Accidentally destroyed goods from incomprehension, inability to follow instructions, panic attacks, social phobia too great to get there sometimes, big social communication challenges, being bullied and the butt of jokes, sexual harassment… you name it, it happened.

It was at least the late 70s-early 80s, so 15 year olds were cheap factory fodder and required no CVs in those days. Having arms and legs was a qualification. Holding a job was another matter entirely.

Big incentive to try to study instead, another massive challenge - all in Nobody Nowhere if you want to read about it.

Used typing skills to do casual on call data entry and copy typing, probably my most successful mainstream employment, for a year. Jobs were days, weeks, months but at least due to the casual nature of the work. Socially it was still fairly challenging.

Remedial english and maths, trying to pass at tertiary level (where there were student benefits to survive on). Finally did a post grad teaching qualification (in Somebody Somewhere), not without its challenges.

Then the autism world put me to use, 4 years of volunteering, then public speaking etc. Been a writer, artist, songwriter, after that, then consultant and screenwriter since then.

Because receptive language processing and visual interpreting is still quite slow/unreliable, I’d still be limited in the mainstream work place.

I’ve always liked DOING. I’m agitated when not doing.

Getting by as a self employed writer/artist/consultant isn’t easy, but its given me consistent achievement in place of exploitation, unpredictability and consistent failure.

this is why we started http://www.auties.org to help others to help themselves take their skills and services to the public.

… Donna.

Tony’s not diagnosed on the spectrum. He’s a psychologist who diagnoses people. Wendy Lawson wears Irlen tints but she says hers help her with bright light, not visual fragmentation.

People on the spectrum worldwide now wear tints, so much so its like a club symbol. Most don’t have visual fragmentation or agnosia, but wear them to feel more socially relaxed behind tints and/or because they dislike bright light. There are others who wear them for all that AND visual fragmentation but none with well known websites.

Among the most well known people who DO wear tints for visual perceptual disorders (as opposed to just for social comfort and distaste for bright light) are three published functionally non-verbal authors Lucy Blackman, Richard Attfield and Alberto Frugone.

Perhaps you can go fish for people in a forum.

… Donna *)

… Donna *)

ps. This isn’t really the topic here so given I closed this topic elsewhere after becoming exhausted by endless interviewing on it (the bug under a microscope thing), lets skip more of the same.

I read in your book about the fragmented vision. I understand this as many of us experience it.

You said in your comment above … that you have fragmented vision without your lenses. Without your lenses, is your life considerably worse and if so in what ways?? Like, which functions are affected? Second question, is your social functioning the same with & without your lenses?
Thanks.
Ursula

You weren’t so lucky. You’re Irlen ones didn’t work for you.

Hope that clarifies.

How much sorting visual perception will improve the emotional/social phobia aspects depends on the DEGREE to which that’s underpinned or separate to the visual perceptual issue. In my case they were partially intertwined but not totally. Also, unlike people with a social phobia/exposure anxiety and depression, mines a bipolar state so I didn’t struggle so much to look at people when in manic states except when very agitated. Mostly the eye contact thing was a bigger struggle in depressive cycles. So over a day or week I could swing pretty wildly between being socially oblivious and highly self protective. But that’s ME, so each person’s different. Someone with depression and not a rapid cycling bipolar state would have a totally different, perhaps more consistent experience. The best book to make sense of such variation is The Jumbled Jigsaw.

I still have fragmented vision, but only without my lenses.

Donna *)