“Dear You: To my Aspie Sisters and Brothers”
My response to this one is brief but heartfelt:
Thank you.
Category Archives: Blog responses
Crisis of Faith
For the last several months I’ve been experiencing a deep crisis of faith. Not my Christian faith, but rather my faith in what I do as a TSS. For those of you unfamiliar with the TSS position, it stands for Therapeutic Support Staff. Most of the children served by my agency (and all the kids that I have worked with) are on the autism spectrum, though there are other diagnoses/issues that can cause a recommendation for services. Here’s how it works: after an intake evaluation, a child may get a BSC, who is a master’s level clinician. The BSC consults with the caregivers and school (if relevant) and develops a treatment plan full of objectives and interventions. Then the TSS, a bachelor’s level therapist, implements the interventions (while teaching caregivers/teachers to use them) and collects data and documentation (the bane of my existence).
Some tools of the trade – computer for documentation, a variety of ear protection, visuals, fidget toys, a pencil for writing a flexible visual schedule, highlighter to color in a smiley chart.
I worked for another agency for a year and nine months before reaching burnout point and moving home, and I have worked for this agency just as long. I’ve always been really good at my job – at least, especially good at the working-with-the-kids part, because I *get* them and can tell what’s going on with them before most other adults in their lives. I always figured it was because I have empathy for autistic kids because of my cousins, and because I’m a highly sensitive person myself, and because I’ve studied a lot about autism. But last summer when I realized I have Asperger’s, I started to not only empathize with and understand the kids but also identify with them. And in many ways that has made my job much harder. One day I exclaimed in frustration, “I feel like I’m disguised, helping those adults to oppress my people!” My mom chuckled, but it’s a real feeling.
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A big component in the development of my Crisis of Faith was reading a few blog posts as I was exploring my own self-diagnosis.
[Warning – this post is going to involve a lot of “recommended reading.” I’ll try to summarize the key idea of each link I post, but they are all worth reading.]
One of the first was “Quiet Hands.” As I read this post, my heart sank. How many times have I, following the leads of the adults in charge at school, tried to suppress my clients’ stims? Sure, I’ve suggested things like fidget toys as alternatives; and sure, most of my main client’s hand movements are accompanied by disruptive sound effects (think Angry Birds; that’s the game he’s usually playing in his head while stimming with his hands). But I’ve also used this visual:
Which brings me to the next blog, which I think is actually where I saw the previous link. “On Failing Kindergarten,” by Alyssa on Yes, That Too. I spent all last year, and most of this one, watching the staff in autism support rooms trying to make kids follow these rules. I’ve felt frustrated with them making a kid sit with his feet on the floor in front of him, when the kid is trying to sit on his foot or sit cross-legged in the chair- like I do. I’m so uncomfortable with conflict and speaking up. . . if I’m in a situation where I don’t think my advice will be heeded I am unlikely to offer it. But I’ve tried to muster courage to be a sort of advocate when I can. In that specific example I did finally say, “I have trouble sitting on these hard chairs; have you tried one of those squishy things they can sit on?” (I’ve seen them at the school.) The teacher shrugged it off with a, “We’ve tried everything” (not true) and resumed firmly demanding he sit “right” in the chair, threatening him with the weighted lap pad instead of offering it as a good thing.
Situations like that are difficult, because I am a guest in these classrooms and it is not my place to tell the teachers what they’re doing wrong. . . I’m there to explain interventions that work for my client and model them. And like I said, I am uncomfortable. I’m too afraid to say things that will cause discord or bad feelings, since I have to be around these people every day. I was yelled at once at work while trying to implement an intervention and nearly cried; I was terrified of seeing the person again. Although I tried to act normally around them I was also very wary. So I have the internal conflict of watching treatment I strongly disagree with but being afraid of trying to change it.
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Here is an example of what it’s like to *see* what the people in charge do not see when an autistic student is acting out. Her writing powerfully conveys the feeling of heartbreak and helplessness I often feel in such situations. – “What I Saw” by AutisticChick
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Alyssa
Alyssa
Alyssa
On Failing Kindergarten
I’ve only read a few of Matt Walsh’s posts and I don’t agree with everything he says. But I really liked most of what he says in, “Help, doc, I’m bored by boring things. I think I’ve got the ADHD!” I agree that medication is over-prescribed, but I think he’s a little too strongly anti-meds (for an example of a family who dramatically benefits from meds, check out the BBC documentary Living with ADHD).
Here’s the main point of this post summed up in two quotes:
What if — this is a big IF — what if people are all, like, different?
Hold on.
Don’t stop reading yet. Seriously, think about it. What if there ISN’T actually some preordained mold of behavior and thought in which we’re all supposed to fit? What if it’s OK for some people to be a certain way, while others are another way, and still others are an entirely different way? What if some people are active, and some people aren’t; some people are creative, and some people aren’t; some people have a lot of energy, and some people don’t; some people are daydreamers, and some people aren’t? What if — again, HUGE if — but what if we tried to find a place for the unique qualities of all men and women, rather than attempting to chemically eradicate entire personality types simply because they don’t gel with our artificial societal constructs?
What if we stopped trying to make our kids “normal,” and instead encouraged them to be exceptional?
and:
Could it be that our kids are distracted because they’re surrounded by distractions? Could they be overstimulated because they’re surrounded by stimulation? Could they have trouble paying attention in school because school is tedious and boring?
I really loved that second quote.
I also read one of his rants about public schooling and homeschooling; again, I don’t agree with everything he says, but he made points that resonated and further weakened my already shaky faith in the public school system. And let me tell you, I have had the privilege of working with some amazingly wonderful educators. Ever since I was a child I have had respect and affection for good teachers, and it continues to this day. From what I’ve seen, the school I mostly work in right now is a great school, at least by the standards of the schools I have seen or attended. However. . . more and more I’m seeing how it really doesn’t work for everyone. I see kids falling through the cracks, because even the best teachers are only human and have too much on their plates (crowded classes, heavy workloads, lack of parental involvement, etc). I cannot emphasize enough how much I respect most of these teachers; I honestly cannot think of a single negative thing to say about my client’s second grade teacher, for example. But when I’m sitting there trying to get this kid to stop his noisy stimming while the class is taking turns reading, I have to wonder, “Why are we here?” He pretty much never gets anything out of the lessons in the gen-ed classroom; he learns and works much better one-on-one. Most of our time in the gen-ed room is spent trying to keep him quiet and on task; if he doesn’t have a specific task in front of him like a worksheet it’s rough. So why is he there? To try to learn how to sit still and quiet and listen to group instruction? That leads to the next question – Why? Does he really need those skills? I mean, what kind of additional education is he going to seek in the future, and what kind of job? When I think about it, most jobs don’t involve the kind of “skills” he’s supposed to be learning in school. I am all for him spending time with the gen-ed kids, not only for his benefit but for theirs. We didn’t have any kids like him in my class growing up. In fact, I have so little exposure to individuals who have labels like ID that when I first started going to a Life Skills classroom with another client I felt VERY uncomfortable around those kids, much to my shame. But the kids in my younger client’s class – they accept him. They are willing to help and prompt him and pester him for high-fives. I’ve seen bright and social young boys give up doing something “normal” with their friends at recess to interact with my client and help him practice things like tossing and kicking a ball – and this without any adults suggesting they do so. In those moments I feel hope for the future.
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So, what are the next steps? Well, my first personal step is switching gears and going back to college to study Information Sciences and Technology. After we discovered my place on the spectrum, my mom encouraged me to look at career fields that would be a better fit for someone with Asperger’s. I start classes next month and will continue working as a TSS part-time for as long as I can manage doing both. Another step has been slowly “coming out” at work. I didn’t make a big formal announcement, but if I’m chatting with someone about a student’s specific behavior I will say something like, “I can really understand why he has a hard time with the noise in the cafeteria. I started wearing earplugs in there! I’ve come to realize that if there had been more awareness when I was a kid I would have been diagnosed, myself. Loud noises like that are overstimulating to me and make me feel really anxious. Do you think he’d tolerate some kind of ear protection for in there?” I don’t make a big deal about it, but I want them to know I’m giving advice not just as a trained TSS but as an autistic person. An also-autistic person speaking for and defending the rights of these autistic kids who don’t yet know how to speak up for themselves. Which leads me to a third step – promoting true “Autism awareness” by encouraging autistics to raise their voices and NTs to start listening.
“You make me feel disabled. Yes, you.” by Pensive Aspie
“You make me feel disabled. Yes, you.” by Pensive Aspie
I’m typing this and I haven’t even finished reading the post – I like it that much.
My words can express an agreement and hide my dislike for certain things, but my body language is almost incapable.
Yep.
Even large family gatherings with people who love us can make us anxious. When you dismiss our anxiety with a wave of your hand and a roll of your eyes, you say our feelings don’t matter. Your dismissal of my feelings increases my anxiety because I feel I have disappointed you. I feel like I cannot do anything right.
YES.
Because sensory issues play a big part in our lives, we often prefer specific foods. Forcing us to try new foods and chastising us if we don’t proves to me that you don’t respect my boundaries. I am an adult. I know what I like and what I don’t.
THIS.
I finished reading it and wanted to shout, “Amen!” and show it to everyone I know. Here’s my first step:
http://pensiveaspie.wordpress.com/2014/04/19/you-make-me-feel-disabled-yes-you/
“Before I Arrive… Aspie Exhaustion”
“Before I Arrive… Aspie Exhaustion”
Question: do non-autistic people really not have a stream of consciousness that sounds like this? It wears me out.
Empathy
lightning across Lake Winnipesaukee
Thoughts about empathy have been swirling around my head for weeks, and I’ve been wanting to write something about it. . . but this is a topic that could easily be researched for a dissertation. Instead of trying to write a cohesive essay I’m just going to catalog some thoughts here.
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I instantly become defensive when people talk about autistics and their ability to care about others. I have reacted this way for years, even before I considered myself on the spectrum. For example, at a meeting a coworker was talking about her brother who has Asperger’s, and his reaction to someone close to him dying. I can’t remember what she said verbatim, but the gist was, “He didn’t really seem upset about it. They just don’t make that connection with other people. He didn’t want to talk about it.” Without pacing the room and waving my arms around and shouting, “I’m autistic, too! We are human! We have emotions and love people!” I quietly tried to bring a little perspective. I suggested that perhaps he didn’t seem upset because people on the spectrum often don’t understand and express their emotions the same way neurotypicals do. I added that funerals and the like can be really uncomfortable situations, with all those people crying and putting out negative vibes and maybe he was struggling to deal with that, rather than showing his own grief in a recognizable way. I also suggested that individuals with Asperger’s are often logical people who want to fix things, and he might see talking about the situation as pointless because “What good will it do?”
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I think one of the problems is, how do we define empathy? I have Tony Attwood’s book Asperger’s Syndrome (1998) on my shelf, and I pulled it down to see what he had to say about empathy. A search via the index gave me this (p 55, 56):
The original list of features for Asperger’s Syndrome includes the comment that the child lacks empathy. This should not be misinterpreted as meaning that the child completely lacks the ability to care for others. It is more that they an be confused by the emotions of others and have difficulty expressing their own feelings.
But wait – isn’t “caring for others” what most people are thinking of when they talk about empathy? I get the sense from things I read/hear that a lot of people think that autistic people don’t care about the feelings of others, that they’re unfeeling robots. The almighty Wikipedia says, “Empathy has many different definitions that encompass a broad range of emotional states, such as caring for other people and having a desire to help them; experiencing emotions that match another person’s emotions; discerning what another person is thinking or feeling; and making less distinct the differences between the self and the other.” (emphasis added) Clearly people on the spectrum don’t (as a whole) lack the ability to care for others and want to help them. It’s the other aspects of empathy that can be difficult, like “discerning what another person is thinking or feeling.”
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It seems like this “lack of empathy” (or perhaps we should call it, “misunderstanding others”) isn’t reserved only for autistics.
This author says it well:
I think it’s important to draw attention to the fact that this lack of understanding goes both ways. I find that when people on the autistic spectrum fail to understand someone’s reaction, this is seen as ‘lack of empathy’ – but, when someone who is not on the autistic spectrum fails to understand the reaction of an autistic person, this is seen as a case of ‘autistic people are a puzzle’ and a justification for representing us as a jigsaw puzzle piece. These double standards are unhelpful. They place all responsibility for lack of understanding on the autistic person, and create a divide between those who are on the spectrum and those who aren’t.
Rachel Cohen-Rottenberg states in her Critique of the Empathy Quotient (EQ) Test:
After all, if the statement about intuitively reading awkwardness or discomfort assumed that the respondent were looking at an autistic person, the results would come out quite differently, for two reasons: a) autistic people stand a better chance of reading one another’s signals properly, and b) non-autistic people usually find it very difficult to read autistic people’s signals properly.
NTs may be better at reading NTs than autistics are, but autistics are better at reading other autistics than NTs are.
I believe this is one of the reasons I am a good TSS. Often I’m more likely to accurately guess what’s going on in my clients’ heads than even their caregivers are. Here’s one example:
A young autistic girl was screaming under the kitchen table while I talked with her mom and her BSC. She hadn’t yet been given her medication. When her mother directed her to take the medication she refused, and so the mom told her to stand in time-out (a spot in the kitchen with us). The girl stood there for a minute but then went over and closed the sliding-glass door that led outside. Her mother yelled at her for leaving time-out. I told the women that I heard a car drive past right before the child closed the door, and maybe that was the antecedent. The BSC agreed that the girl was probably over-stimulated and the car was extra loud to her, even though the two other women hadn’t noticed it. The mom then stopped reprimanding the girl, and after getting her to take her pill she had her go to her quiet bedroom to calm down until it kicked in.
As a bit of an aside, here is a beautiful post that may help you empathize with the sadness of someone with AS – “10 Things Not to Say or Do When I am Sad.”
A wonderful example of NT/AS misunderstanding was on “The Hofstadter Insufficiency” episode of The Big Bang Theory. Starting at minute 1:45 in this video, Sheldon shares something personal with Penny.
Sheldon: Here’s something else you don’t know about me. You just hurt my feelings.
Penny: What did I do?
Sheldon: I opened up and shared something deeply upsetting to me. And you treated it as if it were nothing.
Penny: I-I didn’t think it was a big deal.
Sheldon: It is to me. That’s the point.
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Imagine a row of people watching an emotional movie, such as the recent version of Les Mis. Three of them are crying, and one isn’t. Would you assume the first three are feeling empathy for the character singing on-screen, and the fourth was cold and unfeeling? Maybe.
The first person is thinking about the character’s situation and feelings, and she’s empathizing and feeling their emotional pain.
The second is crying because the song was a favorite of his late mother, and he’s grieving for his loss.
The third is having memories of her own past hurts stirred by the words of the song.
And then there’s me. I’m literally thinking, “This is a really sad song. I can’t imagine how horrible it would be to be in her situation and feeling all of those things. And if I let myself think of her sadness or my own past heartaches, I will cry. I hate feeling negative emotions, and I HATE crying in public. . . so I’m putting up the wall. Look at that – they’re using a really narrow depth of field. Why don’t they keep his eyes in focus? That’s Photography 101. Obviously they’re doing it on purpose, but I really don’t care to stare at this guy’s nose-pores. This is weird.” And I focus on the cinematography and random details for the rest of the film.
Take that, Les Mis. I can shoot with a wide aperture, too.
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The empathy issue was actually the biggest reason I thought I wouldn’t qualify for an autism diagnosis. I’ve always felt *too* sensitive to the emotional states of others, as well as their hidden feelings at times. In Rudy Simone’s excellent book Aspergirls, she says that women with AS can have heightened “psychic sensitivity” and can sense things like others’ true intentions hidden behind their outward appearance and words. Tony Attwood mentions this as well in this forward. And in this post on the topic, Tania Ann Marshall even cites the Highly Sensitive Person website that helped me so much in college. In these cases, it seems like women with AS are using this “sixth sense” to compensate for not being able to read people the same way neurotypicals do.
Here are two posts that talk about people with AS feeling too much empathy:
The Hidden Autistics II: Asperger’s in Adults and Empathy
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In my readings and wanderings, I also came across Aspies who fought against the push to say autistics don’t have an empathy problem.
Here’s a very short one – “Stop Making Value Judgements about Empathy Please”
“The Empathy Conundrum“- I’ve mentioned before that I’m a big fan of the Musings of an Aspie blog. I really appreciate this post, and it gives a good balance to the discussion on empathy. In fact, re-reading it now I feel like she has much better things to say about empathy than I do, but since I’ve already typed up most of this post I’ll keep it.
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One day I was reading a link someone shared on facebook, and on the side of the page saw a link to another article titled, “10 Symptoms of Asperger’s Syndrome.” Feeling a little trepidation about what might be said regarding AS, I clicked the link. The third symptom listed is “Inability to Empathize.”
Individuals with Asperger’s syndrome may find difficulty empathizing with others. As they age, the affected person will learn the accepted social response for interacting with others. While they may react appropriately and say the “right” things, they may not understand why the other person is truly upset. This can be an issue in childhood as the individual with Asperger’s may play too roughly with their peers or say cruel things, unknowingly hurting the other person. When confronted for this behaviour, the child may respond that what they said was true and they do not understand the issue.
Oops. I recently made an off-hand comment online that caused a dear friend to cry; that was definitely not my intention, and obviously I couldn’t see how it would upset her, or I wouldn’t have posted it. And I can’t tell you how many times (both growing up and even in the past few years) I have said something to my sister that really upset her, and my mom would reprimand me and have to explain to me why she was upset. Usually my first reaction in those situations wasn’t to feel sorry – it was to feel frustrated and annoyed that she responded that way, because I “couldn’t see what the big deal was.” Especially if I thought I was just stating a neutral fact.
Maybe I have a problem with empathy after all.
Brilliant but disabled
Why I’m still disabled, even though I’m brilliant (or so people tell me)
This is another great piece in the same vein as my last post. I was going to pick a line or two to quote, but I couldn’t decide! Just go read the whole thing 🙂
Reflecting on “The Doubly Exceptional Child Grows Up”
After reading the Musings of an Aspie post that led to my self-diagnosis, I read several more of her entries. This is one I read with a special hunger, because I too was labeled “gifted” as a kid and we didn’t know I had Aspergers. Unlike Cynthia Kim, I didn’t have a great gifted program at my school. I was in 1st grade when I received the diagnosis and the next year I was thrown in with some older kids (scary!) for the weekly activities. (If I recall correctly I was the first one in my grade to go, but one other girl may have started at the same time.) I only have two clear memories of the program. The first is building towers with straws in the library; I was frustrated when we were done and I saw the superior techniques the other kids had used. The second was using an SLR camera. We were given note cards saying what we were to photograph, and mine said “blacktop” – I was super embarrassed when I had to ask the teacher what it was and she told me I was standing on it. Today I asked Mom a few questions to check my own memories of the timeline. She said she talked to my 2nd grade gen-ed teacher and they agreed that to me it felt more like a punishment, so they let me quit the program.
Fortunately I wasn’t permanently deterred from learning how to use an SLR.
In fifth grade a went to a different school (I was bored; they promised I could work at my own pace; they lied). I enjoyed the gifted program there, mostly because I had a crush on one of the boys. When I returned to public school the next year I continued in the program. From what I recall the teacher was pretty cool and really nice to me, but my peers. . . well. . . they were all girls, and at this point the bullying and social awfulness had started (and in junior high the gifted class ended up being one of my worst settings socially). But that’s a topic for another day. In 9th the teacher who normally had the gifted kids for a period was ill, and the sub didn’t do much with us, so it was basically a fun study hall. That was my last experience with the gifted program. Junior and senior high were academically better for me because there were accelerated and AP courses to take.
Back to the post titled “The Doubly Exceptional Child Grows Up.” I hope you’ll read it in its entirety, but here are a few of my favorite key quotes:
Adults wrote off our quirks as a byproduct of our intelligence. They sent us out to the playground and expected us to figure out how to navigate the social minefields that lurked within kickball games and jump rope circles. We were smart. We would get it eventually.
This is a bit like taking a kid who’s a good baseball player, throwing him in the pool, then being surprised if he sinks like a rock. What do you mean he can’t swim? If he’s athletic enough to hit a baseball, surely he’s athletic enough to swim.
When you arrive in adulthood lacking the social skills that most people have mastered by sixth grade, life becomes exponentially more confusing and hard to navigate. For much of my adulthood, I’ve had the odd belief that someday I would “grow up” and suddenly feel like an adult. That I was just a little behind the curve when it came to social skills and one day everything would magically fall into place.
A final note for today about giftedness. When I was in college, I took as an elective an education course titled Psychology of the Exceptional Child (special education). Our wonderful professor put the bell curve up on the board, and reminded us that two standard deviations below the mean on an IQ test meant a child received an MR diagnosis (now Intellectual Disability) whereas children two standard deviations above the mean were labeled Gifted. Children in the first group generally spend most of their school day in a special classroom, and children in the second group spend maybe an hour a week in a special classroom. Yet the second group is just as different from their typical peers as the first group is. That kinda blew my mind, and it helped me feel a little more understanding towards myself. It also helped explain why I felt so very different, though I hadn’t yet discovered the biggest missing puzzle piece.
Hmm. I wonder about the percentage of people at the right end of the bell curve who are also Aspies. Let’s research. . . first interesting Google result- here’s a great article about Gifted children with Asperger’s Syndrome – it includes a chart showing some differences between Gifted and AS kids as well as some strategies for helping the AS kids. I’m heading down a rabbit trail and have “real life” stuff to work on today, but I’d love to look into this more. If you have any thoughts or research to share, leave a comment!
Reflecting on “Aspergers Traits (Women, Females, Girls)”
“Reflection”
This is one of the posts I read right after my self-diagnosis. It is a post that still brings tears to my eyes when I read it again, because it accurately and eloquently describes so much of my life experiences and struggles. It is one of the best pieces I’ve found in my process of reflecting on and re-framing my past. I hope that you will take the time to read it – if you’re an Aspie, you may feel self-awareness and solidarity; if you are not, you may feel a new sense of understanding and empathy. (Because despite all of the talk about autistics and empathy, I find most NTs lack empathy towards autistics!)
I could comment on every point she makes, but this is one that stands out to me as extremely validating; it describes one of the biggest social struggles I faced as a kid:
We aren’t narcissistic and controlling–we know we are not, but we come across that way. We bring the subject back to ourselves because that is how we make sense of our world, that is how we believe we connect. We use our grasp of the world as our foundation, our way of making sense of another. We share our feelings and understandings in order to reach out. We don’t mean to sound ego-centered or over zealous. It’s all we know. We can’t change how we see the world. But we do change what we say. We hold a lot inside.
Without further ado, here is the link:
Click here to read “Aspergers Traits (Women, Females, Girls)” on Everyday Aspergers
Splines Theory: A Spoons Metaphor for Autism
Splines Theory: A Spoons Metaphor for Autism
This post is full of awesome. I loved the old Maxis games, so I loved her use of “reticulating splines.” The other metaphors are spot-on, too.
I’m as close to the Spectrum as you can be without being diagnosable. . . or am I?
Hi. My name is Schenley. Here’s a little bit of information about me that is relevant to today’s topic of discussion.
I’m 29 years old. I’ve been studying autism ever since my little cousins were diagnosed when I was in high school. I got a BA in psychology. I discovered the Highly Sensitive Person website in college, and it really helped me re-frame my life experiences and develop better coping skills. I’ve worked as a TSS with autistic kids for over 3 years. I diagnosed my dad with Aspergers a few years ago, and I’ve long joked about our “autistic tendencies.”
On July 25, 2013, I was chatting with an Aspie guy, and with the topic of Aspergers on my mind I found a link I had shared with my mom months earlier. (I thought she’d be interested in reading about an AS/NT marriage where the woman was the Aspie.) I clicked the link and somehow ended up reading her post titled “When Being a Good Girl is Bad for You.”
Here are what my thoughts sounded like as I read it:
Huh. I was a conscientious “good girl” too.
But. . . why wouldn’t your Nancy Drew mysteries be lined up in numerical order? That just makes sense. It’s how it should be. All of my Animorph books were in order. I organized my collections, too. I remember having a case to sort all of my little colored erasers, and compulsively organizing Crayola boxes of 96 crayons into meticulous rainbow order.
photo by bookgrl
Everyone called me “shy,” too.
The section called “Aspies at Play” – this is where things got intense.
“God mode” – Wow. I know being bossy was my biggest social deficit as a kid, and I struggled for years to overcome it. It was tough.
The difference between boys’ games and girls’ games – I always preferred things like playing video games with the guys (something I was good at) to role-playing with the girls. Playing with children as an adult (as a nanny, babysitter, or TSS) I am still that way. I thought it was just because I was a “tomboy” instead of a “girly girl,” but it’s more than that.
“isolation, bullying and depression” – words I know too well.
By the end of this blog post my perspective had changed. I was not just “as close as you can get to the Spectrum without being diagnosable.”
Seeing this chart sealed the deal. 
I quickly showed it to people closest to me. My mom is certain that if there had been more awareness, I would have been diagnosed as a kid.
Thus began my quest for more knowledge and self-understanding, reading blogs and books about women with Aspergers. Reading the blogs, I’ve been going back-and-forth on the idea of starting my own blog. Do I want to let people I know deeper inside my heart and head, or would I want to write anonymously? Would I even be able to write honest, detailed posts without giving away my identity if someone who knows me read it? Do I have anything worth saying? Could it be therapeutic to write, anyway? Do I really have the time to take on yet another project?
I’ve decided to give it a shot. To start I’d like to revisit some of those posts from other women that really hit home and made me feel less alone, that helped me understand myself. To reflect on those first, interspersing more independent writings as I go. Baby steps. Unlike my quilt patterns or photography, I have no agenda, no desire for recognition or monetary gain here. It’s an experiment, and a less structured one than I’d normally like. Baby steps 😉
And I’ve decided to not try to hide my identity as the author of this blog. Most of my life as an undiagnosed Aspie has involved feeling invisible. Feeling like I had to hide my true thoughts and feelings. What good has that done me? It’s time to be real. I’ve always been an honest person- I’m an Aspie, after all – but too often I’ve held my tongue or stayed hidden.
So like she says in this video I watched recently – I’m coming out of the closet.
Walking Inland 