Finding My Voice…

For years I’ve never understood why I felt on the outside, always looking in but not really belonging. I’ve never been able to express this in words — I feel so much but can’t find a way to verbalise it.

It isn’t as though I don’t communicate, I’m a ‘talker’. As a young child, however, I never spoke outside of the family. It wasn’t as if I couldn’t speak, I was talking sentences at 11 months old, but only with people I knew.

Today I can talk around topics I know and I am interested in, in fact I often monologue. If someone had challenged my communication skills a few years ago, I would have been adamant I had no problems, because of the ‘volume’ I speak (I mean quantity not decibels!).

Yet I still had this problem of feeling on the outside that I couldn’t understand — something was missing, I felt peripheral, alien in some way….

In the past, when stressed or having problems with relationships, I would write letters to people, more recently this has become emails or texts. I prefer texting to the phone. I think this was always perceived by others as not very ‘normal’ and I often felt ashamed, guilty and embarrassed around this, that I couldn’t deal with face to face. It isn’t even as if I am afraid of conflict, I’m not, but I would feel tongue tied and unable to put my point across effectively and this would lead to further miscommunications which I couldn’t find a way to resolve, so I would become extremely stressed and anxious.

I would and still do practise conversations beforehand, on my own, over and over. They would be perfect and coherent, until I was then in front of the other person, then it all came out wrong or it would feel all wrong. I could never fully anticipate the other person’s response so the conversation would go off at a tangent that I hadn’t prepared for. Sometimes I wouldn’t allow the other person to speak to avoid this, but then it would appear I was talking ‘at’ someone rather than having a conversation. Sometimes, I would just avoid the conversation completely, because I knew I couldn’t make it work. On my own, my communications would be succinct but in the public or spotlight I would ramble on as I struggled to stay calm and in control.

In a recent BBC documentary ‘Employable Me’, one autistic person wrote a beautiful speech and then read it out word for word. That was a way for him to express himself in a way that he couldn’t do naturally through conversation. I was able to relate to this.

I struggle to connect my feelings and emotions at the same time as thinking, listening to the other person in conversation and also deal with the stimulation in the environment — noisy places, eye contact, visual distractions and physical movements. I’ve learned recently that this is at the heart of my problems. When on my own, I have minimised all stimulation and therefore I am able to fully focus and concentrate on what the communication would be, hence it is coherent and succinct (on my own!).

Practising conversations beforehand, I have learned is known as ‘scripting’. Some time ago, I made reference to a friend about ‘you couldn’t have played that conversation any better’ which meant I fully understood her. The response came back ‘I don’t play at anything’. I realised immediately how this had been misinterpreted. The use of the word ‘play’ can have so many meanings and is a good example as to why autistics can struggle to interpret meaning, especially when they struggle to read context. In this case I didn’t mean play in the sense of ‘play games’, but I meant play in the sense of pressing the ‘play’ button on a rehearsed conversation. I meant she couldn’t have rehearsed the conversation and got any better result, which from me was an ultimate compliment as someone who needs to rehearse and prepare conversations beforehand. This is my life…

Although I struggle to verbalise, I have learned I can write it down.

I have found my voice to my emotions and feelings through writing. Like the autistic person in the ‘Employable Me’ documentary, I could write and read it out. Trying to discuss face to face, except from exceptional, calm environments, I would feel disconnected and as if I am describing myself from afar.

There is a tendency to think of this as not authentic, not real and in the past I have struggled with feeling ‘fake’ because I feel disconnected from my emotions. I am realising, however, that this isn’t helpful. It doesn’t become more authentic when this is a result of an inability to express emotions and feelings, rather than a lack of desire.

You wouldn’t accuse a blind person of not being authentic if they told you they couldn’t see something and had to use their hearing to reach a similar result as you.

My feelings and emotions exist and are very real and I would love to express them easily.

I am good at presenting, a one sided communication, to large numbers of people or just one to one, on special interests, work related topics and anything that falls within my expertise. I can invite questions and answer them, I can even debate around my expertise, because I can recall information and facts easily, process and communicate.

But every day two way communications about ‘nothing’ can be very challenging, especially if discussing feelings and experiences.

Autism by its very nature and literal translation, comes from the word ‘autos’ meaning ‘self’. Another way of looking at this could be ‘in own world’.

As autism is becoming more understood, especially for non verbal autistic people, society is realising that this does not necessarily mean autistic people have nothing to say or that they do not want to communicate. Communication comes in very many ways, verbalising is only one way, behaviours and non verbal body language are others. Writing and technology in the form of Apps and Tablets are providing means for autistic people to express themselves and communicate, to such an extent that it is now dispelling myths about the levels of intelligence in autistic people.

This is most definitely a good thing.

I think it is equally important to not underestimate communication difficulties in those who are highly verbal and recognise that writing or technology can be extremely important and rewarding for these people too.

I am highly verbal, but it is quite distressing and disconcerting being unable to express myself fully, especially when everyone else appears to find it so easy.

I often feel misunderstood and this inability to express how I feel, I believe is a large component and leads to the feeling of being on the outside looking in.

Being locked in my own world without a voice can be extremely isolating…

Being able to write is changing this, I feel connected and extremely authentic. Writing has been an amazing experience and it feels as if it is the door to my heart and soul.

I love the people in my life to read my writing as I know this gives them an insight into my soul, my emotions, my true personality and how I feel about the world — something some time ago would have been almost impossible.

I have finally found my voice….

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