Published on 12, July, 2020
Since graduating from college I've been strugglign to adapt to society, I've been unable to hold down a job and have been dealing with depression, mood swings and a whole host of mood swings. My wife pointed out to me a while back that I showed a lot of signs of autism, and rethinking about my childhood (I was always paranoid that people weren't telling me that there was something wrong with me. I wasn't like the other kids, I did well in school, but I didn't act like them, I didn't talk like them, and I didn't think like them), I couldn't read until I was in 4th grade, and the only solice outside of learning I ever took was video games. It was the world I understood best. My psychiatrist agrees that I might have autism but is telling me that a diagnosis would do nothing for me, and that kaiser, at least the one I go to, will only diagnos children and that they don't see a point to diagnosing adults because we should already have coping mechanisms. School was the only thing I ever understood. It made sense. I have a schedule, I attend, I learn at my own pace, I can leave and return, I gain knowledge, I grow in power, I move onto the next adventure. It was even easier to be social, I felt safe. It was an environment I knew. Anyways, I forgot what my point was. I guess I just wanted to be heard, realize I'm not crazy, that I do have this problem and that I can finally start finding resources to help me succeed.
Counselling probably isn't an ideal job for someone with autism! There are lots of things in my life like this that make more sense with hindsight and more self understanding.
Your experience in lectures, of being at odds with everyone else, is familiar to me. There were times when I was baffled by what other people thought and I guess that they were baffled by some of the things that I came out with. Having autism means that we are on a different wavelength in lots of ways. Sometimes that is good as we can often think laterally or differently to everyone else but it also brings the problem of being an outsider a lot of the time.
Wakefield and Trump make interesting subjects for study! I saw the program last night and was already familiar with W's work and T's weirdness. W strikes me as the sort of person who has fixed on a theory and takes all opposition as a reason to be more certain of his ideas. Trump strikes me as not scientifically trained, they say that he might be narcissistic which might suggest a degree of autism - he seems very self centred or self sufficient or something - he certainly doesn't seem to be a person that listens to reason, again like W, he seems to have fixed ideas - my way or the highway. How would you go about persuading either of them that their ideas are wrong? This is an interesting thought experiment because they are both objectively at odds with a heap of scientific evidence but they don't seem to care about that. Presumably they could be made to change their views but how?