I am a visual thinker. If I need to remember important information, I think of a picture with details drawn in. I am also somebody who, like perhaps all people on the autism spectrum, learns by making rules. These two brain functions are what carried me through much of life when it came to learning new tasks and becoming more flexible in my thinking. If I was expected to change the way I do something and then eventually did, people would say, "See, you CAN be flexible!" In reality, it's not that I was being "flexible" at all. Instead, I was forming a set of sub-rules to a main rule. In the book Unwritten Rules Of Social Relationships, rule #1 states, "Rules are not absolute. They are situation-based and people-based." By making a rule "situation-based," I can appear to be flexible and can therefore pretend to be somewhat normal in society. Thinking in pictures and forming sub-rules are also how I learned very complex tasks, tasks which would seem impossible to tackle for a person with an autism spectrum disorder.
In the book Developing Talents, Dr. Temple Grandin states that one of the most improbable jobs for visual thinkers is to work as a nurse in a busy hospital setting. There is too much sensory input coming at you from all angles, and the multitasking that is required would be unmanageable. Between 1984 and 1986, I was a student at the now-defunct St. Joseph Hospital School of Nursing. I never made it through the program because I was unable to handle being in such an environment. My mind could only focus on one task at a time, and it was very slow at doing that. Even though I was at the top of my class academically, the program administrators said that I needed to drop the program. Back then, I did not know that I was on the autism spectrum, and testing I had done at the local rehab hospital did not pinpoint anything specific. This was before the days of there being any form of protection or accommodation for people with disabilities. Six years later, though, I did become a respiratory therapist. The training itself was slower-paced and specific. Therefore, I was able to get through it. But once I was working in the busy hospital setting, I saw how very very challenging it really was. I didn't spent a great deal of time in that setting before going off to graduate school to become a chiropractor.
Where I DID spend a great deal of time was being an ambulance attendant. Ten good years of being with the same squad, working with the same mentor, was the ideal situation for me. It was where I became quite proficient at being able to handle extremely stressful situations which required multitasking to be able to get anything accomplished. Most people spend about three months being a trainee if they are just starting out on the ambulance squad. I spent at least three years as a trainee. Under normal circumstances, a person like me would have been let go of in a matter of weeks. But this was a volunteer organization, and my mentor Larry was somebody who worked with my mom and knew her very well. Besides, volunteers were always hard to come by. Little did I know that how I learned things was very different from the norm. Learning how to put a splint on a broken leg in a classroom didn't take much brains. But learning how to put a splint on a broken leg while your patient is lying in the middle of a busy highway covered in broken glass in the middle of a thunder storm while there were four other injured people to worry about is a whole different ball game. It took being subject to such situations over and over and over again to be able to form sub-rules for various situations before I was finally able to do such things on my own. A day eventually came when I could just pull out that file in my head and know what to do for what type of situation. Nothing was spontaneous. It all had to be learned, step by step.
Learning how to multitask was a whole experience in itself. How was it that I was eventually able to take a blood pressure while at the same time listening to the paramedic's assessment? This is where thinking in pictures was my best friend. Normally, such a bombardment of input would be handled by shutting everything out and focusing on just the task I was doing at the time. This is how I flunked myself out of nursing school and is also what I did in the hospital as a respiratory therapist. I knew that if I really wanted to be part of the ambulance service, being a great contributor to my community and saving lives, I better get learning! I eventually figured out that I could build my short-term memory by holding an image of what was being said in my mind long enough so that I could retrieve it when I was done with the task at hand, making that the next order of business. If there were more than one orders of business coming up, then each one would be a picture in my head, one right next to the other just like in a comic strip.
While making sub-rules and thinking in pictures were, and still are, my best friends in the work setting, starting up again in a whole new profession would not be possible. On the ambulance crew, I had three comfortable years to be able to go through all the processes and self-discoveries. This is certainly not something any employer has the time for. It is also why I am not currently looking for another career path. To reenter the world of pre-hospital emergency care is also not in the cards. Now that I know what chiropractic can do, and what medicine cannot do, I would be too tempted to educate people to these facts. I truly AM a chiropractor at heart, even if I’m not serving an abundance of patients at this time.
If there was a way to think in pictures and to form rules and sub-rules regarding successful marketing, I’d really have my hands full. This is an area that I still haven’t quite figured out yet, even after ten-and-a-half years of being in practice. Dr. Temple Grandin got to where she is today because she had a nice portfolio put together of all her successes. She did not get where she is because she had good people skills. She does not, and neither do I. While at first glance, people would never guess that I have autism, they would certainly come to know this over a period of time. My next step is to work on a portfolio that shows my accomplishments. Dr. Grandin, like me, developed her skills by having a mentor who believed in her and gave her a chance. The “real world” is not so giving or forgiving. I guess I will forever be in a state of struggle, whether being an entrepreneur or if working for somebody else.
There are other factors that affect my abilities, such as having a cognitive disorder and a circadian rhythm imbalance. The cognitive disorder affects my ability to process information and to remember things offhand. Learning new skills not only requires that I learn things my own way by forming rules. Constant repetition is also necessary. Usually when a person tells me something, such as a memorandum piece of information or their name, I will not remember it, even if I am attentive. I must hear the information a second time, or even a third. As for the circadian rhythm imbalance, ever since my senior year of high school I have had notable sleep disturbances. These disturbances have prevented me from being able to hold a daytime job. The record, though, goes to Penske Truck Leasing, who I worked for as a data entry and report editing clerk for 26 months, thanks to Benadryl and L-tryptophan. There is a reason why my chiropractic office hours begin at 2:00 in the afternoon and go well into the night. That’s what I am capable of. I mention this in my marketing efforts to let people know that it would suit them better to visit a doctor who they can see when their work day is done than to have to miss work during the day. I always find a way to make lemonade out of my batch of lemons.
Over the years, I have certainly been quite the spectacle. Kids on the playground at school would make fun of me. Adults in the workplace would make fun of me too. They knew that I was different, that I didn’t fit it. They knew that I did things in odd ways. Although I may have appeared as a recluse, I still got the job done, somehow. But for those jobs where I lasted only three weeks or less, it was apparent that I wasn’t able to cognize the skills that were required of me in a reasonable amount of time. Perhaps the most notable of these jobs was my short stint at Pearle Vision Center in January of 1988. Lots of lenses were destroyed as I tried to learn how to use the lens grinder. I would have finally “gotten it” if I had been given just a few more days. Whether we are talking about kids in school or adults in the work place, people do not like being around somebody who doesn’t “fit in”. It makes them uncomfortable to have to mesh with somebody like that. It makes them feel burdened as if they cannot be themselves. It brings out the worst in them. This is why schools and employers NEED to have mentors available for people on the autism spectrum. Mentors are truly angels in disguise. They are the ones who can let the individual on the autism spectrum know that they DO belong and that they are an important contributors in this world. The mentor is the one that the autistic person will remember and thank profusely when it comes time to give credit for their marvelous accomplishments. Despite the fact that the audie thinks and reasons very differently, the same goals can be reached, and perhaps with even greater insight. All they need is a chance.
No comments:
Post a Comment