Chapter 2: Perception
6 March 2020
The morning after the internet revealed that I am on the spectrum, I do not think about it. I have seen an American breakfast restaurant on the map, and this takes precedence over some silly internet quiz. Besides, on the internet almost all queries lead to cot death when you Google “how to take care of a baby” (not that I have done that), so I take its “diagnosis” as seriously as I take my daily horoscope, which is suspiciously accurate. Confirmation bias is not reserved for discrimination.
I snap this article’s photo in my hotel room before leaving and minutes later am delighted by a “Coronado Beach” breakfast platter at the California Bean. Nothing screams America like a Nürnberger bratwurst. This sounds sarcastic, but I mean it. Nothing I have found comes closer to an American breakfast sausage link on this side of the pond. If it had not been labeled “Nürnberger”, with a glaring umlaut, I would have blissfully mistaken it for a Jimmy Dean. As the taste fills my senses, I am transported to my part of the US, which is as far as you can get, literally and metaphorically, from California.
North Carolina has beautiful mountains, beaches, and forests. Its cities are charming; even the biggest greets you with rocking chairs at its airport entry. It also is a red state, and I do not just mean Republican. What Richard Berrett describes as red levels of human consciousness run wild there: “Underlying anxieties about not being respected, not being enough, not being accepted, not being loved, not being safe or secure or having enough…” I wonder if there is a relation to the political color coding. After breakfast, I join the class for the last day and share a good laugh about my internet quiz. That evening I board what would turn out to be my last flight in over a year and counting.
11 March 2020
People in Denmark gather around TV sets like a national soccer game is on in Central America to watch as our Prime Minister, Mette Frederiksen, announces that Denmark is shutting down due to the high volume of Covid-19 cases. All schools will close, and all non-essential workers should remain home. While we listen to the prime minister saying this, there is a red bold banner scrolling across the bottom of the screen saying, “Denmark is NOT shutting down.” At first, I check my language skills, for Danish is my 3rd and laziest language. It is like a 3rd born child, who has learned to rely on regular doses of indifference. When I speak Danish, I do not even try to proactively make the right grammatical choices. If my conversation partner does not understand me, rather than try to improve, I use cultural tricks against them saying “nååhhhhh” while making conflict avoiding shrugs. The best part is that no one seems to notice because native Danish speakers also do this.
My Danish husband kindly confirms that my language skills in this case do not fail me, but that indeed what Mette is saying and what we are reading are not very similar. I know right away, this is just another example of the starring phenomenon of my life: that reality as I perceive it and reality as it seems to be perceived by others, do not match.
A couple months into Corona lock down, date: who knows?
I have started marking the time by which cup of coffee I am on until it becomes time to look for chips. I hang up from a phone call feeling slightly better than before after speaking with my best friend. She is a mother of three and is always there to one-up me with being hard on the kids. It is cathartic to know I am not the only one who feels like a ticking time bomb, ready to explode upon stepping on one more Lego. My floor is smothered in Legos and I resent them on a deeper level than their surface cluttery annoyance causes. They are the tiny, colorful, inanimate victims of my resentment because I never played with them as a child. I never played with them because I was told by many teachers that I was not creative. What I do not know is if I was not creative because I was told I was not creative. My original hopes of MIT professors resolving this confusion wane as I age, leaving my naïve expectations stranded (nice try though, @Chomsky). I reflect on how much labels affect our reality.
The fact is, sometimes I get stuck in my head thinking about these things, which is incredibly interesting, until it is not. I decide to find a therapist. I need to know why I do not enjoy playing with children and while we are at it, find out if I am autistic. “Is ‘be’ even the right verb choice for this label I am casually trying on? Or does one ‘have’ autism?” I wonder. I want to find a therapist who understands the South of the US. There should be an entire accreditation program for psychiatrists who specialize in understanding the cultural conditions that brought the tent revival, speaking in tongues, and religious snake handling. If the movie, The Exorcist seem like a documentary to you, maybe you are also a potential patient.
I settle for a Danish therapist who has spent a lot of time in a different part of America because it is likely that my Bible Belt accredited therapist does not exist in Denmark. We speak for 1.5 hours and she gives me the verdict: “You are too empathetic to be autistic; you are just really smart,” adding, “and no one really likes playing with children; what matters is that you love them.” She tells me I do not need therapy, since I seem to know a lot about psychology already and sends me on my way. “Maybe they should add business courses to the psych curriculum,” I think. But I feel relieved that I do not get labelled with a “disorder”. Who does not like to be told they are really smart? I accept the conclusion. But what if I go around acting like I am really smart the same way I have spent most of my life believing that I was not creative? Is this useful? I wish I could Zoom with Sapir and Whorf to pick their brains.
Although not sure what to do with this “just really smart” label, I am no stranger to it. In most job interviews, I get interrogated about my intelligence scores. “Will you get bored here?”, “Are you able to work with people who are less smart than you?” I have come to realize they want me to lie to make them feel comfortable. Perhaps my one-hit-wonder therapist was right, I am empathetic. But unfortunately lying — even the “white” version — is very hard for me. Not in a holier-than-thou or Pinocchio kind of way; rather, departure from truth, either by reducing the explicitness of the premises or by committing logical fallacies in the syllogism, gives me anxiety. While preparing to move to Europe 13 years ago for a leadership spot, I was called up a few days before my departure to be preemptively demoted. My manager-to-be explained that my replacement was “not as smart as you but good at navigating politics.” This information gleaned from off the shelf intelligence and personality tests, not interactions with me, was not untrue.
Soon, I take my mind off my psychological problems to focus on more relevant matters, getting customers. I have written to several people working with innovation to tell them about a new concept I have just coined called “Exaptive Consulting”, which involves facilitating collective intelligence. My concept has matured its value proposition to that of helping organizations make connections between things to find good ideas. In a nutshell, I want to help larger organizations tap into their creativity. I feel equipped to do this, since I had to learn to be creative in the same way one learns a second language. One may not master the skill as much, but the explicit awareness of the process and structure is greater, making it easier to explain to others.
I have just received a response from a Director of Innovation, so I eagerly open the mail. He writes as an elaborate explanation of his rejection:
I am annoyed but feel grateful for the candid feedback. It is always useful to find out how others perceive you, even if it hurts. I chant, “feedback is a gift…feedback is a gift…” like George Costanza’s crescendo, “Serenity now” as I return to my psychological musings, “what is wrong with me?!?!”
In 2017, a psychiatrist, turned Leadership coach came to help the team I was on pull from our strengths. He had us all take the Meyers Briggs Personality Assessment. My results showed that I am/have an ENTJ, with the E just on the border. He explained, “One of the most important things you should know about yourself is that you think very differently than most people, yet think most people think like you.” It was a eureka moment. The detailed report resonated heavily. According to a website called 16personalities, ENTJs are:
“…natural-born leaders. People with this personality type embody the gifts of charisma and confidence, and project authority in a way that draws crowds together behind a common goal. However, Commanders are also characterized by an often-ruthless level of rationality, using their drive, determination, and sharp minds to achieve whatever end they’ve set for themselves. Perhaps it is best that they make up only three percent of the population, lest they overwhelm the more timid and sensitive personality types that make up much of the rest of the world — but we have Commanders to thank for many of the businesses and institutions we take for granted every day.”
Three percent of the population is estimated to have this personality type — one percent women. Winston Churchill, Steve Jobs, Margaret Thatcher out of 97 other people. The rate for ASD is almost identical and the famous names correlate. But when I research autism the results are mostly about children and mostly describe what is wrong with them. Meyers Briggs, however, is more targeted to adults and describes strengths and weaknesses. An article in Psychology Junkie called “Recognizing the Meyers Briggs Personality Types in Childhood” states, “When it comes to type theory, a lot of the descriptions for adult types won’t work as well for children. Children are just starting to develop and as a result, they won’t have steady access to all of their cognitive functions.” I need to do some more exploring. Is it only a coincidence that my soul brothers Winston Churchill and Steve Jobs have been given both labels? And why is one of the labels dubbed “Commander” and other “Disorder”?