John's Sharebox

In my most recent post, I promised I'd discuss Asperger's a bit more so today, that's what I'm doing. Fair warning, there's some heavy stuff that'll come up.

Asperger's syndrome is named after a German doctor named Hans Asperger (pretty self-explanatory) who, in 1944, published his findings about a group of four boys in whom he observed "a lack of empathy, little ability to form friendships, one-sided conversations, intense absorption in a special interest, and clumsy movements”. He also observed in them what he perceived as great intelligence, and noted that some of them went on to have very successful careers on account of their abilities. In fact, he once said that "Not everything that steps out of line, and thus 'abnormal', must necessarily be seen as 'inferior'".

Hans Asperger was a key figure in the N**i regime, separating autistic children by those he deemed intelligent enough to be an asset to the state and those who were unfit for that purpose, and would thus be killed.

The less fortunate children, roughly 800 of them, were sent by Asperger to a place in Vienna called the Am Spiegelgrund clinic in which they died either in gas chambers or by illness induced by medical experiments that they could not consent to. Asperger himself enjoyed a successful career as an academic before dying in 1980, and the terms Asperger's syndrome was brought into mainstream usage by Lorna Wing in 1981. It was only in 2010 that the truth behind Asperger's involvement with the N**is was unearthed, in the form of some newly discovered documents and medical records from the time of the N**i regime.

There's a couple of perspectives on this, and it depends who you ask. Many people with the diagnosis of Asperger's feel perfectly comfortable with the term, and they're not to be judged for that. I personally don't want to associate myself with the name of someone who committed such crimes as Asperger did, and nor do I wish to separate myself from other autistic people as I don't feel superior to them.

Also while I'm here, do not refer to me as an 'aspie'. Apart from it being derived from his name it's also very infantilising. Some people don't mind this term, but I do.

On an optimistic note, I appreciate knowing about this because I think it's really important to acknowledge rather than bury the history behind the term Asperger's. Apart from everything else, I'm glad that our understanding continues to evolve and bring us to new ideas on what autism is. I feel more in common than differences between me and other autistic people, and I'm proud to be on such a diverse and fascinating spectrum.

You may have heard about different types of autism. You may even hear about them this month. When DSM-4 was published in 1994, there were several categories, which were autistic disorder (sometimes referred to as classic autism), Asperger's syndrome, Pervasive Developmental Disorder Not Otherwise Specified (hereby referred to as PDD-NOS), Rett syndrome and childhood disintegrative disorder.

According to the DSM-4 criteria, for autistic disorder to be diagnosed, someone would have to have shown delays in language and social development, as well as patterns of repetitive behaviour. Someone with these characteristics is often what people think when they think about autism.

Asperger's syndrome was characterised by similar social difficulties and repetitive behaviours, but no linguistic delay. In fact, those diagnosed with Asperger's often demonstrated language skills above and beyond that of their peers, and this was a reason that it was often assumed that they didn't need as much support as other autistic people. If I had been diagnosed according to the DSM-4 criteria as opposed to the more up to date DSM-5, it would probably have been with Asperger's. In fact, I'm going to discuss this further in my next post because there's a lot I want to say about it.

Then there's PDD-NOS, or atypical autism. If someone demonstrated some of the symptoms of autism, but not all of them, they could be diagnosed with this, providing that one of the difficulties they demonstrated was socialisation. As well as this, things like childhood schizophrenia would have to have been ruled out.

Rett Syndrome is a very rare genetic disorder that manifests almost exclusively in girls, and with symptoms similar to autism like avoiding eye contact and repetitive movements along with many other physical symptoms that aren't connected to autism. Then there's childhood disintegrative disorder, which is a condition characterised by similar developmental delays seen in autistic children, or in more extreme cases sudden reversals of said development. Again, CDD is rare.

When DSM-5 dropped in 2013, autistic disorder, Asperger's, PDD-NOS and CDD were merged into a single diagnosis of Autistic Spectrum Disorder (which going forward I will refer to as ASD). For ASD to be diagnosed, a person must demonstrate difficulties in language and socialising as well as repetitive behaviours. Any and all of these can be more or less obvious depending on the person. Incidentally, Rett syndrome doesn't appear in DSM-5.

The diagnoses were merged into one because it was observed that there was a lot of commonality between them. Indeed, with many autistic people I've met I've noticed that we have little things in common here and there, even those who'd previously have received a different diagnosis from myself. That being said there are still many narrow ideas as to what autism is - someone like Raymond from Rain Man, or Sheldon Cooper from The Big Bang Theory (who is a terrible representation of autistic people, but that's something else entirely). Rather than a few stock ideas or people being "more" or "less" autistic, everyone on the spectrum has their own combination of traits, but we are all autistic. Whilst I have my own special interests and sometimes struggle with certain things, another autistic person will be interested in something totally different and may find easy the sorts of things I find harder.

As our understanding of things changes, so too do the terms surrounding it. Often it takes time for these things to settle in, but the more work we put in, the more understanding we gain.

Edit: added a little more about Rett syndrome so it reads more clearly, and reworded the PDD-NOS paragraph slightly because I was worried it sounded rude

This next post comes a bit later than I wanted it to, but it's a more light-hearted one today. Seeing as I'm not sure what people do and don't know (I'd like to discuss this notion later, in fact - it's called theory of mind, and there's some funny stories I have about it), I thought I'd take the time to discuss special interests. I've posted about mine before, and it seems quite Autism 101 to me, but some people might be keen to find out more.

Most people have at least some sort of hobbies or interests in things. These can be passing fancies, or something you take a bit more seriously and invest more time in, like perhaps training for a sport or studying a language. Many autistic people - but not all - have very strong interests, which often go far beyond a casual interest with something into the territory of collecting as much information to do with it as they possibly can. These special interests can be absolutely anything, and I find it super wholesome to find out about what other people's are because I just love the fact that one or two subjects can give someone so much joy and fascination.

For me, it's retro video games and especially Sega consoles from the late 80s to the late 90s. 1998-9, depending where you were, was when they released their last piece of hardware, the Sega Dreamcast. (At the moment I'm especially interested in the Sega Saturn, for some reason.) But, I've had a few throughout my life - Pokémon, Zelda, heavy metal, Ancient Egyptian/Greek mythology, medieval English literature & manuscripts, and James Bond being some examples. Some special interests can last for a few weeks, or for a lifetime. Often we rediscover them after a few years and get to enjoy ourselves all over again.

The negative is that oftentimes if we don't have the time to pursue our special interests, we can get frustrated and disengaged with whatever else we have to do. In some extreme cases I'll think so much about when I can next play Nights into Dreams that it'll come dangerously close to the detriment of any real life responsibilities. Oftentimes I've spoken so much about my special interest at any given time that people have told me to shut up about it, to my initial confusion and upset but retrospective amusement.

But, it's a real positive to be able to find almost unlimited enjoyment in the things we enjoy! Special interests may come and go, or even stay, but anything that can distract us from other difficulties we may face is very much welcome. I've attached some pictures pertaining to various special interests of mine over the years, so give them a look if you feel so inclined.

Round about this month, you're no doubt going to be seeing the puzzle piece pop up a lot as a symbol for autistic people, as well as the colour blue. I am here to tell you why we reject these symbols, and what you can do instead.

As has been brought to my attention, Autism Awareness/Acceptance Week/Month is closely associated with Autism Speaks who, if you don't know, are widely reviled by autistic people for being basically the worst advocates for autism that you can be. They don't have a single autistic person on their board, and their main agenda is to push for a cure for autism rather than educating people how autism affects us, and on how to accommodate for us. They often use the puzzle piece in their material, and it's extremely harmful for us.

In 1999, the Autism Society of America created the puzzle piece logo supposedly to symbolise the complexity of autism and autistic people. Many of us find it incredibly frustrating to be reduced to a puzzle and treated like we are incomplete or lesser people with something missing in our minds. Before I was diagnosed with autism, I felt like something was different about me that I couldn't put my finger on. Often being different is a good thing, but often when I was forced to adapt to situations outside of my comfort zone of heavy metal and old video games, I would make mistakes and end up feeling like I was thick or inadequate, less able to do simple things the way my non-autistic peers could with ease. Sometimes, I still struggle with this even though I am broadly comfortable in my newfound identity as an autistic person.

So as you can imagine, to have these notions reinforced is nothing short of incredibly hurtful for a lot of autistic people, and the continued use of this symbol serves only to reinforce negative ideas about autistic people. Before I forget, many of us feel that this symbol is also infantilising with its use of bright colours and its depiction of a stereotypically childish hobby. (Yes, I have some quite childish aspects to my personality but that's not the point.)

But, it's not all bad! There's positive things you can do instead - for example, many of us really like the infinity sign pictured above, because it demonstrates the diversity of autistic people in a far more appealing way, one that better reflects our understanding of autism these days. Plus, it comes in both rainbow and gold varieties! The reason gold is used is because the chemical symbol for gold is Au, because we love a good pun.

Instead of using blue, you can use Red Instead, which stems from a movement created by autistic individuals in 2005. Red is a very striking colour and has a good visual impact, which can help draw attention to the cause. Some people also theorise that red is a calming colour.

So hopefully, that all makes sense and you know that little bit more about how to be supportive this upcoming month. Go forth and fight the good fight!

Autism Acceptance Month starts tomorrow, so I've a few posts planned 👀 If there's anything you'd like me to discuss, let me know!

A follow-up to my recent post about Diddy Kong Racing - I managed to unlock T.T. after much toil 😁⏱️Diddy Kong Racing has been my special interest lately, but now that I've completed the main adventure I'm at somewhat of a loss - there's always Adventure 2 though, or trying to finish the game as only Krunch 👀

When it comes to the new children's wizard game, I'm not afraid to say I stand with my trans siblings in not buying it ✊ 🏳️‍⚧️ Also worth mentioning is the fact that one of the devs, Troy Leavitt, has strong ties to the alt-right, so even more reason to ignore it 🙅 ⛔ 🚫

Also I'm far too absorbed in Diddy Kong Racing to even consider another game at the moment (jokes aside, that's my view)

I'm pretty lucky in the sense that I've got a full-time job that accommodates well for my autism, but many other autistic people aren't as fortunate. Workplaces as a whole have got to be doing more for autistic people - here are some cases that prove my point, folks

Employers ignorant about disability - autistic man - BBC News Autistic people are statistically less likely to be employed, compared to other disabled people.

Sonic vs. Dr Robotnik

Showing off my Retroid Pocket 2+ for Special Interest Sunday =D Retro video games are yet another of my special interests, and by extension, emulation of said games (basically, downloading software that can imitate old games consoles onto your computer, or in this case, a handheld system the size of an old Game Boy Advance). Recently, I've been getting into Diddy Kong Racing properly, after sort of casually dabbling in it for a while, but this thing can run anything from NES to Dreamcast games more or less flawlessly 😎 The most recent model can supposedly run GameCube games, and seeing as the GameCube is one of my favourite consoles E V E R , that will be interesting to see 👀 P.S. My mains are Tiptup and Pipsy but I selected Banjo in the character screen so I could amuse myself with his voice

How people would expect autistic folks to engage with quiz shows: hmm yes I know ALL the answers to these questions for I am a true prodigy

How I actually engage with quiz shows: wow a question about Sonic the Hedgehog this will make my entire week

A lot of ND children who are seen as being intelligent far beyond the level of their peers won't get the help they need later on in life which leads to a lot of problems buckaroos

It can be very difficult for many neurodivergent people to process verbal instructions - often, we benefit from things like visual aids or actually doing something for ourselves. At work I've had tasks explained to me verbally a thousand times and not taken it in, but when getting the opportunity to carry it out I can do it just as well as anyone.

Funny as this meme is, please don't think ND people are any less able to do a job because we absorb information in a different way to you.

An excellent development for disabled gamers by Sony - Microsoft have developed a similar controller too in the past, so it'll be interesting to see if other developers follow suit =D

Sony unveils PS5 controller for disabled gamers - BBC News The Project Leonardo controller is announced five years after Microsoft released its accessible gamepad.

Nice

Hello again everyone, and thank you for coming. Today's post is going to be about work, and how tricky even an enjoyable job can be if you're autistic:

Today was my first day back at work after the Christmas holidays. Broadly speaking, I like my job - the people are good, the work is something I enjoy doing and it can be extremely rewarding. It's also the sort of job I can leave behind at the end of the day, and after doing other tasks that need done I still have a little time to play games, chill with my partner, or whatever else I feel like or have the energy to do.

This being said, I still often find things very difficult at work. Why?

By and large, workplaces aren't designed for autistic people, especially if the work requires you to spend a lot of time around people. Even if you're working with the best people in the world, oftentimes it can be hard being with them working in a "fast-paced environment" for upwards of 8 hours at a time, especially if the job requires, as mine does, a lot of patience and enthusiasm. It can be extremely draining for autistic people to have to maintain a facade for a long period of time (for those of you who haven't heard this term, we call it "masking" and my work picture is an absolute masterclass in it) and for many people a day's worth of doing this results in great exhaustion, frustration and sometimes even depression and other associated issues.

Think about the last job you worked in. Do you remember your first day? What was it like? Did you feel like everyone already knew each other and knew just what to do, and here you were playing catch-up? Did the rules of the workplace seem mystifying to you, like there was always something you'd forgotten to pick up on? Did everything just seem super overwhelming? Did you feel extremely self-conscious about being the newbie? Did you simply feel like an outsider?

Take a second if you need to.

Now, imagine that, but every day. I've been working in my current job for just over 8 months (had to think about that, no idea where the time goes), and I really enjoy the work, and all my coworkers are extremely pleasant people. That being said, they've all been in this line of work for years and this is my first job in it. To me, it still feels like everyone else is part of some sort of community that I'm not quite a real part of, like a slightly bemused outsider who stumbled in one day and was just sort of given some tasks to do. I've often felt this way throughout my life, part of things but not really fully integrated into them. It often makes you hyper-aware of the things you do wrong, or the things everyone seems to just know that you don't.

Another reason I found it hard going back is that with the holidays came a relatively unrestricted schedule and with it, an enhanced ability to pursue my own special interests I sometimes don't get the time to in my day to day life. The notion of losing out on this sort of time was frustrating to me, and I went into work with perhaps less of a sense of vigour than I might have wanted. Often, the worst part about going into work is the anticipation, but once I'm there it often becomes easier.

To take a broader perspective, only 22% of autistic people are in full-time employment (source: https://www.autism.org.uk/what-we-do/news/new-data-on-the-autism-employment-gap), even though the vast majority of them want to work. This is simply not good enough, and really shows we need to be doing more to help out autistic people who would like to enter the workforce as well as those already in it.

In general, I'm quite lucky as far as work stuff goes, and there's a lot I'm grateful for. But even when I seem to be coping well, I often struggle with the expectations of a workplace not really designed in my favour. On a happy note, the bosses were actually very helpful when I discussed my autism with them, and have made accommodations here and there for me to make my work day that little bit easier. Of course, that's a legal requirement for employers but it's good that it was easy to get that help when I needed it.

That seems like as good a place to round off as any, as it's also getting late and I haven't had much time to play games yet. Bye for now 😎

This is something that I often do when I tell people about things, especially if it's a thing I enjoy - I like people to have as much context as possible for what I'm telling them, and often I get distracted by something else and start discussing that, even if it has little to do with what I started out with 😅 My friend's mum once remarked upon it to him, saying she asked how my day was only for me to tell her in great detail about it rather than giving a brief good/bad response as one is generally meant to. Sometimes, I miss out on things like that and socialise in a way many people might find unusual - although in my friend's mum's case, she'd worked with autistic children in a supportive school and had me twigged immediately 😆

I just noticed this post was kind of an infodump in itself, so I'll round it off there - bye for now 😎

A quick edit: my friend has told me that according to Did You Know Gaming, Satoshi Tajiri was never formally diagnosed as autistic, although he does demonstrate a lot of autistic traits. He well could be, but we don't actually know for sure. I'm happy to amend my post, and I'll do more research.

A quick edit 2: a fair few characters in the new games actually demonstrate some autistic/neurodiverse traits as well! Penny in particular is quite withdrawn, and demonstrates a strong interest in the Pokémon Eevee and its evolutions. Nemona hyperfixates on Pokémon battles and often turns conversations to them, all while becoming intensely interested in the player character. There's also Courtney in Ruby/Sapphire, and Cyrus in Diamond/Pearl, who I'll go into some other time.

Happy New Year to all, whenever you are - hope it's a great one for you whatever happens ☺️ I noticed that today was Sunday, so now seems like as good a time as any to start the year off with a little Special Interest Sunday post 😈

Today I'll be talking about a very old one of mine that I've rediscovered lately - Pokémon =D Satoshi Tajiri, who is himself autistic (see edit above for more surrounding this), came up with Pokémon all the way back in 1996. When he was a young boy, he liked to collect and study insects - so much so that his friends called him Dr Bug. In fact, as you might know many autistic people really throw themselves into an interest and get totally absorbed in it - these special interests are a major part of many autistic people's lives and oftentimes, we get frustrated if we can't pursue them. Collecting things can be a significant part of that - many of us like to collect as much information as we can on a given topic, or may even have collections of physical things. In fact, this is why Pokémon is such a lot of fun for me - collecting the various creatures 😃

The very first games, Pokémon Red and Green, were released in Japan in 1996, and in Europe Red and Blue followed in 1999. These games saw your character explore a region named Kanto, roughly based on a region in Japan, catching as many Pokémon as one feasibly could, battling trainers and eventually beating the best trainers in the region to become the Pokémon Champion which is basically a title conferred on someone for being the best Pokémon battler. Battling required a lot of strategic thinking; each Pokémon had one or two types, and each type takes more or less damage from other types, so if you wanted to best your opponent quickly you had to know what type was weak or strong against what - for example, Fire beats Grass, which beats Water, which beats Fire. Annoyingly your rival always chose the type which beat your own type, which made it all the more satisfying to defeat him later on. I got Pokémon Blue along with a Game Boy Colour for my 9th birthday, and I chose Squirtle; many players of the original games still passionately defend their chosen starter even to this day.

A fun thing about the Pokémon games is being able to name your character, as well as your battling rival - for 9 generations, I've used the name Abs for my character, even though it's not my actual name; I saw my friend playing before I got the game and nicked his name idea. So Max, if you're reading this, sorry about that! I couldn't type this out without also mentioning a brief personal story a few of you will be acquainted with. As I say, you could also name the rival, and like many others I thought it would be hilarious to give him a silly name. My 9-year-old brain landed on the name TWERPO (yes, in all caps), manufactured simply by taking the first low level insult I thought of and adding the suffix -o. Unfortunately, due to shenanigans by the likes of us the rival-naming feature was nixed in later games. Boooooo 👎

Two years later, Pokémon Yellow was released and I got it as a gift from my gran - this was essentially an improved version of Red/Blue, where you got Pikachu as your starter, among other little changes here and there (you could even get all three starters from the previous games, a fact which I loved). The series of mechanical bleeps that Pikachu produced in Red/Blue had been replaced with an actual voice clip of him from the TV show - due to technical limitations of the Game Boy, it was highly compressed and would sound very primitive by today's standards, but as a kid my mind was absolutely blown by an actual speaking character in my game!

Round about the same time as these games, the TV show came to the West, depicting the adventures of would-be champion Ash Ketchum, famous for his friendship with Pikachu and his often dire but hilarious puns, as well as his friends. Many people in my generation will know about Brock and Misty, but over the years he's had many travelling companions. Perhaps the highlight of the show was the shenanigans of the infamous Team Rocket, whose refrain I can still reel off by memory - praise be to my autism and its prioritising of weirdly specific memories for that one.

In Japan in 1999, the second generation of Pokémon was released along with the accompanying games, Gold and Silver; we in the West were very much behind, not receiving the games until 2000-2001, depending where you were. 10-year-old me loved this generation - getting a new series of Pokémon, as well as an entire new region to explore in colour, was seriously exciting to me at the time, and it's perhaps partly because of this that Gold and Silver are some of my favourites to this very day. I remember having a poster from a magazine with all the then new Pokémon on it; I loved this poster and took it everywhere with me, looking at it at every opportunity. There we have another autistic trait of getting very attached to physical objects, which I still demonstrate to this day (although sadly, I don't know whatever happened to that poster).

There were absolutely loads of games after that, which would take ages to go into in any sort of detail, so let's fast forward to today and how much I'm enjoying getting back into Pokémon. In 2022 (feels weird to think of that as last year), Pokémon Scarlet and Violet were released on the Nintendo Switch, along with the 9th generation of Pokémon. Many people will remember the days of the original 151 Pokémon (which I once managed to reel off by memory as a kid - again, thank you, autism) - there are now 1008 of them! I don't think even I could manage to memorise them, although if you showed me any Pokémon I could probably name them. I can also tell you all the weaknesses of the various types and the type combos, although I'm still working on what types resist what. The new games have introduced all sorts of complicated mechanisms that many players don't really bother with, but as an autistic person, it's a lot of fun for me to learn about them and get to know the games in as much depth as I can.

Well, I reckon that just about covers it for now - there's a lot I've probably neglected to mention, but if you've any questions then please do ask me! For those of you who enjoy visual things, I've attached a few pictures of various favourite Pokémon, as well as screencaps from the games and what have you. Hope you enjoyed the first post of the year, and managed to get a little something from my ramblings! Bye for now ☺️

It's kinda sad that Ash isn't going to be in Pokémon any more, but he finally achieved his goal so it's about time he gets to chill out - plus, the new iteration of the show has Fuecoco and he is a very good boi

It's been such a long time since I posted any stuff, so thanks for your patience with me - the new year seems like as good a time as any to start up again, so watch this space 👀

Been having a difficult time of things lately (brain stuff and work) so nothing in the way of posts, and I apologise

Anyway I've been really wanting to play Wario Land 3 again because it was one of my favourite games when I was like 9-10 and I've been doing this because it's such a good game (my friend might actually join me so that's a start 😈)

More or less tbh

Alternating between trying really hard to come across as a semi-normal person and just not bothering and letting my brain take its course not worrying if I alienate or weird people out 👍