“I don’t really feel comfortable around other people, but I know how to fit in. I’m like Jane Goodall with the chimps.”
At this point, in every therapy session I’ve told this story in since I was 15, the therapist would smirk or even laugh, and I would feel so clever; until my evaluation.
When I was a young child, I learned about Jane Goodall and her work, and I was amazed that someone else in the world sought out that sort of connection with animals. That’s what I wanted. That’s what I believed I could do. But until I saw the story of Jane and the chimps, I hadn’t considered studying behavior as communication, as well as the importance of rules for social animals. I obsessively watched nature documentaries, read the encyclopedia, took out books from the library and basically everything pre-internet kids did when they hyper-fixated on a subject.
It wasn’t until 9th grade or so that it dawned on me; I could use this with humans. Maybe I don’t need to be the weird girl! Maybe I can pay better attention to them and assimilate.
And I did. I learned to mask and mirror.
“What were things like for you in school with the other kids?” one of the therapists conducting my evaluation asked me.
“After years of getting picked on for being weird and nerdy, I figured out how to act like them to be able to fit in, like I was Jane Goodall with the chimps.” I waited for the smirk or the laugh.
A serious, “Tell me more about that,” was the response.
For those that don’t know, it’s actually difficult for an adult to get an autism diagnosis. There are other things that can affect our brain during our lifetime that can result in autism-like feelings and behaviors in adults. But disclosing in my evaluation the entirety of my Jane Goodall obsession was one part of the confirmation they needed, to be able to see some early childhood signs, as well as my desire and talent for masking that started in my teen years.
Thanks to Jane, I not only learned a skill that helped me get through life, but my story of her influence on me to the right therapist finally brought me clarity on why I needed that skill in the first place.
Now I can use this skill more selectively, with care to use it only for my benefit.
Chimps can be quite fascinating, after all.