My whole life I was asking myself, whats wrong with me? Why I’m struggling with rudimental social skills, seemingly natural and given to other people? Why I never been successful as a photographer, even with a paramount of talent? Why I’m always so exhausted after social contacts? Why do I have this strong need in being a part of social affiliation? Why relationships exhausting me that much? And fucking why, I’m permanently ending up in such fatal burnout’s and catastrophic situations? Those questions are haunting me my whole life and I never had a coherent answer. I felt like being from other planet, like a salt-water fish forced to live in sweet-water. And even the constant attempt of self-reflection didn’t brought me any helpful answer…
shattered after working in conflict areas (photographer: Sebastian Marko)
About 2 years ago, with the inition from another appearing burnout, I was searching for professional help to get out of my damn hole. And in best case, getting a few answers. During this therapy I found more and more behaviors, I didn’t realize my whole life. Now I know the names for them: stimming, meltdown, shutdown, overload or communication disorder. People with a diagnosis in Autism also know those terms. A few years ago, I think it was in 2016, a friend already told me her assumption and that I could possibly be an autist. Back than I was laughing about this allegation. Persons with autism looked for me at this time like the guy from “Rain Man”. Sitting in a corner, seesaw the whole time and learning by rote the phone books from the whole country. Today I would say, what a stupid stereotype thinking! After hours of speech therapy, reams of therapy sessions and countless testings (AQ, EQ, SQ, IQ), I finally got in spring 2023 the results and my diagnosis:
F84.5 Aspergers Autism Syndrom in conjunction with
a Savant in photography and a high intellectually giftedness.
It took over a year from this “harmless” therapy sparked from a burnout, to my diagnosis and almost another year to even realize whats really going on. You need to imagine, that I had to reconnect every single experience of my life, every relationship to persons and all of my behaviors – completely new. Ok, a few things I already knew, like that I have a talent for photography, because a lot of people told me that. But a lot of things I didn’t know. How shut I? Wherefrom I should know whats a normal thinking and behavior?
One of my biggest issues was the distraction due to my special interests and not seeing the “big picture” of life. When I’v been into my special interests, I am like channelized. Like a horse with blinkers. And when someone distracted me from this interests, I was completely freaking out. In autism this is called a meltdown. Now I know about this. But when you don’t know about that and not able to control it, it becomes a huge problem in our society and the everyday life. With now knowing what triggers me, I’m able to avoid such situations and prevent a lot of troubles. Also the behavior of “stimming” in stressful situations, was something I never realized knowingly. Pulling on my nailbed until bleeding, was one of those behaviors. Now I can use stimming as a tool to calm my self down in a way, what is not injuring my self, like using a squeezing ball.
Reading all this sounds like everything’s negative in being an autist. But no, I can assure you, it isn’t. One beneficial feature is as example my outstanding talent and savant in photography. The gift that I can see a golden ratio, a harmonic image, the decisive moment – without thinking about it. Also my highly analytic and logical thinking, my accurate functioning and tendencies to perfectionism, giving me very beneficial qualities. And with a little consideration from our fellow human beings regarding my deficits, I would be a full functioning member of our society, without existential struggles, shutdowns and overloads.
For me this diagnosis was not only a mind-blowing cognition, it also helps me with knowing my deficits and as well my assets to look forward – forward to a new and better life.
So please rethink before judging to quick about a person who is acting non-conform to your personal social expectations. Maybe it is an undiagnosed autist who don’t know by them self whats going on…
…to be continued!
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