No Longer Speechless

You’re out at a café with your family. Your father asks your siblings what they want to drink, and you are excited to try the new Pumpkin Spice Latte. Moments later, your father returns with coffee for your siblings, but hot chocolate for you. That’s not what you told him. You reach to try a sip of your sister’s drink, but four hands push your arm away. The café door opens. Wow those girls are talking loudly. Wait, what is dad saying? The coffee pots are too loud. What are all these people looking at? Who keeps saying your name? It’s just coffee! 

Meet Carly Fleischmann, a sassy 24 year old with non-verbal autism. For Carly, this is a normal experience at a coffee shop. Individuals with autism have much more acute senses, making an everyday trip to the café feel like a battle. Every noise, smell, taste, and sight can be overwhelming. Furthermore, Carly is unable to tell anyone how she feels and why her body is doing certain things. For years, her family members assumed she was intellectually disabled since she was unable to talk. They would talk about her right in front of her, oblivious to the fact that she was comprehending everything they were saying. One day when she was 11, Carly was not feeling well, so she went over to the computer and typed H-U-R-T. A few minutes later, she typed H-E-L-P. After, she went behind the couch and got sick. No one had taught Carly these words, let alone how to spell them. This was the first time that Carly was able to accurately express and communicate how she felt. Her therapists and family members then worked extensively to motivate and teach her how to type. Now, she is able to type exactly what she wants to say. She has a Twitter, hosts her own talk show, and is working on a novel. Reading her words, you would never guess that they came from Carly. She is finally able to explain that the frantic movements she makes with her arms and the banging of her head is because her body feels like it is going to explode. She knows she is not supposed to do it, but she can’t control it. She tells her dad “you’ve never been in my body… I wish for one day you could be in my body.”

Carly’s story can be related to the opportunistic assimilation theory. This concept states that previous failures in accomplishing a goal are encoded into memory.  These encoded failures could be remembered when similar stimuli are encountered. Opportunistic assimilation, with the combination of encoded failure and “unconscious spreading activation… prepares the problem solver to be able to use relevant cues without requiring the examination of every object in the environment to consider its relevance to the unsolved problem” (Smith & Ward, 1995, 466). After many years of failing to communicate and becoming increasingly frustrated, Carly saw a computer sitting on the kitchen counter, and tried to use it to express her emotions. She was in a situation where she needed to communicate, but encoded failures told her that she couldn’t. She knew that people used a computer to communicate. She seized the opportunity and never looked back.

Carly has a talk show on YouTube called Speechless with Carly Fleischmann. In the first episode, she interviews her crush, Channing Tatum.  She offers advice to parents of children with autism and is committed to encouraging everyone to find inner voice.

Sources:

Smith, S. M., Ward, T. B., & Finke, R. A. (Eds.). (1995). The creative cognition approach. Cambridge, MA, US: The MIT Press

https://people.com/human-interest/22-year-old-nonverbal-woman-with-autism-on-finding-her-voice-and-advocating-for-others/

https://www.appliedbehavioranalysisprograms.com/lists/5-ways-individuals-with-autism-communicate/