Here’s
an odd little notion that occurred to me one day – “by God,
this disorder BETTER be life-long, or I’m going to be mighty annoyed!”
(??!) I think that requires some explanation…
A person
is born with certain differences. Because the world expects certain
things of certain people at certain stages of development which may
not ‘jive’ well with these differences, in various ways
this person is disadvantaged. She eventually learns to rise above the
disadvantage – not by actually smiting the differences mind you,
but by enlisting them instead. In this way, her chosen self-definition
then begins to rely on those very differences – what once plagued
her is transformed into the source of her success. I once heard it said
that “no one’s ever gotten anywhere by building on their
weaknesses”. While I would agree, I suppose I would want to temper
this thought with an addendum: don’t knee-jerk into assuming that
a difference is automatically a weakness either.
This notion
is hardly original. Dr. Temple Grandin, famed and accomplished animal
scientist who also just happens to have autism, stresses this point
herself. She advises adults to find each autistic child’s individual
strength and cultivate it into an occupation. That strength you find
and the child’s difference may just be one and the same. Dr. Grandin
herself is a case in point – it was the very sensory sensitivities
borne of her diagnosis that fostered her many brilliant insights into
reducing stress and suffering in livestock around the world. Sun Tzu's
Art of War tells us, “Keep your friends close, and your enemies
even closer”: this applies just as well in the brain as it did
on Sun Tzu’s battlefield. Even Spiderman describes his superpowers
as “my blessing…my curse”.
In my
case, akin to the starving artist notion, the angst that my differences
provoked has been a valuable commodity. The unrest I felt over my impulsivity
in action and emotion, my inflexibility at times, and my unusual movements
and noises fostered insights within my chosen field, and in the end
opened rather than closed doors for me. It caused me to become preoccupied
with things I’d have rather not thought about; the passion in
my writings and presentations is borne of that mental wrestling. And
so whether I lose my differences, or simply come to comfortable terms
with them, the end-result would be the same. I’ve lost something
valuable. Who are you, after ‘who you are’ is gone? What
would happen to a “Disinhibited Thoughts” column if the
thoughts suddenly found inhibition? How would you explain battle-scars,
hard-won in a battle of differences, when those very differences desert
you with no overt trace of why or how you’ve become the person
you are? You’d be expected to pass for normal then – close
Pandora’s Box and pretend it all never happened. That sounds so
invalidating to me – I would want to yell, “HEY! I STRUGGLED!
We might look the same now, but we started from very different places
– don’t judge me!”
Do I want
to become adept at running a lemonade stand, only to have my supply
of lemons cut off just as I find myself amid ambitious plans to expand
the franchise? No thanks. As Captain James T. Kirk once said, “I
don’t want my pain taken away, I need my pain”! Keep those
lemons coming, please.
Until
next time,
my friends!
B. Duncan McKinlay, Ph.D., C.Psych.
