Looking at my past through the lens of autism...Part 1 of 'for the rest of my life!'
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- Опубліковано 2 жов 2024
- I've been doing this since the suggestion of autism was put in my brain and more and more makes sense. I know I'll be sieving through all the memories for the rest of my life and trying to understand 'was that autism or not?'
I may never get an answer on some of them but overall there is a theme of getting things wrong, feeling awkward and not part of what is happening, and generally feeling shameful.
Also learning how differently autism presents in women and girls to the stereotypes we've been fed before. There's a lot to understand and navigate.
Good luck to each and everyone of you who is travelling down this road too. It's not easy and thank you for watching and sharing your experiences ❤️❤️
FAIRN BREHDEE, WOOHOO! (As phonetic approximations of Scottish accents go, this is the best I can do.) Haven't listened to it yet but I've got the audiobook of Strong Female Character in my queue.👍👍 Love her, she's so clearly one of us.
I find it interesting that you're looking at social connection as a form of special interest in itself, because my formative reactions to the shame of social awkwardness were so often to double down on whatever my interests were i.e. I would rather be alone to happily immerse myself in whatever the interest rather than defer to any social expectation which dictated that loyalty to a friendship ought to come before said interest.
In that sense, how we engage with life itself as autistic people is exemplified by our social challenges: we want a deep, immersive involvement with anything and everything that catches our interest, to the extent that we don't seek external social validity for our activities - we learn to expect that other people just cannot relate to that intense degree of involvement.
In astrophysics we know that certain stars have such a strong gravitational pull that they absorb all other would-be planets in their orbit (as a lay astrophysicist I admit I don't recall what they're called.)
Perhaps this nevertheless serves as a good analogy for the autistic mind, in that we burn so brightly alone because nothing of interest can escape our fixation.
Oh I love the astrophysics connection! Yes, I have learnt that others will not relate to my hyperfixations and I don't expect them to anymore. Although, I am still miffed when someone tells me that they don't understand my focus on something, and as such I usually don't share with people I don't completely trust. So I share with about 2 people.
Lightbulb moment ... another person can be a special interest?! Yes! So often I've admired and mirrored people in real life and movies, as you said fascinated, not in a creepy way, then suddenly losing interest. Thankyou so much for sharing your experience. I'm still learning and awaiting diagnosis (I'm 49). My own personality type and traits have also been an ongoing special interest, perhaps because I always want to solve the puzzle of why I think differently, have sensitivities, obsessions and aversions, why I always felt like an alien, and so on.
I can confirm that if one makes ones spouse a special interest, a genuinely nice, funny, gentle person may start threatening murder in ones sleep. But I can't help it. Oh well. I wonder if a provide her with a permission slip / mitigating circumstances she will at least avoid prison on my demise.
I am becoming kinder of my past and current self. Only internally though. I find unmasked me is not anyones cup of tea so I have literally driven others away. I think primarily because if one can have a special interest word, for me it is understanding. I am trying to understand everything about others and myself. Internally I am happier and kinder because I better understand most things I have done in the past. And present. Its amazing how much of the shame is in "not feeling normal" and not in some bullying event or slight. But actual acts like having hurt someone, is still something to be worked through and corrected.
Externally, apart from my wife no one has any interest or energy in understanding. Or finding new common ground. Quite understandable for someone I met yesterday. I am referring to people I've known most of my life. My kids are in their 20s, have always found me weird and although they have made no extra effort its all okay as they sort of adapted to weird dad long ago. And their poor mum usually gets awful dad first so they avoid him.
My father passed away a few years ago and was a dangerously damaged man. But even as far as his treatment of me I have realized just how confusing this weird son was for him to manage. I am not sure if I pity him or enjoy thinking how many buttons I must have inadvertently pressed in him.
Issues were minor with my mom. She was generally great. Currently though if she does something that upset me as a child I am far more upset about her current action.
But evidence is never thrown out of a data hoarders brain. For example, something may lie fairly peacefully in my brain. But if my mom does something now, I get a deluge of related details from my brain stretching back +50 years in some case. Who says time is a continuum anyway. Even Einstein was confused by time, at times. I wonder if Einstein kept a diary?
Anyway, I see no hope for future friendships especially because I have always preferred friendships with women. I may look like a rugby player but I enjoy friendships with emotional depth. And most importantly, women, justifiably have to be very careful of rugby playing looking men who are interested in everything about them. Of course this comes off as wanting something more. This is no criticism of women. Its them practicing common sense. Even my good relationships with men were only because they shared my special intetests and tolerated the depth to which I plumb emotionally.
I have largely eliminated existing relationships outside our 4 walls. I just cannot envisage being unmasked me and having friends. And I have retired so don't face this at work. It does mean when I venture out it is much easier to mask a little and frankly, be pleasant and experience pleasant interactions with strangers.
I have even found my driving has dropped another notch in terms of aggression and increased in terms of consideration. I gave up the full road rage high speed approach decades ago but its nice to be even nicer whilst driving. I do put this down to usually having more spoons available.
In general it makes me feel whole but others think of me as an ass-whole. I know I can only manage this "I am a rock/island" lifestyle due to my wife as she is my rock and companion. But as you mentioned this is not ideal for spouse and I do drive her crazy.
Thank you for sharing all this, I relate to a lot you say. I feel my parents are/were neurodivergent and I think they found everything overwhelming and so couldn't give the support that I needed as a child/teenager.
My husband watched the video and laughed because I do drive him nuts! But he said I was his special interest too, however, he could just be being nice! haha!
I think it is important for me to say that although I am trying to unmask more, I still mask loads outside my home. I sincerely don't know how to cope otherwise, and maybe that's just the way it is.
I'm really glad you feel whole as a person, that is so so important.
@TheGreatReveal As if to confirm my "special interest" I spent a decent portion of yesterday making a 4 minute long video consisting of photos and videos of my wife, from earliest photographic evidence (she is also my research project) to now at 53 years of age.
I was driven to this by hearing Tears 4 Fears new release "The girl that I call home" which I used as the audio.
So in a way I was forced into this. I mean. The song title alone drove me to it. I am trying to quite but tomorrow is another day.
Glad you loved the book. That bit where the teacher in 'the unit' thought her being nice was a threat to his family, and she points out "this wasn't a Borstal - none of us were there because of committing any crimes" (or however she put it) was *dead serious* - she may be a comedian but she's one of the most serious thinkers on the public/media side of things and is going to be deeply important for neuroacceptance over the coming decades. Stigma's a threat to our safety and is reflected in the stats. I _dread to think_ how over-represented we are in the Criminal Justice System, where 'the deficit model' is the thing that determines whether you do extra time or not. Literally disparate impact of jail-time based on pathologising discrimination.
However bad the shameful stuff is, you don't have to spell it out explicitly, it goes without saying large numbers of the community will have said/done/experienced just as bad, so you're 'forgiven' in advance. The urge to provide evidence for things is strong: I'm feeling now what you were feeling there: I'd _love_ to say "oh yeah I pissed myself in X Y and Z" or "I did this horrible embarrassing social thing where I was 'rightly' judged" or whatever..... but everyone knows, everyone's got things that they see as genuinely shameful. Those were throwaway ones, the really bad habits over the years aren't for public consumption.
So even though we look to you for guidance and representation, you don't have to go there either.
Very glad you're around, and that you've survived to understanding.
Thank you so much for your kind words! I actually needed to hear these (but obviously didn't realise until I read your comment!), so thank you for saying them.
Oh yes, Fern Brady's experiences in "the unit" were so awful. I have a friend who works within prisons on the mental health side and she says that she feels a lot of people in there are undiagnosed ND and because they were made to feel like they were a problem rather than needing support, they ended up making decisions that landed them in prison. I think it is something that definitely needs more research into and action, especially as it then becomes a vicious circle, as you pointed out, where they are punished for not meeting NT standards which they can never meet.
@@TheGreatReveal I hope it doesn't breach any special rules or anything, because we're going back more than twenty years and I'm not identifying anyone or any systems or anything, but I have a similar background myself and - no disrespect whatsoever intended toward your friend - I'm pretty ashamed of a lot that continues to go on today.
I don't know if you saw the Oliver Campbell case but in a nutshell he was wrongfully imprisoned for _thirty-four years_ based on some bad police practices. Even if he was guilty of murder, the average for a routine lifer like that is way less than thirty-four years served. He must have been a decade over 'tariff'. Reason? 'Cognitive deficits' and lack of remorse.
I guarantee that among those kidnapped by the state for no good reason, we're over-represented, because even in 2024 they're looking for criminogenic risk factors largely centred around 'cognitive deficits' such as social perspective-taking, impulsive cognition/emotion, atypical affective presentation, lack of evidence of detailed, nuanced remorse, social problem-identification and self-critical thinking.
Sounds great on paper but since it's all assessed by third parties there's a high risk that ND people will be _perceived_ as having 'made no progress in these areas', and hence be deemed to be at a level of risk that's unchanged since conviction.
For _indeterminate sentences_ this is devastatingly unsafe.
For _determinate sentences_ (4 years for armed robbery or whatever), it's still serious in terms of disparate impact but for someone at the absolute mercy of the lifer board, there's just no way they're ever getting out. Not for any genuine crime-prevention reason (which is obviously a good thing) but rather for their personality, which in practice often means their neuro-type.
Oliver Campbell I don't know whether he's neuro-divergent or not (but Black people are ridiculously under-discovered because of ongoing stereotypes about what autism looks like) but he is intellectually disabled because of a brain injury. Zero slack cut, for this first-time offender, and the same demands for complicated pretending rituals made as for any other prisoner.
So while I miss the environment - and the work, paradoxically - I don't feel good about having completely overlooked the issue of false conviction (for pragmatic reasons at the time, but that amoral stance sickens me now) and the centring of The Deficit Model is, in my view today, atrocious.
Of course this isn't your friend's fault and it wasn't mine at the time either.
(This isn't a bleeding heart do-gooder sentiment: if Oliver Campbell turned out to be guilty, he would have deserved to serve twenty years inside, doubly ditto offenders where there's _no question of guilt_ - but there's an unjust bias involved, both in the cases where the person's done nothing wrong, and even in the cases where the main crime shifts from having done something outside to _being deficited while inside_ which in practice can very easily mean _being odd, not fitting in, being misunderstood, not showing the proper affective presentation and so on_ ie. *being autistic* )