Sameer Dahar: How Learning to Write Changed My Mind
In the following short essay, Sameer Dahar, US Autism Advisory Board Member and Non-Vocal Advocate gives us a deep look into the minds of those who are unable to speak or who have limited speaking abilities with profound insight that describes what things might be like for those with autism who lack language. In his own words, he also helps us understand how language development ultimately reshapes the mind as individuals with autism learn to communicate.
About Writing
In my life before words there were sensations and patterns. I generally describe it as a chaos of miscoordination of body and senses. My determined inquiry into my sensory workings led me to understand the cause and effect of discrete sensory stimuli. A pseudo code of my nervous system I discovered in my behavior. I developed response strategies to sensory stimuli or what are called stims, as a child. That was how I communicated socially- by my body language. I was identifying the sources of opportunities—McDonald's, White Castle, toy names like Hot Wheels, Thomas train, etc. The symbols and the words each had certain patterns. In terms of lexical understanding- it was a discrete word recognition.
My internal world is complex and vividly depicted. In this map are conditional statements, feedback loops, and categories. It's a web of nodes and density probabilities. It works in parallel processing, in top-down processing layers. I must analyze discrete packets of information as functions of reality or environment. In sensory dysregulation there is no sequence; instead we use mental hyperlinks and make solid network connections at a glance.
I discovered the power of words. In my subsequent education, I learned grammar and syntax. I taught myself the order of words, of sentences, in the children's picture books of the library of my elementary school. Words could somewhat explain, identify, and translate my sensory experience. I could not speak then, but I was absorbing books, YouTube videos in different languages. I was making a mental map of my words. I still use this map today.
In having autism we must understand the brain-body disconnect. Learning for me is a multilevel event. In learning I have to process each sense, integrate sensory patterns, form the mental word concepts, and internal connections in the mind. Timing these steps has incredible challenges, particularly in environments that are sensory chaotic. The timing must be manually integrated because I take in and process sensory information at different rates.
The process of writing comes after all that processing of information and mental manipulation. The open communication took me years to develop. It was structured motor memory practice, patience in data acquisition, thinking about putting sequential order, forming the motor execution and expression. In typing, I have to talk in my head first, timing my thinking to typing words. It is a split-brain phenomenon, where this internal divide is separating the mind from the physical body. The argument of the body language is impulse, emotion, fight or flight. Mental argument is logical—recording emotion, dictating morality, and consciousness.
Because of this internal conversation momentum, I realized that for another person, my thinking is not functional. Most neurotypical thoughts are transmitted as words. In my mind, thinking intuitively is an affirmative action that relegates my body as a separate entity and defines my spirit. My autism controls my body but not my determination. Now that determination has a part in my life story.
People generally express their thoughts/mind expression to form social connections, create cooperation, start governing participation—basically, organization of society. I have neural expression in terms of my mind recognition of sensory processing. By making connections between issues in the geophysical environment, through intimate study of my own mind, I discovered a language of sensation, discrete spatial perception—a cognitive exercise with real emotion.
Structuring my writing is an exercise in neurotypical thinking. I must think sequentially, ignore sensory manipulation and make my internal dialogue with my sensory self, quiet down. Through writing, I am attempting to translate this cognitive and sensory experience into an alien language that does not have the proper words or verbal output. This language assumes a narrow threshold of information processing. It's a measured token language, while my internal world is complex and vividly depicted.
In these terms of usage I am bound. Uses of sense must be predictable and orderly. One cannot communicate the wealth of sensory exploration I experience and the intuition of micro-behavior and interaction. It is not expressed in words or writing. This is the loss or deficit in verbal communication.
Personally, I find that writing is a window and door into the neurotypical world. It gives me power and is agentic in terms of independence. In verbal expression, the material words formulate the idea of intellect- in words there is authority and direction. Impacting my freedom and life circumstances. Despite all of this, I am still considered low functioning. I determine my goals now and participate more in life today. Intellectually, I make conscious decisions. Having writing skills that enable me to communicate is empowering.
The darkness of isolation and the denial of my mental competency is no more. My autism is singular in that it defines who I am socially, yet makes me look past social conventions. I live like an astronaut in this world, an observer. Participation in writing is a social expression gone public. Much like Facebook people will take what they will going from my posts. I am timing my approach to their sensory structure systems. In effect I am investing in my future self to see if I will be able to bridge the gap between two worlds.
This is writing.