Navigating the Event Horizon

Our lives are full of cycles:   We learn, we teach, we become wiser.  We gain confidence, we take risks, we learn moderation. Some cycles are repeated again and again as we age. We trust, we are disappointed or betrayed, we make better choices about who we confide in, or we don't.  These cycles of trial and error are the mechanism by which we learn to navigate our world, but when you remove the 'why' from these experiences, our ability to learn from them is compromised. If you don't recognise that your trust has been abused, rejected or betrayed, or do not understand the reason why, how do you make a better decision next time?  How do you protect yourself?

One particular cycle (trying and failing to get the outcome I desired, and blundering into exactly the same issue next time I tried) was interrupted when I got my diagnosis 7 years ago:  I learned about Asperger's and that lent me the understanding I needed to begin to extricate myself from the cycle.  I nearly fell back in when, after copious research, I realised that there were no apparent solutions to how Asperger's affected my life.  I had simply added one more step in my cycle:  Try and fail, but fully appreciate the impact on myself, and others before blundering into it once again.  I still didn't know why, and even if I did, I did not have the language, skills or support to try to improve things.

But I wasn't ready to admit defeat.  I decided to embrace the positives.  I decided to use my experiences to illuminate the little-understood world of Asperger's. - to provoke discussion and highlight issues.  I had some success, which allowed me to take the next step...  And when the invitation came, I accepted and I learned about a possible solution - a way to claim back a portion of my life that I had never realised was lost.  I began to co-present The Different Engine's Aspie TA workshops. I made new friends and eventually, the illumination spread to those around me, letting everyone see me more clearly, and I, them. I am no expert in Transactional Analysis - I have a basic vocabulary, but is is enough to enable dialogue, and consequently, understanding.

But life with Asperger's is rarely so straightforward....

One of the most painful aspects of living with Asperger's, is the way that huge, hulking misunderstandings can still come barreling out of left-field to knock you senseless and make you question your entire world view from the tiniest details to the broadest foundation.

Everyone suffers unexpected setbacks at sometime in their lives, no matter how they try to insulate themselves from disaster.  I myself have spent a lifetime, unsuccessfully trying to find ways to avoid getting hurt.  Enhanced understanding cannot cover every eventuality, and certainly cannot stop the dreadful emotional impact of misunderstandings when they happen.  So you explain yourself, people understand, you feel more relaxed and accepted, you take a chance and trust more.  In neurotypical people, there are numerous buffers (tests, if you like) that ensure that the risk is manageable; trust growing incrementally, allowing only the most worthy and compatible into the inner circle of genuine and mutual intimacy, where lasting harm could be done. This is not the case with Asperger's.

Asperger's not only means you are without the vast majority of these 'buffers', (meaning you are likely to risk far too much in one go), but also that you are likely to be unaware that this is happening until it is too late (leaving you totally unprepared for the disaster when it descends and utterly defenceless in its wake).

When I have encountered such disasters in the past, I have always responded to the appalling emotional and psychological pain they inflict by removing myself from everything and everyone involved immediately and permanently.  An over-reaction?  It may seem that way to a neurotypical, but I have a pitifully limited defense.  It is rare for me to trust, and rarer still that I relax in another's company.  So when it turns out that, in my enthusiasm to celebrate some of those rare relationships, I have unwittingly caused harm to them, my world falls apart.

 I suppose it is a nod to progress that I have not acted immediately on this occasion, despite the impact of this particular disaster being as painful as any I have encountered.  I need to know if this can be resolved, if my world view can survive, and whether I can live with that resolution, should it materialise. Running away and hiding from the pain is as attractive as it's ever been, but I will see this through. I need to know if it is possible to build mend bridges instead of burning them.  Sometimes, it seems, the only thing you can do when trust has let you down, is to trust that things will get better, and I'll emerge from this black hole.

If Hawking radiation can do it... maybe I can too.

The hits keep coming...

So, has the bubble burst?  Has my new-found validity run out of steam?  Met it's match?  Died a death? The answer is most assuredly: No.

Indeed, I have put it to the test.  I have thrown everything I can think of at it:  There have been social events, stressful health issues, concerns about the educational future of my son (SATs and Secondary Schools), and the most potentially incendiary of all: A meeting with Senior Leadership at my school: (a second attempt at an abortive OH follow-up meeting that led to a very public meltdown...)

I had given it much thought, of course; (don't we always?) the reasons why this meeting ended so quickly and so disastrously...  The unexpected venue of the large conference room next to the Principal's office... the equally unexpected attendance of my line manager and a representative of the School Federation's HR department, as well as the one person I had expected.  As they began to go through the points raised in my OH report, I immediately began to feel defensive, hearing demands instead of questions, ultimatums instead of realities.  I felt tears prickle at my eyes as the panic rose, and that was that.  Less than 5 minutes and the rest of the day spent agonising about how annoyed everyone would be at me, that they had arranged this meeting and made the time... etc. etc.

Weeks passed, and so did the TA 101 part 2, (where my husband's TA Epiphany took place) and where validation was achieved, despair was mislaid...  Then came the email:  Would I like to meet up and try this follow-up meeting again?

Was I stricken with terror?  Did I arrange to be absent?  Did I refuse, saying it wouldn't be necessary?  No.  Not only did I agree, but, when the meeting details were sent - I asked for them to be changed:  Could we meet somewhere less formal?  Could it just be the two of us?  Of course, this was accepted, because they are reasonable requests.  I was very pleased with myself indeed.

When the meeting came around, the atmosphere was entirely different.  I asked that we omit the blow-by-blow account on the OH report, in favour of an informal discussion about things I found difficult at work.  I talked about the lack of interaction with my line manager, my difficulty with networking.  I spoke confidently about what I have to offer, and my frustration at not being able to communicate it.  I spoke about the shame I feel that I have to ask for explicit, verbal feedback because I cannot rely on picking it up through non-verbal cues common in the professional relationships most of the staff here share, (mainly because this is often misinterpreted as needy or egotistical.)  As the conversation went on, the panic never materialised... I felt almost equal, justified, calm, articulate - my vocabulary did not desert me.  I voiced my suggestions and they were not dismissed.  There was no awkward end to the meeting.  We were just two colleagues walking to our next appointments and casually finishing a conversation ignited by our discussion.

I realise the only thing that has changed is my attitude towards myself.  My ability to understand non-verbal communication has not improved miraculously, I have not become more confident, more social, observant...  No.  And the hits keep coming. But I now know that other people can understand my world, and that gives me validity.  Therefore my thoughts, words, feelings and actions must be valid:  This upturn in my professional fortunes is merely the result of my analytical mind applying new knowledge to an existing situation.

But it changes everything.

In a different light: A full-disk multiwavelength extreme ultraviolet image of the sun taken by SDO on March 30, 2010. False colors trace different gas temperatures. Reds are relatively cool (about 60,000 Kelvin, or 107,540 F); blues and greens are hotter (greater than 1 million Kelvin, or 1,799,540 F).
Credits: NASA/Goddard/SDO AIA Team

Capacity building

I recently travelled to Egypt for a diving holiday.  Seems such a straightforward and harmless statement doesn't it?  I went on holiday - just popped onto a plane and got off in another country, got my transfer to the accommodation and Bob's your uncle!

Here's how my experience really went:

We piled into the car at 4.30pm on Good Friday and took to the road.  Apparently, the rest of the UK did, too.  Even though I wasn't driving, the ensuing 2 hours, 45 minutes of motorway driving left me exhausted:  The driving conditions were poor, with rain, darkening skies and roadworks and breakdowns everywhere.  When travelling at speed, I find the rate of visual input completely overwhelming, but I am also plagued with anxiety which furnishes me with constant, detailed and realistic visualisations of potential incident after potential incident.  The truly exhausting part was having to hide all this from my son, so that he wasn't affected by my anxiety.

Fortunately, I have had plenty of experience of staying in hotels (required in several of my previous jobs) so I am not as affected by strange accommodation as I might be.  The grossly decorated lobby with its alarmingly squishy carpet was airy and open plan, so I was able to relax somewhat - only the constant visualisations of horrific plane crashes from the neighbouring Gatwick Airport to concern myself with...

An early morning rise for check-in saw the return of my favourite coping mechanism:  Panic humour. Being hyper aware with anxiety means excellent comic timing, and there was a wealth of material in peoples' reaction to the ludicrous management and staffing in the check-in queues...  A welcome distraction from the looming flight.  By the time we entered the departures lounge and it's wealth of noisy, smelly, crowded food outlets, I was exhausted and staring at the joins in the flooring materials whenever possible.  Still aware of the importance of 'staying positive', I kept up the cheery exterior and focused on my son, who was taking everything in his stride, considering it was his first trip abroad... only my husband was aware of my mounting anxiety.

The bus journey to the plane seemed to take forever - showing every possible angle of the plane that was to be our transport to Egypt.  I forced myself to endure it, inwardly chanting things like "no, the rivets are supposed to look like that", "don't look at the engines" and "you don't know anything about what well-maintained landing gear looks like", and trying to remember air travel versus air accident statistics to put my mind at rest.  This self calming continued on board - "they look competent".  "At least the pilot seems mature"...  The facade nearly slipped when my son insisted I sit next to him in full view of the tiny window for the 5 hour journey.  A matter of minutes later, I found myself in the ridiculous position of 'whooping' for my son's benefit at the excitement of the take off, whilst simultaneously crushing my husband's hand in terror!

As soon as we were allowed, I got out my chosen book and put on my mp3 player at top volume, determined to distract myself from anything that might remind me that I was in a plane.  Sadly, my book choice could have better, beginning as it did, with an explosion at an airport...  Luckily, my son's tablet battery lasted almost the entire flight, so I didn't have to keep up the facade for him, but my husband's hand suffered every time there was a little turbulence...

The next five hours are, thankfully, already fading from my memory - a nauseating cycle of anxiety, trolley avoidance, speculation and visual scenarios until our imminent arrival at Hurghada was announced. Any relief was short lived as figures for the statistical likelihood of failures on landing began whizzing though my head, despite my understanding of the overall safety of air travel.  After a bit of waiting around, security checks and baggage collecting, we made our way to the exit to meet our transfer. I was practically a zombie by now, all my coping mechanisms exhausted, so the hour and a half break-neck drive to our destination (with no seat belts and a tendency for our alarmingly young driver to drive at on-coming vehicles even when blinded by their full beams) passed relatively quickly.

I did not sleep for the next 3 nights.  This seems to be as a result of the anxiety of this type of travel - I usually just crash after too much social interaction - sleeping for longer than usual, but foreign travel requires another magnitude of effort.

The journey back was somewhat less stressful, buoyed as I was, by having survived the journey there!   Why put myself through it?  Well this isn't simply a fear of travelling...  I know it will improve, as everything does, with familiarity - my capacity for dealing with travel will improve.  It is only now that my son is old enough to have qualified as a diver that we can all go together.  I am immensely pleased to be a diver and able to see the amazing sights under the Red Sea, as the memories generated by the holiday in between these terrifying episodes have to be amazing to justify the effort!

Liar, Liar (First published Jan 18th 2016)

It is a subject I hear discussed only occasionally, and then usually by professional types, as part of abstracts about ongoing research into Autism and Asperger's…  but it is one that fascinates me. It is, in part, the reason for my user name: Talentless Liar.  I consider myself to be an honest person, but over my lifetime, it has not escaped my attention that people are very good liars.  I don’t mean to insinuate that they are dishonest in any criminal way (though clearly, some are!) but only in the subtle ways required by informal social interaction.

People appear to make instant judgements about each other, hundreds of times during an average length conversation:  They may recall the last time they spoke and decide, on the fly as it were, how the conversation should begin:  Was it a long time ago or earlier that day?  They make observations about each other – do they look well? Have they lost weight?  Had a haircut?  These are the clues that are noted and acted upon throughout an informal chat.  Reciprocity, interest and empathy are all integral to engine that drives the conversation.  It’s incredibly complex, but all happens INTUITIVELY in neuro-typicals (normal people – for want of a better term!)  

People with Asperger’s have to manage this on a purely intellectual level, making each observation ‘manually’, thinking though potential responses, whilst cross-checking possible pit-falls with each mico-decision and memories.  What is for most a pleasant distraction, is for me, a strategic campaign: The First and most important goal being to get through it without upsetting the other person. (Objective No 1.)  If I was on form, I might attempt Objective No 2:  Leave the other person feeling better about themselves. This might be achieved by using an observation to spark a positive comment, but this is a minefield when you consider that the response to your comment might be negative and self-effacing.   (I recognise that this is sometimes used to illicit further positive comments to confirm their truth, but lose track and disaster may ensue!)  

On the rare occasion that the exchange continues in fairly reciprocal spirit, (and I really have to be ‘on fire’ for this)  I may go for the elusive Objective 3:  Leave the other person feeling better about me. Because none of this is intuitive in my case, I inevitably have to lie to some degree.  Most people probably wouldn’t see this as lying. After all, this all happens on an intuitive level for most. It is only only when the process is broken down intellectually that the lies become obvious.

I am uninterested in hair (unless I am considering whether my own needs washing.)  I don’t care about fashion, Social media, games, Celebrity, Soaps, most fiction books, football or Reality TV- most TV, in fact.  I actively avoid talking about relationships, (not my area of expertise!) social tech, dating, breakups or sensationalised news stories.  You may rest assured that if I am in conversation with you where any of these subjects are concerned, I will be actively lying, not to mislead, but purely in order to achieve the aforementioned Objectives.  I will be using my prestigious catalogue of real-life ‘emoticons’ to confirm, agree, sympathise and enthuse.  It has become an entrenched response to unplanned conversation.  

It’s unrealistic to expect most people to understand that I need sufficient notice about a conversation before my contribution can be truly honest and tactful.  The normal measure for honesty for neurotypicals is the ability for someone to respond tactfully and spontaneously; something I find extremely difficult. The only exceptions are those conversations which are a) about one of my ‘special interests’, (Most of these are so ‘special’ as to negate general conversation.) b) with someone who either has a deep understanding of Asperger’s or is just incredibly understanding and patient, or c) I’m fed up, tired or angry and can’t be bothered to lie.  These conversations are usually quite short, unless the other person has misunderstood and thinks I am being humourous.  Smiling is not something one does naturally when one is engaged in a difficult task that requires great concentration and effort, so remembering to use appropriate facial expressions whilst doing this is almost impossible…

To achieve Objective 3 in a conversation, is to be on Cloud 9 for the rest of the week (or until over-confidence supplies the inevitable social disaster!)  I can live on the crumbs of a ’3 for 3′ informal exchange for ages…  But why?  If my neurological toolbox is devoid of empathy, reciprocity and interest in people, why am I stupidly pleased with myself when I get these exchanges right?  I have pondered this for some time…
When I first learned about Asperger’s, it’s characteristics and neurological differences, I was both appalled and relieved by this staggering insight.   This was why being around people is so exhausting!  This was why I felt like an alien among others!  This was why people were offended by honesty instead of applauding it.  Lying is a complex and confusing part of communication but there is nothing more human or indeed, humane…