I have two mental disabilities; firstly is Asperger’s Syndrome and the other is Tourette’s Syndrome. They both pose different challenges in life yet they both have a common theme…
Asperger’s Syndrome is a tricky one to grasp. Emotionally it puts you about 5–10 years behind maturity of others. What this means is that you can spend some time floundering when you need to look for a career or get a partner. This isn’t through a lack of trying. Quite the contrary for a lot of people. No, it’s trying to make sense of a society not tailored to work with difference. Job interviews can be a barrier – when you struggle to get words out of your head you soon get thought of as a poor candidate. As for partners, there’s a lot of people out there who go from looks first. It’s not that we have ten heads but it’s more on behaviours and mannerisms. People see eccentric behaviours and they can recoil and get uncomfortable about it.
I do think the majority of disabilities are made worse by a collective failure of society to understand and tolerate difference. So many people think that a cure is needed. For most, especially autism, a cure is not in question. It’s searching for something which can’t happen. Changing how others react and perceive difference would make life a lot easier and is far more realistic.
Everyone with autism is different so I’ll just be individualistic here in my answer. Sensory wise, I find the sun overbearing and blinding at the best of times. People look at me and assume I’m annoyed. No, I’m just frowning because of the brightness of light. Fluorescent light is a problem less so but isn’t something I can ignore too easily. For myself, sunglasses are often essential on most days out.
I’ve talked to many autistics. The ones with Asperger’s Syndrome seem to value deep conversation more and people with it. We care less for the chit-chat and more for the detailed conversations. That’s not to say we can’t do either but something that is intellectually stimulating is good for us. We tend not to do gossip. So can understand sarcasm and empathy – but it can take a heavy amount of learning to pick it up and even when we do it’s not necessarily as seamless as someone who gets it innately.
Tourette’s Syndrome is an extremely complex movement disorder. People may think it’s a just a movement disorder which waxes and wanes like cycles of the moon. No, there are just so many factors as to why you make a noise or twitch. A tic can be causes by sensory input like restrictive clothing and rumination of past experiences; someone saying something that is related to previous tics and what you eat and drink such as sugar, caffeine and alcohol.
It’s a condition which can cause physical pain. Jerking your head around all the time, as an example, can pull muscles and after enough repetition can cause bone and cartilage wear – even paralysis. Just somethings like another condition – even something as simple as a headache can be worsened by Tourette’s.
Then of course there’s the social side. People struggle with erratic behaviours in public. I’m lucky enough to be able to suppress my tics when I need to. It’s still hard to do though and can only be done for some time. You can get into all sorts of scraps off one encounter with just one wrong person. You could get your life threatened or the police called out to arrest you because you’re presumed to be on drugs. And explanations do little at times because people are too afraid that they might be, socially, taken advantage of.
I hope you were able to pick up a running theme there that I hinted at earlier. A lot of the mental disabilities – and disabilities in general – are made worse because of society’s inability to adapt to difference. Whether that’s ramps on street curbs or someone taking a second thought at the person twitching across the room. I’ve had experiences of people exclaiming that disabled people are a drain on society. Well, how can they not when they aren’t given equity to function properly?