Category Archives: writing on the Spectrum

Apr 02 2024
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mindfulness, writing on the Spectrum

A Work In Progress

Making the Body/Mind Connection Part 3

I am trying hard to follow my own advice and be more mindful, but too often, I find that I am not. 

I find myself preoccupied with work problems and issues.  It’s high season for my seasonal work, and the demands on me are almost unbearably heavy right now.

I do not wish for my days to be entirely consumed with work. There is so much more that I want to do!

I live on the usually rainy west coast of BC, but when it is unseasonably sunny out, I need to bask in that sun for at least half an hour, just to remind myself that there’s a rewarding and joyful life available and waiting for me.

I like to both read and least listen to books, but I am reduced to only listening to audio books in the car on my way to the gym.

 Lately, I find I am not even making time to phone and chat with my friends or keep in touch with my distant cousins and relatives, some of whom count on me for support and encouragement.

I am incredibly fortunate in that I have a caring partner who plans and prepares our meals, and takes care of the light housekeeping and gardening. 

So really, my complaint, when I stop to think about it, is not about my situation, it’s about how I am dealing with it, which is a result of what’s going on in my head.

This reminds me of an article I once read, by an esteemed author named Ekhart Tolle.  He said something that really caught my interest.

He said our minds are busy clogging up our thoughts with the past and the future. This keeps us from noticing and fully living the possibilities and the pleasure of the moment we are in. 

Tolle believes that even when we feel that being in the present moment is painful, unpleasant or even unacceptable, that feeling is a judgement we are making about that moment. And just thinking in those terms, Tolle warns us, works against our best interests. 

These assessments of our situation are pronounced as unalterable facts by our mind, and Tolle posits that it is this judgement which causes us pain and unhappiness.

Tolle’s wise advice?   “Whatever the present moment brings, accept it as if you had chosen it.”  He cautions us to always work with the present and never against it. 

“Make the present moment your friend and not your enemy, and you will transform your life.”

This advice sounds powerful. Also very difficult to initiate and sustain.

Reflecting on this article, which I’ve found in my files, I realize that accepting the reality of the present moment requires practice. 

To do so without adding mental predictions of where it is taking me, or how it has affected me, or labelling it a positive or negative moment, to simply accept the moment whatever it may bring, could be the next step in my journey to mindfulness.

I must learn to live in the present moment.  To recognize what I am doing.  To be fully cognizant of my immediate situation, my environment and my body, as I am moving into the next moment.  And that the next moment is always an unknown.

I am working on it.

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Mar 24 2024
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awkwardness, body, body and mind, mind, mindfulness, mobility, physical self, writing on the Spectrum

United We Stand, Divided We….

Exploring the Mind/Body Connection Part 2

I am grateful to my body for all the years it has amazingly, carried me through this life. In elementary school, it helped me win races and high jump and in high school, allowed me to participate in team sports like baseball and basketball. I could act in film and on stage. I could walk for miles and often had to.  This body bore me three fine children.  And in the confines of this body, I cared for a husband with a critical heart condition. 

But ultimately, I never thought much about the physical embodiment that accompanied ‘me’ wherever I went. I stumbled, tripped, rushed, and blundered.

Alternately, I would sit for hours in an unhealthy position, lost in a book or a problem or a project.  My body was just there with me, taken for granted, unnoticed, like an unloved child in the room.

The most positive remark I can make about my attitude toward my body is that I have always been aware that mobility is crucial to a vibrant and happy life. So, this project of honouring my physical self should be a simple matter, right?

The trouble is my mind seems to be jealous.

Just when I think I’m doing well with regular breaks from the computer for movement and stretching, or going to the gym, my mind steps in and takes over, completely absorbing me for hours beyond the time I have allotted it, and once again robbing my body of its due.

Why do I live so much in my head?  Why are my thoughts a constant flow of unremitting playback and commentary? 

Why can I not enjoy a mental silence now and then?  A cessation of mental chatter, a period of serenity which would allow me to breathe more deeply, to drink in the moment, the bright purple and yellow of the primulas outside my window, the hummingbirds hovering at the feeder, the snow on the roofs across the way.

Suddenly, it becomes clear: to give my body its due, I must be able to exert some control over my mind.

My friend, Richard, an expert in mindfulness tells me it will take a conscious effort to co-ordinate my body and mind. It’s a matter of giving my physicality the mindful recognition it deserves. And treating it respectfully. 

Richard says I must learn to be still: to extricate myself from this mental rat race in which I seem perpetually absorbed.

I must deliberately engage both body and mind, he tells me, not only when motion is involved but also when it’s time to be still!

He says there is a way to harmoniously reunite my mind with my body. That I must recognize that there are no grounds for perceiving these aspects of myself as a duality. But this body/mind division seems so real to me. If he’s right, I’m not dealing with two separate entities, body and mind are intimately connected. It seems they just don’t recognize each other now.

I must introduce my body and my mind to each other.

I’m going to ask Richard to tell me more about this. What does recognizing the oneness of my body and mind look like in everyday life?  How do I practice this kind of unity? Does anyone else feel this disconnect–this separation of these two aspects of self? How do we reconnect, assuming the connection existed in the first place?

Come join me in my exploration of the mind/body connection!

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Feb 28 2024
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writing on the Spectrum

Helping Neurodivergent Children Have Success in the Classroom.

Positive Aspects: Sheila’s Story continued.
Feb 25 2024
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writing on the Spectrum

Positive aspects of non-neurotypical thinking

Positive Aspects: Sheila’s Story continued.
Jan 13 2024
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Autism Spectrum, Autism Spectrum diagnosis, writing on the Spectrum

Aspergirls by Rudy Simone

An Empowering Read for Women on the Autism Spectrum

I appreciate Rudy Simone’s acknowledgement that sometimes our social behaviours result in “botched interactions” causing feelings of guilt and self-blame. We on the spectrum have all had those experiences!

I learned that I was on the spectrum when my grandson was diagnosed. My daughter phoned me, very excited, and added, “And Mom, you and I also have all the symptoms!”

It was a joyful and terrifying moment. Joyful because suddenly there was an explanation for my horrific record of social blunders. Terrifying because it meant that I had been stumbling blindly through school, marriages and child-rearing without the benefit of this knowledge.

The awareness gave me the gift of compassion for myself. As Simone says in Aspergirls, diagnosis comes with a sensation of relief. 

I would like to say that I stopped feeling inadequate in that moment, but like the women in Simone’s book, and as anyone on the spectrum knows, that fear of being found lacking in social situations does not suddenly vanish.

Still, I’ve found that sense of insecurity can sometimes be useful. Feeling uncertain can make me hesitant at times, a caution which allows me to reassess a situation and perhaps even quickly think through and revise my initial instinctive response.

Simone notes that not being diagnosed invites all kinds of speculation, including unflattering and insulting conclusions about what our ‘problem’ is. 

People will often assume that our lack of social propriety is intentional. Or, seeing that we are vulnerable, some folks can’t resist the cruel opportunity to take advantage of our inability to appropriately defend ourselves in social situations, perhaps even to elevate their own social status in the eyes of their peers.

I found Simone’s book reassuring, in that she not only writes about her own experience, but also presents the comments and experiences of other ‘Aspergirls’. 

She covers a wide range of topics, from dating, sex and relationships, including ending those relationships (burning bridges), along with bullying at school, managing employment situations, stimming behaviours and sensory overload. Each chapter contains personal anecdotes, research and information, and ends with advice to Aspergirls and their parents.

Aspergirls is not only informative, it is a book that will make any girl on the autism spectrum feel at home in its pages, which will help parents, siblings and significant others to perhaps see the world from our point of view.

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Feb 01 2022
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Adult Aspies and Social situations, An Asperger Point of View, Asperger's research, writing on the Spectrum

Viewing Asperger’s through a Different Window.

John Elder Robison, who has Asperger’s, writes prolifically on Autism. He volunteered to undergo an experimental treatment which involved being subjected to magnetic stimulation of targeted areas of his brain.

There have been extensive studies on Asperger’s by neurophysiologists during the past 30 – 40 years. During the past 15 – 20 years, the emphasis has been upon the difference in utilization of the Cerebral cortex and the Amygdala aspect of the Cerebellum between neurotypicals and those on the Autism Spectrum.

These studies reveal how information with an emotional content, especially when personally conveyed, is largely processed in the Cerebral cortex by those with Asperger’s rather than in the Amygdala where it is processed by neurotypicals.

The result is those of us on the autism spectrum process information with emotional content logically, rather than emotionally.

However, the richer the contextual content associated with the information, the greater the ability of Aspies to ‘understand’, even if they cannot ‘directly experience’ the emotion being expressed.

In the experimental treatment in which Robison participated, he didn’t immediately notice any difference.

But the next day, when he interacted with others, he was unexpectedly overwhelmed by an almost ‘psychic’ awareness of their emotions. 

He was assailed by emotions of “jealousy, fear, anger and every bad thing I could imagine” (Neale). It was an unexpected torrent of emotions which he experienced as shocking and distressing.

This situation, one of being admitted to an emotional landscape which is usually unavailable, puts me in mind of Virginia Woolf’s comment in A Room of One’s Own about patriarchal rules in Oxbridge. At the library, she was refused entrance because of being a woman.

In social situations, as a person with autism syndrome, I feel as Woolf did “…how unpleasant it is to be locked out;” (18).  

But when I am composing a poem like Exonerating Eve which expresses such a divergent but powerful viewpoint, then, like Woolf, I cannot help but ponder the alternative, as she did when she added, “… and I thought how it is worse perhaps to be locked in;” (18).

Aspies, such as myself, come to realize early in our lives that we are somehow ‘locked out’. We learn to accept this and to make social inroads where we may.

But Robison’s experience indicates that our lack of social/emotional understanding is a ‘locking out’ that is at least in some respects beneficial, allowing us to experience the world in a way that, while ingenuous, is also unique and  insightful.

And thus I present my poem:

EXONERATING EVE

I know why Eve ate the apple

Picked and tasted forbidden fruit.

Locked in her Eden she hungered for more,

wanted proof that her life would not always be
just wandering the garden, a helpmate to Adam,

a servant to God.

In her heart she yearned for more than the beauty,

More than the silence. More than obedience.

Something within called her to challenge

the ‘perfection’ of a life established by God. 

Accepted by Man. 

Did The Creator witness her anguish? Did He
inspire her desire for more?

Gifting free will to all of humanity,

did He await our wakening thrill?

Did He seek a braver companion than one who
obeyed without question or zeal?

Was He astounded when it was the woman,

The feminine one who plucked and then peeled 

The Fruit that triggered a flood of passion
and reason, Wherein she
shrugged off obedience and now saw
her truth?

 Newly aware, she sees in her nudity 

All that is vulnerable and desirable to men. 

Looking out at the garden she sees the reality, 

thorns and thistles suddenly visible.

And within her, awareness of a strong inner spirit,

God-given,
to prepare her for the journey that she now begins.

Eve ate the fruit to be free from the fallacy

That her life was perfect. 

She dared to be more than that helpmate.

More than that servant.

To live in a garden that was an Eden no more.

A garden that now she perceives as a jungle.

A garden that asks her spirit to grow. 

A garden with pathways to be forged

and then trodden.

A life posing questions, needing answers,

Revealing wonders, unveiling horrors. A life to be
probed. A will to be tested.

Searching for truth, for reason and passion,

She reaches up, plucks The Fruit from the tree.

And in that critical, wonderful moment,

Plunges mankind into uncertainty, Drawing us
all out of complacency.

 Here in the midst of this pandemic, I understand
a woman like Eve.

As I sit and reflect on the life I’ve created,

I challenge myself to find more of me.

To ask the hard questions, to reach for the truth. 

To find in myself the courage to ask 

the questions that, unanswered leave me unproved.

To reach for the core, the richness of life. Face my own
fears, grapple with and tame them.

While I have time. While I am here, locked in this life Some would
call Paradise.

Yes. I have come to know why Eve ate that apple.

4:53 AM

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Feb 20 2021
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anxiety, Asperger teens, Autism Spectrum, child predators, UNFORGIVING, writing on the Spectrum

On Being a Writer with Autism

It’s a problem.  Not just having Asperger’s or, as the more politically and diagnostically correct phrasing goes, being on the spectrum.  But also not being diagnosed.

I know I am autistic.  My oldest daughter and two of my grandsons have been diagnosed as being on the Spectrum and we process information in a similar fashion — although often arriving at very different conclusions. The way we observe and process information is generally considered to be ‘unusual’.

Being different can bring a sense of isolation.  For me, as a child, it began at home. 

None of my family questioned the things I questioned, or perceived certain aspects of home and the society in which we lived, in the way I viewed and interpreted them.  It made both myself, and my family think of me as ‘other’.  I lived there, but I was different.  Wrong.  I didn’t fit in. And I found myself in a very similar situation in school. 

I honestly would not be able to tell you how I was different from the other kids.  That was a secret only they knew. 

Not knowing how I was different made it impossible to adjust my behaviour to conform.

I loved my mother, but in my opinion she lived a very dull, uninteresting life and I was determined to not grow up to live a similar one.  On reflection, my mother faced a great many challenges.  Raising a family and working outside of the home in the 1950’s and 1960’s when women were bombarded with media messages that their place was at home, could not have been easy for her. But I was too young and too involved with my own dilemmas to truly understand hers.

Then, when I was eleven, a neighbour began to notice me.  An adult, he was a close family friend.  My dad, my grandmother and my aunts all liked him.  As he was frequently in our house, he found me an easy target for his perversion.  Familiar with our household routines, he could easily determine when I would be home alone and thus vulnerable.

My autism contributed to my sense of helplessness in dealing with this neighbour’s twisted mind. 

The isolation I felt from my parents, the sense of being ‘wrong’ and not knowing how I was wrong.  The strict rule in our house that adults were always to be obeyed … I couldn’t sort out how I was supposed to alert others to this situation.

When I made tentative inroads into conversations about this problem, as with every other serious conversation I tried to have with adults, I was shut out. 

It was the 1950’s.  No one wanted to hear ‘that kind of thing’.

And, no-one knew about Autism, other than Hans Asperger in Germany and a few of his cohorts. We didn’t know about stimming, the social skills deficit or the neurology that would have unveiled my condition.  So I stood alone.

 I have been criticized for writing about this period in my life as I experienced it, rather than focusing more narrowly upon my autism. 

The social deficits were, and to some extent still are, real and pervasive. The sense of isolation, the astounding lack of connection to others.  Pleasure in solitude.  The foreign-ness of other people’s thought processes.

I cannot make up autistic traits.  I was different.  Socially awkward, and a loner.   That’s my truth.

And as an author who is autistic, the truth is the most powerful narrative I can offer you in a memoir. 

The sometimes horrifying, sometimes touching and sometimes humourous truths about what it was like to be socially challenged in the late fifties, early sixties, attempting to ward off a sexual predator while trying my best to figure out how to be normal in a world that seemed so completely foreign to me, is my story of growing up on the spectrum.

Unforgiving. The Memoir of an Asperger Teen is available on Kindle and in paperback through Amazon Books.  Read for yourself.  I told my truth.

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Feb 02 2021
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Autism Spectrum, writing on the Spectrum

Writing on the Spectrum

Have you ever been bullied at school?  Teased in an unkind way?

Perhaps you tried to join in a conversation and the little knob of people you were addressing just kind of broke up and walked away. What does a person do with that?

For me, it became a memoir, a Kindle book called Unforgiving, Memoir of an Asperger’s Teen. 

I wrote about the incongruous juxtaposition of events in my teenaged life: the unpleasantness of being targeted by a child molester, dealing with an Asperger’s personality when no-one knew what that was, and getting the lead role in a National Film Board film.  Circumstances which in combination, isolated me from my family and my peers.  

My intention in writing this book was to illustrate how a series of events in a young teen’s life can create an overwhelming and pervasive sense of isolation from family and community.

Another Aspie, Tom Angleberger, has written an article on how Asperger’s powers his writing.  Angleberger is the author of a series of young adult books who uses unpleasant incidents from his school days as fodder for his plots.  Angleberger has published many books in which his knowledge of Star Wars along with embarrassing moments in his childhood create humorous adventures for his characters, always with positive conclusions.

Some of his titles include Darth Paper Strikes Back and Emperor Pickeltine Rides the Bus.  He combined his fascination with origami along with his love of writing to produce R2-D2’s Guide to Folding.  He currently has 52 books in print and nearly two hundred thousand reviews on Goodreads!

As for being autistic, Angleberger says the constant flow of words from his brain to his pen have helped him have a career he loves.

You can read more about this author at: https://origamiyoda.com/ or find his books on Amazon, or in bookstores.

That other autists like Kelly Brenner[i], a Seattle based naturalist who writes about urban nature, can become successful authors is not just a recent occurrence. A behavioral analysis site declares that historically, authors such as Emily Dickinson, Hans Christian Anderson and Lewis Carroll are thought to have been on the spectrum[ii].

 Interestingly, an American university research project published in July of 2020 indicated that autistic students out-performed their classmates in essay and project writing[iii]. The main issue for students with autism, the study findings suggest, is overcoming perfectionism.

Shauna Marie Henry[iv] writes to expose ‘the elephant in the room’.  She says having an Asperger’s viewpoint gives her stories a unique look at social conventions. 

For many of us, being an Aspie doesn’t smooth the pathway to a seamlessly successful social life.  At least not in our early lives.  But certain aspects of our condition, including our unique perceptions, our different ways of processing information, and our ability to find humour in the most socially disastrous circumstances, or even just to survive them, can be seen as positive attributes.  

For some, even fodder for a career we love. 

[i] https://www.theopennotebook.com/2018/10/09/writing-when-on-the-autism-spectrum/

[ii] https://www.appliedbehavioranalysisprograms.com/

[iii] Comparing the writing skills of autistic and nonautistic university students: A collaboration with autistic university students  Kristen Gillespie-Lynch, Emily Hotez, Matthew Zajic

[iv] https://writingcooperative.com/learning-to-write-with-aspergers-b1e0fe61b619

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Jun 13 2020
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writing on the Spectrum

Young Adult & Adult Aspies: Who Is In Charge of Your Life?

Margaret Jean

Who will navigate us successfully through life to success?  To achieve the goals we set for ourselves?

Dr. Phil as he is commonly known, says it has to be us.  Nobody else. And he has developed a set of what he calls “Life Laws” which he has used to help many of his clients find their way out of seemingly hopeless situations.

In his book, Life Strategies: Doing What Works, Doing What Matters, Dr. Phillip McGraw stresses that what is vital is “…understanding and controlling the cause-and-effect relationships of life; in other words, using your knowledge to make things happen the way you want them to.”

That we are responsible for learning the social strategies that will get us where we want to go, is probably, as Aspies, the last thing we want to hear.

But whether or not you are familiar with Dr. Phil’s non-nonsense TV Show style of therapy, I…

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Feb 07 2020
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Asperger's research, Autism Spectrum, flat affect advantages, flat affect Asperger's, prosody--inflections in communication, writing on the Spectrum

Flat Affect: The Flip Side

What if our Flat Affect has a ‘flip side’?

What if Flat Affect could even be a selective, evolutionary advantage?

Are Aspies perhaps actually more appropriately aligned to deal with the great variety of societal conflicts currently confronting the world?

I have been researching prosody[i] or the inflections, physical[ii] and vocal, that make up our conversations.  Numerous studies[iii] indicate that not all peoples interpret conversational inflections in the same way.

For instance, as a young man working in South America, my friend, Richard, realized that in some Chilean, Peruvian and Bolivian subcultures, it was not wise to show his teeth when smiling.  He found the baring of teeth could sometimes be mistaken for an aggressive attitude.

Research by psychologist Carlos Crivelli and anthropologist Sergio Jarillo (see references below) indicates that primitive societies often do not read facial expressions in the same way as European/North American cultures.  In fact, they found some of our ‘obvious’ expressions baffling.

Is the increased ‘mingling’ of previously geographically separate cultures, each of which has established its own distinctive non-verbal communication, less of a problem for us Aspies with our Flat Affect?

Does inscrutability lead to less misunderstanding of the distinctive facial ‘cues’ which neural typicals are confidently projecting?

Here’s a radical thought! What if our Flat Affect has advantages which outweigh its well–known disadvantages?

What if our lack of facial expression is not necessarily a negative quality?  Could it instead be a genetic variation which facilitates our participation in a global society?

We live in an increasingly internationally diverse culture.  Different facial expressions can send conflicting and sometimes even threatening messages, depending on the culture in which we find ourselves. Under those circumstances, wouldn’t Flat Affect be a good thing?

And consider this: so much of our current communication takes place on the internet where little or no facial expression is involved—emails, chat rooms, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram. Are Aspies then the children of a world society where conversation is solely based on the verbal rather than on time-honored inflected conversation?

In a shrinking world where uniquely defined cultures more often ‘bump up’ against each other perhaps we are the best prepared to diffuse possible misunderstandings, rather than further igniting them!

[i] https://www.spectrumnews.org/news/social-communication-autism-explained

[ii] Facial Action Coding studies by Jennifer Fugate as reported in Malcolm Gladwell’s book Talking to Strangers pages 147 to 152.

[iii] Sergio Jarillo & Carlos Crivelli  as commented upon in Gladwell’s Talking to Strangers pg.154 to 159 and abstract from:

https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2016-19236-001

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