Conversations on Creativity with Daniel Tammet

http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/beautiful-minds/200912/

conversations-creativity-daniel-tammet-postscript-my-candid-reflections

"A reminded we all have our own unquie brain wiring and as I have found the

more I get to know self, I simply am and nolonger feel at odds with the world..."

  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/fashion/17love.html

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Taking Asperger’s out of the Criteria manual!

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too often that gets crushed along with our self esteem, as others intentional or not

try to put us into moulds we can never fit into and as adults we often spent half a life

time rediscovering and getting to know self all over again, embrace the individual is key!"

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 Are we all autistic now? http://www.spiked-online.com/index.php/site/article/7386/

Humans, aliens & autism ? - by Ian Hacking

I Understand But Do You? -  http://www.theautismperspective.org

Autism claim draws fire from family, mum

http://www.stuff.co.nz/4245818a6530.html

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Research Updates: Autism as mysteries as

the Universe - Edge on Autism - What next!

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Can view many more articles on AsPlanet Forum

http://asplanet.info/forum/index.php - where your be

welcome to join in the discussions and/or comment.

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 List of a few of the articles/news item on forum:

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Almost 50 years old and diagnosed with autism

After four decades a Cleveland man has what he always hoped for, an explanation. He lived his life plagued by an unknown challenge. Now he faces it head on as he talks about living with Asperger's Syndrome.

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Those who know Thomas Mazanec know he is nothing short of brilliant. It's a far cry from what the once reserved 50 year old was called growing up."My nickname at school was the 'retard'," said Mazanec.

School was never easy but Tom never gave up. Instead he kept up and made it into Case Western Reserve University. "I did fairly well in college, in Astronomy," said Mazanec. He earned his first bachelor's degree in Astronomy.

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However when he would get a job, he would quickly lose it. That's when he changed fields and went back to school."So I got a second Bachelor's degree in Computer and Information Science," said Mazanec. Once again hanging on to his good job was impossible.

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He searched for a reason and saw may different doctors. Like during his childhood, doctors never could help. "I've been diagnosed as just about everything under the sun so I had given up on psychiatry," said Tom.

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Without a reason to explain some of his behavior, he lost job after job."Then for a period in the 90's, I wasn't working." Jobs were scarce but Tom kept looking."I felt worthless to society," said Mazanec. Even so he kept trying to find work. Tom, with two degrees was desperate, but not done.

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He saw an advertisement for a janitor at a rooming house, Brendan Manor, a home for challenged but gifted people. He was so eager to work, that this brilliant mind was not above making floors shine. His boss was very pleased with his work but saw so much potential. With a full time job and health insurance, his boss suggested he go see a psychiatrist.

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"For two reasons, I decided to take her up on the offer. She had become my best friend and she was my boss and I weigh suggestions from her heavily," said Mazanec."Two, I'm a science fiction fan...I believe in scientific progress and I figured maybe something had changed by now," said Tom. He went to the doctor and go the best news he's ever heard. "He diagnosed me with Asperger's. I looked it up on the web and thought that's me," said Mazanec."Once he was diagnosed with Asperger's it was like a different Tom," said Diane Kalchert.

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Kalchert is the Executive Director of Brendan Manor. "He began to realize that he was worth while and that he does have gifts and talents," said Kalchert.She urged him to share one talent in particular, talking to others about how he overcomes the barriers set before him by his disorder. For Mazanec it's just one more job he does with great pride.

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"One of Tom's gifts is to be able to talk about Asperger's and to share it with people in the larger community," said Kalchert.His words are uplifting. Those who hear them don't walk away with the story of a tortured man but with great hope that they too can understand this disorder and overcome what is before them.

"My self respect and my dignity are back," said Tom.

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His boss, couldn't be happier and doesn't just use the word brilliant to describe Tom. She also says he is the;

"Perfect example of hope," said Kalchert. © 2008 WKYC-TV

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One of many stories, but like myself finding out your on the autism

spectrum later in life, can be like discovering yourself for the first time.

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From lost soul to success

Dawn Prince-Hughes

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Now imagine that on top of all that, you're homeless.

 

Meet a remarkable woman who, with a little help, has managed to find her way from lost soul to success, and she says she owes it all to the gorillas at Seattle's Woodland Park Zoo.

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For five years, Dawn Prince-Hughes was one of Seattle's lost souls – homeless and sleeping in a stairwell behind a church.

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Now she's a college professor, a best-selling author and a mom. "They gave me everything I have in my life now," she said about the gorillas. "They did. Absolutely. They gave me my humanity."

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For most of her life, Dawn has lived on the brink of society, cut off, not by choice, but by Asperger Syndrome – a form of autism that makes even the most basic human interaction a real struggle. "I'd watch people going by in families and I'd think: What do they have that I'm missing?" she wondered. "What is about me that I can't have this?"

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Everyday life, in all its color, chaos and cacophony would simply overwhelm her senses. In fact, it still does."It was a lot worse when I was a kid," she said. "Just normal levels of light would be way too bright, normal levels of sound could be painful."

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Though highly intelligent, Dawn would always be the odd duck at her Montana school. Nobody knew about Asperger's then."I was a great student at home," she said. "I'd go to school and spend my days surviving the sensory onslaught."

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When she was 16, Dawn dropped out of school. She was tryingto survive the streets of Seattle – all alone. "It was weird, because you just don't exist when you're homeless. People don't look at you," she said. But they did look after Dawn got a job as an exotic dancer. Dawn hated the job, but it paid the rent.

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Longing for nature, she paid a visit to the Woodland Park Zoo. "When I came around the corner and saw the gorillas for the first time, it was a spiritual epiphany," she said. "For the first time in my entire life, I felt my body relax."For a long time, years even, Dawn would sit for hours watching the gorillas. It was her secret.

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Dawn says she owes it all to the gorillas.

Dawn says she may never truly be able to explain how those gorillas touched her life, but they did."I learned enough from the gorillas to start my own family, which was so wonderful. It's such a great gift that they gave me," she said.

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After her 36th birthday, a psychologist officially diagnosed Dawn with Asperger's.

There are thousands more just like her."There are so many adults out there still undiagnosed and so many children just being diagnosed, it's a huge phenomenon in our culture," she said

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So Dawn has written a book: Songs of the Gorilla Nation - to tell her own story about what autism feels like from the inside and how those gorillas helped her become human.

Autism misdiagnosis 'ruined a life'

This may be an older article, but a very important one, as misdiagnosis

is still happening - ruining many lives - my own mother never knew

she had Aspergers, I only found out in my 40's and hear so many

other similar stories - we cannot dismiss what has, and is

happening any longer, for the next’s generations sake...

Sean Honeysett has been in and out of institutions

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Sean Honeysett is paying the price for nearly two decades of being wrongly diagnosed as mentally ill. His entire adult life has been blighted by frequent spells in and out of psychiatric units and prison. He has been prescribed anti-psychotic drugs and anti-depressants, and has made several suicide attempts. However, doctors have now discovered that Sean is not mentally ill, but instead suffers from a poorly understood form of autism known as Asperger's syndrome.

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He has been treated by the psychiatric world since he

was 14, but he has not got a psychiatric problem.

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The number of people identified as having Asperger's has soared in recent years as GPs and psychiatrists get better at spotting the condition in childhood. Some 300,000 people in the UK have now been identified as sufferers. But it is feared that many people, like Sean, have slipped through the net, and are not receiving the psychological support they so badly need.

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           High hopes

Sean was a bright child

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Sean was a bright and friendly child, who learned to read before he went to school. His parents had high hopes for his future. However, 30 years later he now finds it difficult to communicate - even with his parents.

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In fact, Sean demonstrated classic signs of Asperger's from an early age. He was often naughty and his inability to relate to other children led one educational psychologist to label him as "emotionally disturbed".

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Things came to a head at the age of 15. Instead of going back to school in September to study for "O" levels, he shut himself in his bedroom, and said he wanted to die.Sean never went to school again. He was referred to a psychiatrist who wrongly diagnosed him as being mentally ill.

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Sean's problems went from bad to worse, he became depressed and aggressive.The variety of anti-psychotic drugs he was on did nothing to improve his condition. At 24 he was sentenced to six months for assaulting a police officer while drunk. He was released on appeal after 10 days in Brixton prison.

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BBC programme

Finally, in 1995 Sean's mother Sally saw a BBC television programme on Apserger's.

She read up on Asperger's, and became increasingly convinced her son was suffering from the condition. The family pushed for a psychological assessment from an expert in autism.

Sally said: "The psychologist said to us, 'He has Asperger's, why has this never been picked up?'"She was absolutely horrified."

Sean even has trouble communicating with his family .

Mrs Honeysett's first reaction was one of relief: "I thought my son's not a nutter. He has been treated by the psychiatric world since he was 14, but he has not got a psychiatric problem."

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However, four years after his diagnosis Sean is still heavily dependant on psychiatric services.At present, he is being cared for at a unit in Hillingdon, west London.

His psychiatrist, who has treated him since December, trained in the Netherlands where Asperger's syndrome has greater recognition as a possible reason for patients' apparent psychiatric problems.

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He believes Sean's condition should have been picked up in childhood.

"He is of normal intelligence, but he feels very, very guilty because of a lot of nasty things that have happened to him."If his condition had been detected a lot earlier then he would not be that ill or that dependent on services as he is now." Sean is now gradually being weaned off the cocktail of psychiatric drugs he had been taking.

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Asperger's syndrome was identified by Hans Asperger - an Austrian psychiatrist in 1944.

But it wasn't until 1981 - when Sean was 16 - that his paper, written in German, came to the attention of a British psychiatrist.

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Autistic children often have little desire to interact. Children with Asperger's syndrome do want to mix, but do not have the social skills to do so effectively.A recent study of patients in three high security special hospitals - Broadmoor, Rampton and Ashworth - found that up to 5.3% of the inmates had an autism-like disorder.That is more than three times higher than the incidence in the general population. The other great unknown is how many people in prison may have undiagnosed Asperger's syndrome.

BBC NEWS - Health - Tuesday, 27 June, 2000, 22:05 GMT 23:05 UK

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Conversation With Ellen Siska

Over the years, Hollywood has carefully created an image of the reporter as something of a colorful rogue standing, ofttimes alone, against some kind of evil force meaning society such as corrupt government or big business.  The only rule a reporter birthed by a screenwriter’s hand knows is breaking the rules, dashing about with reckless abandon as they ride the jagged edge and occasionally fall off in pursuit of the Big Story.  A reporter is a loner, with the perpetually exasperated editor and often befuddled but always loyal girlfriend for the guys and boyfriend for the girls in tow.  Their life revolves around the story, their moment of glory coming often after great sacrifice yet coming nonetheless when the ne’er-do-wells are shamed by what is revealed courtesy of light the reporter shines on their darkest plots.  Such is the life of a reporter as reported in the entertainment world.

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And then there’s reality:

Ellen Siska is in her kitchen, sounds of clashing and scraping dishes plus utensils provided by the kids wandering in and out occasionally filtering in over the phone.  It’s nighttime in her Pennsylvania home, and having finished her assorted writing chores takes time to chat about not only her chosen profession as journalist, but also a life that would strain the limits of credibility were Hollywood to release it on film.  In this case, it’s all quite true.

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The conversation starts with an observation about the story behind a story.  At the time the interview was conducted (mid-December 2007), Siska had just completed a post for her blog on the York (PA) Dispatch, for which she also writes feature stories about NASCAR with additional freelance work in this area done for ESPN.COM, about a privacy issue involving Kasey Kahne.  A complaint had just been filed by the security guard involved in a shoving incident with Kahne at last year’s Homestead race.  Miami television station WPLG had a story about the matter posted on its Web site which included a copy of the original police report.  Perfectly legal, since the report is a matter of public record.  However, the station reprinted the report in full, including listing Kahne’s personal information such as his address and phone number.  Siska contacted both a publicist for the car manufacturer Kahne represents in NASCAR and Kahne’s sister, whom she had met through some work Kahne’s charity foundation had done in her area.  Shortly thereafter, the television station modified the police report to blur out Kahne’s personal information.

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Siska was born in Hanover, Pennsylvania.  Her father had done some dirt track racing before she was born, but gave it up after a horrifying non-racing accident.  One night after a race, he and a brother of Siska's mother were riding her father’s motorcycle home.  A drunk driver running without headlights rear-ended the bike, killing Siska’s uncle.  She notes, "Both my uncle’s wife and my Mom were pregnant at the time.  Just part of my wonderful family history."  The temptation would be to say Siska is being overly sardonic, but as becomes apparent when the bare facts of her own life are mentioned she’s actually being quite understated.

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Siska’s beloved father now lives in a nursing home.  He has suffered from Alzheimer’s Disease for the past few years.  Her mother endured a major stroke when she was forty-one and Siska was a senior in high school.  She adds, "My older brother was already living away from home and my younger sister was only eleven.  In those days, they didn't have intensive stroke rehab programs like they do now, and my mom was in the hospital for two months."

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One reluctantly expects parents to go through such things as their days on this planet grow short.  One even accepts the possibility of personal troubles; Siska had cervical cancer which given how she was pregnant at the time couldn’t be operated on until after her child was born.  These things happen. You don’t expect such things happening to your own children.

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"My oldest son -- he’s twenty-four -- has a form of autism called Asperger Syndrome," Siska notes.  "Interestingly, although professionals had pointed out developmental problems with him from the time he was about two, he was incorrectly diagnosed with ADD, ADHD, Oppositional/Defiant Disorder, and so on.  It wasn't until he was twelve that he was correctly diagnosed with Asperger Syndrome.  Asperger is now the diagnosis du jour and responsible for the large incidence of new autism cases, in my opinion.  Previously misdiagnosed cases of ADHD are now being recognized as Asperger.  When Jon was diagnosed with it in 1995, no one had ever heard of it.  Now there are specially-designed school programs for children who have it.  I was a bit of a pioneer in pursuing proper treatment initiatives, thanks to the Internet, and I was able to connect to others for support."

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The diagnosis came just a week after… "Hope, my daughter who at the time was thirteen months old, had been sick.  I kept taking her to the clinic I used, and they kept saying it was nothing.  It was the same pediatric group that had taken care of Edward, my son who died of SIDS, and I really believe they thought I was just a 'frantic SIDS parent.'  After five days of extremely high fever, lethargy and no treatment, the doctor was rather condescending when he said, 'Sometimes these kiddies do better with IV feeding, so do you want to put her in the hospital for that?'  To which I replied, 'Definitely!'  It wasn't until she had been admitted to the hospital that the youngest member of the pediatric group ordered a spinal tap and discovered she had meningitis, which many people die of within hours of contracting.  How Hope survived that long without any treatment is really another miracle.  However, the meningitis caused her to lose her hearing, although I didn’t know that at the time."

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Yet neither of these trials were the greatest Siska has endured.  As noted above, in 1991 her son Edward, who was eleven weeks old at the time, died from SIDS (Sudden Infant Death Syndrome).  And in 2003, her brother died after losing a battle with lung cancer.  Yet with all this, Siska is a strong believer in Jesus Christ, leading to the question why she didn’t chuck faith out the window given the hammer blows she’s endured.

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"That might have been an easy way to go, especially after losing my son," she replies.  "That was the biggest blow, the biggest shock, of all; and I had a really hard time with that.  I did have a hard time dealing with the spiritual side of things.  You’d have people saying things like, ‘Well, there’s a reason for this because everything has a reason.’  And I did eventually become a peer support coordinator helping other people who were going through the death of a child from SIDS, being an advocate and support for those families.  So I’d have people saying, ‘Look at all these families you’ve helped; that’s the reason behind it.’  But I could never understand that, because the comeback was, ‘You mean to tell me God killed my child so I could help all these other people whose child He was going to kill too?’  That’s how bitter I was.  I’m not proud to say that, but that was the way I felt about it at the time."

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But Siska didn’t abandon her faith.  "I had too much of a foundation to go that way," she notes.Her life has provided a decidedly different view of racing than is generally held, especially by participants.  "I can’t help but think of these things that have happened to me when I watch racing.  For example, Jeff Gordon’s new baby.  Instead of focusing on how wonderful it was for him when she was born, I was worried about SIDS, even though cases are down.  Was she being put to sleep properly laying on her back; things like that.  I find myself thinking more about things like that instead of her future and will she be a race car driver.  I’m afraid I’m a bit jaded that way.  So as far as being concerned with who’s the champion and things like that… yeah.  I know there are bigger things.  Again using Jeff as an example, I know from seeing him this really is his best year ever.  Not that he doesn’t care about not winning the championship, but it’s a bigger year for him because he has a new baby in his life."

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She adds this point: "It’s life or death in that they’re risking their lives.  But as far as the outcome of the race, it’s not very important in the whole scheme of things.  Not at all."

Siska’s interest in journalism started at an early age.  In school she excelled at writing; elements such as mechanics and grammar came easily.  However, when it came time for college, she self-depreciatingly notes how being the foolish girl that she was by pursuing higher education because that was where her boyfriend was headed, not really knowing what she herself wanted to do, to a degree she followed in her typist mother’s footsteps and became what is now referred to as an administrative assistant but at the time was known as an executive secretary.  Fulfilling it was not, but it paid the bills.

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One day, Siska heard that a soap opera star would be making an appearance at a local mall.  This was the necessary catalyst for putting her journalistic ambitions in motion.  She asked a friend, who worked in public relations, what measures needed to be taken in order to secure an interview.  Protocol was followed, the interview was conducted, the story was written, and Siska discovered the joy coming from not only meeting someone she wanted to but getting paid to do so.  While keeping her day job, she followed this inaugural effort with more interviews with soap stars.

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Siska’s first initiation in covering NASCAR was in 1997.  Back then, Sears sponsored a ‘Sears Diehard Fan of the Year’ contest, the winner receiving airfare, lodging at the Waldorf Astoria in New York City, a seat at the banquet, and an invitation to the champion's party after the banquet.  The person who won the contest that year was a woman from York who worked for the mayor.  The day before the banquet, Siska contacted NASCAR asking to attend as a member of the media to write about the winner's experience.  In the course of doing so, Jeff Gordon invited her to join the party after the champion’s party, where she mingled with numerous NASCAR leading lights and went along with Gordon as he played practical jokes on teammates Terry Labonte and Ken Schrader by knocking on their doors at the Waldorf and telling them they had to evacuate due to a gas leak.

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In September of the following year, Siska made a life choice.  "I decided I really wanted to make a go at working in NASCAR.  The plan was to move to Charlotte and use my secretarial background to get a job as an administrative assistant at one of the shops.  There was an opportunity at the original GEM, which was Gordon-Evernham Motorsports (the current entity bearing the name is Gillett Evernham Motorsports) back when Jeff Gordon and Ray Evernham had the #24 Pepsi Busch team, so I went in to talk to them about it.  Unfortunately, as I mentioned earlier my daughter was deaf and needed to go into a special education program that ran from nine in the morning until one in the afternoon in Charlotte.  I had rented a house in Concord so I could be near the speedway.  The education program didn’t provide transportation, so as a single mom who didn’t know anyone in the area and had no genuine alternatives as far as getting my daughter to and from the program, I couldn’t make the commitment to work full-time."

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However… "The program that my daughter was in led to her being considered as a candidate for cochlear implant surgery.  It was done in Charlotte, and it worked; the implant made it possible for her to hear.  That’s why I say although I went to Charlotte to work in NASCAR, in reality NASCAR was God’s way of getting me to Charlotte so my daughter could get the surgery.  She hadn’t been considered for it here in Pennsylvania because, they said, she wasn’t deaf enough.  At the time when the surgery was done (May 1999), the surgery was still looked upon by some as being experimental.  Since there was no guarantee she’d gain hearing from it, they didn’t want to do it in Pennsylvania.  In North Carolina, they were ahead of the times; they’d done a lot more surgeries."

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She adds, "What further cemented my belief this came from God was my daughter’s name being Hope, her audiologist in Charlotte was named Judy Bible, and her speech therapist in Charlotte was named Margaret Miracle.  I know that sounds strange, but it’s the truth and it still gives me goose bumps when I think about it.  Talk about being hit over the head as to why what happened did happen!"

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The story does not end there.  "I really liked it there.  I met some wonderful people at the church I attended, and overall people were very warm.  But after a year when my lease was up where I had been living, I came back to Pennsylvania because among other reasons my brother really missed me, and I missed my family.  Within a year after I came back, my brother was diagnosed with lung cancer; he died in May of 2003.  If I hadn’t come back, I wouldn’t have had the extra time with him that I did.  Also, my dad came down with Alzheimer’s around that time, so again if I hadn’t come back I wouldn’t have had the extra time with him before he was unable to communicate with me.  So I look at the whole Charlotte experience, the timing of my going there plus the actual time there and the timing of my coming back to Pennsylvania, as something that was meant to happen."  She adds that while she has considered again making the move to Charlotte, especially if an appropriate job offer were to be made, at present she is reluctant to do so as she doesn’t want to relocate her children, especially the two youngest who are currently thirteen and fifteen.  Siska did make time to attend college full-time in 2004 through 2006, graduating with a degree in public relations.

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In 2005, Gordon and Rusty Wallace made a promotional appearance at Hershey Park.  Siska asked her local paper if they had anyone covering the event.  When told no, she volunteered to do so, in the process interviewing both drivers.  The newspaper liked the story, so Siska took it to the next level by suggesting she replace the syndicated NASCAR column the paper was running at the time.  They replied in the affirmative, so at the beginning of the 2006 season Siska started writing for the York (PA) Dispatch.  The online links to her newspaper columns are easily the paper's most popular sites.And thus began a life of glamorous jet-setting and hobnobbing with racing royalty… for someone.  Not Siska.  The reality of being a NASCAR writer is far different than what one might think.

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"I often joke about being careful what you wish for," she notes with a slight chuckle.  Understandable, given how although Siska is paid by the newspaper and other organizations for which she does freelance work such as ESPN.COM, her ‘expense account’ for this consists of whatever is in her bank account at the time.  "I went to sixteen races this past year, all at my own expense.  And after all that, I didn’t receive an official invitation to the awards banquet, which left me feeling a little disrespected."

She adds, "You have to have a lot of respect for the traditional fan that goes to the races.  They’re going to be gouged by the tracks and by the local hotels charging three times their normal rate and with a three night minimum.  Going to a race is not a cheap endeavor anymore."

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While Siska has strong respect for full-time NASCAR reporters ("The grind of doing that thirty-six weeks out of the year would be tough to handle"), she notes they also have advantages she doesn’t enjoy.  "I’m not trying to compete with beat writers living in Charlotte as far as trying to get scoops.  There’s no way I could.  I can’t go to a press conference down there that’s called on a day’s notice, although I do participate in some teleconferences.  I have to weigh everything pretty carefully, because the travel is coming out of my own pocket.  That said, going to the races I did last year opened some opportunities I might not have otherwise had, such as the work for ESPN.  I did come out ahead last year.  But not by much."  She notes how not being full-time limits story opportunities; the only extended one-on-one interview she was able to do this season was with Martin Truex Jr.

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Back to her chosen profession, concerning which Siska has values the strictest schoolmarm would applaud.  "I have a high standard as far as a news story on an official site is concerned.  I expect it to be grammatically correct and factually perfect."

The time for the interview draws to a close.  In lieu of any kind of life or work summary, Siska offers this observation about how in at least one case, the reality of her job reflects the reality seen but not necessarily accepted by many.  "A lot of fans don’t understand Jeff Gordon very well.  He’s always been very cooperative and friendly.  I’ve never seen him blow off anyone in the garage or the pits when he’s being followed by fans.  I’ve never seen be unfriendly or not answer someone’s questions.  He is a very nice guy all the time."

It’s hard not to root for someone like that. It’s impossible not to root for Ellen Siska.

 by Diecast Dude on 6 Jan 2008 (Goldfish and Clowns)

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always looking for new articles, stories, journeys, insight, poems,

thoughts from the autistic community from those with lived experiences...

if your interested in having your work displayed on my web site please

send to for consideration. I will be more than

happy to add links to your sites, blogs etc...as appropriate.