ing out of control, totally disconnected from the
person I’d always been.
Why? Well, my boyfriend of almost two years
— with whom I was absolutely head-over-heels
— had pointed out that all of my classes were in
the humanities. He was in the sciences and had
not done nearly as well at school, despite being
every bit as smart. So, he told me, I was obviously outperforming him because my classes were
much easier. I was a fraud, an arrogant pretense
… as well as a lot of other bad things, he explained. Many times. And because I loved him, I
believed him. I just
no longer believed
in me.
In a nutshell: when
something is truly
difficult, bright, talented, creative girls
often interpret our
struggle as proof
that we just don’t
have what it takes.
That whatever
smartness, cleverness, and goodness
we have (or haven’t)
is inborn — unchangeable. Innate.
Part of a “you’vegot-it-or-you-don’t”
package. And being
on the spectrum
adds a whole extra
dimension to that concept. By our very nature,
we tend to see the world in acute all-or-nothing,
I’ve-got-this-or-I’m-an-utter-failure terms anyway. Bright girls, in general, are likely to see
themselves as inadequate, and spectrum girls
add an extra dose of intensity, anxiety, depression, and self-loathing. As soon as life experiences “prove” our shortfalls, our worst fears
are realized. The smart (or creative or imaginative) person we thought we knew — well, she’s
turned out to be a scam. Turns out — we are
fakes. Frauds.
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ZOOM Autism through Many Lenses
And really, why keep at what you obviously
can’t do well when you can, to some gratification, focus your ultra-fierce attentions on the one
person who deserves your scorn for being such a
failure? Yourself.
SUPER-IMPORTANT, CANNOT POSSIBLY BE
OVERSTATED FACT
I’m now going to tell it like it is because certain
deadly, dangerous, disfiguring specters haunt
girls on the spectrum more than any other
population: eating disorders, cutting, burning. It
makes sense if you
just think about it;
genetically, we are
prime candidates.
We’re socially programmed to judge
ourselves harshly.
We’re neurologically
wired to be rigid
and exacting. To be
perfectionists with
obsessive and depressive tendencies.
To have minds that
get stuck on something and replay the
idea endlessly all
day and night. And
we don’t like to feel
out of control. We
are, literally, the textbook illustration of the kind
of girl/woman most vulnerable to self-harm.
Let’s be clear. You deserve love. And understanding. And compassion. You are not a mistake, my friend. You are not some amoral piece
of garbage who’d do better to numb out and
disappear. You are good at much more than
destroying yourself. Do you hear me? Losing yet
another pound — hiding one more scar — stuffing down one more cookie — it isn’t a triumph.
It doesn’t make you superior to anyone, even
though I know that’s how it can feel.
Years ago, I was hospitalized for anorexia, and
on some deeply-troubled level, I was actually
proud of the “achievement.” Really. Proud of
getting so good at losing weight, at being so
skinny (in reality, so malnourished) that I had to
be admitted to a hospital for a month. And you
know what? The day before I went in-patient, I
was still getting compliments on my uber-teeny
jeans. And, so, I didn’t really want “recovery”
— to lose my only coping mechanism. I felt light
and numb and admired … until I was admitted
and finally discovered that no, I was
just wholly sick …
and wholly friendless. You see, after a
while, you begin to
love your addiction.
Binging. Starving.
Compulsive exercising. All of it is about
trying to escape
from your own
feelings. And for a
while, it may feel
like it works. For
example, when we
are babies and we
get overwhelmed,
we seek the comfort of nursing or
of a bottle. That is,
we find relief from
our big, scary feelings by filling our mouths
with sweet, rich tastes. It makes perfect scientific sense, then, that even though we may not
realize it, consciously, our brains (smart as they
are) haven’t forgotten how to switch on the selfsoothing mode. Maybe we’re feeling left-out or
defective, ashamed or insecure. The feelings get
too big, and … for many of us, the fix is to fill
up on treasure troves of sugar and fat: pizza,
ice cream, cookies, cheese, chocolate. For a little
while, the chemical relief numbs out the hurt.
Hurt? Worry? It’s all shoved deep down beneath
layers of chips or donuts. Hidden. Out of sight
and out of mind. Until the chemical buzz begins
to wear off … and it turns out that the feelings
never went away. They’re still here. And worse,
now there’s self-loathing and shame to add to
the mix. So we punish ourselves … until the hurt
gets too big and the cycle starts again.
For those of us who starve ourselves, the story
isn’t much different. We’re still trying to escape
overwhelming feelings — of being a fraud, not
good enough, unworthy, a failure. Instead of
indulging in cover-up chaos, under-eaters (like I
was) discover relief - even a sense
of power - in artificial control. At
one point, I kept a
spreadsheet of every calorie, gram of
protein, fat, carbohydrate and fiber I
ate. Every day. As
I got hungrier and
hungrier and then
suddenly, somehow
… numb (that’d be
my brain literally
shutting down) …
there was a kind of
euphoria. Even arrogant achievement.
I didn’t feel the
hurt. I didn’t feel
anything … except
… trapped by my
own rules. Afraid of dinner dates or parties or
anything outside of my rigid routine (how very,
very spectrummy).
What I Need You to Remember
When you starve, you don’t actually get away
from anything. What really happens is this: you
get ashamed and secretive and ever-more isolated. Then, finally, when you emerge from the
fog — if you emerge — life won’t have magically
ZOOM Autism through Many Lenses
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