Identities always fail. This is because when I seek to understand myself, to capture my experience and convey it to others through the medium of language –– a language that has existed long before myself, with its arbitrary and historically contingent boundaries and relationships, a language that is radically "not mine" –– I never seem to be able to grasp the full picture.
This is compounded by the fact that when I try to give an account of myself, I can never do so in a disinterested fashion. To understand myself is not to discover a truth by coldly compiling things that happened, it is rather a paranoid connecting of dots, a telling of stories, an act of creation.
It is these difficulties that makes every identity, even successful ones, deeply and irreparably unstable. I am a man because in order to relay my experience of gender to others, I must settle for imperfect categories that are "good enough" (which I frequently fail to live up to). But I am also a man because I understand myself through a gendered lens. I cannot help but see my past as somehow confirming my masculinity, nor can I help but act in a way that is informed by it. Through the masculine narrativization of myself, I am continuously being made anew into a man.
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| Autistic icon and my beautiful son, Rise Donnie |
Yet for the above reasons I find the thinking of this topic extremely difficult and unclear.
The point of this blog post is to try and make sense of this situation, incorporating insights from the questionnaires, personal experience, and observations from family and friends. I will first try to make the case that I am on the autism spectrum, then introduce some points that undermine this certainty, and finally try to figure out where to go from here.
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| Interpretation of RAADS-R score |
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| Average CAT-Q score among autistics |
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| Interpretation of AQ score |
I would like to start the investigation with the most straightforward of information –– the results of the ASD (autism spectrum disorder) screening questionnaires. In recent memories I have done RAADS-R three times, CAT-Q twice, and AQ once. Both RAADS-R and AQ are evidence-based, reliable and clinically widely used screening tests for identifying autistic adults. CAT-Q measures the degree of a person's masking behaviour, which are learned strategies to suppress autistic traits.
The first time I did RAADS-R was three years ago. I received a score of about 90. The second time was around two months ago, when I received the score of around 110. I took the test again right as I was writing this blog post, where I received precisely 90 points (language: 10; social relatedness: 47; sensory/motor: 17; Circumscribed interests:16).
While the score fluctuates over time, it is never below the test's threshold of 65, which indicates a likelihood of autism.
I did CAT-Q around two days ago to the score of 147, and again while writing this post to the score of
153 (compensation: 50; masking: 53; assimilation: 50). A score above 100 indicates masking of autistic traits. The test result also suggest that I am masking to a degree much higher than the average male with autism. This tend to correlates with depression, generalized anxiety, and social anxiety.
I did AQ while writing this blog post and received 36. A score above the threshold of 32 suggest a likelihood of ASD.
The results of these test seems to show that there's a mid to high chance that I have ASD, and that I am making a potentially life-impairing amount of effort to mask this fact. The tests from what I've read seems to be a reliable tool for identifying autism –– reports of RAADS-R's accuracy for example show that no one in the neurotypical group scores higher than 65, while only 3% of the autistic group fall below 65. Yet as the analysis of the test points out, the test itself is not conclusive, and must be supplied with "personal reflection, your developmental history, and, if you choose, professional clinical interpretation."
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My friend Proxy kindly supplied a list of traits she observed in me that falls in line with traits of autism in adults, which suggested to her that I might be autistic. My other friend (let's call them Snorpus) mentioned "[signs of autism] involve a lot of internal feelings and the reasons behind the behaviours matter too." With this in mind, I will go through Proxy's list point by point, supplying it with my own internal experience currently and when I was a child, as well as comments and observation from my friends when relevant. The list is as follows:
- Flat, monotone speaking voice: I have been told that I speak in a more monotone voice, or at least in a "weird" inflection or speed. It's interesting that this seems to manifest in different ways depending on the language I speak: while monotone is what my speaking of English is usually described as, my Mandarin speaking is more often described and mocked as being too slow.
- Difficulties maintaining eye-contact: This has always been uncomfortable for me, but around middle school I learned to stare at the point between the other person's eyebrows and believed myself to be generally better at doing it. I have since learned that I am still, in fact, bad at maintaining eye contact. Snorpus also pointed out that they don't think neurotypicals tend to have a "trick" to overcome eye-contact troubles.
- Using repetitive language/phrases, and a unique way of speaking: I think this point should be understood in four aspects.
- Repetitive language: I think I do use repetitive phrases when speaking, although I'm wondering if this is because English is my second language. I think I must have used repetitive language in Mandarin. People like to do impression of me and they usually reach for my several epic and iconic phrases. But since no one has ever pointed it out to me explicitly, I don't really know if I do this to a meaningful degree.
- Repeating phrases from different sources: I remembered in high school I discovered this gay youtuber with a very mean gay affect and for a while I started talking like that and adopted his phrases until someone pointed it out and I got embarrassed. Nowadays I repeat certain phrases because I like doing it and I find it funny. Phrases get stuck in my head and I find myself saying it very often for a period of time. e.g. I saw the SNL sketch featuring known man James Franco where he said "much to my chagrin" and for a period of time I said it whenever I have the opportunity.
- I think I have a pretty unique way of speaking. I speak in a very academic tone and people often comment on how my speech seems overly formal. In Mandarin I used to over-pronounce my words and people thought that was a bit odd.
- I also want to bring up that when I was little I used to repeat the last few words of the thing I just said under my breath (palilalia) and only stopped because my cousin made fun of me about it.
- Difficulties engaging in small talk: I've always had this problem although it was worse when I was younger. At some point I really studied how small talk flows, what questions to ask and how to keep the conversation alive etc. so it's much less obvious that I'm bad at this. But it still bring me a lot of stress nonetheless.
- Blunt assessment of people and things: I don't know if this is the case myself but if Proxy and Snorpus both think this I think it must be somewhat true.
- Drained by social situations: I work very hard in big social situations mostly because I don't know when to talk and what about. The small talk strategy I have doesn't really work in large groups, nor can I drill into my single interlocutor's interest. Therefore it's very uncomfortable for me and it seldom goes well. Even when I hang out in smaller groups I often find myself thinking about my performance days and even weeks after the fact, reviewing my missteps and wondering if I say something wrong or offended anyone. It's much easier in a situation where people are listening to me talk (presentation, explaining something I like etc.) But otherwise most social situations are quite anxiety inducing and draining for me.
- Code-switching: I find that I act very differently in different friend groups. And I tend to get very disoriented and upset when the boundaries of the groups are transgressed (e.g. new people in group, seeing other friends when I'm in a group). When I am in a group with unfamiliar dynamic or a familiar group with changed dynamic I find it very difficult to talk and act.
- Black and white thinking: I don't really think I think in a black and white way. In fact I think I spend a lot of time reading books to unsettle any trace of black and white thinking in my head. That said my bf says that while I do not have black and white thinking intellectually, I am very black and white with regard to my feelings of things. Proxy brought up the example she observed in me that I think therapy might be dangerous, therefore I should never do it. which supports bf's point. Snorpus mentioned that "You might find it overlaps with structural rigidity in that you have a clear understanding that things must happen a certain way." Which seems to be similar to what Proxy and bf are saying.
- Do not like surprises: I don't really know if this is true, because I don't live a life of many surprises. I suppose I do not like it when something unexpected happens, but I feel I can mostly cope with that.
- Prefer being alone or small groups: I can't really control how the interaction goes when the group gets too big or includes unexpected members and dynamics. So I largely stick with small groups of friends whose dynamic I am familiar with. I wouldn't say I prefer being alone, at least not anymore. I would much prefer to spend time with my clique and my cabal.
- Having highly specific, long-lasting interest(s) on which much of my time is spent: This is what most people first point to when they tell me they think I'm autistic. About three years ago I became deeply invested in Freudian psychoanalysis (in critical theory) and I read all of his books and essays as well as every major theorists' writing on the man. I made a 52 page full colour comic about him and directed an animated short film informed by him. My conversation with anyone would turn into a discussion of psychoanalysis and I just spend a lot of time thinking about it in general. I had many of these interests growing up, from Bionicles to Star Wars to musical theatre, etc.
- Follow repetitive rituals, and finding it easier to flourish in a structured environment: I think it is true that I find rigid structures to be good for me and my mental health. However I live a life of profound chaos and structurelessness of my own making. I find it very difficult to follow a schedule that is not imposed on me and as a result I'm mostly just drifting from activity to activity. My bf points out that my extremely shit routine at the moment might also be a routine, just a very bad one, which I suppose can be true.
- Reduced reaction to sensory stimuli such as sound, smell, and taste: I think I have pretty bad hearing, but otherwise I don't think this one applys as much.
- Easily overwhelmed in busy environment such as shopping centres or restaurants: I get overwhelmed in busy environment but I don't know if it happens to an meaningful degree.
- Difficulties transitioning between tasks: I struggle with this a lot. I get very absorbed in tasks like drawing or more recently writing blog posts and find myself not eating, drinking, or sleeping. I also find it very hard to get out of bed or going to bed.
I also want to add to the list a few traits that Proxy did not mention. These are traits I exhibited as a child and ones that Proxy didn't notice in general.
- Delayed language skills: I had a some trouble learning to read and write. While this problem fixed itself soon enough, I was struggling with it when I was old enough to raise concern for my parents and teachers, especially when compared to my sister and peers.
- As a kid I had trouble understanding idioms and non-literal language. I think this must be a problem to a noticeable degree because my parents and teachers often bring it up as something quirky about me.
- Growing up I really enjoy making lists and charts. I like to draw symbols like every NLB logos, One Piece jolly rogers, or US presidents on a grid in a piece of paper, and I would do this repeatedly. When I drew Bionicles I liked to include in the corner small version of the other 5 characters in the series so when I draw more of them I can pull them up from the folder like a pokedex. Even when I was making things up to draw I like to come up with other similar things to draw in the corner so it appears to be in a lineup of things. I also spend a lot of time lining my toys up. Snorpus and Proxy both pointed out that this blog, especially the listing-stuff-posts, is pretty much the extension of this.
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I think the above picture I painted of my feelings and development, in tandem with the evidence-based screening tools, at the very least speaks to a likelihood that I am autistic. Although there are also a few things that give me reservation to say definitively that I have ASD.
For one, many people who are very close to me, such as my bf initially and my sister, seems suspicious of the idea that I might be autistic. On one hand, this reaction could be caused by prior experience with autistic people that better conform to the general cultural image of what ASD looks like. My sister and I has a cousin whose autism requires significant support and is difficult to mask; and my bf has a close friend and former roommate who is "clearly autistic." I also think the idea of masking is poorly understood if not outright unknown to the general public. I for sure didn't know much about masking before I started thinking about this topic.
But they also brought up a point that I find to be vary difficult to address. Namely, how do we distinguish between autistic traits and things non autistic people do? Let's take special interests and hyperfixations for example: I'm sure non autistic people also have very specific interests and relate to it in highly specific ways and I'm sure that many of them are passionate about them in very high intensity and for a long time. But if this is the case, what really separate the special interest from non-autistic interest? Another example: What is the difference between non-autistic people finding a fun phrase and deciding to repeat it and delayed echolalia in people with ASD? It seems like echolalia isn't necessarily involuntary but rather something that feels good to do. But I can only imagine the reason a non-autistic person would say something they like is also because they like how it feels. It seems to me that many of the traits mentioned above are also things non-autistic people do, and to imply otherwise feels like an uncomfortable flattening of non-autistic internal life.
Perhaps the difference lies not in the quality of the traits but in its quantity. That is to say, it is not the actions that are significantly different, but rather the intensity with which it occurs. But if this is the case I would have no way of knowing where my feelings sits on the continuum of intensity whatsoever, as I can never go into a non-autistic person's head and compare the intensity of their feeling to my own. At the root of the problem, I think, is the impossibility of adequately communicating and comparing any experience to others. I can never know if my experience of interest relates more to special interest in autistic folks, or hobbies in non-autistic folks. All I know about their experience is that they experienced it and termed it the way they did –– the signified has no place in the system of signs, all I can access is the relation of a given signifier to other signifiers.
On top of this, I rarely know if my memories and my self knowledge is valid. I feel that if I go into my past looking for autism, I will likely find autism. Armed with the framing of ASD and its diagnostic language, I recreate my entire history in its image –– "staying up late because I am addicted to my phone" becomes "having difficulties transition from tasks"; "repeating something funny" becomes "echolalia". It might be that this is what people call contextualization, but it feels much closer to inventing a problem where none exists.
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A few days ago Snorpus ask me why I think it's so pressing for me to figure out if I have ASD at this moment. I can only speculate as I often find my own motivations to be deeply opaque and my intentions inscrutable, but I suspect that it has to do with a desire for my struggles to "make sense". To name an unnamed struggle is to have it recognized as real, to be assured that it's not your fault. I assume this is the motivation behind many adults who try to look into ASD, self-diagnose, or seek formal diagnosis. It all reminds me of a tumblr post that my boyfriend showed me:
Yet there is a danger in this naming of the struggle –– implicit in this act is the conviction that one's struggle is unique, an excess that cannot simply be subsumed under "the human condition". The narrative element that hold the fantasy mentioned in the tumblr post together is that throughout the entire story the protagonist remains totally passive. She did not seek out what is wrong with her, she did not wonder why she struggles, she simply tried her best and was rescued by powers beyond her control. And of course she didn't. To seek the name of your troubles is to say, justified or not, that you have it worse, that the world really ought to cut you some slack. I suspect this is part of the reason the self-diagnosers have come to attract the ire of the entire internet –– without the legitimization from psychiatric institutions, it is simply an intolerable absolving of responsibility in a responsibility-obsessed, alienated society.
I find that I am haunted by this same ire, internalized and self-imposed, throughout this quest to understand myself as potentially autistic, which make the entire process profoundly uncomfortable and embarrassing. Whenever an experience can be interpreted as either autistic or non-autistic and I find myself making the case for it being the former, I feel myself morphing in everyone's mind into the quirky, creative, turkey-observing woman who everyone detests.
I didn't really find any clarity through all this research and introspection, and I feel too anxious to try and figure it out any further. I suppose Snorpus' advice that "(bearing diagnosis criteria in mind) if advice from and tools for autistic folks help you, that's more important to allow yourself than it is to get medical permission to identify with that group" is ultimately the best approach to this jumbled confusion.
I think it is also important to note that all this research and thinking is likely just a way to intellectualize my anxiety. Instead of addressing the anxiety itself, I spend my energy thinking about the nature of identities, the difficulties of modern psychiatry and the ambiguities therein. My other friend, Stingus, wisely said, "Ultimately I think the number one goal if you so choose is to address the anxiety, as it’s the common denominator between all of these labels, and I know anxiety is different between typicals and divergents, but coping mechanisms are relatively the same as they come from the same place." And I think this is something everyone around me, along with myself, can agree on.
