The Fallacy of Overcoming Weakness

I was in grade 5 when the feedback I received during my parent-teacher interviews was that I was “too passive” and needed to assert myself more. I also received feedback about what a good student I was: I always followed the rules and was never loud or disruptive. I would later have a teacher who suggested I actually should get into trouble sometimes—and the fact that I didn’t was concerning.

My father, absent for most of my childhood but recently returned, latched onto this perceived weakness and gave me endless shit about being passive. On the way home, he talked about how out of touch my teacher was. I was just a passive person and that would never change. Sitting in the back of the car, I couldn’t express how it made me feel—honestly even now I struggle to describe the feelings. But I liked this teacher, and hearing my father disparage her made me want to prove him wrong. I vowed, silently and to myself, to overcome my passive nature. Seven years later, I managed to return an undercooked cheeseburger to a McDonald’s.

Looking back, this was the beginning of a struggle that plagues me to this day. Why was it such a problem that I was a quiet, studious child? I always did my work, I answered when called upon—I just didn’t raise my hand or do anything to attract attention. I fantasized about magic, especially being able to fly. But not like Peter Pan, because his flight required thinking happy thoughts, and I wasn’t able to identify what happy thoughts were.

So, what began was a years-long process of training myself to speak more, to make friends, to be more assertive—whatever that meant. I went to school pre-internet, so I went to the library and got an encyclopedia so I could research what it meant to be passive, and what it meant to become assertive. The easy summary of what it meant to be assertive was to be confident. So, I had a look at myself and my natural skills, and I tried to find something I could be confident in. I leaned heavily into my creativity and began writing. Any writing assignment in school received a tremendous amount of effort. I would write, edit, revise.. I would put hours into any opportunity to write—especially creative writing. I found that to be the most fun, because I could write about being assertive without actually being assertive. My characters were the versions of me that I had researched and determined would be confident and assertive. They had friends, they could do sports, they solved their own problems instead of ignoring them. They never felt a need to escape, and they embraced changes in their lives. I was able to become the version of me that teachers and my parents wanted, but only on the page.

In trying to overcome my weaknesses, I had instead latched onto my strengths and based my entire personality around those. Around the age of 14 or 15, I had begun to struggle mentally. I had a friend group of around nine people and had never been more miserable. I had to find a way to maintain and manage nine relationships, and give each friend equal time, or I would be seen as having a favourite. In less than a year, I went from these nine friends all the way back down to just one, because I’m much happier with just the one. This high school friend worked out well, because I was his only friend, so we only had to manage our mutual friendship—and that was easy. When his family moved away and he went to a new school, he made new friends and we fell out of touch almost immediately. Shortly after his move, I dropped out of high school. I had been struggling—I’d begun having meltdowns, though at the time I didn’t know what they were. My doctor couldn’t figure it out either, as back then the diagnostic tools and awareness for autism just weren’t where they are today. I was diagnosed with general panic disorder and began a 10-year adventure of mixing anti-depressants, anti-anxiety, and anti-psychotic medications.

I never graduated high school, and in my mid-20s this seemed like something I wanted to fix, so I went back to school to try and get a diploma, and found that even at 23, school wasn’t going to work out. Instead, I worked full time in retail—a world I did not fit into, but I found mild success selling electronics which I had a special interest in. Jobs paid money, and money was how I paid for my subscriptions to all the MMORPGs I enjoyed. It allowed me to explore new games as well. I worked the job so I could afford to enjoy my one hobby—video games. I’d stopped writing as a teenager when my mental health deteriorated. My writing reflected my mental state, so it got really dark and a little scary. It didn’t make me feel good, so I gave it up. I couldn’t write happy characters with friends and loving families anymore. Instead, I used video games to escape reality, and I worked at a job I hated to pay for that escape.

In my mid-20s, I realized that I was beginning to feel like my end was coming. I can’t say I got suicidal, but I started looking at ways I could break free of society—and everything came back to not being around. But then I was reading about someone who went to Korea to teach English, and I wondered if that was something I could do. Education was a barrier, but after about four months of research, I got in touch with an agency in China who could place me in a job. I had to pull together money for a plane ticket, but they would reimburse me when I completed my first year. I scrounged and saved for months, putting together enough money for a passport, a visa application, and a plane ticket, and in September 2008, I did something I never thought I could: I got on a plane to an unknown country to restart my life.

I landed in Beijing and met the school’s representative, who loaded me onto a train and sent me off to the city where I’d be working as an English teacher. I was teaching second-year English students, and my course used a textbook called “The Culture & Society of Major English-speaking Countries.” We called the course English Culture for short. This course revitalized the creative piece in my brain. I was given a textbook and told to go teach a course. No direction, no previous notes.. just go teach. In the first two classes, I literally read from the textbook and watched my students following along but also falling asleep. I spent my first weekend researching and putting together a better presentation including images, a PowerPoint, and textbook highlights. I continued to refine my course over the three years that I was there.

Teaching English also exposed me to a new type of social interaction: the no-commitment interaction. Students wanted to practice their English, and the teachers were encouraged to participate in “English Corner” in order to allow students to practice English. We were paid for our time, so I did it because it was expected of me, but I learned that this type of social interaction was perfect. I could talk and listen to people about things that interested me, or interested them, and then when I went home, there was no followup text message, no phone calls, and no need to remember their life stories because it was all just English practice. When I think about how I moved into content creation, doing live streams is the same sort of interaction—mostly talking with strangers who may or may not come back, but as a streamer there is very little expectation that you remember key details about the people in your chat from just one interaction with them.

My teaching career came to an end when I found out that the agency who hired me had forged an English degree on my behalf and without telling me. I went to renew my contract and was informed that I needed an original copy of my degree, which of course I did not have. I had to return to Canada, but now I had a plan to go to university and get an English degree so I could turn around and go right back to China. In 2016, I graduated with a Bachelor of Fine Arts in Creative Writing—but I didn’t go back.

I got married and had my first son while in China, so when I came back to Canada, I had a wife and child with me. Priorities had changed, and now I was responsible for additional people besides myself. This required me to hold a job, pay my bills on time, and generally just live a more “normal” life. It started with my Fine Arts degree, but those don’t do very well in the job market, so after working for a few more years, I went back to school to get a Master of Business Administration. Somehow, the structure of university was different enough from high school that I was able to not just succeed but excel. My grades in both degrees were very good.. I handed in all of my work on time and got through the group-heavy work of the MBA without much of a struggle. I actually had an autistic shutdown during a case competition presentation but had warned my team in advance of what could happen, and they helped me rally and I was able to deliver my portion after a few minutes of delay.

During my educational journey, I also discovered live streaming. I learned how much I enjoyed doing it—even with no viewers, as talking to myself is a form of stimming that I have always used but was never able to define. So, when I have no viewers, I can talk to myself in an environment where it’s not seen as weird, and when I have viewers, I get that commitment-free social interaction.

Just a sample of a video I’ve done—this one has the most views on my YouTube channel.

Every time I’ve ever tried to overcome my weaknesses, it’s led to declining mental health. When I identify and lean into my strengths and interests, I start to do better. Even now, I have to keep certain masking behaviours at work in order to maintain a healthy work environment, but really I’m spending all day excited to write on this blog, excited for my next stream, and excited to eventually add TikTok and YouTube to my schedule—but not until I’m ready.

If you’ve ever been told to be less passive, or fit in better, I urge you to push back. We don’t need to fit into what society expects of us. We need to do what’s right for us and our mental health. The mental health of neurodivergent people is already chaotic at best—why put yourself through mental torture just to fit into some stupid box that was built for you before you were born? I recognize that we still need to survive, so do it—but do it at your own pace. I stream on Wednesday and Sunday, my schedule is on my Twitch page. Let’s talk about you, and maybe I can give you insight from my own life. I’m not here to give advice, but I am happy to share my story so you can explore your world with one more reference point.