Montse Navarro has 45 years and is autistic. His diagnosis came when he was touching the 30. Until then I thought it was weird.
Neurodivergent is somewhat younger and is also autistic. She was diagnosed in her early thirties. Until then, I felt like I didn’t fit in.
According to the World Health Organization (WHO), autism is one of the autism spectrum disorders (ASD), a group of conditions characterized by some degree of alteration of social behavior, communication and language , and that also includes childhood disintegrating disorder and Asperger’s syndrome.
But BBC Mundo wanted them to talk about what it is, how they see themselves and how others see us.
So he contacted them by Skype.
Beyond of the coronavirus, for them it is a safe environment, since they live in different Spanish cities and traveling is a challenge for them.
“I would like to cuddle to Neurodivergent right now, but until there is teleportation it will be complicated, because travel stresses me a lot “, he admits Montse.
Neurodivergent – is her Twitter name, as she prefers to remain anonymous because her family does not accept that she is autistic – she soon feels identified.
” And if you go to a city like Madrid … Mine does not have the traffic of the capital, it does not have the noise, the light is different, everything is very different and I am used to dosing my energy in my surroundings. If you already put me there, it’s like my battery lasts half ”.
This is the result of the dialogue that arose between the two .
The awareness of being different
Montse: Autism is (having) a slightly different type of brain. It works and processes information in a different way.
And by information I mean stimuli: visual, sound, everything. You do not adapt the same and that makes you behave in a different way … And society sees you differently.
Autism Spain defines ASD as a disorder of neurobiological origin that affects the configuration of the nervous system and brain function.
Neurodivergent : My first awareness of being different was when I was 4 years old. I had the impression that I understood things one way and people went to another ball .
For example, talking to two or three people I get along well, but as there are more people my degree of conversation fades, because everything goes so fast that I don’t have the ability to adapt.
In the same way that he uses his Twitter user, he avoids photos and as an image he always uses Stitch, the character from the animated film Lilo & Stitch , a blue alien who, camouflaged as a dog, must save his family on Earth with the help of his friend Lilo.
All my process of diagnosis and discovery is like Stitch’s life in his movie. You do not know why things happen to you and you only feel that you are trying to adapt to the environment so that they do not reject you.
When you discover who you are and why you are, you like to accept yourself and everything starts to go better.
Late diagnosis
According to estimates, one child from each 160 suffers from a disorder of the autism spectrum , although the prevalence rate varies greatly from one study to another and the most recent ones point to to a higher one.
It is difficult to detect in the first 12 months of life, but it is usually possible to establish a diagnosis before the child reaches two years, says the WHO.
Although Montse and Neurodivergent are just two examples that not always is like this.
Neurodivergent : When I was little the pressure for fit that, if I had known I was different, I would have recognized that there was nothing wrong with me, but that it was like that.
In my adolescence I don’t know how many I’s will have existed because of the continuous reaffirmation that what I did was right.
Nobody knows how to deal with you, and is that you yourself do not know how to treat yourself.
If I had known that I was autistic I would not have tried so hard to be something that I was not. And try hard without succeeding.
It’s like telling a blind man to make an effort to see.
Montse : It would have been very good for me to know, because that way I would have developed better. I could have interpreted the actions of others better and I would not have been so lost.
At school I had a best friend. (Later), in college, I realized that I didn’t know how to make friends, because she had made the ones I had.
I saw myself super alone.
I started asking how to make friends and they told me it was easy, but I didn’t get it. I was quite overwhelmed.
With the diagnosis and meeting other autistic people you no longer look so strange. It is that I had not met the group of people who agreed with me so much.
On the role of others
Montse : What can neurotypical people – people who are not autistic – do to create a more just society?
Neurodivergent : Change is always required of the different: you are autistic and you have to conform.
To change this, the question is to what extent the parties are willing to be respected. Some have to understand that they are of one nature and others of another.
And what do you have to have to be a good father or mother of an autistic person?
Montse : I can tell you what I would have liked to have had.
The main thing is (to give) a lot of love but not for who it will be, but by those. (If not), the child grows up thinking that he does not deserve love until he achieves certain achievements.
Then, (you have to) listen to him, and I do not mean if he speaks or does not speak.
If I can understand my cat when it is hungry, a person, no matter how disabled, is still a person and you can communicate with them. But you have to want to communicate in the terms that that person can.
I speak, but my communication is not the same as that of a neurotypical person, and that is why there are so many misunderstandings.
I have no tact To say things, sometimes I am pedantic and I need to be told: “Stop.”
And apart from that, I know it’s scary, but you have to let them go a bit. It seems that any excuse is good for not wanting to release a disabled child, not to let him make a mistake, to make decisions.
The WHO agrees that the role of parents of autistic children is fundamental in their development.
According to the agency, family support serves, among many others things, to create a stimulating environment for that child.
The “superficiality neurotypical ”
Neurodivergent : Neurotypicals ask“ how are you? ” and they settle for a “good”.
I have never known how to distinguish these types of questions.
You ask me “how are you?” and I will tell you everything: my week, my month and I will give you a detailed analysis of my days of sadness and joy – he laughs -.
Our degree of sincerity does not correspond to what they live them – neurotypical or non-autistic – and it’s like going without a compass.
Montse : You have given an important point: superficiality.
I see the neurotypical world as superficial, it is not intense like us, we go to the bottom.
They have been built based on appearances.
Neurodivergent : I feel like they are in a permanent Official Language School.
Do you know when you study a language and they do the typical questions and they only teach you to answer “I’m fine”?
Montse : I think superficial conversations are fine for a certain social lubricant, but limited to not that. People do not reach the depths of their being and thus you cannot speak honestly.
Neurodivergent : We talk about deeper issues, as previous situations of abuse, and for the neurotypical environment it is more difficult to deepen this way.
Montse : We are social beings, but my socialization is more intense and less superficial.
Socializing tires me more, and there are people who misinterpret this.
They see that I start to pout and they think that I like them wrong, and no, it’s that I’m starting to get tired. But it’s not something I choose.
If it were up to me, I’d be on fire all day, but I get tired. And not just socializing, because I dedicate a lot of effort and intensity to whatever I do.
Neurodivergent : On the other hand, you have me, what I’m the opposite: I adore socializing with anyone.
At any moment I hook up, and I never know when to stop, “he says with a laugh.
I don’t know if what I’m telling I’m telling the right person.
Montse : That happens to me too… Is what I’m telling appropriate?
Neurodivergent : Yes, but to me the thought comes after, not during.
Relationship and sex issues
Montse : I would like to talk about the topic of couple and sexuality.
Neurodivergent : Yes, they are the worst treated topics.
That you are going to have sex being a person with a disability? It is not possible.
They try to show that you are not going to have a relationship as a couple.
And since they hide that world from you, I think we are the group with the most possibilities We have to suffer abuse or tortuous relationships.
Montse : Yes, yes, we do not get rid of it.
I have fallen into abuse very easily.
We are childish, they treat us with that paternalism of “I make the decisions for you.”
Neurodivergent : My first partner controlled me, but I didn’t see anything strange about that because no one had explained the social norms of having a partner to me.
And think too in the subtleties of an acceptance in the case of an autistic person.
I think that we live many situations of abuse because we are not able to say no in time or not at the right time.
Montse : The conversation with autistic adolescents should be aimed at these topics. as: “Maybe you won’t know how to interpret certain signals or stimuli and you rush into a situation.”
The Spanish foundation CERMI Mujeres warns that women with disabilities are four times more at risk of suffering sexual violence than other women.
Edition : Read Sales
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