Neurodiversity

While pouring my son cereal…

~ gypsy116toast2001 ~ Leave a comment

I know that I have been MIA. I’ve had a life circumstance that I have not wanted to discuss publicly. I am still unclear on when, if ever, and what, if anything, that I will want to share. What I will say, is that I’ve had a recent hospital stay (nothing for anyone to worry about, with any luck the situation has now fully been resolved. If you would like to send any kind of positive energy that that is in fact the case, it would be appreciated) and it’s got me thinking.

I’m feeling curious about communication. How much of what a person “hears” you say is only their interpretation? How much is what they actually heard you say? Your actual words?

During the interview with the doctor at the hospital, the one where they take the “history” of the presenting problem, I had mentioned getting my son breakfast. While looking through the after visit notes in MyChart, I saw that the doctor had written that I had said, “while pouring my son cereal”. I most definitely did not say that. My son has never even tried cereal. That is something that has met full on rejection at anyone’s suggestion. What I did do was put peanut butter and syrup on a chocolate pancake (Kodiak cakes) that his dad had just finished cooking and mixed up his electrolyte/multivitamin/magnesium/mineral concoction that we refer to as “juice”.

There were several other discrepancies too but none that stood out as so blatantly not what I said. I’m not upset about it, it’s not the doctor’s fault, this is how brains work, right? She heard getting breakfast, getting breakfast to her means cereal, in her memory her brain translated my words into pouring cereal, yeah? But it is a bit disturbing.

As someone who has been severely mistranslated in the majority of conversations I’ve had over my life (I’m not joking, nor being hyperbolic. If I’m not talking to someone who is very close to me, there’s a very good chance that I will be misinterpreted), I wonder how much of what we humans hear other people speak is our own translation? Also, I wonder if this is something that neurotypical humans are particularly bad at? Or maybe it relates to the double empathy issue? Like are neurotypicals more likely to mishear, i.e. hear through they’re own experience, a neurodivergent human? Vice versa? How do we take care not to misinterpret by interpreting through our own memories? How do we actually hear each other? Is it possible?

Thoughts? I’d love to hear them in the comments.

Traumatic Therapy

~ gypsy116toast2001 ~ Leave a comment

I sent this email to a former therapist of mine earlier…

“Hello, 

I know it’s been some time since I was in therapy with you but I’m feeling  the need to share with you a couple of recent revelations that have taken place in my life. I feel that knowing these things prior to engaging in therapy would have been helpful, and I wanted to share on the chance that they could possibly be helpful if you encounter similar clients in the future.

In the past couple of years, I’ve come to discover that my chronic illness was in part caused by chronic exposure to toxic mold. I’ve been diagnosed with mast cell activation syndrome. You had insinuated time and again that if I did more, I would be able to do more. I now have a four year old son. Raising my son has forced me to do a lot more and I became more and more unwell, the more that I had to do, until I ended up in the hospital. Without the mold piece I was never going to be able to progress further with my health. I’ve been out of the mold for about a year and a half and I am just now seeing real improvement. I’m able to eat regularly (not every few hours and through the night) and am beginning to tolerate heat a bit more. 

The other thing, I’ve recently been diagnosed with ASD. After realizing that my son was displaying some autistic traits, I did a lot of research and realized that it was likely that myself and many members of my family are autistic, prompting me to seek assessment. I don’t have a lot to say about this other than that I can now see how a lot of issues I experienced in therapy with you were due to my being undiagnosed autistic. It may benefit you(and most clinicians) to do a little research in order to gain a better understanding of autism and the myriad ways it can present. 

Thanks for you time,”

This therapist was incredibly helpful when I was working towards leaving my then husband. After that, not so much. Therapy with this therapist actually became harmful to me in many ways. This is just a reminder to anyone, if something doesn’t feel right to you in therapy, listen to yourself. You know you best. This is especially important, I think, for autistic people. If you have a non autistic therapist and they’re trying to treat you the way they would someone who is neurotypical, it very well may do you more harm than good. Look out for yourself. You matter.