BOOKS
Switched On, Raising Cubby, Be Different, and Look Me in the Eye are all available in print, e-book, and audio editions. All audio books except the library edition of Look Me in the Eye are narrated by the author.
Through the Random House site:From your favorite online retailer . . . .
Alibis
Amazon
Barnes and Noble
Indie Bound
Powell's
Tattered Cover
You can also order signed copies directly from us . . .
JohnRobison
And our foreign book selling partners . . . .
Chapters Indigo (Canada)
Dymocks (Australia)In addition you can find my books in retail stores everywhere. My stories are available in the following languages and foreign editions:
US - English
British/Australian/New Zealand - English
Japanese
Korean
Brazil - Portuguese
Portugal - Portuguese
Italy - Italian
French
Spanish
Russian
German
Dutch
Chinese ComplexMandarin
Indonesian
Comments
I purchased and downloaded Look Me In The Eye, and Be Different a few months back and just now have gotten back to begin reading. I'm reading Be Different now and it's moved me to reach out and write to you and say thank you. Deeply and profoundly, thank you.
Your is the first book that has spoken to me through and through on how I process bad news. For that matter, information in general. As soon as I began reading the chapter Feeling Bad News I stopped and backed up to start highlighting. It's like I was reading my story, reading about me. No one has captured and written how I process information, news, bad news, even news that is not news but I somehow shift it to that, the way that you have. Your description of how you processed the news of Peter's motorcycle accident and how it became your own worry was me, spot on. I never realized this was an autistic trait. I just chalked it up to the parts of me that I still judged as OCD, PTSD or something along those lines. I have been that pessimist, and the survivor. It's great to be a survivor, and I can see the positive's to being a pessimist, and having said that, I'd like to be so over that. Instead of looking for what could go wrong and planning for it all the the time, I want to, choose to rest in a place where I focus on all of the good that happens in the world. I loved where you said, "Since I have trouble taking in other people’s perspectives as separate from me, I began relating this new bad feeling to myself and the world around me."
Holy crap! The lights went on in my head. I did not know that was a thing that other people experienced. It's the motor neurons. I'm now trying to understand how my mind mirrors anything I perceive as bad news or a threat so "Naturally" that my mind turns to my own life and how whatever it is then turns to a threat in my own life.
Why is it "Natural" for us on the spectrum to do this?
I have to tell you (preaching to the choir) it is an exhausting way to live. Painful, limiting, frightening way to live. You said, "My logical mind veered off track from logic and into a world of emotion".
How do I reign myself in? It's a daily, sometimes moment to moment challenge to do this dance of remaining separate from others peoples news. Stress makes it harder to manage and I have better days and more challenging days, and it is something that has been with me all of my life. Perhaps more deeply entrenched because I have been doing it for 53 years and I am only now in these past months beginning to understand myself thanks to being diagnosed.
Likewise my feelings of empathy, once triggered are huge. Unlike what I had read and understood in the past, that those with Autism were void of feelings, I am anything but. I've never understood motor neurons this way before. Never understood that the more I took in understanding of something, the worse I usually ended up feeling. I think I must have know instinctively as a child because I avoided some subjects. It hurt to hear about them, read about them, and I would end up feeling them in my body, or expecting them to happen to me or my family. My coping tool was to numb out, shut down. Maybe that's why some of us seem to appear without feelings. Shutting down was the option we used to survive and adapt to this world.
There is so much more I could share as I continue to read this book, suffice it to say thank you, in your words I am seeing a clearer picture of me than I ever have previously and it's soothing, peaceful, healing balm to my soul. Thank you.