The Purpose of my Talks

I do public talks about autism, anxiety, depression, Obsessive Compulsive Disorder and human memory. Those are all topics that relate to my personal life experiences, even though my talks are not always about my own life story.

From being a very young child I have had a passion for both writing non-fiction pieces and doing public-speaking, which I much prefer to one-on-one communication. Thus I decided early on that I wanted to make a career out of exactly what has very much limited my opportunities of traditional employment.

It’s my desire to help other people with my disabilities feel less alone by me writing my blogs and books, as well as by me giving my talks. I also want to do all I can to give the widespread community some first hand experience as to what living with my disabilities is really like. Books and other external resources can only give a certain amount of information.

I am a firm believer that researching treatment (care not cure) for autism is even more important than research for what autism genetically and characteristically is. Nowadays I’m happy to see that the medical and education systems are taking great steps in those directions. I absolutely love to give talks to audiences including therapists and teachers. The two reasons for this are for me to give a first-hand account of what it’s like to be one of their patients or students; and perhaps most importantly I enjoy learning information from them myself  whenever I do my questions and answers session at the end of my presentation. Therapists, teachers and carers are very important people in our lives. So it’s very important for us to have healthy relationships and share information we possess (both from personal experience and from studying the scientific aspects of disabilities) with each other.

So in addition to doing talks about what it’s personally like to have autism, I also give motivational speeches with messages of encouragement (for people with or without autism) to never lose hope or faith in life.