Asperger's Coincidences?

I thought this was an interesting coincidence.

Shortly after the July 4th holiday here in the States I was watching Degrassi on whatever that satellite channel is "For Teens". Think it's a Nickelodeon spinoff channel of some sort. My daughter was a fan of the show and I actually started watching it and got too much into the whole drama of the various storylines...so sue me.

Anyway there was a Degrassi-a-thon leading up to the new season. In the show there is a character named Connor with an episode focusing one of the story braids on him having a behavior issue that is diagnosed as Asperger's. The kid showed symptoms of it for several episodes, but unlike many "teen" or kid shows where a character suddenly has an episode with some condition that suddenly manifests so writers can focus on an issue-of-the-week, this kid had a running history of Asperger behavior that seemed kind of consistent for the character. Nice.

I took note of the Asperger thing. Thought it was interesting.

Later that day I was at the gym listening to episode 48 of Stackoverflow (yes, I'm way behind on some of my podcast feeds) and one of the topics Joel and Jeff discussed were programmers with personality issues in a team and how to deal with them.

One of the points Joel brought up? Techies with Asperger personalities. He said that people with this type of personality usually appreciate being told that they're doing something that others find uncomfortable or incorrect and tend, in his experiences, to just acknowledge it and continue on while trying to correct the behavior (if it's an issue that bothers them or relates to keeping their job, anyway).

Twice, Aspergers was mentioned from outside sources in one day. Interesting! Was something trying to tell me something?

I was also elated to finally hear someone that gets it. Joel (Spolsky) actually understood that for Asperger personalities, we don't care about social rules and courtesies as much as Normals (this is also one of the times when I refer to Normals being people without Asperger's instead of people who aren't overweight...).

A lot of people simply write us off as rude or won't discuss certain issues with us because they're too emotionally rooted in the issue. Social rules dictate we don't talk about certain problems or ideas because it is rude to do so...but for us, people with Asperger personalities, we don't follow those rules because our brains are wired differently. We tend to be more detached emotionally from most issues where Normals worry about how they look to others because it commits a social faux-pas.

Another way to think about it...to us, Normals are the weird ones. We don't understand why something of so little impractical use is such a big deal.

It was great to hear Joel saying that in cases where the programmer or techie is Aspergers it's perfectly fine to just tell them, "Listen, so and so doesn't like it when you stare at your shoes while they're talking to you. Try to watch them when they're talking, 'kay?", and the programmer usually just says, "Oh, gee, thank you for telling me." Then they go off to work again. No hurt feelings. They were unaware it was bugging someone.

On the other hand it bugs me when Normals expect the person with the personality quirk to change just because it makes them uncomfortable. If it's not something that is hurting someone, let me stare at my feet. Unless it is something that is causing you distraction, why stop someone else's habit just because it's rude?

I have a lot of quirks where people distract me and cause me anxiety because of their otherwise harmless habits. Twisting hair, flexing feet, chewing with their mouth open...I can't concentrate. I can't not become focused on this, like a water faucet dripping incessently. I need to remove myself from the distraction or I grow extremely agitated. But if it's a quirk that doesn't affect anyone...why bother them about it?

I guess that just grows out of a feeling I get that I'm expected to accomodate other people while others aren't necessarily feeling any need to accomodate me. I'm told others do and I am just oblivious to it; not surprising, given the situation. We need emotion-based cues pointed out to us sometimes. But I also grew up with the feeling that I was an inadequate outsider. I was "different" and thus expected to conform to what others defined as normal while normal people were perfect the way they are.

This meant that I am very sensitive to when this is expected of me as an adult.

I was simply struck by the coincidence of hearing this disorder being mentioned twice in one day on two different media platforms for different reasons and it got me to thinking about these issues more. It's nice that there's some acknowledgement of it out there in the media. Maybe to some degree it'll enter into the groupthink of society a little bit more. Or at least it's a little consolation that I'm not the only one out here with it, plus I was so happy to find someone who seemed to actually get what it's like to interact with an Aspergian mind without treating them as if they were defective and needed to change to be more normal.

Thank you Joel!