Different Types of Intelligence

Many people say that I don't look autistic. Only people who have known me since my youth say, "Ohhh! The diagnosis explains a lot!" or, "No wonder!" or, "I am not that surprised." With 5 decades of life experience behind me, and a very high IQ, I have developed all sorts of coping algorithms to mask my internal reality. Ever since my diagnosis, I have also spent time compulsively analysing my behaviours and responses in order to develop even more coping algorithms.

My internal reality has not changed. I am still autistic. 

I recognise now that I am compulsively drawn to Chong Pang Market. Cheap goods, good food and quirky products are attractive, yes. What REALLY draws me to Chong Pang Market is the challenge it provides me. Chong Pang is my training ground and experimental lab. It is where I go for my daily dose of Learning To Be Like A Neurotypical. Chong Pang Market is where I go to train myself to tolerate smells for longer periods of time. It is where I go to stretch myself in the area of facial interpretation.

Frankly, Chong Pang Market makes Dr. Petunia Lee feel stupid. I go there almost daily compulsively. Yet, I carry with me this fear of being thought stupid/snobbish by the hawkers there. Most days, I come home and actually FEEL stupid. This feeling of stupidity draws me there. For me, Chong Pang Market is a training ground. I go there to fail and learn about myself.

Dr. Pet feels stupid? I know that is so hard to believe for blogreaders who know me personally. Really? If she feels herself stupid, why is she always pontificating at me? Why does she like to share her knowledge on herbs, psychology etc...? If she is keen to share her knowledge, she must feel her knowledge worth sharing. Hence, she must think herself so damn smart!

Didn't you know? Overwhelming other people with facts about our areas of interest is how autistic people converse. But, I digress. Let me explain why Chong Pang Market makes me feel stupid.

The Chong Pang Market hawkers are intelligent in ways I cannot hope to be. 

ONE

Firstly, they have excellent sensory filters. Without effort, they can ignore all the smells of the market. I cannot. Once I step into Chong Pang, I need to  allocate mental bandwidth to control my frustration. If a Chong Pang hawker and I both possess 100 units of mental processing capacity, I have to tie up 30% of my mental capacity to control my emotional response to smells. He ties up no bandwidth at all because his brain is able to automatically do sensory filtering. See the meaning of sensory filtering HERE.

I only have 70% of processing capacity left.

TWO

Secondly, the Chong Pang hawkers can read social situations AND faces with little effort. It is the nature of a hawker centre to have crowds. At the braised pork stall alone, there are FOUR men within a confined space. If you consider that I need sometimes 5 times longer to figure out a facial expression within a situation, then, asking me to process 4 different facial expressions within a few seconds is quite overwhelming. This alone is enough to take up the remaining 70% of my RAM.

I have no more processing capacity left.

THREE

Thirdly, the hawkers do not have to expend mental capacity on controlling their eyes. To them, eye contact is natural. They know whom to look at, when and how without needing to think. I need to think about my eyes and what they do.

Here, I am running on empty.

FOUR

Fourthly, the hawkers' brains (being able to do sensory filtering) know how and when to screen out irrelevant faces and expressions. I don't. I end up trying to look at all 4 faces, or focusing on only one face. When I focus on only one face, I fear that the other 3 think I am ignoring them. When I try and focus on 4 faces, my brain LITERALLY hangs. I become unresponsive.

Here, I have shut down.

When the hawkers aren't looking at me, I quietly observe them sometimes and often envy the way they can so QUICKLY respond to each other's banter. I am still figuring out what the 1st person was trying to say without saying it, when his friend has already responded with a knowing look or smile, which completely goes over my head. I have no clue what is going on.

Occasionally, I can hear them calling me and talking to me. I cannot respond. Like a person in a coma, but still conscious of the goings on, I cannot respond. Then, I go home and kick myself because I know I might have hurt their feelings. Often, when I am not buying from them, I walk past and try not to look at them because it is really overwhelming. It is much easier for me to cope with the Sugar Cane Auntie. She is the ONLY one at the stall. I only need to focus on ONE face and ONE pair of eyes.

I remember feeling this way all the time, as a child. Back then, my parents told the all and sundry that I was stupid and slow. I too believed myself stupid.

A combination of situational factors and childhood conditioning makes me feel stupid every time I go into Chong Pang Market.

The good thing though is that the rest of my life is autistic friendly. I see almost no one for much of the day even though I coach parents. I interact with parents via email and texting (where I don't need to look at faces nor interpret the unsaid). My work environment is entirely silent and smell-less.

Then, once a day, I go to Chong Pang and put myself in psychological harm's way. Hopefully, I will get better at ONE to FOUR, if I practise enough.

With thinking, learning and practice, I have come a long way since those days when I was 80% of the time unresponsive. The journey is never done though. I want to continue to learn and to develop algorithms so that I can help children like me to shortcut their learning. They can learn to mask earlier and better than I can.

In so doing, they will experience lesser social rejection and a happier life.

Different Types of Intelligence
I have been told I am stupid before. I reckon the Chong Pang hawkers with their fast interpersonal reflexes and the ability to make sense of their environment quickly and well probably think I am dumb too. They are present in their moment and are not absent-minded. Too often, I order a drink and forget it there! I am so busy processing things that they have the ability to process without them needing to think!

At this point in my life, conventional wisdom would say that Dr. Petunia Lee is smarter than those hawkers. In truth, there is no comparison. We aren't comparing the same thing at all. It is simply a mindset that positions my strengths in pattern finding and conceptual thinking as "being clever". From a different perspective, I am actually very stupid.

It is the hawkers who are clever.

Note how poor sensory filtering floods the limbic system and ignites an emotional response. I need to activate my cortical control to tamp down this emotional response at all times. I can do it quite well with practice.

I shutdown more often than meltdown. Some other autistics meltdown more than shut down.