The Blessings and Curses of Picking-Up/Worsening Communications Impairments

 An experience goes thus: an idea is formed in mind, it is clear, and one even finds the words to express it clearly--laid out in a manner orderly so as to be ready to marshall them through the voice box and speak to another human being.

Then flex those muscles and begin, and it is disorderly, like the troops marshalled were all fired upon and sent into a jumbled panic as they moved from one area of the brain to the other that directs the nerves of your vocal chords.

I was asked some months ago to submit paperwork, after a coworker tattled...but reported people were, let's say, "messing" with me, due to matters related to disability. I'm an oddball who persists in working rather than seeking to quit, and in pursuing one's work whatever it may be at that time with an excellence that "scares" people, according to an engineer who would pass me information about what people were saying from day to day: if you're reading and entering data, for example, but simultaneously considering the layout of a program and choices--which language, how to simplify, optimizations, who else could benefit and what adjustments would be made, and you mention "yeah, for that I have this program in my head", this apparently scares even the engineers.

Of course, programs themselves are...language, that you may be able to order in mind, but not then express!

When I was asked to submit accommodations paperwork, which I hadn't been doing out of fear of the inevitable (suddenly being treated like "the re**ded kid"...which did in fact begin once word was out to confirm suspicions about "that guy with weird interests" (e.g. if I'm in logistics I'll be thinking about Amdahl's law, rather than small talking about football and other distractions, as do the normal people...and what else would I be doing, when I cannot often retrieve words upon demand, even when they're in mind sitting there going "come. ON. I AM RIGHT HERE!!!")), which is counter-productive to...forcing oneself to deal with people and keep practicing "for rehab", so to speak, I looked at these documents I would have to fill-out, and realized I would have to go get re-assessed formally to nail-down current capacities, and find and begin treatment (for speech processing) JUST TO FILL-OUT THE ACCOMMODATIONS PAPERWORK. 

It's odd when you have to ask for help from HR, but if the conversation could take 5 minutes, you may have to prepare for...a week. And by "prepare", I mean dedicated serious time, daily--so imagine it's really two to three weeks. So what if the topic will REALLY be complex to navigate? Well...months of thought and prep, and struggling with this experience: 

Often, in trying to prepare--like organize thoughts on the page in a sensible way, and write coherently, you find the organization becomes WORSE, like the areas of your brain involved are...already very weak or tired, and by doing these activities (beyond normal talking with people--one way you overcome the smalltalk problem is to stick to themes and repeat things, by the way) you're not so much exercising, as taxing them, or even blowing them out. 

(

Sometimes I think "perhaps I should learn not just another language" -- that is, besides English and Spanish and the remaining bits of classical/ancient ones I've had interests in through the years -- "but a language that is VERY different--such as in another language family altogether with few to no overlapping phonemes, grammar, etc. with English." The reasoning here being "that way, it forces far more rewiring"--we know that in the brain adding languages means forcing the brain itself to make choices...and that it's a total re-org of the brain overall, so I figure it might serve as a major way to rejuvenate things.

)

In the last few days, I've had to really contend with the "layout and organization" problem again... and lo and behold, the Googlez made a suggestion on the YT that was directly relevant: "How do I get thoughts out of my head? (New Idea for Sharing Content...)" by the channel "Autism from the Inside" (aka "Paul"). I've run into Paul's videos in the past, they're always nigh directly relevant--immensely detailed descriptions of ME TOO in terms of the struggle and way one must go about things.

The process he goes about explaining (having to "chain Monkies" together, for example, arm by arm, to get somewhere) is a good analogy--the idea that you have to talk to discover the words to use is not *as* true *all the time* though it is some of the time. e.g. as I described above, sometimes the word are clearly there in mind, but not accessible to speak, so "rambling" becomes a way to...wander through the thicket and try to retrieve them, often only to get lost along the way, and offend or drive away your audience in disgust or contempt. When he describes that "when I'm trying to be articulate, it's like riding a bike, I have to go a certain speed or I fall off--forget what I was saying/thinking about", it hits like an ultra-familiar gut-punch: this single thing constantly drives people you wish to connect with away, as you're communicating and...suddenly sitting there lost.

One odd...grace(?) of it all is to sympathize with someone who mattered: I lost an aunt many years ago who had suffered damage during childbirth due to a doctor's error--something like choking on the umbilical cord and then he put her into an O2 tent...on pure Oxygen, which wasn't something he should have done (among other errors). This caused her brain damage. 

She (and one other aunt!) and I, as it turns out, shared in common certain traits--e.g. gobbling-down the books in the libraries (all of them available), though she as a child was probably far more prolific, vs. I who I liked to do a lot of grazing and may be read through specific series of books rather than one by one across shelves. 

One of the things that really made me "wonder" (like "how is that possible?") as a very small child was when I was told, "she gets very frustrated, because she feels trapped in her head--the words are there, and she finds she cannot say them, and then she bursts out into fits of frustration at times." When I was very young this led to a few slightly traumatic (hence, getting this explained to me) experiences with her...and then coming to understand the need for patience and why people all around would protect and help her.

Come along through these years and I found myself having suffered some damage...and in the same boat: "verbally, it's like being trapped..." While my own version of "frustration" is these struggles often lead to...being "talked at" even more than the oddities lead people to do to you already.

Beyond the "frustration" and "trapped", it is also (severe) isolation. "Communication" isn't just throwing information at someone (Edit: for an HFA, maybe it FUNCTIONS in that manner--as though it is, but then when you learn to "fix" this approach and practice through time, less so, and even for you the following is true:) communication is about CONNECTING with someone--or sharing with someone to which you feel a connection, and reinforcing that connection by inducing them to feel it to. For the HFA, however, the means to reinforce it are very different in many cases: like everyone else, sharing common experience is the same, but then sharing and talking about matters of interest far out of the Overton window of "stuff normal people small talk about for mutual entertainment and distraction" come into the equation for HFAs. When a friend wanted to share with me his findings, techniques, and technical details about 3D modeling, which I was worse-than-a-novice about, and spent three hours numbing my mind with all that new info...I didn't glaze-over and run the way normal people do to autistic folks (who share what they love like this), but listened...not just because it's what I can find myself doing too easily, but because I knew (instinctually) this was him connecting. (Also, if you do this, and do this seriously, it's a signal to the neurons of "pay attention given how much energy we're expending to listen to all this completely useless and alien stuff", and later on if you encounter that same or related material or problems, it is...less challenging and scary to grapple with.)

As a male I had to figure-out quickly not to "burst out" in any way in frustration, say as my aunt did--people would take it very wrong should I do so. Which is a nice-to-have regardless, and was an option for me. (I wonder if this was just something not within my aunt's reach, and always may given we can no longer ask her.) 

And there's an odd side-effect in that it's an auto-inducement to be or learn to be more laconic and tight lipped. This has the fun side-effect of becoming somewhat automatically more attractive as a man to many healthy women... "Oh, the strong" (not altogether by constitution, but just through taking beating after beating after beating in life) ", silent type!" (if for other-than-usual reasons). And, that is, IF I've been maintaining myself properly in physique. 

In some sense, however, that also is just "normal" progression/learning for men: HFAs or and somewhat smart ASD-traited men just...may have longer lead times on development, or enough detachment from social awareness that they might never learn...and always ramble on.  
Or they may learn but not be able to not stop rambling-on. 

One odd "finding" from getting stopped due to impairments (and intense recent trauma) is another benefit: by being forced to "shut down" and become isolated, you don't drive people away so much, and they're more willing to connect and come to you... 

Meanwhile, the effect on women would be more fun if I had any energy to give someone and therefore interest, but after the last whirlwind romance and fallout, and problems to solve in life...you would need someone REALLY worth it, anyway: if you do one long relationship that goes south and before you've learned that the sunk cost fallacy applies in romance TOO, and you also thicken-up your skin and become faaaar more skeptical and guarded about heart...and the peace-and-quiet you come to price when you get home day to day!

So in some ways, all these problems are also very weird blessings (or have been for me, anyway). But it's still being "trapped" all the time, for now, and unable even to specify details of help needed (even when you're legally due that help and they may even be willing to accommodate!), and so...off to the speech therapy route to begin working the "plastic" and rewiring "the brains" AGAIN, but quite intentionally.