The Gift of Neurodiversity

My life with autism and anxiety disorder and a career that I neither planned nor expected, has provided me with, what I believe to be, a unique perspective on life, the world and humanity; and this is what I know.

It's my truth and I don't expect anyone to accept it as theirs!

By Charles Linden

Nearly two years after the first cases of Coronavirus were announced in the media and after my constant day-one warnings about the resultant, catastrophic activation of a protracted mental ill-health pandemic, 2 years later, health services are grappling to provide support for the, now massively increased, numbers of people suffering from those very same conditions.?

OK, we’re haven’t been ‘stacking bodies in the street’, but the cause of the resultant, unique and never-before-seen mental ill-health catastrophe and its core science, is eluding, or being ignored by, those who provide associated services; I suspect and very much hope, in my eternal optimism, that much of the problem lies in a global misunderstanding of the true nature of the associated science. If I am wrong, it is all entirely commercial or political (or both) in nature; which terrifies me far more than a pathogen.

The global response to the Covid Event, as I prefer to call it, has been the source of a spanner in the cogs of my mind, a binary mind which responds very badly to statements which directly conflict with available evidence and/or logic. No matter which way I tilt my head, everything looks and feels very wrong right now.??

I guess you would say that I am relatively uniquely placed to comment, and that doesn’t mean, necessarily, that I am entirely correct, in fact, I’d love nothing more than to be entirely wrong; not wrong in my colloquialisation of, what would normally be, a verbose barrage of, seemingly technical, psycho-babble, but wrong about the end-result, namely the socio-economic, sociological, genetic and developmental impact of the Covid Event and every facet of the experience we have all endured - regardless of whether you believe the dogma.

My name is Charles Linden. Actually, that’s my legally appointed name. I was born Lyndon Lampitt.

I was born in Worcestershire in 1968 and from that day, the world I perceived made little sense to me; much later I discovered why, but for many years I was bullied, I felt constantly terrified, even of my own thoughts and body; I slept very little because I was scared of not waking up; my waking days were an exercise in coping, managing and manipulating people and environments in order to stay and look, relatively calm; each day was dominated by ‘mind traffic’ and physical sensations - I thought, at least to start with, that it was normal to feel that way.?

My perception of the world wasn’t and still isn’t, as I have been told other people’s is.?

I perceive very little ‘grey’, if any at all.

My world is binary and in the absence of enough data to switch between 0 and 1, I prefer to stay at zero until the evidence presents itself - often it doesn't.

Having had the benefit and privilege to have worked with tens of thousands of clients since 1997, many of whom describe similar experiences, I now have a more complete understanding of myself, but for many years, I struggled with the concept of being different amongst so many, seemingly ‘normal’, people which led to me feeling intimidated, isolated and terrified.??

I have always felt like I live life my life at a cellular level; as if I can hear my body's very substance; I feel consciously connected to the human condition. I suppose I do not know how others feel, but I propose that it’s not like me... at least not for everyone.

My mind has felt like it contains a busy airport my entire life; thoughts and emotions criss-crossing in a constant choreographed stream with the world outside of me fighting for attention as the internal turmoil manifests a constant barrage of risk assessments whilst my creative mind is in a never ending loop of data gathering and problem solving.?

It feels the same today as it did in 1970, but at 54, I have spent decades learning how to ‘spin my internal plates’ whilst systematically addressing all external matters with considered response. To a greater extent now, I can manipulate my world to serve my mind and seem calm and logical despite it all.

Aged 4, I knocked my small orange thermos flask of Heinz tomato soup off the dining table whilst at school and on opening the flask, I saw the myriad glass fragments in my soup; at that point my OCD and eating disorder were activated, leading to 22 subsequent years of panic disorder, OCD, eating disorder, health anxiety, agoraphobia, monophobia, depersonalisation, derealisation and prescription drug addiction.?

I had years of therapy, medical and psychiatric intervention, thousands of doctor and specialist referrals and my situation worsened until in 1996, I was a housebound agoraphobic suffering, supposedly, with multiple diagnosed psychiatric conditions and of course, depression tagged on to round off a devastating diagnosis and an even more frightening prognosis.

I was told I would never lead a ‘normal’ independent life. I was told that I would always be medicated and would always require therapeutic intervention. The psychiatrists told me I would never marry, have children, hold down a paid job; he also told me to but magazines and masturbate myself to happiness, this, shockingly, was probably, actually, the most practical and even vaguely scientific, advice I received over those two decades. The medical and psychological negligence was astounding; I can see that now, but back then, I was desperate. I struggled to walk, let alone work. It starved me of so much joy and fulfilment.

I was a self-proclaimed physical and mental ‘mess’; even the psychiatrist said in his notes that I was unkempt, overweight and looked like a tramp. I did, but none of it was my fault. I, like millions of sufferers, trusted the advisers I had seen, moreover, I trusted their ‘science’; the science that they insisted was the Gold Standard, evidence based, scientific and trustworthy. Hiding behind credentials is too easy. The fact that none ever produced anything vaguely resembling evidence of their ability to actually help me is testament to so many industries which ask for trust in the absence of proof. It’s not about qualifications, it’s about ability to elicit positive change.

That’s all sufferers want - at least till they understand that recovery is, despite the coercion, possible. Then they want what I have and i provide it.

That 'science' took away 22 years of my life; time for which there is no refund; time that makes me the 54 year old father of a 17 and 20 year old; lost years that would have seen me become a surgeon or have seen me take the place at St Martins School of Art, or would have allowed me to enjoy the choices, the holidays, the geographic movement, opportunities and experiences I watched all of my contemporaries enjoy as I sat at home, medicated, housebound, desperate and alone.

In 1996, contrary to what psychologists and psychiatrists predicted, I recovered. I recovered without medication, psychology, counselling or any other intervention; I recovered despite them, against their advise and prognosis and entirely because I stopped believing ‘their science’ and discovered ‘the science’.

Since 1997, I have personally helped many tens of thousands of sufferers to find wellness, recovery and happy fulfilling lives and have set up an organization that meets every expectation for the provision of education, psycho-education and coaching.

Imagine the scenario… mental health services are experiencing a decade long increase in mental health suffering, especially in the young, but they don’t know why.

Services are bursting at the seams, trying to cope with an ever-increasing number of patients that are breaking the business model. The incoming and outgoing patient body is no longer consistent; more are coming in than can leave and services struggle as the young leave child services as adult services aren’t coping with the increased incoming load.

The bottle neck isn’t just filled; it’s burst open. You only have to sit where we site every day to see the devastation it causes; and we live in a country that provides free healthcare, imagine how the same scenario plays out in third world countries.

Is it all due to stress, ever increasing debt, trauma or social media??

Is it due to the increasing pressures of modern life??

Until March 2020, all of these have been the constant focus of research and service provision. The blame game has always focused on societal interactions and experiences and whilst can often be identified as catalysts; they are not the cause.?

Is it because ‘talking’ is difficult for some people and is that all because of sociological factors, access to care or sociological expectations to suppressing emotions?

It’s none of those in fact, it’s entirely due to a genetically programmed conflict between human social and physical evolution, activated by a world that places data and commerce before science and wellbeing; that has ignored the epigenetic train-crash that we have all watched happening in slow motion over the last 4 decades; albeit for most people, without even vague awareness of its presence.

Providing services that attempt to identify and address these catalysts as the cause of these disorders is like blaming Cadburys for obesity; sure, they provide the delicious chocolatey bullet, but the consumer pulls the trigger.

When you see the world from a position of sustained hyper-vigilance; when your mind is processing the resultant incoming neurological data into one black and one white silo of evidence, when you spend 22 years in fear response and 25 years meeting with and understanding thousands of people who provide their data and experiences, you’re pretty well placed to recognise and respond. My staff lives this daily; which is why they are incredible and have saved many lives where others have failed. Seeing the truth behind words isn’t something you can learn from a book, it can only come from asking the correct questions, eliciting the correct responses and using that data to ‘get behind’ the words in a way that no educational process on earth can prepare you for.

When you see a post event rise in emotional suffering, it’s expected.

Talk Radio recently asked me to talk about post 911 anxiety and the impact of the twin towers event on the people who were at ground zero on that day. During that interview, it struck me how my responses were steered by the science of the emotions but how I had to modify my comments in order to not cause conflict between scientific truth and widely accepted beliefs around trauma, loss, grief, post-traumatic stress disorder and social acceptance.

In trauma or grief, it is vital for the wellbeing of the subject, that they receive science-based, practical, easy to follow, coaching in order to manoeuvre them and manipulate their physiology in order to create fast and real recovery – but that is, for some,??socially unacceptable… suffering, to many, is considered necessary; anything less than emotional decline would imply lack of love or respect despite it flying in the face of science and what would be far, far easier and more pleasant for the subject. And then there is the inevitable sociological backlash due to what others might perceive as nonconformity.?

Surely it is better to be well because you can be, rather than unwell due to commercial bias, social acceptability or ignorance? Perhaps that’s my neurodiversity speaking but the logic of unnecessary suffering evades me.

This elevated post-pandemic mental health pandemic is neither a pandemic, nor is it a mental health matter. Nothing is ‘wrong’ in most of the affected minds. Nothing is wrong in their bodies either; but, we are told the exact opposite.?

Anxiety conditions including generalised anxiety, obsessive compulsive disorder, health anxiety, eating disorders, emetophobia, self-harm, panic disorder and more aren’t about faulty thinking, fear, vulnerability or weakness. They’re not about a person’s relationship with food, geographic location about vulnerability to infection or illness. They’re entirely about fear, or more specifically, the inappropriate activation of it.

The Covid event gave rise to a sudden, unexpected and high-level exposure to, what was positioned as, a plague, followed by corroborating media and social media campaigns. The effect of this experience was three critical biological responses. 1. Exacerbation of existing fear disorders in those who had already been activated. 2. Activation of fear disorder in the vast majority of those predisposed to suffering. (It was probably as much of a shock to them as to their families) 3. Activation of biological responses that can and probably will be, passed on genetically to future generations.?

There had been millions of people ‘waiting in the wings’ so to speak; most unaware of their predisposition to suffering from these conditions, who were suddenly activated within weeks of March 2020. This gives rise to a sudden massively inflated caseload for the NHS and private practice but most vitally, this happened at a time when those services were wearing a giant facemask and limiting access to care in the most catastrophic way, but also, the isolation and restrictions gave rise to a sudden and neurologically influential requirement to limit social interaction; the net effect of this powerful formula was to create people of all ages, including the so called Covid Babies and infants, who became instantly phobic of such interactions and geographic freedom and are now struggling to function socially, emotionally appropriately or, indeed, as they get older, on any level.

To call this a pandemic would be so wrong, it’s a total departure from human evolution; the kind of evolution that allows time and social and environmental change to conspire in a good way to adjust the human blueprint gradually and mostly unnoticed. This may sometimes fail but, mostly, historically, it’s worked in humanity’s favour.

Unless the correct science is used to defuse this genetic time-bomb, the future of all these people and all of their social, work and leisure interactions and achievements will be significantly reduced. Their ability to function at full capacity and to maintain physical and mental wellness will be compromised. Their need for care will put strain on service provisions. They may be told, like I was, that they will always need support, medication and therapeutic intervention. They will probably become a burden on society, healthcare, education and their families.?

Post-war Britain saw many people return home with shell-shock, what we now call PTSD, but they were a relatively small number when you consider the millions who fought and survived; but humans were, genetically, quite different 70 years ago; I would estimate that the predisposition was only present in around 10% of all people back then. Pre March 2020, I would estimate that around 40% were predisposed; now it’s around 60-70% and in the future, that number will rise significantly, maybe, even to 100%.?

I spoke to a number of schools in 2019 who stated very clearly that around 45-50% of their pupils experienced anxiety in that year. I spoke to one of those schools again, just this week, and the new estimate is 80-90%.

It’s a catastrophe.?

Vitally, however, the situation can be rescued. All it would take is for those who genuinely care, those who want to take swift, dramatic action and those with the reach, to understand the science and address it head on with the antidote.?

For 25 years, myself, my wife and our team of mental health professionals have worked so hard to take psycho-educational services from its place of hiding within the NHS stepped care model and elevate its practical implementation and extraordinary level of efficacy to the place it deserves at the coalface of service provision.?

Every school, police station, military base, university, healthcare and mental healthcare provision should have trained recovery practitioners in place; people trained to understand and respond to fear disorders. People who know what to do from first-aid through to full and lifelong recovery. It’s a dream that can quickly become a life-changing, life-saving reality – a vital step for pulling the genetic deviation back into line before my nightmare scenario comes to full fruition.

My team has spent 20 months helping our existing client base but also helping to keep anxious key workers in work whilst providing them with a simple, actionable plan to remove their fear disorders.

I have personally helped 1000s of people since March 2020. Through lockdown via Zoom. In person post-lockdown at our Retreats, on Zoom and in person. If anxious people around the world don’t receive recovery instruction, we face a future in which every family will be dealing with the catastrophic impact of fear disorder and the heart-breaking experiences it brings with it.

Take it from a 53 year old ex-sufferer; that is not a world that anyone will enjoy or thrive in, it’s not a future I want for my children or grandchildren; but it’s a preventable.

Charles Linden 5th February 2022