“Going the Distance” Event Review: “Autism in Disney Characters: Volume 1” a
- Jeffrey Snyder
- Apr 22, 2024
- 4 min read
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Yesterday, I had the pleasure of presenting “Autism in Disney Characters: Volume 1” to an audience that was to the untrained eye unusual…recovering drug and alcoholics. Now, as you read this review, there was a very good reason that I agreed to partake in this training because I do have a personal connection to this matter.
You see Herren Wellness, the organization I presented at yesterday, was founded by former basketball player Chris Herren who dealt with drug and alcohol abuse throughout a majority of his life. Since his recovery, he founded Herren Wellness with the goal of helping those beset by alcohol and drug use to kick their habits and live healthy lives.
Why this is a personal matter to me is because not only my dad (who is also my wingman) works there, but also was someone who dealt with alcohol use for most of his life and I had to witness his struggle with the bottle firsthand. Dealing with something like drug and alcohol use is in a way, kind of like trying to find something to cope or to escape the pain we experience in our lives. Now, I’m pretty sure that there are plenty of neurodivergent individuals who have turned to something like alcohol to cope with the prospect of everyday life, but this coping strategy isn’t the right move.
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Presenting to 15 to 20 of the center’s members, I couldn’t help but think of one factor is that these people (including my dad) had to learn at some point in their lives that the coping method that they are using is more destroying their lives rather than saving them. Some of the members in the audience actually do have some form of connection to neurodiversity such as one member who has a neurodivergent brother at age 32 or another member who actually works with neurodivergent students.
I get the fact that learning and grasping with neurodiversity is never easy, but presenting to these men and women showed them that just because they have the habits that they once had, it can affect everyone else around them, including those who are neurodivergent like myself. One of the factors I brought up is that I can pick up on feelings that others are displaying. When I could tell that my dad was drunk, I knew he was drunk and there were times where he would be driving with me in the car and it was nothing but tension between us.
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Of course, my dad has been sober for almost 10 years now, but I still feel that presenting to the Herren Wellness Members more or less sends a message that there are other ways to cope that are healthy and beneficial. One of the characters I brought up was Tigger who represents neurodivergents who have no respect for the boundaries of others.
When people drink or use drugs, their judgment is clouded and they can’t make the correct choice on what to do. I never drank or used drugs (thank heavens), but I still got clouded in judgment in some of my decisions in my life (particularly when I attempted dating) and I could relate to the members in that regard. The truth of the matter is that clouded judgments are a hinderance to our ultimate goals and alcohol/drugs only adds fuel to the fire.
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In fact, I can also relate to the fact that most of the members also had no one else to turn to whenever they had problems in their lives except for the drugs and alcohol. I mentioned that I would often turn to food as a coping mechanism for whenever I got stressed or upset (which is kind of like drugs and alcohol, but different). There is always going to be someone to talk to and sometimes we need to come to the conclusion that drugs and alcohol isn’t the right resource to turn to.
In fact, “Autism in Disney Characters” not only connected the members to autism, but to themselves as a whole, particularly characters like Winnie the Pooh who had a restricted diet of honey or Alice whose curiosity also lead to trouble. For some of the members, drugs and alcohol was the only source of diet in their lives.
As well as for other characters like the Beast from “Beauty and the Beast” who also represented when the boundaries of the members got crossed, particularly when they wanted to get close to the bottle and those that really cared about them would get in between them.
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It seemed that each and every time a character was brought up, the members would connect to the character from the perspective of a recovering addict. They would see the character’s behavior and think to themselves what they were like in that situation. Some could connect to Dopey, some to Gus, some to Pooh, etc. and say to themselves that they were like those specific characters when they had their addictions.
In a way, presenting to recovering addicts was a new experience because that as a neurodivergent, I could see that we were connected in more ways than one and who knows? There might be more of these types of trainings on the horizon.
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Catch you all later!!
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