Square Pegs

I got expelled from seminary.

To be accurate, I was gently encouraged to leave.
I didn't do anything wrong; and neither did the seminary.

I had already been teaching for awhile, but there was a splinter in my brain (that sounded a lot like my mother :-) insisting that I should be a pastor.
After a year of study, several theology classes and a mind-numbing sojourn into Koine Greek, I sat down with my advisor. He talked me through a set of interest inventories I had completed. He asked me pointed questions about my heart for different aspects of ministry.

Near the end of our conversation, he said, "Peter—you should not be a pastor. God has made you a teacher. Go and teach well."

I have learned a lot since that conversation in 1991. Mostly I have learned to retroactively appreciate the gracious release from a dream that wasn't really mine. I've learned that I was built to lead through challenging, questioning, explaining and inspiring. Those could have been good pastor-teacher qualities, but I lacked the nurturing, comforting, and caring impulses that make the best pastors minister effectively.

A lot of our students need someone to pull the college splinter from their brain.
A lot of our students need to be told graciously and lovingly that "college is a round hole and you are a beautiful trapezoid. Go be a chef, a designer, a builder, a painter. Harvest lumber, care for children, build a life with your hands and your heart. Let the people who live in their heads thrive at college. You go and live in the world of people and things."

A new report from Harvard University backs me up.
Let's expel students from the falsely universal expectations of college and some high school programs as well.
Let's release them to a different kind of greatness.

Eat like an Aspie

As a child, there were some foods I could not eat. I wasn't stubborn. In fact, I was fairly adventurous, but some foods were inedible because of texture or taste quirks. For example, I remember cheese being very hard to eat, especially the overly smooth texture of processed cheese. (I still consider Velveeta, Spam, and Miracle Whip the unholy trinity of food-like products.)

Anyway, if you are raising an Aspie like me, you might appreciate some practical tips from the Happy Housewife. Although not directed towards those who manage spectravores, it does have some smart and specific tips for making it through the food wars.

Check out The Happy Housewife’s Guide to Dealing with Picky Eaters:

Will I have Asperger's in heaven? Yes.

I had a little fun with this question recently by polling several Aspies and their parents. I left the question closed—as a yes-no question. That didn't stop anyone from answering with gusto and applying the answer to their own experience.

Not surprisingly, the trend was that parents experienced Aspergers as a condition/disability that will go away, while Aspies themselves see Aspergers as something that is part of their identity.

Background:

I am a Christian believer in the historical, biblical tradition. I am part of a congregation in the Evangelical Covenant Church which means I affirm basic tenets of Christianity including:

I believe:

•There is an eternal, relational God existing in three co-equal persons—Father, Son, & Spirit.

•God is the standard for morality.

•All humans fall short of God's standard—we call this deficit sin.

•The gap between God's standard and human sinful behavior separates us from God.

•We can't bridge the gap through our own effort or righteousness.

•God offered a bridge in the person of his own son Jesus.

•Jesus is both a real historical person and a divine person of the triune god.

•Jesus willingly accepted responsibility for my sin and yours, dying a substitutionary, sacrificial death by execution on a cross.

•God the Father raised His Son from true physical death—adding "Savior" to his eternal title as Lord of the Universe.

•As Lord and Savior, Jesus' death and resurrection broke the power of sin and death.

•In his sacrifice, Jesus offers each of us individual salvation that can restore us to a right relationship with God.

•Because God loves us and grants us true free will, salvation is not mandatory—we can accept it or reject it.

•Following his resurrection and ascension, Jesus sent a third person of the trinity—the Holy Spirit—to give us power to live in relationship with God.

•Accepting Jesus' offer of salvation is the way to experience eternity in God's presence—what Jesus called "paradise" in his words to the thief who was crucified with Him.

•What Jesus called paradise we commonly call heaven. It is the time/place/condition of eternal fellowship with a personal God and fellow saved believers.

•The doors to heaven are open to all, but God sets the conditions for admittance. His condition is acceptance and commitment to Jesus the Christ.

As I understand them, these beliefs are an important part of the good news that Christians call the gospel. I am probably leaving some things out, but in order to understand what I say about heaven you need to know what I mean.

Implications:

The list above is more doctrinal. Here are several implied or practical believes.

Truth is truth. Even if you disagree with every doctrinal point I made above, you may find some insightful truth about Asperger's Syndrome on this blog. I trust my expression of personal faith will not disqualify me in your eyes, but I take that risk willingly.

Asperger's is no respecter of faith. Being a Christian, Muslim, _________________, doesn't exempt or subject you to Asperger's any more than faith protects you from an earthquake. "The rain falls on the righteous and the unrighteous alike."

So, "Will I have Asperger's in Heaven?" demands a very granular response. I would expect a wide range of answers from my Buddhist, Catholic, Muslim, Atheist, and other friends—just as I hear a wide range of answers within my congregation and family. My answer is only my answer. My wife and son don't agree with me on all points. We are—none of us—monolithic.

Conclusion:

My answer is yes. I will have Asperger's in heaven.

There are aspects of Asperger's that help me relate to others and to God. My personal theology is that those elements will persist into eternity. The aspects of Asperger’s that draw me toward temptation and sin may still be present, but in some way I can’t yet understand, I will have the ability to live in complete harmony with my God and his holiness.

God doesn’t make mistakes. I have a more complex and undeveloped theology of disability than I can articulate here, but the essence is that we are living in a tiny slice of eternity. What happens now may not seem to have any purpose, but everything we experience has eternal value. We just can’t see it yet.

In my own brittle, impatient, Asperger’s way, I can’t wait to understand it all.

Celebration: The Seventh Stage of Asperger's Awareness

Celebration:

Can it be? Can a person with a neurological [disorder] like Asperger’s [syndrome] really celebrate their [infirmity]? I can. I do. So do others. When I wrote a post about my son disclosing his Asperger’s, he was excited—not embarrassed. When dozens of great bloggers choose to reveal their membership in the Asperger’s nation, they are not ashamed. We may be defensive, defiant, or overly zealous about our identity, but we are not ashamed of the truth. We are smart enough, secure enough, and gosh darn it—some people like us.

Learning to celebrate yourself is part of healthy human—spirituality, psychology and sociability. Whether in response to Asperger’s or something else, the seeds of self-acceptance yield the fruit of celebration. It is hard to live apart from the herd, for isolation is stressful. The laughter and casual affirmation of personhood is a balm to a wounded soul. When denied that social salve, we with Asperger’s can get cranky, dark, and dangerous. We are more likely to harm ourselves than others, but harm we do.

Celebration is the stage of surging up from self-acceptance to self-appreciation. From the steady breeze of acceptance blow gusts of celebration. We optimize the files at work, find the elusive bug in the software or design the perfect flow chart. We are valued, and we add value. That’s worth celebrating. In our Asperger’s we find an identity, not a disability. It is part of who we are; so after the darkness and emerging acceptance we celebrate our syndrome as part of embracing our undivided self. If you have ever fallen asleep with a sense of satisfaction—knowing you have observed, solved or created something new—then you are living in stage seven. Your celebration may be ever so private, but it is celebration all the same. Thank you. By accepting and embracing yourself, you accept and embrace all the citizens of Aspergia.

With celebration we gain a thicker skin and more energy for introspection. Freed from the dangers of darkness, we can explore our motivations and abilities without fear. The window of our blindness shrinks even more. With confidence and the courage of celebration, we come out to the world and our public sphere expands again. We speak, write, blog, and act on our behalf. We tell our story—if only to ourselves. But when we share with others, they respond to our new-found confidence and share back. That shrinks our hidden zone as well. The stage of celebration is good for our psychological development. It makes us better people and better friends.

As you might expect, celebration represents a restoration of appropriate self-esteem. The grid above needs another dimension; because the esteem of celebration is not the saccharine high of dawn. It is a steady faith in our own goodness and value. It is just as high, but it is far more deep.

If you love, serve, or are someone with Asperger’s Syndrome I applaud you. You are valuable and worth celebration. You deserve the love you get.

Acceptance: The Sixth Stage of Asperger's Awareness

Acceptance

The transition from darkness to acceptance is one of the least discernible shifts in Asperger’s Awareness. Darkness can be so painful that the subject and his/her family go numb in response. Given the options, numb is better than further harm, but it can slow down the process through to a healthy integration of Asperger’s into all aspect of identity. For some, acceptance is the terminal stage of Asperger’s awareness. It is a reasonable and manageable state of affairs, even if it misses some of the psychological and personal benefits of celebration.

Unlike some of the earlier stages, acceptance is a steady state. The shock of being “other” is balanced with knowledge about what Asperger’s is and how it works. The tension of living in the general population is a known, and the last spasms of darkness mellow into a stable, functioning system. Acceptance is not necessarily positive. It can be tinged with resentment and a permanent sense of bitterness or resignation. Acceptance is better than the alternatives though, precisely because it is predictable and static. The pain and negativity of Asperger’s may be profound, but since they are known quantities, the Aspie and loved ones can build and reinforce coping mechanisms. Not all mechanisms are equally desirable, and surely some Aspies develop dysfunctional patterns, but they are at least stable. In fact, the stability of acceptance is what makes celebration possible and begins to guard against a regression in to darkness.

There is no single JoHari configuration that captures the acceptance stage, but there are several patterns. Unlike the unrestrained disclosure that often accompanies dawn, those in the acceptance stage are more reflective about when and to whom they disclose Asperger’s. They don’t try to hide the syndrome, but they may set boundaries to protect their privacy and ensure appropriate disclosure.

In general, those in the acceptance stage have increased their own self-knowledge. This leads to a large public arena, but may also stimulate a reconsideration of what should remain private. Part of the stability of acceptance is managing the message. Some with Asperger’s develop a short script they can use to identify the syndrome to others.

During acceptance—which may last a lifetime—both Aspies and those who love them experience an uptick in self-esteem. Rather than denigrating their self-identity because of the Asperger’s, they tend to upgrade their description of the syndrome to match the level of personal esteem.

Esteem is a tricky thing in any case, but Aspergers complicates the issue because some of the tools that normally construct our self-concept are missing or low-functioning. Many neurotypicals generate a sense of their self-worth by reading how people respond to them. They track affirmation and correction (usually subtle) and build a self-concept from those inputs. Self-esteem is a dynamic idea, with daily and relational fluctuations. Some situations and people bring us down, and others bring us back up. For a person with Asperger’s, many of the cues and signals that feed the self-esteem machine are inscrutable. Consequently, a person who finally accepts Asperger’s may regress to behaviors that they tried to avoid earlier in the process. For example, an Aspie who learns that wearing a variety of clothing is socially normal might decide, as part of accepting her Asperger’s, to wear what she likes. This could lead to some social distancing—and that might be okay. In acceptance, the level of self-esteem is not typically as high as during ignorance, but it is much more informed. The esteem of one who accepts Asperger’s is much more complex, but that complexity is precisely what makes possible the final stage: celebration.

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More insights from the Asperger's Expert are on the main page.

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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More insights from the Asperger's Expert are on the main page.

Dawn: The Fourth Stage of Asperger's Awareness

DAWN:

I’ve spent a few dozen nights under the stars, as a fisherman in Alaska and an avid camper in all sorts of places. One thing I’ve learned is that spending a long cold night outside makes you appreciate dawn all the more. So too, a season of desperation makes an Asperger’s diagnosis feel like a welcome sunrise breaking over the horizon.

Through a combination of poor planning and excessive ambition, I have hiked, boated, biked and driven into the dark before making camp. I love waking up to see the campsite and scenery for the first time. Discovering Asperger’s felt just like that for me. I’d been living at Camp Asperger’s for years but couldn’t see the scenery.

When we with Asperger’s discover our diagnosis, we experience relief, satisfaction, and a perverse sense of vindication. We’d known for a while that we were different, but now we know why and how. Ahhh and Aha! We are ushered into a community of social nomads, and escape from the wasteland of arbitrary anxiety. Dawn rocks.

(So much of the stage of dawn is personal and emotional, I’m going to complete this blog in the first person plural. Please indulge me—I know I don't speak for all Aspies—and let me come back around to a more detached voice another time.)

By the light of our Asperger’s revelation, we start to read. We read people. We read books. We read blogs. We discover that our Asperger’s family has wise parents, Eddie Haskel-like self-promoters, celebrities, and a planetary reach—even if it is the wrong planet. We read wiki’s and forums and discussion boards galore. Some of us tweet. And retweet (please). There’s a very good chance that most of the people finding this site through a search engine are living in the dawn. To some of us, discovering Asperger’s is like finding out that there are others who speak the language we thought we’d made up. It is like grieving the loss of our twin speech sibling (See the movie Nell if you don’t get this reference) and then finding out we are really triplets or quadruplets or more! Dawn rocks again.

I don’t know how this works exactly, but the dawn of Asperger’s is a simultaneous offloading—of the imposed labels of “freak” and “oddball”—while shouldering the mantle of Asperger’s. We Aspies may be different, but we are not alone. We are not the only one. We are a I.

"I'm 33 for a moment

Still the man, but you see I'm a they"

(Five For Fighting - 100 Years)

The dawn of Asperger’s awareness is a curious place for Johari’s window. What was blind to us moves decisively and dramatically into the public arena. Then, we slide a bit of that information into the hidden pane. We learn that we are Asperger, and some of what that means. But we also learn that some of our nature is best kept to ourselves. We look around the community of Aspies and see a few relatives we might rather keep secret.

At the same time, we find out that there are other Aspies, parents, teachers, and friends who have been waiting to welcome and support us. By discovering Asperger’s and stepping into the public realm, we gain access to all sorts of communities, support groups, connections and resources. (Check the right sidebar) By the light of the dawn, we feel better and more optimistic. Dawn connects us to others. Dawn rocks; and dawn rolls on.

Knowing we cannot be banished to solitude ever again helps us feel better about ourselves. Both we with Asperger’s and the parents who love us feel better about ourselves. We should. Dawn is a needed respite in the stages of awareness. Breathe deeply and relax. Dawn is great, but dark days follow. In a way, the sun slips back below the horizon and all that is found seems lost again. Before midday, darkness will eclipse the dawn.

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More insights from the Asperger's Expert are on the main page.

Desperation: The Third Stage of Asperger's Awareness

DESPERATION:

Though ignorance is bliss and inkling is promising, there is a dip of desperation before dawn breaks. The stage of desperation is the time when we know enough to be disturbed, but not enough to take action. Sadly, desperation is not the bottom—that comes later…

In desperation, parents move from suspicion to certainty. Rather than wondering if their child is really different, parents begin to catalog and investigate those differences. Since most of the differences are problematic, parents are usually investigating as a matter of self-defense. (Nobody gets hot and troubled trying to “solve” musical talent or prodigious intellect.) Those suffering from what I call Asparent’s Syndrome are more likely to need support and understanding.

In our family, we entered desperation on the first Friday of our son’s first-grade year. Before he went to school, my wife contacted his new teacher and informed her about some of David’s “different” behaviors. Mrs. S., who has since become a dear family friend, responded to my wife and said, “I see what you mean.” The teacher gave us external confirmation that we weren’t imagining things. While it verified our sanity, it also drove us straight into desperation. I can draw a direct line from that Friday message to the day an IEP team determined that David was on the Autism Spectrum. The period between validation and diagnosis was a fearful and desperate time. But it helped us along the way toward a better day.

For parents, fear escalates along with certainty and clarity. For the subject, the path through desperation may look different. To some degree, the subject with Asperger’s is not as motivated to figure out what’s up, but how to get along. As Temple Grandin has famously observed, the child with Autism/Asperger’s must learn how to imitate proper human behavior. Thus, the child’s focus (or teen’s, or adult’s) is less about labeling the condition, and more about learning to live with it. For me, as a child with Asperger’s, I didn’t care what I was. I just knew I was me, and that parts of me were unacceptable. I didn’t have enough ego development to reflect on how different I was from the norm. Instead, I learned (very imperfectly) to suppress the parts of me that seemed to provoke ridicule and hostility. I also tried (very clumsily) to accentuate the parts of me that earned praise and acceptance. The result, common to many with Asperger’s, is the emergence of a survival system of masks and façades and the practice of rapid identity switching. Some with Asperger’s are better than others, but all of us expend tremendous energy trying to cope. It is hard and desperately so, but it is a desperation for doing rather than the desperation for knowing common to our Asparents.

In the season of desperation, knowledge about the symptoms moves completely out of the hidden quadrant and across the blind and public arenas. As parents seek answers, they talk with the child—which makes it clear that the behaviors are under observation. At least within the family domain, desperation is public.

Some aspects of how people—even parents—perceive Asperger’s behaviors may remain unknown to the subject, so desperation is an appropriate time for parents to provide gentle and caring feedback. This feedback should not take the form of demands, accusations, and ultimatums. Instead, parents might choose an inquiry approach. Asking a child to compare his or her behaviors with peers in similar situations is a non-judgmental way to begin identifying and discussing non-standard behaviors.

The reason parents must be careful and protective during this stage is because the child’s sense of difference is now an open issue and has negative impacts on self-concept and self-esteem.

Desperation can be a brief season, but it is real and necessary because it drives the discovery and diagnosis that begins a walk into the light. Fortunately, that light is coming.

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More insights from the Asperger's Expert are on the main page.

Inkling: Stage Two of Asperger's Awareness

INKLING:

The path from ignorance to awareness is not well marked. There are few mileposts or road signs along the way and it can be hard to discern movement from one stage to another. Everyone exits the stage of blissful ignorance at a different place in a different way. A mother may have a blind spot about her child because she is accustomed to some idiosyncratic behaviors, while a father may see those behaviors and mirror or deny them. Sometimes it takes an outsider to encounter the behavior and immediately place it outside the range of typical.

In other cases, the intimacy of self or parent observation leads to early detection and recognition of Asperger’s symptoms, well before the syndrome is named and researched. As one parent commented on my Stage One post, “I had an awareness from birth…that something was up.” For a parent—often a mom—who is investing massive amounts of intimate time in her child, subtle symptoms like eye contact, muscle tone, distractibility, and even some aspect of how a baby rests (or doesn’t) in her arms can be an early indicator. Though they don’t all have Asperger’s, I have learned that my instinctive recognition that a child is getting sick is usually correct. There is some combination of breath odor, skin “feel” and a general subdued attitude that always precedes a heavy cold or flu. I’m sure there’s some more subtle and subconscious dynamic going on that allows some parents to sense Asperger’s well before any formal diagnostic criteria emerge.

At the other end of the spectrum are subjects who make it well into childhood, teen years, or adulthood without suspecting or raising suspicion of Asperger’s syndrome. Sometimes, the dynamics of adolescence are a powerful catalyst for bringing Asperger’s symptoms into focus. A child who seems normally quiet or withdrawn might be masking AS incompetence that comes to the surface during adolescent attempts at friend-making or romance. I remember clearly that during my fourth-year I had an epiphany about how people think about each other. I was convinced that my looks, my voice, my geekiness, my poor eyesight, etc. were the subject of constant recognition and criticism by all my classmates. One day I realized that I spent very little time observing and evaluating my peers, so it made sense that they spent very little time critiquing me. That realization was liberating (too much so, as I will share when I blog about Stage Five: Darkness). What other may have picked up on through intuition, I only accessed through cognition. The truth is, my self-consciousness was way out of proportion on the high side. Being an Aspergian extremist, I promptly swung my pendulum round to the other extreme.

By sixth grade, I knew I was something. When we were required to write Valentine’s Day cards to all the students in our class, I got some that were signed, “Not Really.” I knew I was intelligent and articulate. I could sing a bit and was tall enough to compensate for being slow and clumsy. I didn’t know why nobody liked me, but I knew it was true. I had an inkling of my Aspergian citizenship that persisted unresolved for 20 years.

Most people, especially in 2010, don’t take 20 years to transition from ignorance through inkling to dawn. There are so many resources and conversations about Asperger’s and Autism that someone is sure to vocalize a curiosity much more quickly. That vocalized curiosity, whether it comes from the subject, parents or someone else, is the beginning of the shift from ignorance toward awareness.

In the world of Johari window insights, inkling is when Asperger’s begins to move from the unknown pane into (usually) the blind spot. Although some teens and adults with Asperger’s may begin to suspect and self-diagnose, it is much more common for the first recognition to come from someone else. Since Asperger’s inhibits the aspects of self-awareness that include comparative social observations, the subject is less likely to observe the package of stereotypical behaviors and interests, social awkwardness, pedantic language that are external markers of Asperger’s. Thus, the movement through Johari is almost always from unknown to blind.

Once it is in the blind spot, Asperger’s is evident to someone. If that or those individuals are parents, the recognition raises concerns and lowers esteem. Without a clear answer, parents are left wondering, “What’s wrong/different/odd about my child?” Answers lag questions by months or years, and the intervening period is marked by decreased optimism and parent-esteem. Often, the subject picks up on the parent angst and misinterprets it as disapproval or disappointment. This is a pattern that re-manifests later on and can trigger a dark and dismal period.

Inkling is a relatively passive stage, but it leads through desperation before an explosion of learning, awareness, and recognition. Stay tuned for some stories about the desperation before dawn breaks.

In the meantime though, please retweet and/or add your comments below about how you first got an inkling that set you on the path towards Asperger’s Awareness. I’m glad to be there with you.

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More insights from the Asperger's Expert are on the main page.

Bliss: The first stage of Asperger’s Awareness

BLISS

During the first stage of Asperger’s Awareness, nobody knows about the syndrome. Not only is the presence of the syndrome unknown, but neither the parents nor the subject may observe any symptoms. This blissful ignorance may be simply a factor of age. Until a child is 2-4 years old, the basic symptoms of Asperger’s are difficult to detect before the child’s language and cognitive development are sufficiently established.

As an example, a toddler Aspie may not have sufficient social interaction to reveal the impairments that emerge in childhood. While some of the early indicators of Asperger’s may be unusually advanced vocabulary or hyperlexia, with an infant or toddler, those symptoms are still below the threshold of detection.

Blissful ignorance can also be a function of denial, mild symptoms, or sophisticated coping skills. A family with an Aspie member might engage in various levels of denial, either celebrating his intellectual/verbal skills or ability to interact comfortably with adults. Ignoring the challenges of Asperger’s while emphasizing its gifts can be a conspiracy within the family system that keeps the status quo in place. Denial takes a lot of energy, and the energy required to stay in ignorance is rarely sustainable.

In stage one, Bliss, the presence of Asperger’s Syndrome is located in the unknown quadrant of the Johari window. For more information about the dynamics of the Johari Window, please review my earlier post on the background for this stage model.

Logically, anyone who is learning about stage one is no longer in stage one. So why spend time discussing bliss? As with many family and psychological dynamics, the seeds of later challenges are sown early on. Some of the patterns that can cause problems for childe and teen Aspies—not to mention adults with the syndrome—begin in first stage, when Asperger’s is still unknown. Patterns of sensitivity, excuse-making, blaming, protecting, rescuing, denying, etc. can all begin when parents and subjects are still ignorant of the syndrome. In some cases, these family system dynamics are themselves powerful forces that create additional complications later on. Subjects and their families who learn about Asperger’s at any point may find it useful to reflect on ways they may have been responding to Asperger’s without knowing it.

During the first stage, both subject and the family have a relatively neutral level of self-esteem and self-identity. As Asperger’s emerges from obscurity, self and family-esteem is one of the first casualties. It is rare for a family to learn about Asperger’s without suffering some sense of loss and inadequacy. Bliss is temporary, but it is a necessary and universal precursor to Stage Two: Inkling.

Please share your comments below. Have you experienced bliss? Do you sometimes wish you could regress back to bliss?

Check back in a few days for some thoughts on Stage Two.

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More insights from the Asperger's Expert are on the main page.