PLEASE TELL I AM NOT CRAZY. . . . . . . SURELY TO GOODNESS, I CANNOT BE THE ONLY ONE, . . . CAN I.??

Hi Hendrow,

I'm really not sure what you're asking.  If you have some kind of special ability, and you can use it in a positive way - then use it.  Why do you need to ask?  Does it worry you in some way?  If so... why?

Take care,

Tom

Do others have such 'gifts' or do they know of any other Autistic's that do?. . . . . . . .  It wasn't easy to come out like that Tom. I have never fit in, it make's me fit in even less. So I must be trying to fit in, at least a tiny little bit. Am I going to regret posting that on FB and on here? I don''t know.

Hendrow said:

I have never fit in, it make me fit in even less. So I must be trying to fit in, at least a tiny little bit. Am I going to regret posting that on FB and on here? I don''t know.

Hi Hendrow,

I'm not sure if you are trying to fit in, are you?  You're just stating something openly about an ability that you have.  I don't think it makes you crazy or weird.  Many people, whether on the spectrum or not, have remarkable abilities.  Mediums, for instance.  So-called 'sensitives'.  Ordinary enough people.  I'm sure a fair few are charlatans - but I've had experiences with these people when they tell me quite detailed things about myself, and things on my mind, and things I do, and things I possess, which no one could possibly have known.

The thing about the spectrum is that it covers such a huge area of ability, from people with profound and multiple learning disabilities, to high-functioners, to savants (like the Rainman character).  Look at Stephen Wiltshire - able to fly over a city once, then draw it in almost perfect detail.  People with eidetic memory, who can read through a book and remember every page.  Human 'super-computers' who can solve complex equations in seconds.

Then there are people like me.  I don't think I have any very special abilities - though I have a facility with words, and with a certain way of looking at something and seeing a connection with something else seemingly random.  A creative ability, sure.  I notice patterns in things - which leads to noticing resemblances.  On the bus the other day, we passed a field where the straw had been harvested and the bales had been left in tall towers ready for collection.  The field was just hard scrabble now - stubble and earth - randomly dotted with these towers.  Perhaps many people would have seen the same thing and made the comparison, but I straight away saw an apolcalyptic landscape with just these random tower blocks of flats dotted across it.  I came home and made the picture I saw.  I'll see a small thing like a flower growing through a crack in concrete, or an old shoe on the beach, and it'll trigger off something in my head that makes connections... which eventually leads to a poem or story.  Like I said, I'm not sure if this is an 'autistic' thing necessarily.  But when I explain this process to other people, they seem astonished.  'I just saw an old shoe on the beach,' they'll say.

I have never fit in, either.  Never.  Perhaps in peer groups - mental health, substance misuse, autism, forums like this.  Out there?  Never.  I've put on an act, sure - we probably all do.  I've copied behaviours.  I've learned what to do and what not to do in social situations (thankfully, few and far between).  But I've always - right from about the age of 8, I would say - felt 'odd' in comparison to others.  Like I've been dropped in a foreign country, whose language, culture, customs and moral code I don't understand.  It used to really bother me.  Probably in my 40s, I came to more acceptance of it.  It wasn't me - it was everyone else!  Now, since my diagnosis, I revel in that uniqueness - even though I don't think of myself as being particularly special in any way.  Creative, yes.  Reclusive, yes.  I do things and think things that might get me some odd looks.  But I'm happy to tell people I'm on the spectrum - as I'd be happy to tell people I was gay, if that was the case.  I'm 'proud', if you like, of the person I am.  And I realise that I'm lucky in that I don't suffer the severe debility with my condition that many people, even high-functioners like Ros Blackburn do.

Like many on the spectrum, too, one of my things is over-analysis.  I'll analyse something to death - look at every detail, why and wherefore, pro and con, until it almost drives me to despair.  I can't help it.  It's how I've always been.  I'll think myself into something and out of it again a dozen times.  People might call it 'dithering' or 'indecisiveness' - but it's very important to me.  I have to be totally certain about something. 

Maybe that's what you're doing.  Over-analysing it all.  Instead of accepting that you have an ability, it worries you in case it's a sign that there's something wrong with you.  And then you worry about worrying about that!  Does that sound about right?  Forgive me if I'm jumping the gun.  Just a thought.

Keep on keeping on, as they say. 

Tom

Thanks MT,

My usual problem is putting complex systems of imagery and thought into simple words, and I had gotten rather burnt out with that over the last month or two. Things are on the mend though, and learning curves are rather useful really ~ especially when I actually learn from them!  

WRITER’S BLOCK

Perhaps only other writers can understand the panic that takes hold then.  You go to your desk, you sit for two hours, six hours… and nothing.  A week, a month… nothing.  You try to trick your demons, perhaps by going to the movies instead of to work, and casually, after a double feature or two, you slide in behind your typewriter at the end of the day when there’s absolutely no time to write anyway, so all the pressure is off.

            … nothing.

You read what other writers have done to win their similar battle.

Doesn’t work for you.

Nothing works for you.

And then you enter into despair.  Because drying up permanently just may be the ultimate nightmare if what you do for a living is battle empty pages.  For almost without exception, this happens to every writer.  Few of us drop in our traces.  Mostly, our energy goes; we fiddle awhile, try this, that, and then it’s over, and how do you fill the rest of your days?

…in a very real sense, the end of creativity is for a writer not unlike Alzheimer’s disease:  You don’t know for sure it’s going to happen, but you know it’s there.  Waiting.

William Goldman:  Adventures in the Screen Trade

Hope it clears up for you soon, DT.

Hendrow said:

Deepthought, I do not buy into that writers block theory, my question to you is what is blocked and by what is it blocked?

My ability to communicate fully is restricted; due to exhaustion, tissue-salt depletion and dehydration.

DT, I kind of had this crazy idea that 50% of HFA'ers maybe had my type of 'gifting' and that would mean that of them, at least one would 'come out' as the 'fear is near' 

We would talk on here, then email, then text, then phone, and maybe eventually meet up in the 'real world'

I presume that Bab's is not on this site. I believe also it is very early days in my quest.

Thanks, for your suggestion though.

Deepthought, I do not buy into that writers block theory, my question to you is what is blocked and by what is it blocked?

Deepthought, I do not buy into that writers block theory, my question to you is what is blocked and by what is it blocked?

Hendrow said:

Deepthought, I do not buy into that writers block theory, my question to you is what is blocked and by what is it blocked?

My ability to communicate fully is restricted; due to exhaustion, tissue-salt depletion and dehydration.