Over the years, I have personally battled with my personal hygiene. Eventually, I have been able to have a baseline to where I manage it quite well. For many autistic people, taking care of their personal hygiene can sometimes be a struggle due to the many steps and elements that it involves.

It is not that I or anyone personally do not want to be a clean person. Although, it can be hard to admit that it is not always at the top of our “radars.” It is just  that the brain and sensitivity work in their own personal ways and it makes the routine that we must undergo to make ourselves clean quite challenging to get completed.

It starts with understanding that there is a necessity for the steps involved, ensuring that everything is completed in the proper processes. Doing this all along shifting from many sensory experiences especially when it comes to the temperature or the way that the body feels can be hard to withstand for an autistic person. To some autistic people, doing these tasks because of the multiple steps that they involve can be too much so they would rather skip out on doing this, especially if there is no apparent reason to do so.

However, there is the reality that the body suffers from not taking care of one’s personal hygiene and the effect it can have on others by not doing so. Things can happen to the body because of not properly caring for yourself in a timely, routine fashion which can be quite embarrassing when having to address these needs to the medical people. Basic prevention is key when it comes to eliminating issues that can be easily resolved by the daily care of your body.

It may just be easy to tell an autistic person that they need to do certain things to care for their bodies, but the feelings as an autistic person may overcome their understanding of why they need to care for themselves or the fact that they need to follow through with their routine completely to ensure the proper and adequate care of their bodies. Because they are unable to see and understand completely the reasons why they need to care for themselves by following all the steps necessary to practice good hygiene, they may not understand completely why it is important to do what they need to do to care for themselves in the ways that they need to.

In the end, it may be the fact that makes or breaks the connections that they make in the outside world and how others connect to them because knowing that even though it may not seem as if the steps that they take to care for themselves are important, in reality they do matter to not only them, but those in the community in which they must navigate.