As a person with Autism, one method I employ in my effort to make sense of the world around me is to replay and review experiences from all angles in order to better understand certain situations.   I usually do this while sleeping.  I have an excellent visual memory and remember situations in great detail-often in a “movie-like” fashion.  This allows me to study a situation post-humorously, so that the stress that may have been present during the experience is absent.  I can also initiate this process in quiet meditation, but it is easier for me to study life while I am sleeping.  This is a coping tool that I have used since I was a child and only recently discovered that this ability does not come naturally to everyone.  I have been told there is a term for this; “lucid dreaming.  Simply put, whenever I find myself in a situation that stimulates an anxiety response, I just tell myself to relax and figure it out later while I sleep. 

For many with autism, social interaction does not come naturally.  For me, it has been necessary to master this weakness for survival in the corporate world.  The greatest compliment I receive is from the people who comment that I do not seem to struggle with the social aspect.  I work to compensate for this weakness with mental preparation.  My practice of introspection and review has been a spring board for “witnessing myself”, so that I can  improve how I respond to others in a manner more acceptable to them.   I replay actions and emotions so that I am able to be more like them and am even able to genuinely connect with people under the right conditions.

I have sensory integration difficulties so to me, the world often sounds like the high volume and chaotic tuning session preceding a symphony performance.  The noise is distracting and irritating.  It is only through active, mindful preparation that I can put the filters in place to manage the chaos, allowing me to function well in this stimulating world.  This hypersensitivity affects every aspect of my senses-both positively and negatively.  Noises, visuals, textures, tastes, smells & sounds are all amplified.  On the positive side, my response to music, food, art, beauty and physical pleasure can be intensely enjoyable.  The negative impact occurs when my senses are over stimulated which can cause unpleasant reactions including physical pain.

As a child, I was a late talker.  When I did talk, it was not very often.  I preferred to be alone and I was allowed to be that way.  My behavior was often excused as shyness.  I would spend countless hours drawing or painting. I have a gift for replicating or copying a photo perfectly using most artist mediums, but I can’t paint or draw from my imagination and am unable to replicate faces.  I also struggle with recognizing how people I have met look, but I can describe other aspects of a person that most people do not notice.  It is not the physical features that are memorable to me, but their esoteric facets that stick in my cortex.  I have had a lifetime goal focused on figuring out the abstract in people which drives me to notice the abstruse and layered complexities in humans. 

I had no professional or medical intervention for my condition when I was young, but the psychologist who diagnosed my autism in my adult years felt that my parents handled my differences (and my gifts) perfectly as a child.  Many of the tools and tricks they instinctively and intuitively utilized are ironically similar to modern techniques that are used in professional therapy offices. 

I have had a very enjoyable career in technology due to gifts that are often common in many people on the autistic spectrum. The ability to memorize detailed information combined with the capacity to rapidly calculate math allowed me to excel quickly in the field of telecommunications before automated computer design programs were commonplace.  I was fortunate that my work did not require much communication with others.  Spoken and written language did not come naturally to me in those earlier years.

I married and eventually started my own business designing telecommunication systems. Running my own company was a profession which suited my need to control everything. I found that as a business owner, people tended to better tolerate my eccentricities.  It was somehow more acceptable to be a “Miss Know-it-All” who had a difficult time grasping that some people have a problem with you knowing it all.  

I had just launched the business when I delivered a healthy baby boy who was so easy to care for that never a day went by that I did not feel blessed to have him.  My business grew exponentially and my husband, child and I moved to the Pacific Northwest.   Over time it became apparent that our marriage would not survive our extreme differences.   The difficult divorce launched a deeply personal introspection through which I found a new comfort level with myself and my differences. 

I started a second company with new and exciting challenges. As part of this process, I designed and built a commercial building that catered to my sensory integration difficulties.  Perhaps not so strangely, when I eventually placed the building for sale, the woman who bought it found the designs and modifications conducive to her work providing therapy to autistic children. http://mindsourcecenter.com  .   Through this business transaction, we became business associates and I learned about many of the modern techniques being practiced in the professional counseling field of autism.  She, in turn, gained insight into my world of autism.   

In 2004, an accident at work resulted in an electrical shock to my head.  This accident delivered a new set of challenges for me.  Physically, there were extreme headaches and some tooth damage. I struggled with dyslexia, short term memory loss and the inability to make sense of anything I tried to read.  I lost the capacity to lucid dream and view things remotely- which was my biggest tool for making sense of the world.  I felt like I was learning how to cope with my autism all over again. Four weeks after the electrical accident, I discovered I was pregnant. 

I delivered a healthy, but neurologically challenged baby and was married to my new son’s Father.  Struggling with my own new challenges and my son’s “spectrum-like” difficulties, I dove into my past to recall my childhood so that I could better assist my son and myself.  This intensive recall of my past has been a gift to me, my son and I hope will be to others looking to understand more about autism.

 Three years after the accident, most of the capabilities I lost after the electric shock came back.  Those that did not come back were compensated for by a welcome new capacity- to articulate and communicate how my thoughts take shape inside my head.    Through this new gift of communication I am documenting my journey, hoping to open doors into the mind of Autism.