Who Am I?

Autistic Burnout – Week 4 of #TakeTheMaskOff

Posted: August 13th, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Autism | Tags: , | 2 Comments »

I don’t have one of my researched, informative posts on this week’s topic. Yes, I’ve read other accounts of autistic burnout. I can’t recall off-hand if I’ve read any formal research or not. I know in a way what I experienced personally, though I struggle to find words that truly capture how it felt. Moreover, it was so pervasive it often lurked at the edges of my awareness. I can also find threads of common experience in the stories of non-autistic people struggling with the ongoing effects of complex trauma, especially from childhood. I don’t think there’s a single explanation or underlying cause for my personal struggles. I believe it was the weight of everything finally becoming more than I could carry.

More people, I think, have heard of autistic meltdowns and shutdowns than autistic burnout. Those are the short term and often visible results of sensory overload and emotional dysregulation. I had both as a child. I mostly learned to control them because I had to do so. I found a way, even though one unintended consequence apparently involved disrupting my interoception much more than I ever understood, at least until it almost killed me last year. After my last major meltdown in adulthood at age 22 landed me in a psych ward over a weekend, controlling them became one of my driving imperatives in life. No, that’s not really accurate. I was driven to control it as a young child. It’s always been an imperative. That was the last time in my life I lost my battle against it. I’ve let the energy out at times, but only in controlled doses in private where nobody could see. And I never, ever let it take control. I’m aware that many, if not most, autistic people cannot manage the overload and dysregulation the way I do. I don’t really recommend my experience, but it has certainly made my life more manageable than it would otherwise be.

Autistic burnout, by contrast, is a long, slow process. For me, especially since I had no idea I was autistic, I had no explanation. Things I had always been able to do became harder over time. It’s not exactly regression, but some loss of skill accompanied it for me. I felt increasingly overwhelmed. I began to struggle to get through most days. I started becoming less capable and less functional. I tried anti-depressants. The one I tried turned the background sense of not wanting to be here or be alive I had managed since I was nine years old into full-blown suicidal ideation. I tried therapy, but it went nowhere. That was always my experience of therapy before I finally figured out I was autistic. I discovered I had sleep apnea and treatment for that gave me a burst of new energy for a couple of years. I discovered I had celiac disease and my body was in bad shape. Treating that improved my energy again for a few more years.

But none of those improvements lasted. I could manage less and less. Every day became harder and harder.

Autistic burnout felt like losing my ability to be a human being, at least in any way that held meaning for me.

I probably reached my lowest point in 2015. I realized how much it was impacting my family and used raw force of will to make myself do better. I’ve begun to realize these past two years just how strong my will can be. I stopped sinking, but couldn’t make much headway until my ASD diagnosis a year later. That finally gave me a framework, explanation, structure, and grounding from which I could work. Things that had never made any sense finally fit. It hasn’t been any sort of magic pill. Progress has been uncertain and slow. But I have finally been able to make progress.

I have some hope again for the first time in a very, very long time.

The ASD diagnosis also gave me the framework and insight to begin to perceive, understand, and work through the impact of toxic stress from my traumatic childhood. I’m barely beginning that work and it’s really hard. I can distinguish the dysregulation of emotional flashbacks from the autistic response I have to overload and that different sort of dysregulation now that I know both exist. They have a different … texture to them. My somatic response, now that I’m learning to pay attention to the signals from my body, is different with each. And only the former comes tinged with dissociation. Complex trauma was certainly a factor in my burnout, but most of it followed the course I’ve seen others describe with autistic burnout, especially the part about slowly losing the ability to do things I had long done.

Life got really, really hard even as the objective demands on me grew less. It made no sense. And that was perhaps the hardest part for me.


Mental Health – Week 3 of #TakeTheMaskOff

Posted: August 6th, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Autism | Tags: , | Comments Off on Mental Health – Week 3 of #TakeTheMaskOff

I’ll start with a simple statement. I have no idea how masking specifically affects mental health. I’ve never done anything but work to camouflage and hide my differences. I may not have had a name for it, but I always knew I was broken, that I didn’t work the same way everyone else seemed to work. And I knew I had to hide anything others saw as unacceptably different from their view, no matter what. “Quirky” could be okay as long as people found it amusing or endearing. Negative reactions, though, meant I had to find a way to manage whatever had provoked the reaction. My success was always mixed, but that’s how my energy has been focused my whole life.

I can say one thing, though. I don’t believe anyone seeks out assessment and diagnosis because their life is going wonderfully and everything is coming up sunshine and roses. I was struggling two years ago when I sought assessment. I had been struggling for a very long time before then, mostly in silence and shame. I am still struggling today. I have my individual therapist. We’re seeing a couples therapist. I’m now also seeing a therapist, working in coordination with my individual therapist, who specializes in EMDR to try to work through trauma. I’m trying, but none of it is easy.

I camouflage my autism no less today than I ever have. Does that also take a toll on my mental health? I can’t really say. I’ve never lived any other way. It probably doesn’t help.

I can say that I’m so very, very tired.


Stimming – Week 2 of #TakeTheMaskOff

Posted: July 30th, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Autism | Tags: , , | Comments Off on Stimming – Week 2 of #TakeTheMaskOff

I wrote an early exploration of stimming, Stereotyped and Repetitive?, in my series of 2016 posts stepping through the Autism Spectrum Disorder DSM-5 diagnostic criteria, what they meant, and the ways they applied to my life. Every human being “stims” to some extent, of course. It appears to be something the human brain needs to generate sensory input, express “energy”, and possibly for other reasons as well. Everyone taps their foot, drums their fingers, hums to themselves, chews pen caps, bites their nails, or some other variation at times. However, the extent, frequency, and nature of autistic stims stand out from neurotypical stims. Most of us naturally stim more often, with greater intensity, or in unusual ways.

And yes, even late in adulthood, I can rock, ask my self a question over and over (often some variation of “what did I do?), hit my head against a desk or a wall, and more. But I never do such things where anyone can see. Moreover, in my experience those are not “normal” stims, even for an autistic person. Those are always a sign of distress for me.

However, I suppress and redirect even normal stims. It’s almost automatic when one is noticed by anyone. I interpret the fact that they found it odd as an internal red flag emergency. Whatever my expression and body language might communicate, if someone comments on something my body or voice is doing, I’m immediately on high alert. Yes, camouflaging involves active steps like managing expressions, body language, and prosody. Social rules have to be understood, interpreted correctly, and acceptable responses offered. Those are some of the active aspects of successful camouflaging. But there are also behaviors and actions that have to be suppressed and hidden. And natural stimming behaviors form the biggest category of things that must always be hidden from view.

Some things can be redirected to less visible actions. I do that a lot. I can also hold things together until I’m alone, even if I have to go to the bathroom or for a walk. But there’s a part of my brain that is always monitoring what my body is doing. And the list of things that part suppresses has only ever grown my whole life. It’s a very long list by now.

Rhi captures it perfectly in her Autscriptic, Mild Autism.

But I’m lucky I’m so mild. I’m lucky I affect you so mildly.

That’s the heart and soul of masking, at least for me. I’m desperately trying to avoid impinging on you in ways you will find … distressing. I’m trying to be human, or present in a way you will accept at least as human enough. I do that every waking minute every single day of my life.

Eventually that became overwhelming for me, especially since I had no name for it, no explanation, and no way to direct and focus my energy and resources. I’m still working to claw my way back. But I haven’t really dropped my mask. I don’t see myself doing that. I know to the core of my being that when I fail to affect others “mildly” things never go well for me.

At the 25:00 minute mark in the video below, Monique Botha expresses it poignantly and so very well. “Yeah, sometimes I might look human.” That’s the motivation behind camouflaging. We can only feel human when other people treat us like human beings.


When you work to become the mask – #TakeTheMaskOff Week 1

Posted: July 25th, 2018 | Author: | Filed under: Autism | Tags: , , | Comments Off on When you work to become the mask – #TakeTheMaskOff Week 1

The #TakeTheMaskOff campaign has been designed as a way for autistic people to share our experience of life in a world that often makes little space for us. The stories, blog posts, and videos often expose a shared pain behind the smile on the face you see. Kieran Rose, “Do I look autistic yet?”, Agony Autie, and Neurodivergent Rebel did a livestream discussing the campaign.

I don’t know if someone who is not autistic is truly able to understand what it’s like to constantly monitor your voice, your face, and your body, checking that everything is as it should be while repressing or redirecting your urges to do things you’ve learned other people will see as odd or strange. And while you are doing that, you are constantly trying to match the words people utter to their expressions and body language, attempting to understand what they mean so you can work out the appropriate way to respond. Oh, and when you do, make sure to adjust your expression and maybe your body position to match what you are saying. It’s pervasive and when you developed it the way I did, that continuous cycle permeates your entire being.

The deeper truth is that for most of my life, I had no inkling that I was “masking”. I did not know that most people do not have to consciously do most of the things I do every single moment. Books did not change that perception. After all, they often describe thoughts of trying to interpret others, awareness of miscommunication, and there are non-fiction books discussing communication in depth. As a result, I believed my experience was similar in type to that of everyone around me. I just thought it came easier to them. Somehow they could always do it better. For some reason, I struggled. I was broken.

In a way that’s true, of course. That’s why it was a natural thing for me to believe. In all the years leading up to my diagnosis, though, it never once occurred to me that most of the time most people aren’t consciously thinking about their body language, expressions, and prosody. Most of the time, people aren’t semi-consciously interpreting every social interaction. Most of the time most people aren’t thinking about any of that at all. They are simply experiencing it. They believe it’s natural. I guess in some way it is, for them at least.

But it has never come naturally to me. It’s a skill I developed with a lot of effort and work as a child and one I am constantly trying to refine and improve. It requires effort and energy for me to maintain. Every second. Every minute. Every hour. Every day of my life.

And that means that the term “mask” doesn’t really fit me. A mask is something you can put on and take off. I don’t feel like that’s an option for me anywhere outside the online sphere. But my written words don’t require camouflage. They are more ‘me’, I think, than anything people see and hear in person. But even if it were an option, I have no idea how to remove my ‘mask’. It’s intertwined with my identity. It’s part of who I am. I’m aware of its presence since I have to work to maintain it, but nothing I do is exactly volitional. It’s responsive. I’ve trained myself so thoroughly, I rarely even think before reacting. I don’t ‘choose’ to mask. I’m simply trying to survive and live.

I think of it more in terms of the actions a chameleon takes to camouflage itself within its environment. My camouflage is often faulty and incomplete, but it has worked well enough that I’m still here and doing at least okay by many of the usual measures.

The reality is that I mostly pass as one of you, something that not every autistic person can do. I wrote about that experience in The Price of Passing. I guess I’m lucky? Mostly I put my head down, focus on the current demand or crisis, and try to find a way through it. It’s the way I’ve gotten through 53 years of life. I don’t really know how to do anything else, even when my efforts clearly aren’t working as well as they once did. Or perhaps they never really worked as well as I thought they did? I don’t have any answers. And despite the hashtag, I can’t say I’m taking the mask off. My words just try to expose a little of what lies underneath it.


Autism Awareness

Posted: April 1st, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Autism | Tags: , , | 4 Comments »

A year ago I was still in the process of deciding to pursue an assessment. I don’t recall even being aware myself of various autism “awareness” activities last April or any previous April. I screen a lot of things out, but I also absorb a lot of information. I didn’t have an opinion, positive or negative, about any past efforts. The various awareness efforts were completely off my radar.

I also don’t believe I was unusual in that regard. I had heard some of the autism scare stories. I knew about the vaccine controversy, of course, and how thoroughly it had been debunked. I had seen one or two representations of “Asperger’s” on TV (in dramatized forms that looked nothing at all like me). And … that was about it. I don’t recall noticing anything about an awareness month. I had never heard of Autism $peaks. My online sphere didn’t really intersect with the rich online autistic community.

So I don’t believe the only issue we face is a need for greater acceptance. We do need greater awareness since acceptance rarely flows from ignorance. But we need accurate and informed awareness. Tales of the suffering endured by parents of autistic children aren’t helpful. My attitude as a parent has always been captured by Sidney Poitier’s character’s response to his father in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?” Our kids owe us nothing. We chose to have them. We owe them our best effort to give them a start and a place in this world. And that’s true no matter how hard or difficult it is. That’s the price of real love, especially the unconditional love we should have for our children. And our kids do not owe us for any sacrifices we might have made raising them. As parents, that’s what we were supposed to do.

Of course, if you view anyone as a “burden” that perspective becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. I refuse to believe that most parents of autistic children fly the martyr flag, just some of the noisiest ones. Unfortunately, the noisy ones keep having their voices amplified.

I also don’t think we need awareness in order to fund the pursuit for a “cure”. Autism is neurodevelopmental. My brain formed along autistic patterns in the womb. I have no non-autistic identity even though I only recently discovered that the way my brain functions has a name. If someone “cured” me of autism, they would effectively wipe me out of existence. Moreover, research is increasingly revealing how deeply intertwined autism is in humanity as a species. Autism develops from complex and varied combinations of genes, at least some of which are also responsible for increased human cognition. In certain combinations and expressions, the dial gets turned farther than it typically does, but autism appears to fall within the range of normal human variation. In order to prevent autism, you would have to alter the broader human genome to exclude autistic combinations and expressions. In order to “cure” autism, you would have to change a person’s genes, the epigenetic expression of their genes, and somehow alter the developed structure of their brain. Thanks, but no thanks.

We do need the broader population to understand the range and variation of autism. We need informed awareness. Awareness does not automatically lead to broader acceptance, but it’s a necessary step. And right now, there is a deficit of informed awareness, at least in the US as a whole. I’m sure there are areas and pockets with greater awareness, but for the most part any awareness that exists is poorly informed.

Of course, it doesn’t help that the most broadly visible autism organization promotes misinformation and uses scare tactics to raise money, most of which goes to nothing useful.  Since much of the awareness that’s currently out there is negative or wrong, we’re operating at a deficit and I don’t see any quick or easy way to change that reality. It looks like a long uphill slog to me. Still, uphill struggles are nothing new to me. That pretty much describes most of my life. And since I can’t change the way my brain works (not that I would be inclined to do so if I could), I’m in it for the long haul.


Chance Encounters

Posted: March 21st, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Autism, Personal | Tags: | Comments Off on Chance Encounters

This weekend my father-in-law was in the hospital again. His memory care facility thought he might have had a stroke. It turned out to be something else, but they kept him to observe his cardiac telemetry and have it reviewed by a cardiologist. Decades of work have trained my system so I tend to wake early and function best in the morning, so I tend to take that part of the load for my wife. Since that’s also when doctors often make their rounds, I tend to handle a lot of the interaction with them as well. While being ‘on’ and interacting with strangers is draining for me, hospitals are a setting where hyperfocus and alexithymia function as a clear advantage. I also never get ‘bored’ the way people describe it, so I’m able to take the long stretches of tedium mixed with bursts of activity in stride. It can be a challenge for me to make sure I ask all the questions that need to be asked and remember all the verbal information that’s shared, but somehow that’s always been easier for me when it’s about someone else than it is when it’s for myself.

Draining as the hospital experiences are, I’m often better equipped to handle lengthy periods in that setting than my wife. I have less emotional involvement when it’s her father, but even when it’s my father in the hospital, I’m able to set that aside and deal with the emotions later. I can even do that to a degree when I need to focus and process when it’s been my wife in the hospital. I never had a name for it until I was diagnosed and discovered a high percentage of autistic people are also alexithymic. I think I can see now why people are always asking how you feel in those situations. For most people, the emotions overwhelm everything else. It’s not that I don’t have emotions and often quite a swirling mess of them. In fact, if I allowed my emotions free reign, they would likely overwhelm me too. It’s more that it takes real effort for me to perceive those emotions as anything more than an undifferentiated tangle of energy. And I can turn that focused effort toward something more productive in the moment and simply use the energy to keep myself moving forward. Identify what needs to be done. Do it. Identify what needs to be done next. Do it. Rinse and repeat until the crisis is over. And when no action is required, wait. I noticed this time in particular, though, that my redirected focus apparently does alter my affect and makes those who know me well, like my wife, uncomfortable.

On the last day, my father-in-law had a student nurse working with him as well. And she’s the one who helped take him downstairs with me when he was discharged. Along the way, she asked what I did and I told her I was a programmer. (Although that’s not, strictly speaking, what I do on a daily basis anymore, it will always remain my primary occupational identity. And it’s a lot easier to explain to someone who isn’t technical.) She asked what I did, which is a massive question, especially with my 30+ year history with computers and technology, so I kept it general. She then told me that her 12 year old son really enjoyed the snippets of access to programming he had in school, but there wasn’t a full class focused on it at his age and she wanted to know if I had any recommendations.

Of course, as anyone knows, that’s a huge question and with no idea where her son’s interests were focused, a tough one to answer. Then she added something to the effect that her son was on the autism spectrum, but he was “high functioning”. In the moment, I simply responded, “I am too. I was just diagnosed last year.”

She didn’t skip a beat and went on to explain that programming seemed to really interest him, but she didn’t even know where to look for resources. None of my kids have ever been interested in technology and computers the way I am, so I’ve never had to think in terms of what would help a preteen and young teenager. Nor did I have time to ask many questions. I mentally ran through modern programming options and decided that an autistic kid who had shown enough interest in the topic that his mother was asking strangers for advice would likely want to dive into a real language. At the same time, it would need to be one that was accessible to a beginner and for which there were a lot of tutorials and resources online in multiple formats since I had no idea how he best absorbed information. So I recommended that she search for python tutorials. It’s a language with which you can do just about anything you want and it runs on pretty much any modern platform. Moreover, there are free tutorials and classes available online in written text, interactive formats, and videos. (And probably other formats as well.) It should be possible to find something that fits his learning style.

And then it was time to take my father-in-law back to his facility. Will that brief encounter end up helping the woman and her son, even a little bit? I have no idea. If her son does have an interest in programming, python is a pretty accessible language. Will disclosing that I was autistic  to her help? I hope it does, but again I have no way to know. There’s very little representation of autistic adults out there today. And 51 year old adults, autistic or allistic, are rarely much like they were when they were 12. Experience and age do make a significant difference. I know parents today hear a lot of frightening stuff about autism. Given that, I hope it helps the mother that the random person she approached for advice was also autistic.

I’m not sure if I’m having more chance encounters with autistic children or parents of autistic children since I was diagnosed or if I’m just noticing each encounter now. Were these encounters off my radar before and therefore didn’t stick in my memory? But now each such encounter stands out as significant to me? Or are people disclosing to me now more than they did before? I truly have no idea, but it’s not like I have an autistic sticker on my forehead.  For whatever reason, though, I’m certainly aware of more encounters now.


Fighting First Impressions

Posted: March 18th, 2017 | Author: | Filed under: Autism | Tags: , , , | Comments Off on Fighting First Impressions

I ran across an academic paper that reviewed research into “thin slice judgments” of autistic people by neurotypical people. (It can also be downloaded and saved as a PDF for those who might prefer to do so.) For those who might not have encountered the term before, thin slice judgments are the ones we make very quickly and with minimal exposure when encountering another person. They represent our ‘gut feeling’ about someone or what we often describe as our ‘first impression’. It’s often an unconscious reaction rather than anything we consider. And the results of these studies were pretty telling. Neurotypical thin slice judgments of autistic people tend to be negative. The studies were constructed differently, but all revealed the same underlying bias.

Specifically, we are viewed as people our allistic peers are less likely to speak to, sit near, or spend time with. We are perceived as more awkward, more unapproachable, less dominant, and less likable. It’s important to recognize that the nature of thin slice judgments is that they are based on extremely minimal input. They are, however, powerful. It’s those very early judgments that determine how likely we are to interact with someone at all or for more than a few seconds. The first study even included different modalities and the only one that didn’t show a difference was when the participants were reading a written transcript.

I very much doubt that’s exactly a surprise to any of my autistic peers. We know we are treated differently. We’re familiar with all the social barriers we face. And for those of us who were late diagnosed, that was true long before we had any idea we were autistic. However, this study illustrates that it’s not as simple as autistic “social deficits” on our part. Thin slice judgments are not based on any actual social interaction. These are the unconscious judgments before any meaningful interaction or even any interaction whatsoever occurs.

As a result, autistic people are constantly fighting an uphill battle against those negative first impressions. Since some of those judgments are whether or not someone will even sit with us or speak to us, it’s an ongoing struggle just to engage with our allistic peers. We’re fighting against their thin slice judgments.

For me, that helps explain why all my work learning social rules, practicing verbal tone and inflection, rehearsing facial expressions, and studying acting has always been insufficient. Thin slice judgments come into play before any of those can be brought to bear. A lot of the time I never even get the chance to employ the varied social skills I’ve developed. It’s not unusual for me to be in a crowded social setting and have nobody speak to me at all. Sometimes I’ll make an effort, with varying degrees of success, to initiate conversations with people. But I can also go a whole evening with nobody in a crowd of strangers or almost strangers ever interacting with me.

I found this paper personally helpful. It’s good to know that it’s not just my imagination. And it’s good to know that it’s based on their judgments rather than anything I’ve actually done or said. But it’s also somewhat discouraging. I’m already at a disadvantage when actively interacting and engaging with the larger neurotypical world. I also have to climb out of a hole dug by their negative first impressions before I can even get to the starting line. And there’s no learned skill or strategy that can alter thin slice judgments. Extended interaction always gives you the chance to overcome and reverse them. But the nature of thin slice judgments is that they have a lot to do with whom people choose to interact in the first place.

I find this search of research helpful. Your mileage may vary, of course.


Autism Spectrum Disorder as a Diagnosis

Posted: November 26th, 2016 | Author: | Filed under: Autism | Tags: , , , , | 4 Comments »

There’s been a lot of discussion about whether or not those on the autism spectrum should be included in the DSM or treated as a diagnosable condition. Silent Wave has one of the best and most comprehensive posts on this topic. I’ve been mulling the topic for some time. I think I have something of a contrary perception, but only on certain aspects and approaches. I’m still not sure I can reduce those thoughts into something coherent and understandable, but I decided it was time to at least make the attempt.

First, I do want to be clear. Autism is not a disease and is not communicable, therefore by definition it can’t be any sort of “epidemic” as we often hear bandied about. It’s also true that autism spectrum disorder doesn’t really fit well in Axis I of the DSM, but it also doesn’t fit anywhere else. The DSM doesn’t really have a way to categorize neurodevelopmental differences. ASD is placed in Axis I because it doesn’t fit anywhere else, so that becomes the catch-all Axis. While there may be environmental issues involved with flipping specific genes associated with autism, in this instance those factors are ones impacting sperm and eggs prior to conception and perhaps some environmental factors in early fetal development. By the time we are born, our neurology is already well-developed. And it’s also true that autism, even though it’s uncommon, appears to fall within the normal range of human development and seems to have been pretty consistent within humanity for a very, very long time. From an evolutionary perspective, that long-term consistency is interesting, though I’m not sure any conclusions can be drawn from it. Still, autism is not a disorder you develop after birth and it’s not something that can ever be cured or eliminated. The level of support a person requires can vary and, in certain circumstances where their environment is sufficiently managed and structured and there aren’t any other issues such as intellectual disability, an autistic person may not require any support at certain times in their life. In those circumstances, they would no longer meet the diagnostic criteria for ASD if evaluated, but their neurology would still be autistic.

However, with all that said, I don’t agree that we don’t need  some sort of formal mechanism for identifying and diagnosing autism. And I think that becomes more evident by exploring some of the places where the analogy with the LGBTQIA+ community used in Silent Wave’s post breaks down. I do want to be clear up front that I don’t consider myself a member of any segment of the LGBTQIA+ community. At most, I’m a little gender non-conforming and the way attraction interacts more with emotional intimacy than gender for me is difficult to express, but I’m generally a white, cis, straight male with all the enormous privilege that entails. I say that because I invite criticism and correction should I write anything incorrect or even problematic. I have had numerous family members and friends who are a part of one segment or another in that larger group going back much of my life and I’ve tried to listen and learn from the things they’ve told me. But I recognize the risk in trying to express things you’ve learned from others.

I want to say that it’s not clear to me that the LGBTQIA+ community is really one community at all as much as a collection of communities marginalized by our larger society for their sexual and/or gender identity. It’s my observation that many lesbians and gays reject bisexual identity, the trans community tends to be pushed to the outskirts of the community, asexuality and agender or nonbinary identities are often outright denied, and actual intersex individuals tend to be forgotten. Moreover, it doesn’t appear to surprise anyone in that community when white, gay men throw the rest of them under the bus. Gender identity and sexual or romantic orientation aren’t even really the same thing. I do find it interesting that at least one recent study has found a much higher correlation with autism among the transgender community, but that’s more of a rabbit trail for a separate post than germane to this one.

And while Silent Wave was correct that homosexuality or same sex attraction was removed from the DSM, the implication that the LGBT community no longer was included in it was incorrect. Gender Dysphoria (renamed from Gender Identity Disorder) remains very much a condition classified in the DSM. I won’t pretend that’s not problematic and I’ve read much discussion about it by members of the trans community, but it nevertheless remains the primary existing avenue for medical treatment and other supports. Therefore the analogy really only applies to sexual orientation, not gender identity.

And focusing more narrowly reveals one of the issues with the analogy. Sexual attraction is something that people can work out for themselves. Even when cultures try to suppress it, it tends to overwhelm societal taboos. For many people, it’s such a primary force that even when individuals work to suppress those urges, they tend to drive behavior. It’s not something most people need help identifying. It can be a confusing and difficult process, but it’s a single, if pervasive, aspect of your identity and one that is often a driving force for many people.

The neurological differences associated with the autism spectrum, by contrast, while similar from individual to individual, tend to manifest in variable ways. The autistic aspects of our brains are intertwined with all our thoughts and many of our behaviors. We are sufficiently alike that we can understand each other and commonalities can be noted, but we are also as different from each other as unique individuals can be. Absent an available and detailed diagnosis, I believe we would fall back into the situation that held for most of my life, where we were misdiagnosed or completely unidentified. Actually, that remains more common for autistic adults even today, though awareness is slowly growing.

Many of us also need the help and guidance of a professional with the appropriate experience when we discover something that makes us think we might be autistic. And, at least in my case, it’s not because I needed a “neurotypical” to explain to me how my brain works, though discussing that aspect with a neutral professional post-diagnosis has been helpful. Rather, I did not truly understand how an allistic brain worked or how my mind specifically differed from their minds. Of course, I knew I was different. I had known that my whole life. I had been trying to work out how my brain was different my whole life. My coworkers had been discussing the ways I approached things differently for decades. But nobody ever associated those differences with autism. Autism remains uncommon in the human population and varies enough in expression that it’s not necessarily obvious except in retrospect.

And yes, with the information now available online, there is a lot that can help people make some determination for themselves that they are autistic. But that information only exists because there are plenty of diagnosed adults providing a baseline and publishing their own experiences. Even with that information, I know I never would have truly accepted the idea absent a formal evaluation. Without the input from someone with a substantial background in psychology and neuropsychology who was also experienced testing and diagnosing autistic adults, my mind would have relentlessly deconstructed and attacked the idea. That’s simply how my mind works. And a formal evaluative process requires a potential diagnosis and diagnostic criteria for it.

The above also illustrates another point where the LGB and ASD analogy breaks down. The incidence of something other than normative heterosexual attraction is an order of magnitude greater than that of autism. Autism is both trickier to recognize and identify correctly and much less common. The only other autistic adults I myself know are ones I’ve met online. And even though there is a lot of information available online, it’s largely invisible until or unless something leads you to specifically search for it. And that will always be true. We’re just not a large enough portion of the population to be substantially more visible. And it’s the existence of a diagnosis with specific criteria that creates the patterns that can be found. Without that binding element, it becomes grains of sand lost on the beach of the Internet.

It’s also not true that the mental health and coping issues those of us who are autistic experience just by living are the result of comorbid disorders or conditions rather than a direct result of being autistic. I happen to be the perfect illustration of that truth. The diagnostician who evaluated me specifically tested and evaluated me for the disorders that are most often comorbid with autism as well as a general screening for any of a wide range of disorders. When discussing the results with me, she called me the most “purely autistic” person she had ever evaluated. I am not intellectually disabled. (If anything, I met the criteria for giftedness as a child.)  I do not have ADHD. I do not have OCD. While I have a base level of anxiety, it’s related to 51 years of actual experience of failure interacting with others and probably a heightened amygdala response and does not meet the criteria for an independent anxiety disorder diagnosis. And yet I have struggled and continue to struggle with life. I live in an allistic world and I have to interact with it every single day. I do need specific counseling and help to better manage that interaction and its impact on both myself and those around me.

I’m also not comfortable with an underlying assumption I sense in the desire to be removed from the DSM, that there’s something harmful or wrong about including the autism spectrum in the DSM. The argument that autism lies within the “normal” range of human neurological variation implicitly also argues that everything else in the DSM somehow doesn’t. It seems to flow from a sense that there’s something “wrong” with having a mental health condition. People trained in psychological and neuropsychological testing are the professionals best equipped, at least as things currently stand, to diagnose autism. Their manual is the DSM, so it’s the appropriate place for the diagnostic criteria. And people with other conditions diagnosed under the DSM also fall within the normal human range of experience and variation. I would never be comfortable asserting anything else.

So yes, there are certainly problems with societal attitudes toward autistic people. There are also major issues with attitudes toward anyone with any other sort of mental health struggle. I don’t think we should try to resolve our problems by separating ourselves from everyone else with conditions delineated in the DSM. That more closely reminds me of the way different racial and ethnic groups in the United States worked to acquire “whiteness” instead of actually addressing the underlying problem with racial attitudes here.

The diagnostic criteria, the process of evaluation, the way the diagnosis is applied by clinicians, and the widespread lack of supports for autistic people all demonstrate problems and issues that need to be addressed. But even though progress is somewhat glacial currently, there have been improvements. The DSM-V diagnostic criteria are better than the DSM-IV criteria. And those were light years ahead of the DSM-III criteria and available diagnoses. The issues with obtaining evaluations reflect systemic issues in mental health care and more broadly in health care in general. There’s a lot of work to be done and progress that needs to be made. But removing autism from the DSM would not be progress. It would be a huge step backwards.

I’m not sure if I was really able to capture my thought process in writing. I’ve read my post now multiple times and aspects of it still don’t feel quite right. But I can’t think of a way to improve it, so I’ll let it stand as written.


The Struggle to Be

Posted: October 28th, 2016 | Author: | Filed under: Autism, Personal | Tags: , , , , | 3 Comments »

My counselor asked a question yesterday that stumped me. “If you had a magic wand, what you would want your life to be like?” Those sorts of questions have always been a challenge for me. I can imagine, even vividly imagine, all sorts of alternatives. In fact, I did that as a child, picking a point in the past and then focusing my mind on the idea that everything since that point had been a dream. But such questions always have a sense of unreality to them for me, especially the older I’ve gotten.

This is the life I have. A ‘me’ who had a different life wouldn’t actually be me. It’s a version of the disconnect I’ve felt when I’ve heard other adults who were teen parents say they regretted it, missed the life they could have had, and wished they had done something else. Was it hard being a teen parent? Sure. Sometimes it was incredibly hard. But saying I regret it or I wish it hadn’t happened feels to me like saying I wish my oldest daughter had never been born. In fact, if you follow the thread of my life, it’s basically saying I regret all my children. While I might have still had children, those hypothetical other children wouldn’t be the ones I actually have today. I deeply love all my children, and no matter how hard things have gotten, there has never been a day I’ve regretted their birth.

And the same is true of the rest of life. There’s good and bad. Some things are hard. There have been and continue to be struggles, but I don’t want a different life, per se, though I do want to live this one better. The bad things are just as much a part of who I am today as the good.

I was reminded of my blank-faced stare when my wife has asked me what I dream of doing now that the kids are grown. I enjoy discussing possible future trips with her. I enjoy doing things like the arts and food scene. But I don’t have a ‘bucket list’ or some similar set of dreams I need to achieve to make my life complete. And I have a hard time understanding the point, even though everyone around me seems to intuitively grasp it. If there’s something you want to do, start making a plan and then execute the plan. Until you’re ready to do that, what’s the point in creating a list? (Now lists that you actually plan to complete I totally understand, but that doesn’t seem to be what most people mean when asking about future dreams.)

Still, I stopped and gave the question serious consideration and, haltingly, honed in on one of my underlying struggles. I’m not really dissatisfied with my life. I want to improve my relationships with my older children. I need to work out how to relate better with my wife. I’m not a super social person, but I know I’ve been happier in the past when I’ve had at least one pretty close friend. That’s true even though it hasn’t happened very frequently and all such friendships have tended to fade for reasons I still don’t really understand. And my friendships have faded even when I’ve actually tried as hard as I could to keep them going.  While aspects of my job are extremely wearing, I enjoy the technical challenges it presents. I love learning and my job basically demands constant learning.

There aren’t really any drastic changes I would make to my life, magic wand or not. For the most part, this life fits me. That is, it would if I could actually live it. And it’s with that realization, I understood one aspect of my struggle.

It’s taking all the energy I have, and on some days more than I have, just to survive. Everything seems to require more effort. It’s hard to focus my attention without getting distracted. It’s hard to keep everything organized. And it’s harder than ever to limit the pull of things that aren’t part of what I need to do in that moment. Dealing with change and interruptions to routine are more difficult to manage now. It takes more effort to maintain an appropriate physical presentation and not do things that appear ‘odd’ to most people. I struggle more and more to process things I hear. The delays in my response are almost always noticeable now. Light is increasingly painful. Bright sun is barely tolerable even with my sunglasses and hats. Night driving makes it feel like headlights are stabbing into my eyes. And even in one on one social interactions, I find I often can’t keep up. Trying to catch all the social cues and provide the right responses has become incredibly draining.

Moreover, it’s been getting worse for a long time now, even though I had no idea what was happening. A decade ago I discovered I had sleep apnea, so I blamed my struggles on that. And I’m sure it was a factor, but it was exacerbating the problem, not causing it. Moreover, once it was controlled, things started sliding downhill again. Then I thought it was the damage I suffered as an undiagnosed celiac. And again, I’m sure that was a factor. Being sick and chronically malnourished will drain your energy and make life difficult. But it’s been seven years, I’m pretty much healed, and celiac disease is no longer a significant factor.

Yet I’m still hanging on by my fingernails. By the time I do the things I have to do each day, I’m so exhausted I’m asleep almost as soon as my head hits the pillow. (Staying asleep is another matter, altogether, but that’s not the point of this post.) I’m hardly managing anything more than the minimum I need to do to get by and even that’s a struggle most days. I’m so deeply tired down to my bones that even the thought of that next thing I need to do often fills me with dread.

Objectively, while crises still arise as they do for all of us, my life is actually calmer now than it ever has been in the past. It’s not like things have gotten harder and it’s taxing my ability to cope. Things have gotten easier. I’ve gotten healthier. And simply living life has gotten harder for me. Each day is a hill and the hills keep getting steeper with no respite and no end in sight.

I don’t know why simply being has gotten so much harder than it once was. But if I had a magic wand, that’s where I would apply it. Unfortunately, no such wand exists, so I’m left looking for more mundane responses. My tendency, of course, is to simply push through. I have a relentless will and I can and have pushed myself when I thought I had nothing left. The problem, of course, is that the well is finite. At a certain point, I can’t just bull through anymore. And I feel like I’m reaching a place where something has to give.

I have no answers, but I did come up with a response to the question and, I think, a revealing response. I pretty much have the life I want if I could actually live it rather than just survive it.


Who’s “In” and Who’s “Out” in the Autistic Community?

Posted: October 7th, 2016 | Author: | Filed under: Autism | Tags: , , , | 4 Comments »

There’s an ongoing “discussion” in the online community of autistic people about whether or not those who are only “self-diagnosed” (meaning they haven’t been able to obtain formal assessment, at least at the current point in time) should be included. It’s often expressed as a question about whether or not self-diagnosis is “valid”. Personally, I dislike the language of validity applied to an individual’s identity. We are all “valid” human beings. I’m also more confused by the fight itself than an active partisan for either “side” in the debate. I can’t discern why it seems to matter so much to some people.

VisualVox, the Aspie Under Your Radar, wrote a post on the issue and I left a rather lengthy comment. Upon reflection, I decided I might as well turn that comment into a post of my own. You probably will want to read her thoughts as well, since in places I do reference them.

I’m pretty sure everyone agrees that if you’re going to seek any sort of official support, accommodation, or anything else from the larger NT world for your autistic needs, you’re going to need the official paperwork to support your request. That’s just common sense. I’ll note, though, that it’s possible to negotiate unofficial accommodation. Looking back, I did that for decades at work as an undiagnosed autistic. I would frame it in terms of whether or not something in my environment was interfering with my ability to produce at an extremely high level and ask to have it adjusted. Since the people I worked for always thought it was in their own self-interest for me to keep doing what I was doing, even if they didn’t understand it, they were generally happy to accommodate my ‘quirks’.

But nobody with a ‘self-diagnosis’ is going to be looking for any official accommodation, anyway, since they will obviously know the above. In most cases, my assumption would be that they are trying to understand why they struggle in certain ways and contexts and why they appear to interact with the world around them differently from most other people. And they may be looking for ways to ease or at least better manage their struggles. In order to do so, they are reaching out to the online community because, honestly, where else could any of us have turned? I certainly didn’t have any other ready avenue for learning ways to cope with aspects of being autistic even once I was formally diagnosed. And I needed the information from those online sources to even confirm in my own mind that I needed to seek an assessment.

So I understand what at least most people with a self-diagnosis are doing and it strikes me as perfectly reasonable. Where else are they going to turn if not to the online community? And given the barriers to assessment and diagnosis in different parts of the world and the high bar gender, race, class, and finances can create even in locations where assessment may be available, official diagnosis may not be an option even for people who want it. And honestly, it’s hard for me to imagine that there are many people who wouldn’t want some sort of official validation and confirmation if they could obtain it. I know I was going back and forth in my own mind beforehand. Even on the drive to discuss the results, I was trying to work out what I would do if she told me I wasn’t autistic. And I masked so well (automatically and unconsciously) even during the assessment process that if neurological results (such as the 30 point split in my two core “intelligence” scores) and childhood history (such as constant spinning and pacing and complete meltdowns eventually requiring psychiatric intervention when anything at all in my room had been moved) hadn’t clearly shown autism, I might have ended up with the new social communication disorder diagnosis instead. Since then, I’ve been able to peel back the masking and coping behaviors and find a lot more evidence for the Section B criteria.

So, given all that, I’ve been bemused by the vehement reactions in some corners of the online autistic community against those who are working from their own self-diagnosis. I can’t see any way those who are operating from a self-diagnosis are harming, threatening, or taking anything from those of us with official diagnoses. The online community is an unofficial place to provide and receive information, advice, and support. If someone needs or can provide that, it’s the appropriate place to be. Nobody’s personal story is invalid and it’s impossible to know who will be helped by it if you choose to share it. And in many ways, a self diagnosis is exactly that. It’s a personal story marking their current place in their journey. Honestly, an official diagnosis doesn’t really change that fact. Ultimately, I only have my story to share. Some people may find it helpful. Others won’t. And that’s okay. We aren’t all cut from the same cookie cutter mold.

CDHD (compassion deficit hyperactivity disorder) is a funny way to capture some of the reaction against self-diagnosed individuals. And a lack of compassion may be a part of it. Honestly, I don’t understand the fight response I’ve witnessed. In some cases, it seems that a person may have encountered some people online in the past who claimed an autistic self-diagnosis and were also jerks. I can see how they might end up lumping everyone with a self-diagnosis into the same pot if it happened multiple times or was particularly painful. Of course, there’s no real relationship between the two. All sorts of people in every category can be jerks. Heck, even otherwise helpful and generally nice people can have a bad day and come across as a jerk or even actually be a jerk. (Usually, if you aren’t a thoroughgoing jerk, you’ll recognize your jerkiness later and apologize for it.)

Other than that, though, I’ve been unable to discern what’s triggering the fight reflex for some people. Someone who has assessed themselves may be mistaken; our own lens is hardly free of bias and distortion. But that fact doesn’t harm or threaten me. Moreover, I have no way of knowing whether or not someone has been officially diagnosed unless they choose to share that information. It’s an unreliable mechanism for determining who you will read or interact with. The better gauge, and the one I’ve used in all situations, is simply assessing what they have to say and how they choose to say it. If I find it interesting or helpful, then it’s interesting or helpful. If I don’t find it interesting or helpful, I’ll look elsewhere. But that doesn’t mean that someone else might not find interacting with them helpful. If they are abusive, I will screen them out. I’ve been abused enough in my life. I don’t need to let abusive people in at this point and I’m much better at managing that aspect today than I used to be.

But nothing in that process has any connection whatsoever to the official state of someone’s assessment and diagnosis. I’ve been trying to puzzle out the underlying issue. It just seems like such a strange thing to fight about.