The Art of Finding a Therapist

As always, names are changed-- in this case, abbreviations are used for my good therapists, and mischievous nicknames for some pretty bad therapists.

"Dr. L. would have some good advice for me on this," I often say to myself when I am having a difficult moment.

But then I remember that I am no longer working with Dr. L. 

An undisclosed medical condition forced Dr. L. into sudden retirement in June, and after six years of working with him-- the longest I have worked with any therapist-- I found myself having to find someone else.

I have been to several shrinks since age eleven. The past thirty years of on-and-off therapy have taught me some valuable lessons, not the least of which is that finding a good therapist is an art. In a sea of "just okay" and bad shrinks, I have had three terrific ones, including Dr. L. I started working with a new therapist, Dr. P., in June, but I'm considering looking for someone else if something doesn't click in the next couple months. She is nice and open-minded enough, and in the beginning I was feeling optimistic about her. However, I have since begun to feel that things aren't clicking as well as I hoped they would. For one thing, I am not convinced that she is intimately familiar with the nuances of autism, particularly in terms of what it generally looks like in cis women*. For another, I find that she often misses my point. Plus, she will often ask me a question right after I say something that contains the answer that she is looking for. For example, I might tell her that I have known somebody for twenty years, and two seconds later she will ask, "How long have you known this person?" It makes me feel like that she isn't listening, or at least isn't completely processing what I tell her, let alone appreciate where I'm coming from.

What was great about Dr. L. is that he knows what autism looks like, including in cis women*. Unlike an alarming number of the psychological community, he knows it is a varied, colorful, complex, and nuanced spectrum, well beyond the stereotype of train-spotting, hyperliteral, STEM-genius cis men. In fact, on the day that I first met him, he said that he knew after speaking to me for about a minute that I was neuroatypical-- he has that kind of radar for autism, picking up on more subtle, less stereotypical cases like mine. After talking to him for about ten minutes, he also commented, "What I am hearing is someone who has experienced a great deal of loss." These comments clearly reflected someone who is highly knowledgable about autism as well as someone who quickly picked up on a common denominator in the stories I related. 

Dr. L. was also good at validating my feelings while trying to help me sort through them. Sometimes I would tell him a story about a memory from my teenage years in the 1990s that had come back to haunt me, and I would say, "I feel like even among the autism community I have stories about traumatic interactions that are really unusual." He would tell me, "Believe me, this isn't anything I haven't heard before from an autistic person" and he would elaborate. You name the esoteric experience, he's heard about it at least once and often has some great insight into it. Sometimes, he would also ask me very disarming questions that would make me rethink my perspectives on certain issues. After getting to know me, it was also easier for him to contextualize any new information I gave him.

And finally-- and this is not a trivial issue-- Dr. L. laughed at my weird, gallows sense of humor. And that's important.

Aside from the importance of finding a therapist who understands your situation, it is important that this person is interested in little anecdotes about something fun you did over the weekend and appreciates your sense of humor. After all, if you're working with a therapist once a week, you are not going to have something "bad" to talk about every week-- sometimes not even for months at a time. Why should you? And being able to have everyday discussions with and laugh with your shrink is important. It helps them to see the whole person, and not just where things aren't working. Plus, it helps you feel more comfortable working with them. 

I have had only two therapists besides Dr. L. who I really clicked with. The first one was Dr. F., whom I saw during my senior year of high school. He was the second shrink I had been to, after my shrink that I saw in elementary school whom I have since dubbed Dr. Bonehead (more on him in a bit). After the first or second session together, he commented, "You're a very intense person." Just like Dr. L., he spotted a common denominator right away. The other one, Dr. G., was someone I saw in my late twenties when living in New York City. Like Dr. F. and Dr. L., she was able to appreciate where I was coming from and help me to understand my feelings. She helped me to come to terms with a painful personal loss of two friends who had recently ghosted me (this was in 2008, one of the worst years of my adult life).

Dr. P. doesn't seem to be fitting all of these requirements. She enjoys listening to my anecdotes and laughs at my jokes but, as I've said, I'm not convinced she fully appreciates just what autism is and can be, and I feel her listening skills leave something to be desired. I don't think she's a "bad" therapist, but she might not be a good fit. I have had some "just okay" therapists as well as some awful ones, and I want to share a few stories to help my readers understand just how clueless and even inappropriate (nothing sexual in my case; don't worry) they can be, and that there's nothing wrong with looking for someone else if the shrink you're seeing doesn't seem to be helping. To make things easier to follow (and more amusing), I have given each of these therapists a mischievous nickname:

Dr. Bonehead: My first therapist, whom I saw between 1992-1995, ages 11-14. Nobody knew what autism was in the '90s beyond the Rainman stereotype, so I wasn't diagnosed. Dr. Bonehead meant well, but he didn't understand me at all. He told me I overreacted to the chronic bullying I experienced, he analyzed things that had no deep meaning, and he often expressed shock at my gallows sense of humor. And he seemed to think a good "cure" for my social deficits was to sit two feet away from me on the couch instead of sitting on the other side of the room. Hey, "normal" people would feel a little uncomfortable, but since I wasn't "normal," I guess he thought the answer was to throw me in the proverbial deep end and hope I'd swim. Oh, and he once told me my hair was sexy. While I don't think he "meant" anything by it (he had three years in which he could have touched me, and he never did-- not even a harmless pat on the shoulder), it was still inappropriate and, sadly, reflective of the culture back then when it was considered okay for thirty-something-year-old men to "compliment" adolescent girls like that. Again, I don't think he was trying to do something inappropriate; I think he was just clueless-- in many ways.

Dr. Uh-Huh: I saw this guy in my late twenties, in Brooklyn, for a few months before I started seeing Dr. G. I would tell him stories and he would just go, "Uh huh. Uh huh." I would ask him for some insight, and he would just shrug. Brilliant guy.

The Drama Queen: I saw her in Boston for a few months in 2014. She was inordinately convinced that I was harboring a repressed memory, which is just absurd because my episodic memory is better than most people's (Dr. L. said he has only worked with one other person in 45 years with a memory like mine). I have no trouble remembering traumatic experiences either, so I don't know where she was getting this. She also insisted that certain things in my life-- such as some drama in my extended family, which only came up because she actually had me make her a detailed family tree for some reason-- had a significant effect on me when I knew damn well it didn't. The family drama involved relatives I barely knew, and while I felt bad for my parents, who were at the receiving end of it, it had very little to do with me. These kinds of assertions felt like gaslighting. Additionally, The Drama Queen was Jewish, and she started asking personal questions to ascertain if I was "really" Jewish (that is, was my mother "born" Jewish? Nope, she converted-- I could see the wheels turning in her head when I revealed that). This is not just inappropriate, but irrelevant. Oh, and when I told her I was going to see cognitive psychologist Steven Pinker at an event to promote his new book, she said, "Maybe we can go together." Uhhh, that's a hard "no." Psychologists aren't supposed to interact with their patients outside of a professional setting. 

The bottom line is that finding a good therapist is an art. It takes time, and sometimes you need to try several before you find one that clicks. There is nothing wrong with that. Sometimes they aren't a good fit, and sometimes they are just bad. And if you, like me, are a woman on the autism spectrum-- which sadly isn't very well-understood in much of the psychological community-- it can be like finding a needle in a haystack. My father said it best-- finding a good doctor of any kind, but particularly a therapist, is like trying to find a good mechanic. You can take your car to several mechanics who say, "I don't know what to tell you." And then one day you take it to someone else who takes one look and says, "Oh, I know what's going on."

Sometimes, you just need to keep looking when your therapist isn't working out. And there's nothing wrong with that.

*This is a very in-depth topic, and well beyond the scope of this blog post. But let's just say that even a lot of the psychological community remains ignorant of the different presentations of autism.

How IQ Tests Hurt Kids with Asperger's Syndrome

Sometimes I really hate IQ tests. There is a good reason why kids typically are not allowed to see their results. A high score can go to their head, and a low score can make them feel like they've been given a life sentence. 

Before I continue, let me clarify something: I'm not one of those people who say that IQ tests are meaningless. They're not. Steven Pinker said it best in his book The Blank Slate:

People who say that IQ is meaningless will quickly invoke it when the discussion turns to executing a murderer with an IQ of 64, removing lead paint that lowers a child’s IQ by five points, or the presidential qualifications of George W. Bush.

If someone gets a high score on an IQ test, it is most likely accurate. You can't cheat on an IQ test and you can't fake your way through it. On the other hand, if you get a low score, the test might not be telling the entire story and can even be misleading. You know what happens: a child gets a low score on either the verbal or non-verbal sections of an IQ test (or both), their ass gets slapped with a label, and their parents told the kid has a learning disability. Good thing the kid doesn't overhear this conversation because, like I said, it can feel like a life-sentence. And it really can be tough for kids with Asperger's Syndrome because it is very common for them to score very high on the verbal portion but average or lower on the non-verbal portion (or vice-versa).

I first saw my IQ scores when I was in 5th grade (age 11). At the end of school one day, I was called to the principal's office where I was handed a thick envelope, which I was told to give to my parents. "Your parents are expecting this," said the principal. Oh, how extraordinarily naïve to think that you can give an 11-year-old kid a thick envelope to give to their parents and expect them not to intercept it. It's an especially naïve expectation if the kid knows that they're different and also knows that a lot of people, including their parents, think they're something wrong with them. And especially if the kid knows that their mother is planning on sending them to a psychologist. 

So, yes, of course I opened the envelope the minute I got home. It was a psychological evaluation from when I was in 2nd grade (age 8 years, 6 months), with an IQ test included. Reading the psychological evaluation-- which in retrospect described all the signs of the then-unheard-of Asperger's Syndrome-- was traumatic, but that's another blog post altogether. I saw the IQ scores-- my verbal was measured at 136, but it was my non-verbal of 102 that upset me. Hell, it wasn't even the number that upset me. It was declarations like this:

On an additional measure of visual motor functioning, Julie was asked to copy geometric designs. Again her weakness in the non-verbal area was evident; Julie scored from 6 months to 1 year behind her age mates.    

Okay, seriously? My visual motor skills were 6 months to a year behind my peers? I was drawing better than most of my peers. In fact, kids often came to me to ask me to draw things for them! Do you think someone with poor visual-motor skills could have drawn this at age 8 years 6 months?:

Yes, let's talk about my spatial reasoning abilities here. While it's true that I was behind in learning to tie my shoes and learning gross motor skills like learning to ride a bike (I didn't learn the former until age 7 and the latter until age 9), my visual motor skills were clearly superior in other ways. Look at this drawing. This isn't just a straight-up-and-down character that most kids that age draw. This character has one leg in front of the other, executing a pose that has some attitude in it. You can tell what he's trying to convey based on the hand on his hip, the wink in his eye, the crooked grin, and one leg in front of the other. I had a natural understanding at that age that drawings are the most effective when they give the illusion of being in 3 dimensions!

As for the shapes that I was asked to copy? I really don't know. Chances are I didn't care because I thought they were boring. I didn't know I was being tested, and it's possible I just wanted to get them out of the way.

Then the evaluation reiterated its declaration of my "poor motor skills":

Visual motor skills are 6 months to 1 year below age expectations, and Julie’s handwriting is poor.

This is poor? I think this handwriting sample from around that time is typical of most kids of that age:

So there I was, age 11, reading this evaluation that suggested that I didn't have age-appropriate motor skills, the very skills that are necessary for being able to draw. When my mother came home, I shoved the evaluation in her face and demanded answers. I think I said something like, "What's the meaning of this?" and my mother told me I wasn't supposed to be looking at it, that it was meant for the psychologist I was going to soon be seeing. Well, again, how naïve… My mother hadn't want me to see the IQ scores, of course, but the horse was out of the barn, and she knew that I was upset. So to make me feel better she showed me results of an IQ test that I had taken two years prior to that one, in which the results were higher: 143 for verbal, 136 full scale, and… I don't remember what non-verbal was. It was definitely higher than on the other test, I think 115 or so. Full scale is not calculated by averaging verbal and non-verbal together, so to know for sure I'd have to find the results of this test again.

Why such a vast difference in results for tests taken by the same person? Damned if I know. Perhaps I was having a bad day on the second test. In any case, I'm sorry that I ever found these results, but it's a moot point because I know eventually I would have started asking questions-- my brother always did better in school than me, especially in math and science-- and my parents would not have been able to keep the results hidden once I reached adulthood. While looking for the psychological evaluation again years later, at age 17, I accidentally found my brother's IQ scores; they had somehow gotten chucked into my folder. He'd kill me if I revealed what they were, but let's just say that suspicions I'd had about him were confirmed.  

At the time that I found those scores, it really didn't bother me. But sometimes things happen in my life that make my mind wander to the IQ scores: Right now I'm taking a JavaScript class in hopes of getting myself a career as a web developer. I am having a really tough time with this class and am even behind most of the other students. I keep thinking about my non-verbal IQ scores and often find myself wondering if it is indeed a life-sentence, the handwriting on the wall that I won't be able to learn this material, that I'm just not smart enough. It's so awful to feel that way, even if I know that it's not logical.

And yes, I know it's not logical. In fact, psychologist Tony Attwood even said that the gap between verbal and non-verbal scores tends to close somewhat as the kid gets older. 

My IQ test had also said:

Weaker areas are those involving the ability to learn new non-verbal information, and the ability to attend, concentrate, and plan ahead.

And in light of that declaration as well as Tony Attwood's comment about the closing of the verbal/non-verbal gap, let me just leave you with this schematic of a plane that I drew when I was 13:

And the final product:

Know Thyself

Those of us with Asperger's Syndrome are no strangers to psychotherapy. Many of us have been seeing shrinks from an early age: way back when we were children in the '90s (or earlier) when nobody had even heard of Asperger's, up through the present day when Asperger's is well-known and understood. What's interesting is that today many kids with Asperger's don't need to see a shrink. Why? Because now that Asperger's is in the mainstream, psychologists recognize that there isn't necessarily anything psychologically wrong with kids who have AS. These kids get a little extra support in social skills and other areas where they have difficulty, these days often in school, but often do not need psychotherapy.

I am turning 34 next month and grew up in a world in which very few people had heard of Asperger's Syndrome. As you may have surmised, I have been in and out of therapy for years to a number of shrinks. Some of them have been great, some of them mediocre, and some just plain bad. I recently had to switch shrinks because my most recent one, Dr. Donalds (not her real name), was a nice person who meant well but who also chased a lot of red herrings, analyzing things about me and my life that had no deep meaning.  Without going into detail, I've recently been having a problem with explosive anger whenever someone criticizes me. Why? Because for decades I've heard "You need to work on this", "You do that", "You make people uncomfortable", "You're perceived this way and that way", "You," "You", "You". It becomes infuriating after a while and makes me feel helpless and angry at myself. It's as if my brain short circuits when I hear one criticism too many. Instead of recognizing this issue for what it was-- anger and frustration--  Dr. Donalds tried to convince me that I was reacting to a repressed memory. Anybody who knows me knows that the idea of me having a repressed memory is hilarious. One of my friends even jokingly said that he doesn't want to end up in a courtroom with me because he knows I'll remember things that he doesn't. I told Dr. Donalds that this idea was absolutely ridiculous, but she got upset, feeling that I was calling her ridiculous. 

Dr. Donalds also tried to diagnose me with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) because of vivid recurring nightmares that I experience. She said that such nightmares are a symptom of PTSD. I am fully aware that one symptom isn't enough to diagnose somebody with anything, so I asked her about the other symptoms. One of them is a "fatalistic outlook on life". I said, "I don't have a fatalistic outlook on life!" She gave me this look that conveyed, "Um, seriously?" In fact, she gave me that look whenever I disagreed with something she said. She also tried to tell me I was clinically depressed. No, I'm happy most of the time, but I'm also frustrated. Again, challenging her assessment earned me the look. 

This woman also treated my life like a mystery novel, trying to find a constellation of events in my background that converged in a singularity that is my life today. She even asked me to help her put together a family tree. I mentioned briefly that my father's side is mostly estranged these days (long story) but I never really knew them well to begin with. Dr. Donalds tried to tell me that this dynamic ultimately had some effect on me.  I tried to tell her that these people had never had anything to do with me so their estrangement wasn't something I gave a second thought. She also tried to tell me that the occasions that I got separated from a group in school because of being spaced out had to have been traumatic. Why? Simply because I remember them. Never mind that I remember a lot of things, good and bad.

Oh, and Dr. Donalds also gave me that look when I told her I had Asperger's Syndrome. She didn't believe me, despite the fact that I was formally diagnosed back in New York City. And for the record, even if I hadn't been diagnosed, nothing could convince me I don't have Asperger's. I've done the research and I it explains everything about my life that was once a mystery.

I finally got tired of hearing that I had a repressed memory, tired of hearing that Dad's side of the family affected me, and tired of hearing that environment, not genetics, was 100% responsible for my issues, so I stopped seeing Dr. Donalds. I am now seeing a new therapist who seems much better. She understands me better and has worked with people with Asperger's Syndrome all across the spectrum. Most people don't know right away that I have AS, but she was able to see it quickly in subtle things such as my facial expressions and mannerisms. 

Yes, therapists have degrees in psychology, but psychology is not an exact science. A therapist should help you with the problems you know you have and, perhaps, help you identify others. But Dr. Donalds made me question my sanity. If you think your therapist is  seeing things that aren't there, or is overanalyzing aspects of your personality, then you are probably right. Just because a shrink has a lot of fancy wallpaper known as PhDs or MDs doesn't mean they have a trump card on understanding their patients. Besides, I think I know myself better than most people know themselves. I also suspect those of us with issues probably know ourselves better than those who have never had to go into therapy. Why? Because we have been forced to undergo constant sober reflection, for good and bad reasons. 

As the old saying goes, know thyself.

People Just Don't Get It

Note: This is an angry rant, so there will be some swearing. If you're offended by that sort of thing, just read my other blog posts.

This post is an angry rant, because I am pretty fucking angry. It's hard enough to keep a happy, optimistic face for this blog. I want this blog to come across happy and optimistic because I want to give parents hope that everything is going to be okay. But I have to be honest. There is a lot in my life that isn't okay. Sometimes I get so frustrated and angry that I break down crying, thinking, "Where do I even begin to fix this?" And by "this" I mean being financially independent like my peers. I am turning 34 in October, and I still don't have a career or even a decent-sized apartment, let alone one that I can afford on my own. Everybody else my age I know-- and many ten years younger-- has a career, has a decent-sized apartment (or a house, if they're in the suburbs), and doesn't need help from their parents to make ends meet.

"Oh, but at least you're not starving in Africa. You don't know how lucky you are." You know what? You're right. I'm not starving in Africa. So fucking what? That doesn't make my frustration and anger any less real (It's a logical fallacy; I forget what it's called). I grew up relatively privileged, in a white, middle-class household with educated parents. I lived in a relatively affluent suburb in Pennsylvania. I went to college and grad school. Given my background, I should have a career now and be financially independent. But if you have Asperger's Syndrome, growing up privileged doesn't mean shit unless you are born into wealth. I still have to get a career. I have a Master's Degree and am making $12.75 an hour at a temporary work-at-home job. What is my job? Transcribing. Mind-numbing transcribing that any idiot with a GED can do. And because I lost my last two jobs, each after a paltry four months (in both cases they said I was too awkward and made our clientele uncomfortable), to stay in Boston I had to give up my spacious, one-bedroom apartment and downgrade to a studio. It's $1200 a month, and the only way to get any lower in Boston is to live in a basement apartment not much bigger than a walk-in closet with no windows. Even then, the lowest the rent goes for something like that is $1000. The other option is to get roommates, which can bring each person's rent as low as $700-$800 per month. But all my roommate situations in the past have been disasters. My parents even said they would rather help me pay for my own little corner of the universe than take the chance that I would get into some ridiculous conflict with roommates and then have to move out (moving, of course, isn't free).

I know that I'm more intelligent than my employment history and living circumstances reflect but that makes no fucking difference unless you have pristine social skills. And research has shown that the decision to hire someone an any job is almost entirely based on how well they think she'll "fit in" with her coworkers, much more than if she has the talent to do the job. I'm not the kind of person who fits in. It's not that I haven't tried, it's that I can't. Making friends is not an issue for me because I live in a diverse city and can easily find social misfits/intellectual nerds who'd rather talk about psychologically intense topics than how someone's third cousin once removed is doing. But most people would rather talk about the latter, and that's what they expect you to do on the job, even if it is not related to the job description. People know when I'm faking it. I can only feign interest in somebody's third cousin once removed before the holes in my mask start to form. I then have to retreat to my little corner of the universe and do my work. But no. Most high paying jobs expect you to work as a team. I work in groups with about the same ease and naturalness as an asexual person behaves like John F. Kennedy.

"Oh, well have you tried this? Or that? Or the other thing?" Yes, of course I have. I've finished my undergrad 11 years ago. You think I haven't fucking tried? Of course I have, and I've run into one brick wall after another.

Oh, and people have told me over and over that I come off as harsh, angry, argumentative, and even cold.

"You know, the way you're talking to me when you're upset, you're real intense and argumentative and harsh. Maybe that's what's gotten you in trouble at work." No! That's not what has happened! I'm letting my guard down with you. At work I try to hide these emotions. People have told me I'm too "intense" or "harsh" or "argumentative" even when I'm happy or joking around. It's like all I have to do to fucking offend someone is open my fucking mouth, even if I just ask how they are! So you know what the other option is, to make sure I don't offend anyone or make anyone uncomfortable? Not talk. And then I become a fucking stiff and they still feel uncomfortable, but for different reasons.

"Well, you know, you do tell inappropriate and sometimes shocking jokes. Do you do that at work?" 

Yes, I have a raunchy, macabre, and downright absurd sense of humor. I also love saying things for shock value just to see how people react. But you know, I'm not Rainman. I tell the "shock value" jokes you're talking about to friends or on online social networks under an anonymous name, not in a professional setting. My friends laugh, and people online click "like" or write "Hahaha!" I learned years and years ago that there's a time and a place for these things, and work sure as hell isn't it. People at work have called me "inappropriate" for reasons that I'm not sure of but that have nothing to do with the jokes I tell outside of work.

"Well you're very interested in the work of Richard Dawkins and Dr. Kevorkian. You bring those guys up all the time. Are you talking about them at work? You can't do that, you know. They're too controversial."

Yes, I fucking know that I can't bring up these guys or their work in a job setting-- especially not Dr. Kevorkian-- because people at work represent a diverse range of sociopolitical and religious beliefs and I don't know these people well enough to have such discussions with them. I don't feel deprived if I can't bring up Richard Dawkins or Dr. Kevorkian, either. I am at work to do work. Of course, the funny thing is I've heard radically conservative people at work bring up their shocking views without getting in trouble. 

"Maybe you are talking about Richard Dawkins and Dr. Kevorkian and you don't realize it?"

I think I'm fucking aware of what topics I'm bringing up. Don't patronize me.

When people-- friends, relatives, and even my shrink-- say these things to me, they clearly don't get it. I know they're trying to help me, reaching for the lowest hanging fruit, so to speak. But after a while it's like I'm hearing a mantra, a list of phrases from a pull-string doll. And yes, when I get frustrated enough, I do explode and curse a blue streak (it upsets them, but they know not to take it personally and I do apologize later). But they don't get it. They really don't. Why? They're coming from a neurotypical perspective, that the only way that I as a white, privileged middle-class American could be in this situation is if there was something I haven't tried. The fact that even my shrink gives these obvious suggestions is very telling. Hell, even my parents only started to "get it" in the past five years or so!

This is my life as an adult with Asperger's. Don't get me wrong: I am happy most of the time. But then sometimes (like last night when I was talking to my shrink) old wounds get reopened. No, they get reopened, have salt poured in them, and are pissed in. And I get angry and explosive and cry. Sometimes I just can't take it. Working out usually helps a little, but recently I injured myself while running and I can't do much of anything in the way of vigorous exercise until I heal. 

I'm angry. I'm hurting. I'm cynical. I'm frustrated. I have Asperger's Syndrome.

The Road to (Self-) Diagnosis

Growing up in a small, homogeneous town in Pennsylvania, it was excruciatingly clear that I was different. I knew long before I started experiencing chronic teasing in second grade (which continued through ninth grade), long before other kids nicknamed me "Space Cadet" and "Alien." I knew it long before I began to sense that my parents thought there was something wrong with me, long before teachers and parents began calling my parents with "concerns." 


By fifth grade, I knew that I had ideas, perceptions, an imagination, and a sense of humor that often significantly deviated from what much of society expected. I also got inordinately obsessed with certain movies and television shows and I knew it was weird to do so. Like many people, I, too, thought that there was something wrong with me. I struggled to figure out why I was so different. But it was the early 1990s and I had never heard of the concept of someone's brain being hardwired differently, or even mental illness. In the '80s and '90s-- when I was growing up-- few people had. 


My parents first brought me to a psychologist in the middle of my fifth grade year. Dr. Klein (not his real name) told my parents and me what amounted to, "I don't know what to tell you. I've never seen anything like this before." I stopped seeing him after three years because it was clear that he wasn't helping and, although I liked him as a person, was notorious for analyzing things that had no deep meaning. 


The summer of 1998-- three years after I had last seen Dr. Klein-- was a major turning point in my life. The concept of people's brains being literally wired differently began to dawn on me, and it drastically influenced the way I understood myself as well as other people. I strongly suspected that my childhood and early adolescent obsessions with movies and television shows -- not to mention the obsessive crushes I found myself beginning to get as of late-- indicated Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD). 


Unfortunately, despite my epiphany about OCD, I struggled with emotional frustration and meltdowns as well as major setbacks in social interactions. My summer camp-- the only place I had ever felt like I truly could be myself-- was not going to hire me as a first-year counselor in the summer of '99. With no friends at school-- I just couldn't connect with anybody-- I had no one to turn to, no backup plan.


In the fall of 1998, for the first time in three years, I was back in a therapist's office. Dr. Fried (again, a pseudonym), was a much, much better therapist than Dr. Klein. After the first or second session, he spotted a common denominator in my personality. "You're a very intense person," he said. Indeed, I am! I experience life in general intensely: favorite movies, friendships, crushes, and worrying. Based primarily on the obsessive worrying, he agreed with my theory that I had OCD and diagnosed me with the condition.  I only saw Dr. Fried for about six months-- college was just around the corner and I would be moving to Brooklyn, NY-- but he helped immensely. I moved to Brooklyn in an optimistic state of mind. 


In my junior year of college, however, my problems began to resurface. I continued to have social problems, not so much with other students (I made some good friends), but with teachers. I was in art school and many of the teachers fit the stereotype of the temperamental, self-righteous, imbalanced, and just plain nasty artists. Despite the OCD label, which was initially empowering, I began to suspect that OCD didn't paint an entire picture. I knew, somehow, that it just wasn't quite it. There were so many things-- like my problems reading social cues-- that just didn't add up.


In 2002, towards the end of my junior year of college-- and one of the worst years of my life-- I came across an article in Time about autism. As far as I knew, autistic people were "those people who don't talk." But then I saw a short description of Asperger's syndrome (AS) in a side bar. Obsessive interests. Difficulty interpreting nonverbal social cues. Awkward motor skills. I ran some searches on the Internet for AS and found out more. Obsessive, obsessive, obsessive. Difficulty making and keeping friends. Experiences the world differently. Misinterprets situations. And so forth.


The pieces fell abruptly into place.


Over the next year, I bought a number of books on AS and essentially diagnosed myself; a psychiatrist confirmed my diagnosis in the spring of 2003. After years of poking around in the dark and only finding partial answers, a complete, coherent picture was finally formed. AS was added to the DSM in 1994, but the vast majority of professionals weren't aware of it until a little after the turn of the century. 


At long last, I had an answer. How did I feel then? How do I feel now? As I said, 2002 was one of the worst years of my life. 2003 was the absolute worst. Whereas the discovery would have come as a relief in high school, a time when I was more optimistic despite my insecurities, I felt embittered and frightened. How could I possibly hold a job after graduating if I had this problem? Would I have to live in a group home or on SSI? Looking at my turbulent childhood and what looked like was going to be a difficult adulthood, I felt that nature had played a sick joke on me. 


Things have changed since then, and I'm a happy, well-adjusted adult, am relieved to have the AS label, and I am able to interact socially as well as the next person. Most people are amazed when I tell them I have AS. And yes, I do have a job. I suppose part of me feels cheated because I suffered for much of my childhood and my early adulthood, just by the sheer accident of being born in 1980 instead of 1990. But I know I should look on the bright side-- at least I wasn't born in 1950. People didn't go to therapy in those days; many people thought it meant you were crazy and should be locked in a padded cell. Sometimes I wonder if that would have been my fate, with the emotional meltdowns that I had from experiencing a world that made little sense to me.


And while we're on that note, it's important for society to understand something important about AS-- it isn't a mental illness and there isn't necessarily anything psychologically wrong with the person who has it; his or her neurology is just different. What Aspies need is not to be cured anymore than a gay person needs to be turned straight. After all, if we cured AS, we would have no Albert Einsteins or Temple Grandins. Aspies-- like gays-- need understanding and support and to have their strengths nurtured, not their weaknesses emphasized. I feel privileged to at last be entering an era where this attitude is starting to become more prevalent.