My name is Laurence Mitchell and I am new here on Steemit with only one previous post to my name. It is important you know a little more about me although googling me you can find out that there are numerous articles about my life. Basically I was diagnosed with Aspergers Syndrome by the Priory Hospital London back in 2002 aged 49, I am now 64. One of the things I hope you will learn that my posts are transparent although there will on occasion as in this one be similarities between this post and others but on sites that are mine such as www.aspieandme.com
I recently wrote a book called Aspie and Me. ![ASPIE AND ME.jpg] that was only published on October 24th of this year. In my opinion it took exceptional courage to write the story because when it was originally written some five or so years ago and edited many times over the years, I was left with a dilemma. There was too much personal stuff that related to my relationship with those that I cared about and I needed to keep them completely out of my story.
In writing about my Book Aspie and Me, it is the first of a trilogy of books and it looks at the life of an Autistic Man(Me) from the self's perspective.
What I have achieved I am not aware has been done before, certainly not focusing on the autism spectrum. I decided to split up the 'self and that of the 'Aspie self'. How many conversations I have had with psychologists, psychotherapists, neuro-typicals (non-autistics); Is it actually possible to split up the Aspie mind to the neuro-typical mind, what part is responsible for certain thoughts and thinking etc? But this is the emphasis in the story. There are included in the book many examples of the manner in which Aspie's think, the way they speak or put words together that differ from the norm as there are examples of why Aspie's cannot relate to how generally speaking Neuro-typicals think (non-autistics_ Then there is the question you might ask me what is the norm? This is very debateable just as asking me is there a Mr and Mrs Average.
If you were to look back into my past you would learn that I had developed for me two different web platforms. Many years ago I had an antiques restoration consultancy and I had patented the image of Humpty Dumpty with a big smile on his face. My Humpty was a happy Humpty because he had found someone who could restore him to his former glory. My two web platforms that were developed; www.lifewithoutlabels.co.uk and www.lifebeyondlabels.com made use of the Humpty image as the antithesis of the original. I decided to change the idea behind the story. My Humpty was a happy Humpty because he no longer was worried about falling off his wall or any wall for that matter because he had learned how to fall or rather land safetly and therfore not end up as a cracked egg.
It is of my opinion this is one of main stumbling blocks for people diagnosed on the autism spectrum. As children they may well be diagnosed as lower functioning autistic or higher functioning autistic or Aspergers.
When I was diagnosed back in 2002 there was so few diagnostic labels compared to today. Primarily Aspergers, Autism and a small number of well known similar disorders or conditions like OCD, ADHD, ADD, Tourettes etc but not that many more.
There were far fewer if any web platforms that supported people on the spectrum. When I had my diagnosis I struggled to get my private health insurance to pay for the costs of diagnosing me because they decided Autism or Aspergers was a chronic illness and my health cover did not include for chronic illnesses. I responded by asking them to prove what evidence they had that Aspergers and Autism was chronic. It was inevitable that they couldn't.
Even so my diagnosis took some three months of repeated psychiatrist visits. My Diagnosis can be read at http://aspieandme.com/comments/. But more recent research due to collaboration with Dr's of Psychology have informally established Alexithymia should have been included with the original diagnosis. But I don't think Alexithymia was main stream back then only appearing more recently in the past decade. Now it is thought of as one of many personality disorders that has a varying intensity. However this can be said of both autism and aspergers. It affects every individual differently.
Looking back at my own life it is very probable I was somewhere on the lower end of the spectrum until the age of around six. Although I was verbal, my parents sent me to elecution lessons because I could not pronounce any word beginning with Th. I refused to use the toilets at school and this went right back to nursery school. I had weird habits, apparently while walking I could only do so if this included touching my knees and ankles. At some point between nursery school and the early years of Junior shool I grew out of "lower" functioning" to "higher" functioning but exactly when that was, is debatable.
When I look back at my life I see myself as a very vulnerable child who lacked confidence in the presence of other people. This meant I was bullied from an early age. To a certain extent this lack of confidence is still with me today and sometimes I get rather embarrassed, act defensively because I do not feel 'right' in my body as though I am looking at myself from the outside, scrutinising my every action. How many times I have run away because I wanted to run away from myself, didn't like what I saw in the mirror even though there were no mirrors around. I used to believe I suffered from every phobia under the sun unaware these phobias would be described today as meltdowns.
In short if I had to describe the roles of Aspie and Me in a sentence or two it would go like this: Me is the part of me that is calm, can remain the observer in difficult situations by taking a step or two back to check his immediate surroundings while Aspie is the part that will panic if he does not understand. He may be blind to people right in front of him but his peripheal vision is outstanding. Where Aspiecan excel, is his out of the box ideas, some of which have come via irrational thinking.
Where people may mis-recognise and register an Aspie as doing something innapropriate, this may be because he is blind to what is expected as norm by the neuro-typical population, just see's everything directly in front of him from his/her perspective.
So what is Aspie and Me really about? Yes my life told by the main character Hartley who plays my part (Me); fictionised The idea for it to be portrayed as a pschological thriller is based on the true life story of an Aspergers businessman who was convicted of murder since there were similarities between him committing murder and the incident Aspie got himself in that is portrayed in the chapter Schadenfrueds. The purpose of this inclusion of a 'murderer', is to emphasise to the reader that Aspie's may have a tendency not to foresee serious consequences that could have a negative outcome to their health because within their diagnosis will be vulnerability traits they will be blind to. (
Iv'e mentioned the main character, Hartley; although you might think Aspie's part should be equal to Hartley's, it isn't, because Hartley see's Aspie as a thorn in his backside most of the time. However there is another character that represents another part of Aspie's world; a real live Tyrannosaurus Rex. Now I know what you are going to think, I can't be serious? But if you were to read my book you would begin to realise Tyrannosaurus is responsible for the more intrusive anxieties that plague Aspie.
The other main character is Rea. Rea is Aspie's confidant, knows all about Hartley's entire past since Hartley has left no stone unturned including the unmentionable, to which he blames Aspie's entirely.
To view my full life story I encourage you to visit www.aspieandme.com but in short I left school without any decent qualifications and my only three jobs of being fully employed lasted a maximum of three days. It was my teenage stamp collecting that saved my bacon and until I was twenty three years old was a philatelist. My mother already in the antiques trade stimulated by interest in antique dealing. Like most other antique professionals that I know of it is a job that does not end at retirement age and invariably will go on until I am physically incapable of buying and selling unless something comes along that changes this.
Throughout my career in the antiques trade I have dealt with mostly smaller items, porcelain and pottery, English, European and Chinese and Japanese works of Art with a specialism in Meissen porcelain, many videos I have authored can be watched on Youtube or Vimeo and watch out for my blogs about antique porcelain in general. While there are some amazing stories about Aspie's antique escapades in my book and the story tells about my lust for living life to its fullest, this is one of my latest photo's of Asoie doing what Aspie loves to do, be the extravert in me.
