Posted on April 3, 2021
Since I wasn’t diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder until I was 20, that meant two decades of struggling and struggling particularly when it came to social skills. But despite finding socialising awkward and stressful, no one ever thought much of it. At most, I was labelled extremely shy. The idea that I was autistic simply did not exist – I didn’t behave according to the stereotype so it was just never considered. But still I struggled. So I thought I’d share how I coped with that and what strategies I employed to make socialising easier. Hopefully they’ll be helpful to some of you. Having said this, these are very specific to my experience, the areas in which I function better, and the areas I find more difficult so they won’t necessarily apply to everyone. But I thought I’d share them just in case, just in case one person finds one example helpful.
As I said, I found social skills very difficult to make sense of as a child and teenager. I found it difficult to process and participate in conversations, for example, making friendships and school relationships potential minefields. So, to compensate, I paid great attention to how other people behaved and interacted, analysing and cataloguing it until I had somewhat of an internal database to draw from. Having said that, I don’t think it’s as simple as just copying other people, at least not for everybody; for me, I think the fact that I’ve always done a lot of writing has had a significant impact on my speaking abilities: it taught me a lot about language, about the flow of words, etc. In a sense, it was like practicing social interaction by myself.
There is definitely an element of ‘masking’ (artificially ‘performing’ social behaviour that is deemed to be more ‘neurotypical’ or hiding behaviour that might be viewed as socially unacceptable) when around people but that’s something I want to talk about in a separate, more in depth post. This is not a post that will teach you to mask (something that can be helpful in certain circumstances but become detrimental over extended periods of time); it’s a post containing some tips and tricks that, over the years, I’ve found to be helpful in make socialising less stressful.
Diagnosed as a teenager and older, it can be very difficult to find support and strategies as most of the information is dedicated to young autistic children and the parents of autistic children. So, for those of us diagnosed later, we’re forced to learn how to cope in social situations by ourselves. These are some of the things I personally did to improve my social skills…
I spent the majority of my life stumbling awkwardly through social interactions but once I discovered that it was due to being autistic, I felt a lot less self conscious about it because I understood where it was coming from. And while I can’t and don’t intend to speak for anyone but myself, I’ve had very few negative reactions to disclosing my ASD in social situations. The majority of people are, at most, curious and want to understand; many people barely react. But the fact that many of the people I talk to know that I struggle socially and may mess up (and sometimes fall spectacularly on my face) is comforting. I don’t have to worry about what they’ll think of me. I’m still me, whether I’m articulate or flat on my face.
Category: about me, anxiety, autism, tips Tagged: advice, asd, autism, autism diagnosis, autism resources, autism spectrum disorder, autistic, autistic adult, autistic student, conversation, eye contact, late diagnosis, masking, personal experience, social anxiety, social awkwardness, social skills, speaking, tips, unknown people
Posted on April 2, 2021
Autism Awareness Day always has a theme. Officially, the UN sets the theme but different organisations also choose their own themes; for example, I know that autistica has chosen the theme of anxiety. The official theme (the one set by the UN) is ‘Inclusion in the Workplace: Challenges and Opportunities in a Post-Pandemic World.’ I don’t feel that there’s really anything useful I can add to that conversation, given that I’ve never been well enough to have what society would consider a proper job and that the career path I’m following doesn’t really involve traditional workplaces. So, instead, I thought I’d write about something different, something that has been a really big deal for me this year.
For so long, I just felt like I was broken. And I felt like I was broken in so many places. I couldn’t understand it. Getting the Autism Spectrum Disorder diagnosis helped but there were still all these cracks, all of these problems that no one could make sense of. I had mental health problems, I had chronic fatigue, I had chronic pain, and so on. Nobody could figure out the whole picture and at worst, I was just abandoned by medical professionals, told that my case was just too complicated. That was the most painful part, I think; these people, many of whom it was their job to help with situations like this, were willing to let me continue to struggle rather than put in the effort and help me. It made me feel like I wasn’t worth helping, the toxic best friend of feeling like I was broken.
But in the last few months, with the help of several new medical professionals and some more diagnostic work, the pieces have all slotted into place and, I think, we might finally have the whole picture. So this is the timeline, beginning in 2016 (I might add dates later but I don’t have them all to hand right now).
(I’ve covered some of this before but I think it’s necessary if we’re talking about said whole picture.)
And suddenly all of the pieces started to click together:
THE MENTAL HEALTH ISSUES (TRD, GAD, OCD, AND BPD) AND ADHD ARE, AT LEAST IN PART, CONNECTED TO MY ASD.
MY ASD AND HYPERMOBILITY ARE LINKED.
THE HYPERMOBILITY LED TO A DIAGNOSIS OF hEDS, WHICH EXPLAINS MY CHRONIC FATIGUE, CHRONIC PAIN, AND OTHER PHYSICAL SYMPTOMS.
Discovering that it’s all connected has been a really helpful and comforting revelation. I’m starting to see each condition as a star in one big constellation and that’s a hell of a lot better than feeling inexplicably broken in multiple places. I still have to deal with everything that comes with each of these conditions, of course, but knowing that they’re all part of the same picture does make my health less draining to think about and manage. It all makes more sense. And I am a person that needs things to make sense. So this is all a really big deal.
Category: about me, adhd, anxiety, autism, bpd, chronic fatigue syndrome, depression, diagnosis, heds, mental health, ocd Tagged: actuallyautistic, adhd, anxiety, asd, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, autism, autism awareness, autism awareness day, autism awareness week, autism spectrum disorder, autistic, autistic adult, borderline personality disorder, bpd, chronic fatigue, chronic fatigue syndrome, chronic pain, depression, diagnosis, diagnostic process, ehlers danlos syndrome, generalised anxiety disorder, heds, hypermobile ehlers danlos syndrome, hypermobility, multiple diagnoses, myalgic encephalomyelitis, obsessive compulsive disorder, ocd, social anxiety, treatment resistant depression
Posted on August 22, 2020
I’m not sure how I’ve written roughly two hundred blog posts and never told this story but I recently found the letters containing all the details and so I thought I’d finally tell it because it was a really important moment in my life.
I’d struggled with what obviously turned out to be Autism and the mental health issues that developed due to that going undiagnosed for years but I’d always been dismissed, told that “every teenager struggles.” But if that was true, I couldn’t figure out why everyone seemed to be coping so much better than me. It was awful and I just felt like I was failing and wrong and always slightly out of sync with everyone else. But if this was normal, then I was going to have to figure out how to live with it. Because apparently everyone else had.
As a teenager, I went to the Hay Festival in Hay-on-Wye, Wales a handful of times. It’s a really cool arts festival and I’ve heard (and met) some of my favourite authors there over the years. But my most significant memory is from when I heard Stephen Fry speaking about mental health. What he said changed my life. He talked about his experience with depressive episodes and suicidal ideation and equated the ups and downs of mental health to the weather:
“I’ve found that it’s of some help to think of one’s moods and feelings about the world as being similar to weather. Here are some obvious things about the weather: It’s real. You can’t change it by wishing it away. If it’s dark and rainy, it really is dark and rainy, and you can’t alter it. It might be dark and rainy for two weeks in a row. BUT it will be sunny one day. It isn’t under one’s control when the sun comes out, but come out it will. One day. It really is the same with one’s moods, I think. The wrong approach is to believe that they are illusions. Depression, anxiety, listlessness – these are all are real as the weather – AND EQUALLY NOT UNDER ONE’S CONTROL. Not one’s fault. BUT they will pass: really they will. In the same way that one really has to accept the weather, one has to accept how one feels about life sometimes, ‘Today is a really crap day,’ is a perfectly realistic approach. It’s all about finding a kind of mental umbrella. ‘Hey-ho, it’s raining inside; it isn’t my fault and there’s nothing I can do about it, but sit it out. But the sun may well come out tomorrow, and when it does I shall take full advantage.'”
(This isn’t the exact quote from the event but this is a metaphor he’s used multiple times and is very similar to what he said that day.)
Everything he was talking about made absolute sense to me; for the first time, someone was saying ‘this isn’t normal,’ ‘this isn’t something you should have to learn to live with,’ ‘this is something that can be helped.’ For the first time in my life, I felt like someone understood what I was going through. Some of the feelings and experiences he described were so similar to mine that it took my breath away. I walked out of the tent in a daze and as soon as we had a bit of privacy, I told my Mum everything.
After that, we went to see my GP and started steadily exploring the options that the NHS provided. Things really deteriorated and the search became much more urgent after I failed an exam (I talk about that in this post and this post) and we were forced to go private to get me the help I needed as fast as possible, before it got worse. If you’ve read the posts about me getting my various diagnoses, you’ll know that, after several years of talking to lots of different people, I ended up being diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder, Depression, Anxiety, Social Anxiety, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, and Borderline Personality Disorder.
And on and off during that time, I thought about that Stephen Fry talk and what he’d said and how everything might’ve turned out differently if not for that moment. So, not long after I got my diagnoses, I wrote to him. I wanted to thank him for his part in my journey. I didn’t know if he’d get it but I wanted to try anyway.
To my utter surprise, he not only got it but a few months later, I got a response. I don’t feel comfortable sharing it because he wrote it only for me and to circulate it feels like a breach of trust. I don’t know if that’s how he’d feel but that’s how it feels to me. But he was warm and kind and generous with his words and I’m so, so grateful. I’ve often returned to it in times of difficulty and it’s helped me pick myself up again and again. This letter is a deeply cherished possession, a gift I never in a million years thought I’d receive.
Category: about me, diagnosis, emotions, event, mental health, quotes, suicide Tagged: actuallyautistic, actuallyborderline, anxiety, asd, autism, autism spectrum disorder, autistic, borderline personality disorder, bpd, depression, hay festival, letter, memory, mental illness, obsessive compulsive disorder, ocd, reply, social anxiety, stephen fry, story, storytime, suicidal ideation, thank you, turning point
Hi! I’m Lauren Alex Hooper. Welcome to my little blog! I write about living with Autism Spectrum Disorder, as well as several mental health issues. I’m a singersongwriter (and currently studying for a Masters in songwriting) so I’ll probably write a bit about that too.
My first single, ‘Invisible,’ is now available on iTunes and Spotify, with all proceeds going to Young Minds.
I’m currently releasing my first EP, Honest, track by track and all five songs are now available on all major music platforms. However, there’s still more content to come…