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Opinion
Back in 2019, I wrote about my struggles with autism and depression while playing a team sport. Now in 2021, I want to revisit that and continue to keep the conversation going.
For anyone who hasn’t seen my earlier piece, I am on the autism spectrum with a sprinkling of depression and anxiety. I learnt long ago to own it, and accept it as a part of who I am; it just means things are different for me.
The reason I wanted to set the stage is because a lot of the academic material published relates to children playing sport, and the challenges they face.
Most of the outcomes recommend steering them towards ‘individual’ sports that have limited team components, such as swimming, track and field, gymnastics etc. This obviously leaves a bit of a gap, as I am in my early 30s, playing and umpiring field hockey, very much a team sport.
My hope for this article, as with my previous, is to talk about this stuff. If this article resonates with one person, who might play seventh-grade footy with the locals from the pub, or a coach that notices a player feeling alone and isolated, then I have achieved success.
I am lucky in some ways, that I am on a learning journey I can share with people – this forum allows me to share what I am experiencing and hopefully make it a little easier for someone else.
So, straight up speaking from my own experience being on the spectrum and often short handing it as being an ‘Aspie’, I take things really literally. Although I am sarcastic in my own vocabulary, I often struggle to interpret it in others.
This is double-edged, as it can both mean I miss the nuance of sarcasm, or wrongly attribute a comment as sarcastic. The other day, someone said I played well in a game, and was just unlucky. I had two touches to halftime, and none in the second half.
Now, playing a striker role in hockey involves a lot of unrewarded running, and often dragging defensive lines around to create space. So not getting the ball is not a reflection of effort or lack thereof.
But I interpret that comment in the lens of SuperCoach or fantasy stats. Two touches, zero goals and gone missing from halftime… I didn’t play well. To borrow from the fantasy community: I was as useful as a broken witches hat.
After hearing that comment, I dwelled on it for a few minutes, smashed my stick against a concrete wall, grabbed my bag and went to the bar in tears.
(AP Photo/Patrick Post)
The reason I am sharing that story is to highlight something that I really struggle with, and I suspect other people might too: how a message is received is so important when talking with someone, and often people take for granted that you understand ‘what they meant’.
Speaking from personal experience, half the time I have no clue, and will assume it’s personal and likely a negative criticism. I will then take it one step further, accept it as fact (ignoring any connect it could be purely speculative) and likely feel worse about myself.
In bringing this up, I want to loop back to my goal for this article.
If you are someone in my position, or my story resonates, find someone you can trust to have open and hard conversations and run the interaction(s) past them. They might be able to help re-frame perspectives, and provide context to comments.
For everyone having conversations with people who may be different, take an extra moment to make sure they understand what you are saying. You might feel like you have communicated clearly a message, and they are standing there really confused.
Hockey is such an important part of my life, and the people who know me, know I sacrifice a lot of time and effort because I love the game.
Late on Saturday night, I thought about quitting the game and walking away, because people made comments about my performance in both umpiring and playing.
I wanted to share this, because I imagine there are so many more people like me, that might need that little bit more support, and I genuinely hope by having these conversations, things might be that little bit easier.
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