Darkness: The 5th Stage of Asperger's Awareness

Darkness:

After the journey from ignorance to awareness, stage five feels like a regression. Rather than the burst of insight and support that emerges during dawn, darkness is a flood of realistic pessimism. The first response to all the books, websites, and support groups is grateful relief. The second reading and beyond is more discouraging. Delving deeper into the Asperger’s community reveals a universe of pain, awkwardness, and depression. Asperger’s is hard, unrelenting, and irreversible. At first, Pervasive Developmental Disability is just a category. Now, “pervasive” lands like a curse. That means it won’t go away.

To achieve some sort of stable integration, the person with Asperger’s will need to accept and ultimately embrace the condition. In darkness, that acceptance is still a future reality. In dawn, we have enough information to be encouraged. In darkness, we have enough information to be depressed. And depression is more than a casual description. Especially for adolescents, undiagnosed depression is a risky condition. There is no question that individuals with Asperger’s are more likely than the general population to experience other mental health challenges, including obsessive-compulsive disorder and depression. The technical term for this relationship is “comorbid” which has nasty overtones in relation to suicide. The problem with a blanket statement about suicide and Asperger’s is that diagnostic criteria for Asperger’s are not universally accepted. That makes it tough to make a clear statistical case connecting the two. However, a short tour through WrongPlanet.net or most Asperger’s blogs will reveal anecdotal support for the idea that teenagers with Asperger’s are at elevated risk for suicide.

Since this isn’t formal research or a clinical study, I simply recommend that parents, friends, and those of us with AS be more careful about mental health issues. Understanding how suicide progresses from contemplation through ideation to action can give parents and others some strategies to intervene and break up the suicidal progression. From the perspective of personality disclosure, darkness is a contraction from the openness of dawn. As information and predications about the syndrome become overwhelming, the most natural response is to pull back and close ranks. The openness and invitational spirit of dawn are banished—replaced with less introspection, more denial, less disclosure, and more hiding.

The impulse to draw back from the syndrome is reasonable, protective and wrong. Darkness is best handled in community—not isolation. But the Asperger’s community is a constant reminder of the Asperger’s condition. In a pattern somewhat similar to racial self-hatred, those who are bound up in the darkness of Asperger’s may intentionally avoid contact and association with other Aspies. Call it a form of denial by selective socialization. Whatever the impulse, darkness draws the Aspie deeper into isolation and decline.

Asperger’s misery does not love company, but the depression cause by Asperger’s is best addressed with activity and community. Unfortunately, the dip in self-image and optimism directly inhibits any action to get out and connect with others. This creates an emotional gravity well that traps the Aspie, family and friends in permanent darkness. What to do? (Hint: Prepare for darkness before it comes…)

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