Aspie's Inc.

Eye to Eye

2011-09-11T20:03:00.001-04:00

Often we Aspies have difficulty making eye contact, knowing when to and when not to stair. I have developed a routine when in casual conversation, so that the other party does field uncomfortable or that I’m doing something unexpected.

The Eye Count: While I’m talking I count: eyes, 2, 3, 4 / mouth 2, 3, 4 / elsewhere 2, 3, 4 then I start over. I throw in a forehead every so often. What happens is that I look the person in the eye for four seconds then I look at their mouth for four seconds, then somewhere else for four seconds then I start the cycle over. This approximates what a typical person does without thinking.

If I five nonstop eye contact the person feels like they are being “drilled”. It’s too intense. I used to just watch people’s mouths the whole time so that it was easier to understand what they were saying and that made some uncomfortable. The gaze of neurotypical folks naturally drifts around as they talk and they just don’t realize it.

Once you get in the habit of doing the Eye Count it will become an internalized process that won’t take as much conscious thought. Then it’s time to move on to Advanced Eye Count. While you are counting you listen for verbal cues to change what you are doing.

“My boyfriend broke up with me” or some other sad or happy revelation means you look near some one’s eyes and do a facial expression of sympathy. Most women will want eye contact at the points in the conversation when they reveal something of emotional importance. Men also, but if you are having casual conversation with guys, you can get away with very little eye contact. Just look some where, anywhere, and ask questions about football or something. When they say, Hey guess what or I have to tell you something, then you give eye contact to initiate the next step in the conversation, but it usually doesn’t have to be long.

UNLESS, you are in a confrontation, then you give non stop unwavering eye contact.

Ultimately, you can develop a routing way of using your eyes when speaking that will be pleasing to the neurotypical and manageable for you.

When you are with your spouse or close friends then you can relax a little and not be so disciplined about you eyes.

There Is Hope (Remembering 9/11)

2011-09-09T22:41:00.001-04:00

Fires burn
Countless mourn
We realize we are but dust
As walls collapse
Our strength fails and
Hope fades
What super power can bring it back?

Fear grows
Countless hide
We realize we are under attack
As soldiers move out
Our sense of safety dies
Souls ache
What weapon can defeat this terror?

No need to fear when you’re cradled in the hand
Of the one who spread the stars in space
When time and earth began
There is hope in the one who holds the keys
To life and death, heaven and hell
King of eternity

No need to fear, for weapons cannot steal
The life bestowed by Jesus blood
Eternity with Him
There is hope in the life beyond the grave
Eternal joy, forever peace
Secure in eternity

There is Hope (Remembering 9/11)

2011-09-09T22:39:00.000-04:00

Fires burn

Countless mourn

We realize we are but dust

As walls collapse

Our strength fails and

Hope fades

What super power can bring it back?

Fear grows

Countless hide

We realize we are under attack

As soldiers move out

Our sense of safety dies

Souls ache

What weapon can defeat this terror?

No need to fear when you’re cradled in the hand

Of the one who spread the stars in space

When time and earth began

There is hope in the one who holds the keys

To life and death, heaven and hell

King of eternity

No need to fear, for weapons cannot steal

The life bestowed by Jesus blood

Eternity with Him

There is hope in the life beyond the grave

Eternal joy, forever peace

Secure in eternity

Grief Expressed as Anger

2011-09-01T21:14:00.001-04:00

In June of last year, I left my quest to be a missionary, and got a contract as a tech writer. I was told it would be 6 to 18 months, and that they really, really wanted to hire me. Then a little church asked me to be their pastor. About 30 people. They couldn’t really afford to pay me anything much, but I didn’t care.

So, I would work 40 hours and spend time outside of work prepping to lead singing and preach. It was draining, but such a great joy to teach and care for these folks.

Then in December, with no warning, the contract ended. I’ve been jobless for eight months. Since June, when I started keeping track again, I’ve applied for 75 jobs.

Today, I spent some time taking care of things at church, and came home furious. It took me hours to figure out that I was feeling grief. Baring a miracle, I will have to leave the church when I finally find a job. I’ve been there over a year, and have grown to care for these folks.

No tears though, just fury. It helps if when I figure out what it is, because then I don’t feel quite so angry. My wife is cool with it if I explain it to here. My wife is the coolest neuro-typical I’ve ever met.

The last time I cried, other than during times of worship, was two years ago when my mother died. Intense times of worshiping God lead me to tears when I have a sense of His mercy and holiness. But those tears are not about grief necessarily.

Adam

This Weekend’s Concert Canceled

2011-06-08T08:15:00.001-04:00

There’s a medical emergency in my wife’s extended family, so we need to leave town.

The concert has been canceled.

Adam

Aspie Family Performs Concert of Music

2011-06-02T21:36:00.001-04:00

Parmenters in Concert
Saturday, June 11th @ 2pm
(Including special musical guests)

Red Brick Coffee House
105 N. Paw Paw, Lawrence, MI 49064
269-674-8080

Admission is Free
Listen to a music sample online at http://sharethecrown.com/stc.aspx

One……Thing……At…..A…..Time

2011-05-23T11:15:00.001-04:00

I’ve been frantically looking for work as a technical writer or project manager for months. I’ve even submitted my name to do some songwriting and recording. Just one of those though.

(If you’re curious what my song writing is like go here)

It makes it nearly impossible to focus on anything else. Money and eating are something I’m very attached to. My family and I are also attached to the little country church where I’ve been asked to be pastor.

I know, an Asperger pastor. It’s working really well.

It’s been an immense challenge to focus on anything else other than finding a suitable job, and not to apply for something, anything, regardless of how far away.

One way that I’m learning to deal with it is to have different places where I work on different things. If I can separate different activities into different physical places, then it’s easier to concentrate.

I also set a specific time limit each day on job hunting. Actually, there are certain places I look each day. When those are done, job hunting ceases to exist for the day. It may take me 2 hours or 6, but when it’s done I stop.

I try not to think about the other things when I’m doing something. You see, I also have to do some repairs on my home and work in my yard. I just have to separate it in my mind and actively ignore what I’m not working on.

The “glue” that is holding it all together is my personal faith in Christ. I believe that I’m supposed to be in geographical area so that I can be at this little country church and serve the people there.

That conviction has made me a bit more brazen and able to resist the urge to move to a location where jobs are more plentiful. I’m starting to learn and understand that serving people, bringing hope and meaning to their lives is more important than material possessions. My wife and I run the risk of running out of money. It could get bad.

Yet, if that is the cost of doing something that has eternal value in the lives of people, it’s worth it.

Adam

I Called in Advance in it Didn't Work Out

2011-05-10T21:26:00.000-04:00

I have to confront some one about inapropriate behavior in a professional environment (that's as specific as I can be). I could let it go and nothing would come of it, but it's something that I really should say something about.

So, I made the phone call in my mind first to see how it would go. This works well for event planning, logistical matters and standard operating procedures, but it never seems to work for people. Never works for people. So, in my mind it turned ugly. I tride it twice and it simply ended in lots of bad fellings and a "never talk to me again moment".

It really won't go that way. Most likely the bloke won't agree and just disregard what I have to say, and we will move on. Nothing will be resolved, but I will have done what I consider to be my moral duty. No, I'm not a crusader. If I explained the details you would understand.

As hard as I've tride I can't create a predictive model for human behavior. I can identify patterns in behavior and match them to models that describe mental/emotional state or intent. Yet, I can't predict regular day to day behavior.

Why am I posting this? Well, as they say, missery loves company.

Adam

Art by an Aspie for sale - Darkness Hides from the Sun

2011-03-29T10:37:00.002-04:00

Darkeness Hides from the Sun. Original Oil on canvas by Adam Parmenter.
$50 plus $25 for shipping.

Purchases via PayPal or money order. For more information send me an e-mail or phone.

All shipping is via UPS or FedEx.
Adam

I’m Back!!!

2011-03-23T10:32:00.001-04:00

(@Aspie @Aspies)

Well, I think I’ve been away for about a month. I just reached the overload limit in life and started switching to survival mode. Job hunting and pastoring at a church at the same time got to be a bit much.

One reason is that I never do anything part way. I want to do the best with what I have. That takes a great deal of energy and creativity. Well, as you can imagine, a church, being a group of people, is an ever changing, cascade of personal textures. Planning becomes an exercise in understanding what volunteers are capable of and how far I think that I can help them grow.

The first mistake (one of numerous I’m sure) was to take the stated intentions of a new person at face value. I should have considered age, background, maturity, stability. So, I invested far more in this volunteer than I should have. Now this person has pulled back, and I’m having to rethink a number of things.

I think we Aspies can train ourselves to look inside of people and discern more about them than we do naturally. I also think that sticking to some guidelines will guard against future error.

Not every Aspie reading this has a group of volunteers whose development and growth he/she is responsible for. However, you might be a parent, teacher, manager, friend, etc. All of us have expectations of what the people around us will be, do and become.

For Aspies, especially, those expectations can be based on an idealized view of the world. Because of the sensory integration deficit in most Aspies, the world around us is a mass of incoming chaos. We manage the chaos through rigidly defining the world around us. Thus it becomes manageable. When we look at expectations for people we tend to set our expectations in the best terms possible for our own benefit.

The world doesn’t simply revolve around my wants and needs. No one can see inside my head and read my list of expectations. If they could they would probably laugh out loud. So what do I do?

First, I slow down. Before throwing some one into a role they may or may not be suited for, take the time to get to know that person.

Second, set clear requirements for the role. Be specific on the few important things you expect. If your list of expectations is over five items, you can count on the person failing.

Third, decide in advance your tolerance for variation or at least decide to expect nothing to be just the way you like it.

Fourth, ask for status updates. How are you doing? Where can you improve? Here is what I expect of you.

Fifth, be an encourager. Highlight what the person is doing well and what you like about it. Don’t discuss failures, but instead discuss growth opportunities.

I’ll try to remember to let you know how this works out in my case. It’s difficult to talk things through in a positive way. I would much rather people just be able to do the stuff I ask them to. In my case, though, I’m a shepherd; a pastor. My job is to gently lead. I think that form of leadership will be successful for everyone.

Adam

Aspie Artwork

2011-03-12T17:09:00.000-05:00

Here are some paintings that I've done in the past. Right now, oil painting is a great stress reliever.

Hit the link below.

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=8289&l=c5e466a5d5&id=1314469237

Adam

Fibromyalgia

2011-02-09T14:02:00.000-05:00

Back in May of 2007 I published a short post proposing a link between sensory defensiveness and Fibromyalgia. Over the years of this blog, that one is the most read and most commented.

Several days ago, I received a comment on that 2007 post that put a different spin on things:

Hi
I have FM and have been diagnosed for the last 8 years...I have a 5 year old daughter with Autism ..The stress that I have had to deal with helping her to be verbal and get a proper education has made me have more flare ups and now find sometimes loosing my balance and falling and getting injured.
I just wonder if anyone else out there relates.
Thank you

As a Fibromyalgia sufferer whose symptoms are primarily in remission, tension causes a flair up. The tension of dealing with a child in the Autism Spectrum can be exhausting and can create tension. I am an Aspie and both my children are Aspies. In my opinion it's easier for me to help my Aspie children then it would if they had a more extreme case of Autism. The tension of that could easily cause a flare up in Fibromyalgia as could any prolonged period of tension.

What we should consider, however, is that it's not the challenges of raising a special needs child that triggers the flair up in Fibro, it's our response to the challenges. I first had symptoms of Fibro when I got my first corporate job as a tech writer at a major pharmaceutical manufacturer. I had absolutely no background in science, tech writing, or manufacturing. I'm good at guessing, so they hired me and I moved into big projects quickly. Problem was I didn't know what I was doing. The prolonged tension of that started manifesting itself in health issues. I was finally diagnosed with Fibromyalgia. It wasn't until several years later that I received the Asperger diagnosis.

Today, I have been out of work for three months. In addition, I pastor a small church that can't afford to pay me. If I were to leave the area for work, it could be the end of them. Frankly, the last four years have been intensely challenging and now I'm facing the possibility of financial disaster. My symptoms have returned in a small way. I have some pain and soreness, but not severe like before.

What has changed? The tension hasn't changed. The challenges I face are much greater now than ever before. How I react to them has changed.

I've matured spiritually. I work to view my life in the perspective of my eternal life with Christ. I am also struggling to have greater trust in God. I'm pretty honest with my prayers. I doubt it's anything that God hasn't heard before. As a result of prayer and intently studying the Bible, I have become more calm, loving, gentle, and frankly a stronger person. I'm more sure of myself when I am more confident of who Christ is.

I have also changed my diet, try to get regular exercise, and try to figure out ways to take refreshment breaks.

I work on meditating on Bible verses. Here is one that I've enjoyed lately:
When you pass through the waters, I will be with you; and through the rivers, they shall not overwhelm you; when you walk through fire you shall not be burned, and the flame shall not consume you. Isaiah 43:2

Clearly, medication and daily stretching, aerobics and even resistance training should be included. But, for me, the most critical aspect of managing challenges of chronic pain, Asperger, and everything else have been focusing on the Bible and prayer.

Best and Worst Jobs for Aspies

2011-02-01T08:18:00.000-05:00

(#Aspie #Aspies #Aspergers) Just read an interesting post by Darian Peters called, Best and Worst Jobs for people with Aspergers. Some interesting thoughts, but don't know if I agree with all his conclusions. What have been your best and worst jobs? What about about them did you or didn't you like?

Best of Aspie’s, Inc.–Watch My Mouth

2011-01-26T08:53:00.001-05:00

(Originally posted August 30, 2006)

I sat through a two day training on Microsoft Access at New Horizons Computer Training Center. It was actually quite useful really. That said, I realized that could understand what the teacher was saying when I watched his mouth.

At times I would work on other things, wright down notes and ideas, or edit a working data base that I need at my job. However, I found that if I really wanted to catch and understand each word (and what they meant together) it was best to watch his mouth.

That brings me back to the phenomenon of sensory scrambling.
I'm guessing that the visual reinforcement of the mouth movements reinforces the auditory input, especially sense some of the auditory and visual stimulus is being mixed up. By locking them together (watching a persons mouth), it essentially defeats the effects of scrambling.

Over the years, I've made an effort not to watch peoples mouths while they talk, because neurotypicals don't expect that kind of behavior. I have a routine that I follow of eye contact for a few second, look at mouth, look back at eyes, look away, look down, repeat. People then feel like they are having a normal conversation instead of being "drilled" with my eyes in one spot.

That said, in a class situation, I'm just going to get the most out of it that I can and watch the teachers mouth.

Adam

What do you really believe?

2011-01-21T22:41:00.004-05:00

What is the meaning of life? What is my purpose in life? We ask that question, often not in those words, but we ask it. We usually don't think about it too hard and just try to stay busy or spend more time online hoping the answer will show up in our e-mail box. But, meaning doesn't come out of activity. It comes from closely held beliefs that I have about life and God.

My faith is the foundation of who I am. My beliefs shape my identity. My beliefs and identify will give me a sense of my purpose in life. If I choose my actions to fulfill my purpose then I will pursue that purpose with passion, creativity and tenacity.

Often, I ignore beliefs, identity and purpose and try to look for things to fix me. Especially as Aspies we are often on a constant hunt for the latest “intervention” that will help us… you name it.

Some of us want to feel or at least seem more normal. Others of us just want to know the key to better relationships or getting the best jobs or dealing with sensory overload. Those are all good things to work on, but we spend so much time dealing with the symptoms of our lives that we don’t ever deal with the causes of many symptoms.

If we ignore what it is that shapes us, then it will continue to shape us, regardless of how many treatments or interventions we choose.

If I believe that the only worth while people are normal people, and that Aspies are defective, then I will identify myself as an individual that is fundamentally flawed. It’s very likely that my purpose will include fixing myself so that I can be or at least feel normal. I will relentlessly pursue normality, which doesn’t exists, and never attain it.

If I believe that everyone is uniquely created by God and as such reflect something of their creator. I will identify myself as special, because my creator God is very special. Being different will not bear the mark of error, but the mark of uniqueness. I’ll also see the skills I have as gifts and my potential as being open to development. How my purpose develops will also be far more open as I will tend to see myself as having potential.

So, what are the fundamental beliefs that are at the core of who you are, and how are they being lived out in your life?

Adam

The Silent Core

2011-01-20T15:52:00.001-05:00

This is a poem I wrote a few years back. It was inspired by my daughter when she was in elementary school. So much of what my daughter experienced, then and now, happened inside her richly populated mind. The world inside never quite matches the one outside and it can be struggle to communicate between them.

SILENT CORE
By Adam Parmenter

Locked inside the silent core
Little escapes
The relentless embrace of
The inner mind

So alive.
On the inside.
Worlds, unseen, bloom and wane
Beyond the reach of
Hands and smiles
If they only knew
The miles and miles
I’ve journeyed alone
Songs unknown
Stories untold
Yearning to break free
To be known and seen

From the silent core.

©Adam M. Parmenter 2010

Surviving High School Tip 2

2011-01-18T15:43:00.001-05:00

Develop a very serious hobby.

Aspies that don’t fit in anywhere except with other Aspies are just seen as weird. An Aspie with a skill that neurotypicals recognize and value will be seen as Eccentric.

Everybody loves an eccentric. Bill Gates & Steven Jobs are eccentric. Does you school age Aspie have any interest in music. Band is a great way to bridge the social barrier between neurotypicals and Aspie.

When my son was in public school, he was respected because he was a great trumpet player. The kids over looked his ticks and social fumbles.

If your school age Aspie likes to run, train for track and field. Jocks will accept an odd person when they respect him as an athlete.

So, this summer if your school age Aspie is worried about next year, talk through a hobby that can become an extra curricular activity and train seriously at it over the summer.

Adam

Surviving High School Tip 1

2011-01-12T17:27:00.002-05:00

(Tags #Aspie #Aspies)

The topic came up on Facebook about having problems in high school. I had plenty in junior high. For high school, my parents moved me to a small Christian high school and it was great.

Now, I’m 46 years old, and have two Aspie children. They were in a small public school until junior high and high school and then we started home schooling. The public schools in our area are large and there’s lots of aggression.

We might be moving to a smaller town that has a better school. If that happens, then my daughter might go there.

One way of surviving high school is to change to a learning environment that fits you (or your child if you are the parent). The same is true of adult learners. Does online work best for you? Then take as many courses as you can online.

People want will tell you that your children need socialization or they won’t turn out right. I figure my children won’t ever benefit from bullying, teasing or being assaulted. They do benefit from church and all the other activities we do with them.

When they get into the adult world, if they are talented and work hard, then socialization is not as important at work and being quirky is a little more acceptable if you are good at your job.

Is the environment doing damage? Change to a different environment.

Any Aspies in the Kalamazoo, Michigan Area?

2011-01-10T15:53:00.002-05:00

(Twitter tags: #Aspie #Aspies #Kalamazoo)

It occurred to me that there might be other Aspies in the Kalamazoo area that would like to get together for coffee. I’m curious what the other adult Aspies are doing, what they struggle with, areas where they’ve done well, etc.

It wouldn’t be a weekly meeting. Maybe quarterly at first. I just don’t know where you all are?
Post a comment or call the Aspies, Inc. phone line (269) 849-9068 and leave a message.

Adam Parmenter
Just your average working class Aspie.

Best of Aspies, Inc: Small Talk

2011-01-10T05:00:00.002-05:00

(Originally posted April 23, 2006)

It happens to me all of the time:

At church: "Everybody stand up and greet one another. Please pay special attention to someone new."

"Hi, I'm Adam."
"Hello, I'm ______."
Pause
Frozen smiles.
This other person wanders off.

Ugh. I'm supposed to say something there, but what!

I'm supposed to fill that pause with words that make that person feel welcomed and significant. It would save time just to say that, but in the neurotypical world, you aren't allowed to use accurate speach.

Maybe I should learn from the other neurotypical brains around me about how they make small talk. Here are some of the nutty things they say:

"So, how are you doing?"
I used to answer that question in sufficient detail so as to provide an accurate assessment of my condition. Since they didn't make a specific request (e.g. Hi, how is your financial condition, how is your health, etc), my answer might need to be quite long. I finally learned that I'm supposed to say, "Fine and you?" Then the other person says, "Fine, thanks" or "Fine" or on occassion people will respond with "Fine and you?", but don't wait for me to answer a second time.

Does that make any sense to you? It would make just as much sense for people to great each other this way:
"Blah"
"Blah, blah"
"Blah, blah, blah"
or
"I acknowledge your presence. It is pleasant."
"I also acknowledge yours. It is also pleasant."
"Confirmed. Greeting complete. Do you wish further conversation? Please choose a topic."

Wouldn't that be cool! No one would have to guess what they are supposed to say, and you might get to learn about some really interesting things instead of:

"Hey were yah from!"
"So, what do you think of this weather!"
"Warm enough for yah?"

If I'm outside, does it really matter if it is warm enough for me? And what will the speaker do if I say no? Does the average man or woman on the street have any ability to raise or lower the outside air temperature?

"NO! It's not warm enough for me, and I'm sure angry about it! This your fault?"

How about this one: "So, what do you do?"

I notice that a lot of these banal questions start out with with word "so". That's a neurotypical way of saying, "I am beginning to speak to you." If I walked up to you and said, "Now commencing chit chat." You would wonder what nut house I escaped from, but you sure wouldn't be confused about my intentions!

"So, what do you do?"

Well, periodically throughout the day, I eat meals, make numerous trips to the men's room, I change my clothes, pray, read the Bible, think mean thoughts about people who ask . . . stop me when I get to what you were looking for."

I better stop ranting, I'm starting to get out of control.

One other thing, it's hard for me to be in group social situations when many of the people in the room are quiet types. We all sit and it is quiet. (now picture rain man rocking back and forth and speaking). It's a social situation, you are definitely, definitely supposed to be talking to each other.

They sit. Quiet. Fear strikes, I may have to start the conversation. What should I do!

I know what to do, "So, how about that weather! Warm enough for yah?"

Later,

Adam

A Ship Without a Rudder? (#Aspies #Aspie #Change)

2011-01-07T13:42:00.000-05:00

Everyone believes and their beliefs give their life "direction". In other words, my closely held beliefs and values influence what I do and how I respond. While you might be a "non-religious" person, you still have a set of values by which you measure and direct your conduct and which influence your perspective. This is true even if you never think about your beliefs and values.

As Aspies we often chase after every new technique and treatment or our parents do. As adult Aspies we work to understand ourselves (hopefully) and live productive lives. These things are all good, but a ship without a rudder may only reach a destination by chance wind current. When I live my life without understanding my own beliefs and values then I'm like a ship without a rudder. That ship must go in whatever direction the wind and sea currents drive it. You may get closer to your destination only to get blown back the opposite way.

If I lack a moral "rudder" in my life then I may face difficulty gaining the life I wish. Most of my circumstances are beyond my control, and they will change often without prior notice. As such without a moral rudder then my circumstances can result in a feeling of powerlessness and lack of direction. In another sense, if I'm not aware of my closest held beliefs and values, then I may not only lack a rudder, I might even lack a destination.

How many of us Aspies look at ourselves and judge our worth or our level of success based on the neurotypical culture around us. A culture, by the way, which is constantly changing and differs depending on the group in which you are. The expectations of the neurotypical world system can vary even from person to person. I can never judge myself based on the chaotic expectations of others.

I do judge myself though. Everyone does. After an event, or at the end of the day or even after a conversation. I think we Aspies do this more than most, because we analyze back through the day and try to decide if we understood and followed all the social rules.

What if you had a separate set of rules. Unchanging rules that guided you through any circumstance at any time. When you judged yourself, what if you judged yourself against principals that had universal merit. Then you value and worth wouldn't change and your sense of success or failure will not change based on the shifting culture around you. Your destination would be to most closely live out your beliefs and values.

That is what is getting me through all the many difficult changes I'm facing these days. Getting laid off of jobs twice, changing careers.... all this change at once is tough enough. As an Aspie it is really difficult. Even as my circumstances constantly changes, my beliefs and values are like a strong rudder that gives me a direction, helps me make choices, and helps me asses my behavior.

What guides you in your life?

My "other side"

2011-01-06T14:30:00.000-05:00

(#Aspie) I'm not sure if there are many Aspie pastors, but the work at Lawrence
Bible Baptist is going well. You can follow us at http://www.facebook.com/pages/Lawrence-Bible-Baptist-Church/157961100910809.

Adam

Available for Speaking Engagements

2011-01-04T18:23:00.002-05:00

Give me a call to schedule a date for me to speak at your event. Call 269-849-9068.

I speak on Asperger, managing change, and Bible topics.

An Invisible God?

2011-01-04T14:08:00.001-05:00

For some Aspies an apparently intangible God is difficult to comprehend. I can’t see God with my eyes, and very few individuals have ever heard Him speak directly. Some people have experienced miracles, but many faithful believers, even Bible scholars, never experience any miracle beyond that of being forgiven of sin.

So, is God hiding from us? How can He be real if I can’t see Him?

Rationally, we can’t question God’s existence simply because we can’t see or touch Him. We believe in the existence of many influential historical person that we have never seen. No one questions the existence of Plato or Aristotle whose philosophies have done much to shape the societies of the Western world. The only evidence that these two men existed are from manuscript copies of their writings. Scholars judge their manuscripts as authentic. The more manuscripts and the closer to their time the author lived the better.

Plato? The closest manuscripts is within a 1200 years of his life. There are seven of them left.

Aristotle? 1400 years. There are 49 manuscripts left.

How about the New Testament part of the Christian Bible? There are copies New Testament books that date within 100 years of the time of Christ. There are fragmentary portions that go back even farther. There are 5,600 New Testament manuscripts available.

That is just part a sliver of the evidence that indicates that the Bible is an accurately preserved historical document. There is much more than I can go into here. Suffice it to say, there is strong evidence pointing to the existence of the invisible God of the Bible.

(For more on this documentary evidence click this link)

It may seem impossible, but is the problem in the existence of god or in my perspective?

More soon.

Adam

Anyboday want to hire a talented Aspe? (#Aspie #Aspies)

2011-01-02T21:58:00.000-05:00

Still hunting for work. My profile http://www.linkedin.com/in/adamparm

I'll even telecommute.

The contractor I worked for as a tech writer / trainer ended my contract, but didn't see fit to tell me in advance.

Nice.

Adam

Best of Aspies Inc: Dance or Stand?

2011-01-02T05:00:00.002-05:00

(Originally posted March 6, 2006)

I never did understand that people go to dances in order to stand around or they go to a “dance” club to sit and drink. I wanted to dance. I was told that my dancing was odd. Funky was the word used once. You can imagine as an Aspie I get into the rocking and bobbing.

I remember avoiding the junior high dances. Junior high was when nothing made sense, and everyone seemed to make fun of me. Like I really wanted to go to a dance. I did see dances portrayed in movies and on T.V. though. Most of the people stand around not knowing what to do. Why would I make a special trip to do that, when I’m doing that most of the time?

As a 19 year old, I visited Hawaii with my father. Dad was a pilot for United Airlines and the employee discount my dad received made travel to Hawaii quite affordable. When I turned 19 I was finally old enough to go to a dance club (in Hawaii at least). My cousin and his buddy were staying with us, and I told them to come along. It ended up I went alone. Didn’t know going to a dance club alone was socially unacceptable. Didn’t even realize that going to a dance club might be considered by some to be morally questionable.

I walked in the door and headed toward the dance floor. The music was infectious. I was just digging the groove, but I could tell that I was supposed to have a dance partner. Dancing with a pretty girl sounded like fun. So, I asked one. I think it took three tries, and a girl said yes. I noticed that she looked every where but at me, and did not engage me personally. Later when I was 21, Greg, a buddy of mine from Michigan, took me to a dance club. We just bopped around on the dance floor, and didn’t even try to get girls to dance with us. Some girls approached us (there’s an ego boost). The slow dance came up and I got my first clue that dance clubs were meant for more than just dancing. I probably new before then, but it just wasn’t my thing. I was there to dance. It is called a DANCE club after all, not an arousal club.

So, the girls that came up to dance with us didn’t even say much, but just sort of slid in and started dancing. As I said, the slow dance came up, and I that girl had plastered herself against me. At that point I understood how the utensil drawer feels when contact paper is stuck to it. Slow dancing was nice if not just a bit to squeezy. I really did want romance and the love of a woman in my life. I even had raging hormones, but this was not the ideal of romance that I had imagined. Then the girl I was dancing with said, “I hope my husband doesn’t find out.” I said, “Why would that matter, all we’re doing is dancing.” That brought things to a screeching halt, and the girls were gone as quickly as they had come.

Was it something I said?

The social strictures that surround the task of locating a willing dance partner make no sense to me. That’s one of the joys of marriage. My wife is my partner in dance and everything else.

Adam Parmenter

Today is the perfect date for a perseverating Aspie. 1/1/11

2011-01-01T12:12:00.000-05:00

1/1/11/111/1111/11111/111111. Sorry.

1

Adam

Can't Take Faith at Face Value

2010-12-30T12:31:00.000-05:00

Received feed back my Six Givens post. They are probing questions that deserve a thoughtful response. So, I decided to respond to some of them here in a new posting.
To pursue a more extended discussion on the veracity of the Bible or the existence of God, please visit Share The Crown. I would love to get feedback there and engage a vigorous and thoughtful discussion.

Here my responses to some of the questions about my six givens.

My statement: There is a literal God who has a personality and created all that exists.
The question: god has personality: is this consistent with being all-knowing and perfectly just?
My Answer: I see no inconsistency there. I state that God has a personality to differentiate myself from those faith systems that view god as an impersonal force. To say God has a personality does not imply that He is a human. It would be inconsistent if he didn't have a personality. The Bible states that God created humans in His image, and as such we are the only animals on this planet that posses person hood or self awareness. God has a will, desires, emotions, values, loves, hates, etc. Being created in His image we have the same.

My statement: The Christian Bible is a message from this unique literal God, and the only source of information about Him.
The Question: why does god undergo a complete personality change between the old and new testament?
My Answer: He doesn't. A careful examination of the Old Testament reveals that it clearly points to Christ as the solution to the problem of sin. Christ is clearly symbolized in the sacrificial system and foretold by prophets. The apparent change is God in His patiences extending a time of grace. Why don't find this confusing in people, why do we demand that God be some sort of robot exhibiting only certain qualities and never the fullness we see in humans?

Think of the most admirable person you know. Imagine that this person is grievously wronged by you. He has every right to reject you as a friend, but instead he gives you a second chance. What happens if you continue to commit wrongs against this person? He will eventually reject you as a friend. You will loose you opportunity for reconciliation. Because of Christ, we have an opportunity to be reconciled to God.

My statement: God created everything that exists
The Question: Who created god?
My Answer: Insisting that God must have a creator is no more rational than declaring He does not. Granted, everything that we can observe has a cause. Some argue, so God must have a cause. The flaw in the argument is that to demand that God have a creator would mean He is not God. I'm going back to the supposition that the Bible is the only source for knowing who God is. In the Bible God He has always existed. There is no hint in any way that God was a creator.

We often make the mistake of conforming our understanding of God to our human limitations. I asert that God created everything including time. Such being the case, God would exist outside of and prior to what He created. He would have no beginning. No creator. Anything created has a beginning. God does not.

My Statement: The first created humans (Adam & Eve) disobeyed God’s moral law and in doing so became enemies of God.The Question: god created adam and eve: does this mean you are a creationist? has god deliberately deceived us by planting [masses of] false evidence against creationism?
My Answer: I disagree that there are masses of evidence against creationism. It is really a question of presupposition. If you determined that they can't possibly be a God, then when faced with the Cambrian Explosion, then you must develop a hypothesis of Punctuated Equilibrium instead of question the veracity of Darwin's theory. Frankly the existence of DNA and evidence that mutation is always subtractive makes macro evolution untenable at best.

These are just a few of the questions posed to me, and I'm sure that they will stir up further questions and comments. Join me over at Share The Crown
if you would like to post comments or further questions.

Adam

#Managing Change - Take A Step Back

2010-12-28T22:19:00.000-05:00

(Twitter Tags #Aspeis #Aspie) As Aspies we can live productive lives even in the midst of chaos. My ability to manage change has been put to the test over the last three years. Laid off from a job because the company was down sizing. Found another job that I liked, but had to quit it, because it didn't pay enough to pay our bills.

Recently had two jobs then. A tech writer job that was I liked some. It paid most all of our expenses. The second job is as pastor of a church. That's going very well, but pays just a small amount. So just before Christmas, my tech writing contract ran out without notice. These are just a few of the changes and unmet expectations that have been hitting us over the last three years. Most of it packed into the last year.

So, how am I doing? This is really tough. I'm smart and capable, so the tech writing job ending isn't logical. I was angry some, depressed, some times felt immobilized, but it didn't stop me. It hasn't crushed me in the way I expected it too.

Just prior to getting laid off from Pfizer at the end of 2008, my wife and I got involved in a missionary organization. That gave me a purpose greater than myself. When I got laid off, I started working with the mission organization full time. We traveled nearly every weekend to speak and sing at churches around the Midwest. All the constant change involved was part of something important. I took a step back.

If something upsetting is farther away and contained, it can't hurt me or frighten me as much. Like a giant black bear in a cage at the zoo. There is usually a cage and mote and fence to keep enough distance. I can look at the bear and hopefully have a healthy respect for its power. It might even make me nervous, but it won't stop me from visiting the zoo.

Us Aspies don't like change. It disturbs us and makes us angry. Why is that? I think it is because, we reflect it so closely on our expectations and need for our worlds to have order and predictability. Sad to say, this world will never be that way.

If there is something in my life that is orderly and sure, then I can take a step back from the changes. I have something that never changes. A direction in life that is consistent regardless of my circumstances.

We spend so much time trying to fix our circumstances. I think I've discovered how to make myself more resilient. I've been able to take a step back and not react as strongly to change, because of faith. Because I believe that God is always at work in my life for the good (even when I face difficulty or loss) then I have a constant, unchanging platform on which to bass my life.

As I work to reflect on and live out the ways of Jesus Christ, I develop a more intimate connection with Him. My trust level in Him increases, and Christ becomes increasingly important to me. In His essential character and His care for me, Christ doesn't shift or change. My relationship with god is like standing on a solid rock in the middle of a storm. The storm may trouble me, but I won't be washed away.

This helps me step back and consider changes from a "distance" as it were.

#Managing Change - Why so tough?

2010-12-22T22:16:00.001-05:00

(#Aspie #Aspies)

This year has been a year of constant change.

Change can be difficult for everyone. For an Aspie our world already seems very chaotic.

The brain receives thousands of bits of input each second. All the senses are sending countless sensory data to the brain. I takes that data, tosses out most of it as irrelevant, and then coalesces the remaining data into a single integrated image of me. That integrative function reassures me that I'm anchored to the ground by gravity and helps me not bump into things.

The integrative function of the brain helps me make sense out of people around me. If it doesn't work right I see a collection of attributes and not people. That's one reason why Aspies tend to remember parts and pieces as much as the whole. The integrative function of our brain isn't fully developed.

As a result the world around us can seem like a mad rush of stuff coming at us all at once. We often crave orderliness to give our world some sense of calm. That's why change is so difficult. Instead of some subconscious part of our mind dealing with change, we often have to cognitively think through change in order to reset ourselves and be ready for it.

It takes a great deal of energy to constantly be consciously processing through changes without any pre-built structure to help. That's why Aspie kids and adults will have "melt downs" because they've reached their limit of tolerance. You might have an Aspie manager who looses his temper when things change. You might be the Aspie manager.

There are ways to create a structure in your mind to help you name the changes. Label them and then manage them. Then you have the control.

More later.

Adam

What Figures of Speech Confuse or Amuse You?

2010-12-22T11:20:00.002-05:00

"Let me float an idea past you"
I'm picturing ideas floating past me in some sort of conceptual river.

"It was so cold I froze my but off."
O.K. now that is truly disturbing. Fortunately if it freezes off there wouldn't be nearly as much blood shed as when it get laughed off.

"A heart warming story for the whole family."
I picture my wife, children, and me screaming in terror as our hearts begin to heat up past 98.6. "What's happening?" we cry in confused terror as we clutch our chests and fall to the grown, searing hot pain gripping us.

So, what figures of speech confuse, disturb or amuse you and what pictures does it put in your head?

Please, leave a comment on this blog or post to twitter at @aspiesinc

Adam

Clothes Make The Man

2010-12-20T13:22:00.001-05:00

(originally posted Feb 7, 2007)

I tend to wear the same kinds of clothes most of the time. To me all clothing is a uniform. A uniform has functional use and signifies ones function or role. So, for me to change my clothes, I have to be willing to change into another part of me.

So, on Sundays if I'm digging the church ministry vibe (how's that for slang) I stay in the outfit that I wore to church. Especially if it feels like Sunday. By the same token, I don't want to wear my jeans out to landscape or do lawn work. I put on my "grubbies". Those are my clothing set aside for painting or for lawn work.

I wonder if that's why some of us Aspies will tend to just go to bed in our clothes. It's the transition. There have been times that I've gone to bed in my clothes and gone right to sleep. Then later, when I wake up at about 3 am (which I do about every night), I change into sleepwear. On those occasions if I would have changed into sleep wear right then, the transition from one me to the Time To Sleep me would have stirred me up a little. I wouldn't be as sleepy then. I don't do that every night.

We are very careful not to let our children sleep in their day clothes, because you can imagine that it could easily become a habit. If I wake up in the morning in my day clothes, I feel very strange. It's as if my sleeping didn't quite count because I never put on sleeping clothes.

Sounds weird huh? It's that whole Aspie thing in which internal things need to be externalized in order to be managed. I'm still coming to understand it.

Please post comments or questions if you would like. I'm curious if any others have had these experiences.

Adam

JUST NOD YOUR HEAD AND SMILE

2010-12-20T12:44:00.000-05:00

I often fake comprehension.

I figured out a long time ago, that if someone says something I don’t understand, nodding my head and saying yes, is the best way to keep things moving along. Honestly, in a noisy, distracting or crowded room, I don’t catch half of what people say anyway. Much of what people say is repetition or unimportant to survival.

In meetings at work, I would drift off, blog or just do something that was interesting. Every-so-often, drifting back to see if anything of importance had been said or decided upon. If some one said, “Adam, what do you think?” I would quickly review what little had really been discussed over the last hour and make a comment. The group would be happy and leave me alone.

That’s one reason I order the same thing at McDonalds every time I’m there. O.K., Most of what is at McDonalds I’m not supposed to eat (Wheat / dairy intolerant), and don’t particularly like. But, when you are in the drive through it seems like either there are too many other competing sounds, the speaker is fuzzy, or the person talking is unintelligible. So, I order the same thing every time knowing that even if I can’t understand the order taker, I’ll get what I want.

That makes sub sandwich places a real gamble. Quiznos wants to move fast, have lots of choices, and don’t always speak clearly. So, I just say yes a lot, hoping that what comes out the other end is something I’ll like. Once, I tride to order all at once. I thought it through ahead of time: my perfect Quiznos sandwhich. When I went up to the counter, I told them everything at once, but it was like being caught in the gears of a giant machine. They just ground forward asking the same questions they always do. I wanted to scream.

As an Aspie, if I decide to do the wheat and dairy and get a sandwich at Quicznos, I want a check list that I can sit and think over quietly. Then I want to be able to complete it on my own and hand it in like a completed math assignment. After that I sit and wait at my table reading a book, and they call me up when it is done. No more screaming, rapid fire questions, with my meal racing down the Quiznos shoot of chance.

Once when my son and I were traveling we stopped for a quick dinner to take with us on the road. It was a truck stop that had everything, including a chicken place and a taco place at one counter. Both places had value meals designated by numbers on separate menus, but the order was taken by the same person. The place was filled with truckers loudly talking, playing video games, etc. I tried to order two meals,

Me: “The number five chicken meal and the grand taco.”
Order Taker: “That’s two number fives and a grand taco?”

As usual I just said yes. This time I ended up with three meals. One was a this massive plate of nachos that had meat, and beans, and a putty like substance that is traditionally considered cheese sauce. Ugh, the place was still just as noisy, and I didn’t have the heart to try and give back the order or get money back, so Michael and I made a valiant effort to eat all three meals.

The whole nachos thing is tough to eat while you drive, and when they get cold, the chips get soggy and the other stuff gets stiff. That’s really backwards of what it is supposed to be.

Sometimes just nodding my head gets me in trouble.

Adam

I could have died laughing

2010-12-20T11:47:00.001-05:00

I was in a discussion on http://www.facebook.com/aspergersawarenesspage about figures of speach.

Several that one writer didn't like were "I could have died laughing" or "I'm as serious as a heart attack".

Before you "die laughing", you'll probably "bust a gut laughing" and then "laugh your head off".

Very violent sayings.

Adam

O.K. Now What?

2010-12-17T09:52:00.000-05:00

Well. There I was happily working away, albeit a little bored, and then next day severed. I have been a contract technical writer at Stryker for the last six months. No notice. No hint that my contract would not be renewed. Even given new work on Thursday. Friday evening, after I had gotten home, I received a call from the contracting agency that Stryker had decided not to renew my contract. Effective immediately, I was not allowed back in the building.

The contract agency was kind enough to retrieve my belongings. I received confused e-mails from coworkers, but not a word from management. That was cold, and very confusing for an Aspie. I was in a tail spin for a couple of days. I'm thankful for relationships and tools in my life that kept me afloat. My relationship with Christ gave me the firm understanding that nothing happens by mistake (Romans 8:28). God is not taken by surprise. Because, I'm a Christian, there is nothing in my life that can shipwreck my ultimate destiny with Christ in eternity.

That faith didn't take a way the confusion, self recrimination or anger, but it was an anchor that held me fast in the storm. I still had to self talk through the blizzard of possibilities that immobilized me for several days. Prayer was critical. I spoke very frankly to God about how I was reacting and feeling. Privately with God, i worked through the logic and fears. Also, I talked through with God what the Bible says about my circumstances and needs.

It's been a week now. My wife and children have been a comfort. I pastor a church now, part time, and that is a joy. I use an excellent task management structure, so today I'm going through everything, documenting, categorizing, and prioritizing. Plan your work and work your plan.

There never was a day that I didn't get out of bed, but I've spent extra time sleeping.

A week later and I'm getting my direction back, purpose and work ethic back. Thankful that the Lord Jesus Christ is like a rock that shelters me during times of confusing and disturbing change. Like a solid rock, He does shift or change as so much else does. How can any Aspie live without Christ?

I don't know.

Six Givens (I wish is was an even 10)

2010-12-16T09:52:00.000-05:00

As a Christian adult in with Asperger Syndrome, I believe that I struggle against the “natural” man in a unique way. I’ll try and explain what I mean over the next several posts. My intent is to propose that Biblical Christianity is the best tool, if you will, for helping people with Asperger integrate successfully and happily into neurotypical society.

I don’t want to cure Asperger Syndrome. In fact, I think when I get to heaven and I receive a “glorified” body absent of sin, I will still be an Aspie (or Aspergerian if you prefer) to the extent that it is essential to who I am as a person and not essentially a feature of sin. It’s tempting for some to conclude in heaven that we will all be wiped of everything that made us who we are and we will be perfect. We will be perfect, but to think that every feature of me will be gone when I enter eternity doesn’t fit with a rational examination of the Bible. It fits more with Buddhism. We won’t be eliminated, rather, sin will be eliminated and we will be at peace with God.

So what is the problem now. What is the natural man. Well, first some suppositions. There are some statements that I treat as real and true and won’t try to prove as part of this series of postings. You just have to go with them as a given for sake of argument or the article won’t make any rational sense.

Here are my givens:

There is a literal God who has a personality and created all that exists. This God is unique in that there is no other God in existence. All other “gods” a human inventions or other spiritual beings (demons) pretending to be an actual god.
The Christian Bible is a message from this unique literal God, and the only source of information about Him. By the way, God is neither male nor female, so the “him” pronoun doesn’t imply gender.
God created everything that exists: time, space, matter, energy and the laws that govern the universe. Those laws or both physical (gravity, motion, etc) and moral (right and wrong). God is morally perfect (also called holy) and demands the same of His creation.
The first created humans (Adam & Eve) disobeyed God’s moral law and in doing so became enemies of God. In kind we have all inherited, by birth, the sin condition. We have enemy status as moral criminals and deserve God’s just punishment: hell. God came to earth as a man (Jesus Christ) to declare the way for us to have peace with God and to take the punishment in our place by being crucified on a cross.
When Jesus died on the cross, he broke the power of sin. When he rose from the dead, he broke the power of death.
When I renounce my status as a moral criminal and ask for God to make me his child based on Christ’s sacrifice on the cross, I am morally cleansed of sin and begin a process of being transformed from a natural (sinful) man into a man (or woman as the case may be) like Christ. There is nothing I can do to achieve this. It is a gift from God. This transformational process takes place over my lifetime and culminates when my physical body dies and I enter into eternal life.

O.K. that was a lot, and maybe you're wondering what this is dong in a blog on Asperger Syndrome. I was asked to help explain God to an Aspie. This is the explanation for the adult Aspies.

As this develops I hope I can parse out the logical supposition for God, sin, the need for salvation, and the joyful transformation of those who surrender to and follow Jesus Christ.

Adam

Bad Words Come Back

2010-03-12T15:35:00.000-05:00

Sometimes bad words come back to haunt me.

I don't mean curse words. I mean when people pronounce words incorrectly. Sounds crazy doesn't it?

For example, there was an employee of mine who pronouced the word probably as "proby". That was one of a number of words in which she left out letters. Often "l", but not when it was at the beginning of words. Listening to her talk made my mouth hurt. She was the one employee who reported directly to me at work, and to make it worse when she was done talking to me about something, she would shurg her shoulders up and down two or three times.

That drove me nuts, because that non-verbal jesture means, "I'm not sure" or "I don't know", but she had just finished making a suggestion about how she wanted to do something. It had the effect of sort of scrambling everything about which we had just spoken.

I found myself doing everything I could to quickly conclude any business that we had and a avoiding talking to her at all costs. This was bad as she was my direct report.

I love words, and make a point of making sure that the "L" doesn't get dropped. It seems like bad treatment. If I were an "L", I would want to be fully included in all the words I was supposed to be in.

I know, that sounds a bit odd.

At the same time, I'm like a speech pattern sponge soaking up the speech mannerisms of those with whom I speak the most. I make great efforts of excluding speech patterns that I don't want, but they try to force their way in.

Such as the word ability which some pronounce "abilty". This time excluding the unfortunate"i".

I wonder what that means. I fear being around people with poor pronunciation. I fear that their pronunciations will take over in my brain, and I actively have to work at not allowing it. I look at the words I'm going to say, sometimes, just before I say them, and make an effort to filter out the speech patterns that I don't want.

Fortunately, for public speaking, I have a voice that I pull out and use, like some people pull out a put on a favorite sweater. For any voice work that I might do I have a narration or producer voice. When I use those I don't have to think about each word, I only think about the concept or the principal style of voice and it comes out.

I used to talk really fast with a more nasaly tone, and I worked on getting rid of that, by allowing other speach patterns to infiltrate. I like my current casual speaking voice better than the one i had as a kid.

Adam

My Words Are Like....

2010-03-11T10:58:00.000-05:00

My words are like.... spices in an idea soup.

If I'm in a group of people having a conversation or I'm in a class, it's like we are making soup, and my words are the like the spices. Soup without spices is very dull, but spices alone don't make good soup.

In order to make a delicious idea soup in a group I need other people's words too. Their words are the other ingredients of meat or something. I also need thoughts. I need to take some time where I'm not saying anything to think thoughts. I need to listen to other people's words and letting them simmer in my brain without saying anything outloud. Then what happens is I have better ideas and more important words to offer.

If it's hard not to talk outloud, then I can let me ideas and words percolate onto paper, and write as many pages of words as a need to in order to keep my mouth from talking. It's very important if I want the best idea soup for the group.

If I use too many words then I spoil the soup for everyone else. If I use the wrong words or words that aren't really very important, then I spoil the idea soup for everyone else. Then what happens is my idea soup isn't any good either.

It's mysterious, but human brains are designed by God so that they work best when mixed in a group with other human brains. So, in order for me to have the best idea soup, I need to make sure everyone elses soup is good too.

The way I can spice up everyone elses idea soup is to pick only the spice words that are most important and not use too many of them.

They Didn't Notice? They Must Be Flawed ......

2010-02-15T15:01:00.000-05:00

So here I am in project team meetings trying my best to sound professional and informed. I felt like I was clearly not. Other than a bachelor's degree in communication I had no real training for my job at a major pharmaceutical. No background in database implementations or project management.

It as fun and really not that hard after all, but I was always afraid that some one would figure out that I was just some guy and not a real professional. When I would make a comment in a meeting, I would expect some sort of .... something from the others to indicate that what I said was worth while. I don't know, they all gasp, or blush with excitement. I'm not realy sure.

Well, that nearly never happens in project meetings. Typically there is no clear indication that what you say is really great so after the meeting I would be convinced that I had sounded like an idiot. What made it worse is that it would dawn on me that no one in the room noticed that I was an idiot. After all, if they had they would have said something.

"Adam, I notice that you are clearly untrained and not suitable for the job you're in, how did you happen to be here."

That never happened. So then I would start to wonder if they were flawed in some way, because they didn't notice how stupid I was. That would make me feel superior to them, and a bizare mental spiral would begin.

I discovered that I had to decided the merits of my own ideas for myself and weigh them against others comments and new information. I quit expecting some great outpouring of adoration if I had a useful idea. Typically, no one says anything, but the idea ends up somehow moving into the project. If it's a team project that's just how it works.

If I have years of experience or am recognized as the Subject Matter Expert in an area, I'm just another person on the team and usually won't get any special notice.

Also, I realized that most of the people I worked with were at least a little odd, and if I didn't do anything terribly unexpected then my comments wouldn't stand out as particularly weird no matter what I said.

I crave validation, but the world around me doesn't give it much. Real validation comes from God in the Bible. When I look more intently there I don't feel as flawed nor do as see others as flawed.

At least I'm moving in that direction.

Adam

What I Know....Doesn't Matter

2010-02-11T10:14:00.000-05:00

I think this might be true for many or most Aspies. When I'm in a group or in a class as another person is talking on a topic I have the urge to say what I know on that topic. Sometimes I know quite a bit on what is being discussed or could explain it better than the leader who is speaking.

It's at times like this that I need to understand that what I know isn't important.

The leader or teacher has certain things that he or she wants to cover and though I have a great urge to divulge at least some of what I know.....no, I really want to verbally puke out all that I know....it breaks the rules for what is expected in a social learning environment.

If you are like me you might feel like it is some how wrong or that people are missing out by not hearing your perspective. You might be right. You might no more than a particular leader or might be able to do a better job of presenting what you know. But if you've entered into a group where everyone expects to hear from a certain person (and not you), this you are breaking a social rule if you volunteer your information.

Does that seem like goofy rule? It is a goofy rule if the whole world revolves around you, but it doesn't. Every person has equal value in the world, and others have a reasonable expectation that if they come to a group with the expectation that a certain person is the leader or teacher then they should be able to hear mostly from that person.

I was in a team meeting once where the official project leader had specific list of things to talk about and time lines for what to cover. The meeting was progressing nicely, until a coworker walked in late to the 1 hour meeting and proceeded to talk about what HE thought was most important for the next 30 min. Everyone felt embarrassed and began to develop disrespect for this coworker. All the work and preparation of the team leader were wasted, because this other person took over. It wasn't fair.

This person did this in other meetings a lot. He didn't realize he was breaking a social rule. His boss never told him. Later he got a demotion disguised as a job change. So he got mad and found another job. Many people were glad when he left.

It is a sign of respect and that you are a mature adult when you respect other people, by being quiet a lot. It's hard for us Aspies, but it is very important.

Adam

Guilty Again

2010-01-02T20:20:00.000-05:00

I've been reading, "Phantoms In The Brain". It mentioned tha tin some brains the person remembers memories while others relive events. There's a difference. As memories are formed our brains edit them and then categorize them (pigon hole them) according to time, place, people and other tags that will bring the memory back. OUr brains also assign meaning to our memories. As we go through life learning and having new experiences we reinterpret our memories based on our new perspective.

A clear example of this might be a child who is afraid of Clifford The Big Red Dog. This really happened with my son. He might have been three. We read him the heart warming story of Clifford the two story tall dog who would peer in his owner's window.

Cute, right?

To Michael it was a terrifying to think about a giant dog peering in your window. As a fourteen year old, he doesn't remember this experience. If he did remember it, he would reinterpret it based on his 14 year old understanding & experiences. Dogs aren't as frightening because he's taller.

The same should be true of embarrassing moments that happened several years ago. Time should add distance, as it were, and further experience change the perspective so that the memory does not reignite that same fear/shame response as the original event.

In fact most people reflect on their small failures or embarrasements with thoughtful reflection (lessons learned) or humor. That is because memories are not static. They are reshaped and reinterpreted based on knew memories that are added. But what if instead of remembering, you relived? The memory would trigger all or manyof the same physiological reactions and the same emotional response.

When I was nineteen I scheduled a skating party for all my friends at college. Some one else had done it the year before, so I wanted to try. I even got sponsors. Instead of hundreds, maybe 20 kids showed up. I was in the hole by $100. Whenever I think back on it, I feel the same dread. As if it is happenning again. In my mind it is.

My thought life is rich with details, sounds, textures, even smells and dimension as well. Today I remembered that skating party and it upset me. I refelt the failure and that sinking feeling in my chest. The Bible talks about taking ever thought into captivity. Taking control of thoughts and deflating their power. After reading the Brain that Changes Itself (Norman Doidge) and Phantoms IN The Brain (V.S. Ramachandran), I believ ethat their are cognitive excercises that one can do in order to stop reliving memories. I'm not clear on the what and how yet.

Mind Blindness

2009-07-23T22:45:00.000-04:00

Mindblind Eyes: An Absence Of Spontaneous Theory Of Mind In Asperger SyndromeMain

Highly intelligent adults with Asperger Syndrome still have difficulties in day-to-day social interaction. These difficulties may be explained by 'mindblindness', the idea that they are unable to predict what other people will do by thinking about their mental states, that is, their knowledge and beliefs. If this is true then why do people with Asperger syndrome pass all the standard tests of mental state attribution? Is the theory wrong or are the tests insensitive? This study reports evidence from eye movements, that adults with Asperger Syndrome do not spontaneously anticipate another person's behaviour on the basis of that person's mental state.

This is in stark contrast with typical adults, and even young toddlers.So the mindblindness theory also holds for highly intelligent people with Asperger syndrome. At the same time we acknowledge their successful compensatory learning. This suffices for slow and deliberate thinking about other people's thoughts, but is not the same as the spontaneous and automatic ability to attribute inner thoughts, and it may be the lack of this spontaneous ability that is at the heart of the everyday social impairments still evident in highly intelligent adults with Asperger Syndrome.

Source: Birkbeck College
Reprinted from Medical News Today

The Greater Good

2009-05-11T00:26:00.000-04:00

Spent a long day speaking and sing at Heritage Baptist Church in Manistee, MI. We talked all about our proposed career as missionaries to the Czech. Got home at midnight. The kids are in bed, and Marge and I are winding down with e-mail and facebook.

I'm sitting in her office with her wondering what's making the high pitched wining sound. It could be the lights or maybe it's a bearing going bad on the fan in my laptop or a light in the room.

It's just so cool that I've learned to cope with the rapid change and the many new environments as we are in pre-field ministry before going to the Czech. It's because I have someone greater than my limitations for whom I am working and striving. My relationship with Christ drives me to look for ways to grow and change in my ability to cope so that I can do this stuff that I am called upon to do.

Having something of greater importance than just my needs or my condition is so very key. I think it's important for anyone. Think about it, if my whole life is summed up in my progress toward some unknown level of normalcy or ....what is it we are all trying to get to? Then, My sense of self worth of purpose in life rests on the shaky ground of my own ability to do....what is it Aspies are trying to do?

Seriously. Are we trying to be normal or trying to be better Aspies or trying to simply live a good life. Those are all good things, but they are so self focused that they can easily lead to a "crash and burn." When we are living to serve a great good, or in my case Jesus Christ, then my good days and bad days don't define me. Those are just difficulties on my effort toward a mission that exceeds the sum of my own struggles.

Adam

It's very cool.

Now I Really Believe in Weighted Blankets

2009-02-26T20:05:00.000-05:00

When I was planning my trip out here to Oklahoma City, I decided carry on my baggage, so that I wouldn't have to go through the baggage check and pay the extra fees that Northwestern Airlines charges. That also meant that anything I carried on would go through the stringent security check.

So, I left my leg weights behind, as they could look quite suspicious to a secruity person (especially in the post shoe bomber world). I also didn't think that I could fit my clothing AND a twenty pound weighted blanket in my carry on bag.

Consequently, I have spent the week without any sensory integration types of weights. Over the course of this week, I have found that symptoms of chronic pain (tingling in the limbs for one), have begun to return, and I'm less rested. I also feel a sense of controlable agitation that I haven't felt for some time.

I'm looking forword to getting home and getting under my weighted blanket. It really does solve a world of problems. I also have the pet theory that, while at one time I was diagnosed with Fibromialgia, I question if I ever did have it. I think that the Asperger/Autism need for sensory integration along with an intollerance to wheat and dairy contributed to a group of symptoms that seems like firbro.

I still have hip pain, but it's quite managable although fairly constant. The hip pain responds well to physical therapy. Controlling my deitary intake of Glutten and Casein (dairy) protein, and attending to my sensory integration deficit by using a wheighted blanket has revolutionized my health.

If I go back about 10 years, I was a mess. I think it was 10 years. I don't know if it is typical for all Aspies, but my sense of time is not linear. Anyway, the first major change I made was in more intently pursuing a relationship with Jesus Christ. That was the first big change that made all the others possible, and meaningful.

So, I've enjoyed the classes I took here in OKC. I learned about running sound systems. I'm also so looking forward to returning to my family and my weighted blanket.

Adam

Aspies Inc Coffee meeting

2009-02-25T00:49:00.000-05:00

Aspies, Inc. Coffee Meeting Thursday 26-Feb-09 at 7pm - Panera Bread 7199 SE 29th St # 113, Oklahoma City - (405) 869-0550

Meet for discussion, support, questions. No admission, just by something to eat or drink from Panera. That way they won't be angry that we are sitting there.

I know, Glutten problems. I won't be buying any bread eiter. Bring a neurotypical so that they can get all exited about Panera bread.

Filter It Out

2009-02-25T00:35:00.000-05:00

I'm at this sound system training. As the trainer is talking I'm thinking of all these things I want to say, and I am purposely toss out almost all of it. It's part of the Asperger to have this urge to disgorge every bit of information in your brain about a certain topic.

I'm not sure why that is, but it just is. Problem with that is that it starts to upset other people, who have come to hear what the teacher has to say. So I do two things before I ask a question or make a comment:

I ask myself, what is the big idea or the main point that he is moving toward in his teaching. Will my comment add or distract from his main point. If it won't add something, then I really shouldn't say what comes to my mind. It's unfair to be a distraction. Besides, I'm not their to chat, I'm there to learn what is in the teacher's brain. Better to letter the teacher talk and guide the direction of the class. Example: The teacher is describing in general terms how to set a compressor limiter. I want to ask, "Do you like the Behringer compressor? I had one and it only cost $120. That is a distraction from the whole point of the discussion, and the other students don't care what I own. They will just think I'm bragging and trying to look cool. Although, Behringer isn't cool, it's affordable.
Is it possible that what I have to ask about is outside the boundaries of this class or will be covered in later material. An overview course, such as "Core Principals of Audio" does not go into detail in any one area. It is a two day introductory course. To ask questions that require great detail in any one area is unfair to other students. Also, if I manage to get the teacher to go into too great a detail, some material will have to be skipped later, because the class has a limited amount of time. If I think the material might be covered later, then I should not ask my question. I might be answered later without me interupting the teacher. If, when the class is over, I have a question that wasn't answered, I can ask the teacher individually.

Another big urge is to tell the teacher things about myself so that I can talk to him. That's unexpected in the neurotypical world. People that talk alot about themselves are viewed as braggers or if they just keep talking and talking then you start seeming creepy.

Just because you feel the urge to talk doesn't mean that you have something meaningful to say. Observer silence as much as possible. Then also watch how cheap other people seem when they try and "talk up" their skills or stuff they own. It's not cool. It just makes you seem childish or like an amature. The real professionals and cool people don't talk as much about themselves, because they don't feel the need to prove that they are valuable people. Assume that you have value and worth, and don't attempt to prove it to anyone by talking. It never works.

Adam

New Place - Can't Hear You

2009-02-23T09:20:00.000-05:00

I'm in Oklahoma for audio system training. I'm by myself, staying with a relative of a brother's wife, I've never been in Oklahoma, and I'm doing something not related to missions or tech writing.

Consequently, my mind is racing searching for a rule set to govern my behavior. How should i stand, act, greet, small talk . . . who am I in this place? I have no rule set for this location. Am I supposed to be here?

I stopped for breakfast this morning. My waitress was talking to me, but i just sort of hear this muffled sound. It hurt to talk to her and look at her. Right now, I'm sitting, just to myself, not talking to anyone. I've had a fair amount of coffee, and I feel like hiding in a dark quiet place.

So, when people talk to me I can hear the words, but much of the meaning gets lost as the words wander through my grid searching for a culture in which to place them. This is when I just have to live with getting only part of what I hear, and being happy with ending up, some how, in the right place. By tomorow, I will have better integrated my environment, and won't feel so out of sync.

Aspie Traveler - Am I Actually Doing This?

2009-02-23T08:44:00.000-05:00

Today I made it through flight delays and airports, cramped in little airplanes in order to go to sound system training in Oklahoma City. This seams absolutely crazy. It’s an Aspies nightmare. I’ve never been to this city, I’m staying with relatives of my sister-in-law that I haven’t seen in 20 plus years, and it’s all a bunch of unknowns.

I have my sensory defense items:
*Ear plugs to limit the overwhelming sound of plain engines
*Sunglasses for when things are visually overwhelming. It’s not just for when things are too bright either. If I’m in a room full of people and I don’t feel comfortable with what I should do with my eyes, then I put those on and my eyes aren’t a concern any more. Also, when I’m on a plain, the sun glasses make it easier to deal with the way plains can sway and move sometimes.
*Vicks Vapor Rub in the half ounce tin. It easily fits in my pocket. I put it in clear plastic bag with other toiletries for the security check and then put it in a pocket for the flight. My second flight, I was sitting waiting for the plain to take off, when I smelled . . . well it was either body odor or some kind of jet exhaust, but it some body odorish to me. So, I put Vicks in my nose and it masked the smell. The first time you use it, just use a little. It it’s not enough you can always add more.

I didn’t bring my leg weights as they might get taken away during the security check. That’s also why I would never try to carry on a weighted vest. To help calm myself, I have red and deaply pondered the Bible, read a book I enjoy, and now I am writing this text which I will later copy into my blog. These things give me my “constant”. Something is familiar and unchanging in which I can find comfort.

You see, I am bound and determined not to let Asperger shape the course of my life any more than it already does. I will ease it if possible, work around it if necessary, and when useful utilize the gifts that it offers.

So, why Oklahoma City? Well, I have always had an interest in music. I was in the band Sojourn for 15 years, and while in it learned how to run live sound. I’ve had opportunity to instruct church people how to do a good job running sound for worship services, but I’m completely self taught.

I have an opportunity to attend a four day class that covers the basics as well as technical aspects. I want to know this stuff. Through some unexpected funds the opportunity has arisen. It seems crazy to me, and it really has me nervous, but I can’t let that hold me back.
My core belief is that God is the creator of all people, fashioning each one. My Asperger, while not ideal from my viewpoint, is not a mistake from God’s viewpoint. That means that I have a responsibility to use the life God has given me and always work to make the most of it. It’s such a priceless gift, and God is such a kind giver, how can I let my Asperger hold me back?

Adam

Accomidations at Work?

2009-02-16T08:20:00.001-05:00

A reader recently asked me about asking for accomidations at work:

As an adult Aspie who worked for a major pharmaceutical corporation, I never initially asked for acomidations. That said, I had an excellent reputation and once I was diagnosed my employer made some accomidations informally.

1. Some one with whom to check my perceptions. I was able to go to my boss and a coworker and ask questions about social rules or what certain e-mails meant. Such as the e-mail from the CEO asking everyone to help the new VP of sales feel welcome. I took it to my boss and asked if the CEO really expected us to do anything or if the CEO was making "happy noise". I would also swing by my coworkers cubicle to check how I should respond to certain things (i.e. e-mail, phone call, ignore the comment).

2. Headphones. If you have a desk job in an office environment get headphones so that when you are trying to concentrate you can have something that masks out other sound.

3. My coworkers new that I brought a book or something to fiddle with to every meeting. If meetings were to slow or boring I would get agitated. Thank God for laptops and wireless internet. If a meeting leader would challenge me, my coworkers would step in. I really was in an ideal situation. People were curious about my condition, supportive (Pfizer is big on inclusion), and I was doing good work accept for the occasional Aspie goof. If you have one of those smart phones that allow you to access facebook or to blog or something, you couls set it on your lap so others couldn't quite see it, and then you could fiddle with that.

4. I live by sunglasses. They really help cut glair if you have the right kind. They can also help the discomfort of making eye contact. They need to be light enough so that people can see your eyes. Yes, I used to where them inside if I felt I needed to. Not alot though. Interestingly, most people would assume they were transition lesnses that weren't clearing up for some reason.

5. I also had coworkers that would proof my documents for spelling and gramar.The thing is this, If you are good at what you do and people value your work, they will put up with all sorts of things. They will consider you skilled, but eccentric. Especially if you are an easy person with whom to work. That said, I built the reputation first over several years. What does the Aspie need that would keep him/her from successfully completing the work? That is a better question. The other question is, what is the marketable talent this Aspie has? If an employer wants what you have, they will make accomodations so that can have it.

Adam

Aspies, Inc Meeting Thursday 26-Feb-09 7pm

2009-01-29T14:59:00.000-05:00

For anyone in Oklahoma City, I'll be at the Panera Bread on 7199 SE 29th St # 113 at 7pm on Thursday 26-February-2009. The phone number for the Panera is (405) 869-0550.

I'm going to be in OK City for some classes, so this is a chance to meet some parents and be an encouragement. Usually, I get the question, "Do you remember when you were [name an age]? How did you...." Happy to answer any question.

I'm not a credentialed expert, but I've lived it to a degree.

No charge, just buy something to eat and drink so Panera will be happy. I'll be wearing a dark green sweater and a black baseball cap. I might even have the sunglasses on. It depends how nervous I am.

Adam

Speaking at a Conference Near You?

2009-01-29T09:17:00.000-05:00

You know about two years ago, I got opportunities to speak on Asperger Syndrome at some conferences and meetings. About four different times. The smallest group was about ten adults, the largest group was closer to 150.

Leading up to each event, I would get all worked up, wondering why I had agreed to this. I would try to document every word I was going to say, but toss each script. In the end I had either some well documented notes or a few scraps of paper.

As I was sitting and waiting to go on, I could feel something in me switch on: like an engine warming up. Then I would step behind the podium, and that something would click, and as if out of nowhere I would have all this stuff to say.

In the last year or so, I've been speaking quite a bit at churches. Different topic. I started to document my presentation less. I've noticed that I work best with a broad outline on paper and then some good ideas in my head. The presentation, sermon, or speech begins to do itself in my head over and over in the days leading up to the event.

When I get up to speak, the sermon, presentation or speech sort of makes itself, and I sit and watch. It's always very visual. I can see and hear what I'm talking about.

I don't know if I'm that good of a public speaker, but it's a remarkable experience. I have noticed that audience reaction to my Asperger presentations is one of enlightenment and hope. That's really cool. Honestly, there's a lot of hope in this world, we just can't see it for what it is.

I'm not scheduled at any more Asperger conferences, but I'd be happy to speak at some more.

But, the point of this blog entry is that I'm wondering if there are other Aspies that have an intuitive ability. It could be music, speaking, drawing . . . something which just sort of gushes out from an unseen place. Maybe as parents of Aspies we can benefit our children, but gently encouraging and feeding that gift, even if the gift doesn't seem to fit our expectation of something with good career prospects.

When I was five, who would have thought that my talking too much could turn into a career, at best, or at least a side job. But as a 43 year old unemployed Technical Writer, I'm sitting here thinking that writing is not my strongest skill. Speaking to and motivating groups is. I don't know how to turn that into any kind of temporary income, but I'm wiser to keep it in mind.

Adam

Aspie / Fibro Connection - Encore Posting

2009-01-22T01:13:00.000-05:00

A May 2007 posting has gotten three comments (most of any posting so far). I am reposting it here with the comments, and some more of my ideas. If you have ideas, questions, thoughts about it, please post them at the comments link. Once in the comments section you are also free to respond to others comments.

I review all comments prior to them being included.
------------------

MAY 2007

Aryeh Abeles, MD and other contributing doctors have authored research recently published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The study put forth the notion that Fibromyalgia sufferers have a lower pain threshold. Maybe it's better to say that they have a greater sensativity to everything. Maybe Fibromyalgia sufferers sensory defensive.

Having recenly been reading the book "Too Loud, Too Bright, Too Fast, Too Tight: What to Do If You Are Sensory Defensive in an Overstimulating World", I started wondering if there is a connection between the overstimulated state of our Aspie brains and the existance of chronic pain. I wonder if Aspies have more occurance of Fibromyalgia and other similar conditions? This is a very short post. Just posing the question, curious of what anyone else is thinking?

-----------------------------------

Here are the comments:

Chosenlast said...
I'm an Aspie with fibromylagia. I think the link between the two disorders is chronic stress. Over half of those with Asperger's Syndrome also suffer from stress, anxiety and depression. It's strongly suspected that the hormone imbalance caused by stress, causes neural changes that lead to fibromylagia.Since neither the cause of Asperger's, nor the cause of fibromylagia are known, its unlikely the biochemistry of the link will be worked out in my lifetime.

Susanf said...
Don't know if anyone is still following this thread. Geneticists have found problems in Asbergers with a specific molecule (SERT) whose job it is to vacuum up extra serotonin. In the variation, the SERT molecule gets turned up extra loud and doesn't respond to the bodies signals to shut back down - and vacuums away too much serotonin. This mechanism is a target for both drugs for Asberger's and Fibromyalgia - and a lot of other diseases that happen when the body gets too little serotonin in the right places. HTH.-Susan

KiKi said...
Don't know if anyone is following this, but it's interesting. I have Fibromyalgia and have been reading about autism for my work...and I have a low tolerance for noise, lights, smells, and small irritations. Very interesting.

The Silent Core

2008-10-25T12:34:00.000-04:00

Here is a poem (or is it lyrics) that I wrote in 2003. It's about Asperger. Not everything, but the rich inner visual landscape of the Aspie mind that is both a gift and burden.

THE SILENT CORE
© 2003 Adam Parmenter

Locked inside the silent core
Little escapes
The relentless embrace of
The inner mind
So alive
On the inside
Worlds, unseen, bloom and wane
Beyond the reach of
Hands & smiles
If they only knew
The miles & miles
I’ve journeyed alone
Song unknown
Stories untold
Yearning to break free
To be known & seen
From the silent core

Adam

People With Autism Make Rational Decisions

2008-10-23T09:25:00.000-04:00

According to Medical News Today, "People with autism-related disorders are less likely to make irrational decisions, and are less influenced by gut instincts, according to research funded by the Wellcome Trust. "

Find the full article at this link.

Lately, I have been "grieving", as it were, over my lack of emotion. Emotional situations become very disturbing, grief leaks out slowly over time, and I wish I could experience emotions as the neurotypicals do. I'm not even sure what that means.

I have discovered that, for me personally, my emotions will come out in a song. For me, everything is a song. Music is a gateway into my emotions that I can't get to through the typical route. I wrote an instrumental song just after my father died. It's called "Kiss Upon The Brow". The last time I saw my father alive, I gave him a kiss on the forehead. That mix of emotions came out in a melody. It is with me forever.

The same happens with lyrics or when I paint. I guess I understand now what people mean when they say they must "express themselves". Do they mean what I mean? I suppose it is wise for me to set aside expressive time in my week so that I'm able to create and capture those emotions.

Now that I'm unemployed and working from my basement, I have music playing at a suitable volume. It makes me feel calm and focused. I used to think that it helped just because it kept me distracted from the noise in my brain. Maybe it is the emotional subtext that I need. Perhaps music for me is the emotional equivalent of crutches for a guy with a broken leg?

I'm no neurologist, so I only have guesses and intuition.

Speaking of intuition. The article noted above makes it sound like people in the Autism Spectrum don't have intuition. That may be true, but I experience intuition for many or most of my decisions. I start with intuition and work back to logic. My version of intuition is devoid of emotion though. My intuition space is filled with timeless principals for living. When confronted with a decisions there is a part of my brain that queries through these principals (i.e. procedures), and reacts first based on a principal. Perhaps that's not really intuition.

Principal led living seems better to me than intuition, but my wife makes decisions based on emotion and intuition and does just as good of a job as I do. In fact she and I share the most important principals for our lives. Hers seem to encoded into both an emotional part of her brain as well as a logical part.

O.K., this post is rambling. I apologize if you were hoping for wise advise. Just some musing today.

Adam

In The Corner Of A Round Room

2008-08-27T08:54:00.000-04:00

As an Aspie I rely so very much on certain things in the world being predictable. I often don’t even realize it. So think for a moment about a hospital. They are terribly comforting places and it’s often easy to get lost. However, one can expect a series of hallways, waiting rooms, and nurses stations. Usually this is oriented in squares or rectangles. Sometimes there is a rotunda that joins two wings, the designers hoping to bring in something other than a clinical feel, but typically it goes back to lots of 90 degree edges and straight lines.

The Native American museum in Washington D.C. is a something different entirely. The designers of that building were seeking to achieve a very organic aesthetic. The building is a series of sweeping curves. Successive floors of the building don’t necessarily line up neatly with one another, but instead the whole building has an undulation like the gently rolling hills of the great plains. Some walls are stucco and some are made of flag stone or brick. The curves and variety of forms all combine to say, “this is not an institution.”

This all brings me to Goshen hospital. I visited my dad there as he was recovering from surgery. It appears that some attempt was made to achieve an aesthetic similar to the Native American Museum with Goshen Hospital, or at least parts of it. So the main entry area is a swoops and curves, the walls are of rock in one place and different materials in others. That threw me a little. I think it was a remodeled entry, because once I got back toward the elevators it was back to straight halls.

What really threw me was the patient rooms. Typically there is a square area with a nurses station. Instead the nurses station was in the center of a . . . well I think the idea was that it would be a circle, but all the walls were straight. It was sort of like the Pentagon, but with more like ten sides. A decagon? As you can imagine, the center of a circle or decagon is smaller than the outside (my apologies to all you geometry experts for the way I worded that). With the patient rooms on the perimeter of this decagon, each patient room was roughly wedge shaped. Like a slice of pie.

Pie sounds really good right now, but walking into that room I felt like a had just entered Picasso. So not only am I emotionally charged from visiting my father who is recovering from surgery, but my conceptual brain is working in over drive trying to get the wall of the room to straighten into a rectangle shape. It was all I could do to not start rocking back and forth. I really wanted to stand in a quiet corner, but there weren’t any.

Corners are comforting because they are distinct and strong and fixed. Corners don’t breath in and out, or shift and shimmer. This building had no quiet corners that I could stand in. Instead the walls in the patient rooms drifted out, the hall outside drunkenly careened in dizzy circles, and the entry of the hospital was trying desperately to be the American prairie.

That really freaked me out.

Bite Marks Are Bad (in food that is)

2008-08-24T08:58:00.000-04:00

I had two pieces of gluten free banana bread this morning for breakfast. My wife makes it now and then. This morning I noticed, again, that I don't like the round bite marks left in the previously rectangular bread and feel compelled to bite the tips off so that the bread is returned to its roughly rectangular shape.

I'm the same way with a sandwich (don't get many of them these days) or any square food item. The bite mark seems chaotic and disorderly.

I can only guess that there is a part of the brain that identifies the general shape and properties of a piece of bread as being rectangular or square and another part of the brain that assigns meaning to the bite mark. There are probably still other sections that develop texture, color, etc. All these elements a some how combined by another part of the brain and then forwarded to the frontal lobe so that it can decide what I think "about" it.

In a neurotypical brain, a bite mark in food would usually mean nothing unless you hadn't started eating your food yet. Then it would be a problem, especially if the waiter just set it down in front of you supposedly fresh from the kitchen. Then the executive function of your brain would raise an alarm that some one else had taken a bite out of your food, and would set off a cascade of other reactions.

So, I think it goes back to the whole sensory integration. I'm guessing that because those of us in the Autism spectrum have a deficit when it comes to integration, that the something isn't getting combined and forwarded correctly to the decision making part of the brain. So, while that bite mark isn't alarming, it is vaguely disquieting. I even out the edges and it feels right again (of course then I feel just a little neurotic).

Perhaps the message that the bite mark belongs to me is lost in processing. I have a memory of biting the bread and eating it, yet the perhaps the visual image of the bite mark has not been integrated with the other sensory and cognitive memories of biting and eating. So, I know it's my bite mark, but there is a missing "green flag" and it makes me feel a bit uneasy.

Just some guessing based on what little I've read about brain function.

Adam

Why Isn't THAT Funny?

2008-08-08T13:14:00.000-04:00

I was sitting in a staff meeting at work and one of my colleagues announced the new corporate IT policy that your laptop computer would follow you where ever you go. It used to be that if you changed departments you had to leave you computer with the other department and got a new computer in the next department. Now the computer transfers with you.

But when he said, "Your computer follows you wherever you go, I pictured this little computer floating along just behined my shoulder. At first it's convenint, but then it gets on my nerves because it's always there. So, I laughed and said, "It sounds like some kind of corporate drug trip." No one laughed.

But later when another guy was talking about something mundaine having to do with the family cat, everyone burst out laughing. What is it with humor and neurotypicals. They get a bigger charge out of laughing at each others mundain stuff, but can't laugh at the odd or nonsequeter.

I still don't understand neurotypicals. They don't get edgy funny stuff.

Adam

Syncronisation Disconnect

2008-07-30T10:50:00.000-04:00

A new study published in the Journal of Social Neuroscience explores the mechanism for understanding social cues and the "disconnect" within the autistic brain. According to the study, inefficient pathways for transmitting information between certain brain regions are to blame.

"The communication between the frontal and posterior areas of the social brain network is impaired in autism, making it difficult to understand the intentions of others" said the study's senior author, Marcel Just, the D.O. Hebb Professor of Psychology at Carnegie Mellon.

The study is the first to measure the synchronization between the brain areas that make up the Theory of Mind (ToM) network, which is responsible for processing the intentions and thoughts of others. It is the first to provide such concrete evidence of faulty social network connections.

2008-06-28T13:44:00.000-04:00

Some interesting new research:

New evidence shows that the brains of adults with autism are "wired" differently from people without the disorder, and this abnormal pattern of connectivity may be responsible for the social impairments that are characteristic of autism.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging, a team of researchers affiliated with the University of Washington's Autism Center also found that the most severely socially impaired subjects in the study exhibited the most abnormal pattern of connectivity among a network of brain regions involved in face processing.

"This study shows that these brain regions are failing to work together efficiently," said Natalia Kleinhans, a research assistant professor of radiology and lead author of the paper published in the journal Brain. "Our work seems to indicate that the brain pathways of people with autism are not completely disconnected, but they are not as strong as in people without autism."

Source: Joel Schwarz
University of Washington

The Plant People

2008-06-02T08:33:00.000-04:00

There is a thought structure that I've noticed in myself and in my daughter. It's a tendency to anthropomorphise objects. That is to ascribe human feelings to some objects.

When I was a teen living at home, I had a dresser with a large mirror on it. on the mirror I had taped pictures of all of my good highschool and church camp friends. When I got dressed in the morning I felt compelled to stand in my closet to get dressed or to cover the pictures. I knew that they were people, but the photos did have eyes, and it didn't quite seem right to get dressed in front of them.

I also remember as a child, when I had to erase a word on a school assignment, that I felt bad for the letters that were being erased. You know, letters want to be put to work on a page. It's why they exist. I eventually decided that the eraser was sucking the letters back into the pencil, and placing those letters in un-employment until such time that there was a word that required their services. That's a little better, but unpleasant if that particular letter has a wife and kids. That can be rough. I blame my kindergarten teacher a little for that one, because when we were learning our letters each one had a personality. There were even stories about the letters doing things together, getting into arguments, or being friends. That was supposed to help us learn our letters, but it just imprinted on my mind that letters have feelings too.

Once when my daughter was young some came to me with a moral dilemma. The end had broken off of her pencil. I said, "Just through it in the trash can." She said, "I can't. I named it." Big problem. If you have a name, then you certainly have feelings. I said, "You know, that bit of pencil wants to go in the trash. The little trash can is like a bus. Eventually the bus will take it to this wonderful resort village where all of his friends are. It's the junk yard resort. They love it there." Problem solved for a little Aspie girl.

So that brings me to this past weekend. A good friend of our family has an over abundance of decorative grasses and ferns in our back yard. So I spent two days chopping some of these plants out of her yard and transplanting them into our back yard.

Often when you move a plant it looks quite wilted. Also, it's important that when you transplant it you give it plenty of support by mounding up the soil around its base. Without thinking I referred the plants as being upset at being moved. I told my son to plant them deep enough and mound the soil up around enough so that the plants were happy. Of course some of the stems got snapped in the process, and for some I chopped the plant in half to spread it out or fit in in a spot. They all looked quite unhappy on Saturday. Sunday I fared a little better, but still I chopped and moved plants essentially against their wills, and they didn't look entirely comfortable with the idea.

So last night I had a horrific dream that I was making these people go stand in my back yard, and that I also was giving some of them a chop with a machete. There was no blood shed in the dream, but I awoke wondering what kind of monster I had become that I would dream such things.

Thankfully, I quickly realised that all those unhappy people are the ferns and grasses in the back yard. At that point at 2am in the night was one of those times when I hated being Aspie.

Adam

Music Used To Explore The Autistic Brain's Emotion Processing

2008-05-24T10:31:00.000-04:00

14 May 2008 Music has a universal ability to tap into our deepest emotions. Unfortunately, for children with autism spectrum disorders (ASD), understanding emotions is a very difficult task. Can music help them? Thanks to funding from the GRAMMY Foundation Grant Program, researchers at UCLA are about to find out. Individuals with ASD have trouble recognizing emotions, particularly social emotions conveyed through facial expressions - a frown, a smirk or a smile. This inability can rob a child of the chance to communicate and socialize and often leads to social isolation. In an innovative study led by Istvan Molnar-Szakacs, a researcher at the UCLA Tennenbaum Center for the Biology of Creativity, music will be used as a tool to explore the ability of children with ASD to identify emotions in musical excerpts and facial expressions. "Music has long been known to touch autistic children," Molnar-Szakacs said. "

Studies from the early days of autism research have already shown us that music provokes engagement and interest in kids with ASD. More recently, such things as musical memory and pitch abilities in children with ASD have been found to be as good as or better than in typically developing children." In addition, he said, researchers have shown that because many children with ASD are naturally interested in music, they respond well to music-based therapy. But no one has ever done a study to see if children with ASD process musical emotions and social emotions in the same way that typically developing children do. In this study, Molnar-Szakacs will use "emotional music" to examine the brain regions involved in emotion processing. "Our hypothesis is that if we are able to engage the brain region involved in emotion processing using emotional music, this will open the doorway for teaching children with ASD to better recognize emotions in social stimuli, such as facial expressions."

The overarching goal of the study, of course, is to gain insights about the causes of autism. Molnar-Szakacs will use neuroimaging - functional magnetic resonance imaging, or fMRI - to look at and compare brain activity in ASD children with brain activity in typically developing kids while both groups are engaged in identifying emotions from faces and musical excerpts.

"The study should help us to better understand how the brain processes emotion in children with autism; that, in turn, will help us develop more optimal interventions," Molnar-Szakacs said. "Importantly, this study will also help us promote the use of music as a powerful tool for studying brain functions, from cognition to creativity." Approximately 15 children with ASD, ranging in age from 10 to 13, will participate in the study, which is being conducted under the auspices of the Help Group-UCLA Autism Research Alliance. The alliance, directed by UCLA's Elizabeth Laugeson, is an innovative partnership between the nonprofit Help Group, which serves children with special needs related to autism, and the Semel Institute for Neuroscience and Human Behavior at UCLA, and is dedicated to enhancing and expanding ASD research. The project is also being conducted in collaboration with Katie Overy, co-director of the Institute for Music in Human and Social Development at the University of Edinburgh, Scotland. "The hope, of course, is that this work will not only be of scientific value and interest, but most of all, that it will translate into real-life improvements in the quality of the children's lives," Molnar-Szakacs said.

Source: Mark Wheeler University of California - Los Angeles

Hit and Miss

2008-05-06T13:37:00.001-04:00

We've eased my children off of some meds. I've also cut back on mine (read this post). I had cut my SSNRI completly to nothing, but with a number of added stressors, I've gone back to taking two thirds of the prescribed dose. Fortunatley, I have a doctor who is willing to listen and discuss. I told him to give me the presecription in pills that equal one third the dose so that I can vary timing and amount.

Well, once again, my employer is restructuring and cutting, my wife had outpatient surgery and the demands of missionary pre-field can also be stressing. So, my pain levels had gone way up (happens in the spring anyway), and going back the SSNRI seemed to help.

I originally was prescribed the SSNRI for chronic pain associated with mild fibromyalgia. As always I put in my disclaimer: I'm not a doctor nor healthcare professinal. Don't use this blog to diagnose nor treat illness. This is just my story. Maybe it will give you something to think about.

There are two SSNRIs that I know of that are on the market:
Lyrica
Cymbalta

Lyrica is a follow-on drug to Neurontin. A follow-on drug is when a company takes one of their own successful medications and attempts to re-engineer it to reduce side effect or improve efficacy. Neurontin was never approved for fibromyalgia (nor until recently were any drugs), but it was found to help. Doctors have the freedom to prescribe meds "off label".

Neurontin was effective but was found to make people sleapy and dizzy. I have found that Lyrica did not have that effect on me. I took part in a trial to gain FDA approval to use Lyrica for treating fibro, but I didn't like the way it made me feel.

I find the other SSNRI is easier for me to tolerate. Don't take my word as law though. There are whole message boards with people screaming about the nasty side effects of Cymbalta.

Keep in mind that both these drugs have wide application and broad dosing. I know a man who is on 20 mg of Cymbalta a day. My prescibed dose is for 60, but I typically only take 20.

How did these drugs help me? In both cases, I had less pain, but still had some pain. However, on both of them I noticed that I was better able to focus and tune things out. I had less repetative thinking, and my mood was more stable. Both drugs have something of a stimulating effect to varying degrees. I have taken Ritalin off and on throughout my adult life to help deal with major transitions or when I suffered from Chronic fatigue. Yikes, when I changed dosages or stopped, look out mood swings. My son took Stratera for several years. Now that he is home schooling, he is completely off of that. He had some side effects both going on and off of that med. So, for me, the Cymbalta has been just enough of the Ritalin benefit along with changes in diet and life style.

The title of this blog is "Hit and Miss". What I'm pointing to hear is that keep your eyes open for different treatments and new drugs, and be willing to carefully try new things. Always research first, but you may find that you can reduce or eliminate some medications when using other treatments such as diet, excercise, and nutrition. If your doctor won't talk about reducing meds and doesn't want to help with that. Find a doctor who will. You need to be able to safely try new things.

Aspie is with you for life. The drugs you take now might be with you for the rest of your life, but they might not have to be permanent.

Adam

So. . . No More Pills. . . Or What?

2008-02-26T17:17:00.000-05:00

O.K. I read an article today with this headline "The anti-depressants aren't working".

"The researchers looked at the four most widely used anti-depressants, including Prozac and Paxil. They reviewed data on 47 clinical trials. Some of that data was unpublished. The researchers used freedom of information laws to get access to it. They concluded that in most cases, the drugs had more or less the same effect as placebos. The drugs only proved really beneficial for a small group of severely depressed patients. GlaxoSmithKline, which makes Paxil and Eli Lilly, which makes Prozac, both rejected the study as insufficient. But a spokesman for Britain's Royal College of Psychiatrists said the message was clear -- that drug companies must be compelled to publish all the data from their clinical trails."

According to www.politics.co.uk the study was published The Lancet, a British Medical Journal. The Lancet report claims that for most users, anti-depressants are only as effective as placebo.

What's odd is that I on a whim I had tried cut me dose by a third. Then I cut it down to one third of the original dose. Then I ran out and forgot to get it refilled. Prior to this I have drastically altered my diet and begun using enzyme supplements. I also exercise more, and frankly I'm putting far more effort into my Christian faith.

I also have been using ankle weights and other sensory integration stuff.

The last several days I had lots of joint pain, but my thoughts are nearly as repetitive and I'm not as bothered by crowds. Just recently I stood in a line and shook hands with about 750 people. I survived it.

Maybe I don't need a refill on my SSRI.

That said, I absolutely rely on my Tricyclic so that I can sleap at night.

I make no recommendation for anyone else dosing strategy, but it is good to read and study and investigate diet and exercise. Diet and exercise have a clear link to emotional health and Aspie survival. Also, take some time to study sensory integration issues. I suggest the book "Too Loud, To Bright, Too Fast, Too Tight". I've used a number of the authors suggestions, and have found them calming.

Big, Big help is investing more of my time, energy, and attention into my Christian faith. I've taken more time to consider the claims of Jesus Christ, and the Bible writers. I've started to read a passage from the Bible and then study the cultural context in which it was written. In that sense the passage comes alive with meaning. Then there is a method for considering what the timeless teaching is that transcends any culture. It has provided a clearer sense that Jesus Christ is God, is the savior, and that living for Him is the best most enjoyable way to live.

My faith experience has been transforming. I would venture to say that my faith experience, more than any other treatment method, has guided me into better mental/emotional health and provided a means to reduce my medication.

Adam

Fracturing

2008-01-14T09:37:00.000-05:00

All you Aspies out there will likely identify with how difficult some transitions are.

Personally, Mondays are difficult for me as I am a missionary on the weekend, and now I'm an employee Monday and it's hard to adjust to the change. I spend a great deal of time on preparation to leave the country as a missionary.

I remember one evening in particular that was fairly stressful. I could feel my personality decouple from the me, and fracture into about five archetypal persons. Sounds strange. It was very visual in my mind and intense.

It's not the Multiple Personality thing, because they didn't talk (to me or through me). They were vivid images of myself. One a weeping child, one an angry teen, one a failed adult, and one ..... I can't remember the other one. It was very disturbing since I felt separate from each.

I believe it's called depersonalization. I just had to try and relax. My wife listened as I talked through my "feelings" and about a day later I am mostly re-packaged into a single image of my person.

I continue to reduce the drugs that I take, and one big help (besides diet) is accepting that I am this way, and being patient with myself. Prayer and my relationship with Jesus Christ hold me together and help me stay focused, and my wife is such a team-mate. I can trust her with myself, and that is such a gift.

Adam

A Cure For Asperger

2007-11-16T11:21:00.000-05:00

I met some one who after testing discovered that her children had many times the mercury in their system than what is healthy. The testing took place at a reputable medical facility and the chelation therapy to remove the mercury is being done by credentialed clinicians. This course of treatment may bring about great relief for the children and perhaps lessen some of the more troubling symptoms of autism. If nothing else, mercury is a dangerous heavy metal that can do real damage to a persons health.

I also read of a similar, but tragic, example of a parent who heard about chelation therapy as a way to cure autism. This parent's child died as a result of chelation therapy which can be dangerous if not administered correctly.

Now, since this is my blog, is when I wade in with my strongly held opinion. Never try to cure Autism or Asperger. Instead work toward helping your child grow into being a healthy person who has a purpose and direction in life.

I encourage every parent of a child who is in the Autism spectrum to get a blood test that would determine food intolerance, and a blood test that would determine mercury levels. Then, for the health of your child, deal with those issues that the tests identify.

If you find a Medical Doctor who is experienced in treating individuals in the Autism spectrum, investigate testing that would reveal vitamin difficiencies that often are present in people in the spectrum. Or discuss enzym therapy that will aid in the body absorbing key nutrients more effectively.

I hear of parents who throw money at Autism by buying into every suggestion immediately. They are desparate for the magic button that will fix their child. Parents, grow up. Your child is a freak. They will be weird no matter what you do.

Actually, if you spend all that time and energy trying to everything to fix your kid, they really will become some kind of lab rat. Instead, take a breather, and set aside time to enjoy life and enjoy the child that God has given you. Teach your children to enjoy who they are even while they enage life long learning and continually strive to improve who they are.

Isn't that a better way to live?

Adam
P.S. Don't be offended that I said your kid is a freak. I'm a freak, nerd, weirdo, whatever you want to call me. I've been called all of that and more. Those voices have lived in my head since high school and I'm only now learning how to come to terms with them. With my children (both Aspies), I have actively taught them that they are Aspie. I've also taught them to celebrate who they are and to work at growing beyond who they are. Besides that, the normal people may get to be the star athlete or cheerleader in highschool, but the freeks get to grow up and be Bill Gates, Albert Einsein, Ludwig Van Beethoven, or James Taylor. I'ld rather be a freek.

For more on famouse fictional and non-fictional individuals with Autistic like characteristics go to http://www.geocities.com/richardg_uk/famousac.html

Too Many Voices

2007-11-10T15:20:00.000-05:00

My wife and I took my daughter to a recital event at Western Michigan University's Dalton Center. It brought back vaugly uneasy memories from my one semester there. I couldn't place why. I've been back there for other events on occassion since my one semester as a student some 13 years ago.

We took Maryellen to the practice rooms, and then it finally hit me. The supposed sound proof practice rooms emitted numerous light melodies. I sat in the hall waiting for Maryellen to be done warming up, and then I couldn't take it any more.

They aren't just sounds. Music speaks to me. Isn't it supposed to? Furthermore, as an Aspie, I look for the pattern and without trying begin trying to identify what it is and what it means. With multiple sounds clamoring in my brain, it's like being attacked by an army of monsters all clawing for my attention.

I excused myself and left Maryellen in the care of my wife.

I remember when I was at Western as a student practicing my voice there that the cacophany of music agitated me so that I threw a music stand against a wall.

I need to remember to carry my earplugs with me all the time.

Adam

My Trials and Tribulations

2007-11-07T07:41:00.000-05:00

This is when Asperger seems really stupid. Maybe its not Asperger, maybe I'm just weird or something, but I hate flossing my teeth. It's quite disturbing to thrust a small rope between my teeth. I used to wrap the floss around my fingers so that I could hold on to it, and that was bothersome as well.

I started using one of these flossing things that has a handle, but I got stubborn and refused to do any more flossing. Last night I finally started flossing again. Ofcourse my gums bleed. That realy was not positive reinforcement, butI'm going to try and keep it up.

Flossing just doesn't feel right.

Adam

The Autistic Therapist

2007-10-24T11:50:00.000-04:00

The attached video profiles a therapist who has had success treating Autistic children. The therapist herself is Autistic. It's interesting.

Adam

Stealling My Words Away

2007-10-23T18:13:00.000-04:00

Words are friends. I love books. I love words. When people talk to me, I often can see the words they are saying. I have to work at not commenting on small nuances of what they are saying. I hear them speak and hear the letters or phonemes they are mispronouncing or omitting from the dialect.

With all of that, it is often quite difficult to wright a document or post to the blog. I almost feel violated after I'm done. It's like I gave away something that was mine or showed to something naked.

There are times when I write that when I'm done, I can't figure out how I wrote it. The same is true for painting. I finish a painting, I like it, then I think, "I couldn't have done that. How did I actually do that."

I believe that is because in order to be creative I must tap into a part of my brain that is not as structured or orderly. Then once I've created something, I can't seem to retrace well defined steps for how I got there.

At work I agree to write documents that conceptually I know I can write, but the document itself scares me. I think, how can I do that? Do I really know how to do that? I probe around in my head for clear evidence that I know how to do it, but it's creative I guess, so I can't see it.

This is weird, and I don't understand it.

Adam

Moving Beyond

2007-10-16T12:17:00.000-04:00

It's interesting, I feel like I'm moving past Asperger Syndrome.

I'm not saying that I've cured it, but that I'm comming to accept myself as me. I'm accepting my Asperger generated atributes as just who I am, and that's o.k.

I still think about Asperger a lot, and am still comming to terms with it, but it defines who I am less and less. My faith and values are becoming a greater defining characteristic for me than my limitations.

It's a curious, but enjoyable process.

Adam

Just Sleap On It

2007-10-02T10:45:00.000-04:00

Last week, Marge and I presented our mission work to two groups in Kalamazoo, and spent the weekend in Detroit doing the same.

Monday, I had some difficulty knowing what to do with myself. I just felt out of phase with whatever my schedule should be. I purposely didn't do anything productive. I took a nap, read some comic books that my son got from the library, and went to bed early. Actually, the whole family turned in early.

I feel a little more on keel today.

There is value, for anyone, but especially for Aspies, to know when it's just time to do nothing, and then go to bed. Down time is critical to adjusting to a changing or active schedule. While in Detroit, Sunday morning, I got up earlier than I needed to so that I could stretch and then have a time of quiet Bible reading/study. That was so helpful. While driving to and from Detroit, there were times when I just didn't talk at all. My son read quietly and Marge napped. I listened to music or talk radio.

So, even when your schedule is very active, you can build in quiet down time activities that help you stay "in frame". Otherwise, we start feeling overloaded, and we can start feeling disassociated from ourselves.

I call it "out of the frame". Sometimes I feel like I'm there, but not part of where I am. Like I'm in a movie, but just got bumped out of the "frame" of the picture. I think that it is do to an overload in the part of our brains that does the emotional processing. We need more time to integrate what things mean and where they fit in our frame of reference.

Take the time that you need. It's so easy as an adult to feel compelled to be "productive", but often the best thing to do is to do nothing. Go for a walk, a swim, paint a picture. Some people love to golf, because it helps them refocus. Look for the thing that helps you and commit regular time to it. Make it a priority.

Being stressed out can hurt your physical, emotional, and spiritual health.

Adam

Gun fights, and sword fights Part II

2007-09-16T17:48:00.000-04:00

The is an article the Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry profiling the violent behavior of a 20 Aspie guy toward his girlfriend. Below is the abstract:

----------------
Asperger's Syndrome is assumed to be closely related to autism. A case of a 21-yr-old man with Asperger's Syndrome who is frequently violent to his 71-yr-old girlfriend is presented. According to a social-cognitive model of autism, this man is predicted to be markedly impoverished in his appreciation of his victim's thoughts and feelings. Interview-based assessments confirm this deficit, and this is discussed as an important factor in the maintenance of his violence.
-----------------

That has to be a misprint. Right? 50 years seems to be a stretch for a romantic relationship.

Then I went to WrongPlanet.com and found a series of posts. Some one asked the question, "Did you ever do anything particularly violent as a child?" Well, there were a string of responses. The common thread used to be an almost clinical lack of empathy or feeling toward the "victim".

If I look back into my own youth and childhood I can see a few times when I did somethings without any thought for the feelings of others. During a game of tag with my nephews I was giving chase. It was one of those games where you had to capture members of the other team or something. We owned a small farm. I think that I was about 14 or 15 and my nephew was probably about 10. He was just a little faster than me. I was having a hard time gaining on him and just couldn't reach him. This all happened in seconds, but I reviewed my options, and realised that the best way to tag him was to make him stop. To do that I lunged forward and firmly stepped on his heal. He fell face forward onto the ground.

Immediately, I realised that doing such a thing, while practical, would engender the condemnation of him and those I cared about, so I told him I was sorry and that it was a mistake.

So, Aspie friends, what is the lesson you can learn from my mistakes? We have to live our lives on principal. That's why understanding what you believe about God, morals, etc (faith), and what is important (values) is so important. As an adult my urges must flow through my faith and values principal filter before I act them out. I am not always successful at this, but I am striving for it, because some one I care about deeply is pleased when I try my best.

I believe that some one is Jesus Christ. He is pleased when we try to emulate Him, and when we try to do what is right. I believe that He is pleased with us even when we try and fail. So, I've really been striving to live out my beliefs. It has made a marked difference in the way I live and the choices I make.

Adam

Gun fights, and sword fights Part I

2007-08-21T16:37:00.000-04:00

A person who is an Aspie asked me if I ever think about violence.

When don't I? That sounds bad, doesn't it? In my opinion, we Aspies are "What If?" machines. What if some one jumped out of the bushes and tried to attack me? What if a gun man broke into my home and threatened my children?

Last Friday some guy jumped out of the bushes about two blocks from my home and snatched a girl. They found her later that day, but I don't believe that they have found the perpetrator. All I could think about that day is what if some one snatched my child? There where many scenarios in my head and none of them where kindly.

Our minds work in three dimensions, and in graphic detail. In a job, that can be an excellent asset as an Aspie mind can actually picture something happening and look for problems. I crashed on my bike once because the pavement was slick. I strained my wrist. So after that most of the time as I'm riding I was playing crash/fall scenarios over and over in my head.

The second time I crashed was by hitting a section of pavement that was under construction, but this time the scenario played back. I analyzed and executed and only got banged up a little. Later that summer, I accidentally ran straight into a curb, this time I executed an exaggerated curving roll into the crash and ended it up by jumping into a standing position.

The incessant what if scenarios in my head, helped me prepare for a crash and avoid getting hurt.

So, the "what if" thinking happens a lot. Sometimes it has to do with war fare and violence.

It can become an obsession, and it can get me down, but it can also be a tool.

Adam

Wine or Shine

2007-08-09T11:36:00.000-04:00

I was riding my bike to work this morning. When the storm system go through, I get extra aches and pains. I have a mild case of Fibromialgia. I'm starting to wonder if that goes hand in hand with the Autism Spectrum.

Because of my over aroused sensory system when I was riding past a sprinkler system that was misting some ones lawn, each drop that shot at me hurt a little. Of course then it began to rain and I was just wet all over. The rain was nice and warm though.

I don't like being wet.

I shouldn't have to ride in the rain.

No one else I know has to ride in the rain.

Those were some of my thoughts. That's when I decided to do some serious self talk. You see, some of the people I admire accomplished great things for the societies around them with less resources than they needed and with obstacles and difficulties at the same time. The didn't wine about it (at least not in the books they wrote).

Instead their attitudes and actions made them stand out from the crowd. Dietrich Bonhoeffer was imprisoned in 1943 because he helped fund the escape of Jews from Germany. He was executed in 1945 after he was traced back to a plot to overthrow Hitler. Bonhoeffer never let his circumstances define who he was, and he took solace in the truth that true freedom (i.e. inner freedom that comes from trusting Christ) can never be taken. Inner freedom can not be taken away by other people or even by death. He decided to SHINE instead of WINE.

He must of had bad days, painful days, days when he had nothing good to say to anyone. Everyone has those days. Don't you think there were days when he was mad at God for his circumstances? Those, however, where the exceptions. The general flow and direction of his life was to affirm and act upon the basis of His Christian principals and inner freedom.

I have other heros that I could write about later. I have to admit, I have yet to read any of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's books. I know the basic outline of his life and some of his most famous quotes. Initially I've been afraid to read his books, because I think they will force me to a new level of living. A level at which I want to live. Changing levels is always painful.

Now, with missions prep, I have limited time for reading since I have quite a bit of assigned reading. You'll know if I'm reading one of his books or a book about him. His best known work is "The Cost of Discipleship". You'll know if I'm reading it, because I'll have to tell you about it.

Anyway, back to shining.

Being wet is a temporary situation. So is everything in life, including life itself. It is our soul/spirit that is eternal. Eternity is huge in comparison to the hundred or so years we will live in this life, so even the worst trial in this life can be considered a momentary affliction when placed in view of eternity.

So, my fellow Aspies, what areas can we learn to endure and move on. How often are we trapped by our condition, unwilling to extend into areas of discomfort. Maybe it's time we strive against the odds and against our circumstances and push past into areas that make us uncomfortable. I think it's time that we try that thing that scares us. Or try a little bit of it.

And while we are trying it look for better and more effective ways to deal with the stress, but don't run from the stress of trying new and uncomfortable things. Endure and move forward in life, since the pain is only a momentary reality.

Adam

Aspies Inc. Blog

2007-08-07T08:43:00.001-04:00

I want to find out more about my readers, by using a series of polls. Look on the side panel of this blog for the first one. These will be simple anonymous polls, that will give me an idea of how often readers are checking for new content, and what other kinds of events or information will be helpful to you.

As always if you have questions or comments, click on the comments link at the end of any of the posts. I get an e-mail whenever a comment is posted and will post a response either in that same comment section or within the body of another post.

I want to make sure this blog is useful to those that are reading it, so my first poll is intended to find out how often readers check in to look for new posts. In the past I've thought about locating other writers so that there is more posts and greater variety. I keep a journal too, becuase writing helps me keep my emotional and intelectual sense of balance. Well, one day I just started writing a fictional story that contained elements of my life in it. It allowed me to document thoughts and reactions that I've had to life without trying to acurately record real events. It also lets me interact with my thoughts and feelings in a creative way.

I wrote one chapter and then misplaced my journal. My wife found my journal in a suitcase so when I have some freetime, the next chapter is in my head. I'm wondering if I should try my story out on you'll here in this blog or just start it up in a different blog. It's the type of thing for which I might go three months without any posts and then post something 10 days in a row.

It might be more interesting to have two or three other Aspies writing here in this blog. Multiple perspectives may generate a more useful blog.

Anyway, as you are reading this post, please help me by completing the poll on the right side of the screen. Also post any comments or suggestions to the blog. If it doesn't make sense how to do that, please feel free to e-mail me at adam@parmenterclan.com.

I want to make Aspies, Inc as useful as possible.

Adam

What should I say?

2007-08-02T14:08:00.000-04:00

There are so many times, when not talking (i.e. holding my tongue) is best for everybody. I was in a meeting at work and a coworker kept interrupting me. This individual dominated the meeting. Any question asked the answer came from this person. Every time I tried to ask a question or make a comment, I got cut off. This individual has handed in a resignation, and will be leaving in about a week. It's said that quite a few people were happy this person resigned.

I kept reminding myself that God made this person and I therefore must treat this individual with value and respect. I could not determine how it could benefit anyone or anything other than to let of some irritation. So I held my tongue. I didn't say all the stuff that I could have justifiably said.

In the end this person would have written me off as inferior, and would have moved on, but I would have been viewed as a hot-head.

What is the lesson for Aspies. Let everything you say be carefully considered before you speak. Be certain that you are speaking for the benefit of others or to enjoy a relational conversation. If what you are saying is spoken in anger, retribution, or just because you have the information in your head, keep it to yourself.

I'm not always successful, but that's what I did today.

Adam

Thimerisol and President Bush

2007-07-24T18:51:00.000-04:00

"Bush Set To Veto HHS-Labor-Education Appropriations Bill Due To Provision To Remove Mercury From Infant Vaccines"

I didn't know that the flu vacine may contain Thimerisol. Click on the link above to read the entire article on the Bill the president is set to veto.

Also, take note that some flu vacines do not contain Thimerisol. Thimerisol is a mercury based preservative used in some vacines. A panel at the FDA found Thimerisol to be toxic in 1982. Some claim that Thimerisol is a contributing factor in Autism Spectrum Disorders.

Mercury may or may not have a link to ASD, but Mercury is just a bad thing to be putting into our bodies. This fall when you consider getting the flue vacine, ask your physician or health department what brand they use, and if it contains Thimerisol.

The following do NOT contain no mercury or Thimerisol:

Fluarix® from GlaxoSmithKline (contains no mercury)
FluMist® MedImmune (contains no mercury)
Fluzone® Sanofi Pasteur - *request mercury-free version. The Fluzone prefilled syringe contains no mercury, but the Fluzone 5ml vial contains mercury.

Fluvirin® is made by Novartis vacines and it seems to also be made by Chiron which, I think, is owned by Novartis. It's the largest selling vacine in the world. It contains some Thimerisol, but I'm not sure how much.

Adam

Aspie in Missions?

2007-07-11T10:25:00.000-04:00

So, I'm sitting at the head quarters for Association of Baptists for World Evangelism (ABWE). We are in Candidate Seminar.

If we successfully complete this seminar, then we will be appointed as ABWE missionaries.

I won't get much opportunity to post to this blog until after 23-July. But in the mean time, you can check my missions blog at http://journey2missions.blogspot.com/

Autism Gene Breakthrough Hailed

2007-07-04T11:05:00.000-04:00

Autism Gene Breakthrough Hailed

Click the link above for the full article.

"Chromosome 11 was identified as one of the culprits Scientists have found new autism genes by scanning the largest collection of families with multiple cases of autism ever assembled."

This is one more indication that Autism Spectrum Disorders (ASD) are hereditery and not caused by mercury or bad prenatal vitamins or some such. It does not indicate anything about people in the spectrum being extra sensative to environmental factors such as mercury, etc.

Experience and research already indicates that those of us in the spectrum have extra sensativities to diet, chemicals, smells, etc. So, it seems likely that our condition could be exaserbated, while not caused, by external factors. By the same token it seems likely that bothersome symptoms could be controlled by elimination or supplements.

Adam

Aspie Traveler Survival Kit - Ear Plugs

2007-06-27T13:43:00.001-04:00

Ear Plugs

These are little foam plugs. You roll them in your fingers so that they become thin, insert them in your ears and they expand blocking out some, but not all of the sound around you.

They block out much but not all of the high and mid range frequencies of sound, and don't do much for the low frequencies. The very low frequencies are more felt than heard anyway.

I use the Hearos earplugs ($2 a pack) because they are flesh tone and less noticeable. When I travel I just carry a pair in my pocket and casually pop them in when I need them. There are times I'll just pop one in one ear. Anything to help filter out found that is becoming overwhelming.

I spoke with a coworker that purchased sound isolating headphones. For a $100 plus a pair, make sure that you really do your homework and don't just take Dr. Bose word for it. Apparently the BOSE headphones really block out sound and surround the ear nicely.

The question is when you travel do you need something to completely isolate all sound (if possible) or just to cut back. The foam earplugs block out sound, but I can still hear what people are saying, and even speak. Speaking is something of a challenge, because I can't be sure how loud I am. Turns out that when I have them in I talk more quietly.

Frankly, when I travel, even if things aren't loud, they and the sun glasses cut back on the amount of data to sort in my brain, and I often just leave them in the whole time I travel.

I do NOT recommend wearing them if you are driving the car. You need to be able to hear everything in order to drive a car safely.

Adam

Magnesium and B6 Supplements May Help

2007-06-21T20:19:00.000-04:00

Well,

I've noticed that a Magnesium supplement seems to help me. I have no medical or clinical training, so I wasn't sure if what I was experiencing was legitimate or just the placebo effect.

I recently was able to find some research that would indicate that I'm on the right track.

Click this link for the full article.

Give it a read. It's a little hard to understand all of it, but it's good to give it a try. Curious if anyone has had any experience or found any science to back up or explain the clain that Magnesium and B6 is helpful for Aspies?

Adam

That was interesting. . .

2007-06-20T20:51:00.000-04:00

Well, this morning I packed up my hand outs and things that I wanted to show, hoisted a 15 pound backpack, and rode my bicycle to work. After work I got on my bike and rode to the D&W for the Aspies Inc Coffee, arriving 30 min. early. I hunted around for what looked like a meeting room, and then went to the service desk. I was told that it wasn't really a meeting room, it was just an open area on the second floor with tables and chairs.

So, I got myself set up and then sat there. Luckily I had all the supplies from my Aspie Traveler Survival Kit to help me pass the time. I had the hand outs set out on the table in hopes that it would make me a little more obvious. At 7pm I walked down the stairs to see if anyone was sitting down there. At 7:40 I packed up, hoisted my back pack and pedaled for home.

I was disapointed and discouraged at first, but prayer has a way of easing those things. It's good not to be controlled by circumstances, and I was really starting to get worked up. So, gave it over to God and could feel the frustration sort of melt away.

So, in the process I got some great bike riding in too.

Adam

Aspies Inc - Coffee Club 20-June-2007

2007-06-17T16:44:00.000-04:00

Join me on Wednesday 20-June-2007 from 7pm to 9pm at the D&W second story meeting room for an informal evening of conversation.

D&W Grocery Store (yes they actually have a meeting room)
525 Romence, Portage, MI
Phone 269-329-3202

The event is free. If you want coffee or snacks, there is a Starbucks kiosk in the store and, well, it's a grocery store, buy whatever you want to eat.

O.K. you Aspies, before you panic about having to chit chat, it aint like that.

Cool, I ryhmed.

I'm going to talk for about 15 min. I think I'll be bringing the Aspie Traveler Survival Kit to show everyone. Then we'll just have a guided discussion. What we discuss will depend on who is there. Some one might say, "Did you guys ever have to deal with bullies?". Maybe you have figured out a great way to deal with teasing, or some excellent way to relax when you are over stimmed.

This evening is openning to anyone in the spectrum from High Functioning Autism, to Asperger Syndrome to all you PDD NOS types. Parents and care givers who have questions about living life in the spectrum are also welcome, but the Aspies get to talk first (just kidding).

Ground Rules:

No put downs. You can question what some one says, but you can't say it is stupid (or anything like that).
No profanities.
Ask at least one question before you make a statement. Ask questions that will help you understand what some one is saying.
No sales. If you have something you are selling, save it for afterward. Talking about your business and trying to get us to buy your stuff, does not count as sharing or conversing.
Excercise the power of pass. If some one asks you a question, you don't have to answer it. This isn't school. Just say pass.
Be honest. Speak you mind.
While your speaking your mind, be careful to phrase your statements with kindness to others feelings.
The leader has the right to change the subject at any time.

Emma and Elaine

2007-05-31T08:56:00.000-04:00

A young girl posted a comment to one of my recent posts on bullying:

"Yes i get bullied. Bullying makes me feel sad. I don't want to have autism anymore. My mommy tells me that is what makes me special."

"ps: hi i am emma's mom and she is telling me that she doesn't want autism anymore and i am wondering if you can help her with some advice.thanks,emma and elaine"

I want to help in anyway that I can, but I need to understand more about what is happening.

I do want to restate that I'm not a clinician, not a DR., nor a therapist of any kind. I'm just a Christian Aspie from Kalamazoo, Michigan. That said, perhaps we can think this through together and help Emma find a solution that works for her.

So, please post in the comment section to this blog posting. Please tell me your story of what happens. My belief is that in bullying situations it's often the same people doing the same things over and over.

Nothing is ever exactly the same every time, but I bet it might be mostly the same each time.

So, please tell me

Who and how many (you don't have to use names). Boy or girl?
Where - Does it happen most at school? If so where in the school. Does it happen in your neighborhood?, then where in your neighborhood. At the shopping mall?
Who else - Who else is there witnessing this. I mean non-bullies. Are you with your friends, teachers, other adults, or is there hardly any one else around.
The Script - Movies and plays have a script so that the actors know what to say. The bullies might not say exactly the same thing each time, but what do they say most often? What do you usually say or do in response. It will help if you can make it like into a play with dialogue and actions. The play could be called, "The Typical Bullying Thing".

This is the first step in the process of stopping the bullying. I call this step IDENTIFY AND OWN. I've heard over and over, and it's true also for me, that we Aspies feel comforted when we can write down things and feelings. Also, the bully or bullies have you believing that they have power over you. By writing down all the Who, where, who else, and the script it will help you to have power over the situation.

Emma, your greatest power is not unkind actions like pushing, grabbing, or fists. Nor is your power in unkind words. Those are things that bullies use. Bullies use unkind actions and words, because they are week and sad.

The truth is, Emma, that your mommy is right. You are special. Autism does give you some special things. Some very smart and talented people have Asperger Syndrome or Autism. Autism/Asperger is a real hastle sometimes and I have days that having it makes me feel sad or angry, but it is who I am, and having it gives me some special ways of thinking that others might not have.

What makes you really really special is something that makes every person special and unique. I believe that every human being (even bullies) where made by God. I believe that God is the most special of all. I believe He is very creative, wise, and beautiful. God is like the most wondrous artist of all, and Emma, he made you. That means you are special, wondrous, and beautiful. God would never make a mistake or make something ugly.

I'm sad to say that the bullies are not acting like one of God's creation nor are they treating you like one of God's creation. Somewhere inside those bullies there is something special too, but over time they have covered the beautiful parts of who they are with lots of ugly and dark parts. I don't know if there is anything you can say that will stop them from being bullies. What you can do, is help them stop bullying you. That is good for you and them both.

So, please tell me the stuff I asked for above, and I'll try and help you. I tried this on my son, and it helped him.

Adam

Calmer@Work

2007-05-25T17:37:00.000-04:00

Sitting in a meeting at work 11:30am

Funny, but I'm sitting in a meeting, and I'm feeling fairly focused and quite calm. It's not a very interesting meeting, but it's important. Normally, I would be so stirred up that I would need to blog, check e-mail, and surf the net in order to keep myself calm. Right now I'm jotting this idea down on paper so that I won't forget it later. Otherwise my mind is at rest.

Later

I'm not sure the cause. I've made some major changes to my diet. I've also been riding my bicycle to work more, and have been wearing ankle weights at home. The ankle weights are something I'm trying. They actually have a calming effect. I've also been praying a lot and been spending more time reading and thinking about the Bible.

There is clearly more stress in my life with preparations for a trip to Eastern Europe, but I am feeling better than I have in quite some time.

No Link Found Between Autism And Thimerosal In Vaccines

2007-05-22T18:45:00.000-04:00

"The increase in the number of diagnosed cases of autism in recent years has sparked concern that environmental toxins may cause this complex disorder. However, a new University of Missouri-Columbia study concludes that exposure to Rh immune globulin preserved with mercury-containing thimerosal before birth was no higher for children with autism. "

"The study - 'Lack of Association Between Rh Status, Rh Immune Globulin in Pregnancy and Autism' - was published in the May 2007 issue of the American Journal of Medical Genetics."

Quoted from http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/medicalnews.php?newsid=71209

So, what does this mean? I think that it means that there is no way to prevent autism by removing a something from your environment. Mercury is toxic and just all around bad, but not necessarily the cause of Autism/Asperger. Ofcourse, I don't think this one study will or sould put this topic to rest.

In my experience there are environmental factors that contribute to and exacerbate symptoms of Asperger/Autism. It's important to understand how and to what extent diet, toxins, etc impact Asperger/Autism and how changes can be brought to bear in the life of individuals to ease some of the distressing symptomology.

That said, my pet theory is that Asperger/Autism is primarily genetic, which means in the absence of some high tech gene treatment, you are what you are. I don't know if I want there to be an absolute cure for ASD. It is so much bound up in who I am. Perhaps what's more important is what does having ASD mean about who you are? Are you o.k. with this label? If you are a parent or care giver, what message are you sending your child? Are you willing to accept the way they are and help them live a full and healthy life?

If there can be not cure, can you still live a meaningful life? That's really what's most important.

Adam

Fibromyalgia - Asperger/Autism Connection?

2007-05-22T12:41:00.000-04:00

Aryeh Abeles, MD and other contributing doctors have authored research recently published in the Annals of Internal Medicine. The study put forth the notion that Fibromyalgia sufferers have a lower pain threshold.

Maybe it's better to sayt that they have a greater sensativity to everything. Maybe Fibromyalgia sufferers sensory defensive.

Having recenly been reading the book "Too Loud, Too Bright, Too Fast, Too Tight: What to Do If You Are Sensory Defensive in an Overstimulating World", I started wondering if there is a connection between the overstimulated state of our Aspie brains and the existance of chronic pain.

I wonder if Aspies have more occurance of Fibromyalgia and other similar conditions?

This is a very short post. Just posing the question, curious of what anyone else is thinking.

Adam

Durable Pets, Weighted Vests, and Trampolines

2007-05-17T11:39:00.000-04:00

I saw Jerry Newport speak once. He has a great book called You Are Not A Label. In his presentation he talks a lot about getting durable pets for people in the Autism Spectrum. He means a dog or some pet that can endure/enjoy being hugged and squeezed.

I don't remember if he discusses the background behind why that might help, or if he helps people decide what will help their child. I wonder how many parents and care givers are stuck in the "fix my child" mode, without coming to terms with what they are trying to accomplish? I wonder how many people misunderstood Jerry's point and ran out to buy a dog for their child.

Others are trying to find out if I've tried weighted vests or if I've bought a trampoline yet.

If I were to pose the question of, what values are behind your decision to purchase a dog or trampoline, the person might reply with, "I'm just trying to help my child!"

That response or one like it is unacceptable anywhere else you know.

At a restaurant,
Waiter: May I take your order?
Diner: I want dinner. That's all I want.
Waiter: Please, be more specific about what it is you want for your meal.
Diner: "I just want dinner!"

With a realtor,
Realtor: What are you looking for in a home?
Home Buyer: Look, I just am trying to find a home o.k.? Just get me a home I can buy!"

Auto Mechanic: What specifically seems to be wrong with your car?
Customer: "Look, I just want to fix my car!"

My wife and I have considered numerous treatments and therapies for our children and have taken advantage of very few. Our primary intervention has been at home, and what we teach them about our faith and values (identity). What treatments or therapies we choose are based on thoughtful consideration. What we choose would be different based on our child's age, but at the fore front of our thinking is our child as a person, and what will enrich his/her life as a person (identity).

Just a thought.

One final note. I am going to buy leg weights this weekend. I plan on wearing them all day. It may help me feel more grounded as the weights will trigger nerve endings in the joints. If you can come to the Aspies Inc. coffee 20-June-2007 I'll let you know how it is working. I have been doing some other exercises and notice some small improvement in tension. ''

Later,

Adam

Do Aspies Need Faith?

2007-05-17T09:51:00.000-04:00

O.K., here's what I hear when parents and care givers get together:

Have you tried vitamins?
I hear vestibular stimulation can cure some!
Have you tried rolling on a medicine ball?
You should send your child for chelation!

Upon receiving the diagnosis parents and care givers switch into panic mode, and jump at things to cure or nearly cure their children. At worst they are engaging in action without direction. At best they are engaging in action that has short sited direction.

Unless our plans/actions are based on some kind of purpose and values we are going to be often frustrated and may even harmful. This might irk a parent or care giver who could respond by saying, "I just want what's best for my child!"

I would say something nice, but inside I would think, "No, you are trying to fix your kid. You are panicked that your child is disabled, and you can't deal with it." So, like all good Americans we just do more, instead of going back to the values position of our live's before planing what to do.

If you saw my talk on Four Square Life Planning you'll know what I'm getting at.

This is especially important for Aspies and others whose disabilities tend toward impulsiveness. Please read this very carefully: My faith and my identity (translation: values) saved my life. They were the reason I never committed suicide.

So, you've just received a diagnosis of Asperger or ADD or OCD or you-name-it, and you are panicked. You might not call it panic, but it is (at least a little). You may also feel anger. Those are normal reactions. Panic and anger are secondary emotions. They typically mask other more troubling feelings such as helplessness and guilt. Panic and anger will shift and change over time and they are looking for a quick fix. If you follow them, you will be looking for a quick fix.

What your Aspie child needs is for you to help them form a solid foundation in their lives that they can rely on for every decision. They need to be able to turn to something in every situation. So, what are they learning?

If things aren't working do more things to fix it.

That's what we do in America. What ultimately saved me is a solid faith/values framework in my mind that created important boundaries and guides to my actions and direction. I messed up a lot in life, but never completely violated the guiding principals that my parents instilled in me as a youth.

What do people with Asperger need? All the different therapies are good, but more than that we Aspies need a framework in which to live our lives. We need that structure so that we can understand what is right, wrong and preferential. We need a framework to guide our thinking so that we can make decisions about what is a valuable direction for our lives and what is not.

The principals on which I've based my life have changed very little. Often I have done a poor job of living by them, but they have gravity like the sun and pull me back toward them. How? I believe them to be true, and they were deeply embedded in me as a child.

The Bible says, "Train up a child in the way he should go and when he is old he will not depart from it." A closer examination of the original language reveals that the passage is not saying that the child won't violate or ignore the way he/she was trained, but the child will never depart from it. Regardless of what decisions I've made in life, the principals instilled in me as a child have never left me, and have drawn me toward them.

My parents began instilling these principals in me from the moment they could talk to me. At the age of four I made a faith decision to be a follower of Christ. I'm an Aspie, I probably could have done it age three.

I'm not sure how to end this one.

Maybe this. It is important to understand Asperger Syndrome and the various therapies that will help your child, but far more important is to understand your own faith and values and to clarify those or teach those to your child. If your child is old enough then the exercise is to help your child clarify them for himself/herself.

Faith and values will outlast any therapies and will sustain your child through the worst "hell" they may experience.

Adam

Bully, Repeat, Bully, Repeat, Bully, Repeat

2007-05-16T09:33:00.000-04:00

I was bullied a fair amount when I was a child. As I think back over the years I think that i see a pattern. I'm 42 now and being bullied at ages 9 or 12 was a long time ago. That said, I think that Bullies tend to elicit the same behaviors over and over, because they enjoy the same response in their victim.

A group of older boys and girls would corner me when they saw me on the street and tell me say, "Adam, you are a jail bird. We are going to send you to jail." I would end up in tears by the time it was all done. They thought it was funny.

Have you ever teased the family cat? Or perhaps your cat likes to fight with you. Maybe you wiggle your fingers around in front of the cat's face and it attacks your hand. It's fun, so you wiggle your hands the same way each time hoping for the same response from the cat. The more you get the response you want and as long as that response is enjoyable, you feel a stronger motivation to repeat the behavior.

Ever get bullied? It's like you are like the cat in a way. The goofy thing is that your tormentors aren't bright enough to think through anything new or creative. Instead they expend their energies on the same behaviors that give them the response that they enjoy.

If you are getting bullied, it is important that you write down everything you remember about getting bullied. Look for a pattern of behavior that repeats itself. Look for location, environment, external events, personal roles present, time/event . . . see if you can identify what bullying events have in common. I think that you will see a number of things that are the same over and over.

If you can identify that and then document it in a journal, PowerPoint or even scrap paper, you will be in a position to gain power over the situation.

My disclaimer is that when I was getting bullied, I never followed this advice. The bullies had dominion and control over me. As an adult, having studied process improvement and quality management techniques, I'm starting to get some ideas. So, I have no personal success stories, but I think my ideas are based on universal techniques.

Let me know what you think.

Adam

Bullies

2007-05-10T21:39:00.000-04:00

I've been trying to think of how I would handles bullies if I could do it all over again.

A parent was asking me how his child should deal with bullies. I was at a loss in a way, but then I had some ideas on the way home.

A bully is an abuser, just like a man who beats his wife or a guy stalking a single woman. There are patterns of behavior that can be isolated and examined. I believe that his process will work for most any age (with modifications).

Let's start out in the bully's mind. What are the bully's general objective. I believe that there are three:

Isolate (this is key)
Dominate
Control

The bully must remove you from any kind of support system (isolate) so that they can seem more powerful than you (dominate), and then determine you actions (control). This gives them a sense of being powerful, when actually they are pathetic and deserve your mercy. If you really could find out everything about the bully, you might find that they are bullied by their parents or something.

That doesn't matter right away though. What matters at first is making it stop.

Here's what came to my mind:

Identify and categorize the event(s)
Own the event
Brain storm alternatives
Pick a solution
Own the solution

1. Identify and categorize
When you have interactions with a bully they probably happen the same way every time or maybe there are two or three different scenarios that take place. Think about it. Right down or talk through what happens when you are bullied. Treat it like it is a play or movie.

Scene 1: Where does it take place. Who is there. What do they say. What do they do with their bodies and tone of voice. What do you do and say? Go for as much detail as you can.

Is there a scene 2 or 3? Do the same.

Now you are no longer isolated with the monster. Now the vague amorphous blob of bullying has been reduced down to the repetitive behavior that it is. It doesn't mean you've solved it, but it means that you can realise that you don't have 1,000 problems to solve, but the same problem over and over again. The bully is thriving because he provides you with a stimulus and gets the same response. It's like when you tease the cat, the cat reacts, you laugh. It's funny to you, so you do it again. You don't do something different. You want the same reaction out of the cat, so you do the same thing again, and it's funny again.

The same holds true for bullying.

Most children could do this with assistance and guidance.

2. Own The Event
Use a video camera or make it into a play or reader theatre, and act it out. Your child must play the part of the victim and the bully. They should do it convincingly. I think this is called role playing. Obviously a teen or young adult will feel silly acting out a play, but they could do a read through. If they are playing the bully's part, they need to match the tone of voice and body language of the bully. They also need to teach you how to match their voice and body language when they are reacting.

It's important that your child make an effort to really play the part. This will help take away the bully's power. It will also help them understand and think through the situation.

3. Brain Storm Alternatives
Talk through different things that they could do. Don't put limits on this discussion, anything goes. If your child is hiding some rage and thoughts of violence, they should talk about it. You then react as if it's no big deal, and you talk about consequences and feelings of everyone. Chances are instead that your child will come up with some good and bad ideas of how they could react differently to the bully.

4. Pick A Solution
Pick one alternative that might work better. There is no right one. Just grab one that might work.

5. Model The Solution
Just like you did before, read through or play act the solution. Talk about how well it would work. How will the bully act? Will this help?

6.Score
Give the child a goal to do the solution three times in a row. If faced by the really bully situation that they have practiced for, and they use the solution they practice, that counts as a point. Three in a row and they get a prize. Then shoot for five in a row.

Each time you do this your child (or you) will internalise one way to break the bully (abusive) cycle.

Let me know if this helps.

When the bully sees that his/her old ways don' t work, the bully is going to try a new approach, so you have to start the process over, and come up with new solutions.

Finding My Voice - Part II

2007-05-07T20:47:00.000-04:00

When I was a teen I remember getting out my dads oil paint set and trying my hand at painting a picture of our barn. I painted it on an inexpensive paper that was supposed to feel like canvas. I think the paper was meant more for pencil or charcoal drawings. My parents fraimed it and have it hanging up in their house to this day.

When I was 18 I went out and bought some pre-stretched canvases and did a couple of paintings. They were only partly representational. I enjoyed it. I also started writing song lyrics.

My point is, my paintings were o.k., and my song lyrics were quite bad, but they were the beginning. I still really like all of my paintings. There were no rules for me to follow, I would just pick a brush that seemed to be calling to me and then find a color that seemed right and do something. One time I just started swirling the paint in a circle (clockwise of course), until I had a mix of orange, red and burnt umber. The circle became the sun hanging low over a mud brick pueblo in the desert. Sorry to say that I gave that one to a girl friend with whom I eventually called it quits. Never got to see the painting again.

Typically now if I paint, I cover the whole canvas in a wash of a single color. I just loose myself in a swirl of red, blue, or green (let's here it for primary colors). I let that dry completely, then build the rest of the painting on top of that color base. I use fat course brush strokes, and a palate knife with big chunks of paint.

What's cool about it is that what is on my mind comes out as a theme in the painting that is difficult for me to articulate. The painting appears and I realise that there is something I'm saying. Something from deep within. I don't paint much at all any more, but when I do it's always revelatory.

My lyric writing skills improved when I got married, and also once I got together with a childhood friend of mine and we started trying to write music together.

Any kind of self expression is worth doing. There isn't really any definition of "good" or "bad" art when it comes to something you make for yourself. Just start doing something you enjoy. If you want to share your art with the public beyond family and friends, be ready for critique and some rejection. Take note also, that for every song I recorded with Sojourn, I wrote about 10 songs. That doesn't include the other songs that I started and tossed. That's o.k. It's o.k. to make bad poetry or crummy paintings, it's the only way to find your way to something meaningful inside.

You could also write a blog. Blog about anything you want! They're free. If you are an Aspie, parent/care giver of an Aspie and you start your own blog, once you have about 10 posts, let me know and I'll post a link to it in my blog. You have to tell me something about yourself, and not just send me a link.

Adam

I did it! I went out to lunch!

2007-04-27T16:57:00.000-04:00

My department participated in a personality profile exercise that was intended to expose how each of us interact and work along with our personality strengths. It has been helpful for me as I try to understand the others in my department and their actions.

I've been studying the report on me and beginning to realize that I don't do chit chat and I avoid social gatherings with people from work. I don't go out on the team lunches. I quit doing them partly to save money, and because so few people would show up. But since our department was merged with another, the team lunches usually include eight or more people.

I also realized that social interactions do help others with whom I work. Also, if I am planning on changing careers and being a missionary, most of my work will be social interactions, so I decided to go on the team lunch.

I'd forgotten what an auditory assault a restaurant at lunch time can be. Wow. There is so much talking that it sounds like the roar of a mighty ocean or a giant water fall. I really had to focus in on what people's words so that I could catch what they were saying. Fortunately I sat next to a man and women that each had teen or pre-teen children heavily involved with sports. Soccer to be exact. That made it easy to make open ended questions in my mouth (I know that's improper English, but that is how it starts in my brain). I listened and asked clarifying questions about as much as I talked.

I have a new goal. It is to become a better communicator. I think that I have always been approachable and, at least, middle school age kids feel comfortable telling me anything. Social "outsiders" tend to approach me more readily then others, but I want to be a warm and welcoming person to whom people can speak even while I maintain a measure of control commensurate to the situation.

I know this will take time and conscious effort, but I've seen people do it. People that you just wanted to talk to, because you know they would listen to what you had to say without mocking or judging. Yet, those same people would guide the conversation so that you didn't "spew" for an hour. An Aspie can get going and "vent" for hours, sometimes without really saying anything. It isn't necessarily helpful or productive.

At other times I've been in productive meetings in which an individual controlled conversation in such a way that everyone had their say without any one person monopolizing the time. That same person kept the conversation on task and the meeting on schedule. He also did it quietly and confidently. He never seemed to have to yell or compel. He just was the leader. Now, he was the "official" leader, but I bet in informal settings this individual portrays a similar sense of leadership.

Such skills will be of great benefit to those around me regardless of where I work.

O.K., so back to lunch. It was fun to hear about other people's children. I enjoy that. The food was good, but I like what I bring in better than restaurant at lunch, and I also like to sit quietly and think at lunch. Yet, those around me seemed to enjoy the experience as a normal part of life.

I think that it is a good thing to do.

Adam

What do I do for my child?

2007-04-25T16:58:00.000-04:00

Here is a question from an anonymous reader:

"I have a 8 year old son who has apergers. I am trying to avoid any anxiety in school years. Please give me some advise on helping him through. You mentioned that Christian High School was your salvation. Why? I would appreciate any suggestions on making friendships, school easier. Thanks."

Here is my disclaimer: I am not a trained clinician. Everything in this blog is just the uninformed opinion of an Aspie guy from Kalamazoo, MI.

I'd like to focus on one specific part of your question: "I am trying to avoid any anxiety in school years."

Take a step back and ask yourself, what are the points that cause my child anxiety? What I think is that there are two core sources of anxiety:
1. Sensory integration / sensory defensiveness
2. Social/Emotional awareness

To me dealing with the sensory issues will bring about so much relief. I'm just learning about that and realising that I'm under so much stress, frustration, and revulsion from sensory input that most people have no trouble dealing with. I must be one tough dude to be distressed this much of the time and still be fairly well balanced.

For the Asperger/Autism person, the world is a chaos of sensory input and they need help feeling grounded and calm. I just started reading a book called Too Loud, Too Bright, Too Fast, Too Tight: What to Do If You Are Sensory Defensive in an Overstimulating World. So far I like it a lot, because the author is explaining what happens in the brain, and how (from a brain chemistry perspective) the exercises she recommends help.

I think that for an eight year old the most important thing is to get some Occupational Therapy (OT)services if you can afford it or insurance covers it. Ask the OT if he/she is familiar with a technique called the "Wilbarger Brushing Protocol". A brief explanation of the technique is at this link. I have not had experience with the technique, but would vouch that deep pressure has helped me.

I sleep under a heavy blanket, and if I could get away with it at work, a weighted vest would be nice. Bike riding, rocking back and forth to music, and stretching are also helpful.

I think that you should also give diet some serious consideration. I think my changes in diet have helped me in various ways. A good place to start in learning about diet is a dull book called Special Diets for Special Kids. My wife owns it, has read it twice, and refers to it with some regularity. There is a sequel to Special Diets for Special Kids, Two, but I don't know what is different about it.

All of the book titles in this blogs are links directly to the books at Amazon.com. If you can't afford to purchase books, check with your local library to see if they have a process for you to request books. The Kalamazoo library has bought all of the books that I have requested (five so far).

This is a place to start. Start there, and let me know how it is going, what you are learning, what works and what doesn't.

In the mean time, start establishing some clear routines for your child. He/she may take some comfort in that. Also, look for an interest or skill at which they can excel and enjoy. It not only helps them with managing emotions, but it will give them a vehicle with which to enter social situations. My son plays trumpet quite well, and it has helped him build relationships in band. My daughter like to run, do crafts, and art.

Don't drive your child, but encourage their passions, and let them excel in an area that appeals to them. Not much money? Look for grants. We got a grant to help pay for trumpet lessons.

Adam

Stranger Than Fiction

2007-04-25T16:27:00.000-04:00

My wife and I were about 20 min. into Stranger Than Fiction (Will Farrell, Emma Thompson, Robert DeNiro), and I turned to Marge and said, "This guy is an Aspie!" He counted everything, timed his days, all these charts and visuals where in his head, his coworkers asked him math problems that he did quickly in his head, and He had no idea how to ask a woman out on a date.

He didn't display any self stimming or ritual behavior so I don't suppose he could completely qualify, but he did have the zero affectation and obvious lack of emotional intelligence. It was fun to watch.

For me the most fun was him talking out loud to the person narrating his life. I thought that was hysterical. The sad thing is that, like most movies, boy meets girl, boy has sex with girl (because they like each other), boy and girl fall in love. According to the movies, television and popular culture, that is what is normal.

I suppose it is normal, but it isn't healthy, and it's not the right thing to do. Humans were designed by God to be monogamous, and to mate for life. The damage done by our promiscuous society is evident around us. Sexually transmitted diseases are only one small, but not minor, consequence. The family as a unit of society has degraded, and as a result society has suffered.

On the contrary, men and women who wait until they are married are seen as prudish and mentally repressed (at least in movies). I have seen exactly the opposite over and over again. I've seen couple after couple who waited until marriage, and go on to live very happily.

So, what does this have to do with Asperger? Well as much as I enjoyed the movie, it's a shame that part of the main characters "salvation" included the immoral behavior. The movie displayed his inner moral strength. That was a key to the movie's plot. What made him odd (or possibly Aspie) also was the key to his quiet dedication to doing what was right.

The main character is an IRS auditor. One of his coworkers jokes about busting a tax payer for evasion. The main character on the other hand never uses bravado or condescends to those he investigates. He has a gentleness and quietness about him. The same thing that makes him odd, is also what makes him a good person. It's too bad that he couldn't have risen to a new level of moral purity and found romance and love while pursuing sexual purity.

Oh, that's right, sin sells movie tickets.

I forgot. How Aspie of me.

Adam

Finding My Voice

2007-04-18T14:58:00.000-04:00

I've found my voice, I think. It's been developing for some time, and It's been integrating into who I am over the last three years or so, but maybe even in the last year, I've fully come into who I am.

What is voice? I'm sure there are text books and paper backs full of discussion. I've taken some English courses in which the text book spends several chapters discussing exactly what communication is. I always liked that, but almost found it a little silly that some one would have to explain it. I always thought, "Can't we just do it instead of reading about it?"

At the same time I used to feel a sense of derision when an individual would speak of "looking" for themselves or say "I'm trying to find myself". It just seemed like so much fluffy mumbo jumbo. Or I remember in the Seventies, the middle aged father of four that would suddenly buy a Corvette, start leaving his shirt unbuttoned and wear lots of medallions. I think that's when mid-life crisis was coined as a term. I remember thinking, in the old days people didn't go through mid-life crisis, because they were to busy trying to survive. I used to really be afraid of mid-life crisis, because I wanted to always be a kind and faithful husband.

Well this isn't a mid-life crisis. Thankfully, because I can't afford to purchase a Yugo let alone a Corvette. My wife faithfully drives me to work each day and picks me up each night until it's warm enough for me to ride back and forth to work on my bicycle. I also think I should take back all my negative thoughts about "finding yourself", because obviously in finding my voice, I have found the means to know myself, and as a consequence know God and others around me in far deeper, richer, and satisfying way.

So what is voice? Well, I'm writing this part first, and haven't read anybody else's work on the topic. This all started as me being engaged to speak at a church academy series, and the title was provided for me.

My personal definition of voice is this:
The ability to express in either concrete or symbolic terms one's inner person, namely one's emotions, big ideas, reactions to the world around, and closely held beliefs. I have effectively "found" my voice when I can express myself to you in a way that is meaningful to us both, and allows you to reflect back to me using your own voice.

It what people mean when they say some one is expressing themselves. They are taking part of their inner person and hading it over to an person so that the other person can receive it, handle it and reflect it back to them. It involves an interaction between two.

The interaction might not be face-to-face even, but might be through the printed page. I'm convinced though that voice must involve some kind of revelation of the inner person and be received by at least one other person. I suppose a diary is the beginnings of that.

Good thing this is a blog and not a book that you've just purchased from a bookstore as I imagine I'll be thrashing ideas about in her for a while. I hope you enjoy it. Please jump in with any comments that you may have.

Upcomming Topics

2007-04-17T15:04:00.000-04:00

I sort of fell of the writing band wagon for a week.

Below are some ideas that are bouncing around in my head. Let me know if you have any questions, ideas or comments in general. Also, if you would like me to post your experiences or comments as a "guest" writer I would be willing to consider them. Please send them to adam@parmenterclan.com.

Here is what I'm going to try writing about next:

Movie: Stranger Than Fiction. This guy has to be an Aspie. Why can't they wait until they're married.

Finding My Voice part II or III or who knows

SCHOOL EXPERIENCES

First Grade - How Was Your Trip? (The angry Mrs Clark, "Put him in special ed")
Second Grade - Spelling backwards and the frost method
Third Grade - Ms Paul - Pushing too hard on my pencil, failing advanced math because I was certain I would
Fourth Grade - Mr. Obrian - I almost never completed a homework assignment
Middle School - Becoming a loner, getting bullied for the first time
Junior High - School is a special kind of hell
Highschool - Grace Christian School. My salvation.
College years - Lost and wandering

Monk

2007-04-02T13:51:00.000-04:00

I've been watching the detective/situation comedy show "Monk". At first I didn't find it funny, because it seemed to fit my world too closely. Actually Monk also reminded me of an extreme example of my son.

O.K. me too.

The difference is that Monk does all his OCD stuff. I do it in my head. I notice little things, and choose to just let them go.

I used to think that I didn't have enough self control. Stuff like that makes me realise that I've got lots of it. I crave order and the world around me seems to be wildly chaotic. There times when I am quite peaceful, but often I other must impose order upon the world around me or simply live with the chaos.

We Aspies need to understand that because of the way we are designed, much of the world around us will be annoying or excruciating and that we can only fix some of it. If we can't make our environment suite our needs we need to employ our mind to overcome the need.

It's taken me a long time to figure out how to do that, and I'm not sure how to explain it yet. Part of it has to do with the sense of being separate from my body. I've heard other Aspies speak of their brains as if it were separate from themselves. I often have that sense. Often feel as if I am a passenger in my body. I think that sensation has a neurological component that is part of sensory integration disorder.

I have "leveraged" that sensation that the "me" part of Adam is separate from the "body/brain" part of Adam, and learned how to step away from my brain. I call it filtering. I remove me from the part of my brain that is in anguish. Sense it is at arms length, I can endure it. For extreme situations it takes a great deal of discipline and energy, and sometimes it doesn't work.

It's an important skill that has helped me survive and grow.

Adam

Adam

Crunch Attack!

2007-04-02T12:45:00.000-04:00

I was sitting at work trying to stay focused when the person in an ajoining cubicle starting loudly crunching celery or something. They were loud open mouth crunching down onto the celery stalk. There is a rush of high frequency pulse that are the crunching of the celery. That sound also reflects off of the inside of the mouth like when you talk into a tin can, but it changes frequency and tone as the shape of the mouth changes. I didn't see the celery. I can only guess that is what it was.

It was like shooting needle like daggers through my brain and chest. I felt physical pain.

You know, I think since I went cold Turkey and cut out Gluten, Dairy, and a few other things I've been more alert. That's good. On the flips side my senses seem like they've cranked up a notch. I've also never heard any one crunch that loud. That was yesterday.

Today it was wheat crackers. The crunching wasn't so bad as the sound of some one eating wheat crackers with their mouth open. Accompanied by smacking sounds. I tried to endure, but I finally had to rush out of the building and find my hiding place. I sat down and put my head in my hands and rocked back and forth. Even after I was "over it" my chest still hurt. It was like being under attack.

I have a pair of earplugs that I wear when I mow the lawn, the cut the volume of a sound, but I used to wear earplugs when I was a furnace duct cleaner. I could wear the earplugs while the loud machinery was running and still carry on a conversation.

Sound isolating headphone are not covered by insurance.

When I got home it made me appreciate my wife even more. At her loudest she doesn't crunch and smack like that. I can never tell this other person that I'm appalled at his lack of manners. I'm just shocked that an educated individual would still eat with their mouth open.

Don't I sound like an Aspie. I feel it 100% today.

Read Light! Green Light!

2007-03-27T12:46:00.000-04:00

I finally admitted to my wife recently that the color of traffic lights holds no special meaning for me. I know that it means STOP, but to me it's just red. If the red light had the word STOP in it that would make more sense. I've actually seen a traffic light (long time ago), that had the word STOP in small black letters printed on the lense. When the red lense lit up, it not only was red, it said STOP.

Most of the world sees that little red light as meaning STOP, but to me it's just a red light. Maybe I already said that. So, I have to remind myself "Red means STOP", when I come to a stop sign. It's usually second nature, but often enough I'll be talking to my wife while I'm driving, and she'll say, "It's red honey".

The other drivers in Michigan (and other parts of the U.S.) owe my wife a debt of gratitude I suppose. I don't get nearly as distracted when I'm by myself. O.K. there have been occasions that I've gone careening through a stop sign or traffic light.

It's inconvenient, but I actually enjoy that Marge and I only have one vehicle. Then, when it's warm enough, I just ride my bike to work. Much simpler. I also enjoyed taking rapid transit to work when I lived in the Chicago area.