REG: Nonverbal Ways

Post Reply New Topic

Btw is your name really Carly Fleischmann? because that's also the name a fairly famous autistic person.

http://carlysvoice.com/home/aboutcarly/

@EzraS:

Thanks for the inquiry relating to my actual name. This can be answered by reading my introduction post here: viewtopic.php?t=353222

A brief summary below:

"I was inspired by the story of Carly Fleischmann and got my name legally changed through the courts as a 1:1 match (based on information from the book). I think the 3rd post down I acknowledge the fact that might have a purpose of being a clone of CF with a predefined list of similarities." I am also transgender.

Any further queries regarding this can be added as a reply to this thread.

And I have a so-called "emergency mode" that should I need rapid communications there are two ways to handle it:
1) pre-programmed "hot keys" or "quickfires" arranged on pages, or
2) as an absolute last resort a limited set of verbal utterances but that's an such an emergency or if the devices are down. I use an iPad mini, and iPad 3, and a dedicated DynaVox Vmax+ (legacy device that i picked up off ebay for about 200 USD)

if a medical situation comes up the data is in 3 places:
1) my medic alert necklace
2) the My MedicAlert EMIR
3) the health app on my iPhone


If I ever have a child, my fiancee would be the one to issue a verbal command of "don't stick your finger in the socket" or i could pre-program it on my ipad as a pre-storred mesage

It seems to me that you have put a lot of thought and research into this but I still think it is an extreme solution when you can just choose to be non verbal which is perfectly fine and easy to achieve with the right dedication.

Mind you I'm the type of person who has thought about drilling into my skull to stop the pressure of my migraines ( watched youtube videos on trepanning ), I have always been glad I didn't though especially after watching Steve Gray (Jim Carrey) do it in The Incredible Burt Wonderstone.



It sounds a little like you have a type of body integrity identity disorder but with your voice , people have chopped off limbs due to this ( sometimes it's helped sometimes it didn't ) . You say that the iPad can give you a voice that matches your gender identity but surely your internal dialogue is in your actual voice and won't change after surgery , will this be a problem?

I would actually like surgery to turn off the inner dialogue in my mind but I suppose that would mean a lobotomy

Hi:

Thanks for your inquiry. If the internal dialogue is still in the hardware-specific voice that's fine. I further experience extreme physical pain when speaking along with distress due to the mismatch between verbal body and nonverbal mind mapping. Internally I see myself as nonverbal and the physically hardware doesn't match that image. I actually generated a letter where I acknowledge Body Identity Integrity Disorder which ran 6 copies, one for mom, one for sister and brother in law, one for my fiancee, one for a close friend, one for all my doctors to take a copy of, and one for my internal records. I will post it here in reply to this thread

Thanks for your inquiry and have a nice day

DISCLAIMER: The following letter deals with my wish to be permanently nonverbal. It contains references to both physical and sexual abuse but only in mention to paint the story. If you are triggered by such content please skip this post so you're not reading over things that make you uncomfortable. remember that you can control your own forums experience and be your own moderator by practicing self-care skills and not reading this content if it offends or is disturbing to you in any way. With the disclaimer out of the way, find below the letter to my friends, family, and colleagues.


To: Family, Friends and Colleagues of Carly Grace Fleischmann
From: Carly Grace Fleischmann
Date: Sunday, August 20, 2017
RE: My Wish to be Permanently Nonverbal
Priority: Severity A (Urgent)



Dear Family, Friends, and Colleagues:


The pain of living a lie has become too unbearable, I have been contemplating becoming permanently nonverbal for awhile now. Sadly, no viable solutions (medical or otherwise) exist to take a verbal person and make them nonverbal by elective choice. I can count on one hand the number of times within the last 48 hours that I have either thought about taking matters into my own hands or almost gone to do it. What I mean by “taking matters into my own hands” is that I would find a sufficiently sharp object (preferably a knife) and stab myself in the throat to (hopefully) inflict permanent damage on my vocal cords (while simultaneously staying clear of major arteries, veins, etc.), thus rendering them useless and me permanently nonverbal. During the last 48 hours, my Fiancee, Alexis has repeatedly stopped me from going through with it or even getting to the sharp objects as specified herein. Living this lie of being verbal is physically draining on me and I cannot take the stress that such a condition places on my physical hardware or on my mental state.

I have felt as if something was wrong physically in addition to my gender concerns since at least the time I was in high school in Madera, but never mentioned it to anyone for fear of how they would react to such information based on prior experience gained from coming out as transgender. There, I met two amazing people who were permanent by congenital defect alone; one being my best friend Krystal, the other being this girl who we will call Kasandra. These two people showed me that you don’t need to verbal to have a fulfilling life. When I first met them, I didn’t think I wanted to be like them in the sense of being nonverbal. I loved to sing, rap, and gab it up on the phone for hours on end with tech support or my friends. So what changed and when did it change to make me want to become more disabled? I don’t have a specific answer to that question as to an exact cause or when such factors became so overwhelming that I thought being nonverbal might be an option to help me feel more comfortable in my own skin. I think the defining moment at least that I can readily point out on the TimeTrack® was back in 2014 when I had temporarily lost my voice for a period of about fourteen days (2 weeks), during this time I thought I was done for when it came to my volunteer call center job (at least for the duration of the vocal deficiency), but thanks to Krystal showing my how to use technology to communicate more effectively I was on the phone again within 72 hours. It was during this first hand experience of being at the time temporarily nonverbal that it really clicked in my head that being nonverbal is more comfortable for me both physically and emotionally. Later that year, I was beaten up in a psych ward for being nonverbal and nothing was ever done to remedy the situation. In addition to all that drama, I was raped after thanksgiving by a trusted individual who had abused their security token. Regardless of all of what happened in 2014, it was a year of a lot of things going wrong in just the right order to make me feel as if being nonverbal was an appealing option.

Fast-Forward to now in 2017, and I have accepted my autism diagnosis as part of who I am just as I accepted my gender identity conflicts as part of who I am. Earlier this year, I had spoken to one Dr. S. Rao, who had told me that if being nonverbal is more comfortable for me, then I should go with it. Since then, most of everyone has been migrated to where I am nonverbal on interactions with them and such migrations seem to be going well. There have been a few hiccups along the way with software issues, certain people not wanting to be migrated, friends being lost because of the migration process, etc. As you can see, it has not been a smooth road all the way through to my ultimate goal of being permanently nonverbal, and no one ever said it would be either. I am writing this letter out of frustration because there seems to be no answers that are acceptable for me on how to accomplish these goals.

To all the friends I’ve lost because of my wish to be nonverbal and all the naysayers, I honestly don’t care what you think since you are free to have your opinion; I however, will have to respectfully disagree with such opinions. It is through adversity and difference that progress is made. I hope that one day, there will be medical solutions available to those like me who feel they should be permanently nonverbal or otherwise loose a working body part. There’s actually a medical name for such a condition, it’s called “Body Identity Integrity Disorder (BIID)”, while not officially recognized as a mental disorder by the American Psychiatric Association’s Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, fifth edition (DSM-5), this is a very real thing. People not being able to get the help the need to feel whole or complete has lead to them doing some pretty drastic things to make a DIY solution since the medical establishment won’t help them. Some have resorted to blinding themselves with drain cleaner, amputating their own legs or arms with very powerful tools, and other such extreme acts of self-help which are then perceived by the outside world as self-harm. I am clearly to the point of self-help if something is not done and soon.

I don’t want to die, let’s get this out of the way now. I really don’t want to die. I want to be made permanently nonverbal in such a way that it cannot be reversed by either me or an institution or agency based on its policies (e.g. the hospital incident). I truly don’t want to risk my life to make myself feel complete which is why I am practically begging for a solution. If anyone has such a solution, please help me to find it as I don’t know how much longer I can take this emotional or physical stress.

Thanks for taking the time to read this:




Carly Grace Fleischmann

All I can say is: good luck. This is obviously what you want. You feel actual physical pain when you speak, and you want to avoid that.

It's too bad you've gone through the things you went through.

Do you have ways you can express emotions through the written word? Or something like sarcasm? I have "gotten it wrong" at times, assuming sarcasm when none existed via my attempt to "read through the lines" beyond what somebody wrote.

What you wrote was affecting.

Firstly I do have ways of expressing my emotions including but not limited to:
- posting stuff here
-posting to my company's "Social Intranet Platform" in the form of forum posts, blogs, and shared images
-writing lyrics to songs and raps that will never be sung
-blogging on one of my customer's sites where i am a frequent member and do assistant web stuff
-and writing letters like that one.

when you say "What you wrote was affecting" what do you mean I'm not quite sure and am requesting clarification.

Thanks:
CF

It made a positive impact on me.

And it taught me something, too.

Can you expand on what you learned and how my writings have positively impacted you? I'm curious

I learned about why sometimes people feel they want to be nonverbal, and that one can attain "conventional" success despite it.

This is a world I haven't really known. It's new to me.

I don't tend to think complexly.

First of all, I'm so glad my writings and letters are able to help you out in that regard. It really makes me smile when I read that. This is what I meant when I said "I hope I can make a difference for someone, if only one person"

Secondly define what "conventional" success looks like... There's nothing "conventional" about me

Ii never said there was. How can a I think you're conventional?

An unconventional person can have conventional success. I mean in your business.

Thanks! appreciate the clarification sorry for the confusion.

appreciate your time and your interaction muchly:
Carly Grace Fleischmann

You're pretty much in my situation.
If you search up my posts you'll find several topics I have made relating to the switch from low-verbal (me now) to nonverbal (what I prefer to be.)
I too am transgender and experience severe dysphoria around my voice. I also have a speech disorder, a type of vocal dysphonia, which makes speaking verbally unpredictable (I don't have much control over my voice) and physically painful. Top that with being low-verbal autistic, and I experience a sort of "white noise" kind of mental distortion or interference when I am forced to speak. When I am not, that blur is not there.
I too got this tipped off again relatively recently - I was nonverbal as a child, and forced to speak by relatives, schools, etc as being autistic wasn't exactly accepted in my situation.
Then kind of like you I got laryngitis for two weeks and couldn't speak at all, physically. And being nonverbal was SO much more comfortable for me, especially when I realized how easy it was to make myself understood when I indicated that I couldn't talk and used gestures instead. I am now learning to sign more fluently, and plan to make this my primary means of communication, along with written of course (emails, texts, letters etc I am fine with, as well as writing in a "talking book" as some deaf people do).
I completely understand your need to be nonverbal, as I experience this myself.
However -
I have to agree with some above who believe that physically harming yourself is not the way to go about this. I know that there are many vocal surgeries available for transfeminine folks which can greatly feminize your voice, including vocal lifts and some laser treatments. Speech therapy is also very successful for transgirls in feminizing their voices - the speech therapist I see because of my own problems both physical and gender related works with many women in transition who are working on getting their voices out of that male register and the results can be spectacular.
There are surgical as well as vocal training options available which can completely transform your voice into a feminine one. You need not be completely nonverbal forever.
As for autism, you can make it known you are nonverbal and refuse to speak, without being physically permanently incapable of same. This is what I am doing.
There are some elements in life which will never accept you being nonverbal by what they see as a choice (as they likely don't understand gender dysphoria nor autism, and why this makes it necessary for you) but harming yourself just to force them to accept your nonverbal stance is ill-advised in my opinion. If those people can't deal with you being nonverbal, cannot respect your decision, then perhaps they are the ones who need to be removed from your life, rather than your physical ability to speak.
I still retain the ability (albeit a poor one until I get surgery to hopefully correct the vocal dysphonia) to speak, in case it is needed or even if for some circumstance I can't foresee now, I might want to use my voice, but I too am switching my life over into a nonverbal one.
So. That's probably a bunch of waffle (for someone who doesn't speak, I tend to make up for it in written form ) but if you want to chat further to someone in a very similar position to you, feel free to PM me.

**** PUBLISHED FROM MOBILE DEVICE FORGIVE MY SPELLING, GRAMMAR, etc. ***

You know it's bad when:
1. My corporate "handlers" receive a diagnostic message on their dashboard which reads "CRITICAL ALERT: HARDWARE FAILURE (DX1045)" the mother nstant they they log in to their admin panel
2. In a similar way my fiancée receives several similar messages along the lines "ALERT: I hate being verbal please fix me and soon"
3. Corporate has an action plan if I try anything "stupid" in an attempt at self help
4. The above letter is generated on a work PC, printed, and delivered to its intended recipients
5. Fiancée vowed to find a way to fix me (even if not medically sound)

I know my sanity is starting to come into question, but I truly have these feelings and those truly are responses given to this situation.

My logic behind a physical solution rather then a mental one is not even the hospital where I was assaulted for being nonverbal can argue with an X-Ray, or undo my final act of desperation to make myself complete.

NOTE: this post is not stating that I intend to act on any such plans, procedures, etc. I would seek professional help if I was on the verge of acting on such plans.

I have the same or similar stuff. I don't use the dynavox much. I just don't like it much for some reason. My primary nature regarding others irl is to be very aloof, so for me the less interaction with any device the better.