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Processing Delay

A Post by Monkey Pliers
on July 20, 2013


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  As have many others on the autism spectrum who's traits are expressed in a way that makes them capable of "passing" as neurotypical, I've had a lifetime of hearing about the differences between "smart people" and "stupid people" and trying to hide the things that would make me appear to be amongst the latter. Now, a full year after my having been diagnosed, I can't hide those things any longer - at least not from myself. I've got to face them and figure out what they really mean. Then I have to decide how to move forward with what I've learned.

  Part of what this means is that I really need to get into what's going on with reading, math, and conversation. As best I can tell, it's all about stalled or delayed processing, sometimes made worse by having to multitask. When I read, for example, I have to go word by word, and sometimes letter by letter. If I read a word and don't process all the letters, my mind may automatically try to fill in the blanks, and I'll think I'm seeing a word that's different from the one that's actually there. I won't know it until the sentence doesn't make sense, and then I'll have to go back and reexamine the word. I can actually read an entire page of text and have no idea what I've just read, because none of it gets processed at all. Then I have to go back and read it all again.

  If I read out loud, enough of my mental power is taken up by making the right sounds come out of my mouth that it gets harder to understand the meaning of what I'm reading in general. Yup, it's multitasking. If I can't grasp the meaning quite as well, I'm more likely to fail to notice from context that I'm misreading a particular word. I either have to slow way down or risk embarrassing myself in front of other people for misreading or mispronouncing many common words, with which I'm quite familiar. The likelihood that I'll miss the meaning of a whole text goes up noticeably when I read out loud.

  I also sometimes make mistakes because I've failed to register punctuation, which makes sentences seem strange to me and can cause me to read with improper inflection. I've even had trouble because of the appropriate lack of punctuation in a given place, causing a sensation of being left hanging, lost as to where the sentence is going. (Don't get me started about instances of error on the part of the writer! Why do you think some of us seem so picky about it? It's not just about being rigid and "rule-bound".)

  I can have trouble reading things I've read before, even multiple times. Reading my own work doesn't necessarily help. I've been laughed at for my errors when reading before others. I usually hate reading out loud. And when I read quietly, just to myself, it still gets so tedious sometimes that my mind can wander a bit. That's not from laziness or inability to focus. It's the result of being mildly irritated and frustrated on an ongoing basis, as I slog my way through a laborious task in order to get the information I want. Imagine if just reading a book for pleasure's sake felt to you like having to pick through stacks of books at the library, paging through them for hard to find bits of information for a research paper, and you may get an idea of what reading is often like for me. I genuinely like to read, in spite of all of this, but I can be excited by the subject matter and yet feel daunted by the prospect of having to fight my way through the text, all at the same time. Furthermore, the longer the piece I need to read in a given session, the more cumulative the effect.

  None of this is the sort of thing that could've been caught by the learning disability testing I underwent in my early twenties. I'm by no means a fast test taker, in any subject. But the writing samples I was given were so short that I was able to engage in my usual self-correction as I went along and still finish on time, scoring on the level of a college graduate. Same with math, which also presents challenges resulting from stalled or delayed processing. What's more, it all depends on when you catch me, as I have little difficulty on some occasions and greater difficulty on others. I can't always tell you what makes the difference, but there may be things I don't notice on any given occasion that are putting additional demands on my mental resources and draining my ability to perform. So, is it any surprise that I was viewed as smart but inexplicably, maddeningly lazy by many of my teachers when I was in school? Nobody knew what was going on. Hence the pressure that was put upon me...

  Being smart is associated by lots of people with thinking fast, making connections, predicting outcomes based on accurate assessment of current information, knowing what's going on around you, and not needing others to spell everything out in order to make up for your cluelessness about the things they're trying to communicate, as well as retaining facts in a broad range of subjects and having skills in areas such as reading and math. It seems I fall short in multiple areas, and I haven't really made up for it by being terribly outstanding in any one area. I have my interests, of course, but I'm by no means a true expert. Besides, people only care what you know if they're also turned on by the same subject, not if you "data dump" about stuff they aren't really into.

  This is why I've been struggling with my self-esteem. I have difficulty doing things, I make all kinds of mistakes, and I'm having trouble seeing enough of an up side to balance all that right now. I know having a negative attitude makes others uncomfortable, so I'm trying not to put it in the faces of the people around me, but I know about it myself. The kind of self-encouragement I used to engage in to pull me through and improve my outlook so successfully in the past seems like nothing but empty platitudes now. I didn't know, back when I learned to use affirmations and meditation and stuff, some of the things I was dealing with. Now I do. So, here's the good news: Now I can meet this thing head on. I can work to understand myself better, and then I can see if I can find more substantial things to build upon, with a truer sense of my own self-worth. I'm a practical sort, in my own Aspie way. I need these hard facts. But hard facts aren't just cold and harsh. They're also sturdy and strong. I need a rock hard foundation, and my journey will provide it. Just knowing as much gives me hope already. So does knowing I'm not the only one. That's a big part of what my diagnosis has given me - a community of others who also understand.

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