The Many Shapes of Sharing
It's been several weeks now since I last wrote here, and there are many reasons for that, most of which I'm still trying to fathom, so I guess I might as well do it in writing.
The biggest reason for my silence has been keeping up with my classes at the Playhouse, which is taking nearly all of my mental, physical, and emotional energy (in a way, that's what I signed up for). My recent struggles have been exacerbated by the fact that I have had to give up on taking my prescribed stimulant medication because—while it certainly helped me focus and persist in tasks that required sustained attention—it also made my stutter much worse and led me to getting overwhelmed even faster than usual, not to mention the fact that, like every medication I have ever tried, it has had the ultimate side effect of making me feel like I'm not myself. The withdrawal period has been marked by worsening anxiety (a lifelong rival), stomach upset, headaches (a childhood foe), physical tics (hand flapping, knee shaking, general fidgeting), a desire to binge eat (an old frenemy), and extreme emotional lability that I can only rationalize as a result of feeling constantly listless. This comes out in various ways during the Meisner exercise (how could it not?) and, for a week or two, had me convinced that most of my classmates think I'm some sort of damaged freak: someone they might have an interest in working with but not someone they really want to know.
Alongside this, I began to strongly consider the possibility that I might be on the autism spectrum, which has been suggested to me by several people in my past, who I dismissed out of hand because of my own ignorance of the subject. After much reading (not random social media posts, mind you, but books by experts as well as many firsthand accounts by autistic people themselves), I decided to pursue assessment by a qualified professional (PsyD) here in New York state, and I was ultimately diagnosed with ASD (and had my ADHD reconfirmed) last Sunday, October 22, 2023.
What does this mean? In short, I'm still figuring that out. It's not an easy answer—if it is the answer at all (I have a healthy suspicion of every diagnosis because of past experience, but I also have an unhealthy history of imposter syndrome, so it is hard to know from whence this particular doubt stems). However, this diagnosis would seem to explain a lot about me, about how I have been, how I am, and how I might be if I can accept some of my differences as differences instead of problems. It would explain, among other things, my lifelong struggle to make friends, my apparent unsettling of strangers, my tendency to overshare in one-on-one conversations (I had an ex that, rightfully, accused me of making every dialogue about myself, which I never intended—who would intend such a thing?—but can see in retrospect), my frustrations with Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (which hasn't helped me much though I've tried many times, more than nearly anyone I know), and my lifelong struggles to contribute to group conversations (outside of a structured, classroom setting where ordered turn taking is the norm) without feeling like I'm dominating the discussion, interrupting, or otherwise coming off as rude or self-centered. And when I contribute enthusiastically to classroom discussion but turn mute the moment class ends, my aphasia is taken as reticence, my giving others space interpreted as an unwillingness to participate because I think I'm better than everyone else (which couldn't be further from the truth).
But I have often thought that I'm different—not special, or unique—but behaviorally different in a categorical way, like an alien in a human suit, and with years of practice I have learned to notice when other people see me like this, though I usually don't quite understand why. I refuse to give up on my dreams or withdraw into hermithood (if I really considered that as an option, I wouldn't be here), yet it is sometimes agonizing to have people repeatedly misread/misinterpret my feelings, and the Meisner exercise forces me to confront exactly how often this happens.
I have spent my whole life trying—and ultimately failing, in most cases—to fit in. But I got good enough at trying that, even when people could tell there was something (from their perspective) wrong with me, they were often wrong about what was wrong with me (ironic, I know). Many therapists and doctors—separated as they were by the very nature of the therapeutic process from my perception of acute moments of social context, compelled to make their determinations based on my vague verbal recounting of such events—diagnosed me with depression and social anxiety: in other words they only named my primary symptoms without making any real attempt to identify their underlying cause. If there was any consideration of the cause at all, it usually came in the form of an assumption followed by an overly simplistic explanation, such as "You just have a chemical imbalance in your brain" (a highly questionable hypothesis that has been challenged by a few brave experts in books like The Myth of the Chemical Cure).[1] Because these efforts focused so intently on treating symptoms, they essentially dismissed the importance of the cause. They created a false dichotomy: change the way you think (either chemically or by actively creating different thinking habits over time) or get fucked. On several occasions I was told things by doctors that, even if they came from a place of care, were at bottom manipulative: think about the dangers of not treating your depression, you might end up in a mental hospital, nearly everyone takes medication for something, you wouldn't refuse insulin if you were a diabetic.
Throughout my adolescence and young adulthood I did just about everything—including quite a few things I shouldn't have—to figure myself out, eventually leading to an ADHD diagnosis earlier this year that seemed to explain many of my struggles.[2] So I was prescribed yet another medication that I and my doctor hoped would help me with yet another list of symptoms, and it did, for a time. But the same medication that helped me write for longer stretches at my computer in one go also made me too aware of all of my senses all of the time: I could feel every fiber of clothing against my skin, I could hear my watch ticking on my wrist, and the sound of a passing ambulance would make my whole body tense up as if I had heard a bloodcurdling scream (even worse if I was walking along the same street and had to see the lights as they flashed by). My stutter got worse, and even the smallest object not in its designated place at home would make me panic and/or burst into tears.
Part of me feels like I would never have even considered an autism diagnosis without going through the experience I'm going through now. For every other year of my school life, I learned to ignore the behavior of others towards me to avoid getting hurt, to cope, to survive. But engaging in a program where I have the same people in every class with me every day, studying the Meisner technique which is all about taking in and answering other people's behavior, it is impossible to not come to the conclusion that my behavior is different in key ways. I laugh when I'm not supposed to. I get tense easily. It's clear to me that I have a presence and an intensity of gaze that most other people find uncomfortable, but while I might understand why, I can't imagine how to change it in a way that wouldn't make me seem timid (the opposite extreme). I often get the impression from people that I've offended them in some way without trying to (usually I am explicitly attempting to not offend anyone by keeping my mouth shut, and looking where it feels like I'm supposed to: towards the instructor or whomever is speaking the loudest at the time).
And now that I've been diagnosed, I have to wonder about if, when, how, and why to tell or not tell people about it. It's like coming out all over again (which is never finished: most people, I think, still assume I'm either straight or closeted). It's another aspect of myself that other people might not see clearly, that might make other people uncomfortable if brought to light (and, therefore, make me seem somehow inconsiderate by bringing it to light, at least in certain contexts). But I guess that's why I'm writing about it on the internet, where people can find it if they want to and take it or leave it. It doesn't define me, but it is part of who I am, a part of me I want to continue learning about, continue accepting, and hopefully give up hiding (which never works anyway).
I know as much as anyone that the decision whether or not to pursue medication is highly personal, and I have taken many different kinds with the support of various healthcare professionals, most of whom cared deeply about my wellbeing. Some of those medications helped me in certain contexts, and some of them hurt me in ways I am still trying to comprehend and articulate. Both because of and despite my own struggles (as well as those of several people very dear to me), I believe unequivocally that there should be no shame associated with seeking relief from despair, panic, executive functioning issues, or for that matter any other problem human beings in modern societies are made to face as individuals isolated by systemic forces that seek to normalize behavior into a very narrow "acceptable" range by demonizing, erasing, or otherwise discouraging differences of all sorts. That said, I find it important for reclaiming my own sense of autonomy to enumerate why some specific approaches haven't worked for me, in particular. ↩︎
I wrote a long essay thinking this through to begin this blog, most of which I still stand by. You can read it here. ↩︎