'Cured Aspie'

One of my relatives described herself earlier as a "cured Aspie". After making a joke about 'cured Aspie' sounding like 'cured bacon', I said that I don't believe that Asperger's can be cured. It can be overcome, certainly, by learning to adapt to the social world, but it's still there. This relative then said that of course she didn't believe that people with Asperger's could be cured, they just overcome. And anyway, she claimed, she was normal. I hope that this isn't confusing to just me!

A bit later, she said, "You probably didn't have depression. It was probably just Asperger's." While the two often go hand-in-hand - here's a short blog post about it that I found earlier - I would never say that one contains the other. I know plenty of depressed people who aren't Aspie, and depression isn't a defining factor of Asperger's. Furthermore, a lot of the depression that I've experienced over the last year or so has been linked to certain events and thoughts about them, rather than being related to my social difficulties. Plus I didn't like being told that I probably "didn't have depression": it felt as though this relative was trying to ascertain my feelings for me, rather than allowing me to have and know them for myself. Story short: yes, I was depressed. Yes, while I'm often content now, I accept that it's still there and will probably pop up again when something upsets me. And no, while Asperger's and depression can be linked, they are not interchangeable.

Lately I've been having more depression-spells and Aspie-moments, I hope that these soon become less frequent.

The manual?

I read a lot when I was a child: in my primary school there were different colours for different reading levels, perhaps 8 or 10 in all, the most advanced being mauve, brown and grey in that order. I started reading mauve books when I was 5, and soon worked my way up to grey. I read of boarding schools and witches, of bullies and time travel. At home I read too: I read the Dorling Kindersley hardbooks on the human body, and once read about a factual book about the creation of Santa Claus while somehow still believing that he existed. Mum loves to read autobiographies of people growing up in hardship, and when I got a bit older I'd read those too. Some books were about autism - given that my brother is autistic, this isn't surprising. Some books wrote about autism in a different way, though: people who could speak, who had no friends, who had trouble knowing what to say and how to stand. People who couldn't act 'naturally'. At that point I'd feel funny and have to stop reading - I didn't want to be like those people, I wanted to be a normal child.

For all the books I read, I never found one that would have made things a lot easier. See, the other children at school knew what to say, knew how to act, knew when to talk and when to be quiet. They didn't have to stare at others to find out how to act - they just knew. I figured that while being taught to talk and walk, they must have been taught social skills too, and for a while was upset at my parents for having not taught me as my peers had clearly been taught (this is how 7 year old me thought at the time). Later I thought that maybe they'd all learned social skills from books - so I tried to find a manual on how to be human. I searched on our bookshelves and in the library, but I had no luck. I was shown books on posture, but they never said how exactly I was to achieve such posture, and how I could tell which situation I was in. I was shown books on building confidence, but they didn't tell me what words I should use, or how exactly one could use inflection. What muscles do you use, and how do you consciously know which pitch to use?

Even nowadays when I've learned a lot more about how to be, I still wish that there was a manual, for those of us who were born without one in our minds.

Aspie Quiz

I signed up on the WrongPlanet forum a few months ago (a forum for those with Asperger's or suspected Asperger's, and friends and family of Aspies) a day or two after I started this blog. Sometimes it's good to post there: I feel more able to articulate my thoughts in a way that's 'natural' to me, rather than having to go over what I've written twice or three times to ensure that it makes sense from more than one angle. A few days ago I wrote something on a messageboard elsewhere that was interpreted by almost every commenter as offensive, while I hadn't read it that way at all: now I'm extra-careful when speaking or writing. On the WrongPlanet forum, though, I don't feel obliged to do that, since I'm not expected to have perfect communication skills.

I digress. One of the other commenters on a thread that I was reading (it was an off-the-wall thread about what music we were listening to at that moment: I happened to be listening to a YouTube video of 'Psychotherapy' by Melanie Safka, while right now I'm listening to 'A River Flows in You' by Yiruma) reminded me of the 'Aspie Quiz'. It's an online quiz, with questions such as "Are you often surprised by what people's motives are?" and "Do you enjoy team sports?" The responses to the questions can be chosen from 0 (No/never), 1 (a little) or 2 (Yes/often). At the end of the 150-item quiz, two scores are given out of 200: an 'Aspie score' and a 'Neurotypical' score ('Neurotypical' is a word that I only learned a year or two ago, which refers to non-autistic people. Cat brought up the point that this implies that people with other conditions such as Down's Syndrome would be classed as neurotypical under this definition: but I digress again).

At the end of the quiz, I got an Aspie score of 123/200, and an NT (neurotypical) score of 74/200, and a statement that I am 'likely to be Aspie'. I'm not wholly sure how the mathematics of the test works, nor am I convinced of the validity of the test (I originally typed in 'reliability', then recalled statistics lectures where the difference between validity and reliability was drummed into us: validity is whether or not the test measures what it sets out to measure, while reliability is whether or not the responses are consistent across different people), but I still find it interesting. I'm still on the waiting list for an assessment - it's been about 4 months since I was sent a referral letter saying that I'd have to wait 6 months or so, but I don't mind waiting a little longer.

Earlier I thought that the way I'm writing this blog is a bit different to the way I've written my other blogs, i.e. those I wrote while in Peru earlier this year and two years ago. Here it seems that rather than writing about what happened in a way that I think others would prefer, I'm focusing in this blog on the things that are important to me. Sometimes I digress and go off on tangents: sometimes when thinking I will do this, because the tangent seems important and relevant to me. I can't remember if I started keeping this blog because I wanted my friends to see that I might be Aspie, or if I wanted to share with the wider world my thoughts and outlooks on things, or if I just wanted to write down how I felt, in a way that suits me rather than in a way that suits others. I write stories a lot: the reason that I haven't gotten far in the plotline is that I read what I've written, and rewrite it over and over. It never seems perfect, but I try to write in a way that others will appreciate. I do that with my emails and other blogs: maybe I started this blog because I wanted a space where I didn't have to do that. A space where I could go off on tangents, where I could talk about 'irrelevant' things (I'd have liked to know that I'd been listening to 'Psychotherapy' and am now playing 'A River Flows in You' on repeat, but I'm aware that these don't relate at all to the blog post) and not have to go over everything unless I wasn't happy with it, for my own reading.

Now it feels as though I'm rambling, so I'll stop here.

Chewing pencils

When I was in school, I'd chew pencils. One boy in my class in Year 1 would eat the bits of pencil that he'd bitten off, but I'd just chew. The reason for this isn't that I was absent-minded: it's that the feeling of having my teeth break wood, particularly my canine teeth, is really satisfying. I'd sometimes just sink in one canine tooth at a time into a pencil, until it was full of little holes.

I don't do this anymore to pencils. Now I use apples.

A not-so-good approach to being overwhelmed

I'm told I take things too personally: but if somebody says something to me, how can I take it in a way that doesn't relate to me? For example, if somebody snaps at me, I'll assume it's because I've done something wrong to upset them, rather than considering that they may have been in a bad mood for other reasons. Even if I am aware that something else has upset them, I still think that it's because of something I've done to make things worse, in order for them to snap at me.

Most of the time, though, I can handle this, and just feel a bit confused and carry on the conversation as normal, if a bit more guarded. However, at times it can be overwhelming, and I tend to not react well. A few days ago I was in a rotten mood, and somebody said something that I took to be hurtful (even though I knew they didn't intend it to be so). My response, which I'm not happy about, was to quietly screech "Stop it" over and over, while grabbing a pillow over my head so that it pressed hard against my eyes and ears. I don't think much behaviour gets more Aspie than that: I haven't done this in a very long time, since I can usually control my responses in a more socially appropriate way. I think I was only like this for a half-minute or so before I calmed down enough to put the cushion down. The thing is, it did help: it was like I blocked out the world for a bit, just to give me a tiny bit of space to adapt to it before coming back. I was still on edge and overwhelmed for a while after, but I had more control.

It scared me. Usually when I'm overwhelmed, I go to the bathroom where nobody can see me to calm down a bit. Or otherwise I count in Spanish in my head, or fixate on a pattern. I don't know why doing this makes me feel better: but it's a more subtle coping strategy than screeching and pushing cushion into my ears. That said, I hadn't felt that overwhelmed in months. I know that I took things personally, but even when I tell myself that it's not always my fault, I still react badly when I'm snapped at.

Fingers crossed that this doesn't happen again for a fair while.