What did you just call me?

Let’s start with some name calling! We’ll keep things polite of course.

As you have seen from the about page, the autistic community is abound with acronyms.  I don’t want to assume that anyone visiting this blog has; or has a strong connection to, autism.  So for those unfamiliar with Autism and  Asperger Syndrome, I will go through a few basics here.

Autism is a social and communications disorder that impairs an individual’s ability to communicate and navigate the social world.  The condition exists on a wide spectrum.  People at one end are characterised as low functioning, they may be nonverbal or have severe communication difficulties and may have additional learning difficulties as well. As we move along the spectrum abilities increase until we reach the other end where individuals are characterised as having High Functioning Autism (HFA) or Asperger Syndrome (AS).  Here, the condition is mainly expressed as a purely social and communications disorder.

Those of us who are high functioning are intelligent, often highly intelligent, but still experience a matrix of social and communication problems which affect, among other things, our ability to communicate, imagine what other people are thinking and understand social rules and conventions.

If you want to find out more about Autism or Asperger Syndrome I highly recommend Tony Attwood’s book, ‘The Complete Guide to Asperger Syndrome’.  I think  it’s the best portal into the autistic world.

The focus of this blog is HFA/AS.   For the sake of simplicity I will use the word ‘autism’ throughout the blog to stand for Asperger Syndrome or High Functioning Autism.  Those of you who are not autistic are described by the autistic community as Neurotypical (NT) which means that your neurons are wired typically.  Our brains are, however,  are definitely wired differently.

People on the spectrum often identify themselves as an Autie  if they were diagnosed with HFA or an Aspie if they have AS.  Now you know.  Never call an Aspie an Autie or the other way around or you’ll trigger a forum war and cause repetitive strain injury across the autistic world.

A quick Update

I think it’s worth having a quick discussion about postings.  When I re-launched the blog I thought that writing a post a week was quite feasible, but I should have known better.  At the end of the re-launch post I suggested that my first post on special interests would be available within a few days.  Obviously this hasn’t happened.

That post will be published today, but the time it took me to write it made me realize that I had to reassess my expectations.  I may do a future post on the fundamentally unstable nature of being a carer and how this can negatively impact ASD.  For now though, I just wanted to explain that, well, things change; and in my life, they can change quickly.  So, I have decided to aim to publish a post a month at least, which should be more than feasible.  Obviously if I have more time on my hands I will post more often.  I also wanted to consider those future posts.

For me, and many with ASD, anxiety and depression are two common experiences but can manifest in many different ways.  Therefore, I intend to write a series of posts about each.  What I didn’t realize  when I started the blog is just how difficult exploring these issues can be; long forgotten experiences begin to surface together with previously buried psychological trauma.  The pace at which I can work my way through this is often beyond my control.  It is clearly going to take patience to work through and I hope that we can both develop this in order to increase our understanding.

It’s important at this point for me to restate why I started the blog in the first place.  It represents the best way I can make sense of the Apsergian me and allows me to share that process with others, whether Autistic or Neurotypical.  If this blog helps any one going through a post diagnostic apocalypse, or knows someone who is, then it will be worth it to me.   Also, as the subject of the posts widen out, I hope that I can show whoever is interested what it is actually like to be on the spectrum and what I’ve learned.

Please feel free to comment on any of this.  I would particularly welcome feedback about the style of the blog.  I chose it because it was subdued and calm which I thought would particularly benefit those with ASD, but I am concerned that it is becoming confusing as the post begin to grow.  I am still a newbie to blogging so any feedback will be warmly received.

The Role of Special Interests

In this post I would like to discuss why those of us on the Autistic Spectrum often engage in an interest or pastime with, what’s often seen as, an abnormal intensity.  In a future post I intend to explore the definitions of ‘hobby’  and ‘special interest’ and explore the liminal area between them.  For now though, I think it’s important to examine the various roles our passions have in our lives.

Once I started to examine myself as an Aspie I began to have flashbacks and spontaneous insights into my behaviours and motivations, and recently these have included the various roles my ‘passions’ have had in my life.

Over the years I have had many disparate interests; playing the guitar, keyboard and bongos; yoga, tai chi, mosaics, local history, photography, Karate,  motorcycling, woodwork, PC maintenance and repair, upcycling, writing, knife collecting, knife throwing; and on and on and on.  With the exception of knife throwing and collecting, most of these interests would be considered normal but the time, effort and money I lavished on them certainly would not have been.

It’s fair to say that I don’t just have an interest in things, I become obsessed with them, gripped by them.  This has often led to both positive and negative consequences.  It is only fairly recently that I have begun to realize the various functions  these interests have had.

Psychologists, like Tony Attwood, have identified the various uses special interests can have (Attwood, 2007, pp. 182-188).  They include the following:

• Blocking thoughts
• Promoting relaxation
• Creating order
• Raising self-esteem
• Providing a source of pleasure
• Providing a refuge

I will explore these in more detail and offer my experiences of each.

Thought Blocking

I don’t believe that this one is unique to those of us on the spectrum, when anyone engages in their favourite hobby they are literally, ‘putting their mind on something else.’  It’s the intensity of effort and extremely narrow focus that makes our engagement with our interests different.

We narrow our attention down to a microscopic level.  When your peering through a microscope you can only see that small part of that small slide you’re focussed on; you’re oblivious to the rest of the world.

For example, when I was heavily into woodworking I would often get ‘sucked in’ to auxiliary activities.  When I started to make picture frames, I had some difficulty making accurate mitre joints.  I couldn’t tolerate the most miniscule gap in the joint and obsessed for weeks looking for ways to make the perfect joint.

I poured over books from the library, gaped at hours and hours of YouTube videos, made countless jigs and bought expensive mitre saws: I missed meals, was regularly late in picking my children up from school and resented the slightest interference with my ‘mission’.  This, as you can imagine, affected my relationship with my wife.  However, while I was in the thick of it, my anxieties faded and I felt energised and alive.  Over the years of caring for my wife I have learned to ‘zoom out’ when I have to but it is still a struggle.

Promoting relaxation 

Everyone’s hobby relaxes them, surely?  Of course it does.  Our interests our no different, but the intensity and frequency with which we engage with them is.  Our interests are compulsions; we are driven to do them.  The benefit to us from an increased sense of relaxation and mental ease as well as the thought blocking aspect propels us to engage exponentially with our interests.  We therefore experience what feels like a positive feedback loop, an all too convenient escape hatch.  We are stressed and so turn to our interests, the stress increases and so we turn more frequently and with more focus to our interests and so on.  Unfortunately, every time we jump down the safety hatch we find ourselves  increasingly further away from the reality of our own lives.  While this isn’t necessary a bad thing, if we are not careful, we can lose touch with reality for extended periods of time.  I think it’s fair to say that most of us on the spectrum have problems managing our escapism.  Of course our interests are more than mere escapism.

Creating order

For those of us with ASD, the world often appears to be an illogical, disparate and confusing set of processes, environments and behaviours.  It makes perfect sense then, that we try to impose some order on this anxiety producing matrix.  Consequently, our obsessions often perform a vital role in codifying  apparently diverse experiences.  We so often use our interests to impose logic on an essentially illogical world.

So many of our compulsive pastimes involve creating and discovering patterns, adopting (often restrictive) routines or cataloguing and listing various phenomena.  This can be as main stream as playing, or creating code for, computer games; or as obscure as cataloguing every make and model of vacuum cleaner since it’s invention in the early 1900’s.

In all of my interests, some of which are mentioned above, there has been a strong codifying aspect.  The one which illustrates this the best is my second flirtation with mosaics.  I was first exposed to mosaics as a decorative technique when  I was making picture frames and clocks.  When I was in the throes of a serious depression years later, I decided to try mosaic as a purely artistic pursuit.  I underwent the normal intensive research process, which led to the creation of a file that catalogued the various types of tile, substrate, adhesives, flow patterns, design principle as so forth.  I made a second file just on design principles and designed and created my own light box.  I made one mosaic.  One.  Looking back now, the joy for me was in the systematizing of information.  I couldn’t figure how to negotiate the arena of small talk, but I could create a highly organized mosaic ‘world’.  I was good at something, and that made me feel good; at least for a while.

Boosting Self-esteem

Perhaps one of the most significant roles that our interests play in our lives is to boost our self-confidence.

Over the years, many people with ASD internalize a lot of negative beliefs about themselves as a result of their social difficulties.  We receive the message, sometimes overtly stated,  that we are social failures, misfits or oddities.  It’s not so surprising then, when these epithets become generalized within our minds and we become to see ourselves as abject failures.

A method often used by Aspies for dealing with this self-limiting belief is to compensate for our social deficits by using our special interests.  We expend inordinate amounts of time, money and commitment  on them until we feel that we are not simply good at them but expert at them; being recognized for this expertise is an important source esteem and confidence.

When I am in the midst of a deep depression I often yearn to ‘go deep’ on a subject to remind myself that my problems being around other people shouldn’t define who I am.  Unfortunately, being a carer, I often don’t have the time and commitment to do this.  This leads to a terrible tearing of my mind: it’s literally pulled in two directions at once.  I will come back to how being a carer can intensify things in a future post.  The point I want to get across for now though is this; deep, meaningful learning is a vital source of self-belief.

Up until my Forties I was convinced that I was a stupid person because I couldn’t do those things that seem so easy and natural for other people.  I simply could not understand people, how they moved so fluidly together.  It seemed as if everyone else knew the dance;, they knew the moves of the dance, they knew what clothing and footwear to use, they knew how to start a dance and finish it.  When I started an Access to Higher Education course at my local University I realized two things.  Firstly that I really was awful with interpersonal relationships but secondly, and more importantly, I was good at working with concepts and ideas (at least on my own).

At the end of the course I was the highest achieving student for that intake.  Despite this I couldn’t attend my awards ceremony.  I could not have coped with such an assemblage of people.  Consequently, I decided to study as an undergraduate with the Open University, a highly regarded distance learning provider here in the UK.  I passed my first two modules with distinction and received an academic prize for my first.  Sadly, the UK government cut the funding for higher education at the same time as my wife’s illness deteriorated so I never got passed a Certificate of Higher Education.  Never-the-less, those three years of study were the best three years of my life.  Spending Saturday afternoons in the University Library felt like bliss to me.  I felt valued and appreciated like never before.

Since my study has ended my mental health has eroded.  Despite trying to boost it with various voluntary work and interests it has remained an issue since.  I know realize just how much of a confidence builder engaging with the right activities can be.  There is, however, one particular function that our interests perform that is often overlooked.

The Pleasure

For those with ASD, engaging deeply in our interests lights up the pleasure centres of our brains like virtually nothing else.  There are three things that all Aspies love:

• Going in deep on a subject
• Developing expert knowledge, and
• Mastering a new skill

These areas coalesce superbly when we are actively engaged in our obsessional interests.  It’s vital that neurotypical people understand just how much joy the ASD population receive for interacting with their chosen interest.  While it’s important that we don’t get lost in them, it’s equally important that our access to them is not blocked or our, already precarious, mental health will invariably suffer.

If I was to summarize all of the above aspects of our obsessional interests as well as those that there has not been time to investigate I would simply say:

Our Interests are our refuge

For those of us on the spectrum it is not simply a matter of, ‘any port in a storm.’  We need a very specific room, in a very specific ship, in a very specific part of the harbour (close to the toilets but that may be just my preference!).

Put simply, when we are deep in the midst of our interests; disturbing thoughts are dissolved; we a more relaxed; we can make better sense of the world, we literally feel better about ourselves and we are genuinely happy.  But it’s not all plain sailing.

Managing our Interests

Our interests can get out of control.  Precisely because they provide such a reliable buffer from a bruising world we are apt to abuse them; like diving on board the lifeboat at the slightest swell in the pond.  We can feel so battered by a world that doesn’t understand us that we  yearn for the slightest sense of self-worth.

During my most recent bout of depression I started to clamber after a raft, any sliver of jetsam to keep me afloat.  Craft activities had worked well for me in the  past so I searched frantically for anything that would grip me, no matter how limply.  In the end it was a guy making a leather belt on You Tube.  Quite why I was caught in the rough embrace of leather work of all things I can’t answer even now.

Soon, I was in the initial throes of passion and pouring over hours of You Tube, scouring the internet for tool recommendations, learning the finer points about tanning; and on and on and on.  I spent a small fortune on the best quality tools, leather, threads, fittings etc.  I was determined to make this one pay so I kept a list of every purchase so I could recoup the cost through selling leather goods on Etsy and the like.  I created a wonderful file illustrating the best way to sharpen tools, the best leathers, threads and so forth for a particular project.  I spent every spare moment learning how to hand-stitch, cut, burnish leather.  I even made my own stitching pony.  I missed meals and even the odd shower to create time for my ‘passion’.  Ultimately, I made two belts.  Two.  One for my son and the other for myself.

Now, my tools loom over me, in the custom-made holders I created for them, on the top shelf of my bookcase as I write this; a constant reminder of the consequences of obsession.  In the end I will have to sell them on eBay at a loss so that I don’t have to look at them anymore.

Since then I have been very wary about allowing myself to ‘go deep’ on anything.  As my depression and anxieties have worsened I have taken to this blog again as a way of trying to understand why I end up being trapped by the various patterns of my life.

In terms of managing special interests this is what I have learned:

• Use a cooking timer with an irritating alarm to break up the time you spend engaged in your interest (you’ll ignore it at times, but it can help you to break off).
• Set yourself a budget, know what you can realistically spend on your passion and be strict with yourself, engage someone’s help with this if necessary.
• Set yourself a clear schedule for eating, sleeping, cleaning your room or home etc.
• Use your passion as a reward for doing the above necessities.
• Try to include a social element into your interests; meeting people with the same passion could spark a friendship, but if not, you are  still getting out of the house.

If you take some basic steps to manage your interests then they need not be guilty pleasures.  You can enjoy them, revel in them and not endure a ‘reality hangover’ afterwards.

I will leave you with a recent experience that illustrates well some of the points we’ve discussed in this post.

I am still in the midst of a deep depression and, I imagine, have been quite difficult to live with lately.  After finishing the first draft of the post I had a huge argument with my wife.  I stormed out and headed, on autopilot, to the library where I spent the next three hours reading random books on local history in a trance-like state.  I honestly don’t remember much about the books that I read.  I think I simply used them to zone out, to block some of the psychological pain; they were my port in the storm.

What are your obsessional interests and what roles do you feel they play in your life? Please feel free to comment below.

 

 

 

 

PDB (Post Diagnostic Blues)

HI everyone.

This post represents the re-launch of my blog, almost a year after I gave birth to the idea.  The reason for such a lengthy hiatus has been the dreaded PDB’s.  I started this blog within days of being diagnosed which, in retrospect, was a mistake.  The initial relief and optimism that inspired my first posts quickly receded.

This recession was exasperated by a serious deterioration in my wife’s illness at a time when both of my children developed challenging mental health conditions.  Consequently, my caring commitment increased exponentially and I experienced a perfect storm of stress.  Suddenly I didn’t have the time or psychological space to contemplate my diagnosis and I simply fell into a black hole.  I am still experiencing the physical toll of this now.  Fortunately, my wife’s condition has improved somewhat and my children are on a much more stable psychological footing.

Finally having some time to myself, I made several failed attempts to connect with other adults on the spectrum in the real world.  I  then joined Aspie Central, an online autistic community, and have explored some of my autistic traits with other ‘Aspies’ there.  I was shocked to hear the same story again and again from other adult Aspies.  After they experience a protracted and arduous diagnostic assault course, they hit a brick wall; a complete lack of support services for all but the most low functioning individuals.

I have returned to this blog to fully explore my autism in particular and the autistic universe more generally and to share with the world what it actually means to be autistic.

One of the ways I coped with the strain of being a carer and my ‘shrunken horizon’ was to lose myself in what psychologists would call my obsessional interests, often called special interests.  This will be the subject of my next series of posts.  I hope to publish the first one over the next couple of days.

Finally Diagnosed at Fifty (2)

In this second part of Finally Diagnosed at Fifty we examines how I slowly began to realise that I may actually have ASD.

The Clarity

Disparate and spectral memories eventually coalesced and formed a massive matrix, like a side lit spider’s web dripping with the clarity of early morning dew.  In the centre, refracted through that lucid liquid, was the word, ‘Autistic.’  It shone.  I could finally see.  I shared my new vision with my wife who responded with,

“Tell me something I don’t know.”

It would not be the only underwhelmed response I was to receive when I relayed this shiny new insight to others.  With my wife on side, I was ready to make a start.  I started with my GP.

The Path towards Confirmation

I went to my doctor’s appointment armed with a complex argument rehearsed to perfection swirling in my head.  I could relate my problems; dealing with people, understanding them, my obsessional interests, how I get caught in thinking loops to the DSM-IV, but, of course I didn’t.  I sat down to the side of my GP and, while repeatedly giving him side glances, jumbled up my entire argument and finally said,

‘So, I think I might be autistic.  I would like to be referred for an ASD assessment.’

My head was banging and my stomach was about to be sucked into my chest when my GP said,

‘OK, but I’ll have to check to see if there’s any funding.’

‘What, it can’t be that easy!’ I thought.

It wasn’t.  At first I was told that there was no funding.  Then I was informed that there was cross-border funding for assessment by an Asperger team in the neighbouring borough to mine.  This proved to be a disaster.  After sending them off a basic developmental history a nurse arrived at my home to do an initial assessment, a nurse!  Within minutes of talking to me she told me that I was making adequate eye contact and that, in her opinion, I was not on the spectrum.  The irony was that she had more trouble maintaining eye contact than I did and seemed to be on the verge of a breakdown.  The assessment was quickly concluded and I refused to engage with that service again.  I was lost in a black vortex for months after that and made myself invisible in my caring role.

It amazes me now that I didn’t notice my GP’s reaction at the time.  He clearly thought I was on the spectrum or, at a time of huge funding cuts, he would have shut down any possibility of adult assessment or at least used one of the screening tools.  Yet, in true Aspie style, I didn’t notice it.  Instead I felt guilty for wasting everyone’s time and crawled back into my carapace.  Of course, my issues didn’t disappear.

It took me years to cobble together enough confidence to try for assessment again.  During this time I read many articles and books and joined Aspie forums.  I took every screening tool I could find on the Internet; the AQ, SQ, EQ, FQ (I was stuck in a lot of queues!), RAADS-R, TFIS etc. I came to a well researched self-diagnosis, but I could not leave it there.  During the same period I had been saving for a car.  I decided to use that money to fund a private assessment.  I researched, of course, and found an experienced clinical psychologist who specialised in ASD and had lots of experience diagnosing adults on the spectrum.

The Diagnosis

I was sent two lengthy developmental history questionnaires; one for me to complete and one for my wife.  Unsurprisingly, I became lost in mine.  I relived the past again. Memories I had buried decades ago started to burst through the loosened soil of their graves and began to wreak horror on my subconscious.  I let loose the living dead.  I could bear the pain in a final push for truth.

When both of the histories were finally finished they were painful to read but my wife’s was the more shocking.  I always assumed that I had developed good masking skills but, according to my wife, I was fooling no one. She could recall times when I had been unwittingly manipulated by my family or acted in strange ways that had made perfect sense to me.  She remembered the time I stormed out of a course for parents of children with ASD within the first five minutes because I thought the trainers were Morons and wasting my time.  We were all sitting in a circle at the time and I felt overwhelmed.  I regret that I left my poor wife to apologize for me but I stand by my decision!

I posted the developmental histories and anxiously waited for D Day (Diagnosis Day).

D Day

I was lucky. The anxiety didn’t have long enough to manifest into complete panic because I only had a short wait before my diagnostician arrived.  It helped that she reminded me of my favourite aunt.  She had a similar eccentric dress sense and radiated warmth in a similar way.  She had a calming voice and a soothing manner.  I was in a consulting room with her and my wife for hours.  I remember very little of it now. I remember talking about; my communications issues, my obsessive thinking, my compulsive interests, and how these affect my relationships.   Only one thing sticks in my mind now.  That is the incessant build up on anxiety throughout like a slow fuse fizzing away.  At some point near the end of the assessment she said, in a very matter of fact way,

‘I can confirm that you are on the Autistic Spectrum.’

A muffled explosion went off.  I cried. It was an intermittent, sob accompanied by a ball of spasm under my rib cage; but I cried.  I don’t cry. It was over pretty quickly but my wife cried a little longer on my behalf.  The psychologist asked how I felt, I said,

‘I don’t know….talk about alexithymia….I can’t pick one out.’

It was not until that moment that I truly realised how difficult it is for me to separate and identify my emotions, but relief was a big part of the mix.  I finally knew.  I was finally diagnosed at fifty.

As long and winding my road to realisation has been, I am aware that I have been lucky.  I have had the support of my GP.  I know that many diagnostic journeys hit a road block at the doctor’s surgery.  I was also lucky to have had the financial resources to be able to seek a diagnosis privately.  I was equally fortunate to have found a specialist clinical psychologist with the requisite skills and experience to diagnose ASD in adults, less than fifty miles from my home.

So, you’ve heard my diagnostic story.  What’s yours?  How easy or difficult has your journey been?  How far along the diagnostic pathway are you?  Please feel free to comment below.

Quick footnote:  For those of us who don’t know, I will explain what alexithymia is and discuss the screening tools in future posts.

Finally Diagnosed at Fifty

 

I am fifty.  I have already lived more of my life than I have left to live.  I am genuinely surprised to have made it this far.

In these two posts we’ll explore my diagnostic journey; it’s been one hell of a trip!  For more than a decade I questioned my identity, slowly began to acknowledge my weaknesses and gradually realised my autistic traits.

In the first part of Finally Diagnosed at Fifty, we’ll discover how Autism entered my vocabulary and how I first began to suspect that I may be on The Spectrum.

The Inklings

My journey began in the office of my son’s primary school SENCO (special educational needs coordinator), sat in an absurdly sized blue chair, while she revealed her suspicion that my son had autism.  In that instant I felt as tiny as the chair I was sat precariously on. The word was as alien as the ‘symptoms’ it described.  My Response was, in true Aspie fashion, to research.

My introduction to autism was Dr Tony Attwood’s, ‘The Complete guide to Asperger Syndrome’.  Inside those pages I discovered that my son easily met the diagnostic criteria and that I had very strong traits too.  I panicked a little at this point but I placated my anxiety with a statistic (a very Aspie strategy).  Just under half of all first degree relatives of a child with Asperger’s will have similar traits but at a subclinical level.  With that I let sleeping Aspies lie, and moved on.   I was so focused on my son’s issues that I ignored many obvious links between the diagnostic criteria and my own problems.  Besides, I had other things on my mind.

At this point I had already been a full-time carer for my disabled wife for over six years, I was contending with a young daughter, and was now grappling with an intransigent mule otherwise known as the ASD diagnostic pathway.  I eventually dragged that stubborn ass to the winning post and my son received a diagnosis of High Functioning Autism.  I then had to let loose my mule wrangling skills again, as I attempted to force, and I do mean force, the local authority to provide my son with an appropriate Statement of Educational Needs.  It was then necessary for me to do a little more ass whispering (I apologise for the image but I love the assonance) in order to secure a place for my son at a specialist ASD school.  Time for a cuppa and a sit down, you’d think? No.

 The Mirror

After her Granddad had died, my wife and I realised that our daughter was starting to struggle at school, both academically and socially.  Her behaviour at home changed and she seemed to withdraw into herself.  Suddenly I was grappling with the reigns of the ASD diagnostic pathway again.  Sadly, funding cuts had created an obstinate donkey with mutant heels.  I had, however, a focused family behind me and recently discovered the joys of working out.  So I had the strength and stamina to draw that donkey along and, eventually, past the winners post.  Except that there were no winners.  We were all exhausted.  I was shattered; and so was my identity.

My daughter’s autism presented in a very different way to my son’s.  Her personality is much closer to my own.  As I rediscovered the diagnostic criteria, and began to identity my daughter’s autistic traits, I couldn’t ignore the obvious anymore.  I had the same traits.  I floundered at school in similar ways to my daughter.  This time I couldn’t run away from it; into the welcoming arms of woodcraft, or mosaic, or whatever my current obsession was.  Even amongst a maelstrom of activity; constant meetings with the school, fighting to arrange psychological support for my daughter, managing her self-harm: I couldn’t pretend anymore.

The Crash

Perhaps because of the strain of trying to support my family through another roadblock, I crashed.  Months of questioning everything about myself left me raw and lifeless on a cold , stone floor.  The bleak cloak of pretense enabled me to perform, unfeasibly, like myself.  The problem was, I didn’t know who I was like.  I didn’t know who I was.  I had to find out.

The Yank Back

I embarked upon what I would now call a life review.  This was not the angst filled questioning of everything about myself that I had already put myself through but a slow, methodical review.  I was finally playing to my strengths.  I made a reluctant start.  Reflection did not come easily.  I allowed myself to think about school.  The lid of the box creaked as I prised it open and dared to peek inside.  In an instant, a hurricane roared, the lid was ripped from the box and memory after memory assaulted my senses.  It was like being glued to a familiar chair while it is flung back in time.  I was gripped.

I saw myself in school, detached from the other children and relating strongly to the teachers.  I had one friend in school.  He had come from a good comprehensive and so was shunned even more than I was.  I saw myself hiding in the toilets, as my daughter does now, curled up in the cubicle praying for sensorial and social relief.  I recalled the blessed refuge of the school library and the school cleaner who loved my posh  anachronistic accent: I came from the same hard, working class neighbourhood as every other kid in that school.  Memories started to merge and connections made, one confirming the other.  The panic attack when I tried to attend my first college lecture, aged twenty-five; the sensory overload during my first traineeship in a large corporate, only realising weeks later when a girl had been flirting with me.  It was chaotic.  It was messy.  But it started to come together.

In Finally Diagnosed at Fifty (2),  I’ll show how I slowly began to realise that having ASD was a real possibility.

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