Published on 12, July, 2020
These concepts have been bugging me so can others share their experiences if not too upsetting in order that I can form a clearer picture of myself?
I used to be on here a long time ago under another name (H) but had to leave because I got very ill. I'm much better now so decided to come back here as I missed the interactions and honest discussions about things that aren't discussed in the "real" world if it can be called that - eye roll.
I find I communicate best on here and in my day to day life with people who are quirky and not run of the mill. My daughter who is 13 and diagnosed Autistic reckons I'm weird like her as she puts it and so we are happy in our own little weird bubble. I no longer see it as an insult as it used to be when I was growing up. I got called weird a lot but always thought it was the other person who had the issue and not me because to me they were like carbon copies of each other which I hated. Okay so back to the point. As I explained in a previous post, the psychiatrist who undertook my Autistic assessment said I had too much reciprocal conversation to be Autistic but that I had many traits of Autism. He also said it likely that my daughter would "grow out" of Autism as she learnt the skills to function in society. I personally found that unbelievable and insulting because why would I want her to not be herself anymore and I thought Autism is genetic so you can't grow out of it (neuroplasticity could make symptoms change though)... I think perhaps he was meaning that she'd be better able to cope as she knows herself and the world moving forward. What confuses me is that:
I have a theory to make sense of all this and have been trying to find ways to consolidate the information but I'm not sure it's possible.
First: Terminology. It seems to me words used within the clinical field once had to adhere to a meaning much like any term a doctor or legal professional uses. But the field of psychology has been over-run by novices who are really just doing a bit of life coaching. They've not read the last century of material, just focused on one idea without this breadth of knowledge available to those in the practice. Having known young and old professionals, many do have an opinion on al this. And in the UK, there's little oversight for psychology.
Second, let's pretend for a moment that one can have 'Autistic traits' without it having a drastic impact on ones social life. Francesca Happé supports this theory just like the theory of BAP (borderline autistic). But I still think the term 'autism' is used a bit loosely suggesting something symbolic in NT-speak that feels rather vague to me. I might suggest that those of us who were called weird, had trouble making friends, but have been able to mature in to ourselves have collected age-old wisdom, incorporating principles of being into our lives and still need to do a great deal of mental work to understand others who do not socialise like us... would've been diagnosed autistic in childhood except society wasn't so heavily focused on socialising in school. One could actually go to school to learn how to learn rather than this modern 'factory' approach to 'education'.
It's been found that individuals working on a project together can synch up brainwaves. Quite literally being 'on someone's wavelength' is a real thing. So it appears, we can send and receive physical waves to one another and read them like a record player.
On an immaterial level, Jung went into detail why certain personality types wouldn't connect well unless matured (by mature I mean adding grounded reasoning and sympathy). The MBTi has a book in-depth on this, why certain personality types attract or repel one another. But at a certain age we'd expect one to be more patient, kind and considerate to what we cannot know about another.
The Communication Myth is based on social expectation in a society who are now used to algorithms and the majority social telepathy.
In my mid 30's I started to notice that days when I was working heavily focused on certain right brain activity, I would lose my ability to use mouth words. Not that I was clever before, I think others had just accepted my impoverished communication because when I would find a way to articulate a thing, it was always met with great surprise. But as I got older I simply noticed this. Spending the whole day programming and editing, I would find at the end of the day, I started to stutter and could literally not access words. This sent me off down a rabbit hole of medical papers and I read somewhere how the brain 'borrows' from various regions to better power the ones in use. And while neurologists talk of habit breaking and reforming neurological connexions. like reprogramming the mind, psychoanalysts might suggest that even if you're able to reprogramme your ability to use the social-linguistic left brain more fluidly, you've already missed out on forming a more immaterial stage of the super-ego, which is subconscious and still the fundamental basis for understanding "Typical" communication, why it's fluid, how cognitive dissonance exists and what the Expectation is.
Eye contact: You're describing the 'Sensory difference' of Autistic eye contact. It's too intimate with strangers unless you're older and wise enough to have asserted personal boundaries. But you shouldn't be thinking about it.
Redirecting conversation to my obsession: Also a Monotropic Trait. You're just older and wiser and probably had a direct communication on how to behave in public and why building relationships or affording others room to share matters.
Autism is at best under-researched, at worst poorly understood, and as the woman who conceived NeuroDiverse suggested, it might just be a Personality sub-Type with a social communication difference Freud and Lacan noted. plus a biological difference on the razor edge of being recognised. Grunya Suhkareva managed to integrate her students into society. We just live in a completely different society than 50 years ago. It's changed to the point that this more Right-brain thinking which communicates different and requires a different way of learning is being marginalised.
What an insightful and well thought out answer. Thank you. It's given me food for thought and made me think more.... You're an incredibly intelligent and well researched mind so I am thankful to have your insight.