There are so many areas of human experience where autism is assumed to mean less than or shortfall whereas it’s often a case of more…so much more that it’s untenable and excruciating to be in the experience. Sometimes, the very appearance of so-called shortfall should prompt the question “is way too much going on in there, so much so that it can’t be handled or made sense of, can’t be articulated or processed in conventional ways?”.
When extra intelligence, intensity and sensitivity cross over, they make quite the package...and it can be extremely challenging! Exploring what this looks like, and how to work positively with these traits. for ever-increasing fulfilment and joy.
Twice-exceptionality is such fertile territory to explore for anyone who may have even an inkling it applies to them (assumng they can get over the sticking point of using that much stigmatised word “gifted” for long enough to even consider it). The effect of being gifted in some areas and yet held back in others can make a person seem as though they are coping when they really aren’t, and it can also deprive them of the help, understanding and accommodations they desperately need for their deficit areas, as well as the recognition they deserve for their exceptionality. The outcome can be a lifetime of lost potential, fallen through the cracks, or even total burnout...until both the giftedness and challenges can be seen side by side and looked at in a whole new way.
When one small thing breaks the camel's back, its usually time to stop and pay full attention. So often, its a clue to how we have been giving ourselves to everything, and everyone, else and not to our own needs...a key trait to notice when we have chronic conditions (because there seems to be a link)...
A non-verbal communication style might not mean the complete absence of speech but that it is not, by any means, the default approach to conducting relationships and many people on the spctrum use actions and gesture, as well as writen communications, to convey most of what they really have to say to others. When it comes to kindly gestures, if there is a need and we can somehow fill it because we have the means or can find the missing puzzle piece, we simply bring those two things together because its obvious and we do this because we are innately well-meaning and without guile. The fact we treat it somewhat like putting a male plug with a female socket does not take the humanity out of it; as in, our logical approach does not negate the deep and often hard-for-us-to-express feelings that bottle-up deep inside when our efforts at communication go unnoticed, unwanted or "unheard". Loneliness, wounding and unfulfillment regarding friendships is a very big factor in autism, perhaps even more so for adult females on the spectrum and the wound can run very deep indeed, year on year, when our unique offerings to the world are treated as no more than the transactional deeds of neurotypicality when, really, we are speaking outloud and as eloquently as we can via them (or, at least, the best way we know how).
Some people, and I count myself among them, are prone to experiencing anomalous experiences; that is, experiences that lie outside the so-called "norm", from high-frequency "tones" ay and night to flashing "lights" and many more special effects. These count as some of the most disturbing and supposedly detrimental to quality of life of all experiences people are said to be encountering in their health today; alarming and even depressing them into states of hopelessness in many cases. Yet what if these sensations are not what they seem, via the rundamentory five-senses system we currently rely upon. What if, like the artist scrabbling for the right colour to express a brand new hue that seeks expression and having to draw on many pigments, textures, all kinds of materials mixed torgether just to get even close to an aproximation of this new "message" that is coming through, our bodies are forced to mix up all our sensory messages...yes, like synesthesia...to try and get through to us something that is just so very important...and its all for us to hear.
If some of us feel as though we are floundering under he weight of "feeling too much" then lets take a broader and more optimistic view of this. Together, we are becoming more robust and I suspect the reawakening of the mirror neurone is a signal that we are descaling our furred up neurology in readiness for a bigger experience of all that it means to be human; which is a far less isolated, self-interested, muffled-up-to the ears experience than we have long tended to believe. In my view, this is the stuff of frontline evolution.
Do you struggle, I mean really struggle, to adjust to getting back into your body in the mornings? Even when there's absolutely nothing to worry about, there's no stress, no unhealthy lifestyle habits to explain it, nothing that could be making your cortisol peak when you wake, do you somehow know that you are treading a very fine line as you re-enter your conscious state each day? Have you had to entrain your family to tread very softly around you first thing in the morning because loud noises or sudden announcements get your heart racing, switch on pain? Even when you are perfectly chilled in your mind, ecstatic with life even, is this your "normal" experience of waking; like it's a precision manoeuver? Its a vata kind of a thing...and there are things you should know about how to make this easier.
to fully claim my physicality....to not want to escape it, shrugging it off like an outfit I didn't choose but, rather, to feel the delight and exhilaration of it, daily, like a child that notices everything and never fails to marvel at how beautifully it all works...there are no adequate words. I would go through the whole of the journey again to have reached this point and know what I do about every square inch of this beautiful organic playground of me and how to operate it like never before, relishing its symphony of experiences and the delight of knowing how I chose to have them. It is in this overspilling love for the human bodily experience that the healing of just so many people (certainly mine) can be found and if, in any way, my experiences help to end the stalemate that has been perpetuated for just so long, between those who feel they have struggled with their own body and that they are at logger heads with it, then these words will have been worthwhile.
Living whole 