James Chan discovered his neurodivergence later in life. Read on to learn how he embraced his intellectual giftedness, channelling his energy into NGO work, Irish music and speedcubing!

About me

I am currently reading Bachelor of Science and Psychology at the Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS). I am a traditional Irish musician and also work at the Asia-Europe Foundation (ASEF) as an Inclusion Advisor and Consultant.

I was the recipient of the Goh Chok Tong Enable Awards in 2020 so I am very privileged and honoured to have been awarded for my work in inclusion in various areas of my professional career in Singapore.

As for hobbies, I love cycling, running and solving the Rubik's Cube.

Source: Aspergers from the Inside.

Studying psychology

I was diagnosed with intellectual giftedness so I wanted to learn more about intelligence, cognitive psychology and related areas of interest. I wanted to know more about testing, psychological measures and things like that, so I decided to explore further and take up this course.

As an exceptional thinker, I think out of the box. So when I relate to concepts in psychology, I tend to question a lot of the model concepts and really examine how they come about through the research and the attitudes and approaches that lead up to those conceptions.

For example, when we talk about Freud and how he developed his psychoanalytical model, it was based on his experience working with his own children. During that time, philosophy still held sway on the discipline so there was a lot of fusing his observations with children and the prevailing sentiment of sexuality of that time.

I analyse all of this context when I read up on psychological concepts. When I address them in the context of the coursework, I'm always critical in talking about how these things came about. Then, when we relate them to more modern perspectives, it helps to view these concepts from the lens of where these concepts came from, how they are still relevant, and how they are not.

“As a person with autism, I have strengths in dealing with patterns of data.”

This brings me to the example of a researcher in Canada who is autistic and she never actually went to university, nor did she graduate, but she started working alongside some established researchers in the field of autism and community.

She managed to do so because she demonstrated her understanding of dealing with data and dealing with research methods, and her critical eye for such things. She has co-authored a couple of papers together with her team even though she had never gotten a degree.

For me, that is another area that I think I have strength in but I have not had the chance to get into yet, because I've not reached the point where I could take on the research aspects fully. I am excited to actually get into them when they arise.

Irish music

I was 17 when I first started learning Irish music. It all started with a video that my mom watched on YouTube of a person playing the Irish bagpipes and Irish tin whistle. She then asked me to try it out.

“Little did I know that a little shared interest in some fleeting YouTube video actually grew into something that became huge. ”

I started learning from recordings on iTunes and MP3 videos because that was how old musicians in Ireland used to learn music at the time, and still do in fact. I taught myself music and I did my first public performance about one to two years after I started at the Esplanade.

Source: Irish Traditional Music Archive.

In 2018, I actually represented Singapore at the Irish national championships. In 2019, I was given direct admission to a Master's course in Irish music in Ireland.

Diagnosis opened doors

I was diagnosed with autism at the age of 26. I went for the diagnosis myself.

Throughout my childhood, I was bullied for reasons I didn't know and I had a lot of friction with my family and my teachers. There were a lot of misgivings. I also had executive dysfunction issues when I was growing up, in school and in my general life.

What sparked me to start the diagnosis process was Julia from Sesame Street—that really showed me positive vibes of community and identity while embracing the knowledge that I’m different.

“At the same time, there’s opportunity and potential in not only knowing that I’m different but also embracing these differences, these exceptional qualities.”

After the diagnosis, I felt my life could finally move on. I could get strategies and help for a lot of the issues that I faced at work and in school.

I was thereafter approached by the Asia Europe Foundation directly for a job. They came to me because I took part in a conference for disability in 2018, which only happened after I got diagnosed and learned about the event through my network.

Read more about James’ experience at ASEFSU21.

The ASEF felt that I could contribute to the discussion through my knowledge of my personal life of living with autism. Afterwards, for my Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) work, I built a portfolio of inclusion in our projects, and then they nominated me for the Goh Chok Tong Enable Awards as well. One thing led to another.

“My diagnosis opened up doors for me rather than the other way round.”

I know that parents tend to see diagnosis as a disaster, when actually, what the diagnosis does is to say that your child has strengths and weaknesses. Therefore, work on building on strengths so he or she will be able to stand out in the crowd. That is the opportunity that has actually happened for me.

Another possible reason for the stigma here is also due to the competitiveness driven by parents trying to compare their children.

I think that's actually something that we also need to discuss when we talk about a more inclusive future, where the urge to compare is the source of a lot of the pressure.

It cuts two ways: That my children are not like other children. They don't play like other children. They don't develop like other children. They don’t communicate like other children. Things like that. That leads to competitiveness and comparison of their children to others.

It's something I think that societies need to move on from because it's not very inclusive. And of course, looking at other families and looking at other children going to Rosyth Primary School, performing at Esplanade at 8 years old, things like that. I mean, people develop at different rates and times, yet the competitive spirit still lives there.

Reaction of others

When I told my friends about my diagnosis, most of them said, “Oh, I already knew that.” As for my parents, they were supportive in general about me wanting to move on with my life and to figure out how to get better.

“The biggest motivation actually came from me internally when I realized that I can now start thinking about solutions and strategies.”

The lack of awareness around available solutions and strategies prevented the biggest area of opportunity for me.

Looking at my other friends who already were diagnosed with autism and comparing their experiences with mine only served to reinforce the idea that after having gone through my diagnosis, I can really start to look at things in a different way and start to actually get to it.

Past schooling experience

In secondary school and polytechnic, there were one or two teachers who knew of my struggles and were very kind and nice.

Even without knowing if I had or didn’t have autism, they still talked to me in a way where they knew that I needed to be engaged in a different manner. However, those teachers were in the minority.

I didn’t have any friends back in my earlier schooling days. I didn’t have a lot of people to turn to. I had an inkling that some people were neutral to me because they didn't want to jeopardize their relationships with the people who weren't nice to me. There were politics involved.

“The turning point for me was the realisation that a lot of the social friction that arose from my interactions with people, with my neurotypical peers, was because of the differences in how I communicate.”

Coupled with how people are people, and when they are faced with people who do not act like them, marginalization happens.

I came to accept that different groups of people fulfil different roles in society. They interact with and contribute to society differently. It just so happens that the group of people who bullied me embodied certain differences as members of a society, where they are less accepting of people who may behave differently. Simple as that.

Just like when we studied personality differences in psychology, when you start to draw the line, a lot of the individual differences result in how different groups interact with different groups.

I mean, not the whole world bullied me. It was just a few groups of people, and why is that? I think it all boils down to differences in individual personalities and that those differences are a particular symptom or particular observation in a society.

So, I just accepted that it’s just what it means to live in a world filled with 8 billion people. It's bound to happen.

Advice for my younger self

Looking back, I would tell my younger self: One, forgive yourself more. Don't be too hard on yourself. Two, start slow. Make decent progress. Don't bite off more than you can chew. And three, be hungry!

In adulthood, with maturing minds and with a greater understanding of inclusion, I received more support at that level.

I actually think that it was better for me to be diagnosed late than early because looking at how inclusion and diversity developed in our societal consciousness over time, I would have faced greater misunderstanding and consequently, discrimination growing up in a society where the teachers weren’t equipped with the right skills and people still thought of autism as a bit of a... “Insert euphemism here”.

While I would have benefitted from a safer sandbox of a Special Educational Needs (SEN) school, I felt that the trial by fire in a mainstream school actually did me a lot of good because I actually saw the society which I grew up in now, which then is only going to get better from here.

“Specifically, I think that I would have benefited from a system that started much earlier to talk about inclusion, to talk about disability, to start to talk about differences and to talk about diversity.”

I think that would have been the main thing, although I’m not sure how likely that people will understand. I think that if you did social psychology, you will understand that persuasion is a difficult thing and people without the right mind to think about such things will actually find topics like this to be a target for ridicule rather than for genuine understanding.

I think it has a lot to do with inculcating thoughts of inclusion, to actually put people with disabilities and also people with autism into positions of admiration and leadership where they actually become role models. That’s actually much better than trying to just really push that message without any understanding of the context.

Inclusiveness at work

Generally, I work in making my organisation more inclusive and accessible to people with disabilities. We do informed education and make those programs more inclusive and accessible to our participants from Asia and Europe. These are two regions that we work with.

For ASEF, what really happened when I came on board is that things have changed. There has been a greater emphasis on diversity, not only in accessibility and disability but also in embracing different cultures, different languages, and different things like that.

For instance, we hire more females than males and one-half of our company directors are female. We are bucking the trend in terms of the gaps between male and female achievement in our organisation. Of course, we hire employees from around Asia and Europe so we are already quite diverse.

However, it was only after 2018 that we started to really push the envelope. We started an inclusion task force to look at how we can put to action a lot of the ideas that have been raised in our events, and in our programs.

We also started to create a calendar of social media posts talking about not only disability, but also about culture, food, language, gender, gender achievement in the workplace, things like that, and that thinking has really evolved in my organisation.

Going beyond that, because we are an international organisation and we deal with different societies, different countries, in general, the thinking of inclusion is also advancing in our societies.

“For the future to be an inclusive one, more governmental focus on reducing inequalities and promoting inclusion in societies needs to happen.”

This is especially so in certain countries where some minority and marginalized groups still face very basic issues with safety, housing and access to jobs, access to society, and access to education.

Those factors present greater issues to people with disabilities because a lot of them face double the issues in that regard. So, these are issues that have been highlighted at my level and I think are something to really look at from a broader, global perspective.

I went to Malta for an overseas trip with my project team during a model ASEAN program (the model ASEAN is similar to the model UN) as a simulation of the model ASEM.

I did social media and did a lot of project support for them. In fact, the social media aspect was something that I've never done in my life. It was my first time working on something like that, and I really enjoyed the process.

Moreover, it was an overseas trip with an overseas work program, something that not many people would ever have experienced at all, and I actually had the chance to do it. You could say, going beyond borders, literally.

I pretty much see myself continuing policy work in the future. I think that the development of disability policy is something that I hope will start to take shape in Singapore and I could contribute to that process.

At the very least, we are moving forward rather than backward, not just staying where we are, so there's opportunity there. We just need to continue to really do the steady work needed to have a more inclusive future.

My hopes and dreams are that more job opportunities, workplaces, and industries can open up so that individuals with more focused talents and skills can find a place to be able to have a decent income and to be able to bridge gaps at that level.

*Promoting Irish music and culture with* *Comhaltas*.

More can be done to provide better services and funding for people who need more help to even get into the process of learning and training and skilling up for jobs. There are some people with different disabilities, not just autism, because of certain barriers to access in society, who can't even access those opportunities yet.

There are so many glass ceilings to break, but we should also start with the most obvious difficulties first, and then we can progressively forge forward. I think that's what we should be doing.

To others with learning differences

Think about strengths and weaknesses. When we talk about SWOT analysis in real life, we want to think about how we can bank on strengths and work around or address our weaknesses, and I think that applies to people with learning differences and neurodevelopmental differences as well.

“Just because the development of your mind, of your brain, and of the way you think, the way you behave is part of the minority doesn’t mean that it’s not legitimate.”

It’s just applying some of these concepts in a way that better harnesses the strengths of people with disabilities in people with autism as well, such as taking a lot of the strategies that work for neurotypicals and then taking away some of the things that don't work.

Especially when it comes to social rules, it's not an exact science, and there is a lot of trial and error there but it’s part of the deal. Take what works, apply it to you, and then just keep learning new things there. I think that's the thing that will really benefit a lot of people who are in the same community as I am.

To the general public, organisations and schools

Every individual deserves the chance to succeed, even if some may not be the fastest learners, the fastest adapters, or the fastest adjusters. This is a very fast and competitive world where some people are getting left behind. Don’t forget about these people. I mean, don't.

It's up to us to start to think about how to maintain a place for many of these individuals who have very specific skill sets but can't find a place to succeed as much as the rest of us in terms of having a decent job, trying to start a family, or trying to own a house.

A lot of these are glass ceilings that we are not very close to solving although we are moving in that direction, so don't forget about these people.

With regards to organisations and schools, I think firstly, we have to educate teachers on exceptional minds and exceptional thoughts, exceptional communication, and exceptional claims.

Secondly, the culture must be from top-bottom; to find ways to include people with disabilities and to put them in role model positions for the younger ones.

Thirdly, we should mainstream inclusion and diversity in the curriculum after the groundwork has been set. It is only when you start to do these things, that it will then become easier to create an integrated learning environment and to cater for special education in the community.

It will make it easier to make our society a much more inclusive and accessible place.

James at Great Ocean Road — *James at the famed Great Ocean Road, Victoria, Australia.*

James Chan