Exploring disability and links with ASD.

Hello, curious minds. Welcome to the first article of ASD Is Ability. I'm thrilled to embark on this journey when we can discuss about diversity, neurodiversity, and how beautiful our minds are, and more importantly, how they can be once we discover ourselves.

Today, we dive into a conversation that's very close to our hearts. It's a celebration of the beautiful, diverse ways that our mind works, and the starting of this journey to talk about ASD, what that means, and actually how we can just get the most out of it. In each article, we'll go through a spotlight of my experience, and also learn and listen other experiences from other people to have a look at it from a different perspective. And from there, know better how we can think how we are ourselves. This podcast is not just about ASD or even neurodiversity. It is really about finding a way to embrace how different we can be, find ways to understand who we really are.

Because by doing that, we can not only be happier with our current reality, more importantly, we can shape our reality to be even better for times to come. So whether you have ASD or have a neurodiversity, or you just know someone, either at work, a friend, a family member or just curious to know more, please join me on these podcasts and podcasts to come so you can understand better and learn as I share my experiences and we go through it. So thanks for listening and joining this, and let's dive in.

And in this first article, I'm going to start by looking at one aspect that is very important, and that's why I wanted to start from the early beginning. As a neurodiverse and the way it works, there's always that internal conflict that reflects with interaction with other people, which is about how we define ourselves as normality and how we want as an instinct to align with what we feel normal. And to frame a bit, I'm just going to bring an example that I hope is going to help you to understand that normality is all about the point of perspective.

Imagine an elephant, and I'm not asking a strange elephant or something like pink or green, standard elephant that you have seen in documentaries or even you have been lucky to see in life. If you take that elephant and you look at it, and from head to toe, you look and you think, it looks normal. It looks normal because you are familiar with it. Picture that elephant in the heart of other elephants, and it might blend in. Even if it has a different size than others, or maybe if it's just bigger or smaller, surely it's going to be feeling the same. If you take that elephant and you put it in the heart of zebras, instantly that's going to feel unusual. And it's going to feel unusual because it's not what we have seen before. It's going to be looking unique. It's going to be looking different.”

We might be thinking, well, something not normal here. That's really important to identify. What's normal is what's the norm, is what we are used to see, is what we think is the natural way of being things around us. In reality, everything can be normal. Everything can be out of normality. It all depends on the conception. For those people that have a neurodiversity or specifically have ASD, that feeling of not conforming to normality is what creates sometimes the conflict. Now, going back to the example of the elephant. The elephant is exactly the same. It hasn't changed at all. So the elephant was normal within the group of elephants, and still is normal within the group of zebras. What has changed is the environment.”

As we grow up, as we interact, regardless of who we are, and how we behave, and how we have been growing up, there's always this comparison of ourselves and the environment. And that's why with this first article, we tackled that to understand how that neurodiversity and how that ASD fits with who we are and how it's seen by other people. And the first thing that I want to discuss here is about what is neurodiversity. I think we have moved forward a lot in terms of understanding that it can be a disability, it can be an element where we need support, and it's an element where it needs more than anything understanding from other people. Now, around disability, there's always the word disabled or people with disabilities. And as a main subject to discuss today, I wanted to just really narrow down on that.

So let's talk about the conflict or the difference between disabled and having a disability. When someone is defined as disabled or someone is defined as disabled by someone external, the word disabled has two main elements that for me need addressing. First of all, it's very binary.

It's either able or disabled. So it's very binary, you don't have any degrees, like yes or no. And also, disabled is an adjective, means someone is going to say that person is disabled, or someone is going to say, well, I am disabled. On the other hand, if you take the word disability, it has much more rich semantics, and it has a better way of explaining, in this case, disability or neurodiversity, as we're looking at it. First of all, you can have a degree of disability, so you can just really grade from a lot of disability or just a bit. So the disability can be graded, which I think really helps, especially when we talk about ASD and other elements similar to that.

The second one is the word and the grammar around it is going to be that person has a disability, or if it's personal, ourselves, we're going to say, well, I have a disability or I have a degree of disability. The important element is that whatever we have is because we have gained through our life. When we are born, we have our body and our mind. It's through life that we start having more things. So having a disability, it's something given to us, and it's very different from who we are. Who we are is defined by ourselves, is not defined by what we have.

Being able to really go forward and say, I have a disability or I have a degree of disability is so important, because it separates in our mind who we are inside us from what we have attached to us. The beauty is, it's easier, regardless of the effort around it, if you compare, it's easier to remove what we have, than change who we are. Who we are is what's defined as unique, is what is going to be defining ourselves as authentic, as honest, as just being who we actually are inside. What we have can be amended. What we have can be improved. Luckily, in terms of advances in science, there's some disabilities, physical disabilities that are being improved, which is great.

From a neurodiversity point of view, there's some disabilities that can also be improved. It's something we have, and then we have a different degree. And I think that, if anything, it's a message that I'm very proud to be waving the flag about. That means that in this podcast and in forthcoming articles, I will always mention about having a disability, having a degree of disability, or having a diverse way of thinking. Being neurodiverse, again, it's a point of view. Everybody is neurodiverse, depending on the environment. You get a group of people with the same way of thinking. They are all aligned in terms of their mindset. If you put one of those people in a complete different environment, who is going to be the neurodiverse? The person being different. Therefore, neurodiversity, for me, it's very important to see it, as well as having a different way of thinking, rather than being different and seeing different as not part of the norm. For me, normality is about being ourselves.

When it comes to groups, when it comes to different people that have a different way of thinking, or they are different, celebrate that they are different, and then have the understanding to know how different they are. And to finish this first podcast, I wanted to outline what's going to be the topic of our next article. At the next article, I'm going to be talking about ASD as autism spectrum disorder, and how the definition of it, and how we use that word, can really help those people with ASD, and also the people around people with ASD.

More important than anything, being able to communicate the richness that comes from different points of view. That will be the topic for our next article, and in forthcoming articles, I will invite also interview of other people, so we can gain the experience. For now, this was everything, and thanks for listening to ASD Is Ability.

If you like these articles, and you are interested in knowing more, please follow and subscribe in your podcast platform, there's more to come. Have a good day, and celebrate who you are.

#neurodiversity #asd #mindset #disability