The Questionable Mindblind Theory of Autism

There was a cute social media post recently that asked kindergarten kids what gifts would be best for 30-year-olds. Of course there were lots of hearing aids and hip replacements in the mix. And it struck me that this could be a good exercise to gently raise awareness of our own stereotypes. Considering what give you would suggest for ___  type of person (slotting in an age, race, gender, ability, etc.), might be a way to flush out the tiny prejudices we might harbour about individuals that are part of a group. We always need reminders that we are each individuals despite all the group affiliations we have. This is especially true when we're talking about people with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), who can be dramatically different from one another. This is a super long one with headings to help!

Dating for Dogs

Lots of people discredit the Myers-Briggs as just a horoscope, but it's significantly different and can be useful in recognizing that we're all innately different kinds of people. This awareness can help us get along in this world and maybe even find love, or at least a better roommate.

Our Tendency to Notice Differences by Type

Dividing people into types based on intrinsic tendencies has been around for millennia, born of scrutinized observations of human nature. Ayurvedic Doshas were recorded about 3,000 years ago identifying people who are Vata (energetic but scattered), Pitta (systematic and ambitious, but dogmatic), or Kapha (methodical but slow moving). The four humours came around 500 years later with

Alcmaeon of Croton to differentiate those who tend to be sanguine (enthusiastic, active, social), phlegmatic (reserved, intellectual, solitary), choleric (ambitious, decisive, short-tempered), or melancholic (depressive, cold, dry). If you think of those categories long enough, you can easily find yourself playing a game of slotting your friends and family under each term.

Then Jung wrote Psychological Types in 1921, outlining opposing traits along three continuums: extraverted/introverted, sensing/intuitive, and thinking/feeling. (That last one might be better updated to task-oriented/people-oriented.) Although it produces only nine specific types, the continuum set-up provides infinite possibilities within each set of letters. It's similar to being mainly melancholic with a touch of sanguine, or having a primary and secondary dosha. Jung explains his stance on innate personality:

A Bit More on Burnout

I was listening to VoicEd.ca last week (Wednesdays at 8:45 am), and they recommended Lynn Thomas's post on resilience and burnout summarized from a talk by Dr. Robyne Hanley-Dafoe. I agree with much of what she writes, particularly about the number of teachers hitting a wall (70% of teachers are concerned with their own mental health), that too much changed too fast (creating anomic stress), and that the public's negative perception of teachers doesn't help. 

I looked up the speaker, and a blurb that's following Hanley-Dafoe says our "modern conception of resiliency as 'fighting' or being 'tougher' is misguided."  Absolutely. I like Dr. Alok Kanojia's reminder that the opposite of sensitive isn't strong, but INsensitive. Yup. 

But, I have some stoppers with all the resiliencey-speak and with a primary solution geared towards reducing the workload-to-time ratio. I wrote about my concerns with resilience being a scapegoat last January:

"If we train students on resilience-speak, then it makes everything they experience a 'them' problem. They just don't have enough resilience to weather the storm, and they should be working to improve that. . . . . Make no mistake, 'resilience' is the new and improved version of 'grit.' Paul Gorski once referred to grit and growth mindset rhetoric as a 'long line of ways to avoid confronting inequity--desperate attempt to locate the 'problem' in kids, not injustice.' He says that telling people they just need a different mindset or more grit or resilience to do better in school denies, in the most condescending way, the reality that people who are marginalized are often models of resilience and grit. . . . We could pull our bootstraps up to our necks and still be struggling with it all"

On "Fixing" ASD

I watched a course-load of videos by Dr. Alok Kanojia (@HealthyGamerGG) this past summer. He's a therapist specializing in addiction in his day job and focused on gaming addictions online, but he has broadened his videos to encompass many other issues. He doesn't do therapy online but "coaches" people instead. And typically right there I'd be out. Coaching?? It all sounds a little goofy and new-agey. But I got hooked when I first saw his video with Natalie Wynn (aka ContraPoints) the previous October because of his openness to really listen to her experiences and learn from them before asking the precisely right questions necessary to get her to understand herself at further depth. And then they meditated. It's a mix of Freud and a mountain top guru; at the very least I'm learning lots of Sanskrit words in the process.

I appreciate how he let Natalie explain her experience as a trans person, BUT then I saw a more recent video with a streamer, DesMephisto, taking about being autistic. Dr. K focused on fixing their ASD (Autism Spectrum Disorder). He often uses an addiction analogy to explain that, generally, first we need to understand and accept who we are, like we have to accept being an addict, but we don't stop at acceptance; the next task it to change ourselves so we can better live in the world. And then he asked Des what many consider an offensive question: "If I gave you a pill that would make you no longer autistic, would you take it?" 

Yikes. 

If that doesn't seem offensive, then imagine if he had asked Natalie that same question about being trans. It doesn't even make sense. 

On Burnout

Dr. Alok Kanojia is a psychiatrist who specializes in addiction treatment. His videos are fantastic for some everyday issues as well, like this one on burnout. The most impactful line from this video is that burnout tends to happen when, "people who want to do a good job are placed in situations in which doing a good job is very, very difficult." It's not because you're lazy or a bad fit with your career, but that your workplace isn't acknowledging their part in making a job unnecessarily difficult. And it tends to happen more to people who actually care about what they're doing, not people who are just putting in hours. He says,

"One of the biggest scams that's currently being perpetrated against people about burnout and mental wellness . . . that's subtle and society wide . . . people are placing the responsibility for burnout on the individual. . . . . Burnout affects the individual . . . so there's a subtle scam going on that once you label it as an individual problem . . . then you work on it as an individuals. It's a catastrophic shift of responsibility from the workplace to the individual."