Improving Your Life With Autism

Improving Your Life With Autism

Chris Hodge

Smashwords Edition

Copyright 2015 Chris Hodge

Smashwords Edition, License Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to your favorite ebook retailer and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Smashwords Edition, Usage Notes

This ebook is intended for entertainment purposes only, and is not intended as legal, personal or other advice. The author and distributors of this ebook are not responsible and will not be held liable for your choices, words or actions, and you can harm others and yourself by being careless.

Foreward

Here's My Story First

-They Always Knew I was Different

-Searching for Something Wrong

-My Flavor of Autism -- The Generic Kind

-How I Learned the Basics

-My High School Days -- Not That Fun But I Survived

-College and Making Dramatic Improvements

Accepting, Participating in and Guiding Change

-Autism and Changes

-Living With Change

-Changing the One Thing You Can -- Yourself

-You Are Changing the World By Being in It

-The World Wasn't Built for You -- But You Can Build Onto It

Dealing With Overstimulation

-Purposeful Sensory Deprivation as a Coping Strategy

-Coping Without Toys

-Using the Power of Hyper Focus

-The Larger Picture as a Map

-If You Need to Regain Control NOW

You are Important

-Other People's Rights Do Not Trump Yours

-Your Rights in the World at Large

-You are Unique, in Autism and Separate From It

-Sometimes You Must Explain the Differences

You aren't THAT Important

-Being Controlling is Being Insecure

-Grudges Hold You

-Your Rights End Where Others' Rights Begin

-Taking Things Too Seriously -- Stop It!

-People Tease -- and So Can You

-Expect From Yourself What You Expect of Others

-Never Criticize, Condemn or Complain -- You Aren't Perfect, Either

-The Workplace -- The Ultimate Test of Your Humility

-The Center of Your Universe

Objects vs. People

-People Are Not Objects

-Others Have the Same Rights You Do

-Objects Are Not Friends

-Even You Need Others

Emotions: A Necessary Evil

-We Aren't Sociopaths

-Let Go of the Bad Things and Pick Up Good Ones

-The Vibrational Scale and How You Can Use It

-You Can Learn Empathy

-How NOT to Sympathize With Others' Plights

-Gratitude, the Anti-Depressed

-It's Possible to Be TOO Honest

Sexual Issues and Being F--ked Up

-Performance Anxiety

-Ejaculatory and Orgasmic Issues

-Excessive Promiscuity and Validation

-Autism and Life Stages

-Your Children May Also Have Autism

Fitting in vs. Standing Out

-Easing Up on the Rules

-Going From Weird to Eccentric

-Don't Act Like a Robot

-Use Your Different Perspective

-Mix Up the Monotony and Grow as a Person

-Vocal Tone and Facial Expressions -- They're Good Stuff

Individual Responsibility and Victimhood

-Other People's Actions Aren't Your Fault

-You Make Your Own Choices

-Playing the Victim Accomplishes Nothing

-Letting Go, Revisited

Obsessions and Social Integration

-When Your Obsessions Bore Other People

-When Their Obsessions Bore You

-Seeing the Connections Between Different Interests

-Regimens and Easing Up

Medicines and Being a Druggie

-Yes, This Society is Obsessed With Drugs

-Dealing With Family and Societal Biases

-Medication May Be Useful

-Medication May Be Totally Useless

-Observing and Controlling Yourself -- The Ultimate Medicine

-Outside Observation -- The Camera Doesn't Lie

Foreward

I wrote this book to help people make less mistakes and live a better life without having to go through some of the nonsense I've had to live with. When I first got diagnosed with a form of autism, there wasn't much to read about the condition and there was even less about how to live with it. Autism is not just a children's problem, though some people forget this. And while it doesn't necessarily harm every aspect of life, the parts autism does impact tend to be hit hard.

So here I come with a small handful of lessons learned and a few tips on how to make your life that much better. I've been extremely negative and proactively gotten more positive over time, which I can help you with. Autism tends to lead to depression because it often feels like we don't belong in this world. We do, but the feeling can be pervasive and lasting.

I'm not going to blow sunshine up your back side here -- having autism isn't all that fun. While there are sometimes advantages to this difference and one can learn a lot about life that neurotypicals don't necessarily need to learn, there are definite disadvantages. When you work to compensate for those disadvantages and work around them, you can actually pull out a reasonable life.

When I read any kind of book on self improvement, I consider it a successful use of time if I learn even one valuable lesson about life from it. I'm going to be ambitious here and aim to give you three or four solid lessons on how to live a better life in these few pages. If we can break ten solid lessons, I'll consider my mission to have been accomplished and then some.

So enjoy this fairly short book on how to live a better life with autism, even if you don't have the difference. If you care about someone who has it, this may shed some light on what they go through on a daily basis -- and you may learn something about how to relate with them more effectively. If nothing else, at least you can say you read a book, and very rarely does something genuinely bad come out of that.

-Chris Hodge

Chapter 1 - Here's My Story First

They Always Knew I was Different

From the time I was old enough to remember, my parents told me all about how unusual of a child I was. I was a super cuddly baby, but I cut off much of the affection by about 1 year old. I didn't talk until I was about 2, and retorted a defiant But I don't wanna in response to a parental reprimand to get out of a cupboard full of fine china. But these things didn't raise any particular red flags. Stuff later on might have, depending on who you are and the preconceptions you have about how a child is supposed to be.

At five years old, I can remember how much I hated corduroy. I hated the ridgy feeling of it, and I can remember feeling a sick twinge that most people only experience amid the din of fingernails scraping across a chalk board. I often got that when I was younger, and I still get it today. I remember the feeling of the material actually making me vomit once -- which actually kept me from intentionally wearing jeans for almost 13 years. I'm not certain if the change back to being okay with more rigid styles had something to do with growing up or if I simply adapted somehow without realizing it.

Naturally, most kids don't have issues with most textures, smells, tastes or whatever. But even without my social skill difficulties or my tendency to speak with a pedantic professor voice, it was obvious to everyone I met that a few things were different about me than the other kids. Usually I got weird from my peers and intelligent from my elders, which made it irritating when a parent or teacher overrode my thoughts in a just because manner. I've noticed that traditional rules of authority are downright strange, but neurotypical people seem to be obsessed with keeping up some kind of hierarchy.

The entire way the world worked has never totally gelled with me. One story from my childhood that my father probably doesn't remember is that I used to trade toys with my neighbor kids, and I usually lost financial value on the deal. What my dad didn't realize on my end was that I always considered what I traded for to be of higher value than the financial cost. When I started paying for my own stuff, this under-appreciation of financial valuation generally changed -- even though I did once trade my worst house for a motorcycle. But that's another story.

One of the other differences I manifested from the very beginning were how annoyed, even angry I got when I had someone over for a long time. For some reason I was basically okay with having the kids my mother sat for over the entire day, but when I invited someone over I would usually get annoyed with their presence within an hour or so. I don't know why this always upset me, but there was always an alien feeling after awhile.

Still another strange idiosyncrasy I had as a child was how I would repeat myself under my breath, almost like a personal echo or something. I have never figured out why I did that, but it was a comforting gesture sometimes. I always just assumed that these strange habits were simply a part of being Chris, and I was called weird so much from an early age that it became a permanently-affixed part of my self image.

From what I've heard, every kid has their idiosyncrasies whether they have autism or not. Maybe you have experiences from your life or that of someone you love who's had unusual mannerisms. Usually when a kid has autism, it's evident from a fairly early age. My parents never said anything about a refusal of eye contact or any of the extremely early signs that some people report, so it's good to remember that every person with autism is an individual with their own baggage to carry.

In my case, I always wondered whether something was wrong with me. I even had an existential dilemma for a time because I didn't feel as if I belonged on this planet. I didn't particularly want to kill myself, but I simply felt as if I didn't belong the way most people do. Looking back, I realize that much of that apparent belonging is either self-hypnosis on the parts of most people or merely an attempt to fake it until one makes it, to paraphrase sales parlance.

As I write this, clinicians around the world are struggling to understand the mechanical aspects of and develop treatments for autism that go as far as to test unborn children. With gene therapy advancing rapidly, there may be a time when autism is detected during the first trimester and eliminated with as much ease as a sonogram. But when I was younger, there was next to no public knowledge of autism -- its causative factors and symptoms were totally unknown to those outside a limited portion of the academic community.

One aspect of my early childhood that has always resonated with me was that I simultaneously loved the comfort of having a set schedule and rules that could be pointed out clearly and hated the rigidity that this caused. I remember once asking my mother why the rules around the house weren't posted where they could be read and clearly understood. I also remember her none-too-satisfying response of, You just need to learn them. I've come to believe that this works reasonably well for neurotypicals, but for those with autism the situation is trickier.

My tendency to act out and think very differently from most children my age manifested early. My parents were sensitive enough to begin my counseling at a young age. While I didn't get much benefit from it early on, I now understand that it wasn't entirely for my benefit. As difficult as it is to have a totally different neurological structure from the norm and not understand the people around oneself, it can be even worse to watch a loved one go through such a lifestyle.

Searching for Something Wrong

The process of searching for what was wrong began when I was 7 years old. At least, that's when I found out about the process. I learned early on that being a young child meant that adults perceive you as being intellectually inferior to themselves, and they consequently hide a great deal of information from you. The first I heard of counseling and the notion that I may have a difference that people could put a name to happened when they called me into a counselor's office in elementary school.

Disturbingly enough, I don't even remember the counselor's name. However, several things stick out to me about the session I can remember with some clarity, but they all boil down to my attempt to be interesting and fit in with what amounted to a group of two. I told a story of how my cousins had enjoying hopping around with their genitals flopping about -- which may or may not be a neurotypical thing -- and I said that I felt like a banana, in imitation of Elroy from an episode of The Jetsons I'd watched a day or two beforehand.

The early counseling resulted in nothing on consequence. No one knew what to make of a boy who could debate at the adult level and read at the collegiate level by second grade, particularly when that boy was socially inept to the point of refusing to play and sometimes ignoring other kids. While I wouldn't have called myself antisocial, that could simply have been me acting like a victim and accusing everyone else of being the antagonists. I had