An interview with a highly succesful Aspergers Adult

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Temple Grandin seems really good at awful oversimplifications after talking to hundreds of people. She managed to put all autistic thinking styles into just three (verbal/logic, visual, and music/math) styles of thinking as well as this weird continuum thing. I honestly have trouble understanding how she forms her categories. It seems almost as if she must come up with the categories first then dump everyone into them later. Because I've met/interacted with/read/etc. hundreds of autistic people too and all I see is immense complexity with dozens if not hundreds of overlapping experiences. Yeah it's possible occasionally to put everyone on one side or another of a line. But only with the understanding that you're looking at one trait among at least dozens.

As I learn more of autism I beginning to see over simplification in a lot of places. Several ideas floating around all seem to want to have an all encompassing, concise description - a Theory of Everything regarding autism. The Extreme Mail brain theory, The Intense World Theory, Temple Grandin's description above - they all seem to attempt to encapsulate the whole spectrum and in the attempt miss big pieces.

It won't surprise me at all if it turns out that autism CAN'T be so easily abstracted into a neat set of descriptions.

I also wonder if this is fundamentally of NT language and symbolic representations attempting and failing to translate something clearly not NT. Perhaps the structure of autistic thinking and communication CAN'T be effectively encapsulated in terminology that is essentially NT.

I read an article (that I can't seem to find at the moment) on Time that basically said autism is not one thing but many things that have some things in common. But yeah, it does seem like everyone wants to make it all fit into one encompassing category, maybe two.

The marshmallow test.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_m ... nt#Results

I've wondered if that's a result of how academia works (though I guess that wouldn't apply to Temple G). That is, in order to become famous (advance in your career), you shoot for a grand-unified-theory (way earlier than is justified) and defend it like mad, hoping that your early guess was right (so that no one gets there ahead of you).


That does make sense. The assumption that a complex neurological condition will break down so neatly along the lines of human philosophical concepts such as "theory of mind," or "systematizing," seems weird at best.

I've been reading about the "basal ganglia" part of the brain lately, and there's apparently not much deep understanding of what it does. Its functions seem to include movement, emotion, and memory (and probably more things), but not as separate things. It may be that our concepts of "memory," "emotion" and "movement" are artificial divisions that aren't reflected in the anatomy at all (though in other places it is).


That's a good point. And, given the possibility, it is at least somewhat ridiculous that autistic input into research and such has been the exception more than the rule.

This is something I find interesting. Because I wonder if it couldn't just as easily have gone the other way as well? Instead of getting the help you might have needed, you'd just have been dismissed because of the condition while not getting any help because you weren't classic Kanner non-verbal?

I wonder this because here I am at 34 with, well lets just say a colorful history in my education (I do very well academically and before knowing about my AS most of my teachers were convinced I'd really become something special), a job history that's pathetic and what I feel is basically a complete dismissal of both my condition and me as a person. Sure, I know what I am, and there's some internal relief at that. But mostly as far as relates to the outside world the diagnosis has gotten me the stigma of being counted amongst both (but being apart of neither) the handicapped and the mentally ill. So I get the rejection that comes with people not wanting someone like that, or expecting someone like that to fail and in some cases treating me in such a way that that becomes inevitable, but I don't get the help since I'm too high functioning and thus am expected to have have 'grown out of' my AS even if I disagree.

I sometimes wonder, if I'd never gotten diagnosed would I be out there somewhere working on something I enjoy? At what cost did I gain this knowledge of what I am? Was it possibly at the cost of my education, a career, maybe even having my own place and being able to support myself? The messages I get from the world are so mixed. On one hand I should be happy I'm given enough money that I should be able to feed myself so long as I live in my parent's house even though people like me should be shot because we're such a burden. Or I get the message that I can do anything because there's so much support in the system, I should just pull myself up by my bootstraps and get an education and then a job. Even though past experience getting help from the system has failed abysmally because all I can get for school is 20 more minutes on a test I will never get to because I can't even find where my class got moved to, and all I can get for my health is drugs because people like me don't have reasons for feeling any negative emotions - we just only ever have chemical imbalances. As to jobs, the job market is at the worst it's been for over 50 years and there's a ton of healthy young men with good degrees and willingness to work for just about anything so long as they can work to pick over the defective older person with no real education.

This is something I wonder a lot about because of how strong AS tendencies there are in my family. Yet I'm the only adult in my family who has a diagnosis (the only other member of the family is still young enough that the school system HAS to let him stay), and I'm the only one who's in this situation. Everyone else in my family who has such strong AS tendencies it's almost impossible that they're not on the spectrum not only have jobs they're successfully holding down for years on end, but they're so successful at their jobs they're considered experts at them and are valued accordingly. Despite the fact that I'm much easier to get along with than most of my family, I have comparable or to be honest higher IQ, I learn fast and I'm pretty eager to please, there just seems to be no place for me in my society regardless of whether or not I try. I'm starting to think maybe the diagnosis wasn't such a good thing to have as early as 19 because it seems to have allowed for and facilitated my dismissal from the rest of society rather than gain me aid to better assimilate to it.

To be fair... I did not fall into my high tech job until I was in my 30s. Before that time, I spent over a decade really struggling with my own career. For years and years, I worked as a single Mother in a job that was physically and mentally so stressful that I had no energy many nights to even take a shower. I made less money at that job than I could have made on welfare given as I had to pay for my two childrens' daycare services. I had no TV, no phone and could barely afford any food paycheck to paycheck. This was a VERY challenging time for me and I remember making the decision to work instead of be on welfare even though it was less money and physically so much more challenging. I went so far as to go down to the welfare office and take a number and then left pissed off and determined to make it NEVER being on welfare... I also never finished college. This all just to paint the picture that life has NOT been easy for me either even though it reads pretty nicely now. I am reaping the rewards today of a lifetime of struggle and hardwork.

When I landed in high tech, I felt "home" but it still wasn't easy at all for me to get to where I am now even so. During the past 20 years in this field, I have been hospitalized for panic attacts, exhaustion and for a bleeding ulcer. I have pushed into and beyond my walls several times and my Doctor once told me in my mid 30's that I would not make it into my 50s if I did not change my life drastically. This is when I decided to become and expert at physical fitness and nutrition. I did change my life drastically and am very healthy today.

Again, these are all reasons why my shrink is in absolute disbelief that I had never been discovered before. All these chances for even one medical person to refer me to mental health services where I would have easily (according to the 3 I have now) been Dxd and it never happened until just this past year when the death of my Father caused me to malfunction badly enough that I could not do my job at all...

Personally, I don't know where AS ends and just plain "life" begins in this game. I am in a playing field where the stakes are high and many people work hard to get to where I am. If it was easy, everyone would be doing it.

My "comorbid" was depression, which was not so much a separate condition but a result of the fact that my family life was very difficult for me (and I was also trying to push myself in my academic life to pursue a good career). So it is not so much a part of AS (which I don't know whether I have, I was diagnosed at age 11 but am not convinced they did a good job on the diagnosis) but a part of my family's reaction to me and my diagnosis. But it is a necessary consequence and I imagine most people with AS may develop this problem.

Oh yes, I certainly didn't mean to discourage your accomplishments by implying it was easy. I'm quite impressed with what you've managed to do and I imagine it must have been quite a challenge. I just wonder by comparing myself with my siblings if the label of the diagnosis is hindering me more than helping. There's often the automatic assumption that a diagnosis must always equate to a better quality of living regardless of anything else. Lately I've just started to question whether that must be true in all cases and if a 'Diagnose and Discard' approach isn't more harmful than going undiagnosed as it allows the 'defective' to be completely dismissed as having no abilities or functions useful to society.

kfisherx - can I ask you what kind of support you had as a kid? Were family or teachers supportive? Was their anyone you would have called a mentor? I know you were dx'd late but it sounds as if your family realized you were a bit left of center early on. I'm just curious what makes some successful in life where others struggle. It sounds like you had a strong work ethic and possibly some excellent examples of general proactive life management.

Depression is VERY common with AS. I fight it all the time too... I know that in the past I could have be Dx with Anerexia, anxiety as well as depression on a number of occasions. Currently I do not have any comorbid conditions and I have been healthy for a LONG while. I attribute much of this to my physical fitness/health as well as my life getting easier with my kids moving out and becoming independent along with my job doing well. Things are flowing well in my life = good mental health.



I understand... I just wanted to make it clear to all the readers that the interview is a result of work far beyond what I can explain in just one hour. I agree that the DX may be a factor for some leading to worse results. I wonder if I would not have had just taken welare had I had a DX back when I had the chance. I mean that would have been a perfect excuse...

I had an amazing weird childhood all things considered. No support whatsoever for me because there was no DX. I actually did well in school without very much effort so I did not need support from the teachers. I got "hit" (paddled or spanked) a LOT as a childin school because I was never very conforming to the rules but I also was always an honor student despite my antics. I always felt smarter than the teachers and other adults in my life and I was. I did what I wanted to do mostly and lived more inside my head than outside of my head. In the 11th grade, I managed to go overseas as an exchange student. I spent the entire year NOT going to school at all, forged all my transcripts and graduate high school sans 1.5 years of high school. (did I mention that I was smarter than the adults yet?) I did not have "friends" per say nor did I do any of the social stuff like school dances. That said, people seemed to have a degree of respect for me as they do today. In high school a number of peple from various groups hung out with me. I could have cared less and did not know then (and still do not know) their names except for 2 of them who I actually sort of liked at the time. Today I do not know or talk to any of them. People seek me out way more than I seek them out.

I finally had the chance (just this weekend) to see the TV show called Bones. This is important to this conversation because the lead character in this series is a VERY accuate represenation of how I am as a character at my core. The physical difference is that I am WAY more gender neutural and way less fashion sense than her but how we conduct ourselves and how people treat me is very similar. It's funny because when this show first came out, my Mother called me to tell me that they created a character based on me and that I had to see it. I never did look at the show but after I learned of Aspergers I also read this person on the show was suspected also of being on the spectrum. So this weekend I finally got the chance to see it and I TOTALLY get what my Mom means. That person's charater and mine are VERY similar.

So if you guys know this show then you know what sort of person I am and how people interact with me and always have. I am completely oblivious to the workings of people and I really don't (and never did) care that they understood me or what they thought of me. I have always known I was different but my different was always better in my mind so it never affected me negatively. I don't know where this came but it is who I am. Maybe this reference will help put things in perspective here.

I wasn't diagnosed with anything as a child. What this meant for me was that I tried very hard to function as an NT without having an understanding as to why I could not function at that level for longer than short bursts, or why I was left so exhausted afterward it would take time to actually recover. I thought what I was going through was stuff that everyone went through because I honestly did not realize that I was different. So they went through it and could cope more.

That is to say, I am not sure a diagnosis means things either way. I'm not saying it did or didn't in your case, nor am I saying not having one did or did not help in kfisherx's case, but not having one certainly didn't help me at all.

I had an experience of school that was pretty similar to kfisherx's (except the overseas part). I skipped a year in school, coming third in the year above me, in a year that was particularly good for my school anyway.

However, my diagnosis negatively affected my family life. For a start, I did not consent to having a diagnosis. I was not told that that was what was happening. I was not told how that diagnosis might affect me in divorce proceedings or adoption proceedings in the future, and I was happy with myself and would not have wanted any support that was offered to me (which in the event was non-existent). I didn't want a name for the way I was, I was me, and I was happy with it. The diagnosis broke my trust with my parents permanently and changed my relationship with them forever. I have not had any respect or love for my mother since she did that to me. I will never forgive her for doing that without my informed consent (which, had I fully understood the ramifications of what was going on, I would never have given her).

My family had a name for why "not normal" meant "worse",it was called a "syndrome" and it meant when we fought, it was because I was defective, not because they were. And someone with phD thought they were right, so obviously they were. When my sister wanted to have screaming children round as friends every five minutes to the detriment of her education as well as mine, I was the defective one for wanting to be asked to give permission in advance of someone imposing themselves on my home unexpectedly, and for wanting to have time to move my stuff into my room, and to wear something that was more appropriate for people I didn't know rather than comfies or whatever, and ensure I was showered and made up, and that if it was likely to be noisy I was not doing my homework during that time. Those expectations were defective, because a "normal" child would not have demanded the equal respect that adults living in a shared house get. Respect was dependent not on functioning academically, grooming oneself well and contributing to housework, but on having a job, and of course it was my fault that UK law stops 12 year olds from working.

I was the one who had poor social skills, although something like 40% of the kids I went to school with were either bullying their friends or being bullied by people they thought were their friends. I was the one who could recognize when people were trying to make friends out of pity, I was the one who could recognize when they were trying to lure naive people in as a target but since I had asperger's syndrome no-one noticed that I understood these things.

My sister is lauded as great at relationships. She is younger than me and has had more relationships than I can count. But the fact that my shortest relationship lasted a year, I have gotten f****d around a lot less than her and have had a two and a half year relationship and a one and half year (and still going relationship) says nothing about my skill or functioning in relationships, because my partners are "weird". But the fact that I have had fewer relationships is a defect, and nothing at all to do with the lack of intellectual milieu in my hometown or the fact that I wasn't having more relationships at university because I was IN a relationship for most of it.

I spend a considerable amount of time second-guessing my interactions, wondering if I am actually sub-normal or not. Whenever other people have been pointing out social defects they have generally been things I consider core parts of my personality-having strong moral criteria for who is and who isn't my friend, sticking up for absent people even when this causes an argument that upsets group dynamics, not being willing to forgive and forget just because it would be better for the group, being willing to tell people when and why they are being excluded from a group when they obviously do not know rather than just continually not inviting them until they slowly and painfully get the message long after it's too late to make amends, being angry when people start rumors about me.

The combination of these things has given me less confidence in myself, and while that was OK in school when things were easy, it makes it difficult for me to cope with challenges and failures. If I get poor feedback I tend to give up easily rather than keep trying. And I am sure this has been a significant contribution to my long-term mental health problems these past few years. I doubt this is entirely due to being given a diagnosis, but I definitely would have been better off without one.