 Aspergios in Society is a Manchester based documentary about the relationship between autism and mental health. Over the course of the filming process, I was introduced to a number of interesting autistic individuals and struck by the quality of these experiences and opinions, I decided to create a behind-the-scenes video series to showcase these marvellous people. This is one of them. So, if you look at, so the first question is, how would you describe autism as someone without it? I'd say it's very difficult to describe because it's very much a daily experience and also I can only give my experience of autism, everyone experiences differently because autism affects everyone differently but also we all have different experiences in life. But one thing I found useful to say is that it's a bit like if you're neurotypical, which is basically not being autistic, then you see life as a colour screen TV, you can hear all the voices, you can see what's going on, you can follow the plot of what was on the telly, but when you're autistic it's like it's black and white TV and it's a bit fuzzy and so you're missing some of the information, visual and oral, so you're only really getting part of the picture of what's happening around you and you've got to find ways to interpret that. So I think that's what I found the most useful to explain to people because they understand that difference, they understand the image. That was very good, perfect. Okay so that was brilliant. Question number two, do you like, I know it's a bit pretentious but do you like being autistic? Yeah I mean it's a funny question and it's a good question because I think most autistic people would say yes and no, you know, in all honesty. I mean it also depends on the day because I do have some of the kind of skills associated with autism, like I'm very good at understanding music theory which is helpful for in my work and I can sometimes be very perceptive about things that are going on which can be very useful but then, you know, the difficulties are considerable, you know, kind of it affects my sleep quite heavily, it affects how I manage outside, I must have to wear noise cancelling headphones and it places too busy that I'll raise anxieties but that's just an example of some of the difficulties that I face on a more or less daily basis and so it's got to be yes and no, probably more no than yes. What traits of autism do you like? I suppose you sort of answered that one before having me already. What about, how have some of the traits of autism benefit to you in terms of daily life and work? Yeah, I think I can sometimes work kind of unassisted for long periods of time, like if you're going to write pieces of music and do things for hours on end without losing interest or without being able to do something else but that doesn't happen very often when it does happen, it's quite good. I do tend to get distracted by things quite a lot. So I'll have to answer that one. This is the one. What were your friendships, relationships like in the past and how do you even view it differently now? I think I was quite lucky when I was younger to have some very understanding friends, I wasn't diagnosed with autism until about four years ago but I think especially being in the world of music people do tend to be more friendly and also you can do music with people without actually communicating with them verbally so that helps to feel more relaxed in an environment. So I think on average for an autistic person I've done quite well socially because I've been quite lucky with who I've known and not to say there haven't been problems and I very often felt misunderstood by people around me, that's more or less a universal experience for people with autism. So yeah I think having a diagnosis has certainly improved my awareness of how to relate to people and now I've realised that I'm not one of the neurotypical people, I can actually study what they do and how they would communicate and learn more using intellect because instinctively I don't get most of what's happening in any social situation really. It's quite nice to like listen to your talk and relax, I feel exactly the same. Well it's a funny thing because you know lots of things are common but very few experience as a universal autistic people, people are very different. Okay question five, do you think your autism has contributed to any struggles in your life? I mean I would say certainly it has, I mean in forming personal relationships it's made it extremely difficult because unlike friendships where you can observe what people do you know how people relate to each other and you can't really do that in a personal relationship that tends to be behind closed doors so that's been a difficulty. I have had some personal intimate relationships but they haven't lasted, I think it's all been because I've not really understood what I should do or how to maintain it so it's just been more or less a pot look so yeah that's a big area of struggle and like we're saying before that the sensory issues for me are a big thing sensitive to bright lights and sound background noise like road noise and that so that all raises anxiety unless I can do something about it but they now do glasses, see glasses have a bit of a filter on so they filter out some of the brighter lights and I've got noise cancelling headphones which mean that I can go out so for example previously like I could go out in Manchester but not for very long before I'd get very anxious but now with the glasses on my headphones I can stay in Manchester for about up to four or six hours even providing my outside all the time because it tends to be busy but I can go to a bookshop and you know enjoy Manchester for a short while which is more than I could in the past Question 6, how was school for you did being autistic impact your experience in anything? Yeah well I read in a book by Tony Atwood called A Complete Guy to Asperger Syndrome which says that every autistic person he's met was traumatised by their experience at school assuming they went to a mainstream school so I certainly would say that applies to me I found it very traumatic and yeah it was because the social side of it was incredibly difficult fortunately I was good at the academic side so I could at least enjoy learning stuff in the lessons I was interested in but the teachers didn't know what to make of me because in some lessons I was consistently getting top marks A stars and just doing very well and being a good student in other classes I was getting Gs and I was getting you know what's it called attention and being sent out and they just couldn't understand how it could be so good in some subjects and so bad in others in every way but of course from an autistic point of view it makes sense because if you're not interested in something it's very hard to work at it so it does make sense of that but I think that they tolerated me because I was going to get some very good marks for the school and I ended up getting some quite good marks so once I dropped the subjects that I had no interest in that's good I thought I had sort of same sort of issues at school did you go to mainstream or yeah mainstream they just didn't they didn't it wasn't that I didn't understand I mean subjects just they didn't know how to teach me yeah they just said it in such an ambiguous way when were you diagnosed then at 10 at 10 I was I was quite hurly diagnosed yeah it was uh it was my mom she's a she's a special needs coordinator all right she's a yeah definitely um so quite a big one here would you change anything about the way society deals with problems or I feel that society is moving in the right direction actually I feel that people are learning or I don't think it's that people are willfully ignorant when the problems happen it's mostly because they don't know what to do and they want to know what to do and an additional problem and with that is that sometimes what will help neurotypical people will actually make it worse for autistic people so for example if someone's really stressed and they need to sit down they don't want someone asking them how they are because that'll make it worse um but again if people know what to do then my experiences they tend to do it um I think if people want to improve things further there's lots of things but basically if you really listen to what we say about our experience and what's difficult and if anything autistic people tend to underplay their difficulties and pretend they're not as bad as they are because they're used to having to do that in order to not shock other people as to um what's certain difficulties entail so um yeah I think just listen to our concerns and make adjustments where possible and just be supportive in general um that's what I would say okay so we have four questions left the next one is it's sort of a little bit similar to the um it's a little bit more of a relaxed question yes um if you could talk to your child self what would you tell them? I've told them to get a diagnosis as soon as possible um I've told them to try and when we get out of the school that I was in I think and go to a a more appropriate school environment um and failing that um you know to get support at the school and so people teachers and students were aware um although I'm aware that you know that could attract bullying in itself so I suppose but the people that I've spoken to who have been to um I thought it was called nowadays but special schools um found that when they changed from mainstream to a special school they were much more relaxed and happier there so it's just probably different for everyone but um yeah I would just say try and get more support for yourself that's what I would say next one is what would you say to any autistics currently struggling in this school environment well similar things trying to you know get get more support um and also um to my experience a lot of autistic people struggle with socialising but not so much with each other because there tends to be a kind of mutual understanding um and occasionally get like a family feel because people really do share very deep experiences which are understood by other autistic people so is there any autistic social groups try and get involved in those uh and even if they they can be difficult even for autistic people to get into try and force yourself to go a few times and then see if you can uh you can get something out of that because I think that can be very very valuable to have support of peers who understand what you're going through nice little ones to uh end up um what do autistic people have to offer the world well again it depends on the person um but I think one thing that's very common is that autistic people tend to think for themselves maybe because they've had to but whatever the reason um I think most autistic people can think for themselves and can often really perceive what's going on um in society and perceive what could be improved and how it could be improved so again it's like more autistic voices are heard I think it has benefited everyone because we tend to be more detached kind of emotionally which can come across as being quite cold hearted but it's it's not that at all um it's just the way we process stuff is very different but because we can have that emotional detachment we can look at things without emotion and without bias as well and see well okay that that's a bit wrong that could change and so I think that difference of perspective is invaluable for society and I believe that there's someone I can't remember her name who's doing a talk I think it's in reading about historically what autistic people have done to improve society as a whole not just for autistic people but society as a whole so um that's very interesting and the young woman from Sweden we heard of Greta Thunberg she's the one who's leading the voice for um action against climate change by young people and she's got a diagnosis of autism so she's affecting the world you know with what she's saying and I think that again autism is playing in her favor because she's not thinking about the consequences for herself she's just thinking about the consequences for the planet and then taking action where many of the people might have thought that I've not done anything so I think that that's a really good example okay last one have you enjoyed this experience and what would you like to say that you haven't already covered yeah it's a good experience I always like to talk about um my experience with autism because there's not always people want to listen for a start um but also if it can improve life for other autistic people in society in general then I'm happy to do it um that says what else would I like to say I think I've said more or less everything I mean the one thing I would underline that I think the thing we need most of all is understanding and that I'll only come from listening to us um I think that's the thing I think that when I speak to other autistic people that's the thing that's most typical um it's not being heard and not being understood and we are usually capable of explaining things if you just give us the chance to uh to maybe take a bit longer to do so then uh that I would really appreciate that for me and and for others