Ouch!
Wednesday, May 26th 2010 @ 3:31 PM (not yet rated)
I am so blessed to have so many around me that are themselves interested in striving to become all they can become. It helps drive us all to be ... more. Than we were; than we thought we could be; than we believed we would ever really become, off in that distant "someday". Really, truely, completely become, and not just in Walter-Mitty daydreams.
It really is a blessing, you know, to have such amazing colleagues, friends, and family. Ultimately, that is, and ... eventually ... that is. Along the way, it tends to bump and grind and bruise oneself all over. And at times, hurt one hell of a lot. While knowing oneself better does help one to find a more satisfying path through this at times painful and confusing event called "life", getting to know oneself better is not necessarily an always-pleasant task.
Miriam and I have Asperger's/Autism "spectrum" children, and my father was clearly out "there" somewhere too. And over time the last ten years or so it's become clear, I also have some few "things" about me that fit along these foggy and so-little-understood lines. Daughter Anna, definitely within Asperger's on the high-functioning side, suggested reading the book "So Odd a Mixture" by Phyllis Bottomer, an expert on that field of dis-orders. Anna is a brilliant and wise young woman of whom we are very proud. So of course, when Anna says "Read!", I read.
Mizz Bottomer is both an expert, teacher, and lecturer of "the spectrum", and a fan of "Pride and Prejudice", the still massively-popular 18th-century novel by English writer Jane Austen. Within this later work are many characters of the "eccentric Englishman" (or "-woman"!) category, and we of course find them humorous and laugh about them.
From papa Bennet's retreating to the library to avoid the raucousness of his daughters and his wife, and his tartly humorous barbs sprinkeld here and there ... Mrs. Bennets loud ramblings so out-of balance to her surroundings ... Mr. Darcy's abrupt and not-always-appropriate manners ... Mr. Collins' total lack of awareness of the effects of his presence and comments, even as he so clearly is attempting to always be so proper ... and who can set-aside Lady Catherine de Bourgh's inimitable presence, oh, it is not to be bourne!
Mizz Bottomer takes her scalpel, if you will, and goes through the book character by character, dissecting the characteristic behaviors that pop up along the way in some of the folks we meet, and studying the context of the communicative styles displayed. But she goes further, to separate out the context of the location of those moments, whether on "home" turf or out in "public" domain. This a context crucial to understanding the nature of those on "the spectrum", and one so frequently overlooked when most people comment on say, Mr. Darcy's apparent abruptness and lack of manners "here" and yet, his perfect and appropriate equanimity "there". She shows that though he has grown throughout the course of the book, much of the difference in the quality of his presence is that the situations vary, from public events filled with light chatter to private situations at say, Pemberly Estate, his home.
Along the way, Mizz Bottomer lays bare the relative "home" or placement on the A/A spectrum of the several characters of this book that DO belong on the spectrum, and shows how utterly puzzling their mis-adventures are to the "NT's" that surround them. The "Neuro-Typical" people, or in other words, normal folk, who are humored, puzzled, or aghast at various times throughout the book by those mis-adventures which we, the readers, find so utterly amusing.
For those on the higher-end of the spectrum, how comfortable the situation is and the nature of the conversational skills needed are paramount to determining how "normal" they will appear. They are much more relaxed at home or in a home setting, and surrounded with only a few people they've known for a long time, than out in a large public gathering with many strangers or casual acquintances.
Further, within the settings they are comfortable in, they will tend to appear more "normal" within detailed discussions of specific items (say, the best way to re-roof a house) than in general light chit-chat. The latter has patterns and flows that are controlled largely by subtly-shifting facial, body, and vocal nuancings ... and those on the spectrum simply cannot read those nuances and process them for the data contained in them in "real-time". If they can even recognize any of the nuances at all.
Take even a high-functioning Asperger's/Autism person into say, a public dance with all the high-stakes private chit-chat to make or break connections that are entailed in such an event, and it is truly a terrifying, confusing miasma of incomprehensible and overwhelming sensory details. Even a high-funtioning A/A will set off embarassing land-mines everywhere they go. The saving grace for most on the spectrum is that they have lowered emotional involvement in "casual" relations, and so at least do not carry the disturbing nature of the day's public conversance to bed with themselves every night.
There are some of us who are both high-functioning A/A's and yet have normal or even heightened emotional involvement with others. We constantly set off those land-mines too. But as we factually learn about the nature and extent of the natural conversational disasters we leave in our wake, we learn to objectively re-create the reactions of others (but only in careful, after-the-fact consideration). And come to fully appreciate the difficulties and embarassments we cause and leave behind constantly.
And yet, though we can fully appreciate the nature of the difficulties and take full and normal embarassment from our actions, we have no capability whatever of changing our responses in "real-time" situations. As Hamlet says in the play of the same name, "... ay, there's the rub ...". And it's quite a rub, too.
It's a hard-wiring problem: we cannot receive and process those subtle facial, body, and vocal nuances in real-time. Those bits of the communication stream are instantaneous and need an instantaneous response also sent by subtle face, body, and voice inflections. Those inflections are rather more than half the content of "chit-chat". And we, on the A/A spectrum, are completely deaf and blind to the entirety of that content.
What is that "ouch" that I referred to in the title of this long essay? It is that in reading the book mentioned, I realized so clearly that I am much deeper into the spectrum than I had ever realized. Much deeper. As the author went through character after character, situation and event, and the reactions of all involved, many MANY scenes of my life flooded back through my consciousness. Those scenes of "P&P" that I've found so humorous over the years, that I've smirked or howled at while either reading or watching the excellent video-productions of the book ... replayed in my own life. By the hundreds.
And as one of the few of the spectrum with high or perhaps even heightened emotional involvement with those around me, there comes naturally to me a vastly higher level of personal embarassment for my public presence.
I know that I am loved deeply ... respected by many ... am highly gifted and talented ... and also know that I am very, very embarassed that I cannot be what I so dearly wish to be in public. That the best I can hope for, is that with diligence and painful attention to the moment-by-moment nature of public discourse, I can be less embarrassing and embarrassed than I otherwise have been so many, many times throughout my life.
As with any self-improvement project, "Where to next?" is the inevitable question. I'll deal with that shortly. But there is a bit of grieiving to do first. To quote Mr. Bennet, " ... let me once in my life feel how much I have been to blame. I am not afraid of being overpowered by the impression. It will pass away soon enough."
Ouch.
