Co-morbid conditions – Being oneself and the dance between identity and medication
I had to renew my prescription this week for the small amount of atypical anti psychotic medication that helps me cope with life and found myself talking about medication and the concept of ‘being oneself’.
When does medication stop us being ourself? When does it enable us to be more of that self? And which self does it enable us to be; the self we have built to fit a role or position in society that was never ‘us’ in the first place or does it enable us to be the meta self I would have, could have been had I not had the mood, anxiety and compulsive disorders that the medication was treating?
And why stop there? For some people nutritional supplements, smart drugs, special diets, tinted lenses, hypnotherapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy, cranio-sacral therapy, chiropractic, immune boosters, non-toxic water, exercise, sunlight or good sleeping patterns may together all dramatically alter information processing, sensory perception and, hence, behavior, emotional responses, regulation of emotion and our relationship to ourself, to others and the world.
Do such things stop one from being one’s ‘real self’ or enable one to become even more of that self? Is one merely fitting the status quo this way by making oneself functional enough to fit into the status quo? If one choses, instead to create a more fitting but idiosyncratic ‘normality’ of one’s own, would we accept this as their ‘self’ or merely ‘what they settled for’?
I explained to the doctor that I prefered to take the tiniest dose of medication possible because it allowed me to experience regular reminders of the mood, anxiety and compulsive disorders I was taking the medication for. Why, the doctor wanted to know? Because, I explained, when medication works consistently in higher doses its easy to imagine one doesn’t need it, then go off it only to find life is chaotic, dysfunctional, unbearable. The sense of ‘self’, I explained, becomes confused, the ‘it’ versus the ‘me’. I felt better experiencing little reminders of my natural but chaotic, dysfunctional, even sometimes dangerous (bipolar) state so I knew that I had a choice which self to be.
Which self to be? Such a strange concept to many people, that one has a choice and yet both are considered ‘self’. But remove that choice and one cannot be sure that the functional, less chaotic self is the real self because it neither came naturally nor could one have a sense of having chosen it via the affect of medication. Its a matter of alienation and how to avoid it. If we feel removed from the process of experiencing self, then we cannot own that selfhood, identify with it.
Yet there are people who don’t live this strange version of reality, ‘normality’ and yet they too have the dilemma of who is their real self. Is it the one everyone else has come to like and want, the one that fits the expected niches? Or are they the one which failed to do so and now lives, supressed underneath?
Self is a strange concept and ultimately the only expert on it is the one experiencing the individual themselves. If we walked back into our own life ten, twenty, fifteen years ago, we’d not be the same self we were then.
According to the Buddhists, selfhood is transient and we shouldn’t become overly attached to it. Fortunately, I am not attached to any one sense of self. I’m glad for my sense of self to change and to be like the ocean, impossible to hold, and with a tide and undercurrent that can switch places in an instant, something enigmatic and difficult to truly know for certain yet possible to feel poetically.
As I take my prescription from the doctor, I know in my heart it brings me closer to the ocean by saving me from a Tsunami and that’s all that matters.
… Donna Williams
author, artist, eccentric
My usual response to drugs is that they mask something, and so are perhaps more destructive than beneficial. But then I avoid certain foods because they disturb my moods, so I guess in a sense, that’s not so different from taking medication.
I don’t identify a one, clear self, but rather a continuum of selves that I flow amongst. These self states are not distinct personalities as in dissociative identity, but they would be significantly different if I were able to isolate them. I sense that it’s important not to limit myself to one distinct self.
I agree. I think the ‘one self’ thing is over-rated. Fact is the greatest source of pain is our own rigidity in being unable to accept change and adapt. The more flexible we are in our sense of self the more resilient we are to change and that means less pain. I have always had a strong sense of self but its certainly not a single one and that’s never bothered me too much. I think if I had NO sense of self at all it might be hard to value a sense of MY life, and there’s been times I found having a self far too ‘present’ and prefered to give up any possessiveness of identity in any form. But I think the danger comes where one over-rates who someone else it, because then there is disatisfaction, loss of control over one’s beingness perhaps. I’m not one for pedestals, not for being on one and not for putting anyone else on one. I’ve always looked ‘across’. I think if we can release ourselves from all manner of expectations about who we should be we are in a more comfortable position to accomodate and build a life that constructively fits who we are at a given phase in time.
you are right too, special diets can be a form of self medication. Dairy, gluten and salicylates cause me pretty marked drug-like affects – dairy like LSD, Gluten like bitch-pills and Salicylates like cocaine! What I’d like to see is acceptance of metabolic diversity so those like me affected adversely by mainstream foods, can easily access foods that maintain my equilibrium and allow me to manage on much lower doses of medication to manage what’s left.
🙂 Donna Williams
I saw your article about DXM and the autistic girl. I just wanted to point out that DXM is not ecstasy. DXM is cough syrup. Ecstasy is a synthetic drug called methyldioxymethamphetamine, an dit’s a phenylthalanine. it’s more related to meth than it is to dxm.
However I thought that the effects dxm produced in the girl were interesting, as ecstasy is what makes me feel “normal”. Instead of being apathetic, unmotivated, unrelatable all the time, ecstasy produces a sense of empathy and sociability very rarely felt. A search on autism and serotonin through any search engine reveals disturbances in many autistic people’s serotonin levels.
Thanks for your letter.
I think sometimes society expect us all to be bubbly, outgoing, empathic, sociable etc and some of us aren’t designed that way. Some of us are geared for self protection, solitude, not comfortable with intimacy and self-owning without being selfish and this is confused with empathy. I’m not big on dramatics. I don’t cope well with emotional push pull and I’m a what you see is what you get type of person. I like my reality served raw not contorted into presentations that offer something they’re not. So sometimes I think the issue is we need to be accepted more for who and what we each are and not expect or force ourselves to function in situations where the only way to ‘fit in’ or ‘keep up’ or be popular is to take illicit drugs to do so. I’m not against drugs, don’t get me wrong. I just feel that the long term safety of drug use has to be something that adds to the value of one’s life and doesn’t leave one worse off in the end. Illicit drugs aren’t regulated for dose and content or fully tested for affect short term, long term in in unusual social minorities with quirky metabolism. Hence brain damage and death is a high price to pay to turn oneself into something more ‘functional’. I’m happy with any small dose of a tested drug that allows me to take moderate risks and experience broader capacity to not just function but, like you say, EXPERIENCE involvement on a range of levels. In time, perhaps society will find ways of doing this for people without so many labels and for the safety of those involved.
warmly,
Donna Williams *)
Hi Donna,
On reading your last message within this thread, I agree 192% with the statement “society expect us all to be bubbly, outgoing, empathic, sociable etc and some of us aren’t designed that way”. The ‘dog’ ruled establishment (in the sense of ‘dog people’) gives us little room to be introspective and allow us some sort of space. This can be mirrored in areas from town centres (noisy pubs) to television scheduling (trashy chat shows, some inane quizzes and reality TV programmes). The pockets of ‘cat’ tend to reside within the creatives, the architects, musicians and writers.
As for the recreational drugs, I am never one for illicit substances, and certainly not one for tobacco (due to smell, expense and nicotine yellow walls). With alcohol, the ‘fit in’ mechanism seems to be applicable, in terms of social drinking. I don’t go for the competitive ‘down as many pints’ laddishness, and prefer less, and quiet, drinks. My reason is sense of control. I hate the loss of control one has after a few pints, having hit that extreme only once and thought “never again”.
Stuart.
I agree with you about ‘dog-people’ social structures. Libraries, trainspotting, birdwatching, galleries, gardens and cycling can be fairly ‘cat-people’ friendly.
I think some folks confuse the momentary relief from addiction when lighting up with ‘enjoying a cigarette’. Thing is the tobacco companies designed the dose and affect that way and promoted it as such. If these folks knew they were puppets to multi million dollar industries which had mind-*&%$#% them into believing their relief from addiction-based craving was ‘enjoyment’, some of them would stop kissing the butt of the establishment just to spite the often non-smoking capitalists behind this industry. But as you know, the ‘sheep’ factor is a strong one baa-aa-aa…and dog-people are not as autonomous at cat-people. It’s harder for them to swing against the crowd, even if its a conformistly-nonconformist one (and yes, non-conformists do conform with the counter-cultures they subscribe to).
Regards alcohol, some folks, like me, are Salicylate Intolerant so craving Salicylates and Salicylate-addiction comes with the territory. One of the highest sources of salicylates (18 times the high level) is grapes… ie wine, port, sherry. So as soon as I discovered those I was hooked on them. I tried for years to limit myself to two glasses but to a Salicylate junkie there’s no such thing as enough so soon enough I discovered alcohol isn’t something I should do in my house. I realised I’d inherited a tendency to alcoholism and made a decision about freedom which meant staying away from what compelled me too much. Hence I’m pretty cool with it all now. I have a sip of someone else’s wine maybe once a year but I don’t even have a glass of my own. Salicylate junkies mean well but whether its the punnet of strawberries, the bunch of grapes or the bottle of wine, they will often go till its gone, then feel angsty till its back again and there is never ‘too much’. I can really relate to those populations with metabolic issues that leave them responding this way to alcohol. I’m really clear though that there’s a social majority without this metabolic issue who can take it or leave it. We all have to face up to who we are and live with that one way or the other, in equality with others and without being judged for our choices to abstain.
You said on 30 April 2006:-
(Quote)
I had to renew my prescription this week for the small amount of atypical antipsychotic medication that helps me cope with life and found myself talking about medication and the concept of ‘being oneself’
(Unquote)
About 4 years ago you said that you were taking 0.5mg Risperdal (anti-psychotic) per day. Forgive me if I’m wrong, but I believe from your past correspondence that you eventually stopped taking Risperdal and switched to an alternative medication (or medications).
If my information is right, please could you tell me why you stopped taking Risperdal and whether you experienced any difficulties or withdrawals coming off it or switching to another medication? Which atypical medication/s did you switch to instead of Risperdal?
Pat
I was on Risperdal 0.5mg and switched to Seroquel 25mg (usual dose 350mg). Seroquel is the same kind of drug but usually for acute mania in bipolar. Both dramatically reduced/removed mood (bipolar type), anxiety and compulsive disorders. These both work as mood levellers, hence they aren’t anti-depressants but they stop the lows being dangerously low and the highs being dangerously high.
I didn’t know till recently that bipolar runs on my father’s mother’s side of the family. I have a cousin on the other side also diagnosed with bipolar. There is extensive depression on my mother’s side with a considerable number of folks with substance issues and several dead already from suicide. So all that helped in the decisions about medication and views on illicit drugs versus controlled low dose medication.
Both my parents were medicated for mood disorders. I was put on ‘sedatives’ at age 9 but then went off these things by my teens when I no longer had consistent medical supervision. It’s unfortunate it took so long to get help via medication in my case.
I was very often a danger to myself, not just via acute depressive episodes (and mine were like flash floods, hit me and escalate in 40-90 mins and I’d become really distressed, confused and suicidal) and acute exhuberant manic ones (where I had no fear of death and walked out in front of cars or wanted to jump from heights to ‘fly’ and ‘get rid of my body’).
I also had INCREDIBLE artistic urges this way, and I still have those as you can see from my website, but life on a rollercoaster is way too exhausting to gut and immune function and akes massive info processing away from processing other info. Also ultimately 15-20% of people with untreated bipolar (including rapid cycling bipolar) kill themselves so I’m hopefully not going to be one of those.
As for withdrawal, no, none, we phased out one whilst bringing in the other. The dose is also so small that there’s no build up so without taking a quarter 4 times over the day (which is great as there’s no crashing out this way and the effects are spread over the day) the mood, anxiety and compulsive stuff comes back which is psychologically great as it reminds me why I WANT to be on it. I did have slightly raised prolactin levels on Risperdal and, hence, wanted to change to Seroquel. I prefer the Seroquel as I am more animated on it… not so ‘level’ but still level enough.
hello there Donna………
read about the medicine stuff…..I just take a small dose of antianxiety agent when I really need it. When we all thought I was bipolar I was on lithium and depakote and seroquel and lamictal and……..I can’t remember……..oh yeah Risperdal, all at once. What a horrific experience that was……..I lost all sense of self often and when the self came back briefly I thought what on earth am I doing to myself? I too have different states of “self”………..I believe many nonautistic people do too but the societal expectation is just to be, like another has said on this blog, the self that fits most to the normal and nothing short of that and nothing more. That is a very depressing thought to me and if I truly were forced to be like that I think I’d not want to be alive. So I do not allow me to be like that………screw what the world out there says.
that’s my two cents…………cheers
ai
This is where misdiagnosis is such a problem. Fact is SOME people on the spectrum DO have SERIOUS mood, anxiety and compulsive disorders that need treatment and others have these mildly enough or not at all that they can cope and function without medication. Also the doses used with people with autism now can be so tiny it should not at all bomb them out or kill off all sense of self. I’ve seen seriously self injurious people able to become mainstreamed, start enjoying social company and become healthier physically and happier once they are stabilised on minute amounts of medication USED WITH THE RIGHT PERSON. For example, there are those with mood disorders on both sides of the family where the child inherits a double whammy and a child with severe untreated depression or bipolar AS PART OF THEIR AUTISM will be more affected than one without these things. Its not about making people ‘normal’… like you, I don’t give a damn about that, but it is about not projecting our own experiences onto the label or all others so that each person’s situation can be weighed up and addressed in its own right.
In your case you can get by without medication. There are those on the spectrum who have, however suicided because they couldn’t and medication would have svaed them and there are others who today have realised a potential they hadn’t been able to reach without such help. So your experience is valid but it has to be put in context. There are many mostly ‘high functioning’ and Aspie adults on the spectrum who are trying to dictate reality for all and after working with around 600 people on the spectrum over 8 years as a consultant, I can say with total conviction that there is no ALL and there is no ONE type and the purist vision that we are all X, Y, Z is yet another damaging stereotype we’ll benefit from losing.
I have several members of my own family dead from suicide. I made sensible choices about myself and don’t project those choices onto others. If others benefit from medication, so be it, if there’s others yet again who benefit from none, that’s cool with me too.
Take care…
… Donna *)
it’s so true about there not being ALL or ONE type of person, autie or non autie. in fact that is true for most everything. Society here in America is either you’re black or you’re white, you’re wrong or you’re right, kind of thing. And I could probably stand to take a bit more medication for the anxiety, however since the nightmare of overmedication due to misdiagnosis is so near, after all, I’ve only been “clean” from those medications for a year and 4 months…….that I’m afraid to commit myself to another long term med besides my attention med, Concerta. about the stereotype thing……..yes we can definitely stand to lose it, we’d be far better off. But that’s unfortunately like me telling you hey, I don’t have a penny to my name but I will give you a million dollars anyway. An impossible situation to effect by only A FEW relatively, who think this way…….as we do. Maybe there are more people out there who think that way than I believe there are………but alas, these people are not in the powerful positions. Philanthropy only goes so far in man’s world………a sad, sad thing for me to realise………I am so very glad for your sake and that of so many people you touched, that you made good choices for yourself in terms of medication and whatever else. Otherwise, for many it might seem like the Rosetta Stone had been destroyed if you were not there to help them.
Cheers
ai
Hi Donna,
Thank You Donna, for coming to talk to us today in Singapore.
You’ve not just taught me about what it means to be Autistic,
but also what it means to be human.
To be me.
Being Autisic yourself,
you are so brave,
so bold,
such a risk-taker,
always searching,
always seeking,
so full of passion,
full of respect,
So full of love.
And you can laugh at yourself. 🙂
Most importantly, and surprisingly,
you taught me so much about myself.
When you said
“if you have an issue about yourself,
get it out of your system,
put it together, figure things out.
Do it now.
you need to own up.”
My heart skipped a beat
and my tears flowed.
You were speaking to me amongst the audience.
“Risk taking in a controlling, conformist and judgemental society”.
How many times have we allowed society to tell us what to do,
to tell us who we are or supposed to be?
How many times have I allowed it to do that to me?
And to the people around me?
Countless.
“If you are not perfect, come and sit beside me.
Because I am not.
I’m full of mistakes.”
I wanted to be the one who could sit beside you on that chair,
and cry or laugh in self-discovery with you.
Or just be silent.
because I am not perfect.
I am just like you.
Thank you so much Donna.
You are such an inspiration to me as an educator,
as a friend to my students, as a human being.
And I’m sure you have touched us all individually in one way or another.
I’ll be dropping by your blog pretty often i guess!
Take care,
Keidi
I’m glad to see that other people worry about the medication issue – I take a lot more medication than what is being described here, but also in small doses and get really frustrated with people asking me if I worry about being addicted (I’ve taken the same dose for 3 years and work and do all sorts of other things) . . . I want to take them back to 3 years ago and show them about my non-functional depressive states – let them talk to my best friend . . .
But at the same time I wonder if I’m creating a new me or improving the old one . . . or ones – I don’t think there is just one of us like other people have said . . .
You are right, mate, some folks make perfect a one-self make-over, an appear-self, a facade if you like, but the real self is very multi-faceted and often not fully integrated, sometimes utterly unintegrated and its about finding a balance so having a body, having a mind, having feelings, having a life, is bearable. We have such a short time alive that its really not other people’s business about our individual choices via which we seek and find health, balance and peace. Those who get on their soap box over it are just people who need soap boxes. And those of us who care too much what they shout are too sensitive and need to put the headphones on and get back to our own reality and what works and doesn’t as none of us is an expert on all of us.
🙂 Donna *)
“tinted lenses”.
I went to two different Irlen Institute professionals over one year, both were “diagnostitians” as they call them. We each had 3hr appointments. In about 2hrs time we went through about 30 or so different colored lenses and lens combinations. I spent about 5-15 seconds assessing each color to see if it was helpful, then was told to move on to the next color if it wasn’t. I had a hard time deciding on whether a color was helpful in only 5-15 seconds. With each Irlen person, a completely different final lens combination resulted. Two totally different colors. Has anyone else had this experience? After getting my first pair of lenses in the mail, I tried them for several days and thought they were not helpful at all. I then continued with them for many weeks, and not helpful at all. I found this confusing. Same with the second pair. Irlen states that what their diagnostitian does is find the exact light frequencies that need to be filtered. I think the fact that two diagnostitians, with their oversight during the lens selection process (they lead the process), the fact that they arrived at two totally different colors speaks about the legitimacy about the treatment approach. When in their office, I think the shading of the lenses provided a bit of “relief”, just from having things shaded out a little bit, but as for anything else, no.
I then went to a third diagnostitian recently (few months ago) and we arrived at yet another totally different color combination. This one, though, seems somewhat helpful with the things you mention Donna like seeing whole objects, etc. But, that’s it. There are no social/interpersonal/communication improvements. So what’s the good of this lens then??
What I mean — there are no improvements with eye contact (despite me trying), no improvements with being able to connect with people with eye contact and also with verbal and non-verbal exchanges.
Donna do you have the tunnel vision effect? What do you think about it, what’s it like for you, how do you you describe it? Happens with me all the time I think, not good.
Hi Ursula,
what you write is exactly why I prefer BPI as a service. One can buy the whole testing range (about 8 lenses instead of Irlen’s 100 or so) for under the cost of one pair of Irlen lenses and test in one’s own time and space under a variety of conditions, paying nobody their psychologist rates for their time and no limit on appointment time.
What works can change if diet or health change significantly. I found this.
As for emotional struggles with eye contact, that’s not a perceptual issue but it can be worsened by one. So, sure, being able to see faces and rooms as a whole means more security and confidence, better processing and understanding, but if one has social phobia, exposure anxiety or depression, this isn’t solved by tinted lenses, but might be by anti-anxiety and mood levelling supplements like omega 3s, calcium-magnesium, mega B complex, Glutamine, or addressing food intolerances or allergies that undermine chemistry balance. Some, like me, finally accept small amounts of APPROPRIATE medication to address what’s left.
It’s about choice.
But one tool generally doesn’t solve EVERYTHING, no.
And struggles to look at people or social-anxiety related perceptual effects, won’t be solved with tinted lenses but if one has perceptual problems AS WELL, then reducing these may be PART of overall improvements and comfort.
All the best.
🙂 Donna Williams
http://www.donnawilliams.net
I like you have trouble seeing whole faces, etc.
WIn your book, when you wrote about seeing a certain person’s face as whole for the first time, connected to that person’s whole body, etc, didn’t this improve your abillity to do the things I mentioned above that I have trouble with?
I’d to better looking at people if I could see whole faces and whole bodies like you’re able to. Didn’t this help you. In your book you seemed really happy to see your partners face for the first time. The Irlen people use your quotes from your book in their advertising “When I received my Irlen lenses” or something like that … it seemed to change your life. I’m confused here. Sorry.
In MY case the Irlen lenses DID work for me. But so, later, did the BPI ones and in my case the BPI worked slightly better than the Irlen ones, so I’ve stuck with them.
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 *)
Hi Mrs. Williams,
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
OK, if you had bad eyesight, would you prefer to walk into things rather than wear glasses? If you had fragmented vision that made people, places and objects startling and foreign, would you prefer to make life easier by seeing as a cohesive whole? Its that simple. Any stressed person compensating for perceptual challenges may exhaust energy and build stress compensating just as someone needing a walking stick might walking without one. It’s all about personal choices. What I choose is my choice. Others can make their own.
… 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.
Hi,
Do you know of others who use lenses. Does Temple, Toni Attwood, any one else with a website like yours with an email address?
Neither Tony nor Temple have visual perceptual disorders.
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 what is your work history like? Like, what jobs have you’ve had since adulthood, what they involved, how you liked them, what you currently do for income. Thanks, really great website http://www.donnawilliams.net
Interesting topic just above here – it would be cool to email the three people you last mentioned, lucy, richard, alberto, anyone have their email addresses or webpages? i’m sure they have a webpage or something since they focus on typed communication. i’d love to talk to them about their use of lenses and their perceptual experiences.
I wrote of my work history in Nobody Nowhere.
In a nutshell, 30 unskilled jobs in 3 years, some lasting only days or weeks.
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.
Thanks for replying 🙂