Florence K
Active Member
Hello, I'm Florence a woman in my mid 30s.
I'm self-diagnosed high functioning autism/mild aspergers.
As I'm pretty sure now I come from a family where mild spectrum disorders are the norm I had relatively few problems as a small child - apart from speaking late. But from about age 8-9 onwards, when social rules started to apply to me I was out of my depth and confused a lot. Throughout my school days I was tolerated, not accepted and essentially during my teens and early twenties I was socially pretty severely handicapped.
In my mid twenties I started to figure out how predictable many social interactions are and I taught myself to deal with them. Now I'm generally seen as a socially competent person, but it still happens by calculation. And while I have no problems with public speaking (after all that is just speaking 'at' people), I do still have a lot of difficulties with socialising in groups - so parties etc.
Yet despite the difficulties I had when I was younger at this point in my life I have to say that being on the spectrum is something of a blessing. I think that it is a large factor in allowing me to do what I do right now. People ask me how I cope with adapting to completely different cultures when I'm away for Orphanage Projects, while to me there is not much difference between observing and adjusting to the social rules when I go to meet a new neighbour or when I arrive at an orphanage in Kenya. I don't feel more out of my depth, so I can just do what I always do. And when it comes to treating sick babies it is very helpful to be able to temporarily turn off my emotion to concentrate on the task at hand.
Orphanage Projects, the NGO that I started to improve institutional childcare, is pretty much a vocation or obsession. Having to work for money aside from that feels as a waste of time, but is inevitable. Apart from that I love learning new languages, self-study in paediatrics, reading a lot and seeing movies.
Those are really most of my defining traits. Oh, and I'm gay and still single.
Anything you want to know about me, go ahead and ask.
I'm self-diagnosed high functioning autism/mild aspergers.
As I'm pretty sure now I come from a family where mild spectrum disorders are the norm I had relatively few problems as a small child - apart from speaking late. But from about age 8-9 onwards, when social rules started to apply to me I was out of my depth and confused a lot. Throughout my school days I was tolerated, not accepted and essentially during my teens and early twenties I was socially pretty severely handicapped.
In my mid twenties I started to figure out how predictable many social interactions are and I taught myself to deal with them. Now I'm generally seen as a socially competent person, but it still happens by calculation. And while I have no problems with public speaking (after all that is just speaking 'at' people), I do still have a lot of difficulties with socialising in groups - so parties etc.
Yet despite the difficulties I had when I was younger at this point in my life I have to say that being on the spectrum is something of a blessing. I think that it is a large factor in allowing me to do what I do right now. People ask me how I cope with adapting to completely different cultures when I'm away for Orphanage Projects, while to me there is not much difference between observing and adjusting to the social rules when I go to meet a new neighbour or when I arrive at an orphanage in Kenya. I don't feel more out of my depth, so I can just do what I always do. And when it comes to treating sick babies it is very helpful to be able to temporarily turn off my emotion to concentrate on the task at hand.
Orphanage Projects, the NGO that I started to improve institutional childcare, is pretty much a vocation or obsession. Having to work for money aside from that feels as a waste of time, but is inevitable. Apart from that I love learning new languages, self-study in paediatrics, reading a lot and seeing movies.
Those are really most of my defining traits. Oh, and I'm gay and still single.
Anything you want to know about me, go ahead and ask.
