I desperately, desperately wish I were neurotypical.

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All my life I have obsessed over speech and language and I really really really want to be a speech pathologist (speech/speechlanguage therapist). I got into the course, got through one year so far, and (as you can imagine) am struggling.

All the usual problems of being aspie are there with just socialising in the class, even after a whole year with intense and constant contact with the other girls. Even though they are, I think, thoroughly lovely people, I feel extremely uncomfortable with all of them, especially the ones I have to work with on group projects etc. I never know what I am supposed to say or when I am supposed to say it - is it too late to ask someone for a favour if I've been in close contact with them for a year and never spoke a word to them?

Even aside from just socialising, the career requirements themselves are against me.

To train to be a good clinician you need to relate to the client on a very high level. Be especially socially/emotionally sensitive, view things and say things from a client-friendly perspective. Otherwise the client gets offended or unwilling to participate etc. You also have to be balanced in your thinking, take criticism productively and synthesise feedback into your performance. Not to mention fantastic speech and language. I think I have some incoordination type things with my speech. Various obsessional, executive and social dysfunctions and deficits trip me up every direction I turn, no matter how passionate and earnest I am to get there.

Splinter skills: great. I can analyse voice qualities instantly. I can automatically transcribe speech into phonetic symbols. That's still not going to help me get there.

And no offence, but I have little respect for people who don't try wholeheartedly, and don't succeed because they've got a diagnosis and that means there's no point trying. That defeats the point of getting diagnosed. (Why get diagnosed if it makes me worse than I already am?) If I just quit like that, then my life will consist of attempting things halfway and then stopping because it's "too hard," switching, then doing the same thing over and over again, getting more and more useless along the way because I'd never actually accomplished anything. If I did that I'd be a waste of life. That is what I DON'T want 10 years from now.

Of course I know that no matter what I do there's stuff that is going to be hard. Of course it will be hard. Everything is hard, doesn't mean I go and do nothing. But when do you decide that no amount of disabilities assistance, training, trying, self-rebuking, and pushing yourself when you really just don't feel like it, is going to get you where you want?

When do you decide that it's an impossible dream.

I really admire that you seem to be putting all your effort into this. I think it would be sad if you quit now after so much hard work, especially if this is something you really want.

I don't know about your circumstances, but I don't think you should give-up on something that's so important to you entirely. If you really think you're less capable of working in a clinical setting then do consider following a different path, like research, as you mentioned, but quitting entirely would be a real shame in my opinion.

Thanks, nothingunusual, for your thoughts and input.

I have actually struggled with this since even before joined wrongplanet but have hesitated to say anything (what am i supposed to say anyway?) But now I am starting to get more depressed when I am constantly surrounded by people who are interacting with each other but not me. Especially so when I realise it's because of what am doing/not doing rather than that they are unpleasant people (because they are the loveliest, most pleasant set of NTs I have ever encountered in one spot).

The hesitation I have about research is of course my social skills, but also executive dysfunction. Of course clinical skills become less important which is great: but you still need communication to weasel other people into doing things for you and co-operating with you etc. Research is a highly organisationally-taxing process, and you can very easily invalidate your research if you forget about ethics, or let someone see something they shouldn't have, or let too much time pass between two instances of listening to the same person's speech.

I know, it's never easy :) Maybe I should talk to someone about the logistics of moving into research instead.

..but still, every day I can't help thinking that things would just be so much easier if I were NT.

You can probably learn to do this analytically.

You can practice this in the here and now by requiring yourself to synthesize feedback about your course work into future course work. You might need a life-skills/self-help book with a chapter on "gracefully receiving criticism" to model your response to criticism on, but again, this is a routine you could learn to deploy no matter how you actually feel about the criticism.

Is this really necessary? Or is the ability to produce technically well formed speech and language the real necessity? If you can recognize the components of speech sounds, then you can associate them with the physical production process. If you merely need to model speech for your clients, then such modeling would surely take place at a slowed pace for the benefit of the client. Producing discrete and slowed down technically precise speech is surely something you can learn to do, even if coordination issues slip-in when you go too fast?

If you really do need excellent speech, I have found my own coordination issues actually can be addressed narrowly for specific tasks through intense practice at initially very slow speed of the technically correct process for achieving the motor task. So it might be plausible for you to learn to produce technically correct speech through intense practice, first at producing phonemes discretely, then using them as they naturally occur in speech.


Sure it could. The phonetic symbols can be correlated to physical descriptions of the process of producing them. You can use this as step by step guide to the technically correct production of the speech units, and as a means of checking which sounds you might need to practice producing, and to check when you are getting it right.

that is how I do it. Unfortunately it takes much longer, is often inappropriate, and never takes into account the principle of "diversity."

That is exactly what aspie/autie people complain about others not taking into account. if aspies and auties don't like it when people assume they're like everyone else, why would a speech client like it? Can't win, unfortunately. No one wants a counsellor who makes assumptions about you.
I have a problem with comprehension. (slow processing I guess.) It takes me a long time to really "understand" what any given person is saying to me. I can (and have in the past) responded gracefully to criticism, but usually will end up ignoring what they are saying and never actually benefit from it.
it is a problem when you are explaining yourself and you trip up over your words. As a clinician you are supposed to model good speech and language. What you mention is a good "compensatory" strategy for an ordinary person to communicate in everyday life, and we help our clients use it, but it is not enough of a solution for someone who needs to use language professionally. Rate, phonology etc is all part of a clinician's ability to convey professionalism and competence. If your client has doubts about your own speech/language, why would they trust what you tell them to do?

My problems are not with pronouncing phonemes. Am obsessed with pronouncing phonemes (avid linguist). While I have difficulty with syllables of connected speech (the co-ordination part) I also struggle with non-speech problems, eg, organisation of ideas, desire to communicate, timing, etc.
As a SLT student, I can tell you that knowing phonetic symbols doesn't do a thing for a clinician, no offence. It doesn't even do that much for a client (you'll never see a speech pathologist tell a client to learn phonetic symbols, for the simple reason that it doesn't help them). It's useful for a clinician and they can use it to help understand what a client's phonology is, but it doesn't improve THEIR clinical performance. A clinician has much higher socio-communicative requirements than pronouncing phonemes. That's why they need a degree for it.

Come on, you have to back yourself. So what if you are not fond of social stuff. The fact that you have an ASD does give you one advantage, you know what it is like to struggle and work incredibly hard to achieve things that others dont have to even think about. That actually can give you a lot of empathy for clients who are having difficulties with their speech. I think that is more important than being good at chitchat.

am working hard but am not achieving.

failed the clinical paper last semester, despite expending all the efforts and help from lecturers I could muster up.

What aspect of the course work do you find hard? Can the tutors help?

I sort of know where you are coming from. I did phone counselling and I had difficulty at the course. It seemed that the other people were dripping with empathy, I wished there were more people like me but those types of professions unfortunately attract people with loads of mirror cells.

I found it difficult, coped by rigidly following the counselling manual, but I had problems with the other people at the course...

I sometimes think of studying counsellling. I am not sure whether to do it or not...

You'd be better off thinking about the ugly duckling and how he kept trying to fit in with the ducks but no matter how much he pretended, he didn't fit in. They could always find one way or another to find him "different".

Then he found the swans. He realised that this was who/what he was. A swan. A beautiful swan. Much much better than a duck. He stopped pretending and then gained acceptance.

Maybe there are more ducks in the lake but that's no reason to stop being a swan.

zen mistress - Nearly everything, except for reading maybe. Not sure what you are asking, exhausted by the last few posts, sorry, I don't organise my thoughts very coherently unless I spend a great deal of effort doing so.

If you asked me specific questions I could tell you.

Rigidly following the manual is not helpful in this course. Part of the requirements are "creating a professional environment" and "putting the client at ease" etc.

And it is depressing when everyone is making friends all around you and everyone has a group of special friends (not deliberately excluding you!!) - and you just do your own thing. What else can you do?. It's not their fault. One or two of them have told me they feel awkward about my awkwardness, too. This course is the kind of difficulty where if you don't depend on your classmates and share your research you'll never cover all the material yourself. That is one of the first things they tell you when you start the course. Have no idea what I could've missed already.

sorry ignore what I said about depression and counselling. that was a bit morbid and malingering. I shouldn't obsess over that.

Last edited by Liresse on 07 May 2009, 10:45 pm, edited 1 time in total.

Thanks for your thoughts, a lovely image.

But the ducks in this pond are kind.. and I still wish to be an SLT/SP...

You'll improve over time, gaining wider breadth and increasing in speed over time as you utilize this skill set.

You are mixing the advantages of the analytical method with the disadvantages here.

The analytic method is slower, although this can be marginal as your skill develops, and appropriateness increases as you gain expertise.

The matter of diversity is actually an advantage as both analytical and intuitive empathy works from generalization, but only the analytic method requires the generalizing person to be aware of the assumptions entailed. Intuition arrives in answer form, sans the working out. The analytic method requires more initial set-up work to account for diversity, but does allow one to be more cautious in the assumptions they make, and where error occurs, facilitates checking of assumptions, whereas intuition is particularly weak in this area.

No one likes a counsellor who makes assumptions about you, in reality is exactly the same as no one likes a counseller. They all make assumptions. Indeed there is no way humans can reason without assumptions, either analytically or intuitively. All counsellors are making assumptions about all their clients. Most do so intuitively and would be hard pressed to describe the assumptions made, much less address them if they are unproductive. A person relying on analytic means of arriving at their answer, can usually identify their assumptions, and tend to make fewer of them additionally.

A client would probably prefer you find out directly from them significant information, and this is probably what every counsellor ought to do. In all likelihood, you will be better at this rather than worse as a result of relying on analytic means rather than intuition. I have worked with professionals who are in the position of needing to balance efficient assumption with the reality of human diversity. Given a sufficient set of "plausible possibilities" to work with, an analytic rather than intuitive approach would have been far superior in by view to the gross intuitive and absurd assumptions and reasoning I have had imposed on me by these "professionals". You might be grossly over-estimating the skill and effectiveness of the methods employed by others in this area.
I tend to appear very ungraceful in response to criticism, whereas I do tend to learn quite readily if the criticism is very specifically phrased (or more to the point where the solution is very explicitly explained).

Is the issue that you can comprehend criticism if you do not concentrate on appearing to receive it gracefully, is it that you cannot comprehend what needs to be done to fix it, or is it that verbally delivered criticism is difficult to process (as compared to written)? Do you write down criticism you cannot process right now, and return to it at a later time (for instance a week later or so)?

There could be a number of things involved. I cannot process vague criticism usefully, but do quite well taking on board explicit instructions. At the same time, I cannot both approximate the behavior of someone taking criticism gracefully while actually understanding the criticism. I can do either, but not both simultaneously generally. The exception is I have a few rote routines that worked well in particular circumstances, that I could deploy without distracting me from comprehending the criticism, but this is only helpful if the issue is not being able to comprehend verbal words at the same time as performing behavioral responses. By routinizing the response so it took no mental effort, I was able to listen to what was being said without the performance taking up all my functional attention.

To find the best strategy, you need to identify the cause of this difficulty (not necessarily easy I know, especially since there may be a multiplicity of contributing factors).
For the same reason I would trust someone with AS to give me advice and coach me on coping with AS. For the same reasons Jenny Craig consultants were all overweight once.

Would you trust someone who had never experienced difficulties in area X and learned X without knowing they were learning it, much less how, to address the issue of not learning X without explicit effort and assistance? I'd rather have someone who has some experience based knowledge about the difficulties I am having, than someone whose only clue comes from reading a book.

But I suspect the bigger issue here is not the clients, so much as other professionals, for instance the one interviewing you for the position you are applying to (post-graduation). I also suspect however, that you could potentially learn to pull this off, given the benefit of structured and scripted narrow scopes of deployment. Most job interviews conform to a script and this facilitates the ability to learn and practice rote answers. Your ability to do this, is something I cannot judge having not met you, but you might be able to figure out based on similar earlier experiences (for instance are you able to adopt formal and correct speech for the duration of a phone call where you begin with all the information you need to ask for or convey written on paper in front of you? Are you able to give formulaic/rote answers in tutorials in "professional sounding" speech given the benefit of knowing you will present the answer ahead of time?).


I experience these issues as well, yet many people think I am an excellent communicator. Is this an issue others have noticed, if so how pervasive is it?

When I am well prepared in a "scripted" environment where I have definitive expectations that are met, I can perform very well orally (nothing kinky...teehee), but I can be a complete mess to the point of failing to be able to properly articulate much less structure my speech when I am overwhelmed, or unprepared. If this is also true of you, then I do not believe this is in an insurmountable barrier to your goals.
Indeed, you would know better than I about this, no offense taken.

I do not find the symbols useful, but do find the precise things they convey very useful. I could not hear the Maori phoneme spelled "ng" until someone explained the precise qualities and taught me the physical process of producing the sound. I can now detect it with the same level of reliability that I can detect English language phonemes (which may not be saying much, but it's still an improvement on not being able to detect any difference from the "n" phoneme common in the English language).

It's not the ability to match the symbol to the sound, so much as that the symbols are correlated comprehensively to the traits of the sound (unlike non-phonetic spellings/symbols). This means you can match sound to its production, and has to be advantageous in detecting where others are going wrong and giving very explicit instructions for correction, if nothing else. Perhaps this is not helpful for the average client, but I know it would have been very helpful to me when I was younger and had articulation difficulties. My own history with particular speech problems could cause me to over-estimate the usefulness of this for general therapeutic purposes of course. Unfortunately, I can only really give advice or input from my own knowledge base and this will necessarily reflect my particular experience. Ignore what is not applicable, and I can only hope that something useful remains.


Degrees do not make you speak better though, or you would not have this concern beyond "will I pass the degree?". Do you think you will graduate this degree?

Perhaps you cannot achieve this goal Liresse but I am confident that if you can you will. You know yourself to be a hard worker and very determined. You are clearly intelligent and passionate. If you genuinely cannot achieve this goal, then I know you will find another that you can feel as strongly about. If you complete this degree and still feel it is an unachievable goal, you can always do another degree; my understanding is that no one will hit you up to repay your student loan until you are earning an income, and you will not be charged interest while you remain in full-time study, so make the most of this.

Whatever you do, you will face challenges most other people cannot even realistically understand. This is a burden, but you prove your strength every day you live with it.

I feel that your position isn't one that's impossible to change. I'm also horribly clueless socially, I don't 'get' it like others do but I'm not uncomfortable around people because of that lack. It's just like that and it's ok.

Knowing that there's no reason to be uncomfortable makes it so much easier, gives you back some of your strength which you can invest into really working with a team. AS can be an obstacle/is for many, but being uncomfortable is the much greater obstacle that actually has the power to prevent your from successfully interacting with others.

If I can't converse with somebody but absolutely have to, I can still say, hey, I really want to tell you guys this because I like you/want to work with you but it's been difficult because I have some form of autism...



Not sure I understand you here. Trying - yes, to one's best abilities (not meaning by another's standards) but failing and failing horribly is perfectly and absolutely tolerable and ok. AS and other forms of autism cannot be cured yet, so how could we ever succeed in overcoming it? That's the whole point of being diagnosed - knowing you can't just snip your fingers and make yourself normal if you just wish for it enough.

That job requirements are against your AS - could be! but that doesn't mean you can't do the job successfully.

My current job demands of me to be highly empathic (I'm zero empathic), have the abilities of a mediator, converse, discipline, explain and comfort with more than 50 kids each day, help integrating several disabled students in normal ed (that's very where I live), debate and get along with adults,

I have my failings, but overall, I have great feedback and it's frequently pointed out to me that I should/certainly would be good in this job later too, though there are a couple of course voices that speak against that because of my unusualness.

I just try and I'm creative and imaginative. Every problem has a solution, some problems can be solved now, others will not be solved until some time in the future.



There's always a way if you try hard.

If there's none, it's not that you didn't try hard enough yet - it's that you looked in the wrong places and think there are ways for you that just don't exist. Don't try harder because that will ultimately make you fail. But turn around, change your point of view and you will find a way that's probably as hard, but it is there and you can make it.

Think outside the box. If you got autism, you're outside of normal standards. Thinking within normal standards gets you next to nowhere then. You got to do it differently, figure it out, without relying on what you hear/read/are told from others because their strategies won't work for you. I'm sure you can!

ditto to gbollard's post.
Comparing yourself to others is no way to help the matter. (Believe me, i know it!)
If you really want to do it, then keep on trucking.
DO you have disabilities services on campus and are you utilizing these facilities and any help you can get?

Sure...things can be hard for us in the material world. I myself could never study at uni as my ASD issues were too severe for that. BUT Liresse,you sound as if you REALLY want this.
the first step is that you are garnering support by communicating these problems here...that reduces your sense of isolation and can help as others identify. I have a career and the means by which i have achieved it are completely novel and idiosyncratic. There are ways for you to achieve your goals.

Are your lecturers, advisers aware of your difficulties? my experience is there are so many bullies and ratbags out in the world and there are also so many wonderful people who will help and support and try to understand and help us on our way.
If you cannot tell them, write to on or two of the more decent teachers and explain your passion and also the areas where you are struggling.

Why do you need to get on with the other students?

Please remember you are accepted here and you can get through this if it is a real dream.
Your struggles are real. And there are always solutions to be found.

you are a swan. believe it.

Wish fulfillment topic

Be careful of what you seek. Do so at your own peril.

The grass is not always greener over there.

A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush...or over on that green grass.

When I was younger, before I self-diagnosed myself with AS, I thought that perhaps I was a horrible person, as in all the classes I was in at school, after a couple of weeks everyone would dislike me, however, a few years later, I relised I had AS, and noticed how annoying most of them were, and that almost every fashion they had I disliked, especially the stupid stupid stupid thing of "going out" which in my school equates to walking to lessons together and gossiping an inordinate amount, yet they call ME odd, for not practicing this. I HATE their culture, "what they do after school: go out get drunk, do something anti-social" it's not just me who's like this, most my friends (who are all Asperges) think that these trends are strange aswell. I think AS is not an impediment, but gift to some degree. ( in most cases)