Melissa Wiseman: BSL is for everyone – my experience of learning BSL as an autistic person (BSL)

It’s a week since I watched Rose Ayling Ellis present her documentary; Old Hands, New Tricks, and I’m still feeling the impact. I have never felt more seen than when Rose said BSL is for everyone.

“Yes! I thought, that’s how I feel.” The result has been deep reflection on my journey so far. I have been losing my hearing for seven years and I have been autistic all of my life.

BSL is having a profound affect on my life. It has given me connections to a new community, access to experiencing music in different ways, access to art, better understanding of myself and it is significantly helping me in hospitals.

My reasons for learning were not just about the gradual hearing loss I’ve experienced, they were about me as a whole person experiencing difficulties with communication, because I’m autistic too.

As an autistic person my communication needs are repeatedly ignored, criticised, misunderstood and shamed through peoples lack of understanding. I struggle with communication and often feel completely alone. The most upsetting part – it’s not because I cant communicate, it’s because I need to communicate differently.

My biggest barriers in communication are seen in hospitals –  for me they are a place of trauma, where I can be completely lost in past memories. Add in hearing loss and being autistic – I find communication with professionals so distressing I am just trying to keep from running away.

Using verbal communication often leaves me misunderstood. Incorrect tone, volume too loud, coupled with overwhelm and repeating phrases causes a lot of tears. I started to hate my voice and how I communicate. I worked endlessly trying to make myself more ‘acceptable’ but its never enough.

This shame pushed me to start BSL. I started wanting to turn my voice off  because when I used my voice I got everything wrong. Through learning BSL I also learnt about lipspeakers, and how they can support with sign and lipspeaking.

Autistic support is virtually non existent and BSL interpreters would not have been the right support either. Lipspeakers are the balance in the middle where methods of communication may vary.

A lipspeaker gives advantage to the hearing I have with the benefit of being able to stop verbally communicating if I need to. As I started having support in hospitals, my experiences are beginning to change.

Having been shamed so much for my verbal communication I sometimes feel like I’m just waiting to be criticised for my use of sign to communicate. But no criticism has come – not from those in the Deaf community, lip speakers, teachers and people who know me. I’ve felt encouraged understood and accepted.

I realise that I often feel calm when signing, recognising that signing helps my emotional regulation. Perhaps because I still have to consciously think it keeps me focused.

One tool in trauma release is to shake parts of the body, so I find it fascinating that the sign for pain is a shaking hands movement. Noticing this has made me question, is BSL actually helping heal me through the movement and connections using your hands creates?

Just like the residents in the television show, learning to show emotions and discuss emotions using your body and face to communicate has been a revelation for me.

I have alexithmia, a common autistic experience, meaning I struggle to read others facial expressions. For the first time in my life I’m learning how to connect expressions with feelings, because of how facial expressions are part of the language.

Now I’m connecting what things look and feel like in ways I couldn’t before and I’m understanding my own emotions better. I have a wider vocabulary for emotion in BSL and connection with the words than in English, and even though I still have signs that I repeatedly use, I have more accurate descriptions.

I can also communicate the depth of a feeling in sign which I struggle with verbally, to explain how frustrated or upset I am. Doing this verbally is difficult, but expressing in this visual language which makes so much more sense to me, where how intensely I feel something is conveyed with more body and facial expression is a little easier.

When I did my first lesson in beginners lipreading, I was horrified to find the teacher stating that if you couldn’t recognise facial expressions, you’d never be able to lipread. I was so upset as she proceeded to play a game miming emotions and we all had to guess. I got everything wrong apart from the emotions happy and sad.

But I am certain I could do this now, because I am a good mimic and a dedicated learner. Autistic hyperfocus, attention to detail and an intense visual memory (hyperphantasia) means I have a library of pictures and videos in my head from watching multiple people sign emotions. It takes me more practice but my ability to recognise others facial expressions has improved drastically.

After some difficult hospital appointments recently, I realise the answer to coping is to sign, even if I can’t do it perfectly. I recently had a long, difficult appointment but I signed the majority of the time with my voice, supported by a lipspeaker. I was completely exhausted, but it made me realise my purpose for learning was right.

At another appointment I didn’t sign and suddenly I was in tears, confused and overwhelmed. I turned to look at the lip speaker and instinctively I turned my voice off and signed, “I’m upset, I want to go home.”

The difference in how I was treated at this point was so contrasting to my usual experience. Only months earlier in distress, I had used the same words verbally, repeatedly (echolalia – another pattern of autistic speech), and the consultant challenged this, took offence to it and just couldn’t understand.

But here, by signing, not verbally communicating, suddenly I had a consultant apologising to me. Suddenly my distress was visible but my voice wasn’t the focus. Turning and using only sign gave the clear message ‘I cannot communicate with my voice right now’.

BSL is that little glimmer of light that can reduce the distress for me. It is helping me take back my right to use my voice when I feel able to, not when it is demanded. It’s letting me choose who I give my voice too, and only those who’ve earned my trust get that privilege.

I know BSL doesn’t ‘fix’ the problems faced with lack of understanding of communication needs, but its a clear visual to indicate ‘my communication needs are not the same as yours.’

My biggest learning curves about my autistic communication have come from connections through the deaf community and the reading and exploration of others experiences.

It has blown my mind observing similarities in the demands and expectations of both communities to be verbal. In the approaches towards childhood where ‘making children communicate verbally’ is often the focus, childrens individual needs are being neglected.

For me, this highlights why BSL should be promoted through different groups who have different communication needs.

I hope Rose continues to raise awareness that BSL can be for so many more groups. Sign languages are so unique and able to give so many more people opportunities to connect in ways that verbal communication cannot.

What a wonderful world it would be if we just recognised that the more people who learn, the more inclusive we are. Language is necessary for connection, but it feels like most of the time it is assumed that speech is whats needed for connection, leaving those who use different languages, or who can’t speak, feeling isolated and alone.

I truly believe in the power BSL holds to help people connect not just with others, but with themselves. Learning BSL – for me –  is a journey of self discovery, and a big lesson in self acceptance.

BSL is for everyone.

By Melissa Wiseman

Image courtesy of Pexels.