Words by Jessica Kate // illustration by Ciel Chen
It’s a funny thing, imposter syndrome. Sneaky, subtle, savage. It creeps in and holds space when it shouldn’t, taking up valuable real estate that could be dedicated to self-awareness, acceptance, or understanding instead. It doesn’t stay in a single lane either – no, it swerves across the highway of your mind like a driver who’s realised they’re about to miss their exit. Even its name is frustrating: a syndrome about feeling like an imposter, the symptoms of which are imposturous thoughts themselves, invading your mind.
Sometimes it feels like my mind is constantly being invaded. There is so much doubt and uncertainty, and about so many things, that it feels impossible it could all be wrong.
It’s been just over twelve months since my child was diagnosed and received their collection of acronyms.
ASD, PDA, ADHD, SPD, ARFID, and Anxiety.
I remember looking at the list in shock, feeling numb, and then having a slightly hysterical giggle when it crossed my mind that Anxiety must feel left out because it doesn’t have its own acronym. Brains process things in funny ways.
The irony isn’t lost on me that it was almost the exact anniversary of my child’s diagnosis when the federal Minister for Disability announced Thriving Kids: a program meant to support families like mine. A program touting support, while its announcement included wording that consistently minimised and invalidated the challenges we experience.
Since then, those “thoughtful impostors” have been louder, more insistent, and more frequent.
I’m not giving my child enough of what they need.
I don’t have enough time, money, energy…
I’m not strong enough to support them through this.
I’m not clever enough to navigate this system.
I’m not present enough at home.
I’m not doing enough, giving enough, trying enough…
I’m simply not enough.
What a terrible word. Enough. So subjective, and yet it’s the evaluator of my parenting, partnering, and performance. How can such a subjective word be used to pass judgement?
I have come to loathe two words more than ‘enough’, though. Two words that have crept into our life and now stick to my child. Two words that follow my child around like bullies: inescapable and insidious.
Too much.
“Too much” volume when my child speaks.
“Too much” movement during class.
“Too much” is required to meet their sensory needs.
“Too much” screen time, even though it’s used for regulation.
“Too much” excitement, sadness, anger, or enthusiasm.
Too. Much.
And yet… recent comments made by politicians suggest that, in fact, my child is “not enough.” Autism is “not enough” of a disability to qualify for the supports we had to fight to receive in the first place. Supports that took countless hours of meetings, documentation, evidence gathering, and report writing in order to obtain. The same supports we must still collect evidence for — to prove they’re still required, despite the fact that my child’s diagnoses aren’t going anywhere.
Or is it that autistic clients are taking “too much” of the funding that pays for those supports? Sometimes I struggle to keep up. But perhaps that’s because I am too busy being forced to prove again and again just how “disabled” my child is. Too busy photographing, filming, and recording those moments I never want to relive, because they remind me that my child lives on the brink of trauma-response mode every day. But I have to – to prove to a nameless, faceless person somewhere out there that we need help. That it’s only now, with the supports in place, that we have stopped screaming for it.
Screaming for help from a system determined to tell me our family’s struggles are “not enough” of a challenge, while the rest of the world says that accommodating us is “too much” to manage. And when I turn to the internet to ask for guidance, I am repeatedly reminded by strangers online that my issue, actually, is that I need “thicker skin.”
That’s another expression for the record books. Another one that has always irked and bothered me: “thick-skinned.”
I don’t know if it’s the mental image it conjures up – callouses, reptilian scales – or the idea that the protection we’re naturally born with, which has evolved alongside us to be suited to our environment, somehow isn’t enough. It can’t keep us safe anymore. Our natural state of being is insufficient to shield us from our world.
It’s even more confronting when you consider the context in which you’ll likely hear this phrase. Because it’s never physical thickness, is it? We have armour and support for that. No, you need to be “thick-skinned” when facing a challenge that has nothing to do with skin at all.
You need thick skin when waiting to hear whether a stranger – who has never met you or your family – passes a judgement that could change your lives forever.
How I wish there were armour for that scenario instead. How I wish there were something to shield my child from the standards they’re held up against, standards they half the time do not know of anyway, until they’re told afterwards that they were, in fact, “too much.”
So, which one is it, Mr Butler? Is my child too much, or not enough?
Because I am tired. And I have reports to write, apologies to make, and armour to weld in order to help my child survive a world that judges them on a scale that changes every day.
But now, before I do any of that, I have to wait for you and your assessment. Which, honestly, feels like too much to be asking of me, for not enough support in return. How does anyone thrive in a system like that?
