Dear John,
I’ve writen about quite a few autistic traits I still can’t do much about, like eye contact.
And at some level, in this life, I’m always going to be autistic. But that doesn’t mean that I’ve still got all the autistic traits I had when I was 18. Lots of people today find it hard to believe that I’m autistic or an introvert, especially if they don’t know me well.
Quite a few of the classic autistic traits are simply not knowing how to do things that can be learned. Like how to be confident and comfortable when speaking to a room full of people. And how to come across as confident and comfortable, which for me was quite a different skill. (In fact I learnt to be confident and comfortable by learning how to come across as confident and comfortable as a trainee teacher, and then doing it day in day out for a few years!) Or how to build friendships, grow romantic relationships, counsel others, book a holiday to somewhere you’ve never been before, and so on. Lots of things that come into the category of “life skills” that can be learnt rather than sensory issues which I might or might not be able to overcome.
Some of those come really naturally to me now, to the point that I don’t even notice that I’m doing them and I forget there was a time I couldn’t cope with them. Others are still fine for me to do sometimes, but I know they take quite a bit more energy for me than for other people and my ability to do them drops off quite a bit when I’m tired.
Have I got less autistic over the years? Am I any less autistic than you? In terms of the basics of how my brain works, no. In terms of what I can do and how I can engage with society, we’re in completely different leagues. Or I like to think so, anyway! No disrespect intended – I guess what I’m saying is that you’ve got a lot of capacity to learn…
Incidentally, that’s why helping autistic people is often focused on children. By the time that we’ve grown up, we’ve often learnt a lot of coping strategies which enable us to deal with life.
All the best,
Future John
Fearfully & Wonderfully Broken is a series of letters from an autistic pastor to his teenage self, covering topics like faith, autism, disability and how to cope with life.
Most of the titles are deliberately wrong, and/or provocative (see letter 2).
John Allister is the vicar of St Jude’s Church in Nottingham, England.
At age 18, he was a maths/science geek who didn’t realise he was autistic.