This picture is of my journal from third grade. I’ve been keeping a journal since before I could write. Sometimes I’ll open a volume randomly and find something notable and send it to my brother.
The circled text says, “Most kids have to brush their teeth, but we don’t.”
I didn’t realize everyone was brushing their teeth every day until my mid-20s. I thought brushing was like making a bed. We all KNOW we’re supposed make our bed but it’s not fun so people don’t always do it. I thought brushing was optional and that this was understood by everyone.
That’s a recurring problem for people with autism. We know that a lot of things that should happen are not all that important. It’s just that neurotypical people have a natural sense of what everyone agrees is important. Whereas people with autism assume that if the task is a pain, then we can ignore it.
Writing in a journal is something people admire. So no one ever thought to look at WHY I was writing so much. They just assumed that writing is good, and self-discipline is good, so writing in her journal is good. But actually, I’ve found that when someone is doing something more than almost everyone else, they have a gift but also a corresponding deficit. Because there is no free lunch in anything, including neurobiology.
The reason I wrote so much is that it helps me with anxiety. Also, I felt that nothing in my life really happened until I wrote it down. By the time I got to college, I would avoid seeing people or going to class so that I could catch up on documenting my life in my journal. By my mid-20s I was writing in my journal three or four hours a day.
When I took anxiety medicine, in my 40s, I stopped wanting to write in my journal. I just stopped. Because my brain was calm for the first time in my life. That’s when I started thinking about the huge number of things I was doing in my life to compensate for autism. Lots of people say, “Just do xxx.” But it’s really really hard for people with autism to “Just do” what other people can do. So we hide.
Also, people with autism have superpowers. And the more we understand what’s special about us, the more we can leverage that to circumvent things that we can’t make ourselves do. When you see someone with autism who is successful, you are seeing that person avoiding everything they don’t want to do. It’s a trick. I’ll show you how to do it.
The biggest problem with not understanding autism is not understanding who we are and why we do what we do. I’ll help you put everything together in a way that does not feel lonely or exhausting—for us or the people dealing with us.
Here’s what we’ll cover in the course:
Day One: Everything you’ve been told is wrong
Did you know that 90% of women with autism are not diagnosed? This is because the medical community has no idea what they’re doing. And the result is that most of the research about autism is understated because half the people who would have been a yes—for any type of research—are a no.
I’ll tell you what this means for people with autism and how you can leverage the research that is just coming out to make better decisions about treatment. Here’s just one thing you’ll find out: Most prodigies have autism. See? No one reports this stuff. You have to get it from me.
Day Two: How to stay employed and stay married
Adults with autism are happy if they love their spouse and their spouse loves them. And they are not stuck on philosophizing about what the word love means.
So the most important skill for someone with autism is to stay married. I will give you hard and fast rules to guide you in picking a spouse. For example, if you pick someone with autism one of you needs a trust fund. And women with autism are the most likely candidate to be engaged to a sociopath.
If you are already married, I’ll show you how to look like you function as a normal adult without really doing it. And I’ll tell you the three signs that the person with autism is destroying the marriage and needs to be contained.
And I’ll show you how you will stay employed if you use the same rules at work for staying married at home.
Day Three: Introduction to the world of paid friends
The reason you don’t need socializing in childhood is that you can buy friends. Neurotypicals cannot do this, because they want so much in a friendship. People with autism are more practical.
I have been buying friends my whole life. I’ll tell you the types of friends you can buy for home and which you buy for work. And I’ll show you how to tell which problems you can solve with a paid friend. And how to get a real friend if the circumstance demands it.
Day Four: Q & A with Me and You
Ask me anything and I’ll give you a longer answer than you need until my co-host tells me to shut up. We learn through example.
Sign up now to get instant access to 5 hours of video lessons, 6 months of on-going support and weekly meetings with like-minded people. In this course, I will tell you what I’ve learned from coaching 300 people with autism and reading hundreds of peer-reviewed articles. I will send you fun things to read. We will chat. People with autism will be in heaven. People who don’t have autism will be shocked, but in a good way.
Tell me you don’t have autism and I’ll decide for myself and then tell you why I’m right. And then I’ll tell you that I know you have autism because you want to be right as much as I want to be right. And wanting to be right is a neurological tic that makes people want to strangle us.
Figuratively.
Esther Wojcicki wrote her book, How to Raise Successful People, so she could take credit for her daughters’ success: “I raised two CEOs and a doctor. These are my secrets to parenting successful children.” Here are Esther’s five stunningly obvious secrets: trust, respect, independence, collaboration, and kindness. Read more
I am with my son at Northeastern University Law School for a day of panels about socialist initiatives. My son told me no writing blog posts in the back of the room. “Can you please just fit in today?” Read more
Americans have an unwavering belief in economic mobility. Most people in the U.S. think they can work hard to get ahead, even though economic mobility is lower in the U.S. than in other industrialized countries. Read more
Have you heard the term zoomers? It’s what Generation Z calls themselves. I remember resisting using the term millennial because I thought it was absurdly self-aggrandizing. But now I see that the moniker is perfectly aligned to Millennial thinking.
The last time I wrote a post with this title, I wrote that women need a stay-at-home husband. And clearly, I was wrong, because later research showed that women who are breadwinners with stay-at-home husbands are headed for divorce.
You know how Marie Kondo tells you to go through your closet and throw out all your clothes because you want to start a new part of life? I did that with my website. If you’re the impetuous type, you throw out your clothes and buy new ones later. I did that, too.
If you do not stay home with kids, you’ll be annoyed to hear all the benefits of watching kids, because people don’t really care about what benefits could be gained. We care about what we could lose. This is true for everyone: Consumers, liars, straight-A students. Working moms.
The #MeToo movement has focused on workplace harassment, and I keep thinking: when will #MeToo include domestic violence? I try to imagine what it will look like so I can help make it come faster. Read more
Unlimited editing for a full year! Plus weekly videos and emails from me and many opportunities to receive feedback from the whole group. The course is $1550.
Writers work best with an external deadline. We don’t realize it, but our definition of a successful writer means someone has attained external deadlines: Journalists have an editor, authors have a publication date, comedy writers have a showtime, publicists have a boss.
If you know you have something to say, but you have a hard time getting yourself to write on a regular schedule, this course is for you. Think of it as buying the external deadline so you can get started.
What does that include? In addition to unlimited editing for a year, check this out:
Self-discipline to write regularly and the self-confidence that follows. Knowing you are writing well is one of the best ways to get yourself to write. And we’ll reach that point by working together.
When I started writing, it was sporadic. I didn’t like that I didn’t know if what I was writing was good or bad. I thought it might be good. But I didn’t trust myself. I wanted outside affirmation.
I turned a corner when I realized that receiving consistent feedback from a seasoned writer made my own writing better and better each week. And the experience made me want to write regularly so I could get feedback: no writing meant no feedback for that week.
Insight into the format that showcases your particular talent. I ended up teaching writing at Harvard, Brown, and the University of Paris. Based on the curriculum I developed, I can help you discover the format of writing that is most true to you: fiction, nonfiction, long-form journalism, creative nonfiction, flash fiction, essay, memoir, op-ed. You might be surprised to discover that you’re naturally talented in a format you haven’t tried.
Finding your best format will lead to you finding your hidden ability to write regularly about what matters to you.
One-on-one coaching to create your own version of the writer’s life. We’ll have an ongoing relationship the whole year via email and phone. I’ll suggests topics, tactics, routines, and other solutions I’ve developed to overcome challenges in my own writing life.
A measurable, achievable goal that will make you feel accomplished. Once you’re writing on a regular basis, I’ll make sure your writing adds up to something. I’m very goal oriented, and I didn’t feel like a real writer until I had a goal for my writing. This might be true for you, too.
The people I’ve been working with for the past four years have had big success:
- One person has seen her blog traffic increase 20% every month for two years.
- Two people got book deals for nonfiction books.
- One person changed from writing a blog to writing a memoir, and that switch enabled her to write almost every day for a year.
- One person—who had never written anything before I worked with her—published a book of short essays that I keep on my nightstand. It reminds me what a joy it is to work with writers.
I know it will change your life, because everyone I’ve worked with in this capacity has accomplished something meaningful to them and surprising to both of us.
No one succeeds alone, in anything. I’ll be your team for your writing.