Hello readers. I have written many pieces relating to my social experiences recently but I am going to collaborate and clarify my experiences in social environment. The two factors that influences my social life are - my hearing loss which affects my hearing on listening people's speeches and clarity; mild case of ASD which influences on my social skills, body language and understanding people's boundaries and rules. Both factors comes together, becomes more difficult than I thought. Finding someone around the world having both a hearing loss and being Aspie is extremely rare. Does that surprise you? How you feel about that? Are you aware of it?
However, I rarely disclose my ASD until later when I becoming comfortable with people including employers and new friends especially at UQ. Despite that, my hearing loss is visual thing because my hearing aids is easily seen by people, and their speech clarity are not always clear to me thus asking for clarification. I don't take a much huge deal on being an Aspie because my experiences recently has shown that I am living my life more successful than a typical Aspie. I met a quite few of them and they have not done things nor have things as much I do. So, I feel safe to say I am proud of myself to my achievements I have done and meeting people is something I do better than before.
Personally I have been to counselling, trainings, seminars and meetings in relation to my disabilities for ten years. I have gained a lot of confidence from my efforts to attend those. Meanwhile I have been improving in managing self eestem, anger and trust. So recently it did seem working. However, my hearing loss does not change the way of how people to speak with me. Many cases that hearing people becomes a miscommunication issue whilst engaging a conversation with me. I met one lecturer this semester at UQ, from day one of the classes I had to approach to speak with him about my awareness in hearing loss and his acknowledgment of my student access plan from my advisors. His reaction appears to be confused, nor does not fully understand the process. This has come to the point I realised that not everyone in the world will understand the aspects of people with hearing loss. It such a shame because how I felt about this including from my experiences I miss out on engaging with people.
You can see this example shows such a huge influence in my social life. As being an Aspie is another thing, but I don't go on too much about it since the fact I am smarter than this since I have learnt so much about social skills and the rules around it. So, it also indeed affects non-aspies to understand my approaches, different perspective on life and the skills I maintain. This is also an everyday life experience. Whether people know I have it or not, it have no such difference made in terms of reactions and approaches. This is because it is invisible disability, where that people tend to judge the mental difference side of it rather than judging the disability itself. From my experiences I have seen many people's reactions becomes quickly judgmental basing on my social and communication skills. Numerous times I have been stereotyped as being a kid, having a mental disorder and labelled in disregarding language from opposite sex. Being victismed!
The combination of both disabilities becomes very difficult to my social life. The challenge itself does not tend to change unless the society accepts who I am. I have learnt to ignore and disregard many able bodied people's rudeness, impoliteness and discriminative languages. Most times when I meet new friends, stays with them for several weeks later. I have seen observations from their reactions and body language becomes more complex. These situations makes me uncomfortable because it may show that they may not enjoy my company. To recap on my values; I am a happy, self orientated, friendly, proactive and nice human being. I do not like hurting people nor negative influences on them. So since the fact of showing my personalities to new friends I have met over time(s), people becomes less friendly and proactive which observably different to other people. I find this unfair, telling myself what I did is wrong and why they do that to me. I never had a single answer for this cause.
As I know considering my disabilities controlling of my life is a negative influence, I am not taking a big deal on this. I always wanted to know why and what is going on in many circumstances from making new friends and engaging in conversations. From the past, I learnt that obsessions becomes a negative outcome when communicating with people. So I ticked that off. Since my move to Brisbane, I tried different and new things, approaches and environments. It does seem working this time because I haven't had any negative objections compared from my previous experiences. However, the problem is still there. I tend to observe the differences of why people becomes less in touch and proactive with me. Likewise these situations I experiencing such as: why friends don't invite me to things anymore? Why that person is not responding to me anymore? Why they sit in different positions in classes than regularly? Why friends tend to forget about my hearing loss? And so on.......
So these questions comes to me everyday, and never being answered. This is what and how I see from my perspective. What is going on? Why this is happening? There are two things I may come to mind: 1) the person becomes more stubborn or 2) I may have done something wrong without knowing it. It would be such a wonderful world if people in general becomes more caring, be out there for others and share life experiences together. Do you agree with this? Would you like to see people becomes less judgmental and passive aggressive?
My life right now is enjoyable. I am experiencing new things and trying differently. I am enjoyng Brisbane and my university. But that is not it, miscommunication between myself and the mainstream is still occuring.
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