How my diagnosis changed the way I perceive myself | Kaelynn Partlow

• When have you experienced a profound sense of disconnection from others, and what did you learn from it? I don't know, since I gained consciousness, I think. It feels like I spend more time dissecting the human experience than having one myself.

(gentle upbeat music)
(ball bouncing)

My name is Kaelynn Partlow. I'm an author, I'm an autism advocate, I'm a content creator, and I'm a Registered Behavior Technician. We came prepared. We have three fidget toys. How could you possibly screw up if you have three fidget toys? You could not. All the anxious thoughts from the brain travel down the arm and into the hand and into the object, and they no longer live in the brain. I think I like balloon dog the most.

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What do you imagine other people assume about you? Hmm, I think people, in person, think that my life is easy and it is free from pain or significant issues, and I don't think they realize that I'm intelligent to the degree that I am.

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Is there a voice in your head that tells you how bad you are? That says, "You're selfish, you're spoiled, you're stupid." Whose voice is that and when was the first time you heard that? I think when I was little, my perception of myself was that I was stupid. It meant I was stupid. And even if I didn't have a name for it, I felt stupid because I was failing the 3rd grade. And how do you fail the 3rd grade and have a good self-esteem, you know? You kind of can't do those two things at the same time.

And so when I got assessed, it was pretty disappointing, I think, on everybody's behalf, that we got autism, we got ADHD, we got dyslexia, we got dyscalculia, we got dysgraphia, dyspraxia. You know, getting diagnosed, it kind of put a word to it, so instead of stupid, I was dyslexic, which helped a little, not a lot but a little, just to have a word for it that wasn't dumb or wrong.

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If someone doesn't understand you, what are you making it mean about you? In an ideal world, if somebody didn't understand you, they would just say, "I don't understand that." But traditionally, that's not how most people communicate. They, I don't know, give me a normal person example. What do the normies do? Yeah, sometimes they just stop communicating. They don't tell you, "Oh, I didn't understand that." They just are done with you.

When I was little, I was really obsessed with dogs. And it wasn't enough to just play with my dog. And so for a very long time, I said that I was a dog. You know, my name is Kaelynn and it starts with a K, and I was nine years old, and so, therefore, I was a K-9. I think sometimes if I got lucky, you know, little kids at at the age of nine would bark back and they would play dogs with me, but eventually, they would get bored or they'd be like, "No, that's weird. We don't wanna do that." And that just didn't make sense to me.

What action do you want to take but don't feel ready yet? My first thought was, "I need a new car and I don't want a car payment." But then, like, in consideration for what this activity is, probably, the answer we're looking for is that I've not prioritized interpersonal relationships.

If I'm in a social situation, I have to think about looking at peoples' faces, intentionally listening to their words and filtering out my own brain noise. I have to think about my own facial expression and body language and posture to make sure that I don't send the wrong message. And so when you're faced with attempts that don't work or attempts that don't feel worthwhile, then it's really difficult to motivate yourself to continue when you know that you're not likely to encounter success.

What are you most afraid will never change about yourself or your life, and why? I guess, what if my interpersonal issues never get better? Feeling big emotions and feeling them very strongly, and, by my own metric, being just a little bit neurotic to live with, being lonely, like, I'm pretty satisfied with how I am, but, like, you're meant to grow and change. And so I guess I'd be afraid that I'd stay like this forever.

My relationship with loneliness is--it's worse nights, weekends, and holidays. The loneliness kind of creeps back in because I'm no longer needed in a professional capacity. And, you know, I've got people who, more or less, need me in a personal capacity, but when those people don't need me or are busy, that's when the loneliness kind of starts to set in and you start to kind of look around and realize, "Well, wait a minute, everything has stopped. Where did everybody go?"

Everybody else is out living their life. Everybody else is out doing things with other people. And I'm sitting here thinking about what things I might do at work next time. Sometimes I write when I feel that way and I'm a pretty good writer. And when I'm in a bad mood, I'm a really good writer, unfortunately.

When I am sad or upset, I go inside my closet and close the door and it's incredibly dark and it's very quiet and there's just nothingness in there except for all of my feelings, which kind of fills up the closet and maybe then some. And I kind of channel that, I guess, through my fingers and into the words that I write until there's nothing else left and sometimes I fall asleep.

(object thuds)
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What personal strength are you most reluctant to acknowledge, and how has it impacted your life? When you get diagnosed with multiple disabilities, you don't get the luxury of ignoring your personal weaknesses, and also you really cling to your personal strengths. And so when you spend a large portion of your childhood unsuccessful in academic environments, you come to the conclusion that, "I can't do this."

And I have evidence to support why I can't do this. Because every time I've tried, it's failed. And I could pull out all the paperwork that says that I have. But when I started with Project Hope, they gave me tasks and activities that I could be successful with. I saw areas in my life in which I was successful and without a whole lot of help.

And it's really kind of empowered me to take advantage of other opportunities I've been offered as a result of that.

(object thuds)
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When did you truly feel celebrated? Probably when I was on Netflix and then we had the viewing party when it came out.

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• [Speaker] Hello. - Hi, my name is Kaelynn. I'm 24 years old, and I'm single, and I'm looking for a boyfriend. To have such a large attendance at my viewing party, it was coworkers, it was casual friends, it was acquaintances. It was just a bunch of people who I knew. Everybody showed up, and I thought that that was particularly special.

You know, the whole thing where they say, "Do it scared"? I realized just how capable I was of doing it scared. So I, very quickly, in my own mind, became someone who thrives under pressure. What do we think about the fingerprint as the new symbol for autism? And the idea that I could be a public speaker was not a thing that I thought I could achieve.

It was maybe a thing that I was interested in doing, but I didn't think it was possible. But with the newfound knowledge of me thriving under pressure, I could pursue things that were difficult. Not only could I tolerate them, but I could pursue them and I could be successful with them.

Please bring light, bring hope to those who need it.

(audience cheering)