Maybe I'm not alive despite my autism, but because of it
Masking my autistic giftedness:: ORIGINALLY PUBLISHED APRIl 19th 2024
Dear soft heart,
One of the things that was very interesting post autism diagnosis for me was unmasking, as it usually is for late diagnosed folks. I discovered however that I did not just mask what I found difficult about having a very sensitive sensory system. Actually, those difficult things were harder to mask because eventually my system broke down and usually for me, this looked like chronic illness flares or periods of time where I was out of remission (like right now) for the chronic illnesses I experience (EDS, MCAS, POTS). As much as I wanted to mask who I was, and how different I am and how I do not fit into the pre-existing systems of this society, it was pretty hard to because my body would sort of tell on me that I could not keep up. Even if I didn’t say the words, my body always very quickly and accurately and sometimes even pretty dramatically, told the story of me not being able to fit in and having a very different brain and nervous system than the norm.
What was actually easier to mask, was how gifted I was. Many autistic people are 2e - twice exceptional - meaning we have both an easier time with something than the norm (gifted), and then also a harder time with something than the norm (disabled) - usually two sides of the same coin - sensitivity.
My giftedness is most evident in the intuitive arts which is a field I’ve worked in since I was 19- I can literally see people’s auric fields, and describe people’s archetypes, missions, purposes, dreams, desires, challenges, etc. It’s as though I see their energy body the same way I do their physical body. To me, this requires no effort, it is simply part of what I can perceive the same way I can see what color your shirt is. When I was a teenager, my mother, also gifted in the intuitive arts, spotted that I could do things beyond what was reasonable to expect when it came to energy and intuition, and trained me properly and also took me to teachers and mentors who taught me. I would spend my weekends earning my reiki certifications, doing reading tarot trainings, etc. You could show me how to do the thing once, and I would learn and master it extremely quickly. My mom was often blown away by the fact that I would surpass her abilities with just one tutorial. By the time I was 16, I was already starting to be told I was one of the best readers people had ever had, and this was years before I ever made it something I did for work. My mom would bring me to her weekend workshops she was teaching folks and on their breaks, I’d sit with them and read for them to get practice. I would not often get the chance to do this, because I never felt comfortable doing it for peers, in fear they would judge me, think I was crazy, or think of it as weird and invasive. Adults felt safer to ask to practice on, as they would initially believe they were encouraging a child’s fun hobby. After the reading, they’d be stunned, perplexed by how a child could do that. And I mean… to be fair, it was weird. I was literally still in high school. Such is the life of a 2e person.
I didn’t want to be a medicine woman initially. In fact, doing it for work happened almost as a need at first. I started offering readings publicly once in a facebook group because I wanted money to cover the tuition for a training I wanted to do in New York City. It blew up through word of mouth, and by the end of the year, I had read for hundreds of people around the world.
I learnt to do this, mask my autistic giftedness, first in high school after being targeted by a teacher and accused of cheating in tests because I was never in school (due to being sick), and I somehow was maintaining a near 100 % in her notoriously hard advanced science class. We had all heard of her failing kids and being very strict and demanding. Once, I had misunderstood a lab and got a low grade on it, but otherwise, I would ace things so well, my teacher began to think it was fishy. This teacher ensued a series of events: She made me sit with my desk beside hers to take a test, as everyone else sat normally at theirs, even though I had done nothing to deserve that except be smart and do well on her examinations, so she could make sure I wasn’t cheating. She brought me to the hall and made me lift my uniform clothes to look at my belly, arms and thighs to make sure I didn’t have writing on my skin that was allowing me to cheat. She humiliated me when I asked a question by telling me she doesn’t answer the question of kids who aren’t there every day, to which some peers thought it would be funny to yell out “OUUU BURN!”. And she even tried to hold me back from going to college by bringing my absences to the attention of the head of the school, because she felt I shouldn’t be allowed to pass if I wasn’t physically there for a certain amount of days per semester, which was apparently a rule in the school’s rulebook, even though I got into many Universities with early admission, scholarships and was graduating high school with honors.
I could do this, despite being absent so much, because I had and still have a very good memory, if I am focused on something. Studying textbooks in my dark room at home assured me to be able to get every answer right. I self-taught most of high school with the curriculum material at home, because I couldn’t manage going to the environment of school more than 2-3 days a week on average on a good week. There were weeks in which I never attended. For me, going to school was a bit of a waste of time, because all it did was overstimulate me and give me symptoms, so I was never really able to be fully present there and had to take an Ativan or two anyway to get through the day. I would have to redo all the lessons I was present for by myself at home. I have continued to be extremely self-taught as an adult. It is the way I learn best.
I eventually told my mom about how this teacher was treating me. At first, I did not tell anyone because I had internalized this teacher’s bizarre fixation on proving there was something off about me as my fault. I felt like I deserved it because I was absent so much and not the same as everyone else. My mom went red in the face, and charged in there and got proper medical documents to support my absences. But the experience left a mark on me, even though I went on to graduate normally and eventually this teacher left me alone.
I learnt to hide what was easy for me, because I did not want to stand out as different. It was terrifying for me to be punished, questioned, humiliated, etc, for not masking something that was easy for me, because it wasn’t really easy for anyone else, and most kids in my class would have failed if not in class all the time. I found that people actually had more complex feelings and behavior toward me when things were easy for me, or if I could get to the end result, without doing it in the hierarchical normal way. It is not the norm in this hierarchical world that a student doesn’t need the teacher, but only the material. And so, I was offensive to this teacher, and as an adult now myself, I can see how she felt I wasn’t respecting the norms or the established hierarchy between her and I, and that’s why she was on my case. I of course did not intend any of this and it scared me to get this reaction. And so, I began to deeply hide the gifts of my autism, even better than the struggles of it. The struggles of it almost vomited everywhere, where the gifts could be concealed very carefully.
I wrote about this in my memoir, Can You Turn The Lights Off? that I’ve been sharing bits and pieces here on this newsletter in the past few weeks. Below is an excerpt where I ponder that maybe I’m not alive despite my autism, but because of it. I find that a lot of the times we autistic people are congratulated for still being here despite being autistic, and I think in my particular life circumstances, autism is not only what is challenging for me, it’s also actually what saved me too.
I hope you enjoy it as we continue to celebrate autism acceptance month and share different POVs on autism.
Illustration by Lisa Seilkopf
Excerpt from…
Thirty-four.
CAN YOU TURN THE LIGHTS OFF?
My memory is also excellent, so much so that I stop myself from wishing people I don’t know all that well a happy birthday when I know and remember it’s their birthday because they told me once, and I’ll remember it forever. When people tell me that it’s wild how I remember something so well, better than them even—details of conversations, an anecdote, their favorite foods, their mom’s natal birth chart placements, the meaning of an exact tarot card from a random minor arcana suit, when their last period happened—my cheeks flush with redness and I start to change the subject back to something else. I’ve often opted into pretending I’m forgetful and ditzy to avoid recognition about my enhanced memory or my encyclopedic knowledge. Like, I keep to myself that I know exactly where any Taylor Swift song is located, on which album, and which number it holds on that specific record’s list. If someone says, “Was ‘White Horse’ from the Red or the Fearless album?” I’ll say, “Hmm, I think Fearless?” When I really want to say, “It’s song # 5 on the Fearless album.” Stuff like that. It adds up as assimilation and masking, even though it seems harmless.
When Leslie and I went on a hike one day when we were dating, she suggested we should use an app she has on her phone that shows you the vegetation of the surrounding areas so you can find random flowers or plants in the respective nature spot you’re in, like in the forest or the canyon or at sea. When we started to look, I found everything very quickly, and she was impressed. “Wow! You’re so good at this!” she exclaimed in awe each time I located something with barely a minute passing by.
“Can you not see very well?” I inquired innocently because it was genuinely so evident to me.
“No, I think my eyesight is 20/20,” she answered.
How odd, I think. I can identify everything. Birds, plants, etc. I’ve always been the best at finding Waldo too. As an autistic, I have visual hypersensitivity. My family always called on me to read posters or street signs that were up to 20 feet away, and I always found it weird when they couldn’t see them. I learned through my diagnosis process that the stimuli I receive from the corner of my eye (in my peripheral vision) are equal to the stimuli that a neurotypical person receives from looking straight at something. I think, damn, no wonder they are so chill.
I’m also really good at making rational choices. Because autistics are less influenced by gut instincts, I can’t ever say I’ve made a decision without thinking it through. I think this is why I’ve always enjoyed being in charge of my own finances. It’s also really easy for me to walk away from unhealthy situations when I’m aware of them or say, yeah, I don’t really want to partake in this family’s dysfunctional patriarchal lineage because it doesn’t make any sense to live like this and it doesn’t make me happy, even as everyone ostracizes me. I realize that for many neurotypicals, the pain of doing something that isn’t traditional or in line with the way things are always done is too much to bear. Although I consider myself an emotional person, meaning I go through many emotional states per day, my decisions are usually void of them. I do things based on my end goals. If my goal is happiness and fulfillment, I can’t keep doing something that doesn’t support that. I’ve never known what it was like to be perpetually stuck in something because you’re worried about what people will think of you if you change things up. I might be scared to jump, but I still do it because my decision-making is rational and based on my values, not on my emotions. To me, this is an asset.
When people complain about things they hate but keep going to the job, or the relationship, or partaking in the system that is broken and not serving them, I wonder why they just don’t find another rational way to get their needs met because, clearly, while the job pays the bills, it makes them unhappy. It’s possible to find another way to make money that makes you less miserable. If you hate your husband, why don’t you just get a divorce and find a new husband who shares your values and wants the same lifestyle as you, instead of talking about how much you hate your husband? That is obviously the sensible thing to do. But it doesn’t take long for me to realize in my socialization process that most people don’t operate like this, and the fact that rational decision-making is easy for me makes others think I’m a little heartless sometimes. I’m reminded of a high school boyfriend I had who drew a picture of himself and me side by side. We were stick figures. His stick-figure had a red heart in his chest area, and mine had none. He wrote “Heartless” and doodled an arrow to my stick figure. He handed it to me in a playful, joke-like manner, I could recognize that, but I also knew that it was his way of telling me he couldn’t feel my heart the way he was expecting to and that I was hurting him. I’ve learned to be more patient with people because of this.
As an adult, when I’ve spearheaded a breakup conversation, and I’ve said something like, “Well, it’s very clear, we can’t naturally meet each other’s biggest needs; thus, we will continue to feel unsatisfied with each other, or one of us will have to change to please the other. Probably both of us will need to change, and that’s not really fair to ask. There are probably better matches for us out there than one another.” I’m told that it’s strange that I can just be so logical about something so emotional. It’s only when I receive that feedback that I realize I had shown my autistic card too evidently. I had to learn to stop saying things so rationally, so no one thinks I’m a robot.
People tell me that I’m a badass and I’m so cool and filled up to the very top with confidence with the way I write and share, but it’s just the autism that blinds me from the social constructs of what society has decided is acceptable to say or not. So, I just tell the transparent truth of my experience. Because what’s the point of talking or writing if you’re not telling the truth? What a waste of time.
The special interests that I’ve developed since childhood allowed me to get straight to adulthood and know exactly what I wanted to do. I never struggled with the big questions of what should I do with my life? I already knew. In fact, most of my childhood was spent feeling annoyed that I wasn’t yet an adult with decision-making capacity. I never, even for one second, went through those growing pains that most of my neurotypical peers agonized over. I almost felt like I should hide how easy it came for me because not many people I knew were so lucky.
Because I can pick up patterns of choices and I have very large attention to detail, I can usually tell what someone else is going to do or what they could possibly do. This means I can predict people’s behavior. People call me psychic because of this. Maybe I am. Or maybe I’m just extremely good at observing people and their patterns. Where I get played, perhaps the low theory of mind thing is making itself known. Since I can assume people have the same intentions as me, and if they show behavior that shows those pure intentions or they say the right thing, I may not be able to detect that they’re lying or manipulating me. However, if someone shows me their behavior without burying anything shady, I’m a pretty good predictor of how someone will react in any given context.
Being autistic and processing locally in my brain is what makes me such a good friend. I always know what each of my individual best friends will need when going through a tough time because I’ve observed their patterns, noticed their likes, dislikes, and dearest wishes, and taken notes on what they complain about and express affection for. This enables me to anticipate what I can do to make myself useful; it affords me the necessary precision to know how to love each particular person based on their makeup. I’m often told that I really see someone for who they are, and they can be themselves with me because I just get them. This same strength makes me excellent at my job. I love to be helpful, and I’m eager to serve. Not to mention the fact that I’m truly nonjudgmental and quite curious, which helps people feel comfortable with me. My friend Uzma says I’m curiosity personified. If curiosity were a person, it would be me. I crave to understand.
I experience a high level of mirror-touch and mirror emotion synesthesia, which means that if someone touches their cheek in front of me, I feel a hand on my cheek too. If someone is crying, I feel the sensation of crying inside me. If someone is rageful, I mirror that too. This explains why I can’t watch the news unless I want to work out everyone’s trauma for the afternoon, but also how I’ve experienced profound, usually excessive, empathy since childhood, which makes me an activist at my heart’s core. For animals, for people, for causes I care about. Having synesthesia, in general, has earned me the title of intuitive because it’s like I have a sixth sense, one God gave me or something. I had no idea not everyone experienced this until I started reading about different neurodivergent experiences and identities, and I saw myself in them.
Additionally, it’s pretty clear to anyone who witnesses me only a few days that I have a truly strong work ethic. I scored 85 on the systemizing quotient test—whereas males with ASD score an average of 80.4 and the average ASD female scores 78. It makes sense why I’m fabulous with goal-persistent behavior and organization without trying much—it’s all just there for me to use. It turns out that the presumed thicker regions of my cerebral cortex that govern memory and attention and perceptual awareness, thought, language and consciousness give me an advantage. Autism has given me the inner resources I needed to rise out of the ashes of developmental trauma and find freedom. So, not only is life harder for me than it is for most people (those who are neurotypical), life is also much easier for me than my neurotypical peers. I’ve never had to work hard at developing discipline, confidence, or honesty. I just had that implanted in me, ready to use.
In many ways, and perhaps in all ways, I’m most likely alive today, not despite being autistic, but because I’m autistic.
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