Autistic People Must Try Too

In some ways, this post is a follow-on from my post "There Are Always Those Who Don't Try". If you want to fully understand this post, I would recommend reading that first.

Anyway, back to the subject matter. In the other post, I focused on the necessity of non-autistic people being understanding to the issues that autism, but there is another side to this. It is equally important for the autistic people to be understanding of the non-autistics. I have been told that very often, it is very easy for a non-autistic person to think that autistic people are very immature or even deliberately making life difficult for themselves and others. While in the vast majority of cases this is highly untrue, there are certainly many people who don't make life any easier for the others in their lives.

There is a solution though - self-growth. If an autistic person shows themselves to be growing, or even making a real and conscious effort to improve themselves, I can almost guarantee that non-autistic people will be much more understanding of the problems you face. Take my word for it, there will be people who do not care, even if you try your very hardest, as I said in the previous post. Having said that, I feel that it is highly important for autistic people to try as hard to blend into the non-autistic world as it is for the autistic world to adapt around autism.

This means changing the parts of yourself that you dislike, however it also involves being understanding of non-autistics. It is clear to me that it is very difficult for a non-autistic person to understand why an autistic does things differently from others. An autistic person is very likely to misunderstand the signals an a non-autistic will portray, but it is equally easy for a non-autistic to misunderstand the signals an autistic will portray, or even fail to portray. This can mean that it is highly likely for a non-autistic to become infuriated with an autistic. This probably leads to the majority of arguments between people. I myself have had several of these arguments.

But there is a solution. Change. Improve. Grow. If you can do all of these things, people will be able to see that you are actually trying to stop these arguments, they will probably reciprocate and learn to accept those flaws you cannot help. The understanding side of things consists of acknowledging the difficulties associated with dealing with an autistic person, and trying to reduce these difficulties. It has worked for me, it can work for you...if you give it enough time and energy.

Sorry for the shortness of this pot, I am on holiday at the moment and I wanted to get this written so I wrote this quickly. I shall very likely return to this topic later. Any comments on this post or the blog in general are more than welcomed!

Awkward!!

On several levels, this post is going to feature awkwardness. Firstly, I am terribly sorry and feel ridiculously awkward in the fact that I have not put a proper post up since the 18th of September!! All   I can say in my defence is that I have been either ill or busy revising for tests. I have had an illness that was so terrible that I did not rise from my bed for around two days.

Which brings me onto my next piece of awkwardness, this one concerning my tendency to get ill. I like to think that I lead a fairly healthy lifestyle - often cycling and nearly always active - but when it comes to illnesses, I am rather weak. Whenever I get stressed or worried, my health takes one hell of a battering. The most common thing that tends to happen is that I get what seems to be a kind of hybrid cold and stomach bug. It confines me to my bed and condemns me to a couple of days of hellish sinus-induced headaches, daydreams and reading in the dark. This does not embarrass me in the slightest, however.

What really bothers me is the return to school and the ramifications of my illnesses. There are some few (mostly a select number of teachers) who are understanding and believe me when I say that I am ill. The majority do not, unfortunately. I have lost count of the number of times I have been called a skiver or been accused of staying off school to avoid tests. 

It's true that I am often off school ill during the test season, but it isn't true that I stay off to avoid said tests. In fact, I have always had a desire to get anything bad over and done with as soon as possible. The truth is that the health of myself and every other Asperger's person I have met is intrinsically linked to our stress levels. Whenever I get a migraine, I know that I am getting stressed. The next thing to arise is feeling like I am about to faint whenever I stand up (I often pass out completely). Finally, the illness I described above happens. 

Though it gets very embarrassing when we get to the stage of my being called a skiver, we have yet to get to the awkwardness. That only arises when I (who prides myself on my honesty) snaps at the person who calls me a liar one too many times. That's when the silence becomes oppressive and so, so awkward. That's the moment when I wish that I could control my emotions or even just my tongue for a while...but I can't.

The final piece of embarrassment I am going to discuss with you is the awkwardness when you say or do something stupid. This is a trait that is not exclusively autistic (everyone gets it) but it does seem to  hit us autistics harder than most! To take an example: the other day I was going to get cash out of the machine at my local supermarket. There was a queue behind me so I was rushing. I battered in my PIN and got the money out...at which point I said thank you brightly and politely with a polite smile on my face before realising that I was talking to a machine. It's safe to say that I got a few odd looks from the people behind me in the queue. I can safely say that I have not felt so awkward in a long time!

I have learned to accept the embarrassing awkwardness that autism seems to usher in, I simply smile to myself and think that we all look like prats, I am simply not as good at hiding it. I then smile to myself and give the people who are looking at me funnily the most blank grin I can muster whilst I walk away. What? They were judging me anyway...I may as well give them a performance! Why don't we all do the same? Why don't we give the holier-than-thou judgers a performance? They clearly want a show of fools...and I for one am happy to give them what they want, and more.

In other news, I have been writing some poetry recently (after a few people told me I was good at it). I have in fact written a couple of poems based on autism. The link to my story writing profile is:
http://www.fictionpress.com/u/820156/Ink-Flows-Into-Power.
The autism poems are under the headings of "The Autism Series". Check them out and give me feedback on them if you like. Thank you!

Sorry

I should have posted this earlier, but I have been unable to post this week as I have had tests at school I was revising for. The last of these tests is on thusday so I should put up a new post on the Friday of next week. Thanks for your patience.

Remembering the Positives

Its really very easy to just see autism as the thing that holds you back - the problems in your life. Its easy to think that all it does is make socialising with people nigh impossible. Its easy to feel stupid because of being unable to communicate with other people very well.

It is very difficult to see the positives, but they are there. It is well televised that people with autism have abuve average intelligence. It is less televised that they tend to specialise in a particular area. I have a particular gift in words and I love to write stories. Even more specifically, I am good at epic fantasies (of the Tolkien ilk). My other great passion is teaching, I never feel better then when I have taught somebody something, thus I intend to go on and become a teacher.

With regards to high intelligence, there are many great people who have ASD. Firstly, and famously, the renowned Scottish painter, Peter Howson who has Asperger's Syndrome (same as me). He has created some truly breath-taking pieces and that's coming from someone who has very little artistic eye.Another great modern autistic is Satoshi Tajiri, the creator of Pokémon.

We cannot say with any certainty that any of the following  people were indeed autistic as the research of their time was either brand new or non-existent. For example, Albert Einstein was dead before any real knowledge of Autism was found. However, it has been speculated that he was most likely on the spectrum. He is rumored to have talked to himself obsessively as a child (a classic trait) and he was notoriously inept socially. Another famous physicist thought to be on the spectrum is Isaac Newton. I found it funny on two levels when I discovered that he gave lectures eve when all of his students failed to materialize. Firstly, it sounds fairly mad, but secondly, its a thing many autistics do when they are faced with a problem - speak it aloud. Even, no particularly, when there's nobody there to listen or interrupt your flow of thinking. I think that the second bit will only be funny to people who understand and as such will see that he just took it further, but not quite as far as that bloody apple that fell on him!

 But this post is not about famous people with autism, its about all of you. Those autistics who feel that it is a condition that will hold them back. These names are not just some collection I made for the fun of it. They are a lesson. Did any of those people allow misconceptions about autism hold them back? Did any of them allow the difficulties of the diagnosis keep them from doing the best they could? Did they not become famous in their own way, their special way? They did. And so can you, all it takes is the bravery to go and face up to those people who thought that they were inferior, be it socially or professionally (Newton was seen as a fool for most of his career).

Face the people who think that you cannot achieve what you know you can. Prove to them that you can do whatever you want to do. Then, once all is said and done, you can turn around and give them a knowing smile. No words needed, the smile will say it all.

This is a little early, I know, but I have finished it so its up. Put the names of other autistic people who have achieved great things in the comments box so we can all take heart from their example. As always, questions are welcome and loved.

There Are Always the Few Who Don't Try!

I have hinted at this in previous posts but never explicitly said this: a massive part of dealing with autism is other people. The vast majority of people will be kind and understanding, even if they cannot understand. There will be some few among them who will try very hard to atually reach some level of understanding. They will likely be the ones with whom you will make firm friends.

For every positive, there is (unfortunately) a negative. There are people out there who do not try at all to understand or be understanding. Some few will think you are a faker or a dramatist. They will often try to "snap you out of it", or force you to learn to control it. These people are not worth the time of day you spend talking  to them. Ironically, they are sometimes the ones who appear to be the most understanding or nice/approachable people.

I fell into this particular trap yesterday. I made a split second choice last week to go to an Open Day at Strathclyde University (two hundred miles away) with a couple of girls in my year who I have known for years but never really been close to, until recently. They asked me if I wanted to join them, and (as Strathclyde is my second choice of university) I said yes. All was well for the first hour of the journey, but form there, it all went south (literally and metaphorically).

They started quipping at me, I can take a joke quite well, but four hours of it gets wearing. It was constant. The way back was no different. I grew angry, but hid it. I tried to joke back but they instantly took offence. I put that down to different senses of humor and left it at that.

I told them that I could not tell when they were joking and asked them if they could make it more obvious. Instead, they turned that into a running joke. Every time they made a joke, they would grin grotesquely and expect me to feel better! Hardly the response they got, particularly while they were laughing about how socially clueless I am.

After a while, I wound up (in typical Asperger's tendency) losing my temper rather dramatically. Suddenly, I was the bad guy. Suddenly, the girls appeared justified in what they were saying to me. Suddenly, I felt like I was nothing.

I got home after the row and felt drained (and not just because I was up at some ungodly hour in the morning). My Mum knew that something was wrong, but as I told her that I was not yet ready to talk about it, she left me be. She's really good like that: she knows when to push me for information, and when to leave me be. The next day progressed as normal save for the fact that I felt an anger in my gut the whole time. When I got home, I snapped at my Mum out of the blue for a mistake I had made. Once we had cooled off, I explained the problem to her properly.

All she said was, "The cruel little b***hs". She later told me the most important message of all. As an autistic person, you must not care about how others view you, at least those who you do not like.

I can tell that the girls thought that I was putting on my Autism, that I was just a brat who had never learned how to take a joke and was used to getting his own way all the time. I can tell that the girls were wholly ignorant to the fight I have each and every day to make myself appear normal. Each joke they made was considered, emotionally, then logically, in order to make a decision as to whether I should take offence or not. Each straight face was scrutinized intently in the hope of gleaning some level of understanding as to its meaning. Each moment of eye contact had to be thought about. Each word had to be considered. All on five hours sleep. Such fun!

The girls no longer talk to me, and you know what, I don't even care. If they were willing to be so cruel as to act as they did to me and force me to feel like crap when I fought back, they are not worth the breath of my lungs. Take my advice: fight for those you care about, ignore those who you don't.

As always, ask me any questions in the comments box. I would also like to request that you let me know how I am doing with this blog and any improvements I could make in the box.  I hope to put up a new post every Wednesday, though if I have a long list of unpublished posts, there's a chance I will put some up during the rest of the week.

No Boundries?

I was just watching a BBC programme concerning autism and how it affects development as well as the child and their family. The vast majority of the points raised were true and excellent, but there was one mother who was entirely ignorant of the way she should treat he sons' mild autism.

Being a mother of two autistic boys must be tough, no doubt about it, but there were a couple of things that this lady thought that cannot be excused by stress. Firstly, she seemed to feel that her son "feels no emotion" after he asked her a question. He asked what would happen to him if she died. She cleverly replied with "we have a wonderful family..." he said (in typical autistic tendency) "OK". She told this tale in an interview within the programme.

So far, so good, but it all went south from there. She went on to say that he felt no emotion about the plausible death of his mother. This, I know, is not true. She appears to think that autism is linked to feeling no emotion. She appears blind to the fact that autistic people feel emotions as well as the rest of the population, but they find it near impossible to express or portray emotion. Her son knew that all people die at one time or another, and he wasn't really asking who would take care of him, but rather, would they be able to do the job as well as a mother? I can give you this as a point of absolute truth: autistic people feel emotion, often more than 'neurologically typical' people (I shall discuss my reason for the quote marks in some other post). We often have outbursts of emotion. If something is wrong in our lives, we tend to get very angry, then break down and cry a lot. Only once these powerful and damaging emotions have been dealt with can we look at the problem with an eye to solve it as opposed to dealing with the effects it had emotionally. People who feel no emotion or compassion are not autistic, they're psychopathic.

The programme then showed the mother trying to deal with such an outburst. The child in question nearly ran from her grasp onto a road while a car was coming. She did not even tell him off. It may seem wrong for me to criticise her on not telling an autistic child off, but it is really quite daft that the boy nearly killed himself and was allowed to think that he was entitled to do so again if he felt the same as he did the first time. If an autistic child does wrong, you have to shout at them. One of the main things people notice about us is that we cannot pick up subtle hints about others' emotions. Therefore saying "don't do that again" in a voice near a whisper meant that "I'd really prefer it that you didn't" as opposed to "never do that again or the consequences will be massive". In this situation at least, the child needed - for their own safety - to be shouted at, to associate the road with bad behaviour. The child needed boundaries.

I could have forgiven the incident as a one-off, perhaps caused by the presence of the camera had a similar incident not happened again, and again. One of the boys had a meltdown after school, (stresses of the day) and kicked hit and pinched his mother. There is no warrant for this kind of behaviour in a child who is to be exposed to mainstream education. The mother did nothing save from quietly asking him to stop (while he screamed so loud you only heard her when he drew breath) and waving her arms to ward off his blows. That is ridiculous. She was well within her rights to yell over him and gently restrain him and stop him from attacking her. Even a slap on the bum to show that hitting others just because you are having a bad day is completely wrong and hitting your mother is inexcusable. The child would have cried, but then apologised and been better off because of the incident - they would understand that hitting was painful and would not do so again.

I understand as well as anyone that when you are autistic and you have a bad day, you have a really bad day. However, no matter how bad things have got over the last two years, I have never hit anybody in anger. I could even argue that it was longer than that as I was defending myself on the last occasion, but was doing so with hatred. In short, I was taught at a young age that violence towards others due to my anger was inexcusable and that helped shape me into a better person.
Let me know what you think of that lady and her methods of controlling her child's autism in the comments box. Other questions are more than welcome!

P.S: It is really worth noting that there was another mother of a more challenging autistic who was way better than the one I discussed here.

How to do the Impossible.

In this post I am going to try to help you archive the impossible - to change yourself. I am going to help you with the identification of a problem in your personality, (be it an autistic trait or not) and then explain the way I deal with such a problem.

How to choose the piece to focus on:

Trust me when I say that there will always be somebody who does not like a part/parts of your personality. Trust me when I say that there will always be somebody who will point your "flaw" out to you. Trust me when I say that you can never change enough to make them happy with you.

Trust me when I say that trying is a waste of time.

 Friends, family, schoolmates and enemies will see things in you that they think you should change. Listen to them. Absorb what they say, then ask yourself three key questions:

1. Has the person had a bad day and are picking out your flaws to make them feel better? (even the best of people are prone to this)
2. Do you think that they are worth changing for?
3. Do you think that you even want to change that piece of your personality?

In answer of the first question, everybody has rubbish days. It makes us feel sadistically better to point out others' flaws - in the short term - as it makes our day seem better as we can see that we are not the only flawed ones. On days like this, the best course of action is to remove yourself from humanity in general. If somebody else has one of those days and chooses you as their scapegoat, listen, absorb, consider, then later (the next day's a good time) question them as to whether they meant what they said, and if they still want you to change the thing. This is a good way to keep friends as they feel they have been able to avert your anger/sadness and help you improve yourself.

The second question is easy to answer. Change for the family you love. Change for the friends you will carry for the rest of your life/for many years. Ignore the classmates you neither like nor dislike. Ignore the temporary friends that are convenient (we all have them). Ignore the bullies and the enemies who wouldn't like you even if you were a saint. Sometimes, it pays to be careful of taking the advice of even the closest of friends because they really want you to be the best you can be, even if you sometimes don't want to go in the direction they want you to. Overall, do they matter enough to you to put a whole lot of energy into making them happy with you?

The third question is the most important by a huge margin, but it is the most difficult to answer. This is because it is two-fold in nature - its all very well deciding for yourself what you want to change to make yourself happy, but a huge part in happiness is the others in your life. Also remember, we may be highly dependant on others for joys in life, but we cannot be happy with others until we are happy with ourselves - its a bit of a vicious circle. My advice in this situation is listen to your heart. Your heart can tell you if you are happy. Always remember that even if your current friends do not appreciate you, there are others out there who will.

Beginning a change:

It never happens overnight. It takes time, perseverance, patience from you and your friends and family. To take an example, I was once accused of having a very poor sense of humour - even nasty. Friends told me this, I considered it, then I acted. The way I did so was to split the problem up into little pieces, then tackle them one after another.

The first piece was my tendency to latch on to one person and make jokes about/concerning them for an hour. I did not even realise I was doing so, until I looked into the matter. When I did notice that, I began a system - I would joke about one person, then move on to another, then the next, etc. I was very careful not to make fun of one person too heavily.

Once that was dealt with, my next bitesize piece was to reduce the overall number of jokes. I did this by saying one in three of the jokes I would see. This meant that other people in my group of friends would have more of a chance to make their own jokes, levelling the playing field.

The last thing I did was to diversify my jokes. Before, I made sarcastic jokes or classic teenage boy sexual innuendos. Now, I recite written jokes, dabble in irony and use jokes based on over-exaggeration. I even bridge into surreal humour, as I never have before. Even as I write this, the alien on my shoulder squibbles his appreciation!

The most important thing about starting a change is to plan the change. I changed my humour through a check-list, if that works, great. If it doesn't, mind-map what you want to do, spider diagram or even bullet-point the changes you want to implement.

Keep at It:

At times, it will feel impossible, implausible, insane. The thing that separates the best people from the worst is a dogged determination to make ourselves the best we can be. To make us happy with ourselves. Lesser people simply shrug things off when the going gets tough, or neglect to try at all. Others simply retreat within themselves and become shadows of their potential. It does not have to be that way. Everyone has something about themselves that they don't like. Change it. Step by step. Let me help you, together we can achieve the impossible - we can be happy with ourselves.

If you have decided to change a bit of yourself but you don't know how, ask me for help in the comments box or contact me on Google or private message me. Also feel free to question me about autism or other things in the comments box. If you would prefer anonymity or not to appear on the blog at all but still want me to answer questions, use one of the above methods to get in touch. Thanks a lot for reading this, hope it has helped!