author seeks AS or HFA consultant

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Hi,
I'm writing a speculative fiction novel (first timer, but long in development) and need your help. One of the main characters is a woman, a prominent scientist, with Asperger's Syndrome or High-Functioning Autism, and having a consultant to help express this character will always trump research (especially since there's apparently so much misinformation out there). One of the main themes is objective reassessment / rejection of cultural traditions and norms, which is something those with AS and HFA can appreciate. This character will be used to highlight that theme, and my intention is that she'll be asexual, or mostly asexual, or at the very least will decide it's not worth the trouble - and she can vacillate and may be occasionally conflicted about it, rather than being a static stereotype.

Please contact me at "teamoverboard at comcast dot net" if you're interested in helping me create an accurate portrayal. Those who relate to asexuality are preferred, and women are preferred because the character is a woman, but all help would be appreciated - men with AS/HFA will be closer to it than I am.

This is not a veiled attempt to have a relationship, I'm really just looking for someone with AS or HFA to help me create a character portrayal that does your condition justice while achieving my story and character goals. Thanks!

Welcome to Wrong Planet!

High-functioning, asexual autistic women with analytical/scientific jobs old enough to be well-respected in their professions? There are a few of us around here.

If you would like to draw from the experiences of many of us, there is no need to have offline converastions with a few of us. This forum has over two million posts. There is an entire women's forum. Many of the women here, too many to mention by name, have posted incredibly insightful views into their experiences, and if you are genuinely interested in understanding autism from a female perspective, you should look there. Should you want additional insights, especially if you believe that they will be useful to other autistic people, by all means post here and ask.

Enjoy your writing! I'm sure many of us will be interested in reading about your character.

Indeed.

Thanks, Melissa17b. I've been communicating asynchronously for long enough to know that subtleties require iterations and clarifications during the process of establishing a common language, at the very least. Offline conversations provide opportunities to discuss representative situations appropriate to my fictional context. What I intend to do with this character can not possibly capture the entire breadth of experience of thousands of people, so reading over two million posts (even if I were able to do so) can't be a more effective or efficient way of achieving my goals than some offline conversations where targetted aspects and ideas can be discussed. I don't wish to exclude anyone, and I recognize that your goal is to suggest I be as inclusive as possible, but realistically my project *will* exclude many. It is a single character, with a unique personality, in unique circumstances, not an amalgam of everyone meant to represent all autistic women. I hope you can understand my angle on this. I really do need one on one help. (My going in position is that passively reading posts will not make me know what it's like. You're not telling me that's wrong, are you?)

I do intend to peruse wrongplanet's content, though. The value of this site is clear.

I certainly wan't suggesting that you could make a single character who embodies elements from every one of us (or to read two million posts). If you could achieve that task, you could also solve much simpler problems such as giving autism spectrum disorders a single labelling scheme that everyone likes. An exercise in futility - we all know it is impossible to completely include everyone in anything.

You seem to have a well-thought-out plan to approach your novel, and the character seems to be crystallising in your mind. My suggestion, which you are already doing, was simply to draw from the vast volume of insightful material already on tap and use that which is relevant to your character. I agree that there will be details, significant to the story, for which you want more clearly directed insight. For that, just ask. You can always PM someone who here who you think can help, or open the floor with a new thread. Longer communications which may develop will naturally tend to gravitate off line.

Just be good, I am hopeful that you will treat the community here is respect and "play nicely".

I would suggest that if you have not already done so that you get a copy of Tony Atwood's book "the complete guide to aspergers syndrome".

Maybe I can bootstrap this thing with this post.

In reading various sites describing Asperger's, I encounter descriptive terminology like the following. Please don't be offended by the way this is worded. I know it may come across as a list of flaws, but let's be plain spoken, shall we?

-- Aspies are plain-spoken and often have difficulty recognizing non-verbal behaviors found in eye gaze, facial expression, body postures and gestures. This can result in inappropriate social behaviors, an inability to gauge the interest level of the other people in the conversation, an inability to detect cues for when people want to end the conversation or change the subject, and a lack of awareness of when they're hurting other people's feelings with their plain speaking.

-- Aspies often have an inflexible adherence to specific non-functional routines or rituals

-- Aspies often have stereotyped and repetitive motor mannerisms

-- Aspies often have a persistent preoccupation with parts of objects [I'm not sure I even know what this means...]

-- due to difficulty with non-verbal cues and difficulty understanding social boundaries, Aspies can be very susceptible to bullying, including stealth bullying by so-called friends

-- Aspies may have difficulty understanding jokes or sarcasm [Surely Aspies can have a sense of humor. Please help me understand.]

-- Because of sensory integration issues exposure to loud noises, bright colors, crowds, certain fabrics or patterns, certain textures, and certain kinds or amounts of touch (e.g. hugging, etc.) can make Aspies anxious, possibly very anxious

- Aspies often avoid eye contact, do not use contractions (e.g. don't), and may seem overly serious during play

Sure I can imagine what all this means, but in writing a character I need to really have a good sense of just how far things like this can go. I need examples of what's common, what's extreme (i.e. rare), and what's just plain out of the realm of possibility. And more importantly I need to gain an understanding of the kinds of thoughts going through your mind when these things happen, the kinds of workarounds you've tried, including attempts to hide these things, and the ways in which you come to accept yourself and neurotypicals faced with the difficulties of communicating across this gap. I need specific examples of these kinds of things, as they initially manifested, as they changed over time (if they changed) either naturally or in response to conditioning by you or your social influences, and how they manifest now. Don't pull any punches on what you think of NTs, but also give credit where it's due to NTs who are better about it than the jerks, finger pointers, bullies, and laughers. I need to know the depth of your feelings about these things and about specific instances. Only then can I present a character that will not be a stereotype and NTs and Aspies can read and say to themselves, "wow, that's a realistic character".

So, recognizing that some fraction of these characteristics are only "problematic" because of cultural norms (which are defined by the statistically larger population, of course) and some of them are "problematic" from an objective standpoint in terms of effective communication, regarding the above list of characteristics of Aspies, I need your help with these bullet items:
-- examples, including how these things may have changed over time, and how/why they've changed (naturally, disciplines, habits, reminders)?
-- what's common, what's rare, and what's impossible?
-- what goes through your mind in the moment and afterward?
-- what kind of workarounds do you use, if any?
-- how have you come to accept yourself and NTs (if you have) with regard to these differences?
-- how do you *feel* about this stuff, in the moment, and on reflection?
-- in what ways (if any) do you ask NTs to change their behaviours in order to smooth things out, or raise their awareness of how to make things work, etc.?

And as you can see I'm asking for a lot of personal information, which is why I offered my email address in the original post, so you don't have to splatter yourself all over the world with your name right there attached to the post. And I may not understand you the first few times around, so we may iterate several times, with me asking for clarifications and maybe leading your examples and expressions in ways that will help me in my task. All that iteration may not be something the world needs to see, either. Please consider email.

This is only the start. There's also the whole thing about the asexuality, but I think I need to start here first!

Thanks, Aspies!

(By the way, as an offer of reciprocity, and toward mutual trust, here's something about me. Due to family of origin...dysfunctions, let's call them, I was about two years behind the social development curve for my entire childhood and into adulthood and only began to recover when I graduated from high school and left that social situation. When others were forming friendships with the opposite sex I was still trapped in the cooties phase. When others were dating I only needed friendships with the opposite sex, and so all of my overtures of friendship were assumed to be romantic, which resulted in very painful and destructive social paralysis. I know what it's like to be socially handicapped and to this day I struggle with friendships as a result of the insanity and abuse of my formative years. I'm not saying I know what it's like to be an Aspie, but there's overlap in our experiences and my history has given me an objectivity about cultural norms which has led to this book project.)

An example of this was that when I attended school, every afternoon I when I got home, I would open cupboards in the kitchen, stare into the cupboard, while repeatedly sighing. I would then close that cupboard and move onto the next one. I would do this in the same order and do several circuits of the kitchen cupboards. I would come back and repeat this several times over any given afternoon, always going in the same order.

I did not have any particular thoughts while doing this and would usually be thinking about my day at school, or my “special interest” or something I was expecting to watch on tv that day.

I still sometimes open cupboards, or the fridge and just stare inside it, often accompanied by sighing. I have no idea why I do this, but it does relax me and I am more likely to do it when I am excited or “winding down” (for instance after being out).

While these activities are described as “non functional” it’s probably more accurate to suggest that they often do have emotional regulatory functions (for instance helping to wind down after school in the example given above). Many people describe these activities as soothing.


Yes, and so do many non Aspies. The primary differences are probably in the kinds of things being done. Many Aspies and non Aspies alike jiggle or tap their leg. Rocking in place is less common among non Autistic persons. With those of us on the spectrum, many of these activities are more pervasive (they happen more often), and many of them are less socially acceptable (no one tends to look twice if someone twirls their pen, but might look twice at someone tapping themselves on the face with the pen, people do not notice tapping the table so much, but will tend to notice hand flapping and wringing).

These behaviors are also probably reglatory, helping to regulate emotions, attention or sensory experience.


Some examples might be, intense interest in the smell or texture of the pages of the book, or an intense interest in the pattern (be it visual or the texture of the weave) of fabric. Basically parts of objects that most people have no interest in and which are not directly related to the functionality of the object, will often be very fascinating and interesting to those people who manifest this trait.

Another example might be listening to the same bit of a song over and over, or repeatedly watching the same section of a movie. There is a fairly current thread in general where people are recounting the latter type of examples (interest in parts of songs, movies etc).

It’s not always possible to tell when people are being friendly or not. It’s actually not always plausible on the basis of the semantic meaning of words alone, to differentiate between nasty teasing and friendly ribbing. It can be very confusing to be laughed at by others for thinking something was friendly when it was not, and to be blamed for reacting angrily to what everyone else claims was just friendly teasing. It would be very difficult to convey this kind of information to you in a way that would be effective for your purpose. It would be better for you to get a “feel” for this yourself by observing interactions where people are teasing each other in a friendly manner, and comparing these to interactions where you know someone was being snide and unfriendly, without using significantly different verbal language. While doing this consider how you would know the difference if you only had the meaning of words to go on.

You can extrapolate from this to get a “feel” for how we can be victims of this “pretended friend” type bullying, where people are snide then pretend they were just teasing. Consider that many of the people who are effected by this have few friends, and are grateful and motivated to see someone as a friend, and because they have been “called out” for reacting angrily in the past to what was actually friendly teasing, they tend to doubt their own judgment about whether someone is being friendly or being mean.

So to summarize, the best way to understand this, is to consider how you can tell the difference between friendly teasing that is meant to express or facilitate bonding and camaraderie, and snideness that is intended to be hurtful without being too confrontational, then consider how these situations are when the cues most people use to make this distinction are just not accessible.

In the first instance, the assertion and your comment following, do not fit together. If I said someone had trouble with spelling, you would be unlikely to assume they therefore are unable to write or spell any word ever.

There are a number of things that contribute in various people to anomalies around humor. One of these follows from the problems described earlier with differentiating between fun ribbing from someone who actually likes you and is being friendly, and antagonistic teasing. One response is to consistently interpret jokes at one’s expense as cruelty or antagonistic. Additionally, some things that a person is picked at in seriousness perpetually, will not necessarily be viewed as funny by that person if someone jokes about it (because of the hurt feelings and frustration associated with constantly being criticized over the trait/behavior concerned). When someone does not respond with good natured-humour to friendly teasing (because they do not realise it is friendly) this can be construed as lacking a sense of humor.

Another dimension arises due to overly literal interpretations of language. To understand sarcasm you need to understand that things spoken sometimes mean something very different to the semantic meaning of the words. In fact with sarcasm, the semantic meaning of the words uttered, is usually contradictory (and otherwise contrary) to the intended actual meaning of the utterance. I had to have this concept explained (I was nine at the time), and I sometimes still fail to realise in practice that someone is being sarcastic (alternatively, sometimes I think someone is being sarcastic when in fact they are not). This said, I usually detect sarcasm fairly reliably at this point (I am in my mid thirties), and I enjoy sarcasm when others use it, and employ sarcasm for humorous purposes myself.

Literal interpretations can also be combined with a lack of shared conventions so that someone may not realise that there is a joke and might be more caught up in analysing the factual content of an utterance, so that they “miss the joke” (this often manifests as “pendantic” correction of a comment never intended to be interpreted factually, but rather intended as a humorous aside), where others would due to shared convention, have picked up the cues that the comment was_not intended seriously. For some (much rarer I suspect) there is sufficent antipathy toward non correctness, that this can interfere with appreciation of humor that relies on saying anything untrue.

Lack of shared conventions can also be a problem where the joke requires familiarity with some commonly known about referent (for instance a joke that requires familiarity with a popular tv show or movie).

Many of us very much enjoy humor and as adults, we often are quite adept at appreciating humor; many of us can be quite witty and amusing. Problems with appreciating and comprehending humor and humor conventions are most significant during childhood, and can often be greatly helped by factual explanations about humor conventions. By adulthood many of us have either worked out these things, or had them explained and have had quite a lot of practice at picking out humor from seriousness, so that for some of us our sense of humor can be as well developed or better developed than any random person not on the spectrum. Just as with people who do not have AS, the extent to which we are interested in and enjoy humor varies from one individual to another.

Equally, some people very much enjoy being hugged. One person on the spectrum, so much enjoyed pressure, that she invented a squeeze box that allows her to experience pressure while retaining complete control over where the pressure was exerted, for how long and at what level of intensity.

You can compare this to being tickled. Being ticklish does not determine whether or not one will enjoy or abhor being tickled. Some ticklish people love being tickled, and some really hate it.

This issue is particularly difficult to convey for your purposes. Some have hypo sensitivity (a lack of sensitivity), some have hyper sensitivity (overly sensitive), many have both, or just plain irregularity of sensitivity, for example I like chomping on my arm hard enough to leave teeth marks. This does not hurt at all. At the same time, a splash or drop of cold water is actually excruciatingly painful to me.

The best thing to do with this, would be to consider how you intend to incorporate this element and then seek clarification as to whether the presentation is realistic. Otherwise you will need to read the many very varied experiences of a lot of people to get an overview of the disparate manifestations of this trait. In fact some people with AS do not self perceive any particular sensorial issues (although objective research indicates that most if not all people with AS do have sensory irregularity).

Some have an aversion to eye contact. Some fail to comprehend that making eye contact is significant (and even when told, it can be difficult to develop a habit of doing so). Some have trouble actually doing it because of an inability to not focus on smaller detail (looking at both eyes rather than one eye, or the hair sticking up in someone’s eyebrow).

Keep in mind that eye avoidance is only one aspect. Eye contact is much more than merely looking at someone’s eyes. In fact if you stare fixedly at someone’s eyes (and fixed gaze is another example of impaired eye contact behavior) this is not proper eye contact and generally provokes a worse response from others than avoiding eye contact does. Many of us that have worked on this problem actually went through a stage of fixed gazing (it is very frustrating to be told for years to look at peoples’ eyes, only to then be criticised and told one is weird or scary for staring too much at peoples’ eyes).

In my thirties, I find that I use a lot of energy and attention in social interaction to mimic eye contact behaviors. I can be quite good at this, although if tired, nervous, or distracted, my performance can drop very sharply. At all times, it is very exhausting and draining to keep this mimicry up, and it requires a lot of active attention which has negative effects of its own.



This is probably more common in children. For many of us, formal language (perhaps because it is more precise and more rule orientated) is more comfortable and easier to learn than less formal language. Some might just have an aesthetic preference (and there are some without AS who do not like or prefer to avoid using contractions). Some of us have a compulsion to follow rules in language, and may have learned that contractions are not “proper words” and this might cause some to avoid using them.

I do use contractions, but for a period as a child I did not, because my parents and teachers had informed me there was not such word as “can’t” and when I pointed out there was they had told me it was not a proper word and explained about contractions. I therefore thought that these were not “really words” and avoided them until I came to better understand the conventional nature of language (if people share the convention that X is a word, then X is a word to those people). Also I made a project in my teens of using less formal language after a group of people took me aside and told me how very unacceptable the way I spoke was (according to them I spoke like that to prove I was clever and make everyone else feel and look stupid, which was not the case at all).

I am more likely to use contractions when speaking than when writing/typing.


You might need to better explain quite what this is referring to.

This kind of request is framed as an “open ended” question. This is not the best way to approach us for information. It would be better for you to provide examples and ask the (close ended) questions of whether the particular example is likely, rare, or implausible. Many of us do very poorly with this kind of very open ended flexible format and do much better when asked to comment on something specific.

I understand this is not ideal from your end given your purpose, but I would suggest, that it would be better to start “sculpting” your character then check back with specific examples or questions as your character starts to take form. Remember that in some instances traits are not well correlated (how literal one is might not correlate from one person with AS to another with how hyper or hypo sensitive one is to physical stimuli), whereas for other traits there might be an association between them (for instance the more literal someone is the less likely they might be to get some forms of humor initially, but once they do understand they might be more fascinated with puns for instance than is common in the general populace). How realistically traits you choose for your character “rub up” against each other is probably as important as whether the traits are realistic individually, and so once you’ve gotten ground work information, you’ll probably need to do some of the work on the character, then check back again to see how the bits and pieces fit together as whole.

Because of how many of us cognate and communicate, it would probably be more productive for you to start a character sketch and then have it commented on. Many of us find it easier to comment on specific examples or answer close ended questions rather than responding to open ended queries. You can always change what you’ve started in response to input, and this would probably be faster and more efficient than asking us to assist at the “blank slate” stage.

Thanks, pandd!

Your cupboards/sighing example is perfect!
(I'm sure the description of such internally soothing behaviors as "non-functional" refers to the outward actions, not the inward effects.)

I understand the motor mechanisms thing. Your example of tapping the face with a pen is exactly the kind of detail I'm seeking.

I understand the issue of relying on literal meanings of words when it comes to bullying and not being able to discern friendly teasing from hurtful teasing. What I'm looking for is mainly real examples of things people have done, said, and perhaps manipulated Aspies into doing (such as manipulating Aspies into doing something socially unacceptable or even illegal, or perhaps more innocuous but self-serving from the standpoint of the abuser).

Thanks for connecting the dots for me between the whole issue of literal meanings of words and jokes, humor and sarcasm. Sarcasm is something that even NTs sometimes miss, being "gullible" (as I think of it) in believing that someone is being serious when they are being subtly sarcastic. I myself have experienced this many times, being a very literal person myself. Believe it or not I recognize in myself your description of the tendency to assume all jokes are at one's expense, and things along those lines. My wife's family are all poker-faced, deadpan sarcastic humor wielders and spending time with them has been educational for me in terms of calibrating my awareness of tone of voice in sarcasm, or very minor facial expressions. One of the things that family does when being sarcastic is right after saying something sarcastic, deadpan mode, they will look off into the distance. I've learned to immediately go back and think, okay, someone just said something sarcastic, now go rewind, replay and reevaluate!

I find it interesting and notable that Aspie sense of humor by adulthood can be quite well developed, since humor relies so much on wordplay, double-entendre, misdirection, and the surprise reveal of a second meaning. This is not all that surprising, since being able to handle those kinds of subtleties may be part and parcel of the definition of "high functioning". Thanks for the clarifications!

Thanks for the counter-example about enjoying pressure, creating a squeezebox. The tickling example is excellent. I react violently to stop being tickled, but I don't "hate it", it's a pleasurable neural sensation. What I think makes me react violently to stop it is that the neural sensation is so overwhelming and robs me of control over basically everything. I will use that as a guideline for the hypersensitivity side of the spectrum, keeping in mind your notable example of a splash or drop of cold water causing excrutiating pain.

The hyposensitivity end of the spectrum is still a bit mysterious to me.

On the eye contact issue, let me ask for a clarification. The eyes are very expressive, there are many muscles around the eyes, so eye contact is to a great extent about the usefulness of facial expressions for nuanced communication, i.e. flavoring the literal meanings of words with additional nuance. Yes, those nuances are learned and are culturally specific, but that doesn't negate the usefulness of an additional "channel of information" in the communicative exchange. So my question is this: when you force yourself to mimic eye contact behaviors, do you not even notice the additional channel of information potentially available in facial expressions? I just wonder if Aspies who have decided to try and mimic eye contact behaviors might occasionally discover this additional channel of information. It seems like any high-functioning brain should be able to pick up on such clues once they are noticed, even if you're decades behind in learning the rote cultural conventions of which eye and face movements might mean what. It seems that way to me based on your description of Aspies having trouble with humor in childhood but often picking up on that next level of linguistic subtlety by or into adulthood. I also understand that facial expressions may be one of those "hard wired" things and part of AS may be that the wiring isn't there to support it, making it no different than any other subtle pattern in the overall sensory field. I suspect that the social norm related to maintaining eye contact has to do with acknowledging that the other person in the communication "is more than their literal words", so it's a kind of acknowledgement of their worth, or intelligence, or capability to flavor "mere words" with something more, even if it's just "their emotions" - everyone wants to feel that they are allowed to feel what they feel, and often it's only expressed non-verbally, especially in Calvinistic or other repressive cultures which are so fond of censorship (which cripples the available vocabulary). Thoughts?

As for the "overly serious during play", I really don't know what that was supposed to mean. I found that on some web site that listed signs of AS. I was hoping someone here with a lifetime of exposure to the world of AS and how it's diagnosed and discussed could shed some light on what that's supposed to mean. I can surely guess, but the goal is to get your (pl.) perspective, not mine. If it doesn't mean anything to you, that's not a problem.

Your note about open ended questions could explain a lot, including how hard it is for NTs to come to an understanding of your world. Without open ended questions I'm forced to use my imagination to guess at behaviors. I never would have come up with something like the opening cupboards and sighing self-soothing behavior. People have a phrase, "you can't write stuff like that". It's a way to express that imagination is to a great extent limited by one's own experiences. It seems best for you to focus on your life alone, not on the lives of all Apies. I'm NOT asking anyone to speak for all Aspies. I understand that you all feel a responsibility to protect the integrity of how you are presented to the world, but please think of my open-ended question as specific to you, not all Aspies. You accomplished an answer to an open ended quesiton when you gave me the cupboards/sighing example. That's the sort of thing I'm looking for with all of these questions. The misleading aspect of this discussion comes from those collected "characteristics of AS", which are worded such that they apply to all Aspies. But your responses need only be personal. Does that help? All of this brings up another important question - how does imagination and creativity work in Aspies (i.e. in YOU personally). Imagination and creativity requires asking oneself open-ended questions, so if open-ended questions are an issue *in general* then I can't see how imagination and creativity would work. Something tells me there's more subtlety about open-ended questions. I think they must work for you in some ways but in other ways are problematic, which is true of everyone to some extent. Maybe you just didn't like the way I phrased those paragraphs (which is why I added the bulletized list, anticipating just this kind of issue).

Bear in mind that you already did answer in a personal way. My last post included redundancy. If the way one part of it seems unapproachable, that's not a problem as you apparently were able to approach the other part of it exactly as needed. Thanks!

I hate to be the devils advocate but you don't have to jump on this like that.

read the drafts if s/he offers them at all. make sure he won't be too strict about his "copyrights" and leave you out of the acknowledgment(in a sense of a group / nicknames etc) and the whole thing to be solid inb4 you do any real advice he could get his info if he ran around some more to figure out how academics and developers with as behave compared to the rest if he even needed any sense of realism / detail / flavour / suggestion other than a stereotype or some character development perk.

Hi, all,
To NTs who follow traditions and cultural norms, seminal events in life are typically things like "turning 16", getting a driver's license, making the team (be it football, track, hockey, lacrosse or whatever), first date, first kiss, entering high school, prom/homecoming (whatever that is), high school graduation, first job, going to college, college graduation, career advances, marriage, having children, and other traditional things.

I imagine for those with AS the list of seminal events in life can be very different. For me, the above list of traditional big events mostly did not apply, although being able to return to college and finish, and then getting a couple of graduate degrees, and finally (after 20 years of striving) arriving at a good career were important events. To me those had little to do with tradition and everything to do with personal independence, self-esteem, and even, to some extent, vindication.

I imagine "diagnosis day" must be a seminal life event for those with AS, if the diagnosis happens after early childhood, doubly so if it happens in adulthood.

Would anyone care to share some thoughts on your "diagnosis day" and other seminal events in your life with AS or HFA? (i.e. events not experienced by NTs or at least experienced very differently by NTs)
What happened?
How did it "change the course of your life"?
How do you look upon it in hindsight?
What was going on in your mind at the time?
How did it affect your relationships with family, etc.? (if any / if at all)
How old were you when these events happened?

thanks!
R

Last edited by deathbymeteor on 18 Sep 2009, 6:15 pm, edited 1 time in total.

You are totally correct that the events that are the landmarks of life for me were completely out of phase with the prevailing conventions. Turning 16, 18, 21, 30, 40, all meant absolutely nothing. Just another day. Even though it took a lot of searching to find my first job after university, it wasn't a celebratory event - I just kept on looking until I finally found the company that used the esoteric programming language I knew. I did what I had to do, nothing more. Even when engaged it took me a week to connect to the reality that it was happening. Forget celebrating - I didn't even tell anybody.

To me, the events that are life-defining have all occurred recently - within the last five years. And, as you say, they pertain to self-understanding, self-acceptance and establishing independence, or at least self-worth.

For me, both diagnosis days were not the defining moments. In both cases, I was aware of the existence of the condition for a great many years. However, as I have extreme difficulty with "inexact matching", the descriptions and profiles of people with these conditions, while bearing striking similarities to me, always had "but I'm nothing like that" bits that led me to believe that I didn't genuinely have these "real" conditions. As a result, I felt even more screwed up and worthless - if I was going to be TS, or autistic, I couldn't even get that right!

In both cases, I was magnetically drawn to the documentaries and exposés on the matter. Over the years, coverage expanded beyond the same two recycled 1994 Discovery Channel documentaries. As I saw more examples of people with these conditions, it became apparent that not everyone looked like the de facto stereotypes. More profoundly, in both cases I finally stumbled into an account of a person that was so much like me that I finally connected myself to the condition. This really IS me! My perspective and outlook on life changed so profoundly in those moments I cannot ever forget. Like most people with 9/11, or when Kennedy was shot, etc., I can tell you exactly where I was and what I was doing, what I was wearing, what the weather was like - these moments are frozen in time.

After these amazing self-revelations which marked the termination of the protracted denial phase, I quickly learned all I could, talked to affected people as well as experienced professionals, and was able to assimilate this new understanding of myself. In both cases, formal diagnosis was a significant milestone, but never either a goal or a defining event, and in any event non-climactic. In the first case, it was only a beginning - there were major adaptations to be made. OK, there was an entire life to overturn and rearrange. With autism, there is no clear adaptation. Understanding being autistic has freed me to make small adjustments. More importantly, it has allowed me to free myself from feeling shame about being different, thinking differently and being astoundingly poor at many things despite tremendous (and usually invisible) effort.

In hindsight, armed with the knowledge and insight I now have, recognising that I had these conditions should have been patently obvious. How could I have missed such glaringly obvious signals for so many years?

As for family, the first revelation resulted in the total termination of contact with nearly every family member. They don't even know about autism yet, and very likely never will.

I'm reading Temple Grandin's "Thinking in Pictures" (expanded edition). I've decided that my protagonist will be a pattern thinker with some visual emphasis/enhancement. I think this will be more consistent with her professional achievements than making her a visual thinker like Temple Grandin. For now I'm putting that book down and switching to Attwood's "Complete Guide" to focus more on pattern thinking.

I'm making contact with a friend of a friend whose son has AS/HFA and hope to make contact with some local organizations soon, as well. I'll post more questions later with more of a character profile you can comment on. Thanks all!