My Journey With Autism

I had this blanket as a child that I called Woobie that had lace trim with satin ribbon running through it.  When I rubbed that satin ribbon between my forefinger and thumb, it was as if my whole existence shrunk down to a pinpoint. All the noise and chaos in my body was drowned out by that feeling.

When I was 8 years old I was diagnosed with Non-Verbal Learning Disability. When my mom asked the doctor what that meant, he replied that it was why I was such a freak. Over the course of my life I've been misdiagnosed with a lot of mental health and behavioral conditions but Non-Verbal Learning Disability, while wrong, was actually closer to the truth than most.

I was an extremely unusual child that didn't fit in in any social setting including my own home and school. I couldn't read body language at all so I missed those subtle clues that people were starting to get upset with me, or that posture that would have let me know that that person was annoyed and I shouldn't go up to them in such an upbeat and effusive manner. At that point of my life though, I didn't know that I was missing social skills. I just knew that I was being bullied and had no friends.
It wasn't until much later in life when I realized I had no social skills and I tried to teach myself body language that I started to put the pieces together.

You see, while there are books teaching people how to read body language, apparently that skill is inherent, or at least, it's supposed to be. But when I tried to find books to learn social skills as an adult? Almost impossible. And the more I looked, the more books I found for certain adults, so I finally checked out one of them, specifically "Be Different" by John Elder Robison. When I read that book everything made sense.

When I met with my psychiatrist the following week, I told her I thought I had Asperger's Syndrome. She asked me why I thought so and when I got half way through my reasoning, she stopped me and said, "yes." I asked her if I needed to take a test. She said there was no need and she didn't know why she hadn't seen it before.

I'm IsaJennie and I'm Autistic. I'm on the Autism spectrum. I don't want to be cured. Autism makes me who I am. My brain is different. It functions in a spectacularly complex way that neurotypical people cannot fathom and it is wonderful. What I want to "cure" is the way I am treated by neurotypical people. I want to make the world easier to live in for Autistic people.

Non-Verbal Illiteracy & ME

(Note:This was a really difficult post for me to write...not physically difficult, because for the most part writing comes easily to me, but emotionally I guess. It's like revealing this deep dark secret and I'm worried about what the people around me are going to think of the secret...)


I know a lot about body language now  but that wasn't always the case.

Growing up I literally couldn't read body language or any type of non-verbal cues. It was absoulutely horrible! Something my siblings often say when we're reflecting on the good ol' days is that when I was younger I had an uncanny knack for putting our dad in an even worse mood than he started off in; He'd walk in the door after a long long day at work obviously upset, maybe from losing a patient or for some other reason, and because I couldn't tell that he was upset, I would just charge at him spewing words at a mile a minute. When all he wanted to do was sit down and decompress I'd just keep talking and talking and talking....and as he got more and more irritated it led to the inevitable chorus of "SHUT UP JENNIE" from my entire family. Looking back, I picture myself as a Golden Retriever puppy meets the Energizer bunny...super hyper and all-up-in-your-grill, and I just kept going and going and going... It was not pretty for anyone involved, least of all me. Can you imagine how many friends I had as a kid??...exactly.

As I got older, I'd start to notice some of the more obvious body language cues:
-someone rolling their eyes at you= annoyed
-someone shaking their head at you=annoyed
-someone rubbing their face= annoyed/ at their wits end.

Unfortunately for me, even though I learned that yes, that kid sitting next to me in German class was really annoyed with me, by that time, it was too late to do anything; I had already annoyed him and I had no clue why! It was like I went from living with a blindfold on to living with a pair of horse blinders on. I was still missing half the picture and I didn't know what to do with the half I was seeing. It got to the point where...I didn't want to look around and see the way people were responding to me because I didn't want to see the irritation and not know how to make it go away or to prevent it.

Now, as a 21-year-old college sophomore, the blinders are off (and the contacts are in thank God or I really would be totally blind ;-D) and it's overwhelming...I can see the joy in someone's eyes, the affection in someone's smile, the sadness in the stoop of their shoulders; I can see the good and the bad, but it didn't come easily or cheaply (therapy much?) but after being around people for awhile, it's like I have to recharge. It's draining to have to focus so much of my attention and energy in order to do something that comes naturally and automatically to most people. And I still need to learn what to do with the information I'm getting. A lot of times...I freeze (see the FFF post).


I wish I could say that I'm a regular Cal Lightman and that non-verbal skills are a non-issue for me, but like most aspects of my life, it's a work in progress...


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-RRR