Autism Celebration Month: The Great Big Smoking Hole Where Social Perception Should Be

I guess I’m hitting a perfect storm here:

• I’m fixing to retire, so I’m of the age rage where Erik Erikson says that we should be taking stock of our lives and figuring out whether it was a life well lived or not or something like that. Yeppers, that’s what I’ve been doing. Just seems to happen naturally. Can’t help it.
• It’s Autism Month, so I’m thinking about all things autism more than I usually do, which is a lot. Being the father of an adult autistic child, having three or four students this year — and every year, to be honest — who are autistic, being autistic myself and very open about it both at work, real life, and here on the blog, I’ve been reminiscing quite a bit.
• And, it is tax season. Long time readers know there is no reason to say anything more, but since we should be writing to the newest reader, I’ll say this: I have pathological demand avoidance. There are times I can’t do the simplest thing because I’m all froze up like the proverbial deer in the ubiquitous headlights. And, hoo-boy is that ever true of taxes.

As a result of this perfect storm, I’ve got a certain kinda blog post about autism, my life, my daughter’s life, and my students’ lives and mental health that I want to make, but it is all tangled up together. I’ve made a couple of attempts at it, and I’ve not been satisfied with any of them, so this is the latest. I guess, I have to wonder whether this preamble is even necessary, but you start where you stare, and you end up where you end up, amirite?

An Autistic Retirement Plan

Since I’m retiring next year, we’ve been needing to plan things like, where we’ll live, how we’ll pay for our daily lives, and stuff like that. For most folks that might could be easy, but for us, as international teachers, it ain’t. We’ve had to save for our retirement since neither Ma Belle Femme or I have worked long-enough at high-enough salaries to warrant any sizable pension.

Before I met Ma Belle Femme, my plan — seriously — literally, y’all — was the federal pen. I figured when I got tired of working, I’d send some talcum powder to one of the Supremes with a ranty barely coherent screed. If I did it two or three times, I figured I could net myself a ten to twenty year stretch. Don’t laugh. Three hots and a cot. A library. Ready friends. It couldn’t be worse than the way I was living my life.

But, the spousal unit has done a remarkable job of riding heard on my spending and putting aside enough for us to retire comfortably to Canada. Canada. Canada.

I’m American, so I’ll need Canadian residency under this plan, which means I’ll need to show a clean tax slate in the States. Oops. I haven’t filed — is it wise to be making this confessional? I don’t know. How easy is it to connect this blog to my real identity? — since 1996.

Tangled Tales of Tax Avoidance

Autism ACCEPTANCE Month: How is Reforming the Police like Managing PDA?

I’m making my third attempt to rectify my tax filing situation. I’m working with our financial advising fella and his company — a good guy, to be fair. Now, that I have this hard deadline, I’ve got to do it. Before, I’d get so far, and hit a snag and just fall apart. Remember, PDA?

Tax Filing Options, Chrometophobia, and the IRS

Autism Awareness Month, 2019: The Dopamine of Pathological Demand Avoidance

I reckon I’ve got what is called chrometophobia, a fear of all things money. I guess that makes sense. I’ve got horrific anxiety as is true for many with autism.

The thing is that when you haven’t filed for years, they recommend you file your last three years. If the IRS audits you, it can be hell to pay, but if they don’t, whew! Just keep filing.

Or you can tell them you haven’t filed and claim that it was because you didn’t know as a non-resident living internationally you had to file. I can’t do that. At least not through this professional reputable company because of my past two attempts.

I figured if anyone would understand that my failure to file was due to mental health issues, it would by this very good fellow who handled me with kid gloves the previous times. I wrote a brief and honest email outlining my claims to a mental health exception: autistic (undiagnosed), anxiety disordered (undiagnosed), and chromatophoic (undiagnosed), but all are possible. I’ve seen psychiatrists over the years and could collect up those records and get someone to vouch for the rest of it now.

He wrote back saying the IRS probably wouldn’t accept it. He wouldn’t even use the words mental health in his email. I had the feeling I was the young couple changing their baby’s stinky diaper next to him on a hot and crowded subway car. Anywho, maybe that’s just my projection.

A Taxing Predicament: Battling Pathological Demand Avoidance

I can honestly say that if I could’ve filed my taxes every year, I would’ve. I am humiliated by not having done so, especially since it was really easy to do. However, I remember looking at the IRS website in 1997 and just… I couldn’t.

I feel what everyone else feels when one of my students or Ma Petite Fille has that reaction, It’s so easy! Just do it and get it over with! It is the most maddening reaction in the world for everyone involved. I knew it would be “easy,” but I simply couldn’t do it.

I feel like if it were a fair and just world, I would be forgiven for not filing, especially since I never owed anything, but the IRS will not see it that way. I feel like the Why can’t I just DO the thing? reaction is all the evidence anyone needs to demonstrate that pathological demand avoidance and autism is a mental health disorder, especially in the world that we’ve made.

Rosenhan’s Failure to Thrive Model & Autism

Are the Ol’ Pussy Grabber’s Tweets Evidence of Abnormality? Yes. Yes, They Are.

One way of evaluating whether a behavior, thought, or belief qualifies as a mental health issue is by considering the degree that it interferes with your ability to complete the tasks of daily living. Way back in 1989 David Rosenhan and Martin Seligman published their list of qualities of mental illness, Failure to Function Adequately:

• Suffering: Mental health issues are painful. People suffer when they are depressed, anxious, delusional. It hurts. You are filled with doubt and uncertainty and anxiety. The anxiety that I feel over all of this and trying to get it done is at time overwhelming.
• Maladaptiveness: People with mental health issues have difficulty coping with everyday events and challenges. Sometimes even getting up off the couch to go to the refrigerator to get something to eat seems like too much trouble. Being tax avoidant is maladaptive. It is putting me at great risk of paying penalties and fines and quite possibly going to jail. Who wants that?
• Vividness & unconventionality: Autism in and of itself is unconventionality incarnate. People with autism don’t feel constrained by social conventions even if we follow them. We will always behave in unconventional ways.
• Unpredictably & loss of control: Autism doesn’t in and of itself produce a loss of control, but PDA is a loss of control. You cannot do what you know you need to do. When you can’t follow social norms, you are unpredictable.
• Irrationality/incomprehensibility: Not filing my taxes is both irrational and incomprehensible. It has created a huge problem for me. It is nothing a rational person would do.
• Causes observer discomfort: When you violate social norms and expectations, the people around you are uncomfortable. It leads them to feel like they can make fun of you or scorn you because strange.
• Violates moral/social standards: My tax avoidance status is a violation of morality and standards, much as it pains me to say it.

The Autistic Struggle of Fitting into a Neurotypical World

Autism AWARENESS Month: Easing the Guilty-Conscious of Schools, Administrators, and Teachers

I have two points that I guess that I’m trying to make. First, is that by trying to fit into a neurotypical world makes autism a mental illness. Being neurodivergent isn’t a mental illness. It is trying to comply with the standards of the world around us that causes it to be so. There is no denying it, though, most people with autism suffer greatly when in contact with the “real” world.

The other point is that there is no escape. Not having choices is another way to define mental illness. We all have to exist in the larger world. Earning money, interacting with others, meeting deadlines, living up to expectations are all part of life. Most days, it feels impossible.

Most days, I will have a PDA moment where I am frozen and incapable of dealing with whatever it is. I’ve learned to cope and either duck out of it, circle around, and address it later, or just take a deep breath and plunge forward.

Retirement: Relieved of Autism’s Masking Duty?

The Rich Inner World of Autism, Its Gift to the World

Part of me thinks of retirement where I am free of the strictures and expectations of social life as blessed relief. You can’t imagine the relief I felt when we met with our financial advisor about the numbers as we approach my last date of work (still a year away). When she said that all of our numbers were better than they needed to be for our goals in retirement, I nearly wept. I was fully prepared for her to say that I’d have to work another five years or more, which I would’ve done, of course. God bless Ma Belle Femme.

I guess that’s about it. There are lots of examples of all of the trials and tribulations that being autistic causes. I could site them, I guess, to “prove” just how painful it is trying to go through the neurotypical world. There are incredible joys from being autistic, too, don’t get me wrong. I love the way my mind thinks and imagines and notices the world around it.

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Image Attribution

This image was generated using Poe’s StableDiffusionXL bot using the prompt, Make a painting of square peg in a round hole based on this photo using Salvador Dali’s style