Michelle Vines, "...Adult with Asperger's Syndrome," Houston Oasis, June 8, 2014

the presenter of our main talk today is a regular participant member of the Oasis community for over a year and I'm going to read from her introduction as she wrote although for the first six months you probably didn't notice her when she was leaving the room during the meet-and-greet time and generally hiding into that corner but she is hiding no longer certainly not after today Michelle is a stay-at-home mom two beautiful boys Isaac and Trent age two and four as she grew up in Australia completed her studies at the University of Melbourne in areas of chemical engineering and science in 2010 she came to Houston with her former husband to pursue his career and the oil gas industry and she has sense doesn't remain here to raise the boys and lady 2010 at age of 30 Michelle was formally diagnosed as a woman with Asperger's syndrome two years later her oldest son was also diagnosed with Asperger's at the age of three and in Michelle's burns she says he's always been described by her friends as a bit quirky or eccentric and often amusing intentionally or unintentionally her interests include making Excel spreadsheets to analyze everything in her life enjoying nature observing discussing human behavior algebra statistics watching bugs scheduling planning anything biology psychology daydreaming looking at you baby clothes singing and dancing and advocating acceptance kindness in a world where everyone appreciation supports each other regardless of how unique each one of us is and eating chocolate okay so let's welcome our friend Michelle vice the topless needy Oh Chinese testing hi as introduced on Michelle and as you can see from my badge that I left at home I believe yeah you'll have to excuse me I'm a bit nervous here I'm not a speaker at all and I might lose my words sometimes because that's what I do um but as far as I'm concerned you're all in your underwear so it's okay I like cinema life so I can make slides appear white magic let me know so I could be scared or not God I decided that I shove myself up on stage and do this talk it's sort of something I was quite brave to do to come and talk about something personal and I thought about doing this for quite a while I'm shaking but what treated me to think about it was on last April I don't know if many of your owner was Autism Awareness Month and I'm seeing on Facebook you know because I love Facebook you know too too much but um I saw all these posts flying around Autism Awareness slowed up blue for autism and puzzle pieces autism be aware of autism and I became very aware of the word autism and I saw this a lot of information out there I'm sort of the classical autism and sort of people who are very effective parents struggling with children who is at a low functioning and will need help all their life and I sort of thought I don't see that much of the really high functioning in there's not much understanding of that there there is some there's some good stuff out there but I just decided I talked about it some more and this is sort of me repeating myself but a lot of people are aware of the stereotypes of Asperger this like you know Sheldon Cooper and I've heard of Rain Man and Trainspotting I don't have seen Lomu's so I don't know they are yeah Sheldon's also so he's a good stereotype these people are sort of extremes these are like you take Asperger's and you exaggerate and you can sum every single trait you could have and in reality I've met a lot of people with Asperger's and there's a lot in the crowd today and there are quite a few of us that are high functioning quite good at compensating for the traits and fitting them well and you might not even notice that we have us variances and you know there's a big subgroup of people that seem pretty normal bit quirky a bit strange make some funny jokes you know all of weird jokes but you know if you wouldn't pick a kid to say I and that guy's a bit funny or weird or quirky but we are we fall we fit in and oh that's what I wanted to talk to babe today talk about today I hope that demographic because yeah this isn't going to be a talk about everyone with Asperger's there's all sorts of trades there's all sorts of different experiences with it I just wanted to talk specifically about that end of the spectrum and what that actually means because do we will can seem normal so what does it mean so the first obvious question that comes to mind what is Asperger's syndrome and when I first found out about this I got really curious and like the ASPI that I am I've read about it and I read about it some more and I looked it up online and I read you know that the got lots of statements you know things like we're socially awkward we have difficulty following friendships obsessive obsessive interests and behavior lack of eye contact hyper sensitivity and difficulty seeing other specific perspectives you see all these lists of traits that an SP might have but I read some more and there were things on forums and that was more more helpful to seeing what people with Asperger's actually said and then I started hearing that brain wiring started you know pspme went oh I got to read more about that so I went and read studies some studies on brain scans the differences you know all these things they've done with people with autism Asperger's blah blah already no red no red no I did what I do and basically now when people ask me what it is it's really simple it comes down to this I mean when you have autism or Asperger's as you grow up your brain just basically grows to be wired in a different way and you know how you have male brains and female brains there's lots of things showing that they have different connective tissue and processing tissue and stuff so the ask your brain is just like another sort of brain and you've got these all these some discussions of what it is but that's it simple that's what it comes down to I have this chart here and I have a limited time slot so I'm not going to read through this and start talking technical but I just wanted to show you what it is when I first started researching Asperger's I am was reading all these brain scanned stuff and I put together a chart male brain female brain autistic brain and then all these differences that were being found and yeah I'd love to talk more about this but no time decided but I will get give up these slides and he I'll get into it certain in the video if you can so that people who are interested can read more and yeah I could even summarize but I'll just point out this one bit that's sort of interesting I was reading like this isn't the key difference but one thing I particularly found interesting is this frontal lobe which is the rationale critical thinking part of your brain and always finding studies that saying you know in Asperger's increase connectivity increased volume increased concentration as metabolites this frontal lobe is more active in regular people there this is amygdala emotional processing center where you can bypass the frontal lobe that have a minister emotional reactions like historically if you were being chased by a lion you want to run you want to react before you stop and think him a lions chasing me what should I do about this what would be the best strategy visual so yeah that's something we've needed in the past and I've noticed this the ESPYs seem to be moving or not everyone but there's a trend for people on the spectrum to be more into logical thinking and being able to process things rationally even in times of strength emotion which i think is pretty cool anyway I'll move on I wasn't going to talk about that and I did there's a million references to go at the table so yeah my summary what I wanted you to get out of that is that Asperger's isn't just a list of symptoms and bad behaviors it is a neurological difference next you're one element I wanted to touch on is there's a lot of lists of problems people with Asperger's might have because you know right diagnostic manuals if you're a psychologist you want to think about how you can help people what troubles they might have but that there is information on it but less in the diagnostic information and less available information on the positives as well there's actually a lot of positives that come with this difference as well as negatives and yet that's not going to be written in the textbooks so much it's not of importance you know they don't write a diagnostic you know write-up for people with extra creativity or high IQ they don't need the help so so after gifts some common things that offers can be talented in I've got a list here is higher than average IQ strong logical and rational thinking I meant hyper focus and obsessive interests we get interested in something and which read everything and do everything alone online but that can lead us to become experts in our fields and some people can make new discoveries and be inventors and you know make leaps in science and stuff because of that strong attention to detail and many us bees have been known to be talented in the arts as well What's Wrong button so here's a list of famous people who either unknown to be on the autism spectrum or are speculated to have been Albert Einstein Bill Gates I think uten a lot of these are scientists politicians artists writers if there's a pretty significant people and I wanted to read out a few quotes the first to a from Tony Atwood who is well known in the autism community sort of a world expert on it won most of the major advances in science and art have been made by people with Asperger's from Mozart to Einstein that's a big statement most not even some but you know that means people with this brand hope are really predisposed to be able to do great things now not everyone well just like you know not everyone in real life will do wonderful things but though that's a pretty positive statement and figures has probably been an important and valuable characteristic of our species throughout evolution so yeah what I just said and the second one is by hand Asperger's who is the German scientists who first wrote about Asperger's in the 1940s and he said for success in science and art a dash of autism is essential and that sort of that perfectionism attention to detail you know hyper focus trap that we have so this isn't like something you see people wanting to find cures for autism roll it out you know all this stuff this isn't necessarily something we want to get rid of in society it's a useful thing to be going on beside regular people you know in terms of human advancement I think next so I thought I'd tell my story what was it going to say lost it I told you at least my weights yeah well I grew up I was normal like I thought there's not more few people around me thought I was a bit strange but you know when I was young I was too oblivious to care so I went about doing my thing lining up my dolls ignoring the rest of the people they could play if they do it my way of it if you want to make the dogs talk and walk around your way that's not how it works and I had no idea I had Asperger's as I got older I got more aware that I was sort of socially not getting along with people as well and the more I realized how I do this I do that that's not going down well the more I sort of changed my behavior and learn to sort of play by your a typical rules and you know I became more and more normal but I didn't think there was anything particularly wrong with me you know so when I was 28 a friend of mine from high school who don't she'd grown up to become a psychologist she I was talking to her about people relationships you know deep stuff and she suggested to me maybe I have Asperger's syndrome and I remember she sort of was doing weird things like she took a cup at me and said this is a dinosaur rawr I mean I created the dinosaur because you're supposed to test if I take things logically but I'm old enough to know not to be fazed by a cup being a dinosaur anyway and yeah so I thought of all this is interesting I went home and I read about it and at first I read some symptoms and went no now this sounds you know really disabled this sounds abnormal I'm normal I'm smart you know I'm not I'm not bragging in mud I'm not someone lesser or you know I say that's not a nice term but you know I just sort of read it like no not me I'm hunted good that's but anyway I forgot about it I put it aside a year or so later I was watching something on television it was actually OCD house to admit and a guy on there got diagnosed with Asperger's over during the course of the show and if anything he was weird he had tannic delusions and all this stuff and I should have gone whoa I am NOT like that guy I don't have a Spurs are not yeah but actually the show made me think because I saw the way he was dealing with the cognitive behavioral emotional stuff and he was sort of logic and logic in it away and it wasn't working on him so I I was just watching him put his mind process is a bit like mine and I don't know just prompted me to think of it and then I went online and started reading it again and this time instead of just reading the formal stuff I found some forums and basically the first time what I read is stuff like this you know lack of social or social or emotional reprocessing well if I had that would I know it's like no appear not understand and empathize will be sensitive with others feelings well I don't care a lot about people I have a lot of empathy so it's like no I don't appear and I again would I know there was mine engaging in most silent one-sided long-winded conversations without noticing if the listener is listening or trying to change the subject okay a victim for the rest of the rest of this I just sort of went no no I don't think oh but then when I read the forum's what people without subpoenas were actually saying really did relate to me I hate having to go to big social functions I like small groups I never know when to come into the conversation other people don't seem to like deep conversation I'm not so interested in the small talk once people really get to know me they just lose interest in hanging out with me for no obvious reason I'm tired of having to work so hard to do and say the right thing all the time people get offended for no reason and I don't even know what upset them other people can be really frustrating to work with you know technically incompetent right you can just seem that way when you've got a lot of technical focus and people think I'm mad or frowny when I'm just thinking stuff like that I started going oh yeah that sort of is me so I joined forums and support groups and suddenly like I was looking back at my life with this spbrasch and going oh my god that's what happened all that's what upset them oh oh you know really light bulb moment oh my god that's that's what's been going on my whole life fancy that okay so wrong but about age 30 I decided to approach a specialist to be formally tested someone who's a specialist of in diagnosing adults and yeah I was diagnosed at age 30 and yeah my oldest son was also diagnosed a few years later he sort of I saw that coming for a long while to get a few traits of his own and then that's it so next topic I talked a bit about how over time I've learnt these social skills people sort of got to me don't seem to have Asperger's you're so normal and I come across normal mostly you know maybe not when you put me up on stage and I'm scared of everyone you know so does that mean I'm normal look you and now that's sort of the question people ask if you can act normal if you can fit in and get along with people does that mean you're not nasty anymore and yeah actually it is a lot more complicated than that because what you see is the person's surface coping mechanisms behaviors our behaviors what goes on under the surface is a bit different so if that rock is way too big I think the boulder should be like this big instead the young I call it yeah I don't have time to talk about every IP difficulty because that would go forever and certainly my experiences are different everyone else's if I was a guy I'd be talking about women relationships it's impossible if I was low functioning or a younger version of myself I'd be like rejection isolation or wants to be friends with me what's going on there that's a huge issue for a lot of people on the spectrum and you see the internet full of people saying I'm so isolated I'm depressed no one likes me that's that's a really common but I decided I'm not going there today because I only had time for a few examples and I want to talk about just a few things that are most relevant to me in my life now you know cousin I'm seeming so normal so what could I possibly have going on the third one's an obvious one over stimulation it's common for people on the autism spectrum don't know why to have extreme senses and be hypersensitive touch taste sound light smell have one or two of these or I know someone about all of them for me sound in life some I'm not so bad at sound that the light you know fluorescent lights daylight outside something about it just tenses me I get I strain headaches all the time it's just an unfortunate thing about being me so wear sunglasses inside when I'm around people enough looked Aggie but I've been going to rock that looks I mean make it cool and yeah it's most obvious when I turn the light off and it's like oh oh it can relax now I feel better I'm not tense anymore I've included a video here but I don't I can't fit this in either there's a short little video it shows auditory overload and I thought this little thing was great so I've included a link to it and maybe I can share it on the Oasis page or direct it to bard or whatever so that people can see this in their own time it was a really cool video but I will move on oh yeah I have a confession to make to everyone I found out recently that I am a need to feel like that's not as creepy as it's out is the name for someone who loves the darkness or nighttime and just finds relaxation comfort I feel like more myself when it's not bright and yeah so I'm not creepy promise the second difficulty okay shift of focus multitasking I put up this brand slide before very helpful I put up this brands line for talking about how the brain is different in one area is that people on the autism spectrum have significantly less connective tissue in the brain we have more gray matter which is processed in condition like they are the computer processor but less cables connecting all the bits and them aspheres so when I say shift of focus is a strand I don't mean I don't like doing it I mean it's actually it takes a little more effort to get from one thing I'm focusing on to another thing those brand connections out there so this is like it takes me five minutes to jump to something else and then jump back and when you talk about multitasking which people women especially do really easily for me that's like oh oh no I'm it because of me headaches it's stressful it's frustrating because I miss enough Y to do that easily and what people don't realize as many work environments just expect you to multitask all the time you know you're working and listening to people talk around you you're paying attention to what's going on or you miss out what's happening in the workplace and people come and interrupt you and talk to you and I'm thinking of going away I was practicing on this getting come back into it I didn't say that I say hi thank you and dumb yeah with this s visa best suited to just focus on one thing crunch try and do it and then and then talk and yeah don't get me started on parenting that one's been a challenge but I'm making it work and yeah I'm caring what about my kids so I make sure they become my focus exhaustion of burner this is problem 3 it's a bit linked to that last one people on the autism spectrum or Asperger's we don't intuitively read body language I have to remember about looking at people's eyes and because I don't tend to do it I have to think do it things like that and we you know when we're interacting with people and picking up their body language and communication we're doing it more intellectually than intuitively so when you're around people for a long time and trying to connect and interact with the making of training like it's tiring so social situations are tiring and the more people that are around the harder it is to keep up with everything that's going on is like this huge intellectual exercise and having said that that doesn't mean that we don't want to socialize in fact I love talking to people I'm a very social SPD I want to go out and have fun and do the karaoke that did the other notes and you know I love being out it just means it takes a lot more what we call energy tokens and we drained a lot easier and need more recovery time and for me yeah I mentioned multitasking is draining how the stimulation is draining and for me for some reason phone calls are just like I can only handle one a day these are the worst thing in the world don't ask me to really find some information hour please and I hope metaphoric I had to do it constantly but fine I've got drained quickly and I don't know why the phone call thing but talking to other people on the spectrum a lot of people seem to hate the phone calls you know I'm happy to talk to people in person and yeah or text email where I go is not too much work there but if some reason someone will tell me one day what that is so exhaustion and burnout happen a lot and people sort of don't get at you you're out you're you know you get to a point where you just can't go anymore I need a break I need a rest and that can be like halfway through the day if you're working but you know it's not something that is really well known or understood but it happens to a lot of people on the spectrum and I'm not going to read all this but I just wanted to point this bit out ASD means autism spectrum and NT means neurotypical universe all of you with normal brains know autism spectrum book or neurotypical professional references autistic burnout only adults on the spectrum are talking about it online and yet it's something that's happening to all of us but it's not a well-known area and it doesn't seem to be the focus of carers parents professionals they don't seem to understand this burnout is a factor in in our kids lives or you know our lives needs I'm sure valid equals recently as figures syndrome and fatigue being emotionally exhausted I'm tired running on empty with Asperger's exhausting exhausted all the time it's it is real it's something a lot of us experience and typical people don't get it they're sort of like why are you saying you're tired you don't even do as much as I do yeah okay I don't want to get too down with it is forth problem is sort of more of a funny one strangers scary strangers icy fuel room today having the video that I'm hopefully you're welcome unfamiliar people are harder to read because they're less predictable until a degree I analyzed my friends and I predict how they're going to react to things and I work out what I shouldn't shouldn't say and there's a degree of intellectual it's easier when people are familiar and many people on the spectrum have had experiences with accidentally offending people you know people don't know how to take you when they don't know you and they can't say oh that's just Michelle just assume she didn't mean it how it sounded I had a friend say that to someone else once you know just a shoot if Michelle said it it's not really that bad so words when I was a bit younger so some people are fine they just keep going about their business and talking and you know some are more confident for others of us on the spectrum it can lead to us being stressed self-conscious with too many strangers around and I personally find too many strangers to be a bit draining and stressful like million pieces so I you know I took to my friends of others very strangers who let all these people in them all they should go really I know they have every right to be there I'm not serious just a feeling of I'm not horrible I promise now this is the last problem I'm going to talk about this one that there's a few slides on it because this was actually a big one for me and I am not the only one who's had this sort of experience I'll start with a bit of background unlike most people on the spectrum I did really well at school and university a lot of people don't do so well because we often have a bit of executive dysfunction difficulty organizing ourselves and but I organize myself from like late high school I had a diary I carried everywhere with me that I wrote things in wrote to-do lists it's actually under my chair I beg their ass to maybe pull it out here's my diary if you want to do something I'll just write at them so I organize myself well I found systems I compensated I also compensated for burnout I avoided multitasking by basically saying I'm going to do all my homework at home and when I'm at school I'm here to socialize so I come in and I talk and people would say Michelle you know be quiet and I'd never know volume control I talk loudly at the wrong time I'm sorry i annoy people but I got along without stressing myself too much that way you know I could do just one thing at a time and when I felt sort of burped out over stimulated I just go okay no more had enough and when I was feeling well I proactively do all my work knowing that I might have times like that so I just came up with all these ways that I did well and managed to feel really well and I graduated top 5% in my class at a very prestigious university in Melbourne I was awarded scholarships in high school and I got a summer research scholarship at the University of Queensland another good University and though I do really well and so this is someone who was soaring up the academic track doing really well at university and you know said I'm so modest about being smart and I I I thought I was going somewhere I would had a lot of potential I was career focused I was ambitious done the opposite of a lazy person like I was driven I worked really hard then life um I started working and I had no idea at the time I was just not okay I hadn't been diagnosed I had no idea why I was not okay and I couldn't really put my finger on what was going on I just get in there and I I needed to get out of there I couldn't stand it basically what happened was I had all these compensation techniques and I couldn't use them in the work environment it wasn't suited for that I was suddenly in this world of social everywhere cubicle people high-pressure be their nine-to-five I'll jump ahead a slide oh you know I sort of figured out what it was many years later but it's this over stimulation and frustration light noise multitasking being there nine to fiver currently when I'm spent and over stimulated you know in long periods of socialization workplace politics Oh God when you're at school you're not competing and you know you're just doing your work your friends doing your work you're encouraging each other you come into the workplace there are these promotion games people live you know you know what I mean I just I was drowning I didn't do that well and I just didn't handle how tired that may be dealing with people who are doing all this a one thing then another stuff that people do and not being able to do things my own way it's like the boss said I want you to call six people hope you like Noren are only call one person a day I wasn't free to completely change the way I worked and skipping back here I became method you know this is live down part of the speech but I I did become extremely depressed I'd get home I couldn't do anything just like that I was so bent out because I'd be burnt out halfway through the day and had to keep going and going and you know I couldn't I didn't have any interests I didn't couldn't join the family and just all I could do was just yeah I was just get up go to work come home be depressed and until I had to get up and go again and you know had a horrible time yeah I kind of play that down that was just you know I dread going to work and I had really disturbing daydreams like I'd be on the train going to work and I would daydream that the train would crash and take me to hospital so I would just do it another one let's see them getting more charming it's like maybe someone had come in on the seat but you know before it's my daydream I don't want anyone to get hurt so everyone's still at home a bit well away from the city and someone comes and bombs the buildings and then this is disturbing and I knew it was busy but I just I could not stand to get up and go in one or day one and yes so yeah I'm not in that case that promise okay anyhow this I love this poster everything's too much too much too much too much I can't handle at all but that's something I think a lot of people on the spectrum can relate to apparently my story is really common when I went and got diagnosed and talked to the psychologist who diagnosed me she said yeah I've heard lots of stories like that and this statistic I just wanted to put in eighty percent of people with Asperger's are currently unemployed or underemployed I think it was most commonly due to having meltdowns in the workplace or quitting or having meltdowns because when you get taken to your limit your emotional limo your exhaustion limit a lot of people melt down they might yell or scream or cry or shake or whatever that that's meltdowns that people get fired for you know they might I've heard of people hitting someone or doing you know meltdowns the most common thing that happened and then some of us will shut down and I was more of a shutdown person just sort of go quiet and try and get through it but you know falling apart inside and so people like me had quit people with meltdowns that get fired and it seems that this is a group of people who have so much potential with that illogical brain with you know high IQ these are people who have done brilliant things or some of them I don't you know this is a group that could do so much and yet 80% of us can't fit in the work environment you know it so this is a big like if if we could be accommodated and work in a different way this is so much wasted potential anyway or go on I had just a few little myths I wanted to address the first is that I see this event as bees don't have emotions and the first off point says it all nonsense as fees are actually we can be over emotional when we have have a trouble with emotional regulation like when we get upset about something it's a lot harder to calm down than it is for a normal person and that's sort of part of the brain wiring we definitely have a lot of emotion people on the autism spectrum many of us lack a part of the nerves in the brain called mirror neurons and that's like if you see someone telling a story about how they're upset you feel how they would feel someone puts them in up you sort of feel what it'd be like to put put your hand up or whatever people with Asperger's don't read body language well we don't have those mirror neurons so it can take us a while to perceive what's going on for another person and see a perspective other than our own so it might look like we don't care we're not reacting the right way instantly we we just act strange we seem less emotional on the surface but actually it's nothing to do with lack of empathy lack of emotion it's all to do with like a perception and knowing the right responses many as because I've met including myself and I can see a few people here are very strongly compassionate towards others who you actually can care about because many of us think through hardship we can understand feelings of hardship yeah there's a slide not only can people with Asperger's syndrome have friends a loyalty in empathy can make us the best friends to have to is this just this idea that it's easy to recognize Asperger's at now actually there's a lot of symptoms that we can have and each of us has different versions of it so you know if you know a person with us things that doesn't mean you can recognize it in others or the people are easily recognized and there are a lot of us out there that go unrecognized like for the same reasons I dismissed it where you seem a bit normal professionals are trained to recognize the symptoms in children when they're really extreme and obvious but not everyone's familiar with adults because we see we so compensate more we seem normal those coping mechanisms can be hard to see through and I know Anna made me go oh you've got Asperger's you're strange I seem so normal I hope I guess that's my opinion and a little lot less is known about girls and women on the spectrum of course is traditionally sort of a boy's condition they made all the diagnostic data based on information about boys and all the tests are based on a way or two there's sort of a chicken and any problem now you know they want to know more about girls but how do you analyze girls when the only girls who are diagnosed is diagnosed with boy criteria so there's sort of young yeah it's going to take time to know more about that and another collage of newspaper articles Gale did a TED talk on girls and autism mainly cried thousands of girls may have been undiagnosed because they could hide the signs better than boys why women with autism are invisible women and girls ah yeah that this all these articles saying we're missing the girls they're having trouble they're getting picked up because of size symptoms like depression anxiety OCD and you know they're they're troubled but we're not picking them up and myth number three this is the last one so we won't go on forever but um there's this notion that if you teach SBS to actually teach them social skills if they act more normally that you know they're approaching cured and if they act well enough they may not need you know the school might have a assessment and take away their remove them from programs order because they seem normal now this in cured but of course if someone has Asperger's they will always have the gusty mind and we do learn social skills especially to grow it might if it's lower than two people but we know especially if we're bright we learn we fit in you know there's a point where it's not obvious anymore for some of us some others you know are more focused on other things and so focused on behavior here you get a range of people but the point I wanted to make is that the more effort someone on the spectrum is putting into acting normal the more burnout and exhaustion we might be experiencing underneath and you see a lot of parents talking a lot about social skills training you know teaching the kids to behave an act normal and all of that and that's good people can benefit from that but you've got to be a little careful to balance it up with not pushing a child too hard because they're exhausted and a common complaint I hear from parents is they just they're lazy they just want to play computer games all day they're unmotivated and I look at it and I think that child is over stimulated over exhausted they're coming home and they're just trying to survive like they burnt out so what do you boys do to wind down and take away that stress a lot of them go play computer games that's that's not laziness that's I'm exhausted I can't do any more and a lot of parents don't understand that so they just want to put me more social skills tell them they're lazy stop you know you just being motivation good get behaving and and it's actually so that they need less they need to have a less draining life then they can start thinking about growing and doing better you know start thinking about anything other than just oh I need to wind down I just want to escape yeah sorry I don't mean to make people said I just thought that was an important point to make and get out to the world because it's not well understood I'm not crying I don't have marinara yeah I'd like to this slide what is this of the ultimate escape eggs and the problem with pounding a square peg into a round hole is not that hammering is hard work it's that you're damaging the peg or destroy so since just to sum up since diagnosis I was a relief to me I felt excuse like Oh for so long my life I push myself to work because that's what I should do everyone works I talk to people about problems and they say well no one likes working we all have to do it and you know it was just this realization of it was harder for me than everyone else and I thought that was the case but now I can just say okay I can do what I can cope with I don't have to push myself to do what everyone else thinks I should do I look forward to throwing out some of those social skills I've learnt and just being me a bit more because the more you try and be what you should be the more you suppress who you really are and I I'm getting to a point in life where I just don't care to be perfect and impress everyone ever I still do a bit you know hey I just want to lean in the direction of on me if I'm quirky and silly and whatever else that I am then let other people bend a bit back and just accept me for who I am yeah and I'm learning it to set boundaries and say no which is sort of a hard one because people in communities especially they want you to volunteer they want you to do things and they expect you should be able to do what everyone else can do and I sort of have to just look at me knowing me and say well this is how much I can handle this is how much will just take me to exhaustion and I especially want to avoid that because I got two young kids I go home to and I don't want to be cranky I want to be able to be warm and loving all day right to the end of the day and not drain myself so I make it a high priority to just not commit to too much me look after myself and make sure I can get through the day especially for my boys and I've been doing a good job at anything you know prepping myself but just to end up I wanted to tell a story about coming to Houston oasis you know I actually heard about this place I think from John Ronald their first famous Stephen the first time I came here I thought I'd heard about it online I finally decided to turn up and the first meeting I was here I started crying quietly and people I oh you know I have reactions like oh you know it's emotional for a lot of us to come to this place where you know finally we can be around people who believe what we believe we don't have to hide who we are and that is very true but um that's not what I was crying I just was not a degree I was actually crying because I came to this place and I saw people who humanists kind warm they believe the things I do this is this warm lovely crowd I recognized very quickly at just how empathetic friendly and climber's placings those cravers people in my name that's another story um I I've had experiences where I've gone into groups like mom's groups and in a big crowd there's a lot of noise a lot going on I have trouble so coming out of my shell and talking to people I'm overwhelmed I don't get to know people that way I've been to Mom's groups for a year or two where I'm not so superficial I never really got to know anybody I never made any close friends you know the people who came could have come to my house play with the kids stuff by that I've gone through groups and groups like this and I here and Mike said you know everyone fill your coffee and go talk and make some friends and I got up and and I felt very own hot dogs for these scary strangers and someone came up to me and started talking about politics and politics my topic and I just sort of went quiet in my shell I was very uncomfortable and I noticed I started feeling sorry for myself I thought of how I'm never going to fit in here if I can't fit in a group like this way can I fit in I'm just going to be isolated forever I just started feeling all these worries me I'm I'm alone I'm mr. balling that's why I was really crying it sounds a bit thinner than outfit anyway the good news is I was wrong I I kept coming probably for the first six months I just set up the back but I've started to go to a few events thank you so much to Hillary for creating family-friendly happy hour that was a place where I could go and be with smaller groups of people so I could talk more personally and get to know people and so slowly I got to know a lot of faces and now I look at the crown I see like half friendly happy familiar faces that make me happy to be here and a bunch of scary Street you know I feel a lot more comfortable here now and I'm happy does it look at all these smiles good only you know people aren't they are wonderful and so just my grand finale I wanted to say thank you so much having this community in for welcoming me into it because it means so much to me to have people who I'm in a community with and friends who I feel closer to and people who smile when I come in it's amazing for me yeah thank you thank you so much it was simply wonderful learn so much I'm sure

Channel: Houston Oasis

Views: 154,471

Rating: 4.8830109 out of 5

Keywords: Houston Oasis, Michelle Vines, Asperger Syndrome (Disease Or Medical Condition), Adults with Aspergers, Aspergers, Asperger's, Syndrome, Aspie, Autism, Spectrum, High Functioning, Personal, Story, Burnout, Meltdown, Diagnosis, Overstimulation, neurotypical, hyper focus, hyperfocus

Id: k_TIztg7GuI

Length: 46min 42sec (2802 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 08 2014