Trying To Act Normal for 30 Years | Living With Autism | Full Documentary

okay right where should we start i should tell you that i have a problem just going off on one sometimes so at the moment now you see i'm thinking about i'm talking to you but i'm actually thinking about me163s which were type of aircraft a rocket aircraft that they were the only rocket aircraft so now i'm thinking about the ticker tape parade that the astronauts did when they got back from the moon in 1969 and they did that on the 13th of august my name is chris packham what you probably don't know because i've been hiding it most of my life is that my brain is different than yours because i'm autistic astronauts neil armstrong neil he's sort of a troubled soul died on the 25th of august 2012. august was a big time for him because the ticker tape was on the 13th like i said that's how my mind goes from one thing to another it becomes these sort of cascades it's memory i just have a memory it's exhausting it doesn't make any sense it's intensely irritating to people oh that was good this tail has got a sting in it my type of autism is called asperger's i've experienced many things on screenwatch today i've spent 30 years on the telly trying my best to act normal when really i'm anything bad bad times it's been immensely difficult you know there were times when i fought it i really fought it i didn't want to be different now i've decided that i want to talk about my aspergers i want people to try and understand what it's like to be me there's a lot about me which is pretty normal there's a lot of you know other things which are not quite so normal this is the story of my life the past and the present how those who love me have learned to live with me he is like an alien it is like he's landed basically as a young man there was absolutely nothing available to help me but now i'm going in search of radical new therapies that might be able to improve my life and the lives of millions of others treatments aimed at making us more normal stripping us of our autistic traits [Music] if a cure for autism ever became available would i choose to take i live in this house in the new forest and it's in the middle of a huge patch of woodland come on scratch let's go you've got a filthy ass this is always my favorite part of the day getting up in the morning and going out into this place with the with the scratch scratchy's my best mate i love him more than anything on this planet and all of my love is focused entirely upon him it's intense and it's real just him being happy here makes me happy it's guaranteed it's like the switch comes on and in human relationships because of the complexity of them and and and the various problems with them they don't always make you happy even when you want them to come on scratch my asperger's is one of many conditions on the broad autistic spectrum i'm lucky to be high functioning but there are still some areas where i really just don't have a clue people like myself are clumsy socially so i even now as an adult having learned you know how to minimize that i still constantly make mistakes let's be honest i suspect that many people find me a little bit weird which is one of the reasons why i've chosen to live all my own in the middle of the woods i can't think when i last saw another human being here [Music] people invite me to parties and it's like you know i'm having my 50th party where is it it's in wales what i'm going to go to wales to go to a party to stand in the corner and not talk to very much to people i haven't been to party for 10 years or something i don't have that need for that sort of social contact at all if you have autism there's an enormous breadth of how that impacts upon your life and i think it varies from having a few traits which might be perceived as as quirky or difficult socially and many many people will have those and at the other end i i think that it is fair to call it a disability i'm not a typical autistic person because there is no typical autistic person look at that look through there now that's really quite a nice sight this is a an inordinately complex environment it's quite challenging to be here because there's so much to see and when i'm looking at it it's all coming in really really quickly it's like swamping there's one aspect of my aspergers that you may not expect you see i experience the world in a very different way to pretty much everyone else there's like a hyper imagine like a hyper reality it's not just about seeing it's about hearing it's about smelling it's about tasting it's about everything i mean there's a very distinct smell of this time of spring it's quite ripe it's quite moist so if it rained now this afternoon the smell would change quite radically and it would be much more intense uh sound wise obviously that jet that's going over i can hear the traffic in the distance and then you've got the natural sounds that are here so that was a blackbird rattling over there there's robin's calling now there's a blackbird calling there i can hear blue tits going um i just heard chaffinch singing there's layers of bird song going on this sensory overload is a constant distraction and it's had a hugely isolating effect on me ever since i was a small boy i grew up in southampton in the 1960s and back then asperger's wasn't a properly recognised condition [Music] as a child were you aware that you were different not really i i think that when i look back on it what was clear was that the depth of the obsessions was so much greater than any of my peers when i got into things i was really into them to the point that everything else was pretty much excluded this was my first fox goal that i collected when i was a kid ah it's beautiful isn't it absolutely beautiful and it's still got you know what it's still got a slightly dry meaty smell and that's a smell that's come from the late 60s [Music] at primary school i didn't have a need for friends if i'm very honest with you there were far more interesting things happening in a dirty old pond just over the fence every year i would collect tadpoles it was one of the highlights of my year it was better than christmas and my birthday tadpole time was absolutely the time of the year [Music] at that point of my life i i had an enormous hunger and thirst for everything that lived that i could find it didn't matter what it was i wasn't repulsed by anything i was absolutely enchanted by every living thing i wanted to own every single sensory input that i could get from it as intensely as possible [Music] it's obvious that you're going to taste it isn't it it is to me they were like little blobs of semolina and when i focused them back to the tip of my tongue so that i could bite into them they tasted earthy [Music] i mean it you know it doesn't seem weird to me when you first lick the back side of a beetle that's oozing a yellow fluid and it's bitter on the taste of your tongue as if you've licked the dirty old sixpence and it doesn't go away for an hour that that's a really quite sort of powerful thing i didn't know that my heightened sensory perception was an autistic trait until much later and neither did my family okay so well i'll just show you what i got it's quite funny jenny is my younger sister so these are the old bits oh my goodness okay you're looking at me in that one there really protective in many respects mum and dad completely facilitated your enthusiasms obsessions obsessions for things and that was all good it's just that when things went bad they didn't know why and then yeah that was when things weren't so good i think the impact on upon my sister was probably that i commanded way too much of the attention in the house my interest was sort of overpowering and because i wouldn't stop going on about stuff i was i always sort of described myself as mutley actually i think i was mutly to chris really i was always the assistant it was me having to do something i was so uncomfortable with actually you know have sort of tadpoles on my ear have snakes around my neck you know i was forever standing at the bottom of trees in nettles looking for birds nests um and and and doing things that were all about all about you you know we had a conversation a little while ago and i sort of said chris you know with this asperger's you're not really understanding the subtleties of you know what people mean etc how come you're so good at manipulating people and he said it's because the i don't really care about them that much but you know you probably don't realize how sort of inspiring you were to all of us actually and how much you triggered in us all to be interested in things yeah that's good come on scratcher i wasn't diagnosed with asperger's until i was in my 40s i've had to spend my life coming up with ways of coping with this condition by rigorously controlling my environment this is my space this is where i try to relax and try to be more me than anywhere else i mean i you know i have the blinds down and that's about keeping the outside world outside and it's about keeping this environment controlled because if you have the windows out you can see things changing and the sun goes in and out and the leaves come off the trees and everything's sort of constantly in a dynamic flux if i can control that then i can feel i can feel comfortable you know nowadays there's a huge push towards finding effective treatments for autism so i'm packing to go in search of anything that might make my life a little bit easier so these ones have never been worn these ones have never been worn i want them to be the same as the ones i've already got so i buy three in one go i really like this shirt sort of quite retro so i bought three of those one of the things that i like to do again it's a comfort thing is to wear the same clothes and eat the same food all the time so there's three of these the fleeces are all in order and they're in color order or they're in manufacturer order and then you've got the same with the puffer jackets and then the raincoats right at the end so no it is um i'm sorry i'm just straightening all these up because it's neater if they're straight i've all got a face in the same direction and uh yeah i suppose that might strike people's odd i think that one of the reasons i like hiding in my own world living in the woods in the middle of nowhere with my dog is because there effectively i'm normal i'm not autistic of course when i get my car and driver drive out the gate into the rest of the world it's not quite so good i'm going to america where controversial new therapies are being developed that aim to change who we fundamentally are [Music] i'm not really sure how i feel about the idea of trying to cure autism i mean in many ways it's defined my life from its highest highs to its most devastating lows i'm in providence rhode island to witness a trial of a radical new treatment tms transcranial magnetic stimulation which is being investigated in the treatment of autistic people to see if it can modify their behavior its electrodes its electromagnetic radiation and the brain scientists still don't conclusively understand what causes autism one theory is that certain parts of the brain may be over or under active tms uses an electrical pulse to try and stimulate these areas it's being trialled here at brown university by dr lindsay oberman how are you doing nice to meet you all right good all right what's the matter with the weather lindsay it's terrible i'm sorry about that i can't control that so this is the tms machine and what we should have said is of course that you're applying electromagnetic force um induction causing neurons to fire in the brain so it's going to be focused down to about a centimeter cubed so it's accurate within one centimeter yes right patrick so we're ready for you you're welcome to come on back 21 year old patrick is halfway through this six-week clinical trial of tms good morning patrick how are you fine good good morning i'm joanne hello john how are you david chris chris sorry that's right one point please all right so how are you doing today fine patrick lives at home with his mum unlike me he struggles with social interactions it's hoped that tms might be able to help him it could help somebody who has that difficulty with say understanding other people's facial expressions they say you know i just i can't read other people's emotions well we can stimulate a part of the brain that we think is related to that ability and that could have a really great change on their quality of life okay go ahead and lean back all right how's that feel fine is that okay we'll put in a series of 600 pulses in 40 seconds and it's that 600 pulses in 40 seconds that's the actual intervention [Music] you're about halfway done [Music] great and you're done what we're witnessing here is a very much an exploratory trial isn't it yes it is not yet um established as a clinical treatment but what's your gut feeling do you think it will work absolutely i wouldn't be doing it if i didn't think so patrick do you like the idea of this piece of machinery changing your brain i guess someone sometimes when i make mistakes around people and stuff i am i think of ways how i could change and stuff and if you can't do it yourself because that's incredibly difficult this machine might help good and if the trials work out would you come back to have the treatment yeah next time maybe i'll bring a movie to watch too patrick hasn't reported any noticeable effects whilst on the trial [Music] would i have you know tms categorically not a chance would i allow anyone to put electrodes anywhere near my brain one cubic centimeter that's going to stick with me in my mind that's a big area there are millions of neurons in there but at the same time you know i've got to say the other side of me there's a real dichotomy here the other side of me is a scientist and i think you've got to pioneer sometimes you've got to sail to the edge of the world to see if you sail off or if it's round you've got to start at the bottom of the ladder maybe that's what this is maybe this is the bottom of the ladder you've brought up an autistic son and i think a lot of people probably don't realize the enormous amount of energy and the difference that impacts on the family that's hard it's very hard and that's why autism is very isolating for families it it's exhausting to meet the needs to meet the safety you know there's divorce there's bankruptcies because everything goes into the safety well-being and treatments for our kids it is you know painful to watch i've been there i've struggled myself so you know in that sense you know you're looking for any form of cure at times you see him failing and that's that's uncomfortable if another therapy arose whereby you could cure autism what would you think of that i think on a bad frustrating day i'd say yes i think on a day like today where i've never been so proud of them i'd say no it's complicated but on the bad days absolutely yeah yeah yeah i remember some bad days i might have taken a pill if it could make it all go away but on good days very definitely not thank you pat welcome thank you very much you're welcome you're most welcome i hope it works out for you yep keep coming we will help the doctor [Music] what's been the lowest point in your life wow the lowest point um kestrel dying was like a very low point so yeah it was a catastrophic event this is where i grew up and this is the house where i grew up number ten looks a little bit of graffiti down here so i some reason felt compelled to carve my name there but more importantly i carved the word kestrel in here that i was so obsessed with kestrels all i would think about all the time was kestrel's kestrel's kestrels when i was in my early teens i decided that i wanted to to to keep a kestrel so i applied for a license at that time you needed to apply for a home office license to remove a bird like a kestrel from its nest from the wild but it wasn't granted and this all came when conflict with the outside world was just about to explode looking back on it i was beginning to recognize the fact that you know i was a little bit different than the other kids in the class they didn't want to listen to a 15-minute monologue about you know the breeding behavior of the kestrel and they liked girls you know thinking about i was already just ferociously determined i wasn't really gonna let anyone i didn't know didn't have any respect for tell me what to do so i found a nest i climbed up and there were young kestrels in it and took one of them out this is the tree and at that point i was very very excited it was absolutely exalted [Music] it was extremely beautiful and i loved it in it with an enormous you know passion and amount of energy so the obsessive interest and the you know intense focus on that one organism meant that i could just exclude everything else and that's what happened all it existed was just us two this is the field obviously where i flew the the kestrel [Music] i mowed a strip a strip of grass i made a hole in the ground where i could put the bird's block and the bird would sit on the block and i would fly in that direction [Music] never going to beat that it was just perfect [Music] it's a strange arena isn't it this little patch of grass between all of these houses to you know actually be the place where i was at the happiest i've ever been in my entire life it was the first thing that i formed a really powerful bond with it was some sort of mental love missile and i just lit the touch paper and fired myself into it at oblivious speed and it exploded and sparkled and it was totally beautiful [Music] i don't think that i've ever loved anything as intensely it was perfect only it was perfect every day for six months until the end [Music] the kestrel um uh it did die i buried it right underneath the nest and i on the night so i came every year from 75 on the day because i still feel that that was um an enormous sort of turning point really and the impact that it had just goes on i know that's crazy a lot of people are just going to think that's mad you're just standing in a patch of nettles underneath an oak tree where a bird died a long long time ago too big for a small boy way too big for a small boy a small boy that didn't really connect with um other small boys or most adults either but only connected with what's buried in the ground down here so when that suddenly didn't exist um there was nothing left so it was catastrophic you know what it did was highlight my vulnerability so after that i was always scared frightened terrified actually of losing the the things that i loved and that's you know quite a burden had you asked me whether i wanted curing in my teens i might have been interested on occasion you know i would sit there and i'd think oh goodness me wouldn't my life be easier if i could just do this you know just get on with people without it being such a struggle there are an estimated 25 million autistic people in the world when i was growing up the only option for me was mainstream education but now here in america a systematic approach to eradicating autistic traits is being rolled out in specialist schools across the country applied behavioural analysis aba is now taught in hundreds of specialist schools all over the united states and i've come to one of the biggest ones it's an hour outside of boston ali's many of the children here have a far more severe form of autism than i have not only do they struggle with social interactions but many of them are non-verbal me moo me ryan's turn no more nice job you're in another bubble although this technique has obviously moved on from its early days in the 1960s it still follows a system of rigorous repetition the idea is that by doing the same tasks over and over again autistic behavior can be stamped out making the child more socially normal [Music] really uncomfortable it's just a mass of noise and color it's not symmetrical the stripes all around the walls the windows aren't in line you know everything else is pretty chaos but it's it's pretty obvious i think it's gonna be a pretty intense day for me there's some sort of fundamental questions to be asked about the purpose of this sort of education aba has been largely rejected in the uk on the grounds that it's trying to force autistic children to be something they're not vinnie can i start yeah please vincent strolli is the school's founder autism is such a broad thing we're all different you're absolutely convinced that at the moment that aba is the best one to treat autistic kids my position hand over heart is people said well this is behavior modification it's artificial robotic manipulative but so was chemotherapy in the early days of cancer treatment people said it was poisonous it would kill the patient rather than help them aba is the way forward and 30 to 50 percent of them will lose their diagnosis after one to two years of early intensive so when you say lose their diagnosis that would mean if they were re-diagnosed for autism they wouldn't fall within the set that currently qualifies correct professional observers would not be able to tell the autistic child this is educational chemotherapy for these kids we wouldn't deny them the chemical and medical chemotherapy they need for their cancer but to deny them the the work that we and our colleagues around the country are doing successfully is you know it's just wrong if you could would you cure autism if i could of course and that would be a prayer come true [Music] let's be really clear about this i don't like the idea of comparing autism to a cancer that requires a sort of educational chemotherapy for me as a child with asperger's i just don't think this rigid system would have worked but for many parents schools like this must seem like the only option if you are faced with a form of autism which is seriously debilitating then obviously you are going to crave a solution for that i fully understand why parents in particular would want to explore any of those avenues to try and normalize to some extent their child but for people like myself with asperger's you know there's a simple therapy and that is just be on your own i have chosen to live in the woods on my own but this doesn't mean of course that i don't need to have relationships just like everyone else there are a handful of people in my life that i'm close to we're on the red funnel ferry to the isle of wight to see charlotte my partner and she owns the isle of wight zoo charlotte and i don't live together we never have does that distance suit you i wish you hadn't asked that question because i mean i like my own space a lot you know we've been together for 10 years she told me this year and um so that's that's pretty good i get i get bored with things really really quickly you know so um the fact that i'm very definitely not bored with charlotte after 10 years if living apart is part of that then maybe there's a good side to it hello fast greet him greet him [Music] greet him frost greet him [Music] hey [Music] hey charlotte how did you meet chris i'll deal with the lemurs um oh it's so long ago i can hardly remember i fancied charlotte straight away but she didn't fancy me that's the truth of it that's what i say and she never disagrees with it i just didn't know when you when you um invited me out what you wanted i was just perplexed as to what you wanted you hadn't given me any clues yeah i'm not very good at those sort of signals am i clearly not i'm still not very good at those signals am i come on porks no i won't come in come on i know it's really bright and sunny out here and you're a nocturnal animal don't be nasty look at those teeth look at those teeth he is like the porcupine whisperer look it's like the porcupine whisperer when it comes to communicating and about how he feels emotionally then he finds that hard he's unable to to empathize but i i think that is for me has probably been the biggest challenge it's just really confusing because it's such an innate thing normally it's such an instinctive thing to have compassion um even for people that you don't know you know but for chris it's it's not on his radar at all some of your worms thank you no no no we've had this argument already you're not having that this is a sort of typical romantic day out for you too we did we did go for a picnic didn't we when we we've been for a picnic we went for a picnic occasionally i'd drag you out to like a tea gardens or something with other humans there yeah generally wish that i hadn't i would like to do more different things so what about that time when i when i looked to take you to cornwall for your birthday there was a horrible silence which was a bit upsetting i'm not very good at socialising i now just know that it's just no point like i've got a friend's wedding coming up soon i haven't even mentioned it to you there's no point forcing you to be there if you don't want to be there is there that's what i would say sometimes i might still try so basically i've got a wedding coming up do you want to come with me no thanks for all the extra hard work and sometimes the tears and the you know the times when you just think oh geez you know it seems like impossible sometimes to make progress um but yeah i think the return is is really definitely worth it he's fascinating he's a fascinating character and there's a lifetime guarantee with chris never would i be bored we've been together for 10 years and i'm still fascinated by his mind isn't that nice hey oh yes i'm very lucky to have found someone who will put up with the constant social failings that come with my aspergers but 30 years ago any interaction with anyone my own age was catastrophic so this is the school i went to this large comprehensive trouble with going back to places like this it's a catalyst to expose things that otherwise you wouldn't normally think about i was a spazzer and a specker and a and a kids beat other kids up but that wasn't as bad as where they would be coming down here yammering on about all of their parties and and all that sort of stuff and i'd feel completely unalienated it was the exclusions that were particularly cool i was at the most vulnerable point in my life i'd been rejected by my peers who i didn't know who i was what made me upset was i didn't understand it i didn't understand why that you know that i was getting picked on and excluded that was it was the confusion that was the agony you know that that yeah that was the problem i took a whole series of photographs in my late teens and they were all sort of suicidal pictures so there are the pictures of me dead or about to die [Music] it's just a pretentious twaddle but underlying all of that and particularly when i got to this stage and i was very very unhappy if you're isolated then it's it's harder for you to find help when you need it did you try to code yeah i thought about it really seriously three times once in 1984 and then twice in the early 2000s when on both occasions yeah i was yeah very serious about it but i i was with the the dogs and they loved me and i couldn't let them down after i left school i went on to university to study zoology and although i was years off being diagnosed it was already clear to me by this point that i had to develop my own ways of dealing with being different by the time i got to university i'd come up with a strategy and the strategy was really simple don't interact with people of your own age just turn up get straight a's and i wouldn't speak to anyone i had no idea why i you know i was different you know so i was confused inordinately angry i was raging absolutely raging that was when the punk rock thing started so that was quite advantageous for me the punk rock thing was a means of me physically identifying to everyone else that i was different and i i i felt empowered by that i think punk you know did save me and that music sounded like i felt confused and angry [Music] don't let them win when i left university i was obviously virtually unemployable i was obsessed with natural history and i don't know what to do but my sister said to me why don't you go on tv and talk about animals because that's all you ever do talk about on and on and on about animals and if you went on tv you could bore the rest of the world and not just our family about it i didn't know it at the time but my asperger's got me an early break on a kids wildlife show you see i had something that my peers didn't and it was a vast encyclopedic knowledge of the natural world but the night before the first recording i was wracked with anxiety i was thinking to myself right i've got no problem with the animals but i'd have to be in a room with a whole load of people that i didn't know and i'd have to be able to behave myself and i've got a photograph of me a self-portrait having just made a list of the things that i would need to do to be able to work in that environment and the things that i had to stop myself from doing the top of the list was to look at them have make eye contact don't interrupt people don't say what you think because most of the things i thought were incompatible with things that they would they would think and then i'd sort of try and engage with people hey hey this this is what i did in my summer so that they would understand that i was actually genuinely listening to them when in fact paul was thinking about something else how long are a tiger's claws well i think that'd be a good one for you chris well thanks terry that's very very kind of you it's also going off on one about something which is not connected to the topic of any relevance at the time so what were there razor sharp talons they're beautiful stripes and asymmetrical stripey fingerprints biggest catch in the world i was thinking to myself calm down just get back into the zone get back into the zone where you could don't constantly do that you know i mean what will what might we see today you know well we can do a lot better than that i'm sure we'll find some interesting plants for staff we've always overlooked plants but it i have to say it was exhausting and and and i would get very upset with myself when i was failing and and it continues to this day 30 years on managing my asperger's on telly so i seem relatively normal still requires an enormous effort hello and welcome to unsprung here at the national trust sherbourne park estate i've taught myself to manage some of my personal traits sometimes i fail i do just go off on one but then the people i'm working with laugh at it more than anything now they think it's funny thankfully this is a budgie we've got on here i think i must speak to the artists later that's all we've got time for today please thank my guest we'll see you again at 6 30 tomorrow night goodbye i realize now that there's no way i could do my job without asperger's what i do in terms of just making this program is afforded to me because of my asperger's because of my neurological differences here so that's being able to see things with perhaps a greater clarity to see the world in a different way in my case in a very visual way but you know i've been able to understand that and that's something which was a painful process to go through but i did it and now i'm very fortunate to be able to reap the benefits of that not all autistic people are in that position there are many aspects of asperger's which are enormously positive and there must be many other people out there who uh could contribute in in in in an immensely productive way who aren't able to do so because they can't quite manage some aspects of their life in the way that i do in order to make it productive in the uk only 14 of autistic adults are in full-time employment and that's the lowest amount for any notifiable disability and that is a tragic loss up until now everything i've seen in america has been designed to fundamentally change who we are but there is one place that's been harnessing some of the special gifts that autistic people have our obsessive focus our ability to see the world from different perspectives [Music] here we are in silicon valley and the thing to remember is that people with autistic traits made this place happen and people with autistic traits made nasa happen we got to the moon we networked the world and we wouldn't have been able to do it without people with autistic traits author steve silverman has written extensively about the contribution that autistic people have made to the explosion of the tech industry it's nasa and samsung tech i mean you know these places are full of particular minds which are doing extraordinary things before the advent of the tech industry these kids would have been considered weirdos now they're running the world and you know one of the people that we spoke to who's involved with therapies for autistic people and pretty close to saying when i asked them if you could cure autism rid the world of it they said yes wow that's horrifying you know i mean the word cure i think is absolutely toxic in the autism community and the excuse in a sense well it's easier to change the individual than it is to change society that's it that's the core of all of this though isn't it all of these therapies all of these things are are basically just saying let's force these people and rather than adapt to accommodate them absolutely so we have to start redesigning society instead of redesigning the individual a change is happening in some of the largest companies in the world neil barnett is pioneering a new recruitment process here at microsoft typically and notoriously autistic people struggle to get jobs in the first place a lot of them basically just struggle with the interview process right right so we've created this program where folks come in and we actually bring them in for a week to do an interview versus one day which is the typical interview what we change with with focusing on candidates that are on the autism spectrum is bring on them in letting them have a more reducing the stress hopefully and then letting them showcase their their skills and so we do this over a five-day period i'm going to be honest with you now i couldn't work in this office personally it's still christmas yeah um there's all sorts of um snowflakes hanging from the ceiling we have individuals that ask for a closed office with a door and you're able to we're able to provide that we are finding great untapped talent that normally we would not see and and these individuals are creating software being used by millions of people [Music] jacob tell me your story like me jacob a lead software architect had a difficult time growing up i was perfectly intelligent i was actually considered genius level intelligence but they said i wasn't socially developed enough to move on to the next grade in school was very hurtful to be perfectly frank i felt like a black sheep most of the time i got a job at microsoft and that eventually led to a number of positions each one building up my skill set and my resume so your perseverance was worthwhile in the end i mean you've managed to get yourself to somewhere where your particular and peculiar skills are valued that's true and it's it's also led me to more independent economic freedom as well here's a truth for you there are so many parallels between us the way that we both had to sculpt a means of uh adapting socially to to to further our progress in life and also some of the pains that we've obviously shared as a result imagine all those people trapped in their room because they are isolated by this condition they haven't been able to sculpt opportunities manage themselves in a way that allows them to fulfill their lives that's like a ghastly sentence set in a vile fairy tale no one should be imprisoned by this condition they should be allowed to to to exalt in in those aspects of the condition which empower them you know that difference is such a you know valuable tool an enormous asset you know to be able to see things understand things process things and remember things in a way that most people can't do has to be seen as a gift not something that you you're badged with and it's about what you can't do it's got to be about what you can do come on scratcher i i do feel i have this horror hanging over me that we're making this program and i'm saying these things in an interval between disasters i'm happy with my ability to manage my aspergers and it allows me to do my job and i've found someone who loves me but there's still one thing that i haven't learned to deal with and that is losing the things that i love he's got shaved sides because he had a scan last week he's got liver disease so at the moment i'm just trying to spend as much time with him as possible you know i would like to be able to think that i might get through scratchy dying you know and me being you know hopelessly alone with a greater degree of success than i have ever before when i've lost the things that i love most um but i'm not i'm not brimming with confidence i don't know i just don't want to be a charlatan and then to say that you know things are actually okay in fact some things are better than okay when in you know you know it's all built on sand for all the contradictions all the heartache of this condition what i've seen in america has made it very clear to me that we need to understand autistic people better not try to change who they are if you offered me a cure for my particular perspective for where i stand then no thank you every relationship i've had in my life has been defined and made difficult by my aspergers but there is one that's come surprisingly easy and it's the thing that i'm probably most proud of remember they are don't spook because if you do you'll spoop them okay so if they're nibbling your fins just let them nibble your fins you know if you sort of jump and turn around they'll be gone okay i'm excited they're very exciting it's always good to be getting in the water with a very large predatory animal megan is my stepdaughter from a previous relationship obviously i have played a role in raising megan and i found it enormously rewarding something that i was very surprised by meg's i met when she was 18 months old we seemed to get on sort of straight away and we traveled a lot together and all around the world i was working overseas a lot of that time so i would take megan with me and so i enjoyed putting an enormous amount of energy into her education it was you know and is one of the most important parts of my existence megs is at um university studying zoology which is a a great surprise to me really so i'm very pleased yeah what's so satisfying at the moment is that when i ring him up she answers the phone like this okay just give me a minute and it's because she's in the library fantastic working christ about time kind of every day up until this point ever since i can remember you've always been someone that has been there you're always there to support me no matter no matter kind of what and you're you're reliable in that sense which is for me it's been really really lovely reliable it's like a different advisory report isn't it i'm getting like a five-star trip advising report here that's what it is it's hard to say no but you you've taught me so much in terms of not just like the natural world and everything that i've become so passionate about as well um you've taught me everything just life lessons and you'd given me experiences that if i hadn't met you i wouldn't have had so if you hadn't come into my life 20 years ago i would probably be in a completely different place than i am now yeah so look how many stars on this sort of guardianship you can get up to 4.9 if you come to my graduation no way i saw i settled for 4.8 i'm really happy with that you won't be coming to my graduation no of course period yeah i am yeah i'm budgeting what i'm going to do drive all the way to liverpool to see you getting a bit of paper yes next chris what i hope you have a good day no you are coming no i'm not going to do that it's ridiculous it's not yes don't make such a big deal out of it anyway it's a big deal you

Channel: OMG Stories

Views: 374,947

Keywords: documentary, real lives, full documentaries, channel 4, bbc, amazing stories, amazing documentaries, tlc, top 10, reddit, full documentary, autism, diagnosing autism, aspergers, asperger

Id: oi4UeKaHCFU

Length: 56min 28sec (3388 seconds)

Published: Sat Sep 04 2021