Labels and preconceptions

Are labels important? Does applying a label of Asperger’s Syndrome to myself help or hinder me?

I spent thirty five years without a label to describe my differences, but at the same time I couldn’t escape labels. Those years were hard at times, and confusing too. Without a name to attach to how I was, I was left wondering if I really was different from the norm. I certainly perceived differences between myself and my peers, but maybe I was just lacking in intelligence, or had an odd sense of humour. You see – there we go already – lacking in intelligence and odd sense of humour are really labels that I was applying to myself to see if they fitted. They never quite did.

I think we all need to be able to define ourselves. This labelling of characteristics not only confirms who we are and what makes us tick, but it also tells others a lot about us in very few words – he works in IT, she’s a mother to five kids, he’s single and keeps cats, she’s a doctor. Not only do these labels pinpoint one fact about a person, they also open up a set of preconceptions about other aspects of their lives. These may be right or wrong, but it seems to be a trait that we all – aspie or not – share, to parcel assumptions around the labels we know. I bet the doctor is comparatively well off financially. Is the keeper of cats lonely? Does the IT person have social interaction issues? Is the mother of five children catholic?

When I attached the Asperger’s label to myself, I felt complete for a while. Suddenly a large set of the characteristics that made me who I was could be parcelled under one label – and not only that, for the first time in my life, it was a label that was comfortable – it felt right, and it fitted.

The internal dialogue that the simple attachment of a label has opened has been immense, and very satisfying. In six months or so I’ve explored areas of my behaviour and my interactions with people that I had never seen in any detail before. I now understand a great deal about Asperger’s, and far more importantly, how it colours my life, and I continue to learn more each day. I can’t state enough just how important I feel this is in allowing me to accept who I am, and give me the best possible chance to move onwards in my life in a positive way.

So – the attaching of a label of Asperger’s to myself has been both a powerful and positive catalyst towards understanding and change.

The flip side of this coin, of course is how others perceive this label that I have. I’m much more wary of this side of things.

As I mentioned above, people tend to parcel assumptions around labels, based on their preconceptions of what a given label means. With a label like doctor, then everyone has an idea of the sort of lifestyle that typical doctor has, and therefore whilst still being a generalisation, it’s probably not wild of the mark to assume that any given doctor is financially well off. However, with a label like Asperger’s or Autism, then there is far more of a problem.

I can only speak for the UK here, but the understanding of Autism Spectrum Disorders in the general populace is very low. Everyone has heard of autism – the vaccines scare of a few years ago has seen to that. But ask someone what autism is, and I doubt you’d get a very clear response. I suspect you’d get told more often than not that it makes children withdrawn and uncommunicative. That’s some of it, of course, but far from the full picture. Ask what Asperger’s is, and I’d guess that most people in the UK wouldn’t know. I didn’t until I read up about it and realised I had it.

Saying to someone here in the UK that you have Aspeger’s is quite likely to lead to you having to qualify it by saying that you have a form of autism. This in turn is quite likely to fall prey to the wrong or very incomplete picture that people have of autism.

And this is why labels can prove to be unhelpful, and probably why I’m not running around making my own label public to those close to me just yet.

Instead, I’ve decided I need a plan. When I do make my label public, I want some way to allow those that I tell to easily overcome their preconceptions of what my autism might mean. This blog has a lot of useful info on it, but I can’t ask them to read it – it’s far too long. My ability to verbally explain isn’t wonderful, so that won’t work well either.

What I intend to do is this: I’m creating a concise version of this site. It’s a single page into which I’m going to try and distil what I’ve learnt about Asperger’s. I want to create something that someone who knows nothing about Asperger’s can spend no more than five minutes on, and leave with a good grounding. This way, I can point those that I tell at the page, and hopefully they’ll choose to visit, and leave with some understanding.

I’m not great at keeping my writing concise, but I’m going to treat it as something of a list and make a concerted effort. You can help too – visit the page, read what I’ve written and tell me what I’ve missed. How could I improve some of the points?

Genetics news brings mixed feelings

It’s big news this morning in the UK that scientists have found strong evidence that genetics have a key role in Autism Spectrum Disorders.

If you ask me, it’s bloomin’ obvious that genetics has a key role – I’m a strong advocate of autism being an inherited condition, having reached this conclusion through simple observation.

It’s good to see that steps along the way to understanding this link by science are being made – for I think it’s important. Indeed when I first heard the news on the radio this morning, a source was quoted as saying that the breakthrough was as important as those made in cancer research. I agree.

Whilst I feel strongly that understanding the genetic mechanisms behind ASDs is important, it also worries me.

If, in ten, twenty five or maybe fifty years time we understand the genetic make-up of ASDs, will we use this information to allow in-utero genetic testing for the disorders? Would this testing lead to the aborting of foetuses with the genetic markers associated with ASDs?

This would be highly controversial, because a great many people of the spectrum lead full and (mostly) happy lives, despite having this perceived disability. But testing of this sort is routinely done for Down’s syndrome these days, so why not for Asperger’s syndrome too?

If I wasn’t born 35 years ago, but in the near future, where genetic screening for autism was possible, would I even make it as far as birth? I find this a worrying thought.

Each and every birth is a miracle of a million genetic coincidences coming together, but I, for one am not bitter to have the genetic make-up that life has given me. I wouldn’t change it, and I would sincerely hope that the future-me with similar genetic make-up would be allowed their chance at life.

A not-so-mild form of autism

I’ve read many times that Asperger’s Syndrome is a mild form of Autism.

In really simple metrics this is true, but at the same time, that is an entirely unhelpful comment.

My reasoning here is that if you tell someone that you have a mild form of autism, then they will likely think that it has little impact on you, especially as those of us with Asperger’s are often good at hiding most of the visible signs of it. Unfortunately, whilst the condition may present as mild, that’s a long way from the truth of how it affects those of us with it.

I’m happy to state that my Asperger’s doesn’t cause me a lot of the problems that more profound autism does – I seek out social interaction at times, and can communicate well with people a lot of the time, especially in writing – but it does still cause me a lot of problems, in practically every area of my life.

Over the years I have adapted and learned techniques like mimicry to help me deal and fit in with the normal world, yet just because I appear to fit in most of the time doesn’t mean that my life is plain sailing.

I don’t think I’m overstating things to say that my life has frequently been hard going, and I expect it to remain so. I’m not saying this to elicit responses of ‘poor you’ – it’s not about that at all. I’m just trying to point out how those of us with Asperger’s tend to have to fight our way throughout life just to live a reasonably normal existence. It’s hard work a lot of the time.

There are many things that make it hard work. Here are a few examples:

People are unpredictable to me, and they often act in ways I don’t see coming. You could view this as an over-trusting type of nature if you like – to me it’s simply that I don’t have much of a natural ability to read people. Sometimes they can read me all too well, and take advantage of that. This unpredictability has caused me considerable anxiety and depression over the years.

Work is difficult – it is expected that I’ll be flexible and work on various different projects at the same time, and be able to literally drop something and immediately run with another if the need arises. I find this very difficult to do, as I’m much more naturally oriented to work on a single thing in immense detail. Time runs away with me, and my forward planning skills aren’t great either.

Phone conferences and meetings with more than a couple of other people in them stress me enormously, as I can’t follow input from multiple people well, and I suffer from the slow and immediate data processing style that many Aspies seem to have. This means that I may be slow to come up with timely input into meetings, and tend to get left behind when meetings move onto new subjects, as I’m still processing what was being said a minute or two previously. Allow me go away and think about what was said in a meeting however, and I’ll often provide valuable input as an afterthought.

As forward planning is a constant battle for me, providing a fun and relaxing home life for my wife and kids is something of a constant battle. It’s extremely unusual for me to think ahead and book a night out with my wife – even something straight forward like going to the cinema or out for a meal. What are we going to do this coming weekend? I don’t know, and I still won’t on Saturday morning, most weeks. Family holidays don’t occur to me either, so it usually falls to my wife to pick up the pieces and be the constant social secretary of the family. Doing all of this work on her own annoys her, and rightly so. It frustrates me, as I don’t neglect these things on purpose, they simply don’t occur to me.

My lack of natural social flair and the anxiety that has sprung up around it makes my life difficult too. I go through short patches of trying to force myself to be more sociable, usually by accepting invitations to social events via tools like Facebook. I typically don’t enjoy them though. The social world is very alien to me, I feel dislocated much of the time, and tend to get drunk far too quickly in the hope that it’ll remove some of the feeling of otherness from me. It rarely does. I feel the normal feelings of needing to connect with others – the need to have friends, yet in reality I don’t have any. Barring my wife, not one true friend. That hurts, yet despite many efforts over the years I’ve not succeeded in keeping friendships going over any length of time.

Whilst the above gives a flavour of some of the ways that Asperger’s has impacted on my life, there are many many more examples.

With all the above doom and and gloom, you might expect me to hate Asperger’s, and to jump at the chance to look for a cure.

Not a bit of it.

Firstly, I don’t believe there is a cure for Autism Spectrum Disorders – I think they a genetic cause.

Secondly, and most importantly, Asperger’s makes me who I am. It doesn’t define every aspect of me, but it has had a large input on making me the man I am today. And despite of the problems I face, I like me. I’m a worthwhile person, and my life has purpose. I have a lovely wife and two great kids.

I may have had to battle through life, but so far I’ve won. I may not be financially rich, but I feel rich as a person. I see the wonderful tiny repeating patterns in leaves on trees, and the beautiful colours in spring meadows, and all sorts of other things that most people seem to overlook.

Asperger’s may be mild when compared to some other forms of Autism, but it’s affect on those who have it is far from mild – it’s all encompassing and causes life-long challenges. At the same time it bestows unusual and useful skills which can provide a lot of pleasure both to ourselves and to others.

I wouldn’t change my Asperger’s even if I could.

I wouldn’t call it a mild form of autism either, it’s too pervasive for that.

Red lorry, yellow lorry

I’ve mentioned in other articles here how I spot all sorts of seemingly unimportant detail in everything around me, including when I’m driving.

The degree to which this happens was brought home to me earlier this week when I was driving home from work. I listen to the radio whilst I drive, and had on my regular afternoon programme, Chris Evans’ Drivetime, on BBC Radio 2. Chris’ style of broadcasting means that his show goes off at odd tangents, and the previous evening he’d mentioned that he was buying a yellow car, which had lead to a yellow car club being established with his listeners.

It was now the following evening, and he’d got a guest on the show to talk about how popular yellow was as a car colour, and to find out what the popular colours were. Odd? Yes, but it’s very much his style to do things like this, and I really enjoy listening to it.

Silver is the most popular car colour in the UK – no great surprise there for me, and black is a close second. If I’d taken a guess before hand, that’s most likely the order I’d have chosen. By this point in the interview, I was already wondering whether they’d mention white cars. You see, I’ve noticed over the course of the last year or so that white cars are making something of a come back. A couple of years ago, you’d barely see any, and those that you did would be on cheap ultra-mini sized cars. Nowadays they appear to be popular on sporty hatchbacks.

The guest said, “…and of course white is making a strong come back”. I knew it, and raised a huge smile. Chris didn’t though. He made noises of surprise. So did my wife when I relayed this story to her.

I wouldn’t class cars as one of my special interests, yet I noticed this trend in colour. I didn’t set out to notice it, I just did. My wife says the things I spot are quite fascinating and one of my endearing features. Just as well really, because it’s not something that I have much control over.

There must be all sorts of trends in information that I’ve seen over the years, simply through my collection of seemingly unimportant detail int he world around me. I wonder if I could harness this attention to detail in some productive way?

Meltdown

When I first started to discover Asperger’s and the various traits that those with it often possess, I was a little surprised by the concept of meltdowns.

Pretty much every trait I read about got a tick in my own personal list of traits that I have too, but I struggled to find a box for meltdowns, and indeed decided in the end that I didn’t have them.

The thing is, though, that I do have them – I just didn’t recognise them.

Through my pre-Asperger eyes of someone who suffered from occasional depression, it was very easy to write off my meltdowns as a bad depression day, but the problem with that description is that it takes no account of what lead to the meltdown.

Part of the reason I’m writing this article now, is that perhaps for the first time, I can see that due to various things that have happened, I’m sitting on the precipice of a meltdown right now.

So – how do I feel right now? Agitated is perhaps the best over all description. I’m rather hyperactive today, and my stress levels are very high. My brain is running at a thousand miles an hour through various potential articles for this blog, and through various Asperger’s attributes. The thoughts are bouncing around and none of them can get focus. If I try and concentrate on one at a time, then I almost instantly forget the other thoughts. This in itself is intensely annoying – it’s only now that I’ve been able to sit down and start writing, and I didn’t want to lose any of the different aspects that I was pondering over.

Why am I like this today? Well, I took an unexpected phone call yesterday that put a whole load of guilt on me. Someone in my family offloaded their problems on to me, and I feel guilty that I have had my part in that person feeling the way they do. That’s not the whole story, though. The bigger problem is that I feel that I hold the key in my hand to explain to that person a good deal of why they feel the way they do. However, by doing so, I’d be opening a huge can of worms that would reverberate through my extended family for some time.

I feel stuck between a rock and a hard place, and I don’t know what to do. My guilt is intense, yet I know that what is missing from the situation is understanding on the part of the other person, and that they also need to seek some help from a professional for what has become a clinical depression. Yet dispensing that knowledge would throw my extended family into chaos, and I can’t predict what the outcome would be.

I’m dancing around the specifics here on purpose. I find it difficult to say them even here on this anonymous blog. I’m concious that one day this blog may not be anonymous any more, and I worry about how this article may be perceived by those same family members after the fact. The information I have almost feels like a dirty secret.

It’s not a dirty secret, of course, it’s simply Asperger’s, which I’m sure crops up a lot through my family. No one right now talks about it, and I have to assume that for the most part, those affected and those around them are unaware of it’s existence. It even may be the case that everyone affected barring me has no idea of it. Whilst they don’t know it exists, it sure as hell impacts them, and at times very badly.

The family member that offloaded onto me yesterday was ultimately complaining about the traits of those in the family with Aspergers wearing her down to the point of absolute frustration. Those affecting her are those closest to her, and understandably through lack of understanding she sees idleness and lack of caring from those people as the causes for her current pain.

We’re not idle nor lacking in the caring department. We’re just typically Aspergic, and find it difficult to express ourselves, especially verbally – which is where my guilt lies – I don’t phone or do much to keep in touch. I find using the phone difficult, and I never known what to say past the usual pre-learnt small talk of how people are and what they have been up to. Making small talk is also a problem, because it’s never been important to me in the same way that it is to typical people. I understand that it is important these days – I know that typical people don’t just intuitively do it, they enjoy it, they need to do it, and it helps build and confirm their social structure and standing. That doesn’t hold for me though – that concept simply doesn’t apply.

So, that’s the problem of the day.

If I look back to previous meltdown situations, then one of two things has tended to happen when I’ve been presented with just too much stress to deal with. I’ve either collapsed in a withdrawn gibbering heap – as it often the case with Aspies, or I’ve vented via writing.

The venting via writing is interesting – it has often been the cause of my getting into trouble at work by sending emails that point out all the problems in the team or with the software we are developing. In cases like these, the meltdown has been caused by a combination of bad practice at work and too much work load, often caused in the first place by the bad practice. My stress soars, and eventually, something has to give, and instead of collapsing in a heap and taking time off sick with stress, I’ve vented all my thoughts – inappropriately, with fingers of blame – in email. I’m not saying that collapsing in a heap would be the right solution, incidentally – the right solution would be not to get into that position in the first place, if at all possible.

Extreme emotional stress has caused both types of reaction over the years, but mostly the gibbering  heap. Often an emotionally triggered meltdown happens over a much shorter period of time – something will happen, and bam – I’ll be unable to cope within minutes. I withdraw and become quiet and tearful. I feel like I’ve put up an invisible shield, and that if I stay quiet, then the emotional problem won’t be able to touch me any more. Those around me get frustrated, because I can’t answer their questions – it feels to them like I’m avoiding the difficult situation.

Have I avoided a meltdown today? Well, I’ve certainly vented by writing this, and feel much better for it. I did the same last night too, by writing a much shorter version of this post as a draft. That meant I slept well, which is good news too. By externalising in some way, I avoid the gibbering heap phase, and by doing the venting in a direction where I’m not pointing fingers, just maybe I don’t put myself in a position where I get unhelpful come back.

See – in a way, I was dancing around the specifics above because I saw what I was doing was venting in just the same way as with all those angry emails that pointed the finger at work. My brain spotted the pattern and responded by telling me to hold back, to avoid any possible negative come back. I’m glad I felt able to say what the root of the issue was in the end, without making it too negative, and without apportioning any blame.

No-one is to blame for the position my family is in right now. That doesn’t make the right way forward any easier to see, my guilt any less real, nor make the hurt felt by some any less painful.

Do I upset the apple cart and live with the consequences, or do I continue to pretend that I don’t know why my family is the way it is?

I don’t have an answer.

I do, however feel much further from meltdown now. My stress has abated some, and my mind isn’t racing in the way it was. Maybe now I’ll be able to get some work done.

Settling in

I often hear other Aspies express the thought that they dislike change, and that they find change to be stressful.

I too suffer from this problem, so can empathise with all those that this problem affects.

Indeed, the very first article I wrote on this site talked about how changes to routine are difficult for me, using the metaphor that I’m a train on a track, and when the change comes along, I tend to want to keep on going on the rails.

There’s another facet to this issue that I need to talk about as well – and that’s the problems I have settling in to new places.

This issue most obviously rears it’s head when I change jobs, but equally, other big location changes such as moving house  and even things like getting to grip with my finances (which I did recently) can cause similar feelings of stress and disorientation.

I’m going to focus on what it’s like when I change job, because it’s probably the easiest of the scenarios for me to put into words.

Once I’ve been working somewhere for a while, I could just about walk around it blindfolded. I know the shape, size and layout of all the rooms, and how they fit together. I know who sits at every desk, and how best to approach them – be it in person, on the phone or by email, etc. This is the closest I come to work Nirvana – all the jigsaw pieces fit together well, and I can interact with both the work environment and it’s people efficiently. All of my jobs so far have ended up at this point, eventually.

Usually it takes me at least six months to get there. The time leading up to it is a big curved graph of decreasing stress and disorientation.

I always find my first week in a new job to be incredibly disorienting. As is the common courtesy, I’ll usually have been show round the facilities and introduced to team mates and probably others that I’ll come into contact with on my first day. I don’t know about anyone else, but this plain doesn’t work for me. I suspect that my initial stress levels are so high that I fail to take in any names – sometimes not even the name of the person who has just shown me around. I also think that I’m prioritising trying to take in the spacial arrangement of the office and the other facilities. I have some deep down need to know my surroundings, and this seems to override the perhaps more important (in a typical view) priority of getting to know those i’ll be working with.

After an hour or so, I’ll often have to ask the person on the desk next to me where the toilet is. Despite trying to take it in on the tour, I’ll most likely have forgotten if it is more than a room and a corridor away. What’s more, I’ll feel it essential to be overly polite to the person I’m talking to. I’ll most likely start my questioning with something like, “Excuse me, sorry to interrupt but…”.

Those first couple of weeks will feel like I’m an intruder in all the public spaces. Whilst I may get to feel at home at my desk in a few days, I’ll find the canteen and yes, probably the toilets too to be an alien landscape into which I’ve strayed and in which I’m not welcome. It’s not that anyone is setting out to make me feel unwelcome – that’s just how the surroundings feel – they are unfamiliar and disorienting to me.

I kept a track when I changed jobs last year of how long it took me to learn the names of those in the office. It’s not a large office in this case – only a dozen people. After a week, I had remembered the names of about half of those in the office, and after two weeks I had all bar a couple of names off by heart. First names, at least. Some surnames took many weeks to learn. Those whose first names took longest to learn were those with whom I had no reason to communicate – which is perhaps obvious.

So, after two to three weeks in a typical job I’ll know the names of those around me, and the way around the facilities. I’ll also have some idea of the roles that those around me have too, and who to approach for what. I won’t feel settled, however, nor part of the team. This takes far longer – as I have already said, typically six months or so. Until that time I feel detached – an outsider. I do what I can to fit in, but as I dislike small talk and find it difficult to do most of the time, this perhaps prolongs the length of time I spend in my detached limbo. I spend this time feeling like I’m faking it, and wondering if anyone has spotted that I don’t know what I’m doing.

Eventually, however, all the jigsaw pieces fit, and I feel comfortable and part of the team.

The same feelings apply for big events like moving house or even organising my finances. Clearly the ground rules involved are somewhat different in these cases, but the feelings of not belonging and being disoriented are the same.

I have one final example. At high school age, I chose to go to a school that was outside of the catchment area for my junior school. This meant that barring one friend who did the same thing, I moved to a school where I knew nobody. I was part of the decision making process for this, but ultimately I used my parent’s logic, and agreed with their choice. The school had a better reputation and better exam results than the local one.

I felt very alone and out of place for a long time at that school. After a term or two, my mother asked me how I was liking it. “I don’t fit in”, I told her, and it was true. I can’t imagine how that must have felt for my mother – it must have been awful to hear. Eventually I fitted in to a degree with the other misfits in my year, and had friends of sorts who would last me the remainder of my time in the school.

So, my feelings of disorientation and of not fitting go back a long way, and still show themselves frequently. Obviously everyone – Aspie or not – is going to take some time to settle into a new experience, but it certainly looks to me like it doesn’t take a typical person months. Do any of you experience similar things?

Go get ‘em boys!

Last weekend, myself and my wife took the kids to the theatre to see Lazytown Live.

We also took one of my son’s friends along for the day, so there were two adults and three kids. We took the train, as it beats taking five by car, and we thought it’d result in a little less stress too. It probably did help a bit on the stress front, but along the way I discovered that I find shepherding three young kids running around in a busy city centre to be very stressful. I’m used to two of them, and I can mostly watch both of them at the same time, but three – well, I don’t have enough resources to keep an eye on what they are all doing at the same time. Cue stress and tetchy shouting on my part.

Anyway – the show was fun, and the kids enjoyed it – it was quite funny seeing their little faces agog at the familiar characters from the TV being on the stage in front of them. For our two kids it was the first time they’d been to a theatre to see a show, but they both took it in their stride, and when pantomime time comes round next Christmas, I suspect we’ll be taking them to see that too.

For one kid, in the row behind us, the show was something else completely. He was maybe about nine in age, and he was absolutely caught up in the action. Completely engrossed. At several points in the show he jumped out of his seat and shouted loudly across the theatre, to the embarrassment of his mum.

I had a smile on my face – his behaviour was somehow familiar. I remembered a story my mother reels out every now and again to embarrass me. When I was about the same age as the boy in the row behind us, my mum took me and my brother to the cinema, to see a Saturday afternoon Matinee performance of Bedknobs and Broomsticks. I too got rather caught up in the excitement of the film, it seems, and at one point shouted, “Go get em boys!” at the top of my lungs across the packed cinema, much to the embarrassment of my mother.

I don’t remember doing this, and I don’t do things like this nowadays, but I still get caught up in a good show and feel strong emotions welling up in me. The Lazytown show had me close to welling up with tears. Why? I’m not totally sure, but my thoughts at the time surrounded how well they had translated a TV show to the stage, and how slick and clever, yet simple the set was. I admired the job they’s done of putting on a show.

I hope that like me, the boy in the row behind us never loses his passion for life. Getting engrossed in activities is one of the most pleasurable things I do, and I knew just how he felt during those 90 minutes of theatre.

Oh, and a little part of me wonders if – just maybe – he was on the spectrum somewhere.

Why all those unneeded words are needed. Maybe.

I wrote last week about how I saw similarities with my own writing style and those of other Aspies whose blogs I read. The article has caused a lot of comment, with points made both for an against what I was saying.

One of the big style cues I noted was the use of a lot of qualifiers in my text – something that Gavin Bollard quite nicely described as writing in a ‘flowery’ style. I put a lot of these qualifiers in my writing, as, I note, do many other Aspies.

Having spotted the pattern, I have turned my attention as to why I might do this. I have a solution that makes sense to to me, so I thought I’d share it, and see what you all think.

Those of you who grew up with undiagnosed Asperger’s will well know the feeling that nothing ever quite makes sense in the world, and that people and their responses to situations are often wildly unpredictable. My response to a given situation often seems to be atypical from the population at large, and these faux pas often cause either derision or conflict.

I, for one, have built up something of a defence to this sort of thing over the years – I’ve had to to survive and keep my self-respect intact, and I suspect that it’s the path that many people with AS take. I do hope you’ll let me know as to whether it is the case with you too or not.

It’s often the case that I can’t tell ahead of time whether my response to a given situation is appropriate, and the one that an ordinary person would be expected to give. Thus I go into many situations ‘blind’, with my best guess, and braced for a negative response of some sort.

And this is where the flowery language comes in. When I’m not sure of myself, and suspect that I may end up eliciting a negative response for something, I’ll start adding in qualifiers. This happens both for verbal and written communication. By doing this, I’m saying to the other person, “What I’m saying/writing may be the case. It’s certainly the way I see things, but please tell me if you think I’m wrong, and don’t be too harsh on me if it seems ridiculous to you”.

Over the years, my use of this sort of language has ballooned. I think this is because as I’ve got older I’ve seen more and more clearly just how out of the ordinary my responses can often be. I’m not thick-skinned (is this a typical Aspie characteristic too?), and therefore I throw in anything I can say or write that might help diffuse any potential conflict. I’d rather do this and sound a little odd than sound rediculous and have my feelings hurt and confidence dented.

If my background stress or anxiety is up, then I use this sort of qualifier even more often, as I’ll in general feel less sure about myself and what I’m saying.

And so, the qualifiers show up a lot in my writing on this site. Whilst what I’m writing makes sense to me, and is a genuine description of the way I see things, I still don’t trust that I’m right, and half expect everyone who reads the site to laugh at what I’ve written, and publicly humiliate me.

You don’t, of course, but that’s an indication of just how much this tendency to faux pas has affected me over the years.

An unusual feeling

When I first started writing this blog, I didn’t know where it would take me. I still don’t, to be honest, but the path which I find myself down now is not the one I thought I’d be down.

Popularity is an odd phenomenon. I’ve never sought it, perhaps because I fear it would show me for the social charlatan that I am. Instead I tend to seek obscurity, and in social gatherings I’m the aloof one in the background somewhere.

Some unexpected things have happened to my blog in the last couple of weeks. Firstly, people have started to actually read it. What’s more, they are commenting on what I write. This wasn’t what I expected when I started the blog.

It’s great – and entirely a surprise – that people are reading what I write, and that they are coming back for repeat visits. I had a lot to express when I started the blog – I still do – but I wrote thinking that ultimately the only person that was likely to be interested was me. That didn’t matter one jot – I needed to express things, and writing it all formally gave me a framework within which to work that was comfortable for me. Making it public on the Internet forced me to think about what I was writing, to a degree.

I’ve worked in online retail, have published my own writing on the Internet before, and am familiar with the various methods of tracking site traffic, so when I set up my blog I added Google Analytics tracking to it. I may have had low expectations as to other people visiting, but I still wanted to see the figures. I’ve also done some other tricks, such as trying to optimise my site keywords to help make the entries show up better in search engine results. The first three months went pretty much as I expected. Visitor numbers could be counted on a couple of fingers most days, and page impressions across both hands, often easily. The line was flat – my blog was, predicably, going nowhere fast.

However, I got my first comments really quite early on and was over the moon. Someone had not only read what I had written, but they had empathised too! Fantastic!

Then a couple of weeks ago the slow creep of comments started to speed up, and finally overtook the number of articles I’d written. At about the same time, the page impressions per day were starting to ramp up. On April the 7th, I had my first day where page impressions excluding my own visits and spider traffic went over 100. Add in the pages viewed in RSS, and I hit close to 150 page views. In the last month 132 different people have viewed pages on my site, including visitors from five continents, and places as far apart as New Zealand, Mexico, Poland, India and Russia. Most visitors are from the US, and the UK.

Is my blog popular? Of course not – not in the grand scheme of things. A grand total of 11 people subscribe to my RSS feed, one of those is me (to check it’s not broken), and I suspect most of the others are amongst those who also visit the site itself regularly. Popular blogs will do many tens of thousands of page impressions a day, and will also have thousands of RSS subscribers.

I feel popular, however. And for someone who courts obscurity, that’s an odd thing. I think, perhaps I feel safe hidden behind my false name on a website that can’t easily be traced back to me. I also feel safe because those of you who do read what I have to say understand me, most of the time. You understand because you have Asperger’s or a similar condition. I can’t tell you how unusual that feeling is. I’m usually the one in social settings that feels they don’t fit in, and that they don’t have anything useful to say – hence the aloofness off in the corner. It doesn’t work that way here though, and so to each and every one of you that has read what I have to say, and especially to those who have taken the time to comment, I say thank you. I hope you’ll continue to come back and provide me with interesting comments.

There is of course another reason for writing this article. It demonstrates quite effectively one of my Asperger’s traits. I can chat away in detail for hours about information that I’ve gathered that only has any significance to me. That famous Aspie trait works in writing too!

Why on earth would you want to know how many visitors my site has had? I still felt I had to tell you though…

The Aspie style of writing

Can you recognise an Aspie from the way they write? I’m fairly sure you can, if you know what to look for.

My own style of writing has always attracted attention. At school I did well in English classes, especially where creative writing was required. My homework assignment stories were often longer than those of my peers, and I suspect they were more elaborate too. Written assignments in other school subjects tended to produce reams of writing too, as did exams. I remember using two or three extra sheets of paper on some exams, where most of my peers wouldn’t need any extra.

So, my writing is wordy. I notice that I put in lots of detail, and I try and clarify everything so that you couldn’t possibly misinterpret what I’m saying. I’m also very careful to put extra words in to make it clear that something I’m explaining doesn’t happen all the time – only typically, or some of the time. Look – I even did that on my last paragraph:

Written assignments in other school subjects tended to produce reams of writing too, as did exams. I remember using two or three extra sheets of paper on some exams, where most of my peers wouldn’t need any extra.

It feels to me like my writing is very exact, yet at the same time is quite wishy-washy – I’m almost weaselling my way out of committing to hard limits.

Then there’s the passion. I feel my writing is passionate – it is one of the main ways that I express emotion. I feel very passionate when I write, and when I revisit something I wrote a while ago, I can usually still feel the passion that I had when I wrote it. I wonder if it comes across to those of you who read what I’ve written?

Another thing I’ve noticed is how my work flows. I usually have an idea about the general direction that an article will take, but the words almost write themselves as I think them – I don’t plan out the article before I write it. I think this makes quite a distinctive trail though the article – you can almost see the different directions that my thoughts take simply by following the words. I like the word flow to describe this – it seems to fit well.

At work, my writing still attracts attention. I’ve received many kind comments and expressions of surprise over the years about how well I’ve described a particular work issue, or how my change request documentation covers all eventualities.

I’ve also attracted the wrong sort of attention for my writing at work too – I tend to turn to writing when I get to the point that I’m frustrated with the way the business is run, or how the product is being developed. In these cases I tend to be far too honest about how I see things, which has on occasion lead to friction with management, who needless to say don’t like having the faults with their systems and products pointed out to them in such an unexpected and abrupt yet precise fashion.

Clearly the complexities of my writing style are unique to me, but do the general points that you can pick out apply to other Aspies too?

Well, I RSS quite a few blogs written by other Aspies these days, and I think I can see a pattern.

Many posts that I read are long. They end up using a lot of words to describe what is often a simple notion or a small piece of a bigger jigsaw puzzle. I suspect, that like me, other Aspies often naturally wish to put a lot of detail into what they write – they don’t want to be misinterpreted.

I said that I feel passionate about my own writing, and I get the impression from their writing style that other Aspie writers often do too. Of course, this isn’t solely an Aspie trait – I’ve read plenty of non-AS writing that clearly expresses passion in it too, but I have a hunch that the number of passionate Aspie writers is higher than the general average.

Finally, some other Aspie writers that I read obviously use the same sort of flow technique as me when they write. Like in my own work, I can follow their thought processes in the words they write, often quite obviously.

Do non-AS bloggers that I follow use any of these techniques? Well, maybe one or two use a selection from time to time. I do, however think that there is often a general pattern to the way that those of us with Asperger’s express ourselves in writing. It’s a distinct and recognisable pattern, and it’s different from the patterns used by non-AS writers.

Or maybe it’s the subjects that we write about that give it away…

Have any of you noticed this too?