Idea. Should we try writing the words "Something not right" in autistic spectrum sites? In hope that folks searching on the idea of something not right will find autism info, which they would never have thought to search for. Try it out here.
This comes from a conversation with an aspie of my age, but of much more recent diagnosis even than me, and I found 35 an unjustly late age for it, and more accidentally discovered than me too. At least I have always known that my strongly felt anti-school cause led rationally to discovering aspieness, from its impact on school problems, at the tipping point of 2002-3 when there emerged a self-organised aspie scene no longer under the medical umbrella.
It is screamingly unjust frustrating and upsetting, that in unknown numbers there are unknown aspies out there, who have heard of autism, can't miss all media that mention it, but no connecting of it to themselves has occurred to tbem. Some of whom will eventually discover it by chance, e.g. from someone else's reaction to a problem, maddeningly late in life, and with all the baggage of relief and vindication and self-explanation. The implication of the chanciness all caring aspies will choke on. That some who would feel the relief and the liberation from unfair social challenges, who would welcome the aspie scene's support and join in it keenly, never will, because the chance will never come and they will live out their lives with social unfairness and withdrawal without ever knowing about aspieness. If we pass them in the library or on the train we can't know it.
We must do anything we can think of about it. It's a key reason why the hidden disabilities need maximum banging on about. Conditions you may not at a glance notice exist, or notice in yourself as a familiar condition you have heard of or that carries any bodily difference: just as society for long missed that they exist, you can miss having them. So you need prompting to contemplate whether any hidden disability matches with personal problems you are aware of. But not a mass screening of everyone by doctors, we can't want that because not everyone would accept it or answer the questions and it would be too connected to sinister mental health screening. Indeed it's important to have the aspie scene supportive of your grounds for diagnosis before you go to the doctor, in case they are too little autism aware and want to see it as mental health instead.
In his long life of missing it, tbe aspie I spoke to mentioned he had a feeling of "something not right". I realise I have often heard a sentiment like that - though I never felt that way, because it was so obvious that school and unthinking laddish characters were what was not right, not me. But social frustrations and difference to the cool kids can often make folks feel not right. It is clearly a sentiment in the lives of many undiscovered aspies at risk of remaining missed for life. So might some of them search on the concept of "not quite right", as part of exploring their feelings and trying to understand life and their feeling? It must surely be fair to try to make that search lead to learning about being aspie.
Maurice Frank
This comes from a conversation with an aspie of my age, but of much more recent diagnosis even than me, and I found 35 an unjustly late age for it, and more accidentally discovered than me too. At least I have always known that my strongly felt anti-school cause led rationally to discovering aspieness, from its impact on school problems, at the tipping point of 2002-3 when there emerged a self-organised aspie scene no longer under the medical umbrella.
It is screamingly unjust frustrating and upsetting, that in unknown numbers there are unknown aspies out there, who have heard of autism, can't miss all media that mention it, but no connecting of it to themselves has occurred to tbem. Some of whom will eventually discover it by chance, e.g. from someone else's reaction to a problem, maddeningly late in life, and with all the baggage of relief and vindication and self-explanation. The implication of the chanciness all caring aspies will choke on. That some who would feel the relief and the liberation from unfair social challenges, who would welcome the aspie scene's support and join in it keenly, never will, because the chance will never come and they will live out their lives with social unfairness and withdrawal without ever knowing about aspieness. If we pass them in the library or on the train we can't know it.
We must do anything we can think of about it. It's a key reason why the hidden disabilities need maximum banging on about. Conditions you may not at a glance notice exist, or notice in yourself as a familiar condition you have heard of or that carries any bodily difference: just as society for long missed that they exist, you can miss having them. So you need prompting to contemplate whether any hidden disability matches with personal problems you are aware of. But not a mass screening of everyone by doctors, we can't want that because not everyone would accept it or answer the questions and it would be too connected to sinister mental health screening. Indeed it's important to have the aspie scene supportive of your grounds for diagnosis before you go to the doctor, in case they are too little autism aware and want to see it as mental health instead.
In his long life of missing it, tbe aspie I spoke to mentioned he had a feeling of "something not right". I realise I have often heard a sentiment like that - though I never felt that way, because it was so obvious that school and unthinking laddish characters were what was not right, not me. But social frustrations and difference to the cool kids can often make folks feel not right. It is clearly a sentiment in the lives of many undiscovered aspies at risk of remaining missed for life. So might some of them search on the concept of "not quite right", as part of exploring their feelings and trying to understand life and their feeling? It must surely be fair to try to make that search lead to learning about being aspie.
Maurice Frank
