Meet Me Where I Am: Navigating the Intersection of Autism and OCD

At age ten, Samuel’s considerable intellectual gifts were complicated by autism, obsessive compulsive disorder and the extreme anxiety that accompanies both of these conditions. As a result, Sam had developed several unique communication differences, unwavering avoidance of any hint that adults were controlling him, and other challenging behaviors that disrupted harmony at home, school and in the community.

This is a book about the “I” in IEP. Special education teams create Individual Education Plans of accommodations and goals for their students. But some students, like Samuel, can only survive in public school with a highly individualized program.

In addition to many common autism struggles, Sam was contending with an invisible postmaster who stole many of his words, panic in response to asymmetrical touch, an unyielding inability to comply with adult directives, and a myriad of other issues.

The book is entirely true, as creative nonfiction must be. Told from the perspective of speech/language pathologist and autism consultant Elizabeth Field, with input from the now-adult Sam and his supportive parents, it weaves the story of their neurodivergent and neurotypical collaboration with the themes of highly individualized education, the consequences of anxiety, and the benefits of acceptance, trust, innovation, patience, and humor.

Unlike the author’s first book, Building Communication and Independence for Children Across the Autism Spectrum, which addressed issues of communication and interactive behavior that occur frequently among children all across the autism spectrum, this book is about unique or unusual challenges complicating the life of one autistic individual. It aims to illustrate that the process of building relationships and intervening therapeutically is an art as well as a science and often involves individualized creativity along with evidence-based practices. Sometimes this requires accepting that another person’s reality may be very different from your own.