So today, I'm going to share with you my diagnosis journey
I found out I was on the spectrum about three years ago now and
at the time Asperger's put a name to something that I felt like I'd been struggling with my entire life
From as early as I can remember I've had this feeling that I was different and that different was bad
so you can imagine that finally putting a name to that and embracing that difference was incredibly liberating
so this story today is probably going to be a little bit raw because
I feel as though
it would be more authentic of me to just keep talking and you can see a little bit more of my personality rather than
heavily filtering it via
editing and scripting and things like that so hopefully that's okay with you and also to help me
keep my train of thought I'll probably walk around a little bit because
that really, helps a lot in terms of remembering what I'm going to say and having that train of thought keep going
so
my diagnosis
This is probably one of the
most commonly asked questions, I do a lot of speaking gigs so chatting to
haha chatting,
presenting to
students and teachers and companies and things about
how to leverage the strengths of autism and what autism is and sharing my story and all of that kind of stuff and
they very often ask me. You know so you found out you're on the spectrum only just recently like what happened
What's the story there and?
Usually there's not really much time for me to give a very detailed answer so the short answer that I give is
I read a book called Look Me in the Eye
My Life with Asperger's, which is an autobiography of John Elder Robison
And I got about halfway through that book and it was resonating so deeply with me that I put the book down
Googled Asperger's, found a support group meeting and everything snowballed from there
So that's the short answer right
satisfied?
There's quite a few questions that kind of get left unanswered
with such a concise answer
so that's what I want to share with you today
in terms of my story
Because the questions that come to mind are things like, you know, I discovered I have Asperger's at the age of 30
How was it not obvious before then what did I think autism was?
Before I discovered that I was autistic
How did I go at school how did I go with friends all of that kind of stuff so
There is even quite a few things that I wasn't sure if I was happy sharing publicly
But I've decided
to include them anyway. Again, because I really believe in the power of
honesty
as a force that can connect us so
Yeah, so there'll be a couple of surprises that I'm a little bit nervous about but we'll cross that bridge when we get there
so
I remember when I was really young, maybe seven or eight
the first time I came across what autism was and
I must have heard the word or sent it on TV or something and I remember asking my dad.
What is autism?
and to this day I still remember the gist of the response and basically the response was
A typical kid will play with toy trucks and cars
and they will sort of roll them around and pretend that they're real, right?
And the difference between that and an autistic kid
is the autistic child will turn the car upside down and spin the wheels
So as like a seven or eight year old that sounded like a pretty good answer
And I felt like I knew what autism was now
In hindsight I used to play with Matchbox cars
and I didn't turn them upside down, and I didn't spin the wheels
But I didn't imagine that they were real cars
I was more interested in the physics of the situation
I was more interested in this object as an object rather than as what the object is supposed to represent
So for example I would get two cars and I would basically
Collide them into each other so they bounce off each other and see which one
Flipped over in which one didn't flip over and that was really really interesting to me
so I would have these epic battles where I'd get every single car and
compete them against every other car and see which one was left at the end of this at the end of this dual and
I remember my very favorite one was like a Formula One racing car and
It always won, because it was so low and all the other cars kind of went up
over the top of it and slipped over so it was by far my favorite and
Then once I had a favorite I used to champion it
and it would go up against these massive trucks like hundreds and thousands of times its size
And it would always win of course because it was you know in my imagination this was this was my game
And the special secret was if you push down on the spoiler at the back of the car
It kind of flips up the front of the car
So if you do that at the right time it kind of flips over the... anyway
So
That's clearly imaginative play, right?
I was clearly being very imaginative, but what I wasn't doing was
pretending that this little car was a little car
so
I was almost being too imaginative because for me the idea of pretending
This thing was an actual Formula One racing car
and pretending it goes round a track in circles really fast. That was kind of boring
whereas
Having an epic battle where it battles a monster truck a thousand times its size was much more interesting
so anyway. That's beside the point.
I guess what I'm trying to say is I had an idea of what autism was and
That idea didn't really fit me at all so that's why I had no idea that I was on the spectrum
Meanwhile I was in the 'special and gifted' class at school
And I knew more about dinosaurs and planets than any other adult that I knew
after years of constant teasing
I finally found a couple of friends at Primary School
Which was alright at the time, and then when I went to high school all of a sudden...
How you socialize is instead of actually playing games
you just sit around and talk
so I spent the next like five or ten years trying to learn how to have a conversation
going from speaking too much to not speaking enough to basically having absolutely no clue what to do and
That meant that I was always on the outer of any kind of group, and it was really hard to get a second chance
To make a better impression when someone got to know me a bit better
so the next important part of the story is at the age of 16
I radically changed my hairstyle, and I got dreadlocks
So I've made a couple of videos on this if you want to check out some of my other videos
But the the crux of the story is that the dreadlocks
radically changed how other people perceived me. So even though I wasn't any different
all of a sudden they no longer saw me as boring and shy in awkward right?
I had this aura of confidence and stuff that I had no idea where it came from but all of a sudden
that's how they saw me
so my social life exploded, virtually overnight, and the short answer to the story is that I never had trouble making friends ever since then
There was a quality particular quality about the dreadlocks themselves and with the image that they gave me that
basically covered up all of those natural weaknesses that I'd been struggling with in the previous years
so with those weaknesses covered up
by the dreadlocks
compensated for by this
magical amazing coping strategy of my hair
no one suspected that I might have Asperger's, not even me, right?
So I finished high school. I went through university. I got a job I got married
I bought a house and everything was seemingly going really really well
so by this stage my
impression of what Asperger's was started to be
Influenced I guess by characters like Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory and
I remember sitting at my desk in my engineering office reading some kind of statistic like
the headline reads
Engineers are 10% more likely to have autistic children, and I remember laughing out loud thinking
Are you serious? Engineers are 10% more likely to be autistic!
Looking around the office, high intelligence, narrow interests, poor social skills
Engineers tend to tick a lot of those autistic traits boxes, right?
to give you some idea of the level of obsession
I was working for Boeing as a aircraft structural engineer and so a lot of the other guys would
describe themselves as Aero-sexuals
Because they loved planes so much, right?
That's the kind of level of obsession that we're talking about here, so
Anyway at this stage. I started thinking
Maybe that is me? I mean I do tick a lot of those boxes
so I went online and I looked up autism and I looked up Asperger's and
I basically got a list of things that I shouldn't be good at
so troubles with communication troubles making friends
Repetitive behavior, all of those kind of things and I thought
Can I really say that I have a deficit in my communication?
Can I really say that I've had trouble making friends?
I mean sure, as a teenager, but doesn't everyone have trouble making friends as a teenager? That's a very turbulent time
What else?
yeah, can I really say that repetitive behavior is a problem?
so
It was a stretch. It was a real stretch, and I came to the conclusion that
in a similar way, so my
my wife at the time was studying psychology
And it was a well known phenomenon that every class she went to she'd come back and say
Oh, I've got this new condition
I've just diagnosed myself with, I just learnt about this, and it's exactly me
So I thought am I just doing that? Am I just projecting some of this stuff on myself just because I take a couple of the boxes?
so I diagnosed myself as an 'engineer' and
I rationed, reas..., rash... whatever... I argued to myself that
Engineers have all of these traits
That are kind of in common with autism so
I'm not autistic
I'm just an engineer and there's no way you could really, it would be a bit of a stretch to call that a disability in my case
Another factor that led me to put the idea of myself being on the spectrum to bed completely at the time was
I had an in-law who was
so stereotypically Aspie. It was not funny
You could just put a camera on him and make it into a TV show
he was high achieving
he was an academic
He'd done a PhD. He spent most of his time alone with his computer
He wasn't good at body language or reading social cues. He would just talk to you at length and
had no idea that you have no interest in whatever he's talking about
He had some friends, but I'm talking like three or four right so
He fit the social categories as well
And it was so obvious to us at the time that he was on the spectrum that it wasn't even a question
It wasn't, "oh, maybe he's on the spectrum, maybe we should look into this?"
It was open and shut case so we didn't even talk about it
so with all those things put together
they formed my perception of what autism was in real life, and I came to the very firm conclusion at the time.
There's no way that I'm on the spectrum because
I'm not like this guy over here, and I don't really fit those diagnostic criteria with all those deficits
and I'm not like Sheldon from the Big Bang Theory.
At least not, you know we show a few things in common, but you know, nowhere near as extreme as that so
That closed the book for me at the time for another couple of years
so hopefully that answered some of the questions around how I spend 30 years not knowing that I was on the spectrum so
Stay tuned for part two of this diagnosis journey
where I will be sharing what the turning point was where it suddenly all clicked and all of those reservations
thinking that these things don't apply to me.
I finally understood what they really were in real life, and how I actually do tick all of those boxes
so I hope you've enjoyed this story so far
and stay tuned for the next segment next week, okay. Bye
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