My mother is 12 people

My oldest kid wrote this five years ago for the college application essay. It didn’t work for a college essay. But I was so glad to read it. If you haven’t read my first post on multiple personality disorder, you can read it here. I will answer any questions you have on this topic on Monday, Nov. 24 at 5pm Eastern. Zoom link forthcoming.

On my sixteenth birthday, my mother told me she has dissociative identity disorder. It means that she has multiple identities – alters – that’s what people with DID call them. She’s had it my whole life. DID only occurs when a person experiences such terrible trauma as a child that they create another person in order to hide from what is happening to them. Read more

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I spent a decade diagnosing everyone except myself

photo by Joshua Sariñana

I have multiple personality disorder

I’ve actually known this since 2013 when a psychiatrist at Northwestern University told me.

At the time I told myself it’s a misdiagnosis and I have autism. I told myself mental health professionals are so stupid and they are always misdiagnosing everyone and I have to figure out everything myself. I spent the next decade figuring out everything about autism.

I figured out my whole family has autism. I put myself and my kids on medicine for ADHD. I turned my career into identifying autism and being frustrated that people didn’t believe me when I told them. They’d say, “How do you know?”

I’d be incredulous: “I’VE BEEN DOING THIS FOR YEARS. IT’S SO EASY FOR ME TO SEE!” Read more

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Don’t say your kid is autistic

Detail of The Rehearsal of the Ballet Onstage (1874) by Edgar Degas

Researchers studying autistic kids give secret autism tests to parents because it’s so easy to see that parents are autistic, but it’s such a huge pain to try to get the parents to understand. Think about it: no one benefits enough from telling you that you’re autistic that they are willing to try to convince you. But research becomes much more useful when we can label parents as autistic for studies even though parents would say it’s only their kid. Read more

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Forget camouflaging at work; do it at home

Tiny Blowing a Bubble, Seattle 1983, by Mary Ellen Mark

Camouflaging is what women do to make sure no one thinks we’re weird. This means we end up camouflaging at work and being too exhausted to do it at home. But home is where we really need it, because the effect of camouflaging is to be more agreeable t0 other people. And the workplace doesn’t reward agreeableness.

We intuitively camouflage when dating; don’t do a bait-and-switch.

Once the kids were gone, I found myself choosing bras more carefully. I only have one real bra. The rest are running bras that squoosh. But I started wearing my real bra when Nino came over for dinner. We had not spent a whole dinner alone in 20 years. I wanted to look like someone he might like, so I put on makeup, but not enough for him to be able to tell that I put on makeup just for him.

It took about four dinners before it felt like before we had kids, when everything was fun if we did it together. When he met me I never wore bras – only bathing suit tops. So I quit the bra. And the makeup. Read more

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I hate books about autism but I made a reading list anyway

When someone tells me their child is autistic, I always end up telling them that they are too. Because autism is a family condition. At the end of these conversations people ask: “Do you have a reading list you could send me?” So here is that list.

Read more

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Your knowledge gap about autism is about genius

Reminder that tonight at 7pm – 9pm Eastern I’m hosting a free, live session to talk about autism. Here’s the link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82800295802?pwd=LfTfUHmWnqbbQdLJCbD9U8Wd7L571A.1

The platitudes about autism being a gift miss the more important point that pretty much every major movement, invention, and breakthrough has been from someone autistic. Here’s the science behind why that is true: Read more

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Democrats are the party of college-educated women and the men they live with

Electronic Superhighway by Nam June Paik

In the 80s my teacher asked, “How did it happen that the Republican party ended slavery yet Black people are Democrats?” That was his introduction to the process of party realignment in the US. In the 1960s the Democrats supported Civil Rights and the party lines were redrawn. And the teacher told us we are due for another Read more

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Free! Live discussion about autism Nov. 13, 7pm ET

Detail of Pilot’s Notion Five, Red, Yellow Star by David Collins

I told a friend I keep not finishing things and he said, “Yeah, the last 10% of anything is the hardest.” A light bulb went off. Once I realized that this is a problem everyone has I could see the last 10% more clearly. And all day I’ve been finishing things.

For a long time I’ve been wanting to have a live session where we all talk about autism and this post is my last 10%. Now we have a date and time: Wed, Nov. 13, 7-9 pm ET. And we have a link. Here it is:

https://us06web.zoom.us/j/82800295802?pwd=LfTfUHmWnqbbQdLJCbD9U8Wd7L571A.1

Read more

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What explains the outsized success of autistic applicants to college

Z went to a Duke recruiting weekend where accepted kids can get a feel for the university. He hung out with some kids who decided to go to Harvard and Stanford, and a bunch of kids who decided on Duke. What was similar about all of them? They talked openly about having autism.

At lunch one kid said to Z, “Do you know you have autism?”

And Z said, “Yeah. Do you?”

And then a bunch of the kids at the table said they had it. That’s all. Then everyone moved on to another topic.

Kids are so far ahead of parents in how they think about autism. So I’ve been trying to focus my own research on what makes autistic people so special. Why are they overrepresented among top colleges, top earners, artistic success stories? Read more

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How to be a better listener: Lessons from the Interruption Queen

My son met a Ukrainian girl over the summer, and after telling me it was a summer fling because she barely speaks English, he started learning Russian and seeing her all the time. The relationship became a race – could she learn English before he learned Russian. Her school is in an enclave of all Russian and Ukrainian kids who escaped the war, so she is not learning English as fast as you’d expect. Read more

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