Chapter 5-- "Discovering My Love of Philosophy." I'm Trevor, and I'm 16 years old. I was diagnosed when I was four years old with Asperger's and sensory integration disorder. The early stages of growing up were hard for me. When I look back in elementary school especially, I can't help but remember always being angry and confused as I tried to figure out how the world worked and why not everybody thought like I did.

It was a very confusing time for me, and I often threw tantrums because of that confusion. It wasn't a time that I really liked to remember. But luckily as I grew older and started to figure things out, life became easier, or at least easier than it was in elementary school. I think the catalyst for that was that I started to figure out that everybody is different and everything works differently. Not everybody was going to be exactly like you. I started to grasp the reality that it was OK if things didn't work out exactly how I wanted them to.

When I was little, I always had trouble with that and thinking that there was only one way that things were supposed to happen. It was very black and white. And once I realized and accepted that the natural order of things is sort of chaos, things got a lot better. When I was young, my main way to deal with stress was through my love of LEGOs. I would seclude myself in my room and build and build and build. That time was really valuable for me to decompress and give myself some time to process the stress I was going through.

Nowadays, I still do a lot of those things. I still might go play with LEGOs. I still might isolate myself and take a shower so that I can be alone. But something else that I've learned to love is music. So another coping mechanism that I now have in my tool belt is that I'll pull out my bass guitar and play around with it or I'll tap on the piano. Those are great ways for me to be alone with my thoughts and deal with my stress.

As I transition to adulthood, I think the biggest skill I could work on is probably decision making. I'm good at figuring things out that are objective, so things like taxes and bills should come easy to me. What's going to be tough for me is making decisions and, more importantly, making sound decisions. I see that problem even now as I'm thinking about what I want to do with my future.

I'm just really indecisive, so being able to make sound decisions that I feel comfortable with is going to be really important for me. Otherwise, I might end up in a position that I'm not very happy with in the future. That's also where philosophy comes in.

"Discovering Philosophy." One of the big things that got me where I am today was studying different ways of life and different philosophies. When I got into ninth grade, I took a world literature class in high school. There, I was introduced to some great writers and thinkers around the world, and I really dove into that.

You hear people in the spectrum community talk about special interests. You could say that learning about philosophy has been my special interest for the last few years and probably will be for the next few years. Three of my favorites are transcendentalism, Taoism, and stoicism, all of which differ slightly but are similar to one another in the sense that they agree on a natural way of order for things and that the best way to live is by observation and going with the flow.

They teach that you can't really control anything other than yourself. So as long as you keep yourself in control, then everything else will be fine. Otherwise, you will just stress yourself out. And as the Taoist put it, you'll drown in the river. Reading all of this philosophy helped me to find a sense of order to my own life. It created an organizing principle that I could rally around so that when I was confused, no matter what changes were happening in my life, I always knew what I had rooted myself in.

Some of that had happened automatically by doing things like moving schools three times, but learning all of those philosophies put a name to what I had been discovering all along. A lot of people consider me to be very self-aware. I've had several psychologists and therapists say that about me. I think a lot of that honestly came from my parents because they've always been supportive.

Whenever I would throw a fit or they could tell that I was about to go into sensory overload, they would say things like, how do you feel; or, what's going on; or, what do you think is making you feel this way? Simple exercises like that is what I think trained me to be so self-aware. And after doing them a few times with my parents, I learned that I could do them on my own.

OK. So I'm feeling X way. What's been going on recently? Has it been the food I'm eating or am I sitting on my butt all day? Let's diagnose what's going on here. It's what happens after those exercises and deciding how to act on the awareness that's the hard part. Take the example of if I do something that I perceive in retrospect as being rude to a friend.

In instances like that, I set rules for myself as to what the plan of action will be, and then I follow that rule. So I will go to the friend who I was rude to, look him in the eyes-- despite it being hard for me-- and say that what I did was wrong and I'm really sorry and I hope we can still be friends.

Generally, I find it helpful to admit my mistakes and ask how I can make things better, and that tends to work pretty well. In other instances, if I do something that isn't rude but it might be cringey or embarrassing, I have a rule that I remind myself that most people are much more concerned about the cringey and embarrassing things that they have done themselves compared to what you have done or what other people are doing. I also remind myself that being you is perfectly OK and so you really just shouldn't worry about being embarrassing or cringey.

"Advice for Others." My advice for others would probably be things that I've taken from the philosophy I've read. A lot of people tend to think there is just one way of viewing things, so I think it's important for people to know there are several different ways to view and frame the world around you.

You don't have to adopt every aspect of every philosophy that you learn about. As long as you can reason it out and it seems logical and brings you peace, that's the important thing. I would also encourage people to explore new things. If someone is stressed about certain things and they just can't seem to find a way out of their stress, I would encourage them to look for new ways.

There are so many possibilities out there, and there's surely no way that every single possibility could have been looked at. There is always another pathway out there. Try everything. You never know if something works or doesn't work until you try it. You just need to check things off your list. And once you've found something that works for you, roll with it.

For me, whether it's philosophy, a hobby, or even a coping mechanism, providing variation is what keeps me sane. When things are changed up and I am trying new things, I've noticed that that is when I am the most stimulated.