Argument for switching from Self Advocacy mindset to developing processes of Self Determination, Agency & Authenticity

Some illustrations of frustrating and way to common interactions in my life:

This is like the story of my life, others criticize me for not sharing enough personal narrative. Yet almost always when I try to ‘open up’ and communicate more naturally. Others can’t digest, process, understand, or accept me. Then I get new feedback of too much, I don’t get it, say it another way, etc.

It seems that in our society, it’s so common to hear encouraging messages, but how come when I accept those invitations, I get criticisms, demands, or banishment?

This is a paradox that I experience quite often, how are you supposed to navigate these two messages???

This might work for people who are verbally fast and aggressive. But I really suck at this, it feels very un-natural, and I’m way too slow and clunky defining myself to others. So I often end up wasting tons of energy countering and deflecting other’s constant attempts to define me or put me in a box.

I seem to have been born with an incessant drive to learn and grow from suffering. Why does it seem so many people are satisfied with suffering trying to fit into society’s & other’s expectations?

Having to constantly defend my sense of being from constant social projections, expectations and external definitions. My inner sense of self feels like this shadowy entity inaccessible in a jar.

I so relate to the donut, my center feels empty and like an infinite void of space, a vast black hole that’s constantly in motion and impossible to pin-point or describe.

When I talk too much from my inner hole void, it freaks others out. I end up getting fixes, prescriptions, distractions, advice, euphemisms. Why can’t people just let me be me?

Why is the void so threatening? I theorize it’s because it’s fear of ego annihilation. My early experiences falling into the void, was terrifying free falling. But with time, I recognized that I mis-interpreted that feeling, it’s falling, but there’s no bottom. So it’s a free floating, groundless ground sensation. It feels very vast and isolating, but it’s also feels infinitely free and pure ease.

I often feel it’s gut wrenching to fit into social norms of communication and comfort level, especially with all talk about the void totally taboo.

Often it seems when the void, grief or ego collapse starts coming up. People go into intellectual mode of communication, with a layer of competitive contest. Along with raw dehumanization, with a weak cover story of altruism.

Why is it so dangerous to be human and share from that place? When did this happen in our modern society? It seems that being too human is equated with automatic unworthiness and instant judgment.

Is a core issue with Autistic people, that they simply too human?

Let’s argue for neurodiversity with some neuroscience. It’s not about Autistic behaviors, maybe their brains are wired quite differently?

Temple Grandin’s DTI brain scan, shows she has 10x wiring for visual in contrast to 0.1x wiring for auditory naming.

I have aphantasia, meaning that my internal imagery is blind. I have no internal mind’s eye. Can’t visualize squat. Also my verbal & auditory thinking seems to also lack, maybe 40–50% of normal levels.

However I have very high spatial and kinesthesia thinking and brain capacity. It also seems to be related to wayfinding, environmental awareness, and positional thinking. I also have high pattern thinking.

Aphantasia on the right, with total blank & dark internal image.

Some common strengths of spatial thinkers.

Brain scans describing more brain connectivity for autistic children, supporting intense world theory, that development disorders and behaviors come from over-sensitivity. Too many connections to process in the brain, during vital child development period.

Excess focus on separate individual atomized sense of self, tends to create excess anxiety and fear of vulnerability & shame exposure.

It feels more natural for me to come from my raw humanity and hang out with grief and collapse. Maybe it’s because I also have some SDAM (Severely Deficient Autobiographical Memory)?? I experience of life from 3rd person, as a default.

I still have memories, and quite good memory compared to others. But the first person experience isn’t there. I’m there, but there’s no first person story or narration. It feels a bit impersonal or lacking personhood.

Maybe I start at 3rd position, but also can easily translate, 2nd, 1st, 5th, and 4th positions of perspectives? I’m a master perspective taker and shifter?

Now onto Autism and broad traits. Let’s explore the spectrum.

Here’s a GAO illustration of 5 categories, along with 4 side showing how unique & different impairment and function can be among individuals.

The 3 categories in orange, are external behaviors that DSM specifically targets and designs treatments around. The 3 in blue are more internal issues, which are often neglected or ignored by specialists and parents.

I suspect that with my lack of internal visual imagery in addition to limited verbal/auditory thinking. Makes communication a core impairment for me, talking spatially feels like trying to put 3D experience into 2D words & narrative.

However I think my social interaction intelligence could be off the charts. I am very fast and intuitive to pay attention to social and cultural norms along with the vast unspoken rules and common deception & manipulative mechanisms out there.

But it’s an uneven ability, balanced by my poor communication range and tone, along with speed of coming up with and keeping up with normal pace of verbal & story exchange.

I find that autistic specialists tend to focus too much on externals and belonging masked as fitting into social norms.

As an alternative approach, I will argue that meeting core developmental needs of the trio below is more important than just social conformity.

My personal priorities tends to place becoming and being very high, and belonging is 3rd. Though in my Chinese family upbringing, I have also felt a sense of belonging, but it’s also matched with feelings of being trapped and sense of duty/obligation.

Here is a wide list of personal traits that are part of my neurodiverse brain traits, within the 3 internal categories of autism. And I intuitively and actively try to link them to innate core needs of Becoming, Being, and Belonging.

Once I have found an internal sense of home, with 3 core needs met, I can start working on maturity, developing essential life skills for a meaningful life. The path to self-determination and Agency with 3 categories of Autonomy, Relatedness, and Competence.

With development and balance of these 3 skills & needs, intrinsic motivation naturally emerges.

It can also be linked to Mental, Physical & Social Health, and a long term sense of genuine Agency.

Beingness & Autonomy are very important and personal to me. Something that is way too often attacked, ignored, and dismissed in our society today. Why is there so much dehumanization everywhere?

I sense that modern education and current social norm of intellectualized anesthetized narrow range form of communication is a big contributor. The standardization of education process along with western Academia norms, has a very dehumanizing influence.

Increasing focus on STEM and rote memory lecture style teaching, is a very narrow range of communication and learning. This form of education might be sterilizing and foreign to neurodiverse brains, it lacks the sensory richness, variety, engagement, creativity and active interaction with the student & teachers.

Education has possibly become an assembly line style mechanism, designed for an earlier era of manufacturing based economy. As this gets antiquated and the limitations are showing, the government solutions tend to be throw more money at it, and more administration.

There are many social and systemic paradigms that are inherently unfriendly to neurodiversity. Another aspect is an excess focus on behavior control with mental illness. There are still many government agencies labelled as behavioral health, with their paradigm of mass behavioral control or influence.

Acting out often is a form of communication, that everyone does when they run out of language. Trying to control autistic acting out behaviors, if done unconsciously can be a form of silencing.

Paradigms in psychotherapy play a big influence. Diagnosis and labels very easy tend to pathologize and objectify that person into simply behavioral control and training.

Psychiatrist Tony Stanton was part of team that treated over 450 “end of the road” children in 23 years. In every case they were able to get the children off their meds and saw improvements in every child by offering safety, predictability and engaged relationships. As Tony mentions, with the trend towards the medical model that we see in psychiatry today, we have lost the curiosity to really figure out the circumstances of a person’s life.

Society might need a wake up call to break these systemic paradigms, otherwise most everyone continues following social norms, oblivious to the inherent dehumanizing effects.

Would this be Jesus’ message if there was a 2nd coming in today’s society?

Another contributor is that the norm our society is to be emotion phobic.

Why is this so uncommon in our society? Is it that hard to hold space for confusing emotions of another?

Or what about just be with someone in uncertainty? Why is this so hard for people to do?

The capacity to holding space for another, seems to be a lost art.

Acceptance, literacy, and mastery of emotions might be a key to integrating a whole self, person and complete sense of being. Maybe we need an approach that’s closer to nurturing and gradual development, instead of shaping minds through pre-scriptions of behavior?

Start with nurturing a foundation of core BEING, and creatively look for ways to ground and anchor the neurodiverse brain’s unique traits of Sensory sensitivity, Intense Focus & Executive Function. Healthy BEING, then slowly grows out a sense of I and BECOMING, and then BELONGING and social function and interaction develops and can be sustainable.

Beingness is sort of like the ground of your being, having that as a foundation, connects you to belonging as a part of nature and a grand wholeness.

Our true nature is that we are a part of everything.

It’s a bit more work at first, but when one recognizes that we’re in this together, learning to better collaborate with each other. It can become more of a win-win situation.

Illustration of Allegory of the Long Spoons, a parable to describe difference between heaven & hell.

Back to paradigm busting, the Western view of separate individual is a norm that is incomplete and inadequate for neurodiversity or diversity in general.

What might a new unit of beingness as relationship look like?

Back to meta perspective, this is from top down view grand map I drew out from my spatial thinking.

Get the worlds inside the yellow center circle in order, then start working on outer green circle to develop and refine into an active, engaged and valuable member of society & community. The path of virtue and humanity training.

Side view of different dimensions/realms of being that are nested and interconnected with each other.

I wonder if autistic people are more linked to the collective unconscious? They naturally have two feet in parallel worlds. The outer conscious shared reality, along with a 2nd foot in the collective unconscious or spiritual oneness dimension.

I like my grand meta maps, but others seem to prefer long lists of things to work on. Here are some that I have pulled from.

From attachment theory, I like Gordon Neufeld’s research and models:

He breaks down core developmental needs into 6 below the surface, that spurts out 3 traits above.

3 core aspects of human potential. Relatedness is social, Competence is adaptive, and autonomy is viable.

A few more related chart references:

Let’s give freedom to others, along with allowing us these core freedoms!

Let’s close going back to the void, or the hole in the center of the donut. Turn it into 3D and a flow that’s universal, the torus shape. A flow, that is essential part of magnetic poles.

The Taoist Yin-Yang, balance of paradoxical opposites. In action it feels like a constant dance. A natural flow of life.

Maybe self determination is a path worth pursing, as it allows realization of balance between realms, opposites, worlds, and it’s just an awesome way of being and living?

Going back to core need of BEINGNESS, maybe that’s what is missing and where people need to start. I wonder if Buddhist mental noting or labeling practice might come to Autistics easier, due to that common intense focus/special interest/obsession capacity???