A congruity of Aspies

I write today, after one of our 'Sunday Group'  meetings.  This comprises some Directors of The Different Engine CIC, some counselors and psychotherapists trained in transactional analysis.  A 50-50 mix of Aspies and neurotypicals.  We don't have an agenda, as such, but they always generate interesting discussion.  It is a safe place, and somewhere I feel I can indulge my vocabulary without rebuke.  I like words.  I find there is something remarkably pleasing about putting different words together in a certain order, for particular effect.  The complexity of the English language encourages flexibility and creativity, and I appreciate any tool that allows me the luxury of such fine tuning.  I consider what I write very carefully - something I wish I had the luxury to do in everyday conversation, but long pauses in conversation are frowned upon, I find, which is why our occasional get-togethers are so pleasing.  A good vocabulary seems to be a characteristic of many Aspies, and when we have occasion to use ours, we go above and beyond.  Indeed,  during this meeting, someone (an NT) made a comment on having a collective noun for Aspies, and we all rose to the challenge, quickly coming to agreement on "A congruence of Aspies".

Word games aside, there is an important point to be made here.  As a person with Asperger's, I live in what is essentially a chaotic social world.  This is a world where 'yes' doesn't always mean yes, 'maybe' doesn't always means that there is a possibility, and questions aren't always a request for factual information.  The Aspie sees incongruity everywhere; discordance, dissonance, incompatibility, inconsistency, disparity, discrepancy.  We crave harmony, compatibility, consistency, conformity, balance, consonance, but this is hard to come by.  I suppose this is why so many of us end up working in the sciences, engineering or computing - fields where an appreciation of congruity is valued.

Part of our discussions touched upon modifying our training workshops to accommodate those who work in education with their limited resources, finances and time.  It had become clear during our last short workshop, that teaching people with very limited time that they needed to slow down, (if they were to give their students the support they needed) was, to their ears, rather unhelpful.  Teachers and Teaching assistants, Learning Support Assistants and Higher Level Teaching Assistants are given training in all aspects of their job throughout their employment, and the delivery method is generally the same, providing them with a 'checklist' or 'tool-kit' to take with them to the classroom. It occurred to me that we were doing the opposite.  We were asking them to throw away their tool-kits and checklists, highlighting a huge and complex issue and merely hinting at a solution.  We were, in their eyes, suggesting incongruity where they saw none (despite a lack of success with the tools they were using).  I was reminded that these roles often attract the more empathetic of us, and that NTs employ cognitive bias without conscious thought much of the time.  This can mean that changing these habits is extremely difficult.

I remain convinced, however, that a fundamental change in approach is needed if we are to achieve rapport with our Aspie students.  How can we meet their needs if we don't understand the reason for their anxiety?  How can we communicate if we don't share a language?  How can we possibly understand if we do not fully appreciate the scale of the challenges faced by these students?  How can we empathise when we do not accept their different experience?

The final and perhaps most formidable obstacle to overcome is the perception that time can only be spent on those students who have been identified as requiring help (those who have received a formal diagnosis).  The obvious issue here is the process of diagnosis itself:  The process is quite long and can be distressing.  People can score very high on the AQ scale, but compensate by trying to not appear different.  They can be disappointed and distressed when they are told they do not qualify for the medical diagnosis - they are functioning too well.  I don't doubt that there is a significant number of students with undiagnosed Asperger's in any educational setting. They might even have been misdiagnosed with depression or pathological demand avoidance... There is no easy fix for this.  It takes time and commitment if we are to effect positive change for these vulnerable students.  There may be a solution in the application of transactional analysis (TA) itself.

Although TA (including our 'tweaked' Aspie version) has proven to be a powerful communication tool for Aspies, it is a similarly powerful communication tool for NTs.  In fact, all the changes we would prescribe for educators working with Aspie students would be beneficial for all, students and staff.  After all... any organisation can only be strengthened by incorporating greater diversity, and wouldn't we all benefit from a little congruity?

"As the new generation of bootstrappers explores this abstract theory space, they seem to be verifying the vision that Chew, now 92 and long retired, laid out half a century ago — but they’re doing it in an unexpected way. Their findings indicate that the set of all quantum field theories forms a unique mathematical structure, one that does indeed pull itself up by its own bootstraps, which means it can be understood on its own terms." (Geoffrey Chew's Bootstrap theory on quantum geometry.)

Mourning the loss of "Why"

First, I must make my apology for being silent for an extended period.  Suffice it to say, it was unavoidable and I will do not wish to bore you with the details.  I will say that recent events have left me in reflective mood; hence the subject matter today....

I have been tasked to support literacy in a class where many of the students speak English as a second language.  After the first lesson, I realised that grammar and spelling were not the issue.  The difficulty arose on interpreting the wording of the essay questions.  Students would wax lyrical about a subject without getting to the real meaning of the task.  It struck me that this is a difficulty I, and many autistic people share.

I spoke at length with their teacher about strategies for helping them with the questions which involved stating their understanding of psychologically-influenced decisions, and the discussion inevitably led to talk of our experiences of perspectives and misunderstandings.  My colleague mentioned a funeral he had attended many years before;  that of a male colleague who had died in an accident.  He mentioned the reaction of the man's autistic teenage son who, mid-ceremony, had turned to his grieving mother and asked if they could 'get a dog now'.

Now, I have a particular difficulty with emotionally charged situations, especially those as heavily shrouded in social rules and ritual as funerals...  I remember the funeral of my own father, when I was 17, and the huge anxiety I felt.  Interestingly, the anxiety was caused not by 'grief', but by the fear of not knowing how to 'act' at such an occasion.  The vignettes of outpourings of grief exhibited by the the other people at the funeral were at once fascinating and bewildering to me.  I did not cry, and although I was sad about the loss of my parent, I don't remember 'feeling' any different than usual. (I have strong emotions, but most of the time I struggle to connect them to particular experiences.) It did not affect me acutely, in the way it clearly affected others in my family. But I certainly felt shame. I could not conceive of trying to 'act' a certain way for fear of being 'found out'. I even spoke with friends at college and asked about grief, what it felt like, how it should be shown and how long it should last etc.  I waited for the feelings of grief (as described by my fellow students) to begin.  They never did.  What did affect me, was the clear concern and judgement on the faces of those who realised I was not reacting in the usual way.  I don't doubt the boy my colleague spoke of noticed peoples' shock and even disgust at his words.  I cannot bring myself to attend family funerals, to this day, for this very reason.

I thought about the boy my colleague mentioned and, after many years of avoiding the subject, I realised a sad truth.  It is not that I did not experience grief - it is just that grief is a constant. In one of our many TA workshops, we talked about 'the loss of "Why"  I must confess, the significance of this eluded me for some time, but I think I understand it now, and it is dangerous territory.

So, the "Why" refers to the process of making sense of the world around us.  It is about the journey we take through our experiences and the lessons we learn from them.  It is how we acquire the answers that allow us to grow in confidence and navigate the chaos that is life, and in the answers, we take comfort.

I crave answers.  Like many people with Asperger's, I am fanatical about researching, learning and sharing information, but there are vast tracts of my world that will always be closed to me:

I grieve for the things I have lost and the things I will never have.  Every day.  I grieve for the unspoken moments I have missed, the expectations I have not lived up to, the experiences I couldn't communicate, the joys that I couldn't share, the opportunities I never saw, the disappointments I have suffered.  I grieve for the friends I will never make, the belonging I will never experience, the camaraderie that cushions, the intimacy that soothes, the feelings and perspectives I will never understand.  (Regardless of new skills and perspectives... the volume is too great.)

Do not confuse this with regret.  Regret infers that there might have been another outcome had different choices been made. Grief is the response to the tragic, unrecoverable events that may happen without warning and despite our every effort.  Grief is my background.  My baseline.  It is the expectation of loss that insulates me from it.  My emotions are nerves stripped bare, the comfort of 'why' is absent, and I dare not dwell on it.

It is this fear that has me looking to the repercussions of actions, instead of indulging my emotions. (I do not have the experience or skills to indulge anyone else's.)  It is this that has me looking to the future to find new problems that I can fix, and this, I suspect, that led that boy to be thinking about a dog, when 'he should have been' mourning his loss to the world.

I don't mean this to garner pity.  Just perhaps to shed a little light on what might appear to be heartless, emotionless behaviour at a time when everyone is vulnerable.  Consider those who are so vulnerable, they cannot afford to show it.

The best of times...

It's that time of year again, and I had hoped to have something heartwarming, insightful and completely out of character for a logic loving, systematic, no-nonsense Aspie, to share with you all.  My Christmas tree is still up, so I've thrown in some Dickens, and have sprinkled it with a comforting amount of efficiency in the form of a 'round-up of the last year' so I haven't completely thrown caution to the wind...

I have never read much Dickens, or Austen, Tolstoy or any of the other great writers who's chief delight was in spinning tales of the human condition and the intricacies of complex family or romantic relationships.  I've tried a few times, but I get lost quickly - there is little common experience here to keep my attention.  That doesn't mean I cannot appreciate the masterful and inspiring skill demonstrated by these giants of literature in smaller doses - they are, after all, eminently quotable.

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair…" 

When I turned my mind to writing my personal round-up of 2017, it was this quote from Dicken's 'A Tale of Two Cities' that my mental Rolodex fell open on.  2017 has been a year of contrasts...

The year began with struggle.  I was desperately trying to manage an increasingly stressful job, (not, difficult, highly responsible, very important or suchlike... just really, unnecessarily stressful).  This was being made more difficult because I was trying to cope with debilitating migraines and equally debilitating side effects from unhelpful drug treatments.  There was, I noticed, an uncomfortable familiarity about the way I was treated as a migraine sufferer...  The lack of understanding about the condition, the isolating effect, the ineffectual and sometimes harmful treatments, the lack of available help:  I'd been down this path before...

But, (I said, boldly starting a paragraph with a conjunction, and including a split infinitive in the explanation) another path was being forged at the same time. This was taking place thanks to the tireless enthusiasm of a small group of people I have come to think of as Friends.  (I feel the need to pause and explain at this point, for those of you who might skip over the significance of this statement.  Naming someone as a Friend, for an Aspie, is akin to bestowing the Nobel Prize.  Make no mistake - great things will be expected. (I write this with the confidence of someone who knows their Friends will see the humour here - which is the most delightful part!))

The formation of our fledgling Charity "The Different Engine" has been a difficult, time consuming, fiddly, awkward, tough task.  And it has been an absolute pleasure to be a part of it.  At the start, thanks to the migraines, I could barely look at a computer screen, but now I have nearly finished our new website: TheDifferentEngine.net.  We have our workshops for next year set up, and interest in what we are doing is growing fast.  Leaflets, articles, books and conference appearances are in all the pipeline. I am learning more about myself and how Asperger's effects the way I experience the world around me, every day, and thanks to Rich Hall and Peter Fowerdew's Aspie TA, I can share this learning with my husband, son, students and anyone else who wants to know about it.

Without it, I would not have had the confidence to leave the harmful environment of my last job (because I wouldn't have recognised what was doing the harm).  I would not have had the courage to talk to prospective employers about my Asperger's, (for fear they would not understand) and they would not have realised the breadth of what I could bring to the role (I would not have had the language to explain).  The essential support and understanding of friends and family that I have relied upon through this difficult year would have been drastically reduced, were it not for the the fact that they have joined me on this journey, and we all now have access to this common language.  After 3 years of investigating this tool and its applications, it still amazes me that writing about it can still raise a tingle of excitement and a hitch of breath.

A last minute meeting, recently, proved to the icing on the cake for me...  I had agreed to come along to a meeting arranged by my friend Rich Hall, with a representative from an Autistic support organisation from which we had we both received support over the years.  I wasn't sure if there was an agenda, or if we were just testing the waters, but I listened as Rich spelled out the key stages of our work over the past few years.  Before long, my enthusiasm got the better of me and I there I was:  Waxing lyrical about my experiences and the way my cynical viewpoint had been changed irrevocably by the efficacy of these techniques and methods...  Our audience was somewhat taken aback by what we had achieved in the time since our previous acquaintance, and he spoke at length about his concerns about the direction of Autism research in the international arena.  It was heartening then, to say the least, to hear his positive response to our work - developed by NTs and Asipes together.  This is the most important type of endorsement in my mind - that of people who have lost faith in the systems that are designed to help people like us (most of them researched and designed by NTs in isolation, or using NT designed and interpreted research from autistic contributors)...  If they can see the benefit and scope of what we are doing, then even my appalling self-doubt cannot put up a sufficient argument.  'Nothing about Us, without Us' is one approach, but we chose to look beyond 'Them and Us' to the potential that comes from truly understanding the strengths of diversity  from both perspectives.  What we have achieved could not have been done by NTs or Aspies working in isolation.  We have tackled the barrier itself, and it has toppled.

2017 has indeed been a year of contrasts - illness and healing, leaving a job and gaining new employment, giving in and taking the plunge, despair and hopefulness, self-doubt and self-belief, trying to help and allowing myself to be helped.  Not as eloquent as Dickens, nor as dramatic, but I feel this year marks an important landmark.  "The Different Engine" is about to make a world of difference to a world of people, hopefully, two worlds.  I am very proud to be a part of it.

Cut on the Bias?

I suppose seven days is enough time to tell if one has made a terrible decision in leaving one job and starting another, wouldn't you agree?  Time enough to feel the familiar lick of flame as you realise you have inadvertently left the frying pan for the fire, or to realise that the grass, did in fact only look greener on this side.

There were some familiar 'failings', that could have started alarm bells ringing: The induction schedule being rewritten in favour of actual work, meetings being cancelled, people being unavailable. The odd thing is that, given the general atmosphere of the place and the level of activity of the people involved, at no time did it occur to me that any of the changes were actually harmful to me.  I was always able to catch up with the people in question later, and they were always happy to discuss issues and answer questions.  So I was happy, therefore, to forego the induction in its full sense and get stuck straight into 'being useful'.  I got the distinct impression that this came as an enormous relief to the rest of the team.  I know this because they actually told me.

I am a systemiser, and it was clear almost immediately that the systems and procedures here are inefficient at best, and might be entirely unworkable were it not for the tremendous effort being put in by the staff to keep everything running. I would like to be a part of seeing this fixed, and think they might let me. I know this because they actually agreed - the systems don't work well. Their honesty was refreshing, to say the least.

This was never the case in my previous job:  Systems and procedures were everywhere and constantly updated without consultation and force fed with no concern about their wider effect, beyond their ability to inflate the progress statistics that drive results and ultimately, funding.  In order to be both efficient and successful then, it pays to be cognitively biased:  Try to consider too many things; too many people. Slow things down, and people at the top start to sweat.  People at the bottom start looking for another job.

I watched a re-run of an horizon programme recently about the work of Daniel Kahneman, psychologist and Nobel prize winning economist.  The basis of his work on cognitive bias forms an important part of the model of NT and Aspie cognitive processing in Rich Hall and Peter Flowerdew's work.  It was interesting to see people falling into the trap of making biased decisions by 'cutting out' data in everyday situations in favour of faster processing, even to the point of witnesses 'ignoring' a plainly visible assault in one experiment.  This is Kahneman's 'System 1' (Fast thinking): That wonderful, flexible neural network that filters out all the 'unimportant' stuff and allows instant, intuitive connections to be made in their place, all at lightning speed, and mostly without your conscious knowledge:  The network that is so underdeveloped and underused in Aspies...  Kahneman's genius was to highlight the triggers, influences and repercussions of this type of decision making.

Sadly, the programme concentrated on System 1 and never really went into any detail about 'System 2', (the system I find myself limited to for much of the time).  This slow, logical, analytical, and much more reliable way of thinking is usually reserved for difficult and involved maths problems and the like in neurotypical people.  Aspies tend to rely much more on this type of thinking, and it is often developed to a remarkable degree.  If everyone had to use this system for all their thinking, they would certainly need things to slow down, as Aspies do, but would certainly make fewer mistakes.

As I watched the programme, my voice was raised at the end of every experiment:  "An Aspie would have made an objective decision!"  "An Aspie wouldn't have made that baseless judgement!"  "An Aspie wouldn't have been swayed by popular opinion or simply because they liked it'!" "An Aspie would have looked at all the facts!" There is no denying that System 1 and it's cognitive shortcuts gets things done quickly, but there is inherent risk in making unconscious, biased decisions all of the time.  Ask anyone who is part of a minority.

So, the question is:  What is better?  To rush decision-making, trust the guesswork of others, go with the flow and finish on time, but with a good chance of having got something important wrong? Or to take things more slowly, consider carefully, look at all the angles (including the premise of the task) and finish late, but having got as accurate an answer as possible?  Of course, they both have their ideal application, but I for one don't see the problem with slowing down, being more careful and considerate.  This breakneck pace at which we live our lives and conduct our business is so wasteful and, without doubt, unsustainable.

I had hoped that Economists had learned something from the financial woes of the last 15 years.  Kahneman told them that people take risks - and the greater the potential loss, the greater the risk they are prepared to take.  Perhaps it's time to consider putting System 2 to use a little more.  (I know some Aspies who could help with that.)

A beautiful map of necessary ignorance?  What would the Aspie version look like?

Karma Police

What an odd title I have chosen for this post.  And yet I can think of nothing better to encompass the feelings I have at recent events.  Perhaps this is the first sign of my sense of validity starting to fracture...  (I wouldn't be surprised, what with illness and issues at work catching up with me.)
My confidence is crashing.

I have just sent an email eloquently backing out of the post-interview process for a job that represented the best chance at alternative employment I have seen in seven years.  And I don't really know why.  I think I may be scared of change, scared of failing, scared of succeeding, scared of taking on too much... but one thing is for sure:  I was told I would be phoned at 4pm yesterday after the interview, and did not receive a call.  It is not unusual for these calls to be delayed, and they would have called if I had been successful or unsuccessful; that is not in question.  But the delay gave me enough time for my terrified mind to talk myself out of accepting it.

At the moment, I feel sad, but relieved.  Tomorrow, I suspect I will be livid with myself.  By the time next term starts, and I am back in the toxic environment I am so desperate to leave, I'm sure I will be seriously questioning my sanity.

Interviews are such dreadful things for Aspies to navigate, and this one was no different in that respect...  A total of 4 hours in which to complete administrative tasks to do with behaviour and attendance tracking, a critique of a 20 slide Powerpoint for a Media lesson, a tour of the premises, a student panel, teaching a lesson (psychology), observing and commenting on a taught lesson (Geography), and of course, the formal interview... So many different tasks in such a short time in unfamiliar surroundings...  But I cannot bring myself to ask for additional time or consideration in these things - the nature of the role means it is pressurised and, naturally, they wanted interviewees to demonstrate they could cope with this kind of pressure.  And it is this kind of rationalisation that makes it so easy for me to stay exactly where I am.

It's odd how a simple delay in notification is enough to open to door to doubts; doubts to certainty, certainty to sabotage.  Of course, there is no guarantee that I would have been offered the post.  No guarantee that it would have been within my capabilities.  (There I go again.)  They asked me an odd question in the interview and, in a single moment, I saw that chasm of difference between me and most other people.  The question was:  "What would you do if you were presented with a challenging situation?"  Clearly, in hindsight, they were imagining the question framed in the sense of a challenging situation in the classroom, and were expecting to hear about some creative strategies for dealing with it.  I, however was flummoxed by it. Where would I start?  Practically everything was a challenging situation to me...  I did a pretty decent impression of a goldfish for a second or two before explaining my confusion, and they asked a more specific version that I was able to answer.

I talked a few posts ago about how my despair had evaporated at my new found validity, but it seems that it's not gone entirely.  It reminds me of a close Aspie friend I heard recently relaying his thoughts about his chances of ever being in a relationship with a partner and his resignation at being alone.  It made me sad, and I felt compelled to make supportive comments, but they would have felt like platitudes, because I myself feel a similar resignation:  A resignation that I will never have a job that shows off my skills or fulfils my potential (or comes anywhere remotely close to it).  People who know me, my work ethic, skills and ability would balk at such a statement, but the odds are stacked against people like us, externally and internally.  Perhaps I'm just too tired after all these years to keep trying.

But there is hope. Maybe it's my little stash of validity fighting back, but there's a little voice in the back of my head telling me that I'm too good for this job, or the new one:  That I am meant for something else, and if no employer can give me a platform for what I can offer, then perhaps I should build one myself.  Maybe it's Karma that I have such a distressing job.  Maybe it's Karma that I am so terrible at interviews.  Maybe Karma is trying to tell me something.  Maybe it's time I listened.

Still from Radiohead's 'Karma Police'

"I've given all I can,
It's not enough,
I've given all I can,
but we're still on the payroll..."

The Incident Pit

As I sit here, towards the end of a busy, full day of cover at my local secondary school, wondering how long the Epi Pen training will take and if my son will make a big fuss about his guitar practice tonight, I realise that things have found their way back to a kind of normality.

I have missed this.  Things have not been normal for some time.  Over a year, in fact.  I don't know how long this respite will last, and I have no intention of letting paranoia shorten any positive effects.  So, this is me drawing a line under the past year's difficulties, and looking ahead to a continuation of all the good stuff that had begun to happen.

However, I think it's worth pausing to reflect on how incredibly difficult these 'hiccups' and 'blips' in our lives are to navigate without a decent support network, real understanding or the ability to properly communicate your experience to those who need to hear it.  Of course, this is the norm for many people on the spectrum, who live every day of their lives without the comfort of a circle of close friends, or the confidence of being able to make themselves understood.  I count myself among the exceptionally lucky that I have a small but exceedingly genuine and responsive circle of friends, and an amazingly understanding husband and son, who have weathered my rants and complaints and soothed my pains and fears.  I don't know how I would have managed this last year without them.

They couldn't help me, however, when it came to explaining to medical personnel the effect of the illness with regard to Asperger's.  Whereas I am sure my Doctor sympathised that my inability to make concrete plans, stick to my schedules or escape into a book or that my ability to draw my super-detailed doodles had been utterly compromised by the threat of severe migraines, I am sure the full impact on my life was lost to her:  The function that reading or doodling fulfills in calming me down at the end of a stressful day of social interaction.  The role that drawing plays in my relationship with my son, the part it plays in our understanding of one another and our creative processes... Without my plans and schedules, I am rudderless and days can pass in a morose of sedentary catatonia.  The pleasure I took at exploring pattern has now turned to fear and anxiety due to the very real prospect of triggering a migraine... It is all extremely distressing and my anxiety quickly rises past it's usual elevated position to new heights, causing sleeplessness and a cascade of other associated difficulties.

It has always been difficult to explain to NTs, how the impact of  familiar issues such as these differs in autistic people.  It reminds me of something that we learn as scuba divers:  To dive within our limits.  We are told that things can deteriorate quickly into a serious situation if we do not follow this rule.  We are told to consider the Incident Pit:  A metaphorical place where a certain number of small incidents can be weathered without major consequence, but one too many, and nothing with halt your slide into panic and its inevitable, fatal result.  I realised that all these 'small inconveniences'  (not reading, not drawing, staying out of bright sunshine, not diving, not eating certain foods, not looking at patterns, not being reliable etc) had me skating perilously close to the edge of my own Incident  Pit.  I faced a future without any of my coping mechanisms, without any of my methods for sharing ideas or connecting with people, and I panicked.  It has been many years since the idea of suicide entered my head, and I'm fairly sure that the only only reason it did recently, was thanks to a rare side effect of the latest medication, but I resent bitterly that it arrived at all, and the terrible impact it had on my family.


So, in summary, although I do, tentatively feel as though I have turned a corner, and that some normality is returning to life, recent events have served to remind me how vulnerable we can be when we isolate ourselves, and how difficult it can be for others to see this.  It is ultimately up to us to recognise our limits, and when to ask someone to throw that lifeline.

Invalid

I have been struggling with the task of adequately describing the sea change that has occurred in my life - to verbalise the subtle, yet profoundly positive shift that has occurred in the relationship I have cultivated with my husband for 30 years.  I have considered and rejected numerous passionate adjectives to illustrate how deeply I feel this change and how shaken I am by its implications. However, none seems appropriate.  Instead, I find myself drawn to focus on what is now absent. What has been alleviated.  What is no longer important... There is a word I keep returning to in my deliberations:  Invalid.

Invalid: Logically inconsequent.
Invalid: Being without foundation or force in fact, truth, or law.
Invalid: One who is sickly or disabled.

Whether spoken as an adjective or a noun; what an awful word this is:
I see now that this change is more to do with what has been lost, not what has been gained. I have been an invalid and invalid, all my life.

Every soul seeks validation, whether it is from family, friends, colleagues, strangers or the wider public...  Most will receive it in some form, at some time or other - although the quality, quantity and frequency may vary.

One of the most sad and debilitating aspects of life with Asperger's is that the neurological differences present make the social mechanisms one would usually apply in acquiring this validation seem to be absent or so underdeveloped as to appear absent.  We do feel however, (and in exquisite detail) the pain of our failures and the void that exists in its place.

We attempt to compensate for its loss by using systematising strengths to develop valuable technical skills, in-depth or encyclopedic subject knowledge, or to collect catalogues of 'appropriate responses' and body language that can be mimicked. The cruel truth is that these mechanisms all so often exacerbate the lack of validation instead of helping.  (People are intimidated by my skills, confused by my subject knowledge, and suspicious of my programmed responses.  My acting is never quite good enough to fool everyone all of the time, and to be caught out is disastrous.)  Even on those rare occasions when validation is offered unconditionally, we may fail to recognise it, or even learn to avoid it, as being without it is more familiar.

I am astonished, therefore, that a simple knowledge set, gifted to my husband and myself, could have overturned such engrained mechanisms and processes so quickly and so completely. The odd reality is that I have not changed.  All that has happened is that my husband has shifted slightly in his perceptions from 'sympathise, but will never really fully understand' to 'I get it'.  I feel that my response can be eloquently characterised as 'Oh. What?'

Every attempt I have ever made to explain my experience, the way I think, my difficulties etc. in my entire life have all led to the same disappointment.  Cumulatively, the effect is better known as despair.  This is the crux of why I am struggling to process the effect of this knowledge - my despair is missing.

Just knowing, really knowing, with utter surety that someone absolutely 'get's it' has been enough to make that despair evaporate.  All the incidents that usually highlight my vulnerability and failures are passing without their usual effect.  The crushing aftermath of misunderstandings has neglected to materialise.  The validation I am used to clawing from all the wrong places is no longer important.  I now have validation from the one place that matters.  It is enough.

Anything is beautiful if you look at it right... (Left behind - Kyle Wilson photograph)

The feeling is Mutual

I have lived for many years with the unshakable and certain knowledge that I was alone.  That no-one would ever truly understand my world, my experience, my truth.  For two weeks now, I have been rather off balance - my certainty has disappeared and normality has yet to return, because return it must:  If it doesn't, I will have to think of something to replace it with, and this is new territory.

I have grown closer to people in the last year or so, special friends who share my experience, whose insights I value, whose company I genuinely enjoy, but the loneliness persisted.  Something fundamental has changed since the TA/Aspie workshop that we attended a fortnight ago, when, shockingly, my NT husband went from borderline cynicism to  wholehearted devotee of TA. He acquired an almost miraculous appreciation, not only of the difficulties I face as an Aspie, but also the breadth of the empath/systemiser spectrum and his place in it, and the power of TA to bridge the enormous chasms that litter our attempts to connect with people.  It was somewhat unexpected, and I wanted to give things time to return to normal, for his enthusiasm to wane, for the bubble to burst. The odd thing is that none of these things has happened.  And, even more unexpectedly, I find I'm OK with that.

I have come to the conclusion that this is due to suddenly having a key person in my life who genuinely understands, wholly, why my life is the way it is. He 'gets it.'

This is The Most Important Person In My Life, and until now, I was certain he only excused my mistakes, tolerated my idiosyncrasies, weathered my anxieties. I have played my part without the innocent wisdom of genuine sincerity. I merely support, agree and frown my concerns with no real expectation of understanding. This is no longer the case. He 'get's it.'

We have talked and talked and talked.  We have sat in silence, grinning at each other between intervals of hand-holding. He tells me he's less stressed now, and that he no longer feels the need to start conversations with 'don't take this the wrong way' or to answer 'it's nothing' when I ask why he's upset:  He gets it.  I go to work and experience the same old problems, the same lack of understanding, the same pressures and anxieties but somehow, they no longer seem to accumulate into the overwhelming assault that left me exhausted at the end of every day.  I brush them off:  The Most Important Person in my life 'gets it'.

My friend, Peter assures me that this is, in fact, the experience of Mutuality.  This is unconditional; a place where communication is effortless, where I am accepting and accepted, where I am welcomed. It is a gift: A sublime edition to our hard won and solid foundation, 25 years in the making.

(I suppose I should wish my husband a Happy Silver Wedding Anniversary while I'm thinking about it... chances are I'll probably forget by next August!)

Binary system - stars in mutual orbit

An illuminating experience (or, The Light at the End Of The Tunnel has had its Chance..)

I think I must have heard every possible incarnation of the phrase: "There is light at the end of the tunnel" over the last 40 years or so.  From concerned family members to well-meaning therapists, the all encompassing message that persistence reaps a happy ending is a stalwart of the optimist's arsenal...  I am sorry if I sound less than optimistic - The light at the end of my personal subway has been obvious by its absence for the entire span of operations, but I suddenly find myself part of a team that has been busily installing skylights along the length of the entire system...

My own network of dark and seemingly endless tunnels had been explored exhaustively and no prophetic light could be found, perhaps because there didn't appear to be an end to the tunnel.  I may have managed, through trial and error, to learn to walk the tunnels without blundering into the walls too often but fear of the dark, so to speak, is ever present and unyielding.  I may also have had company in the dark - a trusted companion  who held me up when I stumbled, but we were both, still in the dark.  In my despair, I reluctantly conceded that this was my reality many years ago, and that it would never change.

I have no precedent, therefore, for the fact that this reality has changed, and I feel oddly, but pleasantly, adrift.  I talked some time ago, about my wish to break down the barrier that still existed between my husband and I, despite our 30 years of amicable partnership.   He is NT and we have never shared an understanding about how the Asperger's mind differs from the NT. Until now.

My husband recently attended Rich Hall and Peter Flowerdew's course on Transactional Analysis for therapists and Aspie clients and their families. Again, I was helping out as co-presenter with my friend, Rich.  I had hoped, that after 3 intensive days of explanations and discussion, my husband would acquire some insight into what life is actually like for me, and Aspies generally. Indeed, he acquired this insight and more:  He also learned a new appreciation of his own personality and communication style, and how it colours all of his interactions. He understands, at last, the extent to which our worlds differ, and that, given the right circumstances, they can converge.  In short, the last barrier to our communication has been lifted, and we can now be wholly 'real' with each other, in a shared space, with no concerns about treading blindly on each other's toes.

My 11 year old son paid us the simplest of compliments, when he heard his Dad and I talking after the course:  He said "Dad, why are you talking like Mum?"  Such a small thing, but it was the first 'independent verification' that we were finally speaking the same language.

My vocabulary seems insufficient, and my thoughts too cluttered to clearly express the impact of this on our lives.  I hope that this stupefied state will leave me soon, and I can write more clearly about the implications of this profoundly positive change.

The Great Convergence:  Galaxies, NGC 2207 on the left, and IC 2163 on the right, approx. 80 million light-years from Earth (Hubble Space Telescope image) Not so much a collision, as a 'coming together'.

And now for something completely different...

I find myself in a difficult, yet familiar position.  I need to find another job.  My current role is fast becoming untenable, and the situation shows no sign of improving... despite my efforts.  I have been in this position many times:  That moment of recognition...  I cannot change the opinion of the people in my environment, and they have concluded that I will not change mine.  I am abandoned and, to them, have become nothing more than an irksome blockage in the otherwise fluid workings of the organisation.  It is a sad and repetitive cycle that I'm sure many Aspies will recognise.

I do not look forward to the prospect of job hunting.  I will avoid it at all costs - even to the point of staying in a role that is unsuitable enough to be damaging to my health and  home life.  "Why on Earth would anyone do that?!" I hear you cry.  Well, I'm tenacious. I don't like to admit defeat.  I always to do my job to the very best of my ability, which is not inconsiderable.  I do find it difficult to 'let go of the bone', so to speak:  I do not notice the metaphorical marker posts (clear to NTs) that are the clues to when efforts should cease, when it's time to negotiate a sideways move or make a complete break... When I reach the 'tipping point', it is only after I have become ill through stress from the constant mis-communication, the culmination of too many long hours, lack of breaks or exhaustion from high pressure deadlines...

My current role has been a little different in this sense. There are no long hours, no deadlines... just a combination of isolation, unrealistic expectation, management inefficiency and lack of support and recognition:  All things I like to think I am immune to - after all, haven't I dealt with such things on a daily basis for most of my life?

Eric Berne defined the fundamental unit of social action, and called it a 'Stroke'. So, if a 'transaction' is any social interaction, a Stroke is each social action considered individually, and can be positive, neutral or negative. Berne believed that we seek positive Strokes in our transactions. As an Aspie, I live in a world where positive Strokes are rare, and I can fail to recognise them even when they do happen.  But I live in hope.  On my better days, it is hope that gives me my drive, my motivation, my optimism.  But sometimes hope is my enemy, the slave-driver that keeps me scrubbing away at the same spot on the floor until my fingers are bloody and raw.

I am so used to trying to fit into the NT world and living up to NT expectations that I sometimes think I will never be able to stop, and 'be myself'.  The NT world is the only world I have known, until recently.  In order to break the cycle, confidence is key, but my picture of myself is just as skewed and incomplete as the one I am sure NTs have of me, and until I can see myself more clearly, I will surely continue to make the same mistakes.  And this is the thing that makes me dread the process of job hunting.

The complexities of NT world means that making social errors is easy...  Today, on my first outing into job hunting for a few years, I was dismayed to see how, over the last few years, the lists of requirements for prospective employees have lengthened and  become more severe; even for the most menial and poorly paid of jobs...  What confidence I had left immediately plummeted .  Although I am both accomplished and experienced, and a whole raft of other, what I am assured are, employer-pleasing things, I do not have a degree.  Therefore, as an Aspie, I would never apply for a job that states that a 'degree-level qualification' is essential.  I would limit myself to applying for jobs for which I have the stated qualifications, experience and abilities.  Simple, yes?  But, I am reliably informed, these requirements are not necessarily written in stone.

How can I hope to navigate the world of work when even the prospective employers don't necessarily mean what they say?  How will I know what expectations it's okay not to meet?   Am I expected to speculate about my ability to undertake tasks in a situation I have never experienced?  Should I guess about how I would progress, interact with other people I have never met?  Why is it okay to offer my qualification when I don't meet the requirements in the clearly stated language of the advert: Why say it's essential, if you are open to persuasion, why say it's desirable when it's not required in the role? Surely this practice of inflating requirements to raise the quality of the pool of applicants is ill advised at best and discriminatory at worst?

I feel very strongly about this.  How long has this practice been in use?  How many applications have been discounted based on my literal interpretation of the role?  And I always thought the interview was the hardest part....

Stranger in a Strange Land

My world is changing.  I suppose this simple statement is open to many different interpretations but, I assure you, my world has never shown any signs of changing in the most important way.  Until now.

I speak of the gradual unveiling of the NT world that is accompanying my deepening foray into Rich Hall's and Peter Flowerdew's particular brand of TA (Transactional Analysis). The reason why my usual cynicism about the possibility of such change is absent?  Because this actually works.  It makes sense to Aspie and NT alike.  It provides common ground where before, there was none and, unlike other 'therapies' and 'techniques', it is accessible to everyone.

I am experiencing a process of profound revelation, unfolding itself in exquisite slow motion, one realisation at a time.  I am using it to shed light on the most inaccessible constructs of my life - places where I have feared to tread, because of their fragility:  My sense of self, my professional persona, my relationship with my husband and son.

I have always sought empirical evidence for the veracity of all things, and this form of TA was in no way immune to my exacting standards.  The first course I attended was filled mainly with participants who were professionals in the field of psychotherapy.  Although the beneficial effect upon the attendees was plain to see, the full potential was not clear to me until I attended the most recent course.

Rich and Peter actually ran two courses simultaneously - one written for NTs (professionals and non-professional) and one, a 'translation' for Aspies (from similarly varied backgrounds).  Peter is uniquely skilled to incorporate Rich's insights and to see the obstacles to communication between the NT and Aspie worlds, and he expertly navigated his way though, dealing with all manner of input from the various perspectives of the mixed group.  Their sincerity and confidence in the findings, and the efficacy of their application were borne out by the changes I saw played out in that room over three days.

Day One saw a large group of people, demonstrably representing every part of the AQ (Autistic Quotient) scale, from empaths (like so many of the therapists) to extreme systemisers, (like Rich and I) all butting heads and struggling to understand and to be understood.  No-one had felt comfortable (including Rich and Peter, I suspect) and everyone had mixed feelings about Day 2.  However, half way through the second day and it was already evident that something in the dynamic of the group had changed.  A dizzying parade of observations, insight and demonstrations from Rich and Peter generated meaningful questions and heartfelt answers from NT and Aspie alike. It was exhausting and inspiring.

At the start of Day 3, the enthusiasm in the group was palpable...  Everyone had identified the common ground and the potential for this gift of translation.  The excitement was obvious:  Here was the start of real understanding:  The promise of progress, the possibility of connection, a beginning of real change.

I have waited for the 'welcome' that Peter speaks so passionately about, all my life.  It seems so close now, I feel I can almost taste it.  I cried when my (NT) husband asked if he could attend the course. We have a good marriage (25 years, next year) but there has always been a wall between us, that I have longed to remove.  If we can really connect with each other after all these years - there is hope for us all.  I think now, that perhaps that welcome has been there all along - just waiting to be discovered....

The Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation Map - It was always there - One scientist predicted it but couldn't find it - another found it, but initially dismissed it as interference caused by messy nesting pigeons in their radio receiver...  Turned out to be the long-awaited evidence of the Big Bang....