Turning Normal Slowly

You may be wondering why I haven't posted here for a while. The reality is that my initial excitement has become somewhat diminished because, although I am still getting physically fitter, I am suddenly very aware of my difficulties socially. I am certainly much more confident than I was a few years ago but I definitely have a long way to go. This is the reality of having an developmental condition such as autism - there are occasional periods of growth interspersed by swathes in which nothing much happens. This is why I have long since learned that accepting myself is a much more effective route to happiness than creating a myth of finding a cure.

Delayed Feedback

Many years ago, I had a habit of asking people to give me feedback about myself so that I would know if they were offended or otherwise negatively affected by me. This would have been very useful at a time in which I was not very good at picking up more subtle signals. Of course, everyone was very uncomfortable with the idea and no-one was willing to help me out. As I get much better at reading people, I have been noticing things that I have been doing for a long time that don't seem to get a positive reaction, in at least a few cases from people I have known for more than a decade. Wouldn't it be so much quicker and easier if we could all be more honest?

Baby Steps

Today, ridiculous as it may sound, I have been learning how to walk. Now, obviously I knew the basics of walking before - put one foot in front of the other and all that - but the specifics turn out to be rather more complicated than I had realised. For instance, I seem to have spent my entire life placing each foot on the ground flat, rather than lowering it down gently from the front. As a result, I have barely used my knees and ankles for the past thirty years. No wonder they are so weak. I'd better get a hang of this walking lark pretty soon as I am supposed to be running a marathon in eight months time. I'm sure it will be as easy as riding a bike although, unfortunately, I'm not too sure about my prowess in that area either.

The Eyes Have It (or Maybe Not)

I have always had lots of problems with my eyes. As well as the classic autistic symptom of not making enough eye contact, I have had very poor peripheral vision and depth perception, hayfever, sensitivity to bright light and incredible vulnerability to infection. It has recently become clear to me that these issues are all in fact related to one another, and that there are remarkable connections with the way that I think more generally as well.

Exercising the eyes is not something that most people think of doing, and it is not very easy. However, I have gone through phases of trying various things from facial stretching to blinking, and then forgotten all about them. More recently, my face has become able to relax, following work on my all-over fitness, and these exercises have now begun to bear fruit for the first time. Nevertheless, I have been surprised in the improvement in both my overall vision and my eye contact, and my annual eye infection has not returned. Furthermore, following a traumatic day in Luxembourg that put my eyes under tremendous pressure resulting in an intense workout, my hayfever and sensitivity to bright sunshine have been unusually mild.

I have made some curious discoveries about eye contact, at a time when psychologists are beginning to look at similar issues. When a paper last year suggested that schoolchildren avert their gaze to think, it caused amusement in the autistic community. It seemed to confirm what we have known all along, that looking at people disrupts our cognitive processes, and our intelligence may necessarily be at the expense of social skills. Now I might have found evidence that the truth is even more complex.

True to stereotype, my memory for facts has been generally brilliant. I could, for example, tell you the capital city of every country in Europe. However, I have been aware that when it comes to remembering details about the lives of people that I know, my performance has left a lot to be desired. Worst of all, my mind has been at its blankest when actually talking to someone. Now I wonder whether looking at a person is largely beneficial for this type of recall and for solving social, rather than practical problems. I have been experimenting with this hypothesis and it seems to be working so far, although it is too early to be sure. It may be the case that certain other types of thinking, such as intuition and creativity, also improve when the eyes are engaged. It have been testing this possibility with crosswords and Countdown and it may be working. On the other hand, my ability to 'think outside the box' has always been pretty good so I do not want to be too quick to draw firm conclusions at this stage.

Unfortunately, all this conjures up a fear that perhaps it will be hard for others to understand, a fear that improving my eye contact will diminish my cognitive skills in other areas. I feel that it would be wise to keep running through my European capitals in order to ensure that I have not lost any. I have always had a sense that a part of me dies whenever I forget something and my biggest fear would be to acquire something like Alzheimer's Disease. Perhaps that is why this trivia seems so precious.

In any case, let's not get carried away. I can relax my eyes but they tend not to stay relaxed, and my eye contact drifts unless I concentrate on maintaining it. Imagine having to concentrate in order to breathe, or make the heart beat. Perhaps it is partly my fear holding me back. I continue to experiment but I do hope to find a middle ground, a way of enjoying the benefit of fully functioning eyes without giving up too much in return.

New Life, New Blog

Welcome to 'Help! I'm Turning Normal'. I have created this blog so that I can post about some curious things happening in my life at the moment. I don't want to discuss them on my other blog for two reasons. Firstly, there is an awful lot to say about the situation which looks as though it is likely to continue to develop for some time and, secondly, I have been finding it difficult to talk about personal stuff on my other blog. I think this is partly because I get too comfortable with writing my social commentary and it is then difficult to get away from the tone that this creates. I still want to blog about these issues, and I will continue to do so. However, let's face it, as a disabled person who harbours a desire to be a writer, the market is such that 'my experience of life' is going to be what sells. It will also be a good challenge for me to try my hand at a new genre, however cringeworthy.

As the title suggests, the theme is going to be my ongoing experience of becoming less 'autistic', but there are a number of important caveats that must be made at this point. For one thing, I am not becoming cured of autism, which is genetically inherited and incurable. Nevertheless, it is a developmental disorder, which means that development is slowed rather than being prevented entirely, and it is quite common, especially for people with high-functioning forms of autism, to begin to show less severe symptoms in their thirties and forties. It is particularly striking for me at the moment because I am going through a period of very rapid change after a few years of stasis. And that brings me to another caveat. It would be easy and cliched to present this story in an unambiguously positive light but, in fact, there are downsides and worries about what is happening, as with any sudden change in a person's life, and I hope to present a fully balanced picture by shedding light on these aspects as well.

To begin, I should explain that I have always had a compulsive interest in self-improvement, since a severe depressive episode in my first year of university. I have had an uncountable number of hours of psychotherapy and have I read many 'popular psychology' books of varying degrees of usefulness. I have also been trying to get fit by doing regular exercise for at least a decade, and I even went to night classes for several months to try to improve my speaking voice. However, while I was successful in overcoming my depression, I did not get as much out of all this effort as I would hope, given the amount of determination that I have applied to the task. In particular, in certain key areas, such as social skills, I continued to struggle. I got better by accepting myself rather than by changing myself.

About three months ago, I discovered Pilates, and I knew immediately that I had made a breakthrough with regard to my physical fitness. Because I have always been very unfit, it was not really a case of regaining fitness but obtaining it for the first time so, along with the lack of co-ordination that is a common feature of autism, I needed to get to my core muscles in order to make serious progress. My previous exercise regimes had clearly failed to acheive this. Suddenly, I am starting to get fit and quickly. More remarkably, my balance has also improved and I am much less clumsy. I am now also better at learning new physical movements, such as aerobic exercises, which had always been a mystery to me in the past. All of these factors have combined to make my overall fitness programme much more effective. I might even be running the 2007 London Marathon, who knows?

Alhough this is all amazing, there is one knock-on effect that has really surprised me. I am now able to relax. Despite trying all sorts of relaxation exercises, meditation, and Tai Chi, this is something that I have never been able to manage in the past. Can you imagine the relief? As a result, the tension is disappearing from my face, smiling is becoming easier, and my relaxed eyes have less trouble maintaining eye contact. Even my voice is improving as my throat relaxes and my nearly-forgotten voice exercies are starting to bear fruit. This seems to be a general theme of the whole experience. Much that I have learnt of which I have previously been unable to make use, I may now be able to apply. It is possible that my memory could allow me to make very quick progress indeed. On the other hand, I have been here before, hoping that my life is about to change only to be disappointed. It feels different this time but it is impossible to predict what will happen. In any case, it will be fun finding out. Watch this space!