“ After being diagnosed with autism spectrum
disorder , I understood ,
perhaps for the first time , that I was human .”
On March 8 , 2015 I did one of the most courageous things that I ’ ve ever done . It was the day that I stepped out of the shadows and told the world about my autism diagnosis . It was the day that I realized just how strong I was .
When I was about seven years old , I began to feel self-conscious about the differences between me and other children my age . It felt as though the entire world was in on a joke that I just did not understand . I was always a quiet and intelligent child . My mother reports that my third grade teacher told her that she was not sure what to do with me because I completed my class work so quickly that she could not keep up with my pace of learning . I was placed in the gifted program at an early age . I was a great student , yet I struggled tremendously .
I had a difficult time understanding people , and people had an equally difficult time understanding me . I was extremely stubborn , more so than the average child my age . I had a hard time with change . Simple shifts in schedules or environments would place me on edge . I appeared to operate with an almost robotic , calculated persona . I took things extremely literally . At the age of seven , while living in Germany , teachers discovered that I had been having accidents on the playground for weeks , simply because I took the instructions of teachers literally when they told us that during the lunch period the building was “ not open until the bell rings .” I honestly did not understand that I was allowed to enter the building to use the restroom .
Every struggle that I had socially or educationally was the result of my lack of strength – or at least that ’ s what I believed . Even in the midst of obvious struggles , I was often characterized as weak , weird or just plain wrong . So I became afraid . I was bullied by my peers , by teachers , and on occasion by other parents because I seemed strange , stoic and sometimes rude or arrogant .
It would be decades before I would discover the language to describe my life . After years of silently struggling with social anxiety , sensory processing issues and a host of other invisible struggles , I found myself seeking a definitive answer about the source of these issues . In December of 2014 , at age 36 , I received my answer . My wife and I looked across the table at the clinical psychologist that we had been seeing , and she said three words that changed the way that I understood myself .
Autism Spectrum Disorder .
After being diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder , I understood , perhaps for the first time , that I was human . I understood that my years of struggling with certain issues weren ’ t due to a lack of perfection , but an abundance of humanity . I learned that I did have some boundaries and limitations , but most of all , I learned that I am not weak . I am strong .
“ After being diagnosed with autism spectrum
disorder , I understood ,
perhaps for the first time , that I was human .”
My life with autism isn ’ t going to necessarily look like the life of the other person you know with autism ; every autistic person is uniquely impacted . Social anxiety and sensory processing issues are a large part of my experience . Autism ’ s impact on my life is almost always invisible to the world . It presents in silent , suggestive and sometimes subtle ways . The signs that I am autistic are at times small yet significant . It is often the reason why many people simply come to the conclusion that I am strange , but what may
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ZOOM Autism through Many Lenses