Kindness and peppermints

Even in the darkest times of my life, there have always been people who were - sometimes unexpectedly - on my side. The word that comes to mind when I think of those people is "kind".

One such person was the headmaster of my first primary school. I was constantly in trouble at that school, usually for daydreaming in class or not getting on with other children. Most teachers dealt with it themselves: I spent many an hour standing in the corner with my hands on my head, or in the corridor outside the classroom. And the head of the infants school was quick to give a sting with a ruler round the legs or on the hand. But now and then, the teachers gave up and sent me to the headmaster for more significant correction. 

This school formally used corporal punishment for serious transgressions: the cane for boys, and the slipper for girls. Corporal punishment was only done by the headmaster, and only with parents' permission. My parents would not have hesitated to give permission for the headmaster to slipper me - and indeed, they did give permission for him to cane my eldest brother. 

I have no doubt the teachers expected me to be slippered. But I never was. Instead, the headmaster treated me with kindness. He told me off, of course, though I sensed his heart wasn't really in it. And then he gave me peppermints and sent me back to class. On one occasion when I had returned from a visit to the headmaster's study, the teacher called me out for eating a sweet in class. She was completely nonplussed when I replied, "Mr. Critchlow gave it to me". 

I don't know why he was kind to me. But I recall having some interesting conversations with him. My visits to his study were intellectually stimulating, not only for me, but perhaps also for him. Perhaps he realised I was bored in class and found it frustrating to work with children who weren't as clever as me. Or perhaps he thought encouraging me would be more effective than punishing me. Or perhaps he just liked me. 

Whatever the reason for his kindness, I was grateful. And I did try to behave better, though as I never really understood what I was doing wrong, this was an uphill struggle. 

Sadly the kindness ended when I left that school just as I turned eight. My new school didn't use corporal punishment, but there are other ways of being cruel to children. My new teachers were if anything even worse at dealing with my behaviour than the teachers at my previous school, so I was frequently sent to the headmistress, Sister Winefride. Her preferred way of dealing with me was to contact my parents - and my parents did use corporal punishment. I don't know whether she knew that they would beat me when I got home, but it wouldn't surprise me to learn that she did. She was a complete dragon. The one time my parents stood up to her and refused to punish me was when she accused me of stealing. "Frances wouldn't do that," they said - rightly. I knew nothing about the incident. She had targeted me simply because she saw me as a disruptive child.

As I pondered on the difference between the way Mr. Critchlow treated me and the way Sister Winefride did, I was reminded of Jesus's treatment of the woman taken in adultery. There is no doubt that the woman was guilty: she had been caught in the act. And the punishment for adultery was stoning to death. Jesus points out the hypocrisy of her male accusers: "Let him who is without sin among you throw the first stone," he says. The accusers, being teachers and practitioners of religious law, knew that only God is sinless. If they stoned the woman, they would publicly commit the crime of blasphemy, for which the punishment was death. But if they didn't, then they would fail in their duty to deliver God's justice. Jesus had caught them in a double bind. Unable to resolve it, they ran away.  

But what is more interesting is what came next. Jesus, being the Son of God, was sinless. He could legitimately have stoned her. But he chose not to. He showed kindness - or what we perhaps know better as 'mercy'. He refused to punish her, and instead sent her on her way with a gentle warning not to do it again, though as far as we know without peppermints. 

Recently, I read a book about bringing up children by the Christian evangelical pastor Tedd Tripp. He takes the injunction "Spare the rod, spoil the child" (derived from Proverbs 13:24) literally. He advocates beating children with sticks from a very early age, for very minor infractions of rules, and even for things that it is hard to see how a young child could understand were wrong. His book is widely promoted in evangelical circles as a model of Christian childcare. 

The most obvious problem with his book is the literal interpretation of the proverb. The word "rod" is a metaphor for discipline, not an instruction to use a particular form of discipline. After all, the Bible uses the word "rod" in other places where it is obviously metaphorical: Psalm 2, for example, talks about the ruler breaking the nations with a "rod of iron". Sitting a two-year-old on a naughty step is "using the rod" just as much as hitting the child with a stick. Really, all the proverb is saying is that children need discipline. Duh. 

But there's a second problem, which is more relevant to the point of this post. I read his book from cover to cover, and nowhere in it did I find mercy. If a child broke the rules, it had to be punished, even if it apologised, or even if the rule-breaking was unintentional. Mr Critchlow should have slippered me instead of giving me peppermints. Jesus should have stoned the woman taken in adultery. 

Justice is fair, because the consequences of rule-breaking apply to everyone, without fear or favour. Mr. Critchlow's kindness to me was unjust. He gave me peppermints, but he caned my brother. Justice required either that he beat me, or he give my brother peppermints. Sister Winefride, who complained to our parents about both of us, was more just than Mr. Critchlow. 

But justice without mercy is cruel. Punishing someone, child or adult, who apologises for their wrongdoing, or who does not know it was wrong, or who is physically or mentally incapable of coping with the punishment, is far harsher than God's treatment of sinners. I find it hard to understand how a man who applies literally Proverbs 13:24 can completely ignore Proverbs 28:13: "No-one who conceals transgressions will prosper, but one who confesses and forsakes them will obtain mercy". 

It is perverse in the extreme for adults to expect mercy while showing none themselves. Jesus gives this hypocrisy short shrift: "Blessed are the merciful, for they will receive mercy" (Mt 5:7) - which carries the obvious implication that if you aren't merciful, you will not receive mercy. Reinforcing this, in the parable of the 'unmerciful servant' (Mt 18:21-25) Jesus tells the story of a man whose enormous debts were cancelled by his king, but who then kneecapped someone who owed him far less money. When the king found out what the man had done, he changed his mind. He reinstated the debts and threw the man into debtors' prison. "This is how my heavenly Father will treat each of you unless you forgive your brother or sister from your heart," says Jesus. 

Jesus requires his followers to show mercy. The pastor who showed no mercy to his children is a sinner. And he's also a child abuser. He shouldn't be anywhere near children. 

We need to be merciful to each other. To "be kind", as the internet would have it. Our lives depend on the kindness of others: "Kindness must watch for me this side the ground," said the poet James Agee. When there is no kindness, it's hard to stay alive. The kindness of people like Mr. Critchlow made my life worth living. And although my brother did not find kindness there, he did find it elsewhere. 

"Be kind" is not merely a silly internet meme. Our society runs on kindness. When justice rules and there is no mercy, cruelty reigns, the bonds that bind us together fracture, and society fragments. 

If we are to heal ourselves and our society, we must practise being kind. 

Related reading:

Breaking the mould  

Image of peppermints by Themightyquill - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4153632

The colour of suicide

Deep, deep burgundy. The colour of dried blood. But not the texture. Dried blood is flaky. Suicide is globulous, glaucous, glistening, like hot wax slowly rolling towards me across a white plate. If it reaches me, it will engulf me. But I am not afraid. Maybe, if it does, it will be a relief. 

I've looked at suicide before, but then, I didn't notice its appearance. I was too frightened. But now, I am no longer frightened. It is there, and I gaze at it calmly, realising it is part of me. Always has been. Always will be.

Suicide calls me. Until recently, the call was deeply buried, But the events of the last two weeks have brought it to the surface again. 

Maybe, if I contemplate it for long enough, examining its shape, its texture, its colour, its movement, it will stop calling me. Or maybe I will stop resisting, and let it engulf me. 

The perils of being a high-profile autistic person

The last two weeks have been a rollercoaster. 

My BBC Newsnight appearance, where I gave Nigel Farage chapter and verse on what the dossier he obtained from Coutts actually said and how bank risk management works, went down extraordinarily well. I became famous for my calmness as he shouted at me. The calmness was of course a masterclass in autistic masking: my emotions were so deeply buried that I couldn't even feel them, and as a result he couldn't find any buttons to press. That, along with the photographic memory that makes me able to recall exactly what is written on a particular page, proved extremely useful. Being autistic has its benefits. But it is also terribly, terribly dangerous.  

Following the Newsnight appearance, Guido Fawkes did a hit job on me, which dredged up comments I have made in the past about Nigel Farage, my open and forthright opposition to Brexit, and my hatred of the Home Secretary's policy on refugees. I certainly won't apologise for these opinions: they are shared by very many people. But to Farage and his supporters, these opinions discredited me as a credible witness on Newsnight. 

I didn't feel that anything I said was coloured by hatred of Farage, nor by love of banks. To me, I was simply stating the truth as revealed in the available evidence. But when I satirically put on my Twitter biog "hates people, loves banks", people took it as fact. Neurotypical people, so quick to find hidden meanings in other things I say, on this occasion chose not to see the hidden meaning. After the Spectator's Andrew Neil publicly called me a shill for banks, I changed the biog.

Simon Jack's apology made my position worse. He described a BBC report that I knew to be factually accurate, because it was consistent with what my own research had revealed, as "incomplete and inaccurate". This was widely taken as representing the BBC's official position. To their credit, BBC Newsnight distanced themselves from his apology and stood by what I had said, and the BBC's News Channel gave me a solo spot to explain what I had found in my research. But to no avail. NatWest Group's CEO had apologised for the language in the dossier (though not for the account closure), the BBC had apologised - so I was hounded on social media by people determined to force me to apologise too, even though nothing I had said was untrue. Perhaps someone with a different view of the world would have given in. But that's not my style. I refused to apologise, and wrote a post on Coppola Comment expaining why the truth matters. 

Farage went gunning for the entire NatWest Group Board, and started a wider campaign promoting himself as the "voice of the unbanked". Under pressure from a clearly rattled Government, NatWest Group's CEO, Alison Rose, stepped down, followed by the Coutts CEO. The media reported that she had broken client confidentiality and GDPR. There's no evidence she has done any such thing, so being me, of course I said so. That didn't go down well either. 

Now, NatWest Group is negotiating a settlement with Farage that involves cancelling the notice given to close his Coutts accounts and giving him a financial sweetener, no doubt in return for shutting up and leaving the Board alone. It is over. The truth has lost out to politics. 

I didn't know it, but throughout this storm, I was being watched by Farage and his supporters. Perhaps someone with better understanding of how politicians behave would have realised that they would do this, but it honestly didn't occur to me. I know now that everything I said was recorded, with lawyers at the ready in case I put a foot wrong. When I inevitably did, they pounced. 

I am now being threatened with legal action for libel. I'm not going to discuss this here, except to say it has to do with comments I made on Twitter in the context of a financial analysis of the limited company Reform UK Party Ltd., and it cites as evidence of "malicious intent" my refusal to back down over the facts of Farage's account closure and Alison Rose's resignation, and my previously expressed opinions as reported by Guido Fawkes. 

I don't believe anything I said was libellous. But clearly, others think it was. And that brings me to the point of this post. 

Despite my apparent facility with language and ability to explain things with clarity, I have significant communication difficulties. I tend to take things very literally and don't understand the nuances of social interaction. I say things that to me appear straightforwardly factual, and am then surprised and shocked when people read into my comments meanings that I never intended. I create storms without meaning to, because I don't understand or anticipate the emotional effect of my comments on other people. I am vulnerable to allegations of deviousness, manipulation and even dishonesty, because I don't see that my comments can be read in more than one way. 

My inability to understand how people might interpret what I say has caused me serious problems all my life. As a child, I was punished for "upsetting people". As an adult, I have lost friends, relationships and jobs. I have tried and tried to change how I communicate, and much of the time I do manage to hide my difficulties. But from time to time I still say things that get me into an enormous amount of trouble. And I still don't understand why. Why are people so determined to find hidden meanings in statements of fact? Why are people so quick to attribute malicious intent? And why are they so inconsistent - taking what I say literally one minute, then the next minute, reading into my comments things I never intended?

My persistent difficulties with communication are the reason why I finally, desperately, asked for an autism and ADHD assessment in May this year. I needed to know why I struggle so much with social interaction that others find easy. And now I'm coming to realise just how vulnerable my autism makes me. 

The higher my public profile, the greater the risk that my communication difficulties and inability to understand social nuances will cause me serious problems. People like the clarity and rigour of my financial analyses, but are unforgiving of any mistakes in my communication. And mistakes there inevitably are, because good though my mask is, it only gives me the appearance of "normal" communication. The deficiencies are still there. They will always be there. And for that reason, my high public profile is dangerous to me. 

There aren't very many high-profile autistic people. Perhaps this is why. The risks arising from a high profile in a world that refuses to understand, let alone accommodate, autistic communication styles are just too great, and the costs of mistakes are far too high. 

Where do I go from here?

Grief is orange

One of the most troubling aspects of my autism is my inability to name or describe emotions - a condition called "alexithymia". Some years ago, a friend expressed astonishment that I couldn't name emotions. I was equally astonished that she could. But she wasn't the only one. Almost everyone I encountered could name, describe and express emotions in ways that other people found acceptable. It seemed to come naturally to them. But it didn't to me. 

Wordsmith that I am, I know hundreds of words describing emotions. They buzz around in my head like a swarm of bees, inviting me to pick one. But I don't understand them. They are just words. They don't meaningfully link to what I am feeling. I don't know which one to choose, and I end up confused and overwhelmed (yes, I know these are emotional words, but they are for you, they don't describe what I actually feel).

For some reason, my friends had learned to name and describe emotions in childhood, but I had not. Why, I did not know. I had learned the words, but never connected them to feelings. My non-verbal expression of emotions upset people, but I had no other means of expressing what I felt. And I still don't. 

My therapist gave me a framework that he thought would help resolve my confusion and make it easier for me to express emotions verbally. He restricted emotions to four: grief, anger, fear, happiness. Pick the one that best represents what you are feeling. The restricted list does help in one respect: it reduces the clamour from all those words demanding that I pick them, which helps me to remain calmer - if I remember to use the list. But it's still just a list. I do not know whether the words I choose actually represent what I feel. And sometimes the words are simply inadequate. A restricted list doesn't help when you are being asked detailed questions about how you handle emotions in yourself and others. 

During my autism assessment, there was one particular question, which I think was about fear, that I could not find words to answer. Overwhelmed with a ghastly feeling which I could not begin to describe, I fell silent.

But although I could not find words to describe it, I could see what I was feeling. I looked deep into myself and contemplated it. It had colours, and a shape, and texture. I could not tell my assessor - or you - what that emotion was, but it was a swirly elliptical shape, oriented northeast - southwest with a depression in the middle, made up of an unpleasant mixture of dark browns and dark blues with a lacy tracing of white. 

I don't know why I never realised before that I see emotions in colour. After all, I see so many other things in colour. Maybe I was so desperate to find the words to describe them - to be normal - that I ignored my own, highly visual experience. Or maybe I was too busy trying to run away from them. In that psychologist's room, I couldn't run away. I had to stop and look. And for the first time, I let myself see. 

I've since realised that other emotions also have colour, and texture, and shape. Mostly, I don't know what the emotion is, I only know what it looks like. So I can't tell you what I am feeling. Maybe I should paint it. 

But there are signs that now I am finally recognising emotions as visual objects, I am beginning to connect what I see with some of the words that buzz around in my head. 

Recently, it dawned on me that my autism is sufficiently severe to be a serious disability in the workplace, and that this may make the safe, well-paid employment for which I long impossible. 

As I contemplated this reality, I was overwhelmed with - orange. My head filled with various shades of orange, in a geometric shape which was almost a square but with the two top corners cut off, with lines running horizontally and vertically through it. The orange shades had a texture almost like muslin: diaphanous, and with visible threads. And where the corner was cut off at the top left, there was a dark green spike, like broken glass, against a brightly lit, faintly blue background. 

And two words came to me. Grief, and loss. Not the grief of bereavement, but grief for the person I might have been, and for the loss of hope. I hoped I could change. Indeed I clung to the belief that if only I tried hard enough I could change, that I could learn to name and express emotions in a socially acceptable way, to handle social interactions better, to cope with uncertainty and change. To do jobs that involve dealing with people. To be a good "team player", since that seems to be expected of women in employment. But autism is permanent. There is no cure. That is my loss, and my grief. It is orange, and green, and the light shines through it. 

I also discovered that music, which as you know I hear in colour, can change the colour of emotion. I was sitting in the car listening to Brahms's first symphony. At first it had no effect - but then the key changed, and the orange in my head gave way to a deep calming purple. And I immediately felt better.  

You'd think that orange would be a happy colour. But not in my world. Grief is orange. 

What's the use of a diagnosis?

"What are you going to do with it?" asked a friend of mine when I told him about my autism diagnosis. It seemed an odd question. What does anyone do with a diagnosis of a lifelong incurable disability?

In truth, I don't know what I'm going to "do with it." 

I originally thought it might help me find and, importantly, hold on to stable employment. But on reflection, I'm not sure it will. In fact it might make it considerably more difficult. I already had two characteristics that tend to put off prospective employers, namely my gender and my age, and I have now added a significant disability. Of course, the law nominally protects me from discrimination on all of these grounds: but there is a vast gulf between the law and reality. I discovered after my diagnosis that only about 20% of autistic people are in employment. The rest are either precariously self-employed, like me, or living on benefits. What a tragic waste. 

But although I do need a stable well-paid job (more on this shortly), that wasn't why I got the diagnosis. I asked for a diagnosis because I needed to know. Many people self-diagnose, not least because NHS waiting lists for adults are years long and private diagnoses are costly. But for me, self-diagnosis was not enough. I needed a formal diagnosis to quell my own self-doubt - to silence the critical voice inside my head that insists there's nothing wrong with me and I'm just being dramatic. I do my best to ignore this voice, but at times it is very, very loud. I thought that if I could wave a formal diagnosis backed up by a detailed report, it would shut up. How wrong I was. 

"Everyone is a little bit autistic," said my friend. I felt as if he had torn up the report and scattered the pieces on the floor. "See, you're making it up," shouted the voice in my head. 

I know my friend is wrong. Research shows that there are significant differences between autistic brains and neurotypical brains. But my assessment did not include brain scans. It was done purely on the basis of self-reported and observed behaviour. The report says that my self-reported behaviour is "clinically significant", suggesting autism, on almost all criteria, and my observed behaviour, on a clinical severity scale, indicated "moderate autism", though it does not explain what this means (I have asked for an explanation). But I do not know whether my brain is actually different from that of neurotypical people. So although I know my friend is wrong, his words cast doubt - again - on the reality of my autism. 

Why did I tell people about my autism? I could have kept quiet, or just told a few close friends. But I seem to need validation from other people. I need to be believed, because otherwise I won't believe myself. The trouble is that, as I have discovered, there's no guarantee that people will believe me, even with a formal diagnosis. I now realise I should have been a lot more careful about whom I told. 

It's astonishing how many people will cheerfully gaslight someone with late-diagnosed autism. They wouldn't question a diagnosis of, say, a congenital heart condition. Nor would they say "everyone has a little bit of a congenital heart condition". But they apparently feel it is perfectly ok to tell someone they aren't really autistic, or that "everyone is a little bit autistic". 

Anyway, I'm not "a little bit" autistic. I'm significantly autistic and I also have ADHD. Perhaps surprisingly, I'm not angry that this wasn't discovered earlier. In fact I'm rather pleased with myself. A child diagnosed with moderate autism and ADHD now would be given substantial support, and an adult would be able to request reasonable adjustments to help them cope in the workplace and would be protected from discrimination and harassment. I have had no support, no adjustments and no protection. Instead, I have been bullied, punished and driven out of work. But I have survived. That's something to celebrate. 

To my surprise, the immediate effect of having a formal diagnosis was to give me permission to feel exhausted. I hadn't realised how tired I was... I had been doing less and less freelance writing, because I found it draining. However, it had become my main source of income, so I was reluctant to give it up. But it left me with no energy to write my own blog, or do any singing, or even read a book. And the thought of pitching ideas made me feel sick. So when my freelance work evaporated completely in April, it was something of a relief. But ever since, the voice inside my head has been nagging me to get a job. So the diagnosis has already been helpful. Taking on a new job when I'm still utterly exhausted from the last one is a very bad idea. 

I will have to find a job at some point, because my savings aren't limitless and although I'm earning some money, it's not enough to live on. But it's not urgent. For now, I need to rest, and read, and sing, and do the garden, and write pieces like this, and rediscover the fun of writing finance and economics stuff. And finish writing the book that is now two years overdue because I couldn't find enough energy to complete it. Eventually I expect I will be able to work again - though I doubt if I will ever again do as much freelance writing as I used to. 

Looking back, it's evident that during my adult life, and probably during my childhood and teenage years too (my awful school reports suggest this), I've suffered repeated episodes of autistic burnout. I've written about some of them on this blog - interestingly, I labelled them "Slow burnout" long before I even suspected I was autistic. I usually managed to get myself out of the job or situation that was causing the burnout, and resist finding another job until deteriorating financial circumstances forced me to do so. And I've just unwittingly repeated the same pattern. 

The question is whether, knowing what I now do, I can break the cycle of overwork, exhaustion and burnout. I will need a lot of support - it's not easy to break the habits of a lifetime. I've joined an autistic women's group, and I shall look for other sources of support. Above all, I will need the help of friends: the long-standing, loyal friends who didn't turn a hair when I told them I was autistic, and the new friends I'm sure I will meet as I travel along this strange yet oddly familiar road. 

Related reading:

Slow burnout series (to find these posts, click the "Slow Burnout" label on the sidebar)

Diagnosis

 

Behind the mask

As those who have read my previous post know, I have recently been diagnosed with autism and inattentive-type ADHD. Most of the people who saw my announcement on social media and read my post were kind and supportive. I am really grateful to you all. But there were one or two people who didn't seem to understand what this diagnosis means for me. 

Receiving a diagnosis of autism is not like receiving a diagnosis of, say, cancer. Autism isn't an illness. It's not something that people acquire or develop in later life. I was as autistic at three as I am at sixty-three. All the diagnosis has done is belatedly recognise a disability I have had for all of my life. 

Nor is autism something that people can overcome with medical treatment or therapy. I will be autistic for all of what remains of my life. There is no cure. Counselling might help me work out what I can and can't do, and indeed I have been advised to seek counselling. But it won't make me any less autistic. 

Autism is not a lifestyle choice. I did not obtain a diagnosis because it was "fashionable", or to justify an unconventional lifestyle. I was not looking for sympathy or excuses for my persistent social and emotional difficulties. And I was not trying to avoid taking responsibility for my behaviour. Far from it. 

I wanted to find out why, despite the considerable time, effort and money I have spent trying to learn how to "behave better", I still upset people without meaning to and act in ways that others consider weird. Why I still find social engagements exhausting and draining. Why I still melt down when things get too much for me. The event that sparked my decision to ask for a diagnosis was a hugely embarrassing meltdown in a doctor's surgery.  

Now, as I come to terms with the knowledge that my social functioning and emotional management are permanently impaired, I find myself wondering why I spent so many, many years trying to fix something that was never fixable. I suppose I hoped that somehow, someday, I would get better. Now that hope is gone, and in its place must come acceptance, not only on my part, but on the part of all who know me. My "difficulties" are part of me. They are, we might say, who I am. 

As a child, and even as an adult, my problems with social interaction and emotional management were dismissed as "bad behaviour" that I could correct through my own efforts. As one of my managers at SBC Warburg said, "Frances needs to work on her social skills". 

To motivate me to improve my behaviour, I was provided with a judicial mix of sticks and carrots. Did this work? Well, sort of. I copied the behaviour of others, mostly successfully, and eventually learned how to conform to social expectations. But oh my goodness people's behaviour was confusing. It appeared to be a mixture of double standards, unspoken expectations and value judgements, none of which I understood.

Initially, I modelled my behaviour on how older people treated me. But this turned out not to be a good strategy. Repeating to others things my mother had said resulted in punishment rather than approbation. And at the age of about 9, patting one of my school teachers on the head because I was pleased with something she had said did not go down well. From this I learned that the way my parents and teachers treated me was not necessarily a good model for how I should treat others. I found this confusing. 

Since modelling my behaviour on that of older people didn't work, I decided instead to copy the behaviour of children that older people regarded as "good". As long as I could remember what they did (or didn't) do that older people received approvingly, and replicate it appropriately, I could avoid the sticks and I might even qualify for a carrot. But this is harder than it sounds. It meant accurately observing other children's behaviour and recalling it at the right time. I didn't always know what the "right time" was, so now and then I replicated supposedly "good" behaviour at the wrong time and ended up in trouble again. And "good" children aren't always well-behaved (this is one of the weird double standards that I have never understood). So I was sometimes punished for bad behaviour when I had copied what I thought was good behaviour. I found all of this very confusing. 

Some aspects of my behaviour proved resistant to change. Despite being repeatedly told I must learn to control my temper, I remained prone to meltdowns. Working in groups was difficult and stressful, and I had a distressing tendency to say or do things that upset or annoyed people. And I didn't socialise much with other students, preferring to pursue my own interests independently. Because of this, I rarely received the promised carrots: on the only occasion that I ever came close to receiving a medal for Good Conduct at my secondary school, some girls in my class took it upon themselves to complain to the Head about my behaviour. My form teacher tore them off a strip in front of the class, but I still lost the medal.  

As an adult, I sought help. I spent eight years in individual and group therapy to try to understand why I struggle with relationships and learn how to manage them better. The therapeutic model was Transactional Analysis, which is rather a good model for someone who doesn't naturally understand how people interact. "What do you say after you say hello?" asked Eric Berne, the founder of Transactional Analysis. This is a question that I had often asked myself. I genuinely didn't know. 

I found Berne's extensive documentation of "pastimes" and "games" that people play enormously helpful. Many of the pastimes seemed silly to me - I'd much rather talk about something interesting - but if that's what I had to do, then I would learn to do it. And learning how to avoid getting into nasty games* turned out to be essential for my survival in the workplace. 

One of the members of my therapy group took issue with the way in which I approached meeting new people. "I don't get you," she said. "You don't do what I expect." Puzzled, I asked her what she expected. "I would expect you to find out about people. You know, by questioning them." It had never occurred to me to do this. In fact I find being questioned by a stranger unpleasantly intrusive, so if I had thought about it at all, I would have assumed that others dislike it too. But apparently this was wrong. So I decided I could learn to do this "social questioning". I watched what she and others did and copied them. 

Now, I've learned how to ask people where they are from and what kind of journey they have had. I've learned to listen attentively while they talk enthusiastically about their children, their pets and their holiday plans. I can even talk about the weather, if I really must. I've also learned how to make eye contact, since it seems to be expected. In a social gathering, I can engage most people in conversation - what is known as "working the room". And I can honestly say I usually enjoy it. But I still find entering existing conversations hard, and I still at times find myself isolated. And it's exhausting. Last week, I attended social gatherings on two days running. The next day I was so tired I spent much of the day asleep. 

But I wonder whether I should have responded to my therapy group member differently. I didn't do what she expected, but equally, she didn't do what I expect. My idea of getting to know someone is not to question them, but to have a conversation about something interesting. The challenge is to find something that both of us are interested in. I'm afraid that doesn't generally mean their children or their holiday plans, though I might enjoy talking about their pets, as long as they are happy for me to talk about animals (which have long been one of my absorbing interests). But I have a range of other fascinating topics we could talk about...  

She expected me to adapt my behaviour to meet her expectations. And because I have been criticised all my life for my social behaviour, I assumed that this was reasonable, and tried my best to do so. But is it reasonable, really? Why should I adapt my behaviour to her expectations, while she makes no attempt at all to adapt hers to mine? Perhaps it's not me who has the problem, but those who are unable (or unwilling) to understand that the way I interact with the world is different from theirs. 

In my individual therapy sessions, we discussed what I called my "mask" - the fake "self" that I had created in years of trying to conform to social expectations. I saw my real self as having a seriously disfigured personality, and I believed - with, to be fair, some justification - that if I allowed people to see my real self, they would reject me. So I hid her away behind a mask of social conformity. 

I dared not let the mask slip, but it became more and more difficult to maintain it. By the time I was in my mid-30s, the mask was fractured and my real self was showing, to the detriment of both my home life and my employment - which rather reinforced my view of her as disfigured and destructive. And I was exhausted and burnt out. 

My therapist tried to help me to come out from behind the mask. But I now know that what he really helped me do was build a better mask. Looking back, it seems odd that my therapist apparently never suspected I might be autistic, even though many, many autistic women create masks like mine. Perhaps my original mask was better than I thought.

But no mask is perfect. Good though my therapy-built mask is, it slips now and then. And it is terribly costly to maintain. I am so tired... 

Maybe, eventually, I will come out from behind the mask I have so carefully constructed. But I'm not ready yet. So when you meet me socially, I will be the person you've always known me to be. But if you really want to understand me, then remember that what you see is not what I am. I've given you a glimpse in this and my previous piece of what is behind the mask.

And if I disappear, and don't answer your calls or your emails, it's not because I don't want to know you, it is because I've taken off the mask for a while. I will be back. 

Related reading: 

The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas - Ursula Le Guin

The Ones Who Stay In Omelas - Coppola Comment

* In Transactional Analysis, "games" are almost universally negative, many are hurtful, and some are deadly. 

Diagnosis

I now have a formal diagnosis of autism and and inattentive-type ADHD.

I have suspected for a very long time hat I am autistic. It is easy to dismiss my lifelong record of serious interpersonal problems as the consequence of a difficult upbringing, and indeed that was the main thrust of eight years of therapy in which I was described as having "borderline tendencies". But I've always thought something didn't quite add up. The social and interpersonal difficulties I have aren't really consistent with any description of borderline personality disorder that I have ever read. 

I first wrote about the possibility that I might be autistic in 2014. I didn't publish that post, so I've used it as the basis for this one. It was triggered by a couple of odd events; a firestorm sparked by a post I published on Pieria (which I eventually had to take down), and a silly quiz that gave my mental age as that of a baby. Yes, I know - it was only a silly game and the zero score is almost certainly because I gave a set of answers it couldn't cope with. But that's the point. No-one else I spoke to got a zero score. And if the software couldn't cope with my answers, it is probably fair to assume that it was a pretty odd selection. 

I've written here about the economics firestorm. With hindsight, I was annoyed by the arrogance of the professor who had published his findings without including either his data or his workings, and who appeared to have made some pretty crass mistakes. And I guess that annoyance came through in the post. But the point is that although I read the post several times before publishing it, I didn't foresee how my comments might be taken. I meant them not as a personal insult but as an expression of concern. But that is not how others saw them - and it simply never dawned on me that they could be seen as an ad hominem attack. 

Such misreading of the way in which others may react to things I say or do has been a problem all my life. I don't expect others to react personally to remarks that I don't intend personally, and I am therefore shocked and hurt when they respond in kind to what they perceive as an unwarranted personal attack. And people don't understand that I am genuinely bemused by this. They think I set out to cause trouble. But I really don't. I don't do subtle. I don't even understand subtle. I say what I think, and I don't foresee the consequences. Well, sometimes I do - I am getting better at thinking before I speak. But it doesn't come naturally. Constantly monitoring what I say or write to ensure its acceptability is exhausting, and once in a while I simply lose control. That's what happened on the Pieria post - and has happened repeatedly since, as a look through my Twitter account shows all too clearly. In fact it has happened throughout my life, though less frequently as I get older. And the consequences can be extremely serious. Lapses like this have at times cost me my livelihood and very nearly my sanity.  

When I first suspected I might be autistic, I decided to do some research to find out how it presents itself in adult women. This is of course completely typical of someone with autism...

I already knew that autism is under-diagnosed in girls and women because they generally present differently from boys and men, but I found out lots more about it. I discovered that because girls tend to be more severely criticised for social and interpersonal difficulties than boys, and perhaps also are more motivated to be accepted by peers, they typically learn early on to copy the behaviour of others and put on an act. They do so at considerable personal cost - constant anxiety, fear of getting something wrong (again), exhaustion due to constantly maintaining an act, insecure identity (if you are constantly acting you forget who you really are), poor self-esteem (if you constantly have to hide your real self, it must be defective) and depression. But because autistic girls become very good at disguising their real selves, they are easily overlooked. And even if they do have a formal diagnosis, it often is not autism but some kind of mental disorder caused by the stress of maintaining the disguise. Autistic girls and women are frequently misdiagnosed with borderline personality disorder, bipolar disorder, even schizophrenia. This confuses the symptom with the cause. 

I recognise all of this. And when I read a post by Tania Marshall about Asperger's syndrome in adult women, it was like reading a description of me. Most of the characteristics she listed apply to me. Tania's post appears to have been taken down now, but this list by Samantha Craft is similar.

There is one particular set of characteristics that both Tania and Samantha identify that I think warrants further explanation, because it is not how we normally think of people on the autistic spectrum. Tania said that some autistic women are hyper-empathic:

"Highly sensitive, may not be able to listen to or watch the news, listen to the radio, read the newspaper, watch violent shows/movies or horror movies, see hurt or injured animals, abuse, war, trauma, are sensitive to the emotions and “emotional atmosphere” of the environment, experience referred emotion and psychic “6th sense” abilities, may have strong intuitive and/or psychic abilities".

And Samantha similarly says autistic women can be "highly intuitive to others’ feelings" and "highly empathetic, sometimes to the point of confusion".

We normally think of autistic people as lacking empathy. But I don't think this is quite right. I think it is more that we feel both our emotions and other people's extremely intensely, to the point of pain, and have absolutely no idea how to manage them, or even (in my case) how to identify and name them. This sort of hyper-empathy goes along with hypersensitivity in other respects too, such as extreme sensitivity to light, sound or touch. I am hypersensitive to both light and sound: I can see the flicker in fluorescent lights (it gives me migraines) and hear well above normal adult human frequencies - one of my friends described me as having "ears like a bat". The description of hyper-empathy in the paragraph quoted above also applies to me (although I do watch the news). And this brings me to the final piece of the puzzle.

I've known for years that I have synaesthesia. I see words, letters and numbers in colour. I hear in colour, too: pitches and keys in music all have different colours, and because of this I have perfect pitch. And I have a third type of synaesthesia, too, which I use when teaching. I can feel in my own body what someone else is feeling in theirs. When I am teaching singing, therefore, I "know" just by listening to the sound what the other person is doing to create that sound. I don't need to ask them, or even look at them. I can feel it. Teaching someone whose voice is damaged or very distressed is actually painful for me and I can even lose my own voice. I suppose that makes me a safe teacher, but the physical cost is considerable.

Research has established a link between synaesthesia and autism. It seems that synaesthetes retain into adulthood connections between different areas in the brain that normally disappear in childhood - if you like, our brains are relatively undifferentiated, and therefore do some very weird things. And it is thought that autistic people have a similar sort of hyperconnectivity, which might explain both our intensity and our giftedness. So perhaps that silly quiz actually said something important. Perhaps I really do have a child-like brain.

If that is right - that I have an immature brain - it would explain a lot. Children are vulnerable to exploitation because they don't foresee, and therefore can't protect themselves from, the behaviour of others. And they say the wrong things and behave inappropriately, because they don't understand social norms. I do understand social norms, now, but I've had to learn them the hard way, and I still get it wrong on occasion. So "childlike" is perhaps a good description. In which case I need protection, just as a child does - by which I mean some way of deflecting the flak that inevitably comes my way because of my unfortunate tendency to say the wrong thing at the wrong time and cause yet another firestorm.

When I first drafted this post, I was unsure whether to ask for a formal diagnosis. I thought it might  help people to understand that I don't mean to hurt, but it is an inevitable consequence of my - disability (there, I've said it now). But then I convinced myself it was simply too late. A middle-aged woman who had never even been considered as possibly autistic, let alone diagnosed..... I doubted if my GP would take me seriously, and I didn't want to put myself through the agony of being disbelieved and even laughed at. And at that time, a private diagnosis was financially far out of my reach. 

So I put it to the back of my mind. And as the years passed, I became known - once again - as someone who is clever but blunt to the point of rudeness, tramples on people's feelings, and picks fights with people. I know that many of those who follow me on Twitter do so because my feed is like an episode of Gladiators. Who is Frances fighting with today? What ridiculous war has she waded into this time? These days, even factual statements about banking attract vicious personal attacks. 

I've also come to hate freelance writing, just as previously I came to hate freelance singing teaching and before that freelance banking & IT consultancy. There's a theme here, and it's not the work itself. Recently, I've realised that the goal of my therapy journey - to "change the way I work" - really meant running away from employment. Freelancing gives me control of my working environment in a way that employment can't. But it also means I constantly have to "put myself out there" to get work, which means building networks and relationships - and not upsetting people. The price of accidentally destroying an important relationship is very, very high. And the instability of freelancing is terrifying. I long for stability and acceptance. 

When I was young, the form of autism that I have was not recognised as a disability. More severe forms of autism were, but children who would now be diagnosed as "high-functioning" autistics were then variously regarded as "gifted" and "naughty", usually both. I certainly was: my primary school reports are glowing about my intellectual ability but extremely harsh about my social behaviour. It never seemed to occur to my teachers that a child with persistent social difficulties might need something other than constant reprimands. I know, from talking to other people, that this was a common experience for people of my age. Many older people who are almost certainly autistic have never received a formal diagnosis. They have gone through their lives struggling with interpersonal relationships and avoiding social situations. As I have. 

But the world has changed, and autism is now recognised as a disability. And now that I have a formal diagnosis, people - including prospective employers - should have a better idea what to expect from me. The demons will never be vanquished, but I perhaps have a stronger shield against them now. 

 Maybe it's time to stop running away. 

When bubbles burst

I'm writing fewer posts than I used to. Earlier this year, this was due to a heavy freelance workload. But recently, it has become much more than that. I'm finding it very difficult to write, because I no longer trust my own ability. I have a crisis of confidence.

My confidence crisis started about six months ago, in the sequence of events that led to my resignation from Pieria. In March, I was asked to write six posts of a 10-post series of "think pieces" for the Design Council, which would be published on Pieria and Medium. I was at the time sole editor of original content on Pieria, but this series was to be separate from the main site and would therefore be under the control of the Design Council's appointed editor.

I'm not going to go into details about exactly what went wrong. Suffice it to say, that I only completed one of the six pieces. The first draft was sent back for changes and further research, and I produced a second draft a few days before going to Washington for the INET conference on 6th May. The initial feedback from the Design Council editor was "It's GREAT". So off I went to Washington believing that the piece was complete.

On 6th May, while sitting in the IMF conference hall listening to Christine Lagarde, I received an email from the commercial director at Pieria. The email informed me that the Design Council editor had rejected the completed piece, on the grounds that it did not match the style of other pieces in the series that had already been completed by another journalist. He had also killed the second piece that I was in the process of writing, and had demanded that I be removed from the project.

To say this was a shock was an understatement. I desperately needed reassurance, so I sent the rejected piece for independent editorial evaluation. The response was amazingly positive. I also sent it to my co-editor at Pieria, who was also positive. On that basis I took the decision to publish the piece on Pieria on the main part of the site (unconnected with the Design Council series), under my own by-line and with a different title.

Unfortunately that decision turned out to be disastrous. The commercial director, presumably concerned that the Design Council would object to the piece being published when they had rejected it, refused to publish it. It remained hidden in the editorial section of the site. Not only that, but all my other work was wiped from the front page of the site, including guest posts I had published on behalf of others on my own profile. This was the action that caused me to resign. I no longer had confidence that any work I did would be published. My position was untenable.

Pieria was a terrible loss. However, I expected that my freelance work would continue. But it didn't. Over the summer months, it all but dried up. Publications for which I had done a lot of work over the previous year stopped commissioning me to write for them. At first I thought this was just a seasonal slowdown, and things would pick up in the autumn. But summer turned to autumn, and no more work appeared.....

Fortunately, a friend of mine recommended me to work with an agency on a content development campaign for a well-known financial services company. I submitted a portfolio of my work to them, which the senior managing editor said was "outstanding". On the strength of that and my editorial experience, I was interviewed for the editorship of the campaign. Unfortuately I was passed over in favour of someone who knew the platform better. But I happily agreed to write for the campaign.

To start with, things appeared to go well. I was assigned my first piece at the beginning of September and completed it on time. Other pieces followed.

But then the edits started....

I discovered that every piece I wrote was being substantially revised or rewritten by the editor. When I asked why, I was told that my writing was "dry and pointless". Apparently I was the worst writer on the campaign. Just as I had been on the Design Council campaign for Pieria.

I don't know what to believe any more. I thought I was a good writer. But the feedback I've been getting in the last few months says otherwise. Maybe I've been misleading myself about my ability.

I started writing because I believed I had something useful to contribute. But perhaps I don't. Perhaps this has all just been a bubble, and now the bubble has burst....

When bubbles burst, they cause widespread confusion and chaos. My bubble is no different from any other bubble. So I am confused, and my mind is in chaos. I no longer trust my judgment about my writing, or anyone else's for that matter. How can I, when pieces that I think are good are heavily revised, rewritten or rejected?

I don't know what I'm doing any more. I don't know where I'm going. I reduced my singing teaching substantially, partly for health reasons but partly to make room for writing. The writing seems to be leaving me, and the singing teaching is not returning - not that I really want it to, but at least it paid the bills. I have no idea how I will survive.

 It all seems so unfair. I've worked so hard, but working hard is not good enough.

Constantly in the back of my mind is a comment I read once about bloggers, that they stop blogging when they run out of things to say. Have I run out of things to say? No, but I seem to have run out of the means to say them.

I never expected to reach this point. But does anyone ever expect a bubble to burst?

Hypocrisy

In my Coppola Comment post "The Twelfth Commandment" I observed that government attempts to make us "happy" are bound to fail if they do not translate into real actions to improve well-being. 

Someone who is unemployed doesn't need therapy, they need a job. Someone who isn't earning enough to pay their bills doesn't need advice on how to stop worrying about money, they need more money. If you don't have enough money, or you don't have a secure job, worrying about money and security is rational. Trying to change people's rational feelings about their circumstances is insulting. It is the circumstances themselves that need to be changed. 

There is nothing new about the tendency to offer well-meaning advice and emotional "support" rather than addressing people's real needs. Here is St. James having a go at people who offered prayer instead of practical help to the needy in the early Christian community:

"What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if someone claims to have faith but has no deeds? Can such faith save them? Suppose a brother or a sister is without clothes and daily food. If one of you says to them, “Go in peace; keep warm and well fed,” but does nothing about their physical needs, what good is it? In the same way, faith by itself, if it is not accompanied by action, is dead."

James 2:14-17

We have a terrible tendency to "spiritualise" the teachings of Jesus and the apostles, so that Jesus's harsh words about storing up material wealth, for example, don't have to hurt our wallets. Much is said by the well-meaning about the power of prayer. And yes, as a Christian I too believe in the power of prayer. But for prayer to succeed, there must also be action. The marvellously down-to-earth Teresa of Avila wrote the following poem:

Christ has no body now on earth but yours,
no hands but yours,
no feet but yours,
Yours are the eyes through which to look out
Christ's compassion to the world
Yours are the feet with which he is to go about doing good;
Yours are the hands with which he is to bless men now.

When people pray instead of doing, prayer is impotent. When governments try to "make people happy" while doing nothing to relieve unemployment and poverty, they waste money. When those with money tell those without money to stop worrying about money, their advice is ignored. But these mealy-mouthed interventions can be certain to have one effect - and that is to cause anger among the needy.

Jesus is critical of those who do nothing practical to help those in need:

“Then [the King] will say to those on his left, ‘Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. For I was hungry and you gave me nothing to eat, I was thirsty and you gave me nothing to drink, I was a stranger and you did not invite me in, I needed clothes and you did not clothe me, I was sick and in prison and you did not look after me.’

“They also will answer, ‘Lord, when did we see you hungry or thirsty or a stranger or needing clothes or sick or in prison, and did not help you?’

“He will reply, ‘Truly I tell you, whatever you did not do for one of the least of these, you did not do for me.’

Matthew 25:41-46

Where in this list do praying for people, giving them advice and providing them with therapy feature? I can just imagine what Jesus would have to say about the well-off who preach to the needy while doing nothing  practical to meet their needs. Such hypocrisy. 

Related reading:

The Twelfth Commandment - Coppola Comment

The problem of debt - Still Life With Paradox

How to worry less about money - Brain Pickings (book review)

A very nasty "nudge"

The BBC reports that mothers are to be given a financial incentive to breastfeed their babies. £120 worth of vouchers will be given to mothers who are still breastfeeding at 6 weeks, and this will be topped up to £200 for mothers still breastfeeding at 6 months.

I'm afraid I think this is an appalling idea. It's the worst kind of "nudge" economics. Instead of addressing the reasons why women stop breastfeeding early, or don't breastfeed at all, it's a clumsy attempt at bribery. It is targeted at lower-income areas: but in reality it is a handout to better-off mothers and those in secure employment, and will benefit the poor and those in insecure employment not at all.

Firstly, let's look at the reasons why women don't breastfeed, or stop breastfeeding before the baby is six weeks old. This study identifies a number of factors affecting breastfeeding initiation and continuation. Their summary findings are as follows.

The key interventions influencing mothers’ likelihood to initiate breastfeeding were being helped to put the baby to the breast in the first few days after the birth and having skin-to-skin contact within 24 hours. 

In terms of other characteristics, the key factors were ethnicity and how the mother herself was fed as a baby. Mothers from a White ethnic background and those who had been fed entirely with infant formula as a baby were less likely than other mothers to initiate breastfeeding. 

Mothers of full term babies who initiated breastfeeding were more likely to be breastfeeding still at two weeks if they:
- were breastfeeding exclusively at one week;
- were from a non-White background;
- had breastfed a previous child for six weeks or more;
- had received help or information on breastfeeding from a breastfeeding support group, peer
supporter, voluntary organisation or community group.  

The key factors affecting mothers’ likelihood to still be breastfeeding when their baby was six
weeks old (among those who were doing so at two weeks) were similar. Exclusive breastfeeding at five weeks, being from a non-White background and being aged 30 or over were particularly associated with breastfeeding at six weeks. Mothers of second or later babies who had breastfed their previous child for only a short period or not at all were less likely to be breastfeeding their new baby at six weeks. 

Elsewhere in the report, socio-economic class is also mentioned as a predictor of breastfeeding: professional and managerial women are more likely to breastfeed. Though nowhere in this list is financial stress mentioned as a cause of premature cessation of breastfeeding. And nowhere is there any indication that bribing women to breastfeed with shopping vouchers is likely to work. 

However, the study only looks at breastfeeding up to 6 weeks. But the research envisages bribing women to breastfeed exclusively (i.e. the baby is given no other nutrition) for up to 6 months. What are the principal obstacles to exclusive breastfeeding for that length of time?

The first, and most obvious, is that £200 in shopping vouchers is no compensation for the loss of earnings that women suffer when they take longer than 6 weeks off after the birth of a child. Maternity pay in the UK is 90% of average weekly earnings for the first 6 weeks and then drops to £136.78 per week for the next 33 weeks. Admittedly, some women earn less than this - but for those that don't, especially the growing number who are their family's principal earner, this drop in income can be crippling. And the remainder of the leave entitlement (52 weeks) is unpaid. Clearly, the only women who can afford to take more than six weeks off after the birth of a child are those whose partners earn enough for the loss of their incomes not to cause serious financial distress. Maternity leave is the privilege of relatively well-off women in stable relationships, it seems. And that might explain the class problem identified in the NHS's study. Because of assortative mating, professional and managerial women are likely to have professional and managerial partners. They can afford to take extended leave: no wonder breastfeeding is more prevalent among this group. They are probably also more aware of the health benefits - but we should not ignore the simple financial logistics. 

Among women in insecure employment, even maternity leave and pay can be a luxury. Temporary agency workers don't necessarily qualify for maternity leave at all. And women employees who fall pregnant within six months of starting a new job don't qualify for maternity pay, though they do now get full maternity leave (this is an improvement - when I had my children, women had to work for the same employer for 2 years to qualify for full maternity leave and pay). Women in insecure employment are among the poorest women in the country - and they only qualify for 2 weeks leave after the birth of a child (4 weeks if they are factory workers). Returning to work after 2 weeks is not enough time for breastfeeding to be established. It would be extremely difficult for a woman to breastfeed if she is returning to work this early - yet many women in insecure or temporary employment have to do exactly that.

Study after study (eight papers cited in this piece of Australian research alone) show that one of the commonest reasons for women ending breastfeeding early is returning to work. Employers are not universally supportive of breastfeeding mothers, and the babies don't always cooperate either: my daughter refused to drink expressed milk from a bottle, preferring to wait until I got home then feed all night. Needless to say, being effective in a full-time job was simply not possible due to lack of sleep. I didn't last very long. 

The fact of the matter is that the UK's maternity legislation does not support extended breastfeeding. In fact for the poorest women it does not support breastfeeding at all. Breastfeeding comes very far down the priority list for women who are forced to return to full-time work soon after the birth of their children, or who already have several children and no help at home because the extended family is broken, or who are isolated teenage mums with no social support and unsupportive boyfriends. No amount of shopping vouchers will compensate women for these problems. 

But an even more important reason for women ending breastfeeding within 6 weeks of birth is lack of support and advice. This study from the USA found the following:

"We found that 32% of women did not initiate breastfeeding, 4% started but stopped within the first week, 13% stopped within the first month, and 51% continued for > 4 weeks. Younger women and those with limited socioeconomic resources were more likely to stop breastfeeding within the first month. Reasons for cessation included sore nipples, inadequate milk supply, infant having difficulties, and the perception that the infant was not satiated. Women who intended to breastfeed, thought they might breastfeed, or had ambivalent feelings about breastfeeding were more likely to initiate breastfeeding and to continue through the vulnerable periods of early infancy than were those who did not plan to breastfeed."

Again, no mention of financial difficulties. Where on earth has this idea come from that bribing women to breastfeed will help them to do so? Would this money not be better spent providing breastfeeding support and advice to younger and poorer women - the ones most likely to give up?

The study's authors certainly think so. They conclude:

"Our findings indicate a need to provide extensive breastfeeding support after delivery, particularly to women who may experience difficulties in breastfeeding."

They are so right. This discussion thread from Netmums contains a large number of - sometimes harrowing - personal anecdotes. If there is one thing that stands out for me from that discussion thread, it is that for many women breastfeeding is DIFFICULT. It is painful, exhausting, time-consuming and - when it doesn't work, as for many of the women on that thread it did not - depressing. And there is nowhere near enough support for breastfeeding from health professionals. Indeed, unhelpful advice and intervention by health visitors and midwives resulting in breastfeeding failure is a frequent complaint. 

Giving up breastfeeding is not something women necessarily want to do. Some do, but many women desperately want to breastfeed, to the extent of making both themselves and their babies ill: the number of women on the Netmums thread who talk about their babies losing weight because they could not breastfeed them properly is truly horrifying. And women are often devastated when they are forced to give up. One woman observed that the combination of breastfeeding failure with a traumatic birth experience was a major contributory factor to her post-natal depression.  I certainly recognise that: breastfeeding failure following the traumatic birth of my son sent me spiralling down into what I now remember as "the horror". 

And this brings me to what I consider the really nasty part of this appalling attempt at bribery. Women are unable to breastfeed for a variety of reasons, not just the reasons outlined in the study above and described on the Netmums thread, but also legitimate medical reasons such as HIV/Aids, long-term medication e.g. for schizophrenia, drug addiction, reconstructive surgery (e.g. after breast cancer) and hormonal problems. Are these women to be denied these vouchers because they are legitimately unable to breastfeed? What about the mothers of very premature babies, who lack a sucking reflex so are unable to breastfeed? Many of these women attempt to express milk for their babies, sometimes for weeks - but women's bodies don't always react very well to pumps: are women who fail to express milk for premature babies going to be denied these vouchers too? What about the many, many women who are forced to give up breastfeeding on medical advice because their babies are failing to thrive? Yes, with more support they probably could have fed their babies successfully, but the medical profession prefers to intervene to avert a catastrophe rather than provide necessary advice and support early on so there is no likelihood of catastrophe. Many of these women are devastated by what they see as their "failure". Are they to be financially penalised as well? It amounts to kicking them while they are down.

Spare a thought for the health professionals involved, too. Apparently midwives and health visitors are to be responsible for confirming that women are breastfeeding. Imagine what it will be like for a midwife or health visitor dealing with a woman who desperately wants to feed her baby but has to stop because of severe mastitis. That midwife knows that when she takes that woman off the list of women who are breastfeeding, that woman will lose £200 of vouchers that she could have spent on things for her baby - the baby she already thinks she is failing. Is that midwife or health visitor really going to do that? Surely there would be a huge temptation to keep her on the list of breastfeeding women, just so she doesn't lose out because of health problems beyond her control? 

Really, this is a terrible idea. It potentially has some very unpleasant unintended consequences. And it does not begin to address the real causes of premature cessation of breastfeeding. It's a complete waste of money.

"Loneliness in a crowd": patterns and learning

It is interesting how unhappy experiences repeat themselves. Patterns repeat......and there are a number of repeating patterns in my history.

• Repeated attempts to make impossible projects work, and then being blamed when it all goes wrong.

• Repeated patterns of overworking leading to a crash, followed by either underwork (boredom) or no work (unemployment). The "underwork" phase becomes longer each time the overwork phase is repeated.

• Repeated examples of blindness to underhand, manipulative, devious and deceptive behaviour by others. Put another way - I am vulnerable to exploitation. In Slow Burnout II, this will be a major theme. 

• Repeated episodes of psychological distress manifesting itself as disrupted relationships. I don't have physical symptoms (or I didn't then, at any rate - though when I write Slow Burnout II, about my singing teaching "career", then we will be talking about physical symptoms). I unload my distress on to others, who may themselves exhibit physical symptoms of stress - as my husband did in response to my postnatal depression. He was not the only one. There have always been disrupted relationships around me - I am something of a storm - but my time at SBC Warburg was particularly bad. These days I am not so sure that it was all my fault as they claimed: the whole environment was unhealthy. But I now know that I act as a focal point, catalyst and amplifier for emotions, particularly when I am occupying a central role such as a project office - a lens, if you like. When I am collecting and concentrating unpleasant emotions, it is not just others who suffer: I get badly hurt myself.  SBC Warburg was a poisonous environment with a lot of negative emotions, and I occupied a central role. A central role where I can all too easily become the "lens" is a very dangerous place for me to be.

• Repeatedly attracted to places or circumstances of work that reflect or reinforce difficulties in my personal life. We do not know enough about why people are selected for particular jobs - what attracts them to the job, and what attracts the employer to them. But looking back over my life, I am struck by how often misery at home is reinforced by misery at work, and vice versa, even when the causes are apparently unrelated. It is almost as if the circumstances of my personal life, and my emotional response to them, uniquely fit me for certain roles within organisational games. "Scapegoat" turns up rather too often for comfort.

• Disrupted core relationships and neglect of friends and family. This is usually worse in the "overwork" phase than the "underwork". When I am working too hard, I "disappear". But when it all goes wrong, my neglect of friends and family leaves me terribly alone. Hence the loneliness theme that runs throughout this story. I think the theme of my life is "loneliness in a crowd".  

The legacy: Nat West/RBS 2000-2002

The uncharitable charity: CAF March-August 1999

I joined Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) in March 1999 as IT Development Manager, taking over from an interim manager who - weirdly - had been my boss in OSS at Midland. It was a welcome opportunity to work more locally (CAF is based at King's Hill, in Kent), and I thought that working for a small charitable bank would mean less of the vicious politics I had encountered when working for larger institutions. How wrong I was.

When I joined, CAF was developing and implementing a new Treasury system. The Development team were doing extensive bespoke enhancements to a package that had been bought at the behest of Sylvia, the IT Director, a Board member. The package did not fit user requirements particularly well and perhaps more importantly did not include interfaces to the principal UK payments systems CHAPS and BACS. So we had to build them. By the time I joined, the project was already running well behind schedule and the users were very unhappy with the functionality they were being offered: substantial parts of the functionality they needed had been de-scoped from the project on the promise of a second phase to follow, but there were as yet no  plans for that phase, the timescale was unrealistic and it was unclear how it would be resourced.

I felt uncomfortable at CAF from the word go. The senior management went on about how "unusual" their culture was, and in particular how "open" it was. Open it was not. I quickly found out that saying what I really thought was not welcome. My regular meeting with Sylvia was not so much a meeting of minds as an opportunity for me to say "yes, I agree" at regular intervals while she gave me chapter and verse on how the system should be designed and how the project should be managed. And the HR Director took exception to something I said in an email, which she regarded as too blunt: from that moment on she disliked me.

But more worryingly, given my experience at Midland with unclear reporting lines, was the fact that both my team leaders, and even some of the development staff, had frequent formal and informal meetings with Sylvia at which she would tell them what they should be doing, regardless of whatever instructions I had given them. This situation created enormous confusion, and just as at Midland I had been blamed for the ensuing distress, so too at CAF. Only a couple of weeks after I joined I was hauled into a meeting with Sylvia at which she told me that I was upsetting my staff and must back off. This would come back to haunt me.

What was a feature at CAF, though, was backbiting and gossip, which I found thoroughly unpleasant. And worse, some people were the targets of what amounted to smear campaigns. The Head of Internal Audit, with whom I developed a good relationship, was the target of such a campaign. She told me that she was concerned that her view of the role of Internal Audit was at variance with that of some members of the Board. In particular she did not think that Internal Audit staff should be treated as free resources for user testing of the new Treasury System, as it compromised their independence as auditors. She said that she would make this clear to the IT Director and stand her ground regarding user testing. Soon after she told me this, the IT Director's secretary started criticising her behind her back - for petty things, even including the way she dressed. I was concerned about this, because I thought it was unprofessional, but I didn't realise what was really going on. Not long afterwards, the Head of Internal Audit abruptly left, apparently because of "inadequate performance". It was the harbinger of what was to come.

The Treasury department were not happy. There had been continual delays to the system, it wasn't going to do what they wanted and tight IT resourcing meant that Phase II was probably going to be delayed. The IT Director had promised them that Phase II would be completed within 6 months of Phase I. Unfortunately she had also committed the IT department to a lot of other developments. I knew we could not achieve them all, and said so repeatedly. I would have redirected staff from other developments to Phase II to enable us to deliver it on time, but there were hard deadlines on other projects too which made this impossible. I could not bring in additional staff to do the work because of budget constraints and CAF's general policy of paying less than the market rate for IT staff "because it was a charity", and I could not pay staff overtime because of Board rules limiting overtime payments to very exceptional circumstances. Overtime rules were relaxed at my request for the Phase I final user testing and implementation, when both IT and user staff (mainly Internal Audit) were working silly hours. But no-one wanted to relax overtime or recruitment rules for Phase II. It was an impossible situation. But that wasn't what Sylvia was telling the users.

Phase I of the new Treasury system was implemented in August 1999. Although the implementation went smoothly, the aftermath was a disaster. The system simply did not do what the users wanted: the lack of functionality due to de-scoping caused them serious problems and they refused point blank to stop using their existing system until they got what they wanted, which meant that IT staff had to be diverted from Phase II development to support a parallel run. This sounds like cutting off their noses to spite their faces, since they needed Phase II to be delivered, but from their point of view the IT department's resourcing difficulties were not their problem: they had a business to run. Unknown to me, the fallout from this went up to Board level.

A couple of weeks after the implementation, on my way into the office, I spoke briefly with a senior Treasury staff member. She had a new hairstyle, and I made a comment about it. Normally this would have been greeted with a bit of a laugh, but not this time. I got a terse slapdown. It was evident something was very wrong: she was angry and stressed, and did not wish to speak to me. I wondered what I had done to offend her. It never dawned on me that I was being personally blamed for the system's shortcomings. But I was.

Later that day one of my team members took a phone call. He looked over to me and said, "Sylvia's waiting for you in her office". I had anticipated this call, as Sylvia had just returned from holiday and I expected she would want an update (yes, the IT Director was on holiday during the implementation of a major new system needed for FSA compliance!). So I went up to the office expecting a discussion about the Phase I parallel run, the planning of Phase II and the other projects, and what we were going to do about resourcing.

It's funny how little details stand out. As I went into the room I remember seeing three coffee cups on the table by the door....I knew then. A normal meeting with Sylvia would not have three people present. I looked over and saw her sitting with the HR Director.

I knew what was coming, but the shock was still terrible. It wasn't "dismissal", as such, as I had been on a 6-month trial period. But it made no difference. As she said "We are not confirming you in post", my head started to spin, and there was a roaring in my ears. I barely heard what she said after that. The only things I remember clearly are that she blamed me for the fact that Phase II had not been planned, and said the staff were all complaining about me.

They would not allow me even to go back to the department and clear my desk. They expressed some concern about whether I was fit to drive, but I just wanted to get away as fast as I could. Sylvia's secretary retrieved my handbag and briefcase from the department, and said any personal items from my desk would be delivered to my home. Then I was escorted off the premises.

Heaven knows what my driving was like on the way home. I was blinded by tears and kept going over and over the meeting in my head, trying to remember exactly what had been said....but I kept coming back to the same thing. The staff hated me. The wound had opened up again, deeper and more painful than ever.

I could not make myself look for another job after that. It hurt too much. So I withdrew into my tiny house with my children, and for best part of a year I became an ordinary mum. Except that I wasn't. I found it hard to cope even with being an ordinary mum.  I was insomniac (I still am), brittle and anxious. What I had been told at my dismissal nagged at me all the time: I felt worthless and hopeless. I found practical things to do, which distracted me: but the dull ache of loneliness, and the sharp pain of knowing that everyone hated me, underlay everything. As I write this, I can feel that pain again, and I know that fourteen years later, I am still not really healed. Maybe I never will be.

The loss of my earnings was financially disastrous. I knew I would have to find some kind of paid work eventually, so we kept on the childminder, even though it meant using up my scanty savings. But as time went on, and I still couldn't force myself to look for a job, I started to get into debt: my husband and I had continual rows about money and the tiny house we lived in felt like a prison. I dreaded both the job search and the possibility - or indeed probability - that I would fail at the next job, too. I looked back over the pattern of the last few years, and realised that each job lasted a shorter time, and each time I lost a job, the emotional pain I experienced was greater and the time I needed to recover enough to force myself back into the market again was longer.

 I was already doing some professional singing and a small amount of private teaching at my singing teacher's suggestion. A chance encounter with a friend who I knew worked for Kent Music School as a singing teacher offered me the possibility of a way out. Maybe, just maybe, I would not have to force myself to find another banking project management job and risk being hurt again.....

But the CAF story is not quite ended.

Nearly a year after I left CAF, I went to a performance of "A Winter's Tale" by the Detling Players, in which a friend of mine was performing. At the end of the performance, I hung around to meet my friend. As I waited, I saw two people I knew......two members of my former staff at CAF.

I had to speak to them, though I was terrified - I didn't know what they would say. I wasn't sure if they would even speak to me: if they really hated me as I had been told, they might turn away when they saw me. But the pain was eating me up. I had to try to find out whether what I had been told was true.

I went up to them and nervously said "Hello". To my astonishment they were delighted to see me. We talked for a while about the play. But eventually I brought the subject round to CAF. I told them about the circumstances of my departure. I said that I had been told the reason was that the staff were all complaining about me, and I couldn't get it out of my mind. I needed to know if it was true.

Mick looked pityingly at me. "It's not true", he said. "We had no problems with you."

"But the HR Director said it too! She confirmed what Sylvia said!" I cried.

"Two very poisonous ladies", he said.

It seemed that I had been sacrificed to preserve Sylvia's position.....for a while. The users were demanding retribution for what they saw as the monumental failure of the IT department to deliver what they wanted. They wanted blood. Really they wanted Sylvia's blood, but she pacified them by sacking me. It didn't last, though. Six months later Phase II failed, as I knew it would, and Sylvia was forced to resign.

Mick's remarks helped to lifted me out of my depression. The wound started to heal. I started to believe that maybe I was not the ogre that I had been painted.

I applied for a job as a singing teacher at Kent Music School and was accepted, starting in September 2000. Childcare arrangements were complicated: by this time Dominic was at primary school and Nadia at pre-school, but some of the Kent Music School work was in the after-school period and did not finish until an hour after my childminder's finish time. My husband, by then working in London, was not going to get home in time to pick them up. So I organised a variety of friends to collect my children from school and look after them until I got home. My amazingly resilient children tolerated an incredible amount of disruption and inconsistency for the next two years. It took a major international disaster to open my eyes to the risks I was taking with such tenuous arrangements for their care - especially after I went back into banking.

For I did, of course. In September 2000, just as I was starting part-time work at Kent Music School, Nat West rang up.

A time to laugh: Save & Prosper April-October 1998

After I had been made redundant, UBS HR provided outplacement services both to me and, as a concession because they knew of his continuing unemployment, my husband. Predictably, I found a job long before he did - in fact he did not find a job through UBS's outplacement service at all, though he found them helpful. In contrast, I was back at work only a month after my redundancy. I went to work for Computer Sciences Corporation (CSC).

CSC had recently taken over the IT function at Save & Prosper in Romford. They were running a large Year 2000 project, organised into three "high performing teams" (HPTs). I was to run the Corporate HPT.

High performing, my team was not. And some members were directly obstructive. Rather as I had been resented by SMI, so I was resented by ex-S&P staff. I was CSC, and they hated CSC.

Nonetheless, the S&P project was fun. Not because what we were doing was fun - it was at times mind-numbingly boring - but because people made it fun. From senior management down to junior team members, there was a sprinkling of people who liked to laugh and who made us laugh. I think I laughed more in six months at S&P than during two whole years at SBC Warburg. Although it had black moments, I remember my time at S&P as a bright spot.

But it ended badly, and to this day I don't know why. In September 1998 the "investigation and correction" part of the project had been competed, and we were about to embark on user testing. Despite a poor appraisal (which I felt was a bit unfair but accepted), I was offered the job of user testing project manager. But I thought about what that would entail - long hours, weekend working, never seeing my two small children. I had been horribly burned by my experience of user testing at SBC Warburg, and I suppose I feared a repetition. I couldn't do that either to myself or to my children. So I turned it down.

This left my manager with something of a problem. I was the most senior project manager there - and the most expensive. But I had turned down the most senior project management role. The alternative was a much smaller project - and it quickly became apparent that that project was not going to fly. I was in serious danger of becoming a "redundant but employed" project manager yet again.

I don't know what discussions there were behind the scenes. But eventually I was asked to resign. What puzzled me then - and still puzzles me - is that as I worked for CSC, not S&P, I could simply have been redeployed: yes, it would probably have meant moving house, but that was not the end of the world.

I have heard that there were complaints about me, but from whom, and what the substance of those complaints was, I don't know.

What sticks in my mind though was being described as "General COBOL" by a junior team member who had a degree in psychology. She said General COBOL led from the front, and defended his team to the last: when things went wrong, he would be the first to fall on his sword.

I suppose, in agreeing to resign, I fell on my sword.

Being asked to resign hurt. A lot. The old wounds reopened: I felt worthless, a failure - yet again. I hated myself.  But even more, this time, I felt the loss of the people. There had been such camaraderie. I really missed them.

I retreated back home to lick my wounds. It was several months before I felt able to look for another job.