I’ve been to two autism organisations so far, both of them have offered me one to one support i.e. I spend however long, potentially ten hours a day to two hours a day or whatever, with one person which I can do pretty much what I want to do in that particular time. And also I have attended classes… they weren’t classes, inter… workshops. One we were building a mosaic, I built a mosaic which is not actually in this house currently or I would show it to you. And there was one we were setting up a charity shop, which I didn’t play particularly much role in. I came rather late, but we were organising, we were able to get a business to give for members of this organisation work experience. And so we tried to set up a charity shop, we did actually recently open, and it was very successful here. 

 

But the one to one support is what I’d like to talk about. In the first organisation I went to, they advertised it as being, I can use this time to do whatever I wanted to do which sounded great for me. Because I’ve had a lot of counselling and I’ve found that I can spend a lot of time talking and during that hour or whatever, I can maybe establish a lot things about myself and what I should be doing with my life, and how to change it. But then for the rest of the entire week I’m just focussing back on my obsessive thoughts and taking no practical action whatsoever, anyway coming back a week later to counselling and just talking about the same thing. So the idea of the autism thing is that it’s much more practical, I can do what I want with it. And so… and trying to sort out my life, trying to get things in order, my life’s quite of a mess. It’s all … There’s no organisation, it’s all chaos, what I’m doing in my life, and my attempt to try and sort out my mental health problems and really very minimal, I do almost nothing in relation to it because it’s so overwhelming, and just so much easier just to sit in my… just simply think about whatever’s consuming my mind, which is never this particular thing. So practical things is what I really needed help with.

 

Unfortunately, the first autism organisation I went to did not have the same notion of practicality as I did. Their entire notion was to give me something to do during the day. And their notion of what I should be doing was things like go to the park for example, was one thing we did. Going to a nearby town for example to walk around and have a look at it, going for a walk somewhere. All things like this, practical things like this, which quite simply I didn’t want to do, and I had no particular interest in doing whatsoever. And yet, this is what they very much insisted on to a point whereby they actually ended support for me, even though it took over a… about fifteen months to set up, I was actually seeing them for about two and a half months once per week before they completely cut support. And I just couldn’t understand why, why they thought I should want to go to, you know, the park and walk around it, is not my notion of sorting out my life. 

 

And I’ve found since then that perhaps a lot of autistic people to my mind are really quite immature, which is fair enough, I’ve got no problem with that, but in that regard I could see, well it’s not as if… immaturity is perhaps… a lot of them are, but then again a lot of them aren’t, and would still be interested in doing this sort of thing, but not for me.

 

Quite simply it’s almost the point is that a lot of autistic people don’t have any sort of life, and so they are trying to give them some sort of life, that this organisation was trying to do. But what they failed to do… I know some of them are very immature and so would be interested in doing all sorts of immature activities, which perhaps going to the park is not a particularly good example, but there are other examples I could bring if I were to think about it. 

 

But for me, I’m trying to live a functional life. I’m trying to, to a degree be normal, I suppose. Almost, as if I can psychological benefits that are there, if I can attain normality, or at least a level of normality. And of this they had no interest, I just couldn’t communicate to them at all that this was what I was trying to do, and it just completely failed.

 

Whereas the actual organisation I am going to currently is good, because I well I could spend two hours a week, and talk about what I want to talk about and quite simply get my mind straight… straightened out. I can have something on my mind which I might want to do, but I need to get everything in order first, I need to talk about it, and try and make plans. Often making diagrams and things, to actually ascertain what I’m trying to do in so far as spiral-diagrams and things like that, very useful, just for simply… okay simply for autism as far as I can tell it’s inability to, one of the problems is inability to… how information works basically in the autistic mind is different from the normal mind, and that’s basically what I’m trying to do; I’m trying to get the information into a proper structure which I can analyse and try and sort out my life to get to do and to find to talk someone to about it, and ask their opinions and all sorts of things, and, it’s immensely beneficial. I can’t do it myself. If I try and sort out my life on my own, I just sit there and don’t do anything. Just stare into space because it’s all so overwhelming. Whereas if I can get it in order. But that’s one thing I’ve never been able to do on my own and that’s what my office and support worker, that’s what she is extremely helpful with, quite simply.