#I learned about these guys from the neuro class I dropped in college

[ukulelekatie]

yesterday I put my eclipse glasses on over the top part of my regular glasses so I could look up at the sky through the filters but also look down and still be able to see where I was walking and I said “I’m an anableps anableps!” and no one knew what I was talking about

[raederle-phoenix]

Mom sent me a video called “Could it be Aspergers?”

Raederle: I've been learning a lot about autism recently. Btw, It's no longer trendy to call anything on the spectrum Asperger's, apparently.

Mom: It may not be trendy, but while I'm comfortable saying, “I have Asperger's,” I am not comfortable saying I have mild Autism.

Raederle: Many people have the opposite feeling because of the guy Asperger's was named after.

I'm watching the video now. It's good thus far. I was the “Italian driver” as a kid, as he put it. I didn't read the signs in social situations. lol

Lytenian has noooo tolerance for people shouting. (9 minutes into the video now.) 

Lytenian also can't wear a mask without having a panic attack. Every time we go grocery shopping I have to pause and hug him regularly while he hyperventilates.

Accountants are shown to be really likely to have aspy kids, lol. (Looking at you.) [Mom has always had a passion for accounting.]

He tells the story around minute fourteen of the kid who ends up studying psychology . . . And points out he has been studying people since he was three because it was the only way to cope. Man do I relate to that. And so does Dad, I'm sure. [Dad studied psychology in college and went on to continue to study it for life. He’s the one who introduced me to transactional analysis and NLP.]

OMG. Minute 20. Aspy girl observes the popular girl. “What does she wear? Pink. I'll wear pink-pink-pink. What does she like? Barbies. I'll get 100 Barbies!” I don't recall deciding to do that due to any particular girls I knew, but perhaps I used TV as a model.

OMG #2. Minute 22. Sometimes the aspy girl can't find acceptance so she gives up copying the others and turns to things like promiscuity, so at least she can get acceptance that way.

Did Dad watch this with you? LOL. 

Yoga and meditation. “Tell aspies to do it because it makes them smarter. Explain that being upset makes their IQ drop 30 points. Yes, it will drop into the normal range.” LOL. 

Wow. He even mentioned narcissism toward the end.

Mom: The video is SO on point – for you, me, Dale, Carlos – I didn't know about Lytenian.

Raederle: Ah, of course Carlos. And obviously Michael. [My nephew.] I think our family is actually a magnet for aspy people. [I named other friends of the family.]  

[The next day] Raederle: I'm now questioning whether Greg has a touch of it after all. The man in the video did say that a percentage of people were subclinical . . . I really want to know all about the genetics of it. How many different genes are we dealing with? Three? Fifteen?

Mom: Good question.  And I also wonder about that. But I don't think that genetics has the final say about it. I think a lot of it is things like mercury poisoning. Early trauma that affects the brain.

Raederle: I used to think it was more about things like mercury poisoning, but after learning about how the dynamics of HSPs [Highly Sensitive People] work, and that hundreds of other species have HSPs, and that they serve an important role in society, I now think aspy people serve a nature-intended role. 

I think the enhanced awareness and diagnosis of people with autism could actually be due to our society becoming more dysfunctional. When the diet everyone ate was healthy, and when communities were more supportive and close-knit, aspy people would have had a strong support system that accepted them as they were. The healthy food and healthy relationships would keep their anxiety down and their strengths would shine through. 

With the way society is structured now, it is too hard to cope as an aspy, so the ones in the latest generation are becoming spokespeople.

Mom: Certainly a valid argument.  And certainly aspies serve valid functions, just as do homosexuality and other 'aberrations'. 

But I think the trigger is always early trauma.

Consider that the very things that cause violence and narcissism are violence and narcissism.

And in societies where those are rampant, they are considered good traits.

Raederle: Hmm. But violence and narcissism are behavioral patterns. Autism impacts the neural pathway structure itself, and even how many hormones are released in conjunction to certain stimuli . . . Then again, I suppose behavior works that way too. Our brains develop neural superhighways based on whatever we do a child while we are using dendrites rapidly in our brain to make connections.

I still think there is something different going on with things like autism and being an HSP, however. When someone does a lot of shadow work, they can find themselves increasingly healed from a need to have a narcissistic relational style, but their brain set-up (being good at pattern recognition, or being more focused on incoming sensory stimuli, as examples) actually gets better at what it was already doing; it doesn't change to suddenly become neuro-typical if it wasn't previously.

Mom: Also good points, but the premise, logic, and brain power are getting beyond me. My brain doesn't do things it used to. [Mom is over seventy now. She had me when she was forty-two, and I’m thirty-one now.]

Raederle: *sad*

Mom: Yeah I know.  Such is life.

Raederle: I brag to people all the time that in college you had a 4.0 in calculus. :)

Mom: I brag to myself about it.  But I went back once to audit a class, and couldn’t follow it.

Raederle: I've started re-learning all the math I knew in high school from Greg. And he's going to teach me calculus after I'm caught up. From there, Scott might teach me more.

Mom: That would be cool! Bear in mind that my first calculus teacher (they taught it over three semesters) was extremely good.

Raederle: I'm sure. It helps that I get to have one-on-one tutoring. While I learn a lot from books now, I still learn a board game better from a good teacher than from a manual. The idea of learning math from a book scares the daylights out of me. I never learned a thing about math from a book.

It seems more natural to learn about people and psychology from books, and yet learn about math from people.

Okay, that is a weird thing . . . lol.