Julie DelegalAs we approach the anniversary of one of the saddest days in recent history, Adam Lanza, the man who murdered 20 first graders and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School, has reappeared in the news.
This week, the Connecticut State Police released a report that compiles odd details about the shooter’s life. But, as the New York Times reports, there is still no answer to the question, “Why?”
Why does anyone, in their hour of private darkness, succumb to committing evil acts?
It’s only natural for us to ask. Seeking answers gives the illusion of control, of power, over evil. It also gives us the opportunity to remember that all around us, especially this time of year, there are people in pain.
We can help heal the pain around us — born of both abnormal wiring in the brain or chaos in the home — but only if we’re connected enough to know about it, to see it, and to act.
There’s not a mother or father in America whose heart doesn’t ache for the parents in Connecticut, who were picking out tiny coffins last year when they should have been picking out Christmas trees.
And then there are those of us who have children with autism spectrum disorders, who pray that news reporters include, as they have been careful to do this year, an important fact: People who have Asperger’s syndrome – as Lanza did — are no more prone to violence than anyone else. There’s nothing inherently violent about the disorder.
While psychiatrists saw fit to collapse Asperger’s syndrome into the “autism spectrum” in their profession’s descriptive bible, the DSM-V, there now may be scientific evidence that the two disorders are distinct.
One interpretation is that people with Asperger’s have used other parts of their brain to help compensate for decreased activity in the left brain’s language-associated regions. (Doing so could be exhausting.) Whether the difference enables people with Asperger’s to learn language better than those with autism on the whole, or whether learning language spurs the brain differences we see, remain unanswered questions.
Generally, Asperger’s is considered a “higher functioning” form of autism. Make no mistake, though: The core differences in social interaction that characterize autism remain in people with Asperger’s.
Learning to “read people” — their facial expressions, body language, intonations, idioms, and subtleties — becomes constant gardening for those who receive appropriate interventions.
There are adults among us, however, who have had trouble keeping jobs and relationships without knowing why; who may seem humorless; who have tremendous emotional difficulty; and who may have very specific, restrictive areas of interest. These adults deserve to talk about their differences with professionals, and to understand how their alternate neurological wiring affects their lives. They may have Asperger’s syndrome. (In women, eating disorders may also be a symptom, and the disorder differs in other respects.)
This time of year, this holy, holy time, is also a time of personal pain and strife — and not just for those whose brains are organically different. Perhaps it is the closing of another calendar year that pressures us to judge our worthiness: Another year is over and what have we done?
Perhaps it is the family dinners and parties that put us in contexts where old wounds are reopened. It’s enough to make anyone feel like a powerless child.
We may never know the “answer” to why Adam Lanza yielded to evil last December. And we cannot bring back 26 senselessly taken lives.
But we can empower each other to be gentle on ourselves during this time of year, and we can give a little extra love to those who are in pain. Instead of trying to ascertain the thin, elusive line that divides pain from its corollaries — despair and psychosis — let’s just work to ease it.
Online resources for help:
National Alliance for Mental Health
National Suicide Prevention Lifeline
http://www.suicidepreventionlifeline.org/ ; Call 1-800-273-TALK
Florida Centers for Autism and Related Disabilities
http://www.florida-card.org/map.htm
Northeast Florida’s HEAL (Healing Every Autistic Life)
Autism Society of America, Florida Chapter
Asperger’s Support Groups Florida
