The Elephant In The Room

Before we go on, there's something you should know...

Almost a year ago, at the seasoned age of 55, I was diagnosed as Autistic. Discovering this fact about myself was like being handed a key to a place inside myself that I had long since determined would never be explained. I was, I believed, just hopeless when it came to certain aspects of life. Always destined to be the weird girl, the one who was so awkward in social situations.

It explained everything. All those years in therapy, rolling around certain behavior patterns and thoughts that just never seemed to go away, no matter how hard I tried. And God knows I tried. In the weeks after the diagnosis was official, there was a period of grieving—not for the knowing that I am Autistic, but for the not knowing of it, for so many years.

“Without knowing who I am--
that is, without finding the place
where God and I meet--I will
become everyone I love”

~Mark Nepo, Knowing, Drinking, and Seeking

So excited I was about this discovery, that I began sharing it openly. I wrote about it on social media, talked about it in my art group, shared in my newsletters, included it anecdotally in my blog posts—writing about how this revelation meant so much to me, how much of me it explained. I’ve always shared openly about my life in these forums, so it never occurred to me that there might be repercussions for sharing this news.

I’m going to say that is my neurodivergent naivety, that part of me that is open and honest and shares from the heart in an unguarded way, because I have a hard time understanding why certain things are supposed to be kept secret. Not that I didn’t understand keeping secrets. Not that I didn’t understand the bondage of shame. I come from a family system steeped in these things.

What I didn’t, and still don’t understand to this day, is the protective nature people have around what they’ve deemed secret, and the complete denial they have of their participation in perpetuating their own shame, by refusing to acknowledge and heal from the wounds secrets carry—taking pride in being “private people”, when the words “private” and “secret” have such completely different meanings to me.

Saying something is private when what you really mean is “a secret too shameful to reveal”, feels like finally pinpointing the source of an infection and then refusing to treat it.

Learning I am Autistic, hasn’t only been the key to unlocking all of the difficulties and mysteries of my past, it is the very thing that has brought me to the place I am today in my career as an artist, with a passion for teaching about the Intuitive Voice. It explains my sensitive nature, the rhythm in my head when I write creatively, the connections I make to life through metaphor, the work that I create, and the deeper meaning I glean from it all.

Anything that has ever been celebrated about me, not just what makes me seem awkward or weird, are connected to my neurodivergent wiring. So it came as quite a shock to find not everyone was so enthusiastic about my news.

Immediately, I began noticing an increase in the unsubscribe rates in my newsletters. At first I thought it had to be a coincidence, but then the pattern held each time I mentioned being Autistic. Coming on the heels of the opening of my website, enrollment in my classes began to drop dramatically. It absolutely baffled me, until I began to notice the way people responded when I shared on Facebook.

Researcher and Storyteller, Brené Brown writes “There’s nothing worse than feeling pitied, and we have the research to show us why it feels so isolating. Pity involves four elements: a belief that the suffering person is inferior, a passive, self-focused reaction that does not include providing help; a desire to maintain emotional distance; and avoidance of sharing in the other person’s suffering.”

In other words, feeling pitied just plain sucks. It is a method of othering. Being moved from the category of “relevant” to the category of “one whom should be pitied” wasn’t just a shock to my system, it was a direct blow to my financial stability. I found myself pulling back, hiding my core self more and more out of desperation for the income on which I rely.

But hiding my core self just plain sucked too. How can I continue to teach and write about the Intuitive Voice—what I have come to know as the truest, most authentic version of ourselves, our own core voices, when I was hiding my own?

Going through the diagnostic process, the psychiatrist used a variety of standard tests, including testing my IQ. My scores revealed a higher than average intelligence and a woefully inadequate Executive Functioning Score. Part of these tests included identifying the next segment of a pattern. Periodically the psychiatrist would stop and ask me to explain how I’d arrived at my answer and more often then not, when the pattern was complex, I was unable to verbalize my response. This, she concluded was evidence that I’d relied heavily on my intuition to guide me over the years.

When I teach about the Intuitive Voice, I break it down into three components. The largest of which is the category of information that we’ve learned through direct teaching, or simply picked up through exposure over the years. I call that category “Pattern Recognition”.

It is no small irony to me that revealing this part of myself that has caused so many people to turn away or pity me, is the very thing that made me an expert on the topic of the Intuitive Voice.

Indeed, the elephant in the room is not that I am Autistic. It is the belief that being Autistic means I am no longer relevant to the conversation.

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It helps me to hear your feedback and to know how my words are landing. Community begins to form as we each participate in the dialogue. You can also help by liking the post and sharing the blog on your own social media platforms.

With so much gratitude,

Crystal Marie