THE ADVENTURE OF DISCOVERING MY BRAIN
Most people don’t like me. However, I tend to like people like me, especially intelligent people who use common sense and logic. Despite being highly successful at virtually anything I put my mind to, I have been a social disaster. As I write this at age 69, this may be hard to believe, but, until recently, I never understood why. I didn’t realize that my countenance was stern-looking, that I didn’t have a ready smile. It didn’t occur to me that I was saying things in a way that is generally not socially acceptable in most societies. Being a medical doctor and relatively intelligent, one might think I would have had more insight. Maybe my Asperger’s was involved in this “mental block”?
I can be guilty of some of the following. Many people with Asperger’s syndrome consider a conversation to be primarily an opportunity to exchange information, to learn or to inform, and if there is no information to exchange, why waste time talking? I may be notorious for being verbose when interested in a topic, but when the subject matter is of little personal interest or has been introduced by someone else, I may be reluctant to participate in a conversation at all.
Sometimes I can be criticized for being tactless or socially naive during a conversation, perhaps saying something that is true but would hurt someone’s feelings or is inappropriate for the context. From early childhood, typical children adjust the topic of conversation according to whom they are talking to. Such modifications are based on an understanding of social hierarchies and conventions and the need to inhibit certain comments when taking into account the other person’s thoughts and feelings. In AS people, due to impaired or delayed Theory of Mind abilities, the conversation can be a social ‘minefield’ with the tendency for the conversational partner to be offended by the comments, criticisms, and value judgments of the person with AS. However, being offensive is not usually the intention of the person with AS, who tends to speak his or her mind and unfortunately has greater allegiance to facts and the truth than to someone’s feelings.
Sometimes the problem is not what I said, but the way I said it. This can give the impression that I am overly critical, grudging with compliments, abrasive, argumentative, and impolite. Other people will know when to think rather than say something and how to avoid or subtly modify comments that could be perceived as offensive. It is important to recognize that there is no malicious intent.
Being factual and honest seemed the only natural way to be. I accept virtually nothing on faith. I desire evidence-based facts. And when there is no clear evidence, I use my knowledge base to formulate a common-sense, logical answer to problems. But most people don’t want to hear the cold, hard details. They want empathy, sympathy, consideration of their feelings, and kindness.
When I have a social decision to make, I intellectualize it using my left brain, and as a result, bypass the emotional side. It takes me about 24 hours to access that side of my brain and finally make the right “social” decision.
Both these make Aspies not very good in social situations. Our brain is wired differently – we see things from a different point of view.
I get easily annoyed with “neurotypical” thinking and behaviour. If things are being done in ways that don’t use intelligence, make common sense, or are not logical, I can get irritated and then display my displeasure.
I have never understood why everyone doesn’t think like me. I have lots of great, logical ideas. I think there is always a better way to do things. But most people are content with how things are and aren’t looking for a better way – they find it easier to go with the flow and don’t sweat the small things. I believe that my difficulties with expressive language prevent me from appealingly expressing ideas.
THE JOURNEY
I didn’t understand why, but when I was about 60 years old, I read the book Neurotribes: The Legacy of Autism and the Future of Neurodiversity by Steve Silberman.
Everything written on autism includes Asperger’s syndrome as part of the autistic spectrum. I could relate to some of the high-functioning Aspies.
If I were to be evaluated by a clinical expert on autism, I doubt that I would be diagnosed with Asperger’s. This is similar to many of the famous people with high-functioning Asperger’s – most seem pretty normal but describe preferring to be alone and often have social issues. My revelation came after reading one sentence “Do you get easily annoyed with people”. That turned on the light bulb. That’s me. I don’t suffer fools gladly. I not only get annoyed easily but then often express it with facial expressions or worse, verbally.
I am not very tolerant and even less tolerant of myself. I get much more annoyed with myself than with others. I don’t tolerate my mistakes well.
I put Neurotribes down and didn’t finish reading it until about 4 years later. It now forms the backbone of the post on the History of Asperger’s. Starting with the biographies of Henry Cavendish and Paul Dirac (I added Sir Isaac Newton), Steven Silberman chronicles how autism was first described in the early 1940s by Leo Kanner and Hans Asperger and proceeds through the evolution of the spectrum to the present day.
Kanner’s thinking was that autism was rare and most with it required institutionalization. Mothers of children with autism were described as refrigerator mothers creating decades of enormous guilt.
The search for the cause and cure, rather than providing the services autistic people require, set back the lives of autistic people for decades. The “vaccination wars” delayed understanding again for years. Asperger’s syndrome was not well appreciated until the 1990s as people who could be highly functioning.
In 2020 during the COVID pandemic with lots of time on my hands, I Googled books on Aspergers and bought four of them. Maybe I would get some answers.
I read The Journal of Best Practices: A Memoir of Marriage, Asperger Syndrome, and One Man’s Quest to Be a Better Husband by David Finch (2012) about a man with Aspergers and his social dysfunction and how it affected his marriage. However, many of his qualities were specific to him and I had difficulty relating. I still didn’t understand how our brains are “wired” to behave in certain ways. I still didn’t know what I said to people that turned them off.
I arrived at one story when he and his wife shared an apartment with another couple. I knew what was coming. Feeling uncomfortable, I put the book down for a few months before I finally finished reading it. But I still could not really relate to him. We are all different. Asperger’s has its own spectrum, not only determined by nature (DNA and genes) but by nurture (how we are raised by our parents and our interactions with others).
The next book I started to read was Aspergers in Love: Couple Relationships and Family Affairs by Maxine Aston, Christopher Slater-Walker, et al. (2003). Written by a marriage counsellor who worked primarily with couples with one or both having Aspergers, I increased my knowledge base. A major revelation was the discussion of brain wiring that bypasses the part of the brain that deals with empathy, communication skills, and social functioning. But after reading only about half, I again have yet to finish it.
I also bought Asperger’s on the Inside by Michelle Vines (2016) a woman with Aspergers. I didn’t have time to even start reading it but one day opened it up to one page. She related the story about a woman who had had a spontaneous miscarriage and the responses from friends on FaceBook. Everybody made empathetic responses but she gave the Aspie way of looking at spontaneous abortions – that mistakes are made in the formation of the embryo and that most SAs reflect those mistakes and can be viewed positively – as a way to deal with something that was “not meant to be”. She was criticized for her response. I now finally understood what I was doing, giving the truth, but again often not appreciated.
I have since started The Complete Guide to Asperger’s Syndrome by Tony Attwood. This is easily the most comprehensive discussion of high-functioning Asperger’s syndrome. He draws on his extensive clinical experience to explain many of the nuances of the syndrome.
Even though I have lots to learn, I now understand some of my issues in social behaviour. Each book added information that I have found to be possibly the most freeing moments of my life. Now, whenever I say things in an aspie way, I recognize them. With my friends, I would now open up a statement I recognized as an aspie way of expressing myself with “I’m going to aspie you”. I thought that by doing that, the statement would be OK, and I could get away with saying things socially inappropriate. Maybe they would even appreciate my particular way of expressing myself. I am unsure if it works very well.
This started what I call “Ron’s adventure of discovering his brain”. It has been one of the most exciting times of my life.
Not long after, I decided to write this book. I couldn’t relate to the common belief that Asperger’s people don’t feel empathy, can’t read other people’s feelings, constantly change conversations back to themselves, have no sense of humour, or can’t fall in love.
I had to read all the literature to understand how high-functioning Asperger’s people thought and expressed themselves. Virtually all the literature dealt with poorly functioning autistics or low-functioning Aspies to whom I could not relate. Hopefully, this book will give answers to those who are functional but with many social problems. Even though it was my personal story, particular to me, I hoped that others with Asperger’s could relate and also “find themselves.” It is a very freeing feeling.
Asperger’s gives me many talents. I am intensely curious about the world. I have an enormous drive to excel at everything for which I have developed a passion. I am always looking for a better way to do something. I get intensely passionate about anything that interests me.
I express myself much better by writing them down. My mind will ruminate over ideas until I can put them on paper to “free up my thinking.” As you can see from my writing style, I express things in terse, factual ways. I have a great passion for reorganizing what other people write in a logically organized way. I often take multiple sources and combine them to formulate one coherent text. I leave out the non-factual material that may not have much bearing on the final message.
Rather than viewing Asperger’s as a pathological abnormality, I now think of myself as neuro-atypical, a person who was part of human “neurologic diversity”, as people with ADHD or dyslexia. Viewed as possibly dysfunctional, a social misfit, by the rest of society, I love what Asperger’s has allowed me to achieve. We skip the emotional stuff and get to the facts. We don’t just talk the talk, we walk the talk. When I direct my tremendous energy and drive to achieve something, I believe almost anything is possible.