Please read it.

You’ll find it here:

http://lah1983.blogspot.com/2010/06/aspergers-duran-duran-personal-account.html

mark ty wharton

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mark Ty-Wharton

I am seriously considering dropping sarcasm from all my communication.

I am a bit of a joker, thriving on dark twisted humour.

But I have noticed when I use irony I am usually way off the mark, particularly in written communication.

Any forum I join quickly becomes a flame war.

People just don’t get it.

Like me, people with autism take things very literally. I really have a hard time with metaphor and tend to take communication at face value.

And then I attempt to use irony, or sarcasm in my own communication with people. It makes no sense for me to do it, when I have no idea what works and what doesn’t.

I usually end up way off the mark, offending people, when all I want to do is be friends. And it is only when people are my close friends and know my motivation in life is love they get there is no malice.

I communicate with Americans a lot. Tours have nearly been cancelled because of me! It is meant to be a British thing, this dark incisive repetoire we Brits cook up between us.

I actually wonder if it works at all…

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

mark ty wharton
[contact-form]

  Copyright secured by Digiprove © 2010 Mark Ty-Wharton

While I don’t have a natural ability to follow some other social cues, I can apply logic. Most of the time this works. If I concentrate , I can usually figure out facial expressions pretty well. For some reason I am anger blind and fail to notice if I am really annoying someone. In familiar situations where I have learned other people’s patterns and probabilities, I fare much better.

I am also more comfortable if I have someone neurologically typical to ask for assistance when I get stuck on something. Occasionally things go way over my head and I nod and pretend.

For me, most of my anxiety stems from a feeling of not knowing. It is a bit bewildering to miss simple social cues. It makes me feel foolish and stupid if I miss something obvious. Especially when people are joking or conversation is ambiguous or metaphorical. I get angry at myself, then embarrassed and anxious.

It is important to me to be a good communicator, I have a special interest in becoming more social. I am working on improving the way I interact with people. And recently I am discovering the way I assess myself and social situations is not working for me.

Because of the way my high functioning autistic mind works, I am very good at focusing on fine detail and learning it. But I cannot seem to learn every combination of every facial expression logically. There is only so much I can figure out.

While I am learning to accept I will always make mistakes socially, I don’t want to feel like I am putting up with it. I understand that neurologically typical people have an intuitive knowledge in social interaction I somehow miss. It is called mind blindness. Sometimes I miss the meaning of a word, sometimes I miss a facial expression and sometimes miss the entire context. That is how it is and acceptance is being okay with that. It’s a choice. Like choosing a thoroughbred sports car, great on the open roads but it tends to overheat and stall in traffic.

So here I am in traffic. I just arrived at a bustling party with friends eager to say hello. And here I am doing the social equivalent of my first driving lesson in an E type Jag.

The Aspie solution of course, if I know enough stuff I can make it.

The average English speaker possesses a vocabulary of 10,000 to 20,000 words out of around a million estimated words in the English language.

Imagine you could make words out of any combination of letters, then imagine there were no rules in language, then thinking only about four letter words…

There are 26!/22! possible combinations of four letters in a 26 letter character set. Which gives 358,799 alternative four letter words to the word fu*k. So why do I keep saying that!?!?!?! Sorry mum, I promised I wouldn’t. Ahem…

Given that the longest recorded word is 189,819 letters (the chemical name of titin, the largest known protein), if we were to work out all possible combinations of letters up to and including words of this length, it is fairly easy to see there is infinite possibility of combinations of letters that could be used to make words. My calculator got jammed even trying.

But bear with me here, this is going somewhere.

Spoken language (the part of communication I am good at) with all its infinite probability accounts for a very small percentage of face to face communication. I think the NLP guys say seven percent.

It seems to me that there are language patterns I repeat, (yes mother, I am working on it). To learn written language, I had to sound out the words, yet now I recognise them instantly. I cannot choose to not recognise a written word. I can even read and write backwards, mirrored, upside down, left handed and pretty much any combination of those.

So let’s say for a moment I want to learn to read another visual language, facial expressions. What if autistic minds are over focused (stuck on) the building blocks. What if we are still sounding them out, or worse still don’t even know my alphabet. What if we could learn more about the building blocks using the Facial Action Coding System? Or perhaps a specialised simplified version that takes a clear look at 5 or 6 major muscle groups. Perhaps I need to lift up my head and start studying faces.

The problem with neurologically typical people is, they freak out when I stare at them. I don’t naturally know how much eye/face contact is enough/too much. There is no damn logic to it when I focus on the details. Again, perhaps there is something else to get about the overall patterns of social interaction here?

People tend to follow very predictable patterns and then, they don’t.

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

mark ty wharton

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Life is about possibility. Without me, there may never be a Transport
Museum in Biggleswade. In fact at the moment there is no museum at
all. Sure lots of people are having conversations about it, yet nobody
is really doing anything. The focus seems to be on what is not
possible rather than creating a possible outcome then taking actions
consistent with having such a place become a reality.

So what am I doing?

I am introducing myself as a new conversation about museums in
Biggleswade. I have captured the interest of a friend with an
engineering works who can also see it’s possible.

And as the man with the idea, I am the first point of contact. While I
see myself as the founder not the owner, I actually want to create it
so it lives on without me, way beyond my lifetime.

At this present point in time, there is nothing. The museum exists in
my mind and in a conversation I had with a friend. Unless my friend
sees it as possible, the conversation will die. I need to be
responsible for creating the museum in conversation such that my
friend “gets it” and continues to see its potential. Right here, right
now, “I” am the museum.

By making my life work, I am making the museum work. So coming from a
place where there is a museum, what steps do I need to take to get
there?

I recognise I need to operate from a solid base. If my life is in
chaos, I will occur to others as chaotic. People, out there in the
world need to get that this is happening.

So, in doing the housework I am taking the first steps towards
creating a solid foundation for a transport museum.

By managing my breathing, anxiety, panic attacks and subsequent
depression, I am creating the possibility of exemplary customer
service.

I see the world winding down for Christmas and realise I am starting
this project at the perfect time of year.

By the time I have my presentations ready, the local community will be
saying their New Year resolutions and being positive.

Launching ideas on a wave of enthusiasm can only serve the autistic
community I wish to provide employment opportunities for more fully.

This is where the true magic starts, right here, right now!

Visit http://transportarcheum.com to find out more about it.

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

mark ty wharton

Often awareness gives us the power to change, by whatever means. However, looking back at my posts, I decided to delete them.

While it is a severe situation, the posts were not a report of the facts, they were a complaint.

Just because I have the technology to type, even when I don’t want to get out of bed, doesn’t mean I should.

I justified my posts by telling myself, “if I am authentic about my experiences, it might help someone else”.

But what if, a problem shared is a problem doubled?

I am not saying people shouldn’t seek help, I am saying help should be sought from an appropriate person.

I think the analogy is “only complain to someone who can do something about it”.

Except this is where it falls off. When there is nobody prepared to do anything about it, who do you turn to?

FACT 1: In the UK there is no treatment available for autistic adults (unless they have some other condition).

FACT 2: Autistic adults with mental health disorders are generally treated using the same basic criteria that would be applied to a neurologically typical adult.

I don’t need to spell out the pitfalls of that one!

FACT 3: Many doctors still believe “there is no such thing as Asperger Syndrome”.

Because they have a different style of communication, autistic adults need a different route into the system.

At least one doctor at any practice could be trained to understand autism. Doctors with a partner with an interest could display a sign.

After forty odd years of appearing to be OK, I pretend to fit in.

It takes a person with considerable skill and understanding to get that I don’t.

So who do I complain to?

I don’t want to set up a campaign to deal with the issue. However, if you do, I want to speak at your events!

See you on the other side of the looking glass,

mark ty-wharton

Find Me presenting at the London Motorcycle Museum
A Century Of British Motorcycling, 2004

Find Me talking about canals, motorcycles and steam

The vision?
A Biggleswade Transport Museum staffed by autistic expert researchers.

The talk?
Any era, any marque, any event!

Intrigued?

contact me to find out more

If you are neurologically typical, I believe there are more things about us that are the same, than are different.

If you are on the autistic spectrum, then like me, you are looking for a place where you fit in to life.

So what am I trying to achieve?
I believe every section of humanity has a purpose and serves a function.

If one part of society is dysfunctional, then society is dysfunctional as a whole.

My goal is to make society aware of the benefit of giving autistic people a voice.

To reintegrate the Einstein mindset, lost by the education system, with humanity.

To reintegrate humanity with the very value that makes it human…

Diversity.

The campaign?
Jobs for genius is a project to create a commercial autistic mastermind group, which solves seemingly unsolveable problems for corporations, manfacturers and technical service providers.

The vision?
Thousands of self managed mirror groups worldwide.

The talk?
The possibility explained.

Intrigued?

contact me to find out more

contact me to find out more