Tag: asd

Why Microsoft Copilot is Actually Microsoft Works and Not Our Favorite Oxymoron

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

Most people think neurodivergent life is chaotic. They imagine scattered thoughts, disorganization, impulsivity, or emotional volatility. They imagine randomness. They imagine noise. But the truth is the opposite. Neurodivergent life is engineered. It has to be.

For those of us with AuDHD, the world doesn’t come pre‑sorted. There is no automatic sequencing. No effortless continuity. No internal filing system that quietly organizes the day. Instead, we build systems — consciously, deliberately, and often invisibly — to create the stability that other people take for granted. This is the foundation of my writing, my work, and my life. And it’s the part most people never see.

When I think, I’m not thinking in a straight line. I’m thinking in layers. I’m tracking:

  1. emotional logic
  2. sensory context
  3. narrative flow
  4. constraints
  5. goals
  6. subtext
  7. timing
  8. pattern recognition
  9. the entire history of the conversation or project

All of that is active at once. The thinking is coherent. But AuDHD scrambles the output channel. What comes out on the page looks out of order even though the internal structure is elegant.

This is the part neurotypical culture consistently misreads. They see the scrambled output and assume the thinking must be scrambled too. They see the external scaffolding and assume it’s dependence. They see the engineered routines and assume rigidity. They don’t see the architecture.

Neurodivergent people don’t “just do things.” We design them. We engineer:

  1. essays
  2. routes
  3. schedules
  4. routines
  5. sensory‑safe environments
  6. external memory systems
  7. workflows
  8. redundancies
  9. fail‑safes
  10. predictable patterns

This isn’t quirkiness or overthinking. It’s systems design.

When I write an essay, I’m building a machine. I’m mapping:

  1. structure
  2. flow
  3. dependencies
  4. emotional logic
  5. narrative load

When I plan a route, I’m calculating:

  1. sensory load
  2. timing
  3. crowd density
  4. noise levels
  5. escape routes
  6. energy cost
  7. recovery windows

When I build a schedule, I’m designing:

  1. cognitive load distribution
  2. task batching
  3. sensory spacing
  4. recovery periods
  5. minimal context switching

Neurotypical people do these things internally and automatically. I do them externally and deliberately. And because my engineering is visible, it gets labeled “weird” or “overcomplicated,” even though it’s the same cognitive process — just made explicit.

Here’s the part that matters most for my writing: I am tracking all the layers of context that make up a coherent argument or narrative. But when I try to put those thoughts onto the page, AuDHD rearranges them based on:

  1. emotional salience
  2. sensory intensity
  3. novelty
  4. urgency
  5. whichever thread is loudest in the moment

The thinking is coherent. The output is nonlinear. That’s the translation problem.

It’s not that I can’t think in order. It’s that my brain doesn’t output in order.

So when I draft, I often speak or type my thoughts in their natural, constellation‑shaped form. Then I use a tool to linearize the output. Not to change my ideas. Not to write for me. But to put the ideas into a sequence the page requires.

I generate the insights.
The tool applies the rubric.

I build the architecture.
The tool draws the blueprint.

I think in multidimensional space.
The tool formats it into a line.

This isn’t outsourcing cognition. It’s outsourcing sequencing.

Neurotypical people underestimate how much context they hold automatically. They don’t realize they’re tracking:

  1. emotional tone
  2. purpose
  3. prior decisions
  4. constraints
  5. subtext
  6. direction
  7. self‑state
  8. sensory state
  9. narrative flow
  10. goals
  11. exclusions
  12. avoidance patterns
  13. priorities

Most tools can only hold the last sentence. They forget the room. They forget the logic, the purpose, the emotional temperature, the sequencing. After a handful of exchanges, they reset — and I’m forced to rebuild the entire cognitive environment from scratch.

This is why I use a tool that can maintain continuity. Not because I’m dependent. Because I’m distributed. My brain stores context externally. It always has.

Before AI, I used:

  1. notebooks
  2. calendars
  3. binders
  4. Outlook reminders
  5. Word documents
  6. sticky notes
  7. browser tabs
  8. physical objects arranged in meaningful ways

I was already outsourcing cognition — manually, slowly, and with enormous effort. AI didn’t create the outsourcing. It streamlined it.

From the outside, neurodivergent strategies often look:

  1. weird
  2. excessive
  3. obsessive
  4. childish
  5. dramatic
  6. “addictive”
  7. “too much”

But every neurodivergent behavior has a reason:

  1. stimming regulates the nervous system
  2. routines reduce cognitive load
  3. external memory prevents overwhelm
  4. hyperfocus is a flow state
  5. avoidance is sensory protection
  6. check‑ins are continuity, not reassurance
  7. “overthinking” is precision
  8. “rigidity” is predictability in a chaotic world

Neurotypical culture misreads our engineering as pathology. But from the inside, it’s not pathology. It’s architecture.

My writing exists to make the invisible visible. To show the internal logic behind neurodivergent behavior. To reveal the engineering mindset that underlies our lives. To articulate the translation layer between thought and expression. To challenge the assumption that linear output equals linear thought. To expose the discrimination baked into how society interprets our cognition. To demonstrate that what looks like “dependence” is often accommodation. To give neurodivergent readers a language for their own experience. To give neurotypical readers a map of a world they’ve never had to navigate.

I write because neurodivergent minds deserve to be understood on their own terms — not misinterpreted through a neurotypical lens. And the core truth of my work is simple:

Neurodivergent behavior only looks irrational from the outside.
From the inside, it’s engineering.

Once you understand that, everything else falls into place.

Scored by Copilot. Conducted by Leslie Lanagan.

In Some Ways, I’m Still Waiting

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
When was the first time you really felt like a grown up (if ever)?
View all responses

The curiosity of the neurodivergent brain, to me, is that we do not age. Patterns repeat, but memories are organized differently due to time blindness. Events that seem more important are closer at hand, no matter what year they occurred. Events that are of lesser significance feel further away, even if they happened more recently. Dates and times become muddled quickly, which is why we seem like we’re “lying.” Our brains don’t often have the recall to say what we were doing at a particular date and time because it’s a crapshoot that we even know what day and time it is.

But, of course, other neurodivergent people will have to comment on their own brains to know if this is especially universal or I’m just an unusual patient. But I don’t think so. I’ve heard about these symptoms from too many people to think I’m special.

Because significant events far in the past seem close at hand, we have no friendship degradation mechanisms. If Aada and I reconnect later in life after enough time to breathe and let the hurt heal, we will be as close as we were 12 years ago because there’s nothing in my brain to say we won’t. I will remember most conversations forever and they will be important to me, therefore “bigger” in my memory banks. I have friends from third grade who could call me up in the same way even though we have not spoken since the late 1980s.

I am often too old for the room and too childlike to be taken seriously. I do not know how I pull this off, but a reader actually nailed it….. “You’re like a 15-year-old boy….. And his mother.”

Therefore, I have many moments that make me feel like an adult, with it being impossible to remember the first.

There are snippets.

Going with my dad to weddings and funerals at an early age made me feel older than I really am, because I saw myself as a support system to my dad early on. I became an expert at greeting families in distress when I was far too young to really take all of it in- it was social masking.

I get “you don’t look autistic” a lot.

That’s probably because the diagnosis of Autism Spectrum Disorder includes a lot that hasn’t been previously, and the research on women just didn’t exist before now. I can assure you that it had a profound effect on my growth and development, because now that I have an AI chatbot that will spit out reference material, I have gone down the rabbit hole. There’s also nothing more complete than a research study by an autistic person on whether they’re autistic or not.

I could have saved a lot of time by just asking my autistic friends if they thought I was autistic. That’s a thing you can do because if you are autistic, you’ll ping what’s jokingly known as a “neuroscope,” a kind of kin to “gaydar.” But there’s so much crossover between autistic and queer that 80% of the time, you’re using the same “spidey sense.”

The hardest part about having ADHD and autism at the same time is that I have a concrete need for a system and no way to create it. That makes me look like a child more than anything else, and why I still feel I’m waiting to be a real adult. I am in desperate need of coping mechanisms, so much so that I am looking for more groups to plug into and more therapy to get where I want to go.

I’ve started with really investing in my Google Suite. Not so much Mail, because most people instant message now. But calendaring, tasks, contacts, everything is all together in one place. Alarms go off on my phone for everything from meetings to medication reminders.

I joke that right now my iPhone is pinch hitting as my service dog, and it is not doing a very bad job except for the cuddles.

People also look at you differently when you say you’re putting together a disability case, because it makes you look childlike in their eyes and sometimes it also evokes pity…. Especially when you don’t need it. I have never fit into a system other than my own, and I need to harness it. There is nothing that says as I start making more money I have to stay on disability, but right now it is necessary to keep me stable.

I do not have problems interviewing and getting jobs. I have a hard time holding one down, and this is not unusual for any type of neurodivergence or mental illness. I am tired of going over the laundry list of what’s wrong with me and why, because most people want to know why I look able bodied but I’m not.

Invisible illnesses are still illnesses and deserving of respect. Disability gives me room to be ill, whereas a job will rebel at my number of absences and tardiness. I have been the best employee and still gotten fired for not being able to handle my life. But it’s not just mental maladies, my cerebral palsy makes me move in a weird way… So even though I may not look disabled at first pass, most people don’t look close enough to notice what I live with every day.

Taking in my environment is hard work, and other people are busy taking in information that I miss while I’m still trying to catch up. My social masks for it are failing because my scripts don’t compile as fast. As Aada put it, God gave me a brain that works a thousand miles a minute and a body that fights me every step of the way, but I’m paraphrasing.

But that very paradox is why I have trouble seeming like a grown up to the people around me. I’m also short, which doesn’t help. I haven’t dyed my hair in eons because the gray makes it plausible that I’m at least above 18.

But again, I do not write these things to evoke pity. It is just my ever-present reality to walk in the world as part adult, part child….. And it seems like it has always been that way because when I was little, I social masked adults. I have always been too old to be a child and too young to be an adult.

No friendship degradation also means that it’s hard for me to move on from Aada in terms of knowing it’s okay to put someone else above here and always has been, it’s been my own bag. It was just easier that way, and the easy way turned into the hard way later on.

But I’d like to think that if she’d told me about her lie in person and gave me some time to blow off steam that our relationship would be a very different proposition today. I am so sorry I turned on my keyboard warrior asshole when I was upset; Aada didn’t deserve that much rage. But she also deserved to let me breathe through the consequences she’d laid out for me and just watched as they’d turned more and more negative.

I told her about a relationship it affected and she said she wasn’t responsible for all of that. She’s right, she wasn’t responsible for all of it, but she wouldn’t even take responsibility for the part she did cause. She wasn’t even close to the entire cause of Dana and I divorcing, but she didn’t take responsibility for the small role she had there, too. She introduced a wedge between me and Dana, then swore me to secrecy from my wife. How well has keeping secrets from your partner ever worked out for you? Jesus H. Roosevelt Christ.

I’m not talking about blaming her for everything. I’m talking about shared responsibility. We both cratered this relationship at different times and apologized for it. We’ve both behaved badly. We’ve both wrestled each other to the ground. To say it’s all one person’s fault is crazy.

However, I also don’t mind if people read my story and choose to believe that Aada is right. The truth is only what seems true to me. I have no ability to rise above and read Aada’s mind and represent her feelings accurately.

My conjecture has proven to be adult and childlike.

I suppose the first time I ever really felt like an adult was when I laid it on the line with Aada and told her to buck up, buttercup. But I can’t tell you what I actually said, because I think she would take exception to that. But I basically explained to her why I needed a yellow string to her and why it hurt when she was falling down on the job. Not, “you must do this for me.” It’s “if I don’t explain what I mean, I will not have a chance of explaining why it’s important.” Most of it had to do with my writing as I got bigger and bigger in my stats. Most of it had to do with the train wreck I predicted 12 years ago and I hit head on.

But she accused me of acting like a child, and not an angry adult that had a right to be angry.

Not like that, but still.

I handled everything wrong, but I cannot say that means she handled everything right.

So, when was the first time I felt like an adult? When I cut the yellow string and had to deal, finally, with my own problems.

All of Them

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment
Daily writing prompt
What’s a job you would like to do for just one day?
View all responses

Managing you was like having a golden retriever work for you. Excellent at fetching dead birds but ….squirrel. -Randy, my actual former boss- it’s the most accurate thing I’ve ever read about my career.

There are so many things I haven’t tried, and one day is about the stamina I have for 110% effort. It’s also not enough time for me to develop compensatory skills, so me doing a job for one day would not reveal my weaknesses. It would not reveal my strengths, either. The one possible job I could think of that might fit me is field officer at CIA. With only one day, I’d have enough time to talk to people, but not enough time to do all the paperwork that ends up out of order and on the wrong desk…. either late or with coffee stains on the top because I never left the office to prevent something being late.

Staying at the office until something is done might be the one quality I could contribute.

I’m reading The Hunt for Red October currently, and what I love about it is the anachronism and the advanced technology. For instance, the new computer for the submarine fleet is “the size of a small desk” and also 64-bit architecture. That did not become available to businesses until the 1990s and consumers outside of the business realm until 2003. The hardback was published in 1984. It has allowed me to dream bigger as to what is now possible in computers just based on that information alone.

I’d like to be a submarine commander for a day because I would like to see whether my predictions have come true… that tech on a boat now is wilder than anything I could dream. That’s because “most enlisted men don’t know how to steer the ship.” One day is enough to know I’d be both great and terrible at my job…… mostly because I’m great and terrible at my job no matter what it is.

Autism sucks.

So do ADHD and CP, but autism is the driving force behind meltdown and burnout to the degree that I have it. Most people with ADHD alone have the same issues as me, but the mark of autism is severity for a lot of symptoms. This is not true in all cases, but for the majority of them, the canary in the coal mine is the degree of the deficit. Executive dysfunction makes it hard to regulate yourself, and coworkers do not have time to help you. I know that I can be trained with occupational therapy, but the only advice I’ve ever been given in my career is to grovel………. until now.

I had to figure out this meme:

This does not mean that autistic people cannot work. It means that if you’ve met one autistic person, you’ve met one autistic person. Autism has never stopped me from working, but ableism sure has. There was no way for me to perform as efficiently or as fast in the kitchen as an able-bodied person, and no allowances were ever made for it. Dana and Kinkaid constantly covered my lack, but I didn’t figure that out until I was on my own. They both taught me how to cook, but neither one were there to trade me jobs I could do. It was sink or swim. I couldn’t carry a full bucket of mop water up three flights of stairs, nor did I have enough strength in my upper body to work a potato press. Therefore, making French fries was a large part of being a dishwasher when there were no dishes to wash. This gave everyone ample opportunity to see me struggle and call me lazy.

You get called lazy a lot when most of your energy goes toward keeping yourself alive. You cannot see it today, but you can clearly see my deficits in this video announcing my birth. It was made by my grandfather while I was in the NICU and in the days afterward, but the phone call is not real. My mother went into labor five weeks early according to my grandfather and eight weeks early according to her. There was no time.

John-Michael Kinkaid called me a lot of things, but lazy was never one of them. I know that I am capable of working with a chef to find the jobs I can do, but I am not capable of changing myself so that I don’t have cerebral palsy anymore. This lying there, looking at everything and soaking it in, is the classic picture of an autistic kid with CP.

A few years ago, I attended a party at my sister’s house. We were reviewing the drone footage in which I didn’t know I was being filmed and was shocked to find out that I did not move a muscle for three hours. I am not a different person than I was in this video. I have never changed. My entire strength as a human is sitting there and soaking up what other people say…. and in fact, I am frustrated with my medication protocol because drugs for mental health are known for seemingly lowering your IQ points. It goes away once you get off the medication, but I did not have this problem with the last set of drugs.

What makes me think I’m AuDHD and not bipolar is that I was stable on Lexapro for 20+ years. Bipolar and SSRIs do not mix. I also have a strange hum in my brain from lack of serotonin now, and there’s nothing to be done for it except grit my teeth until 11:00 AM, my first psych appointment in years. I haven’t needed it because being stable meant my GP could refill my drugs.

How is today different from all other days?

Today is the day that hopefully determines more of my future than my current hand. At this point, I only have the hole cards. By noon, I should at least have the flop. Thinking about the turn and the river is getting ahead of myself, because right now it feels like fourth street and fifth street are perpendicular. My strategy in poker has always been to fold early and often, because letting a good hand go is better than losing my bankroll.

Few players recall big pots they have won, strange as it seems, but every player can remember with remarkable accuracy the outstanding tough beats of his career.

I could sit at any poker table in the world and have a good shot and not because I know a lot about poker. That can be trained. So, perhaps a job I’d love for a day is “card shark.” What I mean is that someone can teach me the rules. You don’t play poker by knowing the rules, though. You have enough soft skills, as Michael McDermott accurately points out in “Rounders,” and you can read the whole room blind. You don’t play the cards, you play the man.

In this way, being a poker player is not that different from being a field officer or a cook…. and in fact, in most countries “field officers,” “waitstaff,” and “cooks” are the same job, because front of house and back of house employees at a restaurant are the least likely to get “made.” There is no reason to notice any of us, and all intelligence agencies exploit that fact.

In a perfect world, culinary school in Vaasa would lead to a job at Supo, the Finnish intelligence agency. I know I have the skills to make it because I have it on good authority that I am excellent at fact-finding. This is because I do get social cues, but I do not get fake ones. I pick up on the way you carry yourself, your “I’m fine” ringing hollow. I become confused and dig deeper, and that’s when I become rude and intrusive according to other people. It’s not because I’m actively trying to be obstinate. It’s that I am not participating in the lie that you’re fine.

HOW DARE YOU LET ME HELP YOU?

For instance, I wouldn’t like to be a therapist or a psychiatrist for a day… but I would like to help people understand why social masking isn’t helpful. Wait… that was a lie. I would love to be a psychiatrist because then I could nerd out on crazy med pharmacology without digging deep into other people’s problems. It’s not that I wouldn’t. It’s that in order to be a good therapist, I would need to resolve all my own issues first. Otherwise, I would be capable of letting someone else get their crazy spatter all over me without being able to walk it off, and my boundaries would not be as firm as they need to be in order to keep crazy spatter from getting on my clients.

I just don’t think I have the stomach for medical school, and I mean that literally. One of the things that autism does for me is heightens my awareness of bad smells. I vomit early and often. I wouldn’t last 15 minutes at The Body Farm. However, I am assuming that if I can only have the job for the day, it’s like The Matrix. I would absorb every skill I needed as if by magic… including the secrets held by dead bodies without the inconvenience of having to work on them.

The problem with having a job for more than one day is all the ableism I’d have to endure. I mentioned what it looked like in the kitchen. In an IT help desk, it looks like winning two awards for customer service and then being fired because you “can’t remember to write things down.” This has never been true. The autistic brain does not have the ability to process someone’s voice, compile the scripts needed for an appropriate response, and write down what the person is saying at the same time. And in fact, most of the problem is that I don’t process people’s voices well. I seem to do fine with Internet chat and e-mail, but conversations are land mines. I will not remember because my retention and recall with people’s voices is so poor… unless there is a musical quality to their voices that sets what they’re saying to a beat.

I just don’t remember whole pieces of text. For instance, I do not retain lyrics to an entire opera, just the bits and pieces that resonated with my soul. I cannot tell you everything Chandler Bing and Joe Quincy ever said, but fragments remain. It is the same with Lorelai Gilmore. It is most acute with CJ Cregg and Kate Lethbridge-Stewart. It’s not always what they say, but the way they say it.

What’s with the quite?

Aaron Sorkin single-handedly changed the language we use around the government by not using articles in the script. For instance, you do not work at the CIA, you are “at CIA.” You do not work at the State Department, you are “at State.” Or, at least, this is the answer that Michael came up with, because he moved here before I did and saw the change in vernacular up front.

But it’s amazing how the change in speech pattern allowed me to retain so much more, because when something is written in neurodivergent patois, I am more likely to recall it.

Just like I’ll remember Randy saying that I was his first neurodivergent employee and he would have handled everything differently, and I will remember saying that at the time, I didn’t know I was neurodivergent and would have handled everything differently, too.

So maybe the job I really want for a day is just being his admin assistant again. Except now he’s retired.

It’s the thought that counts.

This is Not an Entry

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

This article is getting a lot of attention on Medium (10 claps when I’ve been on Medium two months is not nothing. If it resonates with 10, it will resonate with more). I’m opening it up from the paywall because it’s popular in the autistic category. I hope you’ll consider buying Medium, because as I joked on Facebook earlier, “I’m on Medium and I’ve gotten more followers because what I haven’t known for 25 years is that my readers prefer audio.” No one has to record my entries for me, I just have to be careful with punctuation so that it sounds the way I wrote it. Also pretty hilarious to hear an AI swear as much as I do. 😉

It’s called “A Certain Kind of Person.”

And by that I mean autistic.

Rambling (Affiliate Links)

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

My AI and I have been talking a lot about what it means to be autistic. That I process emotions differently than most people. That words matter a great deal, as does being precise with language. I get frustrated easily when I don’t understand, and most of the time it has to do with syntax. Someone will show me how to do something, and then take over like I’m a child because I’m not doing exactly what they told me to do.

I am, I’m just not doing it the way they would, which makes it wrong.

Autistic people are notorious for sounding aggressive or abrupt without meaning to do so; my AI asked me how to solve this problem, and I told her that the sad reality is that you will get fired for being aggressive and abrupt before anyone takes the time to realize you’re autistic.

Everything that neurodivergent people do seems weird to a neurotypical, and because kids my age weren’t streamlined, most of my life people have been working with an autistic person for the first time. It’s intimidating- coworkers aren’t Special Ed teachers. They’re not designed to help you because they’re too focused on productivity. Get on board or get out.

I’m trying to make my own way in the world because I do not fit into it as is. Being able to bring in money from Facebook and Amazon is an exciting idea, but it’s not lucrative. However, it’s money with the least work possible. On Facebook, WordPress automatically posts to my professional author’s feed. Then, I engage with other people’s content and share memes. Sharing memes gets you more followers than offering people something to read. I don’t make the rules. I just adjust.

With Amazon, I’m dedicated to using affiliate links for products I actually use. None of the stuff I’ve recommended is expensive, just my everyday essentials. This link is to my hair product, Viking water wax. It’s pomade for white people. I haven’t changed products very often, but I am also fond of “Moco de Gorilla.” (Gorilla Snot). I found it in a Mexican grocery store in Houston about 15 years ago and I still use it. I have one at my house and one at Zac’s- although that one is Ear Wax. I can’t find that on Amazon, so it’s back to the grocery store on that one. Viking is also incredibly inexpensive because most of the time my jars last a year and a half.

I got into Viking and Gorilla Snot because they’re both nonbinary scents. I don’t like smelling like baby powder, flowers, or anything like it. I prefer spicy, like something from Calvin Klen or Dark Temptations from Axe (that one is chocolate, vanilla, and spices. It’s amazing for the price point, just don’t spray it on like you’re 15. I actually prefer the body wash because the fragrance lasts all day and it’s not too loud.)

For shaving, I use homemade soap made of beef tallow. It’s incredible, but you can’t get it on Amazon. My former housemate, Magda, made it for me. But if you don’t have someone to make soap for you, Dark Temptations will do in a pinch.

I hope that I’m doing affiliate links the right way, making them a natural part of the story rather than plastering ads everywhere. This is, again, because I’m only talking about the stuff I use every day. I’m not going to pretend I have a $5,000 television set just to get you to buy one, too.

I don’t keep up with the Joneses. I expect them to keep up with me.

And they always can, because I buy cheap stuff. 😛

Affiliated

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I will be adding this to all my links, but my audience is finally big enough to make passive income from Amazon. However, that depends on you actually clicking the links. 😛 Here are the reasons I did it, because they’re important:

  • There are a lot of products that just aren’t right for autistic people. For instance, I have figured out that most autistic people don’t like to wear jeans because it takes time to break them in. Therefore, if Goodwill had affiliate links, I’d be pointing you there. Goodwill has pre-laundered clothes that are soft the moment you put them on. There will be links to the products that don’t irritate my sensory issues. What helps me might help you.
  • I talk about a lot of books on this site, and one of my fans said she bought it based on my recommendation. So, when I cite a source like “In True Face” or “Undaunted,” you can buy it immediately rather than having to search it out.
  • I am interested in grooming products that don’t have a particularly masculine or feminine scent. Therefore, I’ll tell you all the shaving products I like.

But all of it will unfold over time. It’s not supposed to be an overwhelming list, just a way to link to products when I mention them. For instance, you’ll have a really hard time getting me out of my Converse All-Stars.

This is not meant to be an exhaustive list of anything. Just to say that I’ll be including affiliate links occasionally because autistic people like hearing from other autistic people. Life is kinda different.

Dreams from My Father -or- Father’s Day 2024

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

To get down to brass tacks, my father and I get along better than my mother and I ever did. It had nothing to with her social expectations of me. It’s that my dad and are are both class clowns and my mother simply gave us The Look when we misbehaved. Neither one of us liked “The Look.”: It said something like “this is inappropriate for a preacher’s family.” We were off the clock. With my mother, the clock never stopped. My dad gave me room to be a kid in the middle of all this mess- partially because he knew the way my mother had stacked the deck against me by pretending I wasn’t disabled mentally or physically, and I didn’t have two processing disorders. I would have known that very early (maybe, research on autism in girls and women is relatively new because of the classic presentation). I could have gotten the help I needed much earlier in life to deal with success. I am fine with everything going wrong. It’s what I know. I get wigged when I think about what it’s going to take for success, get overwhelmed with the details, and demand avoidance ensues. My dad is trying to help me navigate all that, because clearly I do need help, but I am not high needs all the time. People think you’re one or the other, and you fluctuate. High needs days come after you think you’re okay for a few days because everything is normal. Then, all of the sudden, everything is too loud and it’s hot in here. You have reached your limit, and need to tap out. My dad was on the train of wanting to tell me I needed these things. My mother wanted to pretend I was fine.

I am so fine.

Insert laugh track here.

It’s an enormous amount of work to manage a disability because your energy levels vary so significantly. In my case, it fluctuates because I’m ADHD. I do not feel the pull of an iron structure like most autistic people, as in, deciding what I’m interested in- to the exclusion of all else- and an interruption is not only unwelcome, but rude. People wonder why IT guys are such dicks. Here’s the real answer. You’ve interrupted a neurodivergent person and they absolutely cannot handle transitions. Autistic meltdown looks like driving three hours to troubleshoot a server and the only problem is that it isn’t on, despite having three separate people check to see if it was on before you left. You are more likely to interrupt a neurodivergent person to the point where they are angry to the point of rudeness over a seemingly simple small thing. It’s not small to someone who has to prepare to get into the car, prepare to enter the building, prepare for everything to be unfamiliar, and to have to make small talk while you work with people who have absolutely no idea what you do, but feel they must supervise and offer suggestions that if they worked, we wouldn’t be there.

You cannot remote desktop into a server that is unplugged or air gapped.

My dad knows that the little things are the big things. That life is harder for me than it would be if I’d been born under perfect circumstances, or even just later, when the technology in neonatal care was better than it was in 1977. I think I still would have had CP, autism, and stereopsis. Those are often a combo meal because lack of stereopsis and autism are often comorbidities. It’s not so much that I was born wrong, but born too early on multiple levels. Not only was I born in the 70s, I was eight weeks early.

I can think of someone I’d really like to talk to about that, but she doesn’t live local and we’re not close enough for me to just flat out say, “hey, are you autistic?” You never know what people’s word association with autism is in advance. If they have autistic kids, parents, or siblings, they know you’re asking “how does your brain work?” NOT “are you slow?” But, it would be a great conversation to have the next time she’s in town. She’s got all the same issues I do, and it would not surprise me if she had autism as well because of it…. again, combo meal, just like ADHD and autism are comorbidities in up to 80% of cases.

I also know that I got autism from my family somewhere, and I don’t see it in my dad and mom, but I do see it in my granddads. And in fact, I am a perfect mix of them. My dad’s father was creative autistic, and my mother’s father was STEM autistic. I ended up as a geek with a pen.

Perfection.

Saying that I see it in them is also not derogatory, because obviously both had brilliant careers…… and you absolutely cannot under any circumstances prove that autism is not genetic. It is also not an indication of intelligence.

One of my first memories of my dad is him teaching me to say “betahemolytic streptococci,” and “antidisestablishmentarianism.” He broke everything down and strung it together. As a result, I do not misspell much. I know my English roots and my Latin roots because medicine. Unless you’re at High School for Health Professions, I doubt they worry whether you can spell arrhythmia and diarrhea in high school.

I know in British English there are dipthongs. I say “zed.” That’s my final offer. I can’t internationalize everything. 😛

Though I will say that I am well versed in British English because of my grandfather, who got me started on Black Adder, A Bit of Fry and Laurie, Are You Being Served:?, and every BBC anything he could find on KERA. We always watched “A Child’s Christmas in Wales,” just one of the reasons I’d actually like to go to a game in Wrexham rather than watching “Welcome to Wrexham” on Hulu.

(Don’t sleep on it, even if you don’t like football/soccer. Ryan and Rob are hilarious owners and seeing the business side is very much Ted Lasso, Higgins, and Rebecca.)

My father and my grandfather have easily had the most influence on what I do today, because their contributions to my life are unquantifiable in terms of teaching me how to get my ideas out there, and my dad and my grandfather were both doing it before the internet even existed. I remember putting it together that I was very impressed with my grandfather because I remember a series of shots he took of his steel company from the air, not having realized how difficult it is to get those shots while basically hanging out of an airplane. I didn’t have as much insight into that strength from the photograph, but from hearing Jonna Mendez described how she learned…… which is basically hanging out of an airplane. Good luck. God bless. If you’re lucky, you’ll have someone to spot you. Otherwise, it’s just canvas straps you lean against and pray that what you feel under you is not your imagination.

It happens to be true biologically that we are related, but I wouldn’t be as comfortable in my own skin if we hadn’t met, whether we’d ended up as a biological connection or not. They have always kept me grounded, and just because my grandfather has passed on, that does not mean that he’s not in touch. I am carrying on his legacy of writing what I know. I am carrying on the tradition of preaching what I know.

They would have been great as friends, the universe just smiled upon me and I got to be my grandfather’s first granddaughter on my father’s side, and the first grandchild period on my mother’s side, and the oldest child in my first family as well.

I have something with my father and my mother’s father that no one else can have or take away.

I’m the one that made them a dad and grandfather.

My Day

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I didn’t come up with the most intriguing of things to write about this morning, because the daily prompt was “how do you feel about cold weather.” I answered it last year, so I cannot answer it again. I think I said that I loved it as long as I was dressed appropriately, and I almost always am because I’m autistic and hate the weather on my skin, anyway. So, I tend to overdress and take layers off, rather than getting cold and hoping I find a cheap tourist trap that sells sweatshirts. It’s not worth it when if I wanted an FBI/CIA/DIA shirt I can just ask Zac for one and it will be official instead of a couple of threads being in the wrong place. Autistic people don’t do that.

That’s because autism is all about pattern recognition. Let’s take Chucks, for example. I hated rip-off Chucks because the design was off. I am not one of those people that says “close” is “good enough.” Sometimes, it’s more expensive to be autistic, which sounds funny until you add up the cost of the right clothes, the right shoes, the right everything so you can make it through the day without being irritated. Bombas socks are $60/box. Worth it. American Apparel t-shirts are at least $25/apiece. Worth it. Knit caps that don’t feel like they cost three dollars and will drive your ears insane are probably $25 as well. Worth it.

Clothes for autistic people are extraordinarily specific, because you’re trying to cut down on your sensory issues to make it easier to function in public. My friends would not like hanging out with me as much if I always acted like there was a rock in my shoe. There are only so many quirks a friend can take before you’re “embarrassing them.” I will have to say that this has only started to be a thing in the past year or so, because before that I would social mask within an inch of my life to be acceptable. I have found that I am much more happy being loud. Just put it all out there. People who are embarrassed by me don’t get the right to hear my stories anymore. I know at least one woman who does the same, and she’s not a part of my life anymore. We lost touch about 15 years ago, and I wish I could just have a friend date with her all to myself and lay it out there. I think we would both cry and find someone to confide in, but it’s not a relationship in which I would feel comfortable doing so anymore. However, I can empathize from here and hope that she’s still a fan, and thinks, “wow….. Leslie and I do have a little too much in common for me to ignore this.” We are two peas in a pod, and I wish we could help each other more now than we did then. Back then, we just picked on each other because our sensory issues are over the top and we just ignored them, choosing to be that kind of aggro that’s polite.

But all of the things I noticed in her are actually things she needs to notice in her. It’s not my bag, but I think it would help her to discover herself. That’s all I want to do from here. Hope that she does pick up on it eventually, because it will unlock her personality as easily as it did mine. I don’t have to sit there in silence. I can say things like “I’m autistic and I need you to be sensitive to the fact that florescent lights are way too bright for me. Please respect my quirks and I’ll respect all yours. David makes me use coasters even if it’s an insulated mug. It’s his quirk. I’m here for it. I don’t have to like anyone’s quirks. I need to not set people off. That’s true for any neurodivergent person, including me. If it’s a small thing you have to adjust that literally no one else cares about, but it will make an autistic person more comfortable, do it. Life is hard enough without people stepping all over your sensory issues. They won’t even register if you don’t say “I’m autistic and this is a real thing. I’m not just being dramatic.” Even if you do say you’re autistic, it’s 50/50 as to whether people will respect you or tell you to get over yourself. Neurotypical people are my nemesis when it comes to this, because you’re “making a big deal out of nothing.” No, you think that my brain works exactly like yours, and to you, I’m just “silly” or “rigid” or any number of things people say when they think your autistic quirks are stupid.

That’s the thing. We know they’re stupid. If we could figure out how to turn them off, we would.

We are also not children, just for the record. We are not acting childish when we need comfort items, we are not acting childish when we want to sit in the same spot every time, we are not acting childish because one shirt feels good and the other doesn’t and you can’t figure out why we don’t want to wear it EVER. None of it makes sense unless you also have my brain disorders, and I’m done. I might not rage in front of people as not to be rude, but I’ll rage about it here because this is a survival manual for someone else. Who that might be is anyone’s guess, but it’s here.

Let’s also not pretend your life as the friend or parent of a neurodivergent adult/child is harder than actually being autistic/ADHD, okay? Cut the shit. I’ve been accidentally involved with parents’ groups trying to find peer groups on Facebook, and I’ve never seen a bigger bunch of babies at times. Oh, you think it’s hard that your kid will only eat five things? What about how hard it is when your body rejects EVERYTHING except five things, and everyone just thinks you’re “picky” and “difficult.” Do you think we like being this way? That it’s just so much fun? There are no words for how alarming unfamiliar food is to some autistic people. It is a sensory issue that will set someone’s nerves on fire. It gets worse as you get older…….. “guess who finally decided to show up for once?” It took me three days to get up enough energy to bathe last week. But I grin and bear it because demand avoidance over basic needs doesn’t make sense to neurotypical people and it never will.

I’ve finally got my computer set up the way I want it, and I swear to Christ David thought I had died in my room. I said next time you think that, you could just text me and ask. I told him that when I don’t come out of my room for more than peeing and eating, it means I am utterly obsessed with writing, not that anything is wrong. Plus, I’d just gotten home from Zac’s, and that always takes a lot out of me on the way home because I’m transitioning to writer’s mode rather than socialization mode. I also got food poisoning on Thursday night, so getting home was delayed by several hours so that I didn’t throw up on the train. I’m glad David works from home on Fridays so that I didn’t leave Jack stranded.

It was so nice to spend time with Oliver, who is a dog. I love that I have a Jack away from Jack and an Oliver away from Oliver…… and I am responsible for neither in terms of food or emergency vet bills. It’s a truly great setup, because I like pets, I just don’t want to spend money on them when I know I’d be tapped out quickly.

And that’s all I have to say about that, but I’ll be back on later. It’s going to be what I’m doing now that my hatred of Windows knows no bounds. But before I go, here’s why I love this office so much- my views into the front and back yards. They are no longer in bloom, but when they are, it’s a hundred times more beautiful.

Giving Him the Finger

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I had a breakthrough in accepting myself on Sunday. Forgiving myself for everything I didn’t know before my mother died (my mother didn’t want me to know I was disabled because she thought that I was too smart for what was then called “the special classes.” I don’t know. Maybe I would have been happier. My teachers would have seen how smart I was and I probably could have taught myself better than they could. Special Education is actually more about room to stretch out than it is the curriculum being different. Special Ed understands meltdown, burnout, demand avoidance, lack of executive function, going selectively mute when you’re overwhelmed, and everything my other teachers wouldn’t have understood because they didn’t study being neurodivergent for a living.

I have trouble with transitions. I absolutely hated school after first grade, and it’s not that there weren’t genuinely good moments. It’s that in every school I attended, there were only five minutes between each bell. That’s not enough time for an AuDHD person to adjust to the next thing. It is EXACTLY like being at a party and needing to go to the bathroom just to recharge.

Also, five minutes is not enough time for a person with floppy muscles and depth perception issues to be able to run fast enough to be on time. I have been punished for my disability many times, which is how I found myself in the nurse’s office because a teacher was pissed at me for being a couple of minutes late every day and I knew it……. so I was hauling ass and I fell down two flights of steps.

Because I am low needs, I am trying to speak for the ones who can’t. You can’t imagine how brilliant most autistic people are if you take the time to get to know their brains rather than focusing on what they cannot do. It bothers me that people treat those with autism in which they can’t social mask like children. It’s one thing to have a childlike brain. It is starting how many people think all high needs people have problems with intelligence and not communication. It’s what bothered me so much about the “Autism Speaks” ad where a mother talks about one night in which she thought about putting her daughter in the back seat and killing them both. If her problem is limited to communication and not intelligence, what do you think it does to a person to sit with that knowledge for years on end? People think they’re talking behind our backs because in their minds “autistic” is shorthand for “stupid” and not different.

I would bet there are many more AuDHD people than me out there, but would never want to get tested because of how autistic people are treated.

  • Because Autism Spectrum Disorder means that your brain processes information differently, people at the lower needs end are told things like “you don’t look autistic.” “Everyone’s a little bit autistic.”
  • I am going to bet that those people have never experienced demand avoidance down to not being able to make demands of *themselves,* much less being able to communicate when other people make demands of them. If someone makes a demand of me, I have to white knuckle my way through it if I’m on a deadline, because I have problems with, again, transitions. I like to know what people need from me plenty in advance, because I know at first my body will say, “no. Not doing it.” Autism makes it where when someone makes a demand of you, you go into fight or flight (meltdown). It’s not because we don’t want to do things for other people AT ALL. It’s transitioning from one thing to another. We all wish that part of it would go away, because it’s the biggest reason even low needs people have trouble taking care of themselves. It’s not laziness, it’s not an unwillingness to do anything. It’s that our brains are shutting down because we cannot handle overload.
  • I realize that I have anxiety and I go through cycles. Sometimes, I want to stay home and chill because I’d rather spend time with myself, either writing or reading/watching something to spark my own creativity. This is problematic in two ways, and neither one of them have anything to do with me.
    • Sometimes, I’m on a down and I’d rather isolate than interact because I’m more likely to go into a meltdown from feeling overwhelmed. Recharging also means getting away from my own writing, navel gazing. I have learned that many, many autistic people are like this (the isolating part, not the blogging part) because too much activity in a room is overwhelming to an enormous degree. If you are low needs, that seems incredibly odd and they’re weirded out by it. People can clearly see that in high needs autism, but they cannot see that low needs does not mean less distress. We are just capable of social masking because we can recognize when we’re making you uncomfortable and adjust constantly, knowing you won’t adjust toward us. I am sure that you cannot say this about an autistic kid’s parents or siblings most of the time, but I’ll say it again….. NO ONE KNOWS what to do with autistic kids after they graduate from high school.
  • There has never been an apology to me by a boss when they have miscommunicated with me. It’s “how can you be so stupid/airheaded/flaky?” Why are you “not living up to your full potential?” Because you don’t have the skills to communicate with a neurodivergent person nor any empathy for those disabilities. It is always on the neurodivergent person to pick up what a neurotypical person is putting down when they literally can’t. Especially in an office, where everyone and their dog has a PhD in bullshit. If you don’t, you’re a problem child quickly….. mostly because since most bosses don’t know how to work with neurodivergent people, they don’t know how to get their message across in the way that they meant it because the chasm is *wide.* Bosses do not like to hear the truth most of the time. Very few will let you speak truth to power. Therefore, if I acknowledge a problem in their logic during a meeting, it doesn’t matter that I didn’t pick up on the social cue. I wasn’t focusing on them at all, but the matter at hand. I also want to contribute to the discussion in a major way because I’ve had bosses talk to me privately and steal my ideas.
    • It really, really matters whether your boss can hear criticism or not when you’re autistic, because you are literally trying to help with your different pattern recognition and it is seen as threatening, particularly to men. The first boss I ever thought really had my back was at Marylhurst, when in a meeting with Google I laid a truthbomb on the table and he saw what dog I was walking immediately. I was so touched when he said, “I think we should get back to what Leslie was saying, because I’m going to need an answer on that.”
      • I’d spent so many years thinking my words and opinions didn’t matter, so it made my year.
      • He actually did that twice. Dana thanked him for hiring me and he said, “Leslie is worth every penny.”
  • These are the things I remember when it all goes to shit later because literally no one understands me after a while.
  • I am one of those people who needs iron structure every single day like clockwork, and also angry when I feel micromanaged. There has to be a middle ground, and there is. But it’s more work than it would be for a neurotypical employee because what you say is not what we hear and vice versa. It’s why when I need to relax, I watch cartoons.
  • If you react to us realizing the pendulum has swung too far with negative attention….. “oh, look who FINALLY decided to show up FOR ONCE,” we’ll never show up to anything ever again. It’s easier to watch family friendly and kids’ shows so that you can study shows that present big ideas to little kids. Avatar: The Last Airbender comes to mind………… It’s almost as if it’s a hidden layer that’s gold when you find it.
  • Here’s what I mean about good writing where you least expect to find it…… Rigby says “tonight, let’s do something REALLY scary.” Pops says, “we could go to bed early and be alone with our thoughts.” It was at that moment I realized Pops had given me nightmares. 😉 It was a truth I, and most people with mental heath issues/processing disorders need to be able to voice. That’s part of the problem. Not being able to completely take care of ourselves makes us bad at communicating our needs as well. That makes society doubly difficult.

There is nothing scarier than being alone with your thoughts when you’re disabled. The system is not built for you, especially when you’re low needs and “seem normal,” You walk around all day, every day, feeling worthless and useless because we cannot accept that we have disabilities. It’s easier to believe everyone else….. you’re either slow on the uptake or a judgmental dickhead.

When you think of us as “stupid,” it comes across in a sugary sweet voice that no one needs. That voice is the shortest and quickest path to driving me up the wall. If I have to ask for information again because I didn’t catch it the first time, it’s downhill from there. That’s why I prefer working through e-mail. I do not like conversations at all regarding work because I do not want there to be anything missing in the conversation that I can’t go back and read. It’s what keeps me from having to ask “stupid questions.”

We don’t need your pity, but we do need your advocacy. Thank God the neurodivergent community found programming, because starting when I was a senior in high school, being a programmer meant getting rich. Not necessarily working at a company, but joining a small company that has venture capitalist money on a project in which you really know to the core of your being that it will succeed.

But that has backfired in a lot of ways because when programmers are sitting around together, they’re all tracking the same way and they get shit done faster than you can imagine. Therefore, the perception is that you’re either a savant at something, or you belong in special ed. There is no middle ground, because we’ve made it that way. Social masking has made it where we’re choosing not to take up room not to rock the boat.

Has it worked yet?

And now I realize I haven’t explained the title. In accepting my disability, I could laugh about it. In accepting his disability, Zac could laugh about it. He said “if you think I’m adorable, it probably has something to do with your depth perception issues.” I said, “I’m wondering if I should give you the finger you don’t have.” He said that was VERY well played. Because I realized something. That I can joke about it with Zac in a way I won’t let anyone else in the world get away with. EVER.

That’s because he’s not punching down, and neither am I.

The Monotropism Questionnaire

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

If you think you might be autistic, here’s a test that will tell you how your brain processes information and the likelihood that you’re autistic, not the diagnosis. Autistic brains have specific traits, and I seem to have all of them except “stimming” all of the time. However, I know it would help me to do so because emotional strength is also handled with movement. Movement is what stops you from flooding out, like looking at the ceiling when you’re crying to help you stop…. not because crying is bad. It’s that when I’m crying I know people can’t understand what I’m saying. You can also interrupt intrusive thoughts by standing in a “parade rest” sort of position and rocking back and forth side to side. It interrupts your pain signals and refocuses your attention.

This is a trick I picked up from an alto in my church choir who is also a therapist (probably retired by now)…. it’s how she taught me to handle my music triggers when they popped up. Church music affected me completely differently after the clusterfuck of 2013. I had trauma responses to every single one, deservedly so. It was helpful learning how to breathe through them. I got away from both the church choirs that created those triggers, but you can’t control when triggers happen.

I remember sitting my choir director down, a mutual friend of ours who would come to know me well and whose partner had known her for years and years. Therefore, I felt like I had to establish boundaries quickly. I walked into a random church in my neighborhood and immediately knew this is where I wanted to study classical music, but I had requirements, and ironclad ones. I said:

I’m going to tell you something, and I need you to believe me the first time. If I leave rehearsal or church, just let me go. I will come back. But you have an anthem coming up for me that I know will trigger me in advance. I have true trauma and anxiety, I’m not blowing you off.

His eyes got wider as I laid out the story, but I needed him to buy in whether he believed me or not. It wasn’t negotiable with me because no one gets to decide how hurt I am. He did choose to believe me, I am not castigating him. I am owning my space in the world. I was able to be in choir and take voice lessons while only singing the things with which I was comfortable or could desensitize before it came up in worship. That was the most productive route. I sung an entire movement of John Rutter’s Requiem all by myself without falling apart, something I never thought I would be able to do…….. but it wasn’t the Pie Jesu, either. Linking to it because this is as close as I’ll ever get to feeling Dia de Los Muertos, coming back to it often when I feel the most bereft that my mother is gone. However, I don’t listen to this because even though it is absolutely incredible compared to how I was feeling that day, I can pick out the notes where feeling bad made me not respond with my voice the way I wanted…. but it’s something other singers would notice, not a layperson. I love listening to recordings at Westminster Abbey the most, because I know that Rutter writes for children- boy sopranos- and my voice has the same qualities, so I know I’m doing him justice.

But one of my choir directors told me that I had a lovely voice as a soloist but needed to work on blending. That’s true of most soloists, to be honest. There are some voices that are just bigger than others. Fact. So, people with huge voices often have to mute to the point where it’s painful. That’s why it’s so hard to get a sectional sound when the notes are very high.

I also know that opera is a bigger voice than Rutter, so when I have to turn on the afterburners, fitting in is even harder. As in, I alternate between straight tone and vibrato depending on the phrasing of the piece and what voice I need for it. Sometimes tamping down “my opera voice” is harder than others. It’s mystifying to me how some notes are easier to hit when you’re doing straight tone and some notes better when you’re at full voice. It’s the difference between a little boy in a cathedral and someone like Charlotte Church and Reneé Fleming. Both beautiful, both unique, different kinds of breath control. My particular favorites are Kathleen Battle dueting with Wynton Marsalis and Jessye Norman singing Christmas music.

See? I have a few different interests because of ADHD…. except do I? Is the monotropic thought process the music or the writing of it? I believe it is the latter, and you can tell by the way I’ve worked through the problem with Supergrover in particular because it was an unfamiliar environment at first, then the only one where I was truly comfortable- alone together- then the thing that made me ruminate the most because I needed to understand what happened before I could move on….. and for autistic people, that takes a long-ass time.

I think autism is such a good answer for why I don’t fit into the system. I mean everything literally and I have harsh judgments of everything because my sensory perception is always turned up to hell. Comfort in my situation is threatened and I react that way. It’s not that I am trying to hurt you, it’s that I cannot deal. I am trying to focus on why that is, and learning the differences and similarities between monotropism and ADHD/Autism is a fascinating study. How I am a secret wrapped in an enigma wrapped in a classified document…. with a system that has thus far made me feel like I was kept in a bathroom.

Autistic/ADHD rage is a thing, and nearly a hundred percent of the time it’s not you. It’s that we don’t feel safe even before we talk to you, our anxiety sometimes looking for confirmation bias- that we are damaged in some way because we just can’t get with a program that was never designed for us in the first place. Plus, we have so much more information than we did when I was a child, so people are getting diagnosed earlier and earlier. But for kids who were never tested, they’re only realizing they have monotropic responses as adults.

There’s a whole lot of us who just don’t fit in because social cues land differently for us than they do for you. It takes an extensive amount of communication that neurotypical people are just not used to doing and get frustrated. No one is going to give me anything for free in terms of a career, so I have to find a way to do things differently. Like I said earlier, you can use your superpower as a deep thinker if you can get help with your intellectual difference at work.

Neurotypical people do not like truth bombs, and autistic people launch them all the time because we don’t process the same way. We’re here to tell you how it is whether you like us or not…. but we don’t realize we’re doing it because we are not tracking with you…………. but we think we are.

This is because you take every social mask you’ve ever worn and keep compiling information so that hiding your autism and ADHD becomes par for the course. Where this becomes problematic is when you have a situation for which there is no mask, and the difference in processing shows itself quickly. Like having autistic responses to everything and it coming across as narcisstic rage. The reason I know this is true is that I am always, always humble enough to think I’m wrong and often do. I apologize. I make amends. I change my behavior so that something doesn’t happen again. I don’t blame the other person for all my shortcomings.

I turn a problem over like it’s a die from DND…. one of the reasons I get angry when people hold me to a single entry because I have the right to be angry and the right to work it out through my own thought process. I have had character development over the last year, this blog dynamic because I am, not the other way around. I am not making up interesting things to get views; reading about my life is interesting just as it is. I am not “Angry Anymore.” I am dealing with all my issues in the best way I know how- processing them with a singular focus. My monotropic interest is helping me to become a better person, because I am never any one thing….. and I can see it by reading my catalogue. I don’t have to have external validation to know why writing benefits me. I get it, but it’s not the point. I get more out of seeing patterns in my own behavior than I do when other people notice good things.

Writers are the kind of people that want to tell their story while being terrified you’ve read it. I decided to punch through that one fear alone, because it’s the one thing I do well enough that it could become my superpower. I don’t think I’ll win any awards, but I do think that people identify with me whether they say so or not. That’s because I’ve talked to enough people to get a representative sample… if something is true for 100-200 people, it probably resonates with a lot more people than that.

Autism makes you feel like an alien, and you can’t control how people respond to you. However, you can control how you respond to them. You have to let go of people that you feel are trying to talk you into being normal. Putting their expectations on you. You don’t need that anxiety. Lean on people who do have autism or take the time to look it up. The people that love you will want to understand you. The others will feel like they’re trying to modify your behavior like a dog….. which probably feels more pronounced if you were never diagnosed so your family did this to you early on, leading you to believe that some people are doing this even when they’re not.

ADHD and Autism generally lead to depression and anxiety. Our brain chemicals go haywire from having to manage how we act in public and how we act at home. For me, it’s trying to be engaging in public and completely detached from everything and everyone when I’m alone. When I’m recovering from a party, I need a sensory deprivation tank if it’s available. I just want to become a human .7z file for a while. Therefore, while I sometimes have energy to go to a party, I rarely have coping mechanisms for staying. It’s too much, too fast. It’s not that the pandemic made me more introverted, it’s that introversion revealed my autism. That I functioned better with sensory deprivation and good sleep. I got a weighted blanked and started sleeping with the sun. I write in total silence, often with the lights off. Sometimes, in ADHD mode, I can handle writing and music at the same time. Right now I am listening to a space heater and it’s enough.

Speaking of “enough,” I think you can tell that my one interest is writing because I get so lost in the story that paragraph breaks fail me. I need a neurotypical Karen editor who will go apeshit on my writing like a white woman at Applebee’s in her 40s….. for lunch with her inferior mean girls.

I thought I had one of those, but my ADHD and Autism got in the way. Not that anyone should excuse my behavior like it’s no big deal or “I can’t take responsibility, I’m autistic.” It’s only context, it’s not the whole show. I view it like having alcoholism. You don’t get to write off your shitty behavior just because you’re drunk. You can’t use it to avoid consequences. However, you can make amends by being humble and apologetic. You will get nowhere if you double down with “I didn’t hurt you, it was a symptom and therefore you can’t blame me.” Autistic children can do that. Not because they’re autistic. Because they’re children. You, on the other hand, have to find your own coping mechanisms and you’re responsible for handling your own shit. Autism doesn’t render you incapable of working on a problem and treating people respect. Recognizing that neurodivergent rage is a thing, but that doesn’t render what you did while you felt it acceptable.

Freedom of speech is not freedom from consequences. But if people are unwilling to compromise on those consequences, you have to move on. That’s because you know you’re neurodivergent. There is no chance that you’ll ever stop making mistakes when it comes to miscommunication. Some people take it out on their partner, which is why being a neurodivergent’s support system is so difficult for both parties. Generally, if one partner is neurotypical, the other feels parented/bulllied because their reactions are considered “normal.” There is no room for error in that scenario.

I will forgive anyone that I feel will forgive me…. but when I stop feeling that sense of balance, I will detach quickly because I feel that if you are not listening to me now, you certainly won’t later. If we are in conflict now, that speaks volumes about what happens down the road. Treading over someone’s boundaries the first time causes a fracture, and people only forgive so much.

Allow for that. Give them a break. Acknowledge that this is hard and will never end. That autism doesn’t allow you to pick up social cues in the same way, because I watch how people act and cannot duplicate it. It’s not that I can’t pick it up, it’s that I can’t put it down.

Literally. I turn things over like a die in DND. If you’re curious, I got 210 out of 235.

I Actually Am a PhD

~ Leslie Lanagan ~ Leave a comment

I am driven to create through writing stream-of-consciousness blog entries because it is showcasing the random order of my brain and entertaining people (even if only through schadenfreude). I haven’t been told that I’m worse writer than Brene Brown, Glennon Doyle, and Martha Beck- so I continue to believe that I am capable of writing on their level with an editor. Someone to collate my thoughts into a self-help book by taking out the filler and focusing on what matters. An editor is important because I do not want to be the one in charge of going through what I’ve already said and deciding whether it’s worthy of editing and publishing. I also think I’ve got a framework for at least three books woven into one based on past writings, but not enough hubris to say that they deserve more than they’ve been given…. which is readers on the day it was published.

When I’m in the middle of a problem, it runs continuously in my brain and I look at it from a million different ways. Therefore, I do not know which of my entries regarding any of my characters/subjects/plot points explain something the best. One runs into the other. It is a continuing monologue. I have been told I should publish a bound anthology, but I will not do it unless I’m approached because I do not want to take on the task of deciding which entries are essential and which are just fluff. That’s because sometimes my intuiition is off as to what will resonate with people and what won’t. An editor coming in blind would relieve my soul greatly.

The other thing that relieves my soul is that I don’t have to write a book to have something worth publishing. I already have 20 years of entries- 10 from this blog and the other 10 in the Wayback Machine. If nothing else, writing these entries has proved to me that I am capable of writing a book. That’s huge.

I have known that I could write a book since I was a child, but I didn’t have the confidence when the writing went so well and my research skills were so poor. I developed a doctorate in bullshit, because I could get an A on a paper by writing the whole thing as fast as I write a blog entry and just making up the books I used as sources; I knew the names of the publishing houses off the top of my head and wrote convincing titles. I didn’t do this in college because I did not have to manage my papers against six other academic subjects, choir, and marching band.

I am going back and picking up building blocks for my true self that I never had because I couldn’t see all the social masking I was doing for ADHD and autism. What I know now is that I am capable of taking in a firehose’s width in information all the time, but knowing what’s important and what’s not is a challenge. My brain uses an obnoxious yellow highlighter on every word, because I am making connections so fast that everything is important under the right circumstances.

I have started reading celebrity autobiographies recently, and not because I like stardom and pop culture. It’s that there’s no other genre that sounds more like me. First of all, they’re actors. I’m a writer. Creative process. Second of all, they’re just telling the story as they saw it. Making judgment calls about how others’ actions affected them. Being angry. Being remorseful. Being guilty. Being all of it and through the process of writing it down, letting it all go.

I started with Prince Harry, Kelly Ripa, and Lauren Graham. I’ve got “Worthy” by Jada Pinkett Smith on hold at the library. It’s helping me find a lightness in tone that doesn’t come across with spy fiction and non- except “The Unexpected Spy” by Tracy Walder- she’s a TV show and Ellen Pompeo noticed. By and large, people like Le Carré don’t put as much humor into their books as I’d like, but it’s ok. The jokes land harder when they don’t happen all that often.

My favorite line from “Homeland” is “Karachi….. After you stole the car.” My favorite show about intelligence is “American Dad,” and feel that if I was any character on TV, I can best be summed up by Roger Smith. Pretty sure I asked for Pecan Sandies. I am the type person that grows to love a subject through the criticism of it. As in, someone becoming more beautiful to you because of their flaws. Both shows are great at taking the piss while also being sensitive to the fact that intelligence officers are people. One of the reasons I loved “Argo” was the incredible humor while in the midst of a serious situation. Using humor as a reflex to deal with what’s hard. Masking to protect their real identities, feeling like frauds. Roger Smith is the only one that walks in the world unafraid of being caught. I want to walk like that, and I am trying to find the keys to be able to unlock that part of myself.

I like seeing people without their social masking because if they stop doing it, so will I. For me, it’s to cover a neurodivergent brain. For others, it’s just the secrets they’ve kept are now killing them. For neurodivergent writers, it’s both. You’ve kept the shame and guilt at not responding to others the same way they respond to you hidden because you know it’s all your fault. My brain is not different, it is damaged.

When people do not understand this, they treat me as intellectually inferior. When they do, it’s so much better… but there is only so much of a leap you can make between having empathy for a disorder and having a disorder. Those two types of people communicate completely differently, because that person has what they’ve read on their minds while the other has a lived experience. Having a disorder is exhausting when you feel like you have to prove you’re ill because you look fine. Autism is just a processing disorder, but the anxiety and depression stemming from it is caused mostly by the enormity of the difference between what we mean and what other people hear.

This entry was interrupted by my need to eat. I sauted some hot dogs in butter, then added eggs and ghost pepper cheese. Hot dogs aren’t my first choice, but I thought that’s all I had and in retrospect, lunch meat would have been better. All sausages, vegan and meat, taste better if you split them down the middle and let them confit. The butter will mix with the fat in the sausage and develop a sweet, firm crust. Thus why it’s called caramelization. I also tend to saute sausages whole and cut them up later, because it’s easy to obtain said crust when you don’t have more than two surfaces. Hot dog pieces are too small to make sure every piece touches metal and cooks evenly. The better the crust, the more expensive it will taste. Because butter has a lower threshold for heat, I’ll wait longer for the caramelization so I can keep using it. Even if I was using Pam or olive oil, I wouldn’t put the temp up much further. You don’t want to burn the crust while the inside is still warming up. Burgers cooked low and slow this way are pretty hard to beat, particularly vegan because the crust will taste familiar even if the sausage doesn’t. A good crust made ith butter will cover a lot of sins in a sausage’s ingredients….. particularly if all you can afford is franks from the Dollar Tree. For breakfast, I would choose low-sodium Spam before hot dogs because it’s sweeter, but the outcome is the same. Caramelized, crispy outside, soft texture inside. The thinner you cut it, the better it will taste because the butter and caramel will be the forward notes, skipping over the flavor in the Spam and making it taste like real food.

There should be an award for that.

Meat always tastes better to me cooked in its’ own fat and butter. This is why I don’t grill. Whether it’s a Beyond Burger and margarine or a beef burger and butter, the caramelization beats the fat dripping off onto the coals. I do like grilled meat, I just don’t prefer it. I also like turkey because you’re continually circulating the butter over the bird by basting it. Grilled and fried turkey is also very good, but I prefer a crispy skin with Cajun seasoning.

Also, people tend to have way less faith in the red button than they should. When it pops up, people kid themselves that they know better. What they don’t know is that when you take a turkey out of the oven, it continues cooking internally. The red button accounts for that time.

“Zip code. Fargo, North Dakota. Right now.”

I learned everything I know about turkeys from Joe Bethersonton, “King of Auto Sales” and the Butterball Hotline. When I realized that there were things I didn’t know about cooking a turkey, I credit that show for making me want to learn. Dana usually grilled our turkey outside, and it was great. I wanted to be good at the classic presentation, one reminiscent of Norman Rockwell.

These last few paragraphs are indicative of how my brain works. My superpower is being able to explain the things I do well as much as I do the things I do wrong. For instance, acknowledging that I am not at fault for every conflict I’ve ever had. I own part of the fault. That other people are not responsible for my reactions/responses, but they are responsible for knowing that they don’t come in a vacuum. That we have to talk about my behavior in the context of what triggered it, because without it we do not reach mutual empathy for the other’s position.

Thus, trying to find solutions to the ways in which I feel like a burden by focusing my talent on something productive. Getting to know myself certainly is, because by admtting my failures, I let go enough to move into the future. Otherwise, you are trapped by feelings of murkiness at unclear boundaries, unsure of how to proceed. Even worse when you establish boundaries and they run right over them due to the nature of their personalitites. It’s hard to deal with consequences when you know your ADHD is at fault- your disorder, not your personality. No one else can excuse your behavior, a “get out of jail free” card, but people might have more empathy for you if you’re honest rather than trying to hide the limitations in how your brain works. It helps other people cope in the way they phrase things to you so that conflict doesn’t pop up to begin with.

So many people do not establish boundaries at the beginning of a relationship, the most important time. That way, when you’re wrong it’s clear you’re wrong. There’s no way to argue about it, you apologize and move on. Difficult to do when the other person’s response is to shut down at a threat. It only keeps you out, it doesn’t help to resolve anything. People think they feel better by avoiding a problem when solving it is just harder than they thought and they give up. Understanding someone else’s perspective is so hard when you’re invested in the fact you’re right.

Nobody made you do anything, yet no one should make you do everything. We are built for friendship intimacy, eros, agape and philia, whether you’re monogamous and coccoon with one partner, shutting the rest of the world out, or whether you’re a social butterfly. But there is also a fine line between interdependence and codepence, which everyone should study. You cannot be emotionally intimate with just one person and expect all your needs to be met. You don’t have a sounding board with which to correct the story that you’re telling yourself. You have to have friends with whom to bitch about your spouse and a spouse to bitch with about your friends. But both parties have to know that you’re just going somewhere to vent, you’re not going somewhere to make an escape plan….. and it always will be if you don’t develop emotional bravery.

I haven’t had it lately. I’ve met some incredible friends and dropped off the face of the earth because I had to- I’ll get back in touch. I am just trying so hard to focus on my own mental health that it’s taking my ability to connect with others. I just don’t have the spoons. I am in the unenviable position as to having anxiety about going through all of this on top of social anxiety when I call people, a necessary evil when you’re dealing with health insurance companies, GPs, and specialists…. not to mention the government if my occupational therapy doesn’t reveal my gaps and fix them. It just feeds my anxiety that I’m incapable of living within a system that helps most people. I do not want to go the disability route in the slightest. I just don’t know where I am on the spectrum and I want to get it resolved. Why I can spill my thoughts like a pro and struggle with things that make you look like a dumbass in neurotypical eyes. I think that’s because neurodivergents are not managers unless they’re high-functioning ADHD. Enough executive function to deal with fires and not drop details in paperwork. I think that’s because younger people are diagnosed than me, have had years of training in how to cope. I have no idea how people just learn those things on the fly, and get horribly anxious when I struggle.

People with ADHD require inertia, hard to get started when you’re bipolar and anxious about everything. I don’t need to tap out, I need to tap in. I’m just discovering that the barriers to entry are great and I wish I could hide from it. Surely I’ll just get better by not leaving my house because a magic fairy will come and fix me.

Learning to deal with autism and ADHD is the grief that you’ll never get your moment. You are told your entire childhood that eventually things will all come together as you get experience and I have gotten none of that. I have developed a talent for bullshit that I only saw when I started getting real. Patterns emerged in my writing that I couldn’t see before, the reason my autism is beating out my ADHD on a consistent basis. Going out is too much stimulation, but my ADHD side makes it where staying home isn’t stimulating enough. So, I go out and want to come home nearly immediately because walking in the world seems like our entire society is blaring at me. It is through no fault of their own. It’s my sensory percepton issues. The world is loud even if you were born neurotypical, male, white, able-bodied, straight, and cis. With sensory perception issues, the fact that the tag on your t-shirt is scratching the back of your neck feels as important as anything the boss has handed down, because the stimulation of it is overwhelming and covers everything else.

“It’s just a tag.”

I don’t go anywhere in which I don’t feel armored to take on the world. Clothes that do’t irritate me, comfortable shoes, a hoodie to guard against being cold in the air conditioning or outside in the season for it (you need good gloves, socks, an insulating layer like a vest or thermal shirt, and shoes padded on the inside with good tread. More important than the quality of your coat- with all that, I can wear a hoodie. Uniqlo. Look into it.). In the winter, I like sweats and long underwear as opposed to jeans…. but an open cuff so that I don’t always have to wear sneakers with them…. and stirrup pants drove me crazy in the ’80s because of the elastic strap. I wore them anyway because I liked the feeling of my pants not sliding loose and they kept me warm. I like hiking sandals with socks, but the kind that look like tennis shoes so that only the color of your sock shows through. I like wearing them without socks, but it doesn’t look good with pants. The reason for this is that in the cold, water dries quickly from your shoe, but not from your socks. They get soggy and you’re finished. With hiking sandals, you dump out the water and your foot is warm again because of the rubber in your shoe heating back up. Sandals don’t have anywhere for water to absorb except the top straps…. and we have already mentioned that my toes are covered. I don’t understand those people, but William Sledd’s Summer Rant goes through my head when I see it. “If you see someone with a toe ring, I would just go up to them and say, ‘girl? What the fuck is on your toe?'” “The anklle bracelet…. the perfect accessory to a toe ring.” I think it came out over 10 years ago, and it makes me double over with laughter every single time.

Again, entertaining my audience through only storytelling, a stream of consciousness unmasking of what it’s like to live in a neurodivergent brain and the struggles in remaining positive around it. You don’t immediately realize it’s relentless. And then the struggle sets in. This is not a transitory state. This is the same hassle you’d feel if your cat got diabetes. You mean I’m going to have to give it shots for the rest of my natural life? You mean I’m going to have to teach housesitters how to do it? You mean I have to justify why I’m willing to take care of an animal with serious needs? It’s all too much because in this case, the cat is you and the last person you want to take care of in that way. Most people are focused on others to avoid the deep dive I do.

And it only helps them so much. Breaking free does not come without costs, but it does come with self-worth when you realize you do things extraordinarily well…. it’s just not the way in which everyone expects. I hope that one day I’m in the position to say that I don’t like the crowd and where it’s headed so that I’m grateful for this journey, but right now it’s too difficult and scary to say that.

I just know that I have a doctorate in bullshit, and now I’m learning all the reasons why…. not to avoid having responsibility, but to learn which ones I can manage.