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Hello, everyone. Thank you for having me here today. Hope
you all enjoying the conference event so far. My name is Mathew Townsend. This
is my second presentation with the ASPECT conferences. Today I will talk about
‘Master of Aspie: sharing perspectives’. This is a second version from my first
presentation. Though things has changed a lot since, so it is important to
reflect on those aspects. This is an exciting thing for you all. By the way
this is my first time visit to Melbourne!
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So what about my world today? I am currently
completing my Master degree thesis on ‘How does different vegetation, material
and building type impacts on the surface temperatures?’ This study is at the
University of Queensland’s St Lucia campus, up in Brisbane. The Master of
Environmental Management degree will be concluded by the completion of my
thesis which is on the 3rd of June. I am expected to graduate in
mid-July.
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Over past years I entitled my passions to my
personal values and goals. I am passionate in environmental sustainability and
political science. These interests explores frequently every day because the
influence of my like-minded friends. I do have other interest that inspires me
such as climate and weather, astronomy, urban planning and design, fitness and
riding a bicycle.
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Before my first presentation at Sydney in 2014,
I only visited to the United States and Canada as the main overseas
destinations I been to. However, I have added more to the list more recently as
part of my career experience. I visited Vietnam, Hong Kong, China and Macau.
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My career pathway can be challenging because of
competitiveness I have earned especially in the past year. I would feel desired
to become a politician to save our global issues from my personal experience.
Otherwise I am more likely to end up working for an employment, hopefully!
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So before moving onto sharing my perspectives. I wanted to
briefly describe my situation, so it helps to give you a big picture of what a
person with high functioning Autism and hearing loss lifestyle currently at
this stage of life.
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What happened to me in the past year? I have
moved out of regional NSW area to the city of Brisbane to start a new life.
Studying at the well-known university in the world, volunteering in many events
and organisations, had few short employment opportunities, a three month
internship. So this is not only ones that has changed my life. It is also that
I never made so many friends. I used to feel lonely more often before moving to
Brisbane because there are nothing to do especially for people at my age. So I
met lot of likeminded people especially through my university, which leads to
meet more new people out in the community of similar values. The network has
grown since then so I can meet new people from anywhere.
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Changing the way how I interact with people can
be advantageous thing that would help to broaden my horizons and open the gates
to the learning different perspectives. So yes I did change the way how I put
people’s position in the conversation. Engaging a conversation is really
difficult, but the more you try is the better you get along with them. So what
changes I made? I finally made a decision of my life is to disclose my
challenges. How hard is it to me to listen when they are speaking, explaining
the environmental factors that distract the conversation, and describe how I
miscue the social skills.
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Did I motivated to learn new things? The simple
answer to this question is yes. Since I mentioned that I made a move from a
regional area to a city earlier last year. What lead me to make this decision?
Opportunities. Usually someone on the spectrum doesn’t like change. So they
usually confined to one place for the majority of the time due to their passion
and obsession. I realised that it didn’t made me happy when I stayed at one
place for long time because of nothing is offering me. So it convinced me to
see the city where I should able to learn to be more independent.
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Now let’s talk about learning and sharing perspectives. This
part will give you an insight how I worked with my friends giving a perspective
onto each other’s especially to a singular point of mind. This will help you to
see where I am coming from, and how did my friends managed.
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Awaring the way I behave in reflection to my
friends’ reactions – this is something I am not normally good at knowing myself
that my behaviour did impact on my friends’ feelings, emotions, and comfort
level and ‘what to say back’. How I become fully aware of this? After I
disclose my challenges to my friends in the earlier days of the friendships,
this become a way to help me to learn how to reflect my behaviour. I tend to
become obsessed talking about a specific topic, which that most of my friends
do have similar interests but sometimes I didn’t know it is too much for them.
So they politely tell me we are talking about something else because they
understand that my conditions is responsible of the obsessions. The sensory
overload in the environment is another awareness that my friends started to
understand how to minimise the challenges. For instance, background music or
other noise is too loud for a conversation. So they recommended to turn it down
a bit or relocate to a suitable place. Sometimes they are mindful about my
challenges, but also I am mindful for theirs.
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Learning to speak up about the challenges – this
is critically most important thing that happened to my life. This method has
changed my life, made so many vast improvements especially in areas of
friendships, relationships, communication strategies and social skills. In the
early days I used to have social anxiety, because I have a fear people become
aggravated about my challenges. I overcame this when I felt comfortable at one
stage speaking to a new friend last year, she encouraged me to build trust with
people and making new friendships is something to speak about what challenges
you have they will understand. It about expressing my feelings in social
settings, this has improved today. Seeking support and advice is an everyday
thing because of new situations emerges thus require new strategies. But again,
it improves over time.
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When someone speaks out about their personal
challenges and life issues, it normally encourages other people to do a same.
In my case when I express my feelings of communication isolation and other
challenges, it has encouraged some of my friends to tell me their issues
especially with anxiety and depression, privately. None of the friends in the
larger circle does know there is some people have these issues. So what I
believe I have admired people to understand about the aspects of the
challenges, which that helped me to understand theirs. That when the anxiety
comes from, because I won’t take judgement of their behaviour. But hey this is
a really good thing to share perspectives?
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Now I am going to speak from my perspective on what I have
learned from the challenges.
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What communication and social skills I aware
that I may not adapt to? This is a tricky question but it is reflective to my friend’s
behaviour towards me. The communication barrier is more on the hearing loss
rather than the spectrum side. So my group of friends who are able to response
to each other’s requests on time, I was unable to respond that quickly because
I couldn’t hear them properly. It a same how I respond to a social skill or
setting, most of the time it hard to know if I am doing it appropriately. My
reflections towards them is not a same when they do to me originally.
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Sensory complications especially noise, light and
crowds. Hanging out with friends, going to work’s social gatherings and
community events that I like to do. There can be sometimes the environmental
conditions stops me from going, or giving me extra hard time. When the music is
high, I am unable to engage in conversation with the person. This is a primary
issue I face every day where loud background noise within a social setting puts
me in uncomfortable mood. I am always looking forward to have time to converse
with people but these type of environment is prevalent these days thus making
difficult to learn new social skills which that I missed when I was younger.
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Making conversations. Sometimes I noticed myself
I can be one sided when chatting with someone. Although I feel having a habit
of this, thus make me feel guilty. It turns my friends away from engaging a
conversation with me, or initiate with me. So I realised that I need to learn
to balance the conversation to the point of talking about the other’s person
situation rather than talking about myself. This boost my friends’ confidence
of engagement with me.
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Quotes and metaphors are something bothers me a
lot. When people make these statements, I always place in my position to ask a
question to someone to clarify what it is means, specifically. I believe that
when I missed learning key literature skills when I was younger, that should
have helped me to understand these statements today. So I will continually ask
my friends, and family, depending on the circumstances to seek clarification of
these quotes and metaphors from such conversations and media.
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Nonverbal communication such as eye contact,
body language and social cues are impacting my ability of developing
relationships with people. It is very difficult for me to learn without the
natural impact; so I have no role models in my life who that would able to
teach me at the specific social setting I am currently in to explain the
situation.
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Negative feelings – most of the time that when I get those
feelings when I know I am coping the challenges. It’s brutal. It’s difficult.
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Comparing myself to others: that is something I
forced myself into the negative territory seeing other people have more things
or things that I struggled to earn. I understand that my challenges doesn’t
mean I can’t get them, although I can feel the pressure in my way like
obstacles blocking my way. I couldn’t help myself trying to go through these
obstacles, but what made the pressure to be relived is to forget about what
other people have or not have. I learned to focus more on myself, which that
made me become happier.
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It can be that I didn’t know someone else is
talking to specific person, or my voice is not loud enough, or even the
person’s hearing wasn’t so well. I tend to avoid assumptions of why people are
not listening to me is that I have a hearing loss where that made people
excuses of poor communication. So my friends also told me same perspective on
this when they try to get attention when they are talking to people. Sometimes
in conversations, especially with group of 4 people or more it usually becomes
imbalanced.
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I personally own a Facebook account since the
end of 2008, it was the reason I joined because I moved out of family home for
university studies and traveling. So, Facebook in general doesn’t always make
me happy because I tend to over read things even when I didn’t know whether
it’s a joke, exaggeration or people aren’t responding back to you. I tend to
get depressed over this, it generally make me feel lonely because there not
usually someone to talk or share time with.
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It is extremely rare that I hurt my friends’
emotions and respect when I misread the nonverbal communication, more so of the
body language/movement. For instance, should I follow that person because
everyone else is following her? Majority of my friends didn’t understand why I
following them, so they are female friends and it about female things that is
nothing to do with my business. I didn’t entirely understand the movement from
the first place. This never happened again because when I disclosed my
challenges, the nonverbal environment became clearer.
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Do people in general not being confident to
engage in a conversation with me? This is an everyday challenge of a person
with a hearing loss. Whether the people observe my hearing aid, they assume
that my conversations is not on par as everyone else.
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What we should do to minimise these impacts? The impacts of
communication challenges, learning social skills and isolation. This is my
personal experience of what and how made it happened which it works well for
me. Be mindful it doesn’t work for everyone, but it is a good guidance to
alleviate most of the challenges.
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It’s a social responsibility advice, as I mean
my personal experience comes to make advice because it works. A professional
advice is different because they are not you.
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Increase advertising and media tools
compromising the awareness of the behaviour, challenges and potential advices
to support these people. Advertising in to the mainstream world like we seen for
sexual health and domestic violence at the bus stops, billboards, television
commercials and so on. Imagine we swap all of these advertisements to mental
health, disability and diversity and other related awareness features. People
will start to acknowledge the important aspects more than our personal beliefs.
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Like I previously mentioned about encourage to
speak up about your feelings, expressing them and seek clarification. Although
this is a way to convince yourself to explore the challenges and how you want
people to support you. This will improve your health and wellbeing.
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I am not trying to make trouble here because
there are psychologists in the audience listening to this. I had 7 years’
experience of psychology and counselling sessions. These sessions only refer
myself as in the issues are personal rather than learning the communication and
social skills. I have been recommended, and taken advice to learn those skills
from the psychologist. Though I only see the theoretical side of it, hence it
does not mean improve my practical reality of providing these skills. You need friends to be with you to observe
and give advice/feedback on your behaviour/skill. This helped me so much more
than just seven years of those sessions. Especially in past year I learned more
practical side than the theory, thus build my confidence in the social
environment, and encouraged me to speak out about my challenges.
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Always the best thing a person can do is to be
yourself, motivate your life to do things. From my experience, sitting down at
the computer all day, watch television and that doesn’t make me happy. I was
hungry for social connection but my attitude is self-centred because I was
complaining the way how people treat me.
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Biggest thing I learnt more recently is that life is
difficult for everyone no matter if they are on the spectrum or not. It is
because the influence of my friends who shared me their personal experiences,
thus helped me to understand the bigger picture.
The communication and social skills is still challenging
today because the environmental conditions is ever changing and always new
objective turns up.
How to learn to share perspectives with people. This is an
important aspect to find support and help your situation within others. This
reduces assumptions and avoid communication issues.
We need to increase awareness through the mainstream media
especially advertising and education.
I have a Facebook page I run, it aims to bring awareness of
diversity and inclusiveness. I also share my passion for the environment,
politics, and global goals from the United Nations. The Facebook page name is –
Mathew Townsend Positive change for the future.
Thank you for your time being here. Hope you all learned
many things.
