALL autistic needs/wants. ASO is probably just set up mainly for the college educated neurotypicals with mortgages and student loans to pay off - with volunteers under them being used to increase profits. To make things ideal for the autistic who interact in their events/programs would lower the profits for the neurotypicals at the top. Success is making a failure out of ASO - who should not be willing to alienate the very parents and people with disabilities they claim to exist for... . Getting 20% of the profits should not be worth causing suffering or alienation in not setting a better example to the neurotypicals & autistic ones that we on the spectrum expect ASO to act better than!! The end does not justify the means or being mean/hurtful to the feelings of anyone on the spectrum, you guys.

I visited the ASO event in Oaks Bottom today, and I felt deeply disappointed. I was expecting an event that was sensory friendly, but there was loud music and announcements blasted over the loudspeakers. There were no sensory rooms or areas to retreat from the sensory input. I saw several children having meltdowns, likely due to poor environmental sensory control and social overwhelm. This event felt catered to an allistic community rather than an autistic community with sensory difficulties. This becomes an even more prominent feeling when the majority of the booths were about ABA therapy rather than about autistic acceptance. I would recommend that future events from ASO either provide ear plugs and sunglasses to autistic participants or provide sensory rooms or retreats. I would also recommend that future events from ASO have more booths about autism acceptance or public educational resources provided from actually autistic people.

We attended the Portland Autism Walk at Oaks Amusement Park today. On the plus side, there was a fun and upbeat atmosphere, and a festival feeling. Also, Spectrum Life was there advocating for Autism Acceptance. On the minus side, it was much more skewed towards the Autism Awareness crowd. There were far more ABA booths than anything else, designed to draw in children and their parents. This was so sad, because many adults who have grown up having experienced ABA have spoken about how damaging it was for them, but the industry is alive and well. There were many Autism Awareness shirts, and there was an autistic child whose mother had put him in a "vaccine injury is real" shirt, implying that autism is bad, that vaccines cause it, and that he is injured. So so sad that this mother doesn't accept her child as-is and view him as not injured. Also, there was loud music piping throughout the place, and no ear protection, eye protection, or sensory rooms appeared to be available. We saw multiple autistic people in meltdown due to the sensory overload. In sum, this seemed to be an event whose main purpose is to sell autism parents ABA. We left feeling deeply saddened by the event. We hope that in the future, these events are sensory friendly, and that they bar ABA from being present, so they truly represent the autistic community's will.

It is a fantastic thing that they do