You're going to have to put up with me on this one, it will be like a veritable splurge of thoughts and events interwoven into some mad patchwork blanket you're great-grandma would have made!
I planned to write, or at least start, this entry two weeks ago but when I got to work I saw an open invite on the Wellbeing group I am part of that there was a seminar available covering this very subject. Straight away I decided that meant I couldn't venture into the same world and should (as is normally the case) bottle up the thoughts and leave them be. Since then a million and seven things have happened and today has reached a moment of "to hell with it" and I've sat myself down to blurt out a lot in one go.
I shall begin with why I thought to even label the entry that. It's simply (before I read the invite and saw some mention of personal confidence etc) the fact that I always find a way to convince myself I am not the right fit for situations I find myself in. I have an immense defence mechanism of turning myself into the one less adversely affected or luckier than others in terms of the medical elements or else under-skilled in comparison to my peers that lead me to see myself as not fitting in or not being worthy of being there in the first place.
It comes down to the fact I will always either find a way to compare myself to someone or something that is so inherently better/different that I would never achieve that or else find someone who suffers far worse than me or my own children to say to myself "look you have it easy" and so it convinces me that all the silly little things should be placed in my Chinese chest of drawers in my head and locked away, after all everyone else's worlds and challenges are greater than mine!
I do it with so much that I really do undersell myself and it is becoming quite apparent and obvious how much I do it. People who don't "know" me (as in peers who see and iteration of me in a work or similar setting, only see the confident masked iteration of me and struggle to believe how much I chip away at myself inside my head.
Hence...Imposter Syndrome and the fact I rebelled against the idea when I read the Wellbeing post was, perhaps, because I saw a quantified list of characteristics that felt all too familiar.
In recent weeks I've been helping with a support network at work around Neurodiversity and found myself faced with a curious reaction from someone who, apparently, was unaware of my own placement on the autism spectrum. It surprised me as I have been very open, and terrified work would literally sever all ties and take the one situation and role that fits perfectly with me and my way of thinking and working. That fear was overcome over a year ago when my world didn't fall apart and the immediate organisation around me was supportive. The conversation the other week however was a catalyst to a plethora of worries coming flooding back and it wasn't even a conversation aimed directly at me.
I ended up leaving work at the end of the day in an almost rage at how outdated the views expressed were and ultimately, before I reminded them of my position, made me feel that once again the idea was that neurodiverse individuals simply aren't good enough to do certain things and should automatically be subjected to extra critical eyes "of course only to protect them and the organisation in the long run". I spent that night compiling research papers and information for this particular person and had a brief conversation around it but still feel the old world attitude of "not in this job" was always going to be there.
And so I sat and spent the time thinking "well my diagnosis is only research so isn't real" to "maybe I'm just making it up" and even to the extreme of "it'll be something temporary,some response to stress that's making it seem worse than it is."
That last sentence rang true when i looked over things and realised yes things are more obvious but that's because I have accepted myself a little more but also I've forced myself to try and stop masking a little bit and be myself more.I think the fact of life events have actually enhanced some of maladaptive coping mechanisms and I still need to work on those.
Which then brings me onto why I wrote this today...
You may recall (if you read) an earlier post, that there has been a fight to get my brain-twin son (T) assessed formally for what we believed was ASC like his old man (me). Today we had our continuation appointment and the paediatrician has agreed with the diagnosis. With the Covid situation I couldn't be there but T's mum regaled the meeting and I had to ask "did what she was saying remind you of anyone else?" Of course the answer was "yes, you know I agree with you" and so my brain-twin son reflects everything. Down to the fact the paediatrician said he is very good at masking in all but home situations where it leaks out. Now we aren;t total twins, there has been some developmental delay in aspects of his personality but I see so much of me in him.
Already feeling bad for not being able to go (Covid rules and the fact I was running a course at work although I know work would have told me to go if I had been allowed) I wasn't able to find out all the details until after I had been teaching all day. I got the text (simply a confirmation of what we knew) but stood there for a moment trying to process it.
My reply?
My reply to a long message with as much detail as could be put to sum an appointment was what?
Sorry!
The first thing I felt was an immense sense of guilt in the fact I had done it, I had passed him my personality, my flaws, my genes and all of it was my fault. Then I of course chastised myself for "making it about me" and reminded myself to shut up and carry on. So I did, put the phone away and carried on, ran the lessons, debriefed the students, wrote everything up and then drove home.
Can't remember much of the drive home as I was going through everything and yet again the overarching feeling was guilt. Finding that I felt I was blaming myself. They have also agreed to complete the genetics test with T to see if he carried the CACNA1C deletion and associated Timothy Syndrome which again will help, if he has, with the research for a link with autism and the deletion potentially. Yet again, guilt, if he has it too then I am to blame for that. So I told myself off again for "making it about me" and then boxed it away.
And then I told myself off!
If I am forcing myself to limit the influence of my masks then I shouldn't default to boxing away, I should face even just a little. So I focused on why I feel I have to tell myself off. For me I have never allowed myself to be the focus of sympathy or attention even on high profile events. I always play down my part and prioritise the actions, feelings and events of others over me because, well I'm me and it's my job. It's less about making it about me and perhaps coming to terms with the consequences, not about wanting to steal the attention (as I sit and think people may think) and about trying to accept everything, T's new label alongside my own.
You'd think I would be happy having fought for this for too many years to remember off the top of my head. Countless emails, meetings, phone calls, complaints and yet here I am sitting here thinking "it's all my fault." But then I am reminded "what is my fault?" the fact I helped create a wonderfully quirky next generation version of me? That I influenced him to embrace his creativity and continue to do so? That there are now two of us that see this world the way I do? Why should I be sorry for that (hell there was just an emotion as I typed that and I have the Lord Of The Rings soundtrack playing - of course that emotion got pushed back down and told off for appearing).
Doing our workout and training tonight me and A (T's older brother) discussed the diagnosis and A asked me how me and T are similar. I confessed to him how I see things and how I bottle up when the world gets a bit full-on for me whereas T, as yet, struggles with that at home. A was surprised by what I told him and how open I was with him and I'm now a bit nervous he might think a little less of me. I told him the truth about my books and that everything I write I have actually seen and to me, although I know it isn't, everything in my stories is real and I've lived through the events emotionally with all my characters. To him they are stories, to me they are things I've seen and experienced in some way. He didn't get it, and I don't expect him to, but T, well he gets it completely.
Should I feel bad for harnessing and encouraging that? Who knows! Do I? Yes and no.
The fact I've even written this is a step, talk to me about it in person and save for a very very very very very select one or two people, I won;t talk about it, I'll just mask it away unless you catch me on a good day.
But to sum up, today we've finally got what we wanted for T and the right people can help us to help him growing up. Although he has already learned from his Jedi Master (me) how to hide it away most of the time, that'snot the right way. I've always said, as you've read before, he shouldn't have to mask the way I have growing up. I wouldn't change my masks as they work for me, my coping mechanisms work for me but T, well he deserves better than that and in the world we live in I believe there are the right people with the know-how to make a better job of it as he is, after all, the upgrade of me.
I think I need the mountains, my solitude as I've very daringly written this at not three-to-five days as is normal but three-to-five hours and I'm sure I'll regret every single word but if I write it I may as well post it.
Deletion or not my little brain-twin is his own Little Man. On a side note me and A made it into the local paper but I'll cover that in another entry, right now, the deletion and the genes strike again with a tsunami of WTF!
