I hope this tale helps our NT allies to bear with us, and possibly even nudge us along, when Aspies are struck with the snag that befalls me sometimes---and likely, other Aspies. I call it the brain hiccup.
It strikes me most often when my emotions are running high, but it can accost me at any time. My mind catches on some psychic detritus that I cannot name for the life of me, and it gets caught there. When it happens, words elude me. It's embarrassing as all get-out. A chat has been humming along just fine; suddenly it screeches to a halt. My companion makes a comment, and inwardly, I flail for a reply, in vain. I can see their baffled expression as they wonder why I went mute. They're waiting for me to respond. That makes me flail more frantically for a response, which in turn makes a response go further into hiding. I fumble for some lame comment to show that I'm not orbiting Jupiter. Sometimes a stammering fit strikes. Often, the conversation ends. I walk away hoping I didn't give offense, or give the impression that my companion offended me, causing them bruised feelings. If I'm lucky, my companion keeps talking. Eventually they say something that, inexplicably, frees me from whatever my brain is caught on, and I find my words again. I am not angry or upset when this happens. I'm stalled.
If this happens while you're speaking with an Aspie, please be patient. My lay explanation for this is that our brains don't process input in the same way that NT brains do. If you can keep on speaking in a non-demanding way, that might help. I know it helps me.
Thursday, June 23, 2011
Wednesday, June 15, 2011
Accepting Beats Deflecting
As a teenager, I baby-sat for a neighborhood couple. One clear, brittle January night, the husband walked me home. I commented that I could smell the cold.
"Oh, you can?"
In hindsight, I can hear the "wow, that's bizarre" tone in his voice.
"Yeah," I continued, oblivious, "It smells like shiny metal."
"Huh."
I hope I live to see the day when the "huh" is banished and replaced with "cool!" or the like. We on this far end of the human spectrum deserve better than the leaden "huh"---NT-speak for "I'm blaming you because I don't understand you."
I don't care where people dwell on the human spectrum. I care about their character. Their place on the human spectrum doesn't determine that, any more than their skin color or their ethnicity. People reveal their character through their actions. People who taunt, bully, ostracize, and otherwise deny acceptance to those they deem The Other, the different, show a lack of character. I accept people as they are unless they act to hurt other people, knowingly. I think less of un-accepting people.
Who are we of The Other breed hurting? What is our offense? Those are my questions when I'm coming away from a messy mix-up with some conventional, unremarkable petty tyrant who couldn't abide my asymmetry. How did I poison their world?
When I told my NT friends that I'd been diagnosed an Aspie, they asked me what they---NTs---could do to make my life less trying. Often, they added that we should accept people as they are. In asking what they could do, and in calling for acceptance, they did make my life a bit less trying. I know I'm among accepting friends. That goes a long way in offsetting the nerve-wracking skirmishes I face with lesser minds.
I get the "what" of these lesser minds. They don't accept we "off center" types. We arouse revulsion, aversion, and scorn in them. But for what it's worth, I want to hash out the "why." Why do they ostracize, bully, and harass us? I suspect that they feel threatened by us. It could go deeper than that, though. Their hostility toward us could also be a smoke screen.
Fearful people lash out at those they deem "different." I've been on the sharp end of their abuse all my life, so it's an effort for me to offer compassion for them, but I've learned to understand them to the degree that I know they vent their fear on me when I don't meet their expectations for conformity. But I chafe at the binary, NTs vs. Aspies approach we fall into so often. We've got a human spectrum of complexity and richness that we ought to try to understand. We can't do that unless we ask what motivates an NT to react, at times, with hatred toward Aspies.
I've got an amateur's guess. I have no background in mental health. But a possibility strikes me when I follow politics. I suspect that those who target Aspies so viciously borrow a tactic from closeted gay politicians, religious leaders, and activists who out-homophobic everyone within earshot of a microphone or a TV crew. Consider Larry Craig, Ted Haggard, Mark Foley, and Roy Ashburn, among others. Outspoken public homophobes, all were caught engaging in homosexual activity or alleged homosexual activity. My hunch is that their fire-breathing rantings of disgust at homosexuality were designed to deflect suspicion from their sexuality. They made a choice. They would succeed in the straight, sometimes gay bashing world by passing as straight.
I think of this sorry practice every time I read about another instance of cruelty toward anyone who is different---and let's be real, Aspies don't hold the patent on difference. The most vicious "NT" tyrants out there may not be so NT. They may be closeted "weird" and "off center" people who opt to succeed in a not-so-neuro-tolerant world by passing as normal, average, unremarkable, conforming, and typical---as the neuromajority defines all of that. They deflect suspicion from their own "weirdness" by targeting people who haven't got the hang of hiding it. No one suspects that they've got "weird" nuggets of their own hidden away.
That's as much charity as I can manage to conjure for conformists who are on the attack. Through my six decades of life they have mocked me (behind my back and to my face); ostracized me; bullied me; harassed me; set me up for humiliation; and driven me out of jobs, all gleefully. I don't think I've left anything out. I do find comfort in knowing that we who are The Other have NT allies. To answer their query, "What do Aspies need from us?" I say, expand your psychic skin to accommodate me---and us. But it looks like they're already doing that.
"Oh, you can?"
In hindsight, I can hear the "wow, that's bizarre" tone in his voice.
"Yeah," I continued, oblivious, "It smells like shiny metal."
"Huh."
I hope I live to see the day when the "huh" is banished and replaced with "cool!" or the like. We on this far end of the human spectrum deserve better than the leaden "huh"---NT-speak for "I'm blaming you because I don't understand you."
I don't care where people dwell on the human spectrum. I care about their character. Their place on the human spectrum doesn't determine that, any more than their skin color or their ethnicity. People reveal their character through their actions. People who taunt, bully, ostracize, and otherwise deny acceptance to those they deem The Other, the different, show a lack of character. I accept people as they are unless they act to hurt other people, knowingly. I think less of un-accepting people.
Who are we of The Other breed hurting? What is our offense? Those are my questions when I'm coming away from a messy mix-up with some conventional, unremarkable petty tyrant who couldn't abide my asymmetry. How did I poison their world?
When I told my NT friends that I'd been diagnosed an Aspie, they asked me what they---NTs---could do to make my life less trying. Often, they added that we should accept people as they are. In asking what they could do, and in calling for acceptance, they did make my life a bit less trying. I know I'm among accepting friends. That goes a long way in offsetting the nerve-wracking skirmishes I face with lesser minds.
I get the "what" of these lesser minds. They don't accept we "off center" types. We arouse revulsion, aversion, and scorn in them. But for what it's worth, I want to hash out the "why." Why do they ostracize, bully, and harass us? I suspect that they feel threatened by us. It could go deeper than that, though. Their hostility toward us could also be a smoke screen.
Fearful people lash out at those they deem "different." I've been on the sharp end of their abuse all my life, so it's an effort for me to offer compassion for them, but I've learned to understand them to the degree that I know they vent their fear on me when I don't meet their expectations for conformity. But I chafe at the binary, NTs vs. Aspies approach we fall into so often. We've got a human spectrum of complexity and richness that we ought to try to understand. We can't do that unless we ask what motivates an NT to react, at times, with hatred toward Aspies.
I've got an amateur's guess. I have no background in mental health. But a possibility strikes me when I follow politics. I suspect that those who target Aspies so viciously borrow a tactic from closeted gay politicians, religious leaders, and activists who out-homophobic everyone within earshot of a microphone or a TV crew. Consider Larry Craig, Ted Haggard, Mark Foley, and Roy Ashburn, among others. Outspoken public homophobes, all were caught engaging in homosexual activity or alleged homosexual activity. My hunch is that their fire-breathing rantings of disgust at homosexuality were designed to deflect suspicion from their sexuality. They made a choice. They would succeed in the straight, sometimes gay bashing world by passing as straight.
I think of this sorry practice every time I read about another instance of cruelty toward anyone who is different---and let's be real, Aspies don't hold the patent on difference. The most vicious "NT" tyrants out there may not be so NT. They may be closeted "weird" and "off center" people who opt to succeed in a not-so-neuro-tolerant world by passing as normal, average, unremarkable, conforming, and typical---as the neuromajority defines all of that. They deflect suspicion from their own "weirdness" by targeting people who haven't got the hang of hiding it. No one suspects that they've got "weird" nuggets of their own hidden away.
That's as much charity as I can manage to conjure for conformists who are on the attack. Through my six decades of life they have mocked me (behind my back and to my face); ostracized me; bullied me; harassed me; set me up for humiliation; and driven me out of jobs, all gleefully. I don't think I've left anything out. I do find comfort in knowing that we who are The Other have NT allies. To answer their query, "What do Aspies need from us?" I say, expand your psychic skin to accommodate me---and us. But it looks like they're already doing that.
Wednesday, June 8, 2011
A Brief, Amateur Take on Asperger's
Full disclosure: I do not have a background in psychiatry, psychology, counseling, or social work. I have a well-established background in first-hand, lived experience with Asperger's. What follows is my treatment of Asperger's to the degree that it affects me, which isn't how it affects everyone on the spectrum. Mental health professionals reading this may have a quibble with what I have to say about Asperger's. If you do, quibble away.
A few words about words. Notice that I stop at "Asperger's." As it affects me, I quibble with---no, I bristle at---the words "disorder," "disease," and even "syndrome." I prefer to say I have "Asperger's Nature," or that I'm an Aspie. And I really like the word "neurodiversity." Asperger's has complicated life for me only so far as the neuromajority bristles at people like myself because we're different from them. We're different to the degree that since they're the majority and they wield the power to define, they define us as disordered---and some in the neuromajority suffer from the disorder of feeling threatened by those designated "The Other." No one can make me feel disordered without my consent. I deny that consent. I'm unique and special. Asperger's is not a label with a stigma attached to it. It's a name, and I own it.
Back to Asperger's. It is not mental illness. It is not a disease. The psychiatric community disagrees on how to classify it. Recently a panel of researchers moved to remove the classification of Asperger's from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), and to include it in the heading of autism. As of 2013, those diagnosed with Asperger's will be designated high-functioning autistics. I call Asperger's as I have it a cognitive condition. I don't experience the world the way most people do. I process information and the world around me differently. I'm challenged with unspoken social rules and cues. I've become good at reading people---not infallible, but good---but when I was younger I was utterly clueless about facial expressions and body language. I have sensory issues. Even on overcast days I need sunglasses. At my train station, I can hear the train approaching the bend before anyone else. I cannot wear clothing made of certain fabrics, and I can't wear turtleneck tops. Jewelry begins to bother me after a while. When riding the subway I have to hold my ears (other passengers look at me like I've got a pacifier in my mouth). If I attend social events involving a lot of noise, movement, and flashing colors, I need a place where I can retreat for some quiet time. I'm gullible and I take things literally; I don't catch on readily to comments made jokingly. I have a very strong sense of justice. I couldn't multitask to save my life. I communicate with animals very well. I've got great attention to detail and focus is a strong point. I'm deeply loyal. Aspies get a bum rap for being cold and unfeeling. Quite the contrary. I feel emotions deeply, so much so that I feel overwhelmed and I shut down, which may make me seem unfeeling to others.
That's my offering---one Aspie's blog to the rest of you. It's written in hopes that some day we'll be accepted as people at one far end of the human spectrum, and not shunned as "The Other."
A few words about words. Notice that I stop at "Asperger's." As it affects me, I quibble with---no, I bristle at---the words "disorder," "disease," and even "syndrome." I prefer to say I have "Asperger's Nature," or that I'm an Aspie. And I really like the word "neurodiversity." Asperger's has complicated life for me only so far as the neuromajority bristles at people like myself because we're different from them. We're different to the degree that since they're the majority and they wield the power to define, they define us as disordered---and some in the neuromajority suffer from the disorder of feeling threatened by those designated "The Other." No one can make me feel disordered without my consent. I deny that consent. I'm unique and special. Asperger's is not a label with a stigma attached to it. It's a name, and I own it.
Back to Asperger's. It is not mental illness. It is not a disease. The psychiatric community disagrees on how to classify it. Recently a panel of researchers moved to remove the classification of Asperger's from the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), and to include it in the heading of autism. As of 2013, those diagnosed with Asperger's will be designated high-functioning autistics. I call Asperger's as I have it a cognitive condition. I don't experience the world the way most people do. I process information and the world around me differently. I'm challenged with unspoken social rules and cues. I've become good at reading people---not infallible, but good---but when I was younger I was utterly clueless about facial expressions and body language. I have sensory issues. Even on overcast days I need sunglasses. At my train station, I can hear the train approaching the bend before anyone else. I cannot wear clothing made of certain fabrics, and I can't wear turtleneck tops. Jewelry begins to bother me after a while. When riding the subway I have to hold my ears (other passengers look at me like I've got a pacifier in my mouth). If I attend social events involving a lot of noise, movement, and flashing colors, I need a place where I can retreat for some quiet time. I'm gullible and I take things literally; I don't catch on readily to comments made jokingly. I have a very strong sense of justice. I couldn't multitask to save my life. I communicate with animals very well. I've got great attention to detail and focus is a strong point. I'm deeply loyal. Aspies get a bum rap for being cold and unfeeling. Quite the contrary. I feel emotions deeply, so much so that I feel overwhelmed and I shut down, which may make me seem unfeeling to others.
That's my offering---one Aspie's blog to the rest of you. It's written in hopes that some day we'll be accepted as people at one far end of the human spectrum, and not shunned as "The Other."
Oops, Wrong Planet
I was diagnosed with Asperger’s—as an Aspie—in 2009, at 57.
This is my first attempt to make sense of this, and of my first half century of life.
The day of my diagnosis is a second birthday to me. That day, I learned what I didn’t know for the first half century of my life, namely, that my brain makes me a different breed of human.
The moment I heard the diagnosis, I felt an immense, palpable feeling of inner settling. I had an explanation for the life of head-butting with co-workers, love interests, neighbors, classmates, and family. I’d had to get along among a people whose language I didn’t speak, without a phrase book. But now my task is to use what I know to make my way with this alien people, and to fortify my sense of self.
My new self-knowledge does help, but it isn’t enough. I’m a living testament to the price many Aspies have paid for the lack of early intervention and sound parenting. I found myself in a world that didn’t welcome my kind, and I bargained for my survival by hammering who I was into oblivion. I need more than just the self-knowledge of this present-day Aspie; I need the self-knowledge of a girl and younger woman whose existence I’d long denied.
I grew up in a straight-jacketed family and community where an inquisitive, asymmetrical mind was frowned upon. That kind of belief system wasn’t kind to the adult neurotypicals (NTs) caught up in it, and it was soul-searing for an Asperger’s child, especially a girl. My parents’ hearts were in the right place. But they’d been raised with a parenting ethic that deemed nurturing and tenderness as coddling children, and as raising weak adults. They believed in tough, even harsh, love for growing strong adults. A child who chatted with pansies needed toughening.
I was indulged until I reached grade school, when it didn’t take me long to catch on to the message that Me wasn’t okay. The person I was wasn’t acceptable, was disordered, and it didn’t go kindly on me if adult NTs saw me being myself. I did too good of a job suffocating that little girl—so good that now, doing psychic CPR on her, I’m struggling to get her breathing again. Now I need her. I guess I always did, but I had to forego her presence to placate the NT world. I had to forget she existed, and I did her a huge injustice.
But I wasn’t placating the NT world. That was the trouble. Intolerant NTs were picking her up on their radar, and it took me five decades to catch on to this, during my diagnosis journey. I wasn’t hiding her from troublesome NTs. I was hiding her from myself.
Even as I write this, I feel myself struggling to make contact with my center, the essential part of myself where emotion, insight and deep thought dwell. As a survival tactic of decades, I’ve been smothering that center because the awareness it brought left me shaken. Now that I belong to social circles where Me is okay, even well regarded, it’s safe to bring that essence into the open, but when I do, she recoils. She stays out of reach.
That vital core eludes me, but memories are returning of episodes I hadn’t thought of in decades: When I was very small, my parents called me “the mynah bird” because often I sat inside alone, mimicking neighborhood children so skillfully that my mother, in another room, thought they were with me (mimicking skills are common in Aspies). In the fourth grade I used to stare out the window to escape the ruler-wielding nun and the mocking classmates I found so scary and toxic; the nun sent my parents a note that read, “Patricia is in her own little world,” which brought scathing wrath down on me. At 13 years old, during a jobs counseling workshop, when other girls in class told the guidance counselor of wanting to be teachers, nurses, and secretaries, I told her I wanted to go to Africa and emulate Joy Adamson by raising lions—and then I launched into a tutorial on lion hunting, mating and cub-rearing practices. In 8th grade aptitude tests I scored in the top two percentile, and then I flunked the 9th grade. A high school classmate who had invited me to her slumber party, knowing how gullible I was, squirted red food coloring onto the back of my skirt, exclaimed, "Oh, you've got a blood stain!", and after I’d run to the powder room, mortified, she gloated to the other girls that I didn’t have the sense enough to use a pad. I relieved stress in a clerical job by twirling a set of Greek worry beads in the air, which got me fired.
For most of my first fifty years, I wasn’t aware of the irregularities in my weave that were giving me away as an Aspie—the hand-flapping, the “off” facial expressions and speech cadence, the utter social cluelessness---and getting on the nerves of the viperous NTs I had to tangle with. But over the years—especially in the work place—I learned how to be a shape-shifter. It’s a companion skill to the psychic obliteration I’d mastered in childhood, which wasn’t enough to enable me to “pass” as an NT. And camouflaging my oddities in adulthood called for a craftier approach than it did in childhood. Once I caught on to the behavior that got me ridiculed, ostracized, and fired, I began to stifle it. I observed how NTs behaved and I learned to imitate them. My mimicking skills served me well here.
That isn’t to say it made life at work easier, though. For one thing, imitating NTs worked up to a point, but if I became stressed or fatigued, I slipped into Aspie mode. Once I was branded as “goofy” or “weird,” trouble ensued. And I don’t mean “shape-shifting” in the sense that a vapor or cloud shifts its shape. No, shape-shifting for an Aspie is akin to twisting your skeleton into a painful, unnatural position, and having to hold it all day. It’s exhausting. And being someone you are not carries a price, as I’ve learned; you have an ever harder time finding your way back to who you are. The authors of ancient mythology knew this: When returning to human form, werewolves become increasingly weak and debilitated.
My diagnosis has brought me a better fit for my psyche’s moving parts, but I’ve long since reached a healthy peace with my flawed “fit” with the NT world. I used to want to fit in, desperately. For a time, my life was a series of failed stabs at it. Now, the last thing I want is to fit in with the kinds of people who are fixated on conformity. That isn’t to say I don’t fit in anywhere. I do. I changed my social circles. I’ve settled in with people secure and intelligent enough not to feel threatened by quirky, offbeat me. And they’re far more interesting. I don’t know who might be an Aspie or an NT. It doesn’t matter. I'm in a safe place for beginning to gently coax my true center into joining me after all these decades, a safe place for both of us.
This is my first attempt to make sense of this, and of my first half century of life.
The day of my diagnosis is a second birthday to me. That day, I learned what I didn’t know for the first half century of my life, namely, that my brain makes me a different breed of human.
The moment I heard the diagnosis, I felt an immense, palpable feeling of inner settling. I had an explanation for the life of head-butting with co-workers, love interests, neighbors, classmates, and family. I’d had to get along among a people whose language I didn’t speak, without a phrase book. But now my task is to use what I know to make my way with this alien people, and to fortify my sense of self.
My new self-knowledge does help, but it isn’t enough. I’m a living testament to the price many Aspies have paid for the lack of early intervention and sound parenting. I found myself in a world that didn’t welcome my kind, and I bargained for my survival by hammering who I was into oblivion. I need more than just the self-knowledge of this present-day Aspie; I need the self-knowledge of a girl and younger woman whose existence I’d long denied.
I grew up in a straight-jacketed family and community where an inquisitive, asymmetrical mind was frowned upon. That kind of belief system wasn’t kind to the adult neurotypicals (NTs) caught up in it, and it was soul-searing for an Asperger’s child, especially a girl. My parents’ hearts were in the right place. But they’d been raised with a parenting ethic that deemed nurturing and tenderness as coddling children, and as raising weak adults. They believed in tough, even harsh, love for growing strong adults. A child who chatted with pansies needed toughening.
I was indulged until I reached grade school, when it didn’t take me long to catch on to the message that Me wasn’t okay. The person I was wasn’t acceptable, was disordered, and it didn’t go kindly on me if adult NTs saw me being myself. I did too good of a job suffocating that little girl—so good that now, doing psychic CPR on her, I’m struggling to get her breathing again. Now I need her. I guess I always did, but I had to forego her presence to placate the NT world. I had to forget she existed, and I did her a huge injustice.
But I wasn’t placating the NT world. That was the trouble. Intolerant NTs were picking her up on their radar, and it took me five decades to catch on to this, during my diagnosis journey. I wasn’t hiding her from troublesome NTs. I was hiding her from myself.
Even as I write this, I feel myself struggling to make contact with my center, the essential part of myself where emotion, insight and deep thought dwell. As a survival tactic of decades, I’ve been smothering that center because the awareness it brought left me shaken. Now that I belong to social circles where Me is okay, even well regarded, it’s safe to bring that essence into the open, but when I do, she recoils. She stays out of reach.
That vital core eludes me, but memories are returning of episodes I hadn’t thought of in decades: When I was very small, my parents called me “the mynah bird” because often I sat inside alone, mimicking neighborhood children so skillfully that my mother, in another room, thought they were with me (mimicking skills are common in Aspies). In the fourth grade I used to stare out the window to escape the ruler-wielding nun and the mocking classmates I found so scary and toxic; the nun sent my parents a note that read, “Patricia is in her own little world,” which brought scathing wrath down on me. At 13 years old, during a jobs counseling workshop, when other girls in class told the guidance counselor of wanting to be teachers, nurses, and secretaries, I told her I wanted to go to Africa and emulate Joy Adamson by raising lions—and then I launched into a tutorial on lion hunting, mating and cub-rearing practices. In 8th grade aptitude tests I scored in the top two percentile, and then I flunked the 9th grade. A high school classmate who had invited me to her slumber party, knowing how gullible I was, squirted red food coloring onto the back of my skirt, exclaimed, "Oh, you've got a blood stain!", and after I’d run to the powder room, mortified, she gloated to the other girls that I didn’t have the sense enough to use a pad. I relieved stress in a clerical job by twirling a set of Greek worry beads in the air, which got me fired.
For most of my first fifty years, I wasn’t aware of the irregularities in my weave that were giving me away as an Aspie—the hand-flapping, the “off” facial expressions and speech cadence, the utter social cluelessness---and getting on the nerves of the viperous NTs I had to tangle with. But over the years—especially in the work place—I learned how to be a shape-shifter. It’s a companion skill to the psychic obliteration I’d mastered in childhood, which wasn’t enough to enable me to “pass” as an NT. And camouflaging my oddities in adulthood called for a craftier approach than it did in childhood. Once I caught on to the behavior that got me ridiculed, ostracized, and fired, I began to stifle it. I observed how NTs behaved and I learned to imitate them. My mimicking skills served me well here.
That isn’t to say it made life at work easier, though. For one thing, imitating NTs worked up to a point, but if I became stressed or fatigued, I slipped into Aspie mode. Once I was branded as “goofy” or “weird,” trouble ensued. And I don’t mean “shape-shifting” in the sense that a vapor or cloud shifts its shape. No, shape-shifting for an Aspie is akin to twisting your skeleton into a painful, unnatural position, and having to hold it all day. It’s exhausting. And being someone you are not carries a price, as I’ve learned; you have an ever harder time finding your way back to who you are. The authors of ancient mythology knew this: When returning to human form, werewolves become increasingly weak and debilitated.
My diagnosis has brought me a better fit for my psyche’s moving parts, but I’ve long since reached a healthy peace with my flawed “fit” with the NT world. I used to want to fit in, desperately. For a time, my life was a series of failed stabs at it. Now, the last thing I want is to fit in with the kinds of people who are fixated on conformity. That isn’t to say I don’t fit in anywhere. I do. I changed my social circles. I’ve settled in with people secure and intelligent enough not to feel threatened by quirky, offbeat me. And they’re far more interesting. I don’t know who might be an Aspie or an NT. It doesn’t matter. I'm in a safe place for beginning to gently coax my true center into joining me after all these decades, a safe place for both of us.
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