When Breast Binding Becomes Chicken Soup for the Autistic Soul

For autistic girls, the perverse appeal of compression

As a young teenager who believed herself to have been born in the wrong body, I had experimented with multiple methods of flattening my breasts as discreetly as possible, guided by online instructions found on FTM trans forums. Convinced I could stunt their natural growth by binding them young, and therefore qualify for a less invasive ‘top surgery’ that wouldn’t leave me with two noticeable scars across my chest, I became committed to perfecting the ‘art’ of breast binding in secret.

I learned that I could fashion a binder using a variety of items that could be purchased at a pharmacy, a medical ‘posture correction garment’ prescribed by a chiropractor who didn’t question why I would want an already tight garment in an even smaller size, and multiple sports bras worn at the same time but in various different directions. I was physically miserable and existed in a state of ever-present paranoia about ‘getting caught’ — but I was also focused on doing everything in my power to prepare myself for the lifelong road I had staked my entire future on since before I had even become a teenager.

Right before a summer family trip to Europe around my 18th birthday, I squirreled together a VISA gift card and some of my birthday money to buy my first ‘official’ breast binder, which I had shipped to my friend’s house. As my family drove through the mountains of Italy, remarking on the incredible view of chaotic motorcyclists nearly edging each other off a cliff as a mechanism to stave off their impending motion sickness, I checked on the shipping status of my breast binder. As I floated off the coast of Capri, giving myself my fourth-ever sunburn, I ran through a list of possible new masculine names I would call myself.

The day after I returned from that vacation, still jet lagged, I went to my friend’s house to pick up the breast binder I had wanted so badly for so many years. I went to the bathroom to try it on. I ripped open that package with reckless abandon, like a kid on Christmas morning. But this time, there were no eyes eagerly fixed on me, awaiting my reaction. This time, I was about to open the first gift I had ever bought for myself. This time, the only reaction that mattered was my own. Around that time, trans communities had begun to use the phrase “gender euphoria,” which they defined as the opposite of gender dysphoria — a radical alignment between the body and the mind. I thought that surely, that day would be my first experience of it.

I removed my glasses and, shoulder by shoulder, squeezed the binder over my upper body. That first time putting it on required an entire acrobatics act to weasel my way into the thing. Under the irritating flicker of three fluorescent lightbulbs mounted to the ceiling, I put my glasses back on and stared at my reflection in the mirror for the first time in years. But instead of the euphoria I had expected to feel, I was met with the all-too-familiar crushing dysphoria I was convinced would be mitigated by ‘properly’ binding my breasts. Staring at myself in the mirror, I saw a girl in an odd-looking cloth morph between a sports bra and a crop top, staring back at me. I became even more aware of the width of my hips, the narrowness of my shoulders, and the presence of my flattened breasts. I wanted to cry.

But then I remembered that the binder is just an undergarment, so I put on my shirt. That’s when it happened. Not the gender euphoria I was promised, but rather, sensory relief. Almost instantly, it felt as if the binder had enveloped me in a tight, comforting hug that instantly dissolved my worries and doubts about the life I was getting myself into.

In retrospect, this now strikes me as odd — how could someone so sensitive to textures and clothing seams find comfort in a garment designed to compress and constrict? Compression has long been recognized as calming for autistic people (or for people with the relevant sensory processing difficulties associated with other types of ‘neurodivergence’). Weighted blankets and tight hugs stimulate the parasympathetic nervous system, helping to reduce anxiety and sensory overload. Binding, in its own painful way, seemed to give me that same kind of relief, a sense of control over the chaos of my own body.

Normally, the wrinkles on a shirt like this would drive me crazy. With the binder on, I didn’t even notice them. Whereas the seam of a sock rolling below my toes as I walked would cause me to change my entire gait just to avoid feeling the unpleasant sensation, I found it shockingly easy to adjust to the discomfort of a tight garment compressing my ribs and lungs.

What I’m describing here is a sensory paradox: autistic people are hypersensitive to certain kinds of stimulation but often seek out deep pressure because it helps calm the nervous system. Predictable discomfort is easier to tolerate than unpredictable chaos. Binding became a form of self-regulation, even though it was damaging my body slowly and irreparably.

It felt as if my brain just ‘worked better’ even as I was probably depriving it of oxygen. I could wear shirts that previously would never have met my strict standards for fabrics, threads, seams, and buttons; I could tolerate feeling on my skin. Not only did the binder cover most of the skin, which would have normally been irritated by the less-than-ideal texture of the fabrics of shirts gifted to me at on-campus trans clothing exchanges, but even on the skin that the fabric did touch, it no longer felt as if I was wearing sandpaper around my wrists. The compression made my body feel a significantly more tolerable place to be.

It was not until several months after I stopped binding that I began to truly understand how much damage it had done to my body. Over those months, I was progressively overcome by pain in my breasts, ribs, and back that wouldn’t go away. Some of it was the pain I was used to, and some of it was new. Without realizing it, I had changed the way I breathed while binding and now found myself unable to take deep breaths without pain.

While binding, the sensory relief of the compression outweighed the physical pain caused by it. Once I took the binder off, I was left with years of accumulated pain and damage to those areas of my body– but without any of the soothing compression to cushion the blow. I was left to figure out how to support the weight of my damaged breasts on muscles that had atrophied over the course of the decade in which I did not use them, and with ribs that hurt to run my fingers over. No one had prepared me that this would be the outcome of a so-called non-invasive ‘gender affirming’ intervention. I often ask myself, “You were in your body every day you bound your breasts- how did you not know what it was doing to you?”

For me, the incredible relief brought by the compression only made me more convinced in my trans identity, and in the ‘right-ness’ of gender transition to resolve my visceral, embodied discomfort. I didn’t have the awareness to recognize that my breast binding made me feel so calm, and so able to tune out both the physical pain and any possible doubts because it was soothing an underlying ever-present sensory overwhelm, which, I believe, was at the root of my discomfort in my own body. Because I wasn’t given a reality-based answer for my burning, adolescent existential questions, I found an answer in the only framework provided to me: trans.

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It was not until I quit my gender transition that I began touching the actual roots of my embodied distress. It is only in the process of detransition that I am finally able to deal with the untreated issues that contributed to my gender distress, while also facing the new challenges of having sustained damage to my upper body, which I assumed would be ‘cured’ by the mastectomy I planned for, but never got. I have since found ways to address the roots of my embodied discomfort by picking a high-compression sports bra with minimal differences in texture, by using weighted blankets and hoodies alongside vibration plates which help to soothe different aspects of my sensory processing needs and help me to develop the type of body awareness which many autistic and ADHD people struggle with, which in my case all contributed to my feelings of visceral discomfort in my body. As there’s no guidance about how to cope with the aftermath of a decade of breast binding, especially those who have now damaged their breasts, I am figuring out much of this on my own.

As I embark upon the process of healing from this misguided attempt at a cure, I often find myself wondering; how many other autistic girls go undiagnosed with the condition they actually have, and around adolescence, find themselves in gender clinics with doctors who are perhaps unwittingly, encouraging the use of breast binders and prescribing cross-sex hormones and mastectomies to treat a modern manifestation of autism which masquerades as a gender identity crisis?

Maia Poet writes about gender dysphoria, autism, and how parents can support their neurodivergent kids through these times of intense gender-related sense-making.

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