Care and Handling of the Autistic-Spectrum-Disorder S-Type

by Raven Kaldera & Joshua Tenpenny

Self-Help and Resources

This is reprinted from Broken Toys: Submissives with Mental Illness and Neurological Dysfunctionedited by Del Tashlin & Raven Kaldera.

Raven:

In general, the more that your ASD s-type learns about their disorder and how it functions - which does mean learning enough about how neurotypical people work to understand the contrast - the more information they will be able to give you, and the more skillfully you’ll be able to manage them. Therapy with a professional skilled in helping ASD folks may help. For both of you, I suggest talking to other ASD people, and especially other ASD s-types if you can find them. They may have coping mechanisms that neither of you have thought of.

If your new ASD s-type has given up on learning more - if they have become demoralized by their failure to figure it all out on their own, and decided that it’s all just too confusing - remind them that Knowledge Is Power. The more they know about their own mind, the minds of others, and the contrast between them, the more opportunity they will have to create compensatory mechanisms and get more of what they want out of life.

Joshua:

Unfortunately, a lot of the resources available are for parents or educators of ASD children, and many seem excessively concerned with drilling the child in “normal” behavior, without understanding the reasons behind their unusual behavior. I recall an essay by one mother who, after years of scolding her ASD son to have “quiet hands”, tearfully realized that this was actually a way he expressed emotion, and that she had spent much of his childhood telling him, basically, not to do his equivalent of laughing or crying or expressing any feelings at all.

There is definitely great value in learning how to be socially appropriate, but for me to do that healthily, I had to come to it not from a place of self-hatred or hating everyone else’s opaque behavior. A straight-up focus on drilling someone to be “normal” can be very demoralizing. It’s important for you to look at their behaviors and decide which ones are completely inappropriate and which ones are just unusual, and while those latter ones may be slightly problematic in some situations, seriously consider whether they can be left alone as an expression of your s-type’s individuality. If you don’t understand your s-type well enough to see why they do all the weird things that they do, they will never trust you enough to allow you to train them.

Another thing to keep in mind is a point made by Temple Grandin: For many ASD people, the most fulfilling thing in their life is not their social or relationship contact, but having meaningful work in their lives. This means that if it’s handled right, a M/s relationship can be a truly amazing gift for them, especially if it is less about “having a relationship” (although it is certainly that) and more about “having the best job ever”. It doesn’t even matter if it is work that the world values, so long as they are good at it, enjoy it and find it fulfilling, and their master is pleased by it. For me, whatever other work I may do, this is my primary job - being Raven’s slaveboy - and the me-that-I-was before I met him would never have believed how terrifically fulfilling this job can be. I’ve got a purpose in my life, and the best master ever. How much more lucky can one boy be?