Planning and organisation

I have a big problem with planning. At the moment my day has totally gone to pot because I’ve been ill, but when I’m firing on all cylinders I get everything done by making lists. I get up in the morning and make a list of what I need to do that day. I try to prioritise but some tasks are harder than others, so it’s the easiest things that usually get done first. I don’t normally get everything done on the list either.

My problem is the slowness at which I do things. Often I have to bribe myself to do stuff with treats, like two episodes of the golden girls then I’ll tidy up, or something nice to eat then I’ll sort through my mail. Things I don’t like doing are generally physical tasks; tidying up, brushing my teeth, having a shower, getting changed, washing up, ironing, anything that involves interaction with the physical world. Sometimes I think I’m in danger of going into a coma I sit still for so long. Which is why writing is good for me. It keeps me mentally alert at least.

Tasks that require a lot of concentration are also harder, because I find it hard to stay focused. I’m a terrible day dreamer. I remember my Nan once saying to my mother when I was about eight, ‘Victoria has such good concentration, I called her name the other day and she didn’t hear me, she was so engrossed in what she was doing.’ I didn’t hear her call my name, not because I was concentrating, my hearing just plays tricks on me (an autistic thing), but from that moment on I always considered myself to have good concentration. It wasn’t till I was older that I realised I didn’t. When I was studying for my A level’s, I sat in the dining room all day, for every day we were given off to revise. I wasn’t revising the whole time, I would often drift off, but I knew if I sat there all day I would get at least half a days work done. (I didn’t do very well, but that’s because I hadn’t been studying the rest of the year).

There are some tasks I can do quickly. I type quickly. I remember our typing lessons at school, we were given a book to work from and a typewriter, the teacher sat at the front of the class. It was very hard not to look at the keys while I was typing. But it paid off, my friend confessed she cheated and looked at the keys, I think most of the girls were. Anything which involves working on a computer, like data entry, I am fast at. My mind still wanders, but somehow my hands carry on doing the task without much input from me. Mindless tasks I am fast at.

It’s not just concentration that’s a problem for mental tasks. I think it’s also a dyspraxic thing. Not being able to organise my thoughts. It takes me a long time to write an essay than most people, finding out what I want to say and putting all the information in an order which leads the reader to the conclusion. No matter how soon I start my essays, I never seem to have enough time. I’ve been reading a book by a dyspraxic girl and she talks about having similar problems.

This is my problem with trying to organise my day, I‘m not able to organise my thoughts. Autistic people are really bad at sequencing. We have difficulty ordering events it time. This sounds very similar to the dyspraxic thing and about being disorganised. I’m not sure what the different is really. I have a very poor short term memory (common to both dyspraxic and autistic people). I tend to walk in out of rooms a lot. I frequently walk into a room, forget why I’m there walk out, try to do what I was doing then remember what I went in there to get. Walking into rooms without a plan is also dangerous because I am easily distracted by something else I find to do there.

Sometimes though, my mind makes sudden leaps forward and does something I haven’t seen it do before. Like this one time, when I managed to create a sequence in my mind with absolutely no prior planning or even intention. It hasn’t happened again since but it did give me an insight into how an NT person’s mind might work.

I had been thinking about brushing my teeth before going to bed, I was lying on my bed but hadn’t got in. I made the decision that I would. As soon as I had this thought another followed almost simultaneously. I could see the second thought ahead of the first (that I should make a hot water bottle), and there was another beyond that and then another, like a line stretching into the distance but inside my head. It was as if my first thought had set off a chain reaction, and all of a sudden I was certain what I was going to do. There was no lengthy deliberation involved, trying to figure out what should come next. I thought, this is how NT people must think, lots of thoughts happening almost at the same time, miraculously putting themselves in order! If only I could think like this all the time.

Autism and Emotions

Autistic people are often described as being emotionless. Sometimes we also like portraying ourselves in this way too, most of the time it is because we don’t fully understand the disadvantage this emotional deficit gives us. Saying autistic people are emotionless is a generalisation, and like all generalisations it is not entirely true. I can be very emotional, just not when it‘s appropriate or expected of me.

Occasionally I watch the news and see something that makes me sad, but not often. Sometimes I would sit with my Nan watching the news or reading the newspaper, and she would come out with ‘Oh that’s terrible, that poor couple’. I would agree with her, as I knew this was the appropriate response. Privately I used to think she was strange, she didn’t know these people, now I know it’s me that’s strange.

I can appear incredibly indifferent to other people. Not because I don’t care but because I can’t empathise, so I don’t do or say the right things. Over the years I have learnt the appropriate responses in a lot of situations. But I am guided by my store of other similar situations, not by my emotions. Sometimes I think back to a similar situation and compare it, and eventually at some point these become unconscious learned responses.

While I am cool and distant most of the time, I have moments when I ‘lose it’. Mostly this is when I get angry. Nobody knows how to make you angry more quickly than your family. Also I am very emotional and passionate about particular causes. I used to get into many heated debates with my Nan (we have different political views). I’m more laid back these days. People never change their beliefs because they’ve had an argument with someone, so what’s the point. Also, I realise it’s not always ‘appropriate’. Maybe people see me being emotional at these times and wonder why I’m so unemotional at other times, not unreasonably they may assume I only care about myself.

But I do care, I feel compassion for people. I don’t think this feeling comes from an emotional place though. I think we all have the ability to love one another, an unconditional love that comes form our heart. I care to a point where most people would have given up caring: I give people the benefit of doubt, I always give people second, third, fourth chances and more, I always try to comfort someone when I see they are upset. Mostly this sort of behaviour gives people the impression I am a doormat, someone they can take advantage of. But I still persist.

A lot of the time my logical thinking mind has to do the work that my emotional mind should be doing. Autistic people are more reliant on thinking and logic than NT people. I wonder if this makes autistic people more vulnerable to their egos than NT people. Autistic people often come across as very arrogant. It depends how you define ego. If you define it as that conscious thinking part of your mind I think it’s possible. Developing compassion for people is one way of overcoming ego.

Mental Disability

I’m trying to think of a term that describes autism. At my doctors it was referred to as a mental health problem. I don’t like this term. I’m not ill, I was born this way. You wouldn’t described someone who was blind as being ill, even if they became blind during their life. Mental health implies you have an illness that is curable. I know people are looking for a cure, and sometimes I read stories about people who have been cured. I don’t disbelieve these cures but hey only seem to work for a few people. The National Health Service doesn’t offer a treatment anyway.

Actually the National Health Service hasn’t offered me anything. My GP sent my report off to my local Mental Health team in October and I haven’t heard anything. Maybe they have a backlog of cases. I read a book recently, A Short Introduction to Autism, I think it was by Uta Firth. She argued that the increase in cases of autism is due to better diagnosis, but also added that clinicians were diagnosing people with autism so that these people could have access to better services even when they thought they didn‘t have autism. I asked myself where are all these services? I haven’t found them. I’ve spoken to parents of autistic children. I know how difficult it is to get help and why would anyone want to label their child autistic if they weren’t?

I like the term ‘Disabled’ although I’m not sure physically disabled people would like someone like me having the label ‘disabled’. I am though. I have little social contact as a result of my autism, finding a suitable job is proving very difficult. Despite being intelligent and hard working, my standard of living has been severely affected. I’m not arguing that I should be able to drive around with a disabled badge in my car, but being able to say I’m disabled and have people accept it would make life so much easier. The problem is that although most people have heard of autism they don’t understand what it is.

The problem is I look ‘normal’. I can have a conversation with another person; talking to people is hard work for me but I can and do, do it. After spending a bit of time with me people figure something is a bit wrong, that I am a bit strange but they can’t put their finger on it. Partly this is because I work so hard to appear ‘normal’. It takes a lot of mental and emotional energy trying to be something you’re not, it’s certainly not a ‘healthy’ way to be. But I’ve done it for so long, sometimes I’m at a loss how to behave.

The only way to overcome this it to talk to people about it. I didn’t like doing this at first but it’s getting easier. I’ve put it on my CV. As soon as I get friendly with someone I tell them. They tend to have lots of questions. I’ve noticed that this tendency to not talk about illnesses and disabilities is common in most people.

I worked with a man who I think had Tourettes. When he got nervous he had lots of twitches and stammered. We became friendly and I told him I had Autism. He asked me questions, I think he was genuinely interested to know. I explained the problems I have with language, my lack of social imagination, my problems with understanding emotions. He was genuinely I expected and wanted him to tell me what his own problems were but he didn’t. He thought it strange that I was apparently so happy to be called autistic. He suggested that such ‘labels’ limited what a person could become. I said it wasn’t just a label, it was an actual condition, and yes it did limit what I could be in this life but that there wasn’t any point denying it.

I wish people could see inside my brain. I would love to get a brain scan done. I would show people a picture of a normal brain and then what mine looked like and say - See! This is what I have to work with! What would you have achieved in your life if this is what you were given?

Talking to Twitter

When I first heard about twitter I thought, what’s the point, you don’t have room to say anything valuable. Then my brother suggested it as a way of advertising my blog and now I’ve had a go with it I love it. I’ve only been on it three days, but I keep wanting to make entries, I’m trying to limit myself to four a day. It’s great. Especially all the famous people on it, you can know what they’re thinking throughout the day even though you’ve never spoken to them. I have three people following me, my brother and two people I don’t know. I love letting people know what I‘ve just done or what’s on my mind. It’s like a global address book. Because you don’t actually have a conversation with anyone, it’s great for autistic people.

I remember I used to get very excited about meeting new people. I was very innocent. Most people when they meet someone new, greet them with suspicion and distrust at the back of their minds. Unless that person looks and sounds like us, we think what do they want from me and how can I protect myself. I was the opposite, like a puppy all excited, I asked myself what this new person would be like, if we would become friends, what new things would they teach me, If I hadn’t been autistic and was able to form better relationships I think I would have been very sociable. After a long time though, several house moves, job changes and two stints at university, I realised I was never going to find the ’friends’ I wanted because I just couldn’t give people what they wanted. Now I’ve been diagnosed I know why that is.

With Twitter I feel free again. I can talk to all these new people I haven’t met and there won’t be any of the stress that normally goes a long with meeting people. No trying to figure out what a person really thinks, no decoding of ambiguous replies, no worrying about if they like you. I prefer it to Facebook. Facebook is an extension of social networks in the real the real world so you still get the same games being played out. You have to accept people as friends before you can interact with them., and there are lots of privacy issues you don’t have with Twitter. As there is no comment facility on Twitter nobody can be rude about anything you write. You can choose to block people from receiving you tweets if you want, but it’s not really necessary unless you have a strong personal dislike of them or they’re stalking you.

What If We Were All Autistic?

Okay, the reason I’m not good at talking and getting along with people (just to sum up) is because they say things I don’t understand (the reading between the lines thing), and I find it difficult to know how people are feeling (the social imagination thing). Also people misunderstand me; this happens when they read something into what I’ve said that wasn‘t there (I’m very poor at innuendo) or I don’t convey my emotions convincingly.

I don’t know what it’s like to be around just autistic people. But I sometimes wonder what if I was in a room of autistic people, and everyone said what they thought, no hinting or trying to fool each other with their social and emotional skills. And we’d just be talking about the things that interest us or sharing anecdotes. What would be lacking? What could go wrong?

I think there could still be disagreement and uncomfortableness. Autistic people can still be offended by something another has said (even if what has been said is true) if it challenges their ego. There would still be the desire some people have to be cleverer than others. That unsavoury part ourselves, the ego, would still be there causing arguments and separation.

As well as having some of the same problems as NT people have when they get together , there would also be things missing. Things that make the gathering of people together worth while. Such as the warmth NT people display; the hugs, the sharing of feelings. Stuff autistic people aren’t good at. If we were all autistic we would be very reserved. (More so than we are now if you’re English.)

Is it possible to have the advantages of autism without the disadvantages? A little voice inside me says not, or only if you’re NT and can discipline yourself to change. Autism isn’t a better way to be, there are too many draw backs. But NT people could improve their own lives if they learnt the lessons we autism can offer.

The following are some examples of autistic behaviour which if everyone adopted would make lots of lives happier. In these examples I’m not saying autistic people have superior morals it’s simply because of the way our brains work, or rather don’t work.

Autistic people aren’t very good at being mean to other people, mostly because it involves a lot of subterfuge, and the ideas and thoughts just aren’t there. We get angry and cross and have negative thoughts but it very rarely translates into action and we have enough social knowledge to know that yelling or physically hurting someone is not acceptable behaviour, so most of the time we can control this.

This trait has taught me that hurting other people because you feel wronged is not okay, not if we want to create an atmosphere of love rather than hate. I find that if I let these angry thoughts just be they go, and eventually the problem works itself out. Where as if I stay mad, the situation just gets worse.

Autistic people behave very differently in relationships to NT people. I’ve been taken advantage of in relationships before, this was because I didn’t know that the other person had different goals than I had. When people decide whether or not a person will make a suitable partner it is usually on the basis of what they can give them. But relationships shouldn’t just be about what you can get from the other person, but what you can both share. Maybe I attracted the wrong sort of people because I’m easily fooled. Autistic people don’t have the social/emotional intelligence to be manipulative in the way NT people are, but I’m getting better at spotting it.

Autistic people are more easily fooled in personal relationships, but NT people are more easily fooled by groups, institutions, any body of people who have formed together under a common cause. This is because NT people have a tendency to sacrifice their individuality to fit in with society. But we have is a conscience, it is our own personal guide to tell us if we are doing the right thing or the wrong thing. Sometimes this inner guidance contradicts what others might tell us, this doesn’t mean our view is wrong. There have been many instances in history when the majority are not always right.

Having the strength of character to think for ourselves and not to just follow the crowd is a great asset in our personal evolution. I think this is easier to do for autistic people because most of the time we don’t know what other people are thinking so jumping on the bandwagon isn‘t a option. There are also advantages to the NT person’s tendency to follow and band together. New ideas and information can spread with amazing speed. You just need to make sure we are spreading the right stuff.

The most important lesson though that autism has taught me is the necessity of honesty and truth in making the world a better place. You may not want to be at first, because maybe you are afraid of what you will find but it is absolutely essential if you are to improve yourself. If people were honest all the time they wouldn’t be manipulative, they wouldn’t hurt each other. They would also listen to their own conscience more often. If you’re honest with yourself there’s nothing else you need to remember.

That seems a short list and it basically comes down to being honest. But if everyone became honest for the majority of the time, the world would change very quickly for the better.

Autism and Sociability

Why do people think they can fix my autism? Why do they think they can ‘make’ me sociable. Autistic people aren’t sociable because they don’t have an instinct to bond with people, but because; a) they lack the necessary social skills and b) social environments are often noisy and there is too much sensory information to take in. Together this makes social encounters uncomfortable and sometimes distressing. Most of the social skills autistic people lack can’t be taught. It’s a bit like a person’s IQ; with practice you can get better at taking the tests, but your IQ will reach a level beyond which you can’t go - your brain just doesn’t have the necessary wiring.

I don’t think NT people realise all the things the do during social interaction, and if they do, they don’t link those abilities with their brain. In the popular imagination our brains contain our intelligence, to be brainy is to be clever. We don’t automatically draw the same connection between our emotional and social skills with our brain. If you think you can teach these things to an autistic person you are saying you think these skills are dependent on intelligence and are therefore only indirectly related to our brain. This is incorrect. The brain has emotional and social centres and if these are not wired correctly you can’t reverse it.

Intelligence can help compensate to some extent. Autistic people get very good at analysing the people around them. I routinely watch the behaviour of friends and friends so I can work out what they genuinely think. I watch other people to figure out who has good intentions and who might be a foe. Of course it’s not always so simple, someone who is a friend may briefly show another side if they think you have wronged them. Or someone who has an aggressive exterior may actually like you but find it difficult to show it. Also this can only be done retrospectively, after the event. I don’t see things as they happen, I need time to ‘think’ about it. Gradually, over time it has gotten easier. You work out the social rules NT people use, and the methods they use to get round those same rules without appearing rude. There is a lot of subterfuge that goes on during social occasions!

In order to enjoy or just survive a social gathering the most important thing a person needs to be able to do is make conversation. Having a conversation requires being able to; a) talk and listen (actions which are in themselves hard work for autistic people whose speech may not be good, and whose hearing sometimes plays tricks on them), b) to imagine the other person’s point of view, c) to be able to read their responses, d) to be aware of a third party’s point of view, society’s point of view to any exchange that occurs e) to have a knowledge of social etiquette.

I think it unlikely that an autistic person ‘could’ be taught to do all of this. The part that requires seeing society’s and the other person’s point of view requires social imagination, which if you don’t have, I don’t think you can acquire. Social etiquette for common situations could be acquired. Speech can be improved with work, listening though, if the person has auditory problems probably not. Being able to read emotions is something that gets easier over time. But lets say the autistic person does manage to do all this, there is one thing you won’t be able to teach them, which is to have genuine ‘appropriate’ emotional responses, and the person they are talking to is always going to know this.

I used to regularly fake emotions in conversations. I developed a habit over the years of exaggerating my emotional responses and over doing it. I remember being at a fire works display, I was enjoying it, I ‘Oooo’d’ and ‘Ahhhh’d’ to show that I enjoyed it, but I clearly over did it because my friend’s fiancé began mimicking me. I would often overdo the ‘Really?’ when someone tells me something unexpected. Then there are other times when I do have a genuine emotion, and I want to convey it, but for some reason it doesn’t come out sounding right.

I don’t do this so much now (old habits die hard), but instead I end up sounding a bit dull. Autistic people sound monotone when they speak because it is emotions which add the colour to our language. They don’t have to be ’big’ feelings. It’s all those little feelings which people have that lights up their speech in a way an autistic person would struggle to imitate.

All this doesn’t mean that an autistic person doesn't want company. Company is good, so long as it’s with people that are familiar and that you trust aren’t going to make fun of you if you do or say something stupid. With people who understand you and aren’t going to place unrealistic expectations on you. Somehow you have to find a balance between stressful situations and wanting to be around people.

Television and Autism

Like most autistic people I liked watching Star Trek when I was younger. Spock was my favourite character and I will watch an episode of the new Star Trek if it has Data in it. (I had a little crush on him for a short while). At the time I wasn’t diagnosed and I didn’t know why I liked these characters so much.

There were things I didn’t like about the Star Trek too. I didn’t like the way us humans thought we were a morally superior race to the other beings we encountered. A successful mission usually ended up depending on one person, usually Captain Kirk, whose ‘human’, ‘irrational’ and ‘emotional’ nature would save the day. It was supposed to be a crew that was representative of humanity but the people in charge were all men. (I was only about 10 at the time but I was acutely aware of these contradictions).

This is a problem I’ve always had with popular culture. To enjoy it the way I see NT people enjoying it, you have to share the values and beliefs of those who have made it. You have to suspended your own judgement and belief system and enter someone else’s. Maybe all those NT people who watch TV and go to the movies are lucky and their own value system just happens to coincide with what they see on the screen. Maybe they haven’t really thought about it and they just adopt the opinions of the people around them, in which case it’s always safest to go with the majority.

It just doesn’t seem important to some NT people, to have some kind of moral framework. Provided they can make it through life and get what they want; a family, holidays abroad, a decent job, nice house, etc… what does it really matter what you say you believe in? I suppose if you don’t have an ideology to defend, adopting someone else’s to get along with people is easy. I think you adopt whatever ideology helps you to get what you want out of life. If you’re a woman and you want a family, buying into a traditional patriarchal ideology is ’natural’. Also in some NT people I think they value ‘belonging’ so much that adopting your societies dominant ideology is almost a duty, and to hold a minority view is almost treason.

Another program I liked watching when I was younger was Knight Rider. Not because I liked David Hoffman, it was the car ’Kit’ I was fascinated by. It was a machine with human intelligence and like Data didn’t have any irrational or emotional tendencies. I didn’t like that David Hoffman behaved in a similar way to Captain Kirk, like some kind of superhero. Why was it women always needed saving and the men had to save them with their courage and brute force? The only way I could justify watching it was because there was a female scientist who worked on Kit.

It’s not just that Data and Kit were rational, unemotional characters, that I liked them. (They would never turn round and unexpectedly yell at you for something you may or may not have done). There was something else that was safe, and comforting about them. They were all knowing, never wrong and never open to criticism. They are what I imagine angels to be like. Despite Hoffman’s crime fighting abilities it was Kit who had to save him by taking him away to safety, over land or water.

One downside to watching programs like Star Trek and Knight Rider was that for a long time I believed them to be a true reflection of how people behaved towards each other in reality. In these programs people were honest with each, didn’t slag each other off, did their jobs properly and had respect for each other. If a character didn’t behave like this they were a ‘baddie’. (I suppose I bought into it because this is how I want people to behave).

It took me a long to realise that in fact, the majority of people have hidden agendas and are often less than truthful in what they tell you and how they portray themselves. Today, with reality television, and the impact this has had on fictional television, it would be easier to see the mistake I had made. What I was watching was society’s highest vision of itself and not a true reflection of how people behave. Maybe it’s a positive thing that we can see human nature in all it’s glory on screen. Before we can change something we have to first recognise it.

Autism and finger pointing

Autistic children don’t point. You have to teach them. It doesn’t seem like a very important skill when you first think about it. Really it is a symptom of a larger problem, maybe to do with not knowing where you are in space or not being able to summarise what you see in your surroundings (generalising details).

The first time I came across the problem of pointing was when I was working as an ABA tutor. The boys mother was explaining to another person what new things we were teaching him, pointing was one of them. A few minutes later she asked me to pass her something, and she pointed. I twirled about looking for the object. She laughed and said ‘Of course we’re going to have to teach Vic first.’

I know what pointing is; why people do it, how they do it, and what they mean by it. It’s locating the object that’s the problem. I never realised I was bad at it until the above incident and when I asked myself do I ever point, I wasn’t sure. I don’t think I do. If I want to show someone an object I am more likely to pick it up myself and pass it to them, or tell them as accurately as I can where it is.

Also, I don’t use my hands when I’m talking. Most people use their hands expressively when they talk. When I had my meeting with the clinical psychologist she told me she noticed that I didn’t use my hands when I spoke. This maybe another reason autistic people are less likely to point while talking.

After we began teaching pointing, I did try to find applications for it in my sessions. One very good application was using it to tell my pupil to sit or stand. Autistic people like specifics. If you say please stand by the table, this is too general. The table after all has four sides. Because of this autistic children tend to get manhandled a lot. You push and pull them about in a way you wouldn’t an NT child.

I found that by pointing at the exact spot, pointing so that I was physically touching it, my pupil responded and stood exactly where I had pointed and I got a smile from him too! If I’d pointed from a distance say two meters, or even one, he’s response would probably have been different. Distance pointing just isn’t specific enough for an autistic person. It’s the same as saying stand by the table.

I was in a supermarket recently and I couldn’t find the coconut milk. Eventually I went and asked a shop assistant. He took me back to the aisle I had been in and pointed. Of course I had no idea where he was pointing at. (We were actually stood at least four meters away from the cans of coconut milk.) Not wishing to look stupid I said thank you and choose a random shelf to look at. At which point he walked up to the correct shelf and showed me exactly where they were.

Apart from feeling daft, there was no real harm done. It is a good example though of why I prefer to work things out for myself rather than ask for help. Understanding other people is difficult. Getting the information you want out of them is not always easy. It did also make me think more about pointing. I know I should be drawing an invisible line to the indicated object. But as soon as I lose sight of the pointing hand, I am suddenly overwhelmed by everything in my field of vision and I lose the direction of the point. It’s strange.

Pointing sounds such an easy thing to do, and until recently I didn’t even know I wasn’t very good at it. I think previously I would have just cursed myself (I did a lot of that), or blamed the shop assistant for being lazy.

Autistic Disorganisation

During an annual review at a previous job, my team leader made me aware of my disorganisation. My desk was generally messy and I didn't seem to have any system for organising my work. I was surprised. Nobody had ever mentioned it before (I had been working about five years). Maybe people had thought it but never said anything.

The company had a library and she suggested I get out a book about organisation. I got a book out about right and left brain thinkers. After taking the tests in the book I came out as a predominantly right brain thinker, hence the messy desk. The left side of the brain is supposed to be responsible for logical thinking, language and detail. The right side of our brain is creative, it sees the bigger picture, it is visual. Left brain people (the majority of people in my office - it was an accountancy firm) tend to be very well organised and tidy. Right brain people are not.

Looking back I wish I'd thought more about what my team leader had said. The psychologists report on me says that many individuals with ASD suffer from additional dyspraxia-like symptoms, disorganisation being one example. Nothing I read about right brain thinkers suggested there might be another cause for my disorganisation though. The book after all was written for NT people.

The categorisation of people into left and right brain thinkers seems a gross generalisation. It didn't help me understand myself any better. I am logical and I am good at details, which should make me a left brain thinker, however I have problems with language. I am certainly creative as well (I went to art college), but I can't see the bigger picture and I have difficulty visualising. We used to do a lot of these exercises in a creative writing class I took, I never got much from them, usually I just saw darkness. Bizarrely I dream a lot, and in colour too (maybe there's a different part of the brain that?). From this you would assume I was a left brained person. I think my autism must have been distorted the results.

I have recently added that I have autism to my CV. It was difficult finding a way to include it without making myself sound unemployable. I put it under 'Skills and Strengths' near the top. I think I need to read up on dyspraxia as well, although probably not a good idea to put that in my CV.

The Autistic Shopper

I don't know if all autistic people have this problem, but one of the things I hate about shopping in town (apart from the noise) is that I have a lot of difficulty stopping myself from walking into people. You know that dance you sometimes have when someone is walking towards you. You move to step out of their way and they move in the same direction, this continues until you crash into each other. I hate this, it happens to me all the time.

For a while I thought people were doing it deliberately to make fun of me. I think men sometimes stand in your path as a way of getting your attention, but most of the time it is unintentional. In fact I think I am probably the cause of most of my collisions. Recently I have got a bit fed up with it. Usually when I see people coming towards me I move out of the way as quickly as I can. I guess people think I'm very polite when I do this. In the supermarket I try to find the quietest aisle to go down even if this takes me longer to get to what I want. But increasingly I find myself becoming impatient with the whole scenario.

Recently I went through a 'rude' phase. If I saw someone in my way and I wasn't sure which way to go I would just stop dead. People probably thought 'How Rude!'. Maybe they thought I was making a statement, that I didn't intend to move out of the way - not for anyone! Occasionally, if there was more than one person, and I couldn't think which direction to take, I just pushed past, or ran in front/past them. This was even more rude. I looked like I was in a hurry and not showing any consideration for my fellow shoppers.

Shopping is hard work; the constant dodging of other people. Maybe it's something to do with not being sure where you are in space. I often look at my feet when I'm walking, it's not just to avoid eye contact, I want to make sure I'm not going to fall over. It could also be because I don't have very good balance. I walk slowly. My parents used to call me 'Slow Coach' and I was always being told off for dragging my feet. I guess I'm just not very agile, which also impedes my ability to get out of peoples way. Also not being able to read people, and know which direction they intend to take could be a cause.

Autistic problems with spelling and grammar

I used to think I was a bit dyslexic, now I think my problems with spelling could also be related to my autism. I still get excited when I learn how to spell a new word. Recently I’ve learnt to spell Echinacea. For a long time I didn’t know how to pronounce it, and now I can spell it too! I look at unfamiliar words like Echinacea and they just appear like a long stream of meaningless numbers. The way I’ve remembered how to spell it is; ‘e’, then ‘china’ and then ‘cea’ (which you can remember from the way it’s pronounced).

Spelling has always been a problem for me, mostly because I find it so difficult to figure out how to pronounce words. It’s a language problem I’ve had since I was a child (I was late talking and when I went to school my teachers couldn’t understand me). NT children start saying words by the time they’re two. Also my reading was below average. I love reading now; I think it just took me longer to remember how to say all the words. Grammar is still a mystery for me.

I did a degree in writing and film studies. I was really looking forward to the modules on grammar. When I was at school it was trendy not to teach grammar and instead to encourage creativity. I think most of the other kids picked it up along way. But I was fifteen before anyone told me what an apostrophe was.

Our English teacher was telling my class off, it was the first year of our GCSEs, for our lack of grammatical knowledge. At first she didn’t believe us when we said we’d never been taught. But when her favourite and cleverest student (we were the top set) told her it was true she had to believe him. She spent fifteen minutes explaining apostrophes.

It stayed with me for a while. Autistic people learn through repetition though, and once isn’t enough for me. So I was very excited about doing a whole module on grammar. It was hard work and I learnt a lot – at the time. Two years later though I struggle to remember it. I’ve kept my books though. I shall go over them again. One day, who knows, it might stick. For now I have to rely on Word to tell me when I’m using an apostrophe incorrectly.

An autistic person with flu

Do autistic people get more colds than NT people? I’ve been ill for about two weeks now. I’m wondering if I’ve got the swine flu. There were people off with swine flu in the office I was temping at. It’s mostly on my chest. I’m still coughing. I hate being ill. Two weeks of doing nothing. I can feel time slipping away and there’s so much to do.

I used to have colds all the time but I’ve managed to avoid being properly poorly for about two years. I take vitamins, Echinacea and garlic. I’ve also changed what I eat to try and improve my digestive system. A healthy immune system needs a healthy digestive system. If your digestive system is letting lots of toxins into your body then your immune system can easily become overloaded and impaired. This has been a recent thing though. I’ve only been doing it for two months.

I was a very sickly child. I had lots of ear aches. My mum would put oil on cotton wool and stick it in my ears. I’m not sure what the oil was or how it was supposed to help. I read somewhere that autistic children are very prone to ear aches. My sister and my niece and my brother have all been poorly too. Why when I get ill though am I poorly the longest? I really dread getting ill.

One of the problems with being ill is recognising your symptoms. I’ve often heard people say they have muscular aches and pains when they have flu. I’ve never thought of this before, but this time I thought, now’s my opportunity to test it. And, it’s true. The first week of being poorly was the worst, then I start to feel better, and that’s when I noticed the aches and pains. I wondered why I’d never noticed them before.

Someone also told me they feel achy after they’ve had a migraine. I’m not sure if this happens to me. I’ve been on beta blockers for several months for my migraines. Although I didn’t notice it at the time, as I never noticed it before when I was ill, it’s possible I didn’t notice when I had the migraines.

Anyway, what I’m trying to demonstrate here is my bizarre lack of knowledge as to what is going on in my own body and how this disconnection seems to exasperate my symptoms. Every morning I wake up hoping I’ll be feeling better. It takes me about ten minutes to go through my body checking for symptoms. It’s impossible to decide until you actually get up. Then, after about ten minutes if I’m coughing and feel weak and tired, I know I’m still ill.

There’s something wrong with how information is received into my brain. It’s similar to the way that I’m not always sure how I’m feeling emotionally. (Assuming there’s nothing wrong with my nervous system and that the information is being delivered.) I often find cuts and bruises and wonder how I did them. For some reason I don’t notice them at the time.

I read a book by Dr Robin Pauc called ‘Could It Be You? Overcoming Dyslexia, Dyspraxia, ADHD, OCD, Tourette’s Syndrome, Autism and Asperger’s Syndrome in Adults’. He thinks all these conditions are linked and that most people on the spectrum display symptoms of more than one syndrome. I’d recommend it people. It was informative and easy to read.

In his book, Dr Robin Pauc emphasises the problems autistic people have generalising, this is because the executive function in one of the frontal lobes is not working properly. I think it was the right side of the brain (it was a while ago I read it). The executive part of the brain looks at all the data we receive and then tells us what we need to know. If it’s not working properly you tend to get lost in detail, which is what happens to me.

I’m wondering if part of this executive function is sometimes not bothering to tell me anything at all. So I might cut myself, and it decides it doesn’t need to tell me. Or something on the television might have upset me, and it thinks; no need to tell her. So half an hour later I’m feeling sad and I don’t know why.

This is strangely at odds with the sensory overload autistic people often experience, like when you’re in a supermarket or a pub, and you have to listen to thumping music, other people’s conversations, cutlery being dropped, trolleys crashing into things, (the list goes on). And then there are other times, like now when I’m ill, when very little seems input seems to get through.

Hopefully in a few days I’ll be better again. I know that I am getting better because I can think again. My voice is still wobbly and I’m still coughing. I’ll know when I’m properly better because I’ll be able to sing again.

Making Conversation the Autistic Way

I marvel at other people’s ability to make conversation, seemingly about nothing. I know it’s not really about nothing because there is still information being conveyed. For example, you may be talking about the weather but conveying to the other person that you like them. I wish I could do it. I really do.

One method I used to use to make conversation was to tell people funny stories about myself. I had plenty of material. I could turn most everyday events into something funny. Usually these stories involved me losing something, me forgetting something, getting times wrong, dates wrong. At the time I didn’t know I was autistic. But what I was actually doing was using my autism to make people laugh. The only problem was, with some people anyway, they used these stories to criticise me. I was putting myself down and giving them with free ammunition to make me feel stupid.

When I would tell me Nan one of my stories, she would look very serious. And then tell me with a very deadpan face what I did wrong and what I should have done (these things I knew already). I would get cross. I know people expect conversation, so I try to make some, and instead end up being made to feel stupid. Other people would do it too sometimes. Eventually I decided I wasn’t going to tell people these stories. Now when I do something silly, I keep it to myself.

Another thing I do to make conversation, is to get other people to talk about themselves. I’m good at asking the questions. Maybe I’m just nosey, but I love hearing other people’s life stories. I remember a car journey with a girl I didn’t know well. During the car journey I found out she had dyslexia, that this caused a severe lack of confidence at school and she used to have panic attacks, that her parents were separated. I liked this girls a lot. And yet sitting in a classroom with her and the other students – I haven’t got anything to say. I hoped we would become friends after this trip. But we didn’t.

You know, it seems odd to me that when NT people talk they talk about inconsequential things. And that they will become friends, or start going out, without having much knowledge about that persons past. I think the difference is that an NT person decides what kind of person someone is based on how chatty they are, how friendly they are, if they have any common interests, if they threw in any compliments. An NT person forms their opinion of other people based on how well they perform this first social introduction. An autistic person, or me anyway, would want to know some basic things about a person’s history before making any decision. I’ve lived long enough now, that knowing a few things about a person’s past will tell me what kind of person they are.

I used to drink a lot the first time I went to university. I did a lot ‘acting’ when I was out with people. Trying to be like they were, and drinking of course made it much easier to have ‘fun’. Well, if you’re drunk you’re going to say stupid stuff aren’t you. Quitting drinking meant finding a new persona. When I went back to university the second time (I had sorted out the issues I had with my family, I was no longer bitter, I was in a better place mentally) I was still couldn’t ‘fit in’. So in the second year I decided I would just concentrate on studying, and I developed a new persona for myself – the ‘quiet one’, which works well for me. Takes a lot of the pressure that I was putting myself under.

Finding the Purpose of My Autism

I believe that we come to the earth plane to learn, that I have lived many lives here and there are other lives ahead of me depending on what I achieve in this life. There was a time when I was very close to not finishing this life. I had a great respect for authority and institutions. It’s not till I began questioning the authority I gave to others outside of myself that I started to become a happier person.

I had several ‘oh my God’, eureka type moments. Although at the time they were experienced as very sad events. So I couldn’t trust my parents to always do the right thing, then that realisation spread to included, teachers, the police, politicians till I eventually came to God and religion. For a while I was an atheist. I’m still not sure on the god question. I haven’t had any conversations with God myself.

I’ve read lots of books that say we are all a part of God. In a literal sense Jesus was God, but maybe he wasn’t claiming that as something exclusively him. We could all say we are God. Which fits the, we are all one argument. The only actual evidence I have found relates to our continued existence beyond death, and the ability we have to communicate with those who passed over. I’ve never heard about anyone who has passed over claiming to have met God.

I went off the point there a bit. After I had the Eureka moments I still had to work at it. I still had to keep checking my thoughts to check I was slipping back into old habits.

The next big shift came when I began to read books by physics and mediums about the other side. I think I was probably only an atheist for a couple of years. I don’t have a word for myself now. I tell people I’m spiritual rather than religious, although I do love to read about Jesus. I think he was amazing. It’s what people did with his teachings after that was crazy. I don’t think Jesus would have approved of the idea of a pope. Jesus encouraged us all to look inside and change ourselves.

Since my reawakened spirituality, I have made a slow, steady path to a greater peace of mind and increased sanity through meditation and learning to control my mind. The average person has thousands of thoughts a day. Have you ever tried to control these? My thoughts were usually about the same things, they were repetitive and not very happy thoughts; most of them about my childhood. I was very unhappy growing up, and even when I’d left home I was still controlled by these memories. They would repeat over and over in my mind through out the day. I read lots of books on meditating and eventually managed to control these thoughts and learnt to let go.

Most people are controlled by their thoughts; this is the wrong way round, we should control our minds, rather than the other way round.

Knowing I am autistic has been my most recent and life changing Eureka moment. I’m thirty-four now, and only just beginning to feel easy about who I am. I wonder sometimes, if that is it, if all my searching and emotional tribulations are over and I can now start to do something useful in the world. My main aim at the moment is to find a way to support myself. I’ve been told I’m a good communicator (which seems a bit off, for an autistic person). And I love writing – hence the blog, which is great to have, because it makes me write everyday.

Doing these meditation practices has also put me in a good position to examine my autism. This task involves watching my mind to see how it works and then comparing it to how I think other people’s minds work. The biggest boon so far (for knowing I’m autistic) has been being able to accept myself even when I can’t do things I think I should be able to do, and also accepting other people as they are. I used to get so cross with people – the biggest issue being honesty. Why do people lie? Why do they drop hints and make innuendos instead of just saying what they mean? Some people do it more than others. My sister is very much like this.

I’ve realised that NT people value this ability a bit like I value intelligence. Not all NT people have the same social ability. Some of them are better at it than others. Everybody likes to have something they are good at. My sister is smart, but didn’t enjoy school and struggled with it. Although she has different problems to me she finds it easier to understand my problem than the others do and I have a better awareness of hers. She doesn’t have a long list of qualifications, but she is very good at this, dropping hints thing.

I think we all have lessons in life, and its easier to spot other peoples lessons. I’m still not really sure why I’m autistic. I look at the lessons I’ve learnt and I think, surely I could have learnt them faster if I’d been NT? My sister might be able to give me an idea of this, but how often do we sit down and have such honest discussions? I sometimes imagine what my sister would be like if she didn’t have her problems; probably a bit annoying. The sort of clever person who enjoys being clever.

I’m the opposite way round, academically I can perform well; socially I’m rubbish. I sometimes think, that in some previous life, I was too proud of my social skills or that I had a poor opinion of people who didn’t have much social grace. And so here I am, to accept myself and others who don’t have these skills. I suppose the quickest and easiest route for all us to enlightenment would be to conquer our egos and never get vain about anything. Why is the ego so bad for us? Because by making us feel better than someone else it separates us from them, you can’t experience oneness and vanity at the same time.

The Criticism-Sensitive, Autistic Child and Adult

The autistic child is very sensitive to criticism and even as an adult, finds it very hard to accept criticism. My logical self tells me it’s not said with any malice, but I’m still hurt. In a class, when the teacher is trying to teach me something, I want to get it right first time – no mistakes. The autistic person puts an incredible amount of pressure on themselves to do things right. The idea of just giving something a go and seeing how it turns out is just plane recklessness.

Why autistic people are so bad at accepting criticism is a complicated question. Firstly it means accepting that one has done something wrong. The word wrong has two meanings; a) when something is factually wrong and b) when something is morally wrong. The autistic brain, or rather my autistic brain, (I’m not sure if others have the same problem) finds it difficult to separate these two different meanings. If something is ‘wrong’ it is both factually and morally wrong. Getting a fact wrong is being morally wrong. For some reason, I can’t accept that all I’ve done is failed to recall a fact and that this okay.

But it’s not just difficult to accept that I am wrong. I also find it difficult to accept that other people can be wrong. Again, this maybe an autistic thing or just me personality, but when I was growing up I had the greatest respect for authority figures and institutions. My belief in authority lead me to some very dark and unhappy moments. The idea of someone in authority (for example, one of my parents) doing something morally wrong or making a mistake was just unbelievable. Being told off for something you have done wrong is bad enough, but being told off for something you haven’t done is even worse.

I had a lot of difficulty getting on with my family while I was growing up. For a long time, I really believed I was unloved. Experiences, like being told off when I hadn’t done anything (which wouldn’t leave much impression on an NT person) made a big impact on me. What I couldn’t get my head round, was that my parents might not know all the facts and that somewhere along the line someone had said something that wasn’t true. These sorts of incidents lead to a lot of confusion and soul searching.

In my child’s mind, my parents must have been told a lie. They could either debunk it, or use it against me. My autistic mind couldn’t accept that they might believe the lie; parents are never wrong. My only option then was to believe I deserved the telling off for something else. In this way could I protect the image of my parents as good people who loved me. However, this came at great cost to my own image of myself as a good person. This repeating scenario threw me into a nightmarish hell on earth. We were a large family and if someone could the pass the blame for something onto someone else they did. Family life was difficult for other reasons also and being autistic I coped very badly. Suffice to say that by the time I was fifteen, I had very little confidence or self esteem, I really didn’t want anymore of this life.

It’s only going over this now that I can see the errors my autistic mind was making. My parents weren’t always aware of the full facts. For example, both my parents worked, and certain tasks had to be completed by the time they got home, like the washing up. This was something we took in turns to do. Only gradually over time this became my task, because one time I forgot to do and I got into trouble. That one incident was all it took. Because I’d done it once, the NT mind thought that it would now believable to say I had forgotten to do it again. Being autistic, I thought people are more likely to believe the truth rather than a lie, so I didn’t do the washing up when it wasn’t my turn, and I did get into trouble.

Of course there are going to be times, when an autistic person is wrong but doesn’t see it. The consequences of being ‘told off’ however are the same. The autistic person believes that are right all the time because; a) they never lie and b) they always use logic. If you always tell the truth and always use logic, how can you ever be wrong? If every other person on the planet were autistic then probably only very rarely. However the majority of people are NT and they have another part of their brain, the social part. It is very powerful. It can be used for good and for bad. It enables them to both comfort and deceive. And most people use this ability to make their life easier, even if it sometimes makes someone else’s life a bit harder.

You see the NT person believes in a healthy competition. If they are better at this social stuff than you, then its okay, it’s just natural selection at work, survival of the fittest, may the best man win, etc.... And probably somewhere along the line you offended the NT, not intentionally, just because you’re autistic and didn’t say hello or something. In which case, it’s just an eye for an eye; no need to take it personally. But the autistic person takes everything personally. Perhaps because we feel so separate from the rest of the world, that we don’t fit; that makes it difficult for us to think of ourselves as belonging to groups. It is never just kids my age you are getting upset with – it is me. It is never just people who live alternative lifestyles you are getting upset with – it is me. And because autistic people live their lives so openly (this isn’t a judgement, we just don’t know any other way) we have no defence. The autistic has no social mask to hide behind, the autistic person can’t hide they are hurt, which makes it all a lot worse.

How To Get What You Want

How to get what you want - I‘ve met lots of people. I haven’t talked to as many as I might have (being autistic) but even within that smaller sample I’ve managed to observe that most peoples attitude is; me first, people who are useful to me next, and the rest I’m not going to think about. I’d like to illustrate why this approach fails to get people what they want. It was inspired by an incident that happened to me today. A girl in my old job is spreading rumours about me – that I lie on my CV and don’t have any experience in accountancy (I worked in accountancy for about seven years). I was quite cross when I heard this – and also relieved that I had left (I would have been sitting next to her if I’d stayed).

Anyone who knows someone who is autistic will also know how difficult they find lying, even if it’s to protect someone’s feelings. The idea of an autistic person fabricating seven years of their life story is hilarious, the only reason I’m not laughing out loud, is that I think there are some people out there who might actually believe this girl, or rather think they could benefit by believing it.

So to make me feel better, I thought, right I’m going to name and shame her. Then I started writing this. I wanted to work out exactly why what she was doing was wrong – knowing that the universe was designed so we could receive what we desire. I wanted some useful lesson to come from this experience. By the time I got to the end of what I wanted to say, I realised that if I held onto my anger, I would be making myself just as much a victim as this girl is. So if no one else benefits from this, at least I have!

Most of the ideas here come from a book I read ‘Conversations with God’. I’ve read books 2 and 3. My library doesn’t have book 1 (?!), but I intend to get hold of a copy. I really enjoyed these books.

* * *

Firstly, to understand the actions of people, we have to understand their world view and what they want. Then we can say, what you are doing isn’t going to get you what you want. So my main aim here to stop people being nasty to others (including me), but ultimately it will result in their happiness too and one day I hope I will have evolved to a point when I can wish this for them too.

The selfish persons approach to life is pretty much the same as everyone else’s. We all think to ourselves; what can I do now to get where I want to be. For most people they want material possessions. (It’s okay to want to live your life comfortably), for others they want to move up the evolutionary scale and experience greater happiness. The problem is not which you choose, to live your life to its fullest potential, in my experience, you should be choosing both.

Many people focus on the first, because the material world is what we know best and we don’t have any memory of our spiritual life. Our goal is to be happy and we think (not unreasonably) that we should be able to do that with what we find around us. In our world we have developed a system of exchange which uses money as a means to purchase things. Money, for some people becomes a desirable object in itself. This is the first mistake we make.

While having money can make life less stressful (its horrible worrying about whether you can afford to pay your rent) and money can allow you to do things you enjoy (going on holiday, trips to the cinema) it doesn’t in itself create happiness. The idea of winning the lottery makes you happy because you anticipate all the things you could buy with it. Think of people who are tight with their money, who don’t like spending it, they don’t have a lot of happiness. Owning money doesn’t make you happy – it is a means to an end.

People do lots of silly things that make them unhappy because they see it as a way to getting more money. If that money comes, you are rarely in a state to enjoy it – so was it worth it? For example working all your life in a job you don’t like so you can retire on a decent pension – is that sensible? You’re likely to be a bitter person by the time you retire. And if it’s a company pension and they go bust; you’ll be even more bitter. Stepping on your best friend to get a better paid job probably won’t make you happy, you will loose your friend and then who knows, the job may turn out to be very stressful and not allow you enough time to spend with your family.

The materialistic person is controlled by their ego. The ego believes we are separate individuals and we have to compete with each other in order to get what we want. The ego believes there is a finite amount of abundance, it doesn’t understand that each of us creates our own abundance. The ego thinks abundance is something outside of itself. Therefore, logically, the only way to get any of this abundance is either to find some no one has discovered, or take it off someone else.
That final point, trying to take abundance away from another person, is the main cause of pain on our planet. However, eventually this action comes back to us. Not because any one ‘up there’ is judging us, it’s just cause and effect, a law of the universe.

You’ve heard of random acts of kindness and how they spread. The same is true of acts of unkindness, they spread. One person thinks its okay to talk about someone behind their back to get a promotion at work. Someone else thinks; that person now has the edge, if I want this promotion I’ll have to start doing the same. And if someone in that office doesn’t have the strength of character to be an example of a different way to behave, it’s likely that most people in that office will be talking down their colleagues.

Because the ego believes abundance is outside of itself, it also believes that abundance can be given to us by someone else. If we find someone who is better off than ourselves and we think they might be willing to share some of that abundance, we then go about trying to please this person. If that person doesn’t like someone – we slag that person off. If that person has an interest or a hobby, we pretend to have the same interest. If that person voices an opinion, we repeat that opinion as if it was our own.

So now we think we have that person, on our side. But what have we really done? We have given our power to that other person and shown them that we have a higher opinion of them than ourselves. If that person walks in the light, they will probably try to show us the real source of our abundance. If that person is as lost as us in the material world, they may believe that they have power over you. And whilst they may be flattered they might not have much respect for you – you have just given away your power. You may stay in their favour for a while, if you have something to exchange with them (youth, good looks, talent), but don’t bank on it.

So, that was a summary of all the ways I can think of that explains why we don’t always get what we want or expect. The main reason the materialists/separatist route to happiness doesn’t work, is that we are all one. Hurting other people to get what we want is basically hurting ourselves. People seem to treat this fact as if it were a metaphor, not something to be taken literally (autistics however, are good at taking things literally!). But it is true, in a very concrete physical way.

Understanding this and loving one another is what will bring us happiness. Materiality creates the illusion of separation, once we see through it (that acting only for own interests brings unhappiness) we can search for happiness by exploring our spiritual natures, which is the real purpose for us being here.

My mother died recently. Before her death neither my dad nor my sister (I have several by the way but they would prefer to be anonymous) thought about what happens to us when we die. If I asked him, my dad would say ‘I wish I could believe in something’. My sister would just change the subject. She told me recently that she didn’t believe in anything till mum died, she believes in a heaven now. She did used to visit a psychic who is also a medium. So maybe she was just in denial; admitting to herself that life continues after death meant facing the fact that everything we do has a consequence, and there are probably things she’s done she wished she hadn’t. Likewise there are things I’ve done I wished I hadn’t.

So the moral is don’t learn the hard way, learn the easy way! Now!

Worry and anxiety

Worry and anxiety are not symptoms of autism, but most people with HFA will experience high levels of anxiety just because of the stress of dealing with everyday life. As disabilities go the High Functioning Autistic is in an unenviable position. I’m not physical disabled and I’m intelligent – so why (thinks the world) can’t I get on with life like everybody else? Nobody sees the internal struggle that goes on. The NT person, takes for grated all the wonder things their brain can do. They might not even be aware of all the amazing functions it is performing, and so can’t imagine what it’s like to be without these.

Things that cause anxiety for me are situations that involve dealing with other people. I can’t avoid these situations completely – I wouldn’t want to either as I would be very lonely. But I try to workout ways to reduce them in order to control my stress levels. This affects all aspects of my life, both socially and at work. Despite having two degrees, and other qualifications, my standard of living is low compared to an NT person who has less qualifications. My lack of social skills also makes it difficult to have relationships; which means I live alone and have to look after myself by myself. (I’m not totally alone in that I have family, I visit my sister who provides moral support when I need it and a couch sometimes too).

In the past when people told me I worried too much, I thought ‘I’m worrier – what can I do to change it?’ I believed them because of my high anxiety levels but I couldn’t see when I was doing it. I didn’t know I was autistic so I couldn’t understand why it was so difficult for me to cope with everyday life. Also, if you can’t tell when you’re doing something, it’s very difficult to stop.

I thought that a 'worry' would be like a worried person – jumpy, shaky, fretful and nervous, or that it would make me feel those things. Instead I just had this underlying feeling of anxiety that increased and diminished during the day without me being able to locate a cause, and which I didn’t connect to the worrier question. I think this is probably related to the emotional deficit which a lot of autistic people describe (more on that another time).

Then last night, I was thinking my jobless situation, and imagining something bad happening to me. The thought didn’t jump out at me, it just quietly slipped through my mind; I almost didn’t notice it. But I stopped, as I sometimes randomly do, and wondered how I could categorise this thought. It’s the kind of thought that leads a bad aftertaste and I wish I had less of. When I examined it I realised it fitted the description of a worry, in that I was anticipating a negative outcome without having any reason to or any evidence. I realised that if I can catch more of these thoughts, I should be able to reduce my anxiety.

Until recently I suffered a great deal of anxiety. Probably a mixture of my autism and my childhood (my sisters have suffered from anxiety disorders as well). The problem was I didn’t notice my anxiety building up. When something creeps up on you slowly, you kind of get used to it and don’t think there is anything immediately wrong. It was my headaches which made me go to see my doctor. They were actually migraines. I had them on one side of my head, nothing I took got rid of them so I would go to bed and hope it was gone in the morning. Sometimes it was, sometimes it wasn’t. This became an almost daily occurrence, which meant I would go to work still feeling groggy from my headache , then it would start up again in the afternoon and by the time I got home I would be beat.

My doctor put me on Propranolol. It took about three days to work, occasionally I still had headaches when my periods were due, but the improvement was massive. There was also another massive benefit. Propranolol is used to treat people with GAD (generalised anxiety disorder), the relief I felt from my anxiety when I started taking these pink little tablets was blissful. I could literally feel my anxiety draining away from me. I had been getting a pain in my chest which would come on when I was thinking of a stressful situation. (There were plenty at the time, my mum had cancer and I was finding my job difficult). I think I was probably close to developing GAD or something else. Luckily I got the Propranolol before it got to that stage. (Why do we wait before we are suffering from a full blown illness before getting treatment?)

My levels of anxiety are now much lower. I’ve also noticed that I’m more confident these days. Knowing that I’m autistic has helped a lot. I know why I can’t do certain things, and why I find interaction difficult, and I’m less hard on myself. Confident people don’t worry.

Autism and the Workplace

When I told the job centre I had High Functioning Autism they wanted to know how it affected my ability to work. It’s not an easy question to answer. I don’t know really – it makes every job stressful because you’re dealing with people. (Are there any books on autism and the workplace?). I usually tell people I wouldn’t be comfortable in a client facing job because I have difficulty dealing with people. The thing is, they are expecting straightforward bite size answers, like it should be obvious to me. It isn’t, I’m still learning about my symptoms. For so long I thought that I was NT and my faults were down to me not trying hard enough.

Since my diagnosis I’ve had the lengthy task of sorting through all the things I do, and categorising them into autistic behaviours and non autistic behaviours. That’s really how this blog came about. I don’t think there are any simple answers. I’m not sure a professional would even be able to give one. What it really boils down to is how much stress you think is acceptable. You are very unlikely to find a job that doesn’t involve dealing with other people. You have to decide how much interaction you can handle and stick to those boundaries.

Everything I know about autism comes from what I’ve read and what I’ve observed about myself. People don’t ask someone with borderline personality disorder to be able to talk in detail about their disorder. There really should be information available to employers about people like me. Another difficulty I find is that because my disability is not immediately obvious (people don’t look at me in the job centre and say – oh, she must be autistic) some people can’t see why I wouldn’t be able to do the same jobs they do. It’s a similar attitude to that which some people have towards mental health problems like depression. They think it’s all the mind and you’re not trying hard enough. I told one friend recently I had autism, and she didn’t believe me. I told her I’d been diagnoses but she still questioned what I was telling her. Of course not all people are like this, there are some people who are very sympathetic.

It’s very difficult telling people I have autism. I don’t like doing it. It’s a bit like a gay person deciding to come out of the closet. And it’s not something you only have to do the once, like having a big coming out and then everyone knows. You have to keep telling people. And then even when you’ve told them and they’ve accepted it, they still forget ten minutes later when they say ask you a question, and you give an honest answer, and they get offended. I don’t blame them, I’m still working out the ways autism affects my interaction with people. An NT person has even less knowledge than I do.

At the moment I am unemployed. I had a temping job for about a month but I lost that last week. Before then I was unemployed for about five months. It was all a bit of a disaster really. I told the agency I had High Functioning Autism and that this affected my ability to deal with the public. I had been worried that telling my employer would put them off, but it didn’t. Maybe they hadn’t read my application form fully, or maybe it was just because the job they were offering me was so menial they didn’t think it mattered. Anyway, I assumed that they would tell the company they wanted me to work for that I had HFA, and that I didn’t need to anything more. This turned out to be wrong.

After being there for about a month, the company said they wanted me to take a temp to permanent job in their finance team. I was unsure about taking it. I didn’t have any relevant experience. I’ve worked in accountancy, but this was mostly in private practice and I’d been out of it for about five years. I told them this but they seemed unconcerned. They said they were sure I’d pick it up quickly. The next day I reported to my new team leader and she explained briefly what they wanted me to do. Basically they had all these unallocated cheques and they wanted me to call up their clients and find out which invoices these cheques related to.

You can imagine my horror. They have about forty-five thousand clients and tens of thousands of pounds of unallocated cheques. After about half an hour watching another girl do the job (if this was my training it was totally inadequate) I knew there was no way I could do the job without my stress levels rocketing. I told the girl this and went to find the team leader I’d been working for before, to see if it was okay for me to go back to what I had been doing – which didn’t involve any client contact except occasionally by email.

My new team leader came running after me to ask what I was doing. I explained I wasn’t comfortable with the role, that no one told me what the role would be and that I wanted to go back to what I’d been doing. She looked cross and said she would go and talk to the HR manager. When she came back to me she said that even if I went into transaction processing (the department I’d been in before) I would have to be using the phone and so either I took the job they were offering me or.... I didn’t.
So I didn’t... So they called the agency and said I’d walked out! When I called the agency to explain what had happened they told me they hadn’t told the company I had autism. She then asked me what High Functioning Autism was and I had to try and explain in the two minutes before she decided she stopped me talking. She said she would call the company and explain to them, then get back to me. But she didn’t, so I guessed I couldn’t go back to my temp job, even though they were calling the agency asking for more people. (Sounds like sour grapes to me).

Even if I hadn’t been autistic I think the company’s behaviour was unacceptable. Two people had just left the finance department, and they tried to fill those positions with temp staff, one of whom (me) didn’t have the relevant experience and without offering any proper training.

However I have learnt some valuable lessons. Firstly to make sure that my future employer knows I have HFA. Secondly that they know what this is. Thirdly, that I find out exactly what a job entails before saying I’ll do it. Fourthly, not to rely on other people to do any of this for me; if they don’t know what HFA is, they won’t know how important it is in finding the right role for me.

I think the reason I didn’t talk to the company myself about autism is because it embarrasses me. I don’t like admitting I have this thing wrong with me. I so want to be like other people! I fought very hard against what I knew was true. I hope I’ll be strong enough to do all of what I’ve just said above in my next job. I just wish I had more attitude about me.

Creating Money Doing What You Enjoy

I’m reading ‘Creating Money’ by Sanaya Roman and Duane Packer. I’ve read all their other books, but I shied away from this one. I had trouble reconciling spirituality with materiality. Money has lots of negative connotations. You see wealthy people on telly and in magazines, they don’t appear very evolved spiritually, sometimes they don’t even look very happy. Then there are governments and politicians who use money to gain power over people. And somewhere we’ve developed this idea that to be poor is to have moral integrity, (the only people this serves are our employers!)

Jesus has a parable about a rich man and a needle. And I’m sure it says somewhere in the bible, we should store our treasures in heaven not on earth. For people who have developed an attachment to money, it’s good advice. Probably not so good for me, who has a dislike of money. I guess it really depends on the intended audience.

In the world today, in the west that is, we have a higher standard of living than in previous centuries. We have the internet, computers, mobile phones, satellite television. I think you can become enlightened, if you want, by withdrawing from society and leading a simple life. But then you wouldn’t be taking advantage of the opportunity for accelerated evolution for all of humanity. All of this media can be used to help raise the planet’s consciousness, it can also be used for negative reasons. In order to use it for positive purposes, we have to have access to it. Which means having a certain amount of disposable income.

Buying this book was a big step for me and represents a shift in my values. I don’t think I’m unique in this. I think lots of people have gone through the same process. It’s weird, when you arrive at a new place in your thinking; you ask yourself why it took you so long. For me I think a lot of things had to change in myself first. Like getting more self-respect and time for myself, and having more faith in myself and not referring every action to someone else for approval.

The first chapter of this book is really good. It teaches you that you are the source of your abundance. Just reading that chapter made me feel peace and confidence. So far I have lived life at the mercy of other people’s whims. If I was happy or sad, rich or poor it was because of someone else – or so I thought. But it doesn’t have to work that way. So long as you don’t mind how stuff comes to you, you can attract everything you need into your life. You are the creator, the Magician. You are in control of your own life.

The second chapter seemed less relevant to me. First it warned against wanting money to gain status, or because you think owning things will make you happy. Then it said that to make money you need to start doing the things you love. Don’t work at a job you don’t like thinking one day you will be able to retire and then do the things you enjoy – that’s living in the future not the present. Start doing the things you enjoy now!

And I thought, that’s kinda what I’ve been trying to do. Hence taking a career break and going back to university. And hence me leaving two jobs voluntarily, without any guarantee of another job – I was criticised by people for doing this, family and friends. I think some of them were genuinely offended at what they thought was reckless behaviour, I think some were just jealous. But really, you can’t run your life based on other people’s opinions, not if you want to be happy.

I’ve come up with lots of ideas for making money since then, doing things I think I would enjoy. So I thought, this chapter doesn’t have anything to say to me. Later on I was sitting on the sofa watching television. I saw a book lying on the coffee table, about making flowers from paper. (This was one of my plans for making money).

And then I realised, each of these schemes of mine has begun from the same premise – what can I do to earn some money. I’m still coming at this from the wrong direction. I still want some guarantee before I start, that what I’m doing will make me money. It’s the money, not the doing that is the inspiration behind these ideas. I’m not really trusting that what I want to do will bring me abundance. What I should be doing is tying to figure out what I want to do first, the money will come later.

I think that’s why none of my schemes ever got off the ground. I didn’t have the motivation to get started, money isn’t a great motivator for me anyhow. And just doing something because you want to make some cash from it, kinda takes the pleasure out of it. For me anyway, I think it also depends on your personality. I’m just not that focused on the material world, which gets me into trouble. I’m not saying it’s a good thing. Maybe it’s the autism. But if I want to be independent, so I can live my life according to my values, I need a source of income. So I need to decide what it is that i most enjoy doing.

Later this same day:
I sometimes think I’m not doing enough. Mostly this comes from measuring myself against people who are NT. So I’m always setting myself up for failure. This afternoon when I was in the kitchen, I thought, ‘All I’ve done today is cook and write’. Then a thought came to me – ‘That’s enough’. I realised, I’m not expected to do anymore than I’m able to. That thought made me happy, just cooking and writing. Two things I enjoy doing. So who knows, maybe it will lead to something. The thought I could earn a living just doing just those two things made me feel good.

Why is it hard to keep my flat tidy?

My flat is a mess. Not as big a mess as it was this morning. I've been tidying up, but still, it's not as tidy as I would like it. Organisation is probably a problem for lots of NT people as well, I don't think they understand though, just how much harder it is for an autistic person. The number of times I've been called lazy by people who hardly know me. I try very hard to keep my flat tidy. Bit like a yo-yo dieter, I take two steps forward then two steps back.

For example, if I see something needs picking up, part of me wants to pick it up and part of me is thinking, not more work, not again, I keep doing this, it never ends. There are lots of everyday tasks that autistic people find hard; like listening (if you have auditory discrimination problems), like any physical action (because co-ordination is difficult and you can't tell where you are in space), like planning (because you can't create sequences in your mind). I think that's why I stay slim even though I don't exercise; I spend so much mental energy even when I'm not 'working' proper.

From a spiritual point of view, your Self knows it hasn't always been like this, and it won't always be like this. In Spirit you change clothes just by thinking about it. There's no picking clothes off the floor, no washing, no hanging out to dry, no ironing, no putting away. In fact an enormous amount of work goes into putting clean clothes on everyday. At the same time, I don't like mess. A tidy home equals a tidy mind. It's difficult to concentrate when your surrounded by mess. I think anyone who knows something about Feng Shui would probably tell you its a bad thing too. What I'm trying to show is the tasks autistic people find hard, are purely related to how we interact with the physical world. There is nothing wrong with my conscious Self. All it means is losing my balance when I try to pick up that sock, and grabbing at it because I'm not really sure if I have a hold of it, then having a fight with a draw to put it away. Who likes doing stuff they're no good at? I get very mad at myself, but thats because I've been measuring myself against other people for so long. (I've only recently been diagnosed).

I was doing quite well when I first moved into my flat, that was a few months ago. Then I got this job about a month ago, and then it all just unraveled. I didn't have time anymore, or more accurately I couldn't spend the time I wanted on tasks. My circumstances told me how much time I could spend doing something. The routines I'd put in place while I wasn't working, went out the window, because I hadn't factored in time. Autistic people can't conceptualise time. It's very difficult for me to judge how long a task will take, or how much time I've spent on a task. I'm not very good at putting things into sequence, as I can't see ahead, I can't see several things at once, I can only see what I've chosen to do first. If I'd managed to keep my job i think I would have worked out a new routine. But I only had it for a month. Luckily I'm slipping back into my old routine quite quickly. I haven't forgotten it. So my flat is getting tidier. But I have learnt a lesson from this. I would like to spend less time on housework, and do things more quickly. Then I would have more time to do the things I want to do.