My Story

Who are you? What are you? What defines you?

When most people are asked these questions they can usually the first two straight away, their personal circumstance dictating the third.  And yes, when I’m asked the same questions, the first two I answer without thinking: My name is Adrian Lee Baker. I am a teacher. But the third question ‘what defines me’ is not so much governed by my circumstance, although it does have a baring on how I’ve got to be where I am, but more on how I manage day-to-day, hour-to-hour.

Since becoming a teacher, I have learned a lot about human behaviour, and though no clinical psychologist would ever diagnose me with having Asperger syndrome (AS), I certainly share many of its traits. A version of the syndrome bespoke to me. Something I’ve learned to live with, but up until recent years have not been able to comprehend, let alone explain.

Below is my god-awful blend of behavioural anomalies. A set of symptoms that has left me emotionally bereft, stripping away everything normal to leave a person of extremes; someone who lacks all sense of compromise and doesn’t know what a happy medium is.

This is what defines me.

• I lack both sympathy and empathy.
• I have Obsessive Compulsive Disorder where everything, as I see it, has its place. Also in the same vein, if I need to do something, buy a particular item I have been thinking about, or set myself a challenge, I get obsessive in my pursuit of achieving that goal. As if it has to happen before anything else can. Producing an underlying anxiety which renders the emotion and enjoyment others usually feel, null and void.
• I’m prone to sudden aggression. If offended or somehow affronted, I feel duty bound to challenge that person or persons.
• My voice often demonstrates zero prosodic stress. This means my speaking tone is flat, exhibiting little or no emotion.
• I also suffer from verbosity, an overuse of spoken or written words to convey a message. This means I am often elaborate and overly complex in what I’m trying to say or write. It also means that I over-think and unduly stress about situations past and present.
• I have selective mutism, where I choose not to talk or communicate in any form for indefinite periods of time, for example, an hour, a day, or longer, if I’m annoyed with anyone in particular.
• To an extent I am agoraphobic, I hate crowds and being around people, even if I’m outside and there is space in which to move.
• I often misinterpret other peoples’ comments and gestures which has often led to awkward confrontations and friendships being lost.
• I have alexithymia, where I find it incredibly difficult to identify with my own emotions, making me sound consistently vague when I describe how I am feeling – “I’m alright,” I say, but nothing else. It’s about the only subject on which I do not elaborate.
• Tourette’s Syndrome has been a key feature throughout. Easily frustrated, I can flare up out of the blue. These outbursts are typical in their suddenness and aggressive style, as well as the random profanity they contain, lasting anything from a few seconds to several minutes.