Category Archives: Anxiety

04/28/12

Um…Not Gonna Do It

I had planned on finishing another post and putting it up, but no. I am coming out of a shutdown and feel like it is not a wise decision to share what feels very exposing. Not today anyway. I think I will wait until after Monday. I had too much fun with my mom and the kids today at the beach. I was feeling down, and my heart has been feeling achy. Some of that has to do with things that I have read. It is a mix of discovering answers, realizing that there are certain things that are definitely not going to change about me, and it is somewhat hard to adjust to. It is not a negative it is adjustment. I have another new book Asperger’s from the Inside Out by Michael John Carley. It looks like a very good read. An Aspie friend of mine read it and she liked it very much.

I am looking forward to reading it.

I am sure it will wake some things in me and bring about new discoveries. In the book 22 Things a Woman with Asperger’s Syndrome Wants Her Partner to Know, I am getting ready to start reading chapter 8 “She only needs one friend…and the winner is, you!” The title alone helps me. I am most certainly going to go through this book in some detail when I am finished and share my personal experiences and how this has helped me. I wish I could shout this from the top of mountains, but since I cannot I will say it here “OMG! GO GET THIS BOOK!” Aspie girls if you can get your partner to read this I think it would be very beneficial. I also recommend reading it yourself. As a matter-of-fact I think parents would benefit as well and could find it a useful tool to help their Aspie girls find the right type of person to date – if they feel like dating.

It has given me so much clarity.

Several of the things mentioned in the book have been deemed as negative in my life. It made me feel such guilt and at times wishing that I were just “normal.” The confirmation by another person that it is not just me, and that they are not negatives is life changing. I am not making things up, or completely absurd – it’s my brain! Oh, thank you God! It still makes me kind of sad though because I want so much to make others happy, but I realize I have to walk in my own skin. If I am going to truly accept myself, I have to make changes that will help me. It confirms that the directions that I am taking in my life are the right ones. I do understand my needs more than I thought I did. I have gained more of my voice, and am able to walk a little more sturdy in my own shoes. Am I rambling? Am I being evasive? Sorry.

So yeah, the book rocks.

I can apply many things in this book to friendships as well because I see numerous parallels. I have had few friends and I am not good at keeping them. The ones that I still have in my “real” life are NT’s who have not given up on me. I do not have many, but I have a few who come after me when I have been silent for too long. (Even though they are mostly online now I have had them in the “real” world as friends. :-) ) They make sure I know that they are still there and they check on me, try to encourage me, and remind me that they love me. I get pumped up and excited when I am encouraging them though. I end up talking to them about all of the things they are doing or want to do and my enthusiasm tends to get them super stoked and I see them start to step out a bit more. I love that!

It is über awesome to see people thrive in their gifts!

I cannot tell you how happy that makes me. People sometimes don’t believe me, but it is true. That is who I am. I got distracted thinking about my one friend who has started a cake/candy business. I am all smiles now and forgot what I was going to write. Um…Oh, yes, yes. I remember I got kind of sad the other day reading this post Devoted but Dateless. It put into perspective the challenges that single mom’s with special needs children feel. I felt sad for her not in a pity way she is not looking for that, it is the sadness that so many people need companionship.

We all need it and so few are willing to do the work for it.

It made me think about how people can find those of us with special needs and our children to be too much work. That can get me onto a whole series of rants that I am not going to go into. However, I will say I have my own feelings of being a burden and too much work for people so I think it taps into those emotions. Hence, the reason I am not going to write about it. I am not going to go off on a tangent. :-) Speaking of relationships/companionship, I think this connects to my train of thought Pity, Respect, and the We/She Dynamic. At least it did in my mind. HA! I also read these and thought they were very good.

Theory of Mind and Mindfulness

Body Images

I have Aspergers – Part 1: Who I am

I have Aspergers – Part 2: Getting the diagnosis

I have Aspergers – Part 3: Life after an autism diagnosis

Back to Rudy Simone’s book “22 Things.”

I am trailing full circle in my thoughts. I REALLY like how the book is clear, direct, and short in each chapter. No fluff talk! And how she shares a short blurb “Partner’s Words” at the end of each chapter. I think it is so wonderful to read positive words from partners. I loved this one the best so far.

“If you’ve dated mainly NT women in the past, you may have some habits that need to be unlearned. With NT women you have to think of a second layer underneath what they’re talking about and thinking, and do a little ‘dodge and weave.’ An AS woman is merely blunt and there’s less tact involved. Don’t look for the subtext or the game. It isn’t there.”

~ Rudy Simone’s book 22 Things a Woman with Asperger’s Syndrome Wants Her Partner to Know

YES! This helps me to understand some girls who are friends as well. (No wonder they are shocked by some of the things I say. Lol!)


 

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04/26/12

Going For A Top Ten List

I feel the need to keep me light today, but I feel like I need to write. My vulnerability is trying to take hold of me and cause me to feel fear. I am doing a frontal attack! With the hope of helping myself, I am writing a list of things that have caused people to love me, leave me, enjoy me, or can’t stand me! Why? Because even though some people may not like these things, it is me. I do know that some people love these things about me and I need to remind myself that the way I think is a good thing. It also helps me see that I tend to have a lot of fun in life. Even when I am working through emotional things, or feeling exposed.

Top ten things that have caused people to love me, leave me, enjoy me, or can’t stand me!

10. Connecting details as a person talks.

For instance, say someone mentions the movie Se7en. While speaking to me about the deep philosophical truths that ring through the movie, I go down several paths. Here we go — Brad Pitt, discussing his entire film history and my personal feelings toward his acting. I find it to feel all the same except in 12 Monkey’s which happens to be a favorite role to date, second running Fight Club, third running Meet Joe Black. (There are other movies as well, but these roles I like him best I believe.)

Still I have a hard time getting past the commonality of his acting throughout each role. I am not saying he is good or bad, only the same in comparison to the roles and acting of Kevin Spacey. When looking at the two I see character embodiment more so in Kevin Spacey. This attracts me to him and his movies more so than Brad Pitt.  Morgan Freemon I find feels the same in his characters as well, but I enjoy him very much on the Science Channel Through the Wormhole. Again, I am not saying anyone is superior or is insufficient in their acting. My preference is Kevin Spacey.

This leads into the little amount I know about their personal lives. I was very confused by Brad Pitt’s choice of women throughout the years — this topic will definitely come up if one mentions the movie Se7en. Why, because he dated Gwyneth Paltrow. It pops open the questions. I will not go into all of my detailed thinking, but will say I am an Angelina Jolie fan because she is so intriguing and has a very interesting life history. I am not drawn to all of her movies, but I appreciate the more vulnerable roles she has played one being Gia. This then, leading into a conversation about Kevin Spacey being so private, I just enjoy his life style.

I obviously kept this short, but you can image how someone could get frustrated or excited talking to me just by bringing up a simple movie. Eventually, I would lead back into the philosophical truths — expelling into another round of wonders and connections linking poetry, songs, philosophers, spirituality, and whatever else that popped into my head. Of course, ending in song and dance, if I had not already been doing that throughout the conversation. :-) (To add a little more detail, I would have gone into other ventures by connecting other actors in different movies with them such as Anthony Hopkins, as well as music since Gwyneth is married to Chris Martin of Cold Play, who reminds me of the pastor at the positive church we had been going to… I’ll stop now.)

9. Making up random silly lyrics to the tune of songs.

Like the time a radio guy who was doing his show at a place a of business that I worked at, was very rude to me and accused me of hanging up on him when his phone had actually been connected to his fax somehow. Every time I picked up the phone, I heard the sound of a loud fax machine in my ear screeching, so I hung up. He did not apologize after he discovered that I am NOT a liar, or a DUMB girl. So I made up this song to “Hot Blooded – Foreigner”

Mike Boyle yelled at me,

he’s got a temper of 103,

he tried to make cry can’t you see,

He’s hot tempered, hot tempered

Um….yeah, those types of things. I had a whole song, but I cannot remember it all now. I do this all the time it makes me laugh. However, it can annoy my fellow humans.

8. Separating my food so that it does not touch and eating one thing at a time.

One must eat the least favored first. Let me clarify that I do not do with with all foods, it is contingent on look, taste, texture, and smell. As well as how they will look, feel, and taste if mixed together. (Telling people to stop eating so loudly will go under this one.)

7. Saying exactly what I am thinking with no explanation.

This could be things like in the middle of a conversation about global warming I clap and jump up and down while saying: “I love the way the iPad screen looks when it is shiny and clean.” I am listening to the other person, really I am. I see no need for an explanation because the statement is clear, right?

6. Doing what I call the “spastic butt dance.”

I tend to do this anywhere or when someone is trying to tell me something serious. When the urge comes to do a spastic butt dance one has no control. Oh, and add clapping, jumping up and down, doing ballet spins, and laughing loudly. :-) Yikes!

5. Mimicking hip-hop girl’s dances or Hispanic salsa overemphasized hip action.

This can kind of get on people’s nerves. Do you see a common theme? I am an out-of-control silly dancer and cannot seem to keep my moves in check. I will say that despite people’s frustrations with my uncontrollable moves they still laugh. However, it can get annoying with me asking; “Do you like my moves?” repeatedly. David came up with a statement I cannot remember where it came from, but I think he started it about the third year of our marriage after I asked for the thousandth time he said: “Yes, and we are all very impressed.”

4. Acting like a cat.

That seems to bother people.

3. Saying things like:

Oh, so you do like me, good to know.” Or “Oh, so you don’t like me, good to know.” and walking away. The proper etiquette is to pretend that you do not like the person when you do, and to pretend that you do like the person when you don’t. I will apply in my number three this as well. People do not like it when you say things like: “OH, I like you!” or “I DO NOT like you at all!” Especially, when you are in your early to late 30′s.

Reminder: Do not say what you are feeling and pretend as if you feel the opposite. Good to know, I will not remember and I can pretty much guarantee that I will not pretend anything. If I like you I like you, if I don’t I don’t it is usually nothing personal it has to do with personality compatibility. I hope I am not coming across as rude — I really enjoy all types of people. There are just a few that do not work well with my personality and vice versa. My issue is that I do not know how to “pretend” being compatible — other people seem to be able to do this.

2. Staring at someone with no expression.

I have been able to send people reeling with this one. Not even on purpose! I admit I have used it to my advantage on occasions. My way of getting back at people for being mean to me. Shh! Then, there are other times when I think my expression is very clear on my face, but no one knows. Oh, well.

1. Asking people a million questions.

Making people feel like they should be a walking web browser or Evi. I waited all my life for Evi. :-) My mom got so frustrated with me as a child with my constant questions and connections. Her token answer became: “Go look it up in the Encyclopedia.” Also add “dictionary”, and “We’ll go to the library so you can get some books.” We were frequent library groupies it was our hang out when we moved back to the states when I was little. It was one of our entertainments when she became a single parent. It didn’t cost anything, and I wasn’t allowed to talk much, (like that stopped me) but it gave mom a short break. It was a marvelous time for the both of us — it was something we both had in common and enjoyed. In defense of my mom, I am a tenacious question asker. :-)

Well that is it. I have many more, but I think I did well at keeping it to 10. Yea, me! Feeling better already.

Side Note: (added 5/1/2012) It did not occur to me to explain why I chose Evi over Siri until just a moment ago. Frankly, there is only one reason – I like saying “Evi” in my head it sounds pretty. Siri does not. Sorry Siri.


 

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04/25/12

A Bit Of My Meltdown History

I used to be a huge Smashing Pumpkins fan, I guess I still am I just have not listened to much of their music in a long time. Back in the day, I had frequent explosive meltdowns. Their music helped me to scream, sing, shout, and dance to get some of my “rageness” out. One of their songs that I had a deep kinship with was Bullet with Butterfly Wings. Part of the lyrics are “Despite all my rage I am still just a rat in a cage“. (It’s a bit hard and angry if you have not heard it before, you have been warned.)

I would hold in all of my pain, confusion, anxiety, fears, and desperation until I exploded. I now understand that many other factors contributed to this as well. My sensory issues, lack of sleep, lack of food, people in my life constantly being unpredictable, and/or messing with my routines on purpose. My rages were birthed from desperately longing for peace and calm. This rage was normally directed inwardly and promoted mental self-attacks and/ or self-harm. Part of the reason for inward destructive behavior had to do with my inability to describe and explain what was wrong.

I could not gather my thoughts.

I did not understand my emotions. I had no way of explaining to someone why I was upset. I was unable to express myself clearly. When I did attempt to explain myself I was not heard. I was constantly told that I was being childish, overreacting, or somehow what I was feeling did not matter compared to what the other person was feeling. Not only that I was told things like I was just being jealous, I was too insecure, and/or I was too needy.

I felt trapped by my own words. If I used them it caused people frustration, if I didn’t use them people got angry/hurt and read me wrong. Many times all I needed was a simple, honest, and direct explanation. If I do not get that, it feels like the person is hiding something from me or deliberately trying to deceive me. It gets my Sherlock mind going and I start evaluating every single detail, combing over words, information, actions, connecting this and that until I come to a conclusion.

My conclusions were correct many times, but I was convinced otherwise.

This disconnect of knowing something is correct in my psyche and being convinced that what I know is wrong, caused tremendous meltdowns. I have not always been correct in my assumptions, but I was correct about them not being forthright and completely honest in my way of thinking. To them they saw no problems with their white lies, or “keeping” certain things from me. But I knew, I could feel it. I could tell that their words did not match or their “fluff” words made no sense to me.

I hate fluff words! The silly dance of flattery, mixed with digs, or trying to read between the meanings to know that they were “correcting” me in a polite way caused me many upsets. It would cast me into a million questions and cause everyone to get frustrated. It caused me even more frustration because after hours of finally getting to the root, I found it plain idiotic to waste so much time on nonsense when it could have been all cleared up within minutes with honesty and directness.

I would try to control the bottled up emotions for as long as possible.

Eventually they would manifest, through tears, violent rampages on things in the house, or myself, sometimes the person if they pushed my limits or were violent toward me. Something would burst inside my brain and words I had no control over spewed out of my mouth, anger poured out from all the confusion. Fear and the feeling of being attacked caused me to go into self-preservation mode. After the meltdown settled, which usually consisted of me being beyond exhausted, feeling like I had been in a wrestling match with Rowdy Roddy Piper, I would cry. The consuming feelings of guilt and shame took over and every time I would vow never do that again. I had guilt for being destructive with objects, or with my words.

I felt shame for saying things that I never meant, or for harming myself in some way. I was a self-harmer starting from childhood. I would shutdown and lose my words when I was upset, then I would act out and infuriate my mom. She had a terrible temper — it calmed in later years, but I was afraid to talk to her some days. I know that some of this was my misguided perceptions of her words. I had that mixed with her temper that I was constantly trying to stop from erupting. She too was controlling her meltdowns in the outside world — home was a safe place to erupt. Not that it was right, it only now makes sense because I understand all of her stress and anxieties she had.

I am jumping ahead now.

I did not learn how to control them other than hide them. I learned to hold them in until I could find a safe place to let them out by myself. I ached to stop these meltdowns. I thought that by becoming a Christian it would help me love so much that I would no longer have meltdowns. This goes back to my initial prayers of begging God to fix my brain. That led into additional layers of unnecessary guilt/shame for about 14 years.

My thoughts caused me to feel like not only was I failing at being a “nice” human being, I was also failing at being a “loving Christian.” This made it all too clear to me that I would never be acceptable unto the God. And if God won’t love me whole else will? My views about God have changed a great deal. Stripping off the façade image of what others try to claim Him to be has helped me in many ways with guilt and shame. It has been a slow process, but that is what I do. Slow and steady baby! I was not consciously thinking these things, but I see it clearly, as I write.

This is ALL faulty thinking.

It is not true. I did realize that prayer journaling helped me stay in control of many emotions. I have journaled since I learned to write as a child. I was even scribbling way before I could write actual words. I can look back now and see the times when I stopped writing I seemed to have the worst meltdowns/shutdowns. There were times when I did not feel safe enough to write because others would steal my journals, or mock me for the things I had written. I was afraid to share my heart anyway, but most certainly in writing because as my mom puts it “Once it’s in writing that’s it now they can find it. It’s out there, and there is nothing you can do to change it.”

She has had terrible experiences with people using her words against her once she wrote them out. So have I, but it is the only form of communication with myself, and others that consistently helps me. I have no better way to communicate my feelings, or thoughts. I realized the other day that the feelings of guilt and shame stem from people making me feel bad and manipulating my emotions to get me to conform to their wishes. Being a person who gets physically ill at hurting another person especially with my words, I am easy prey for people who are emotional abusers and manipulators. Well I used to be, I have learned a lot in this past year.

I still need to stay on guard.

Not out of fear, but out of my gullible heart that wants to love and believe everyone is operating out of pure intentions. See I need to stay on guard because that is not true about all people, though my mind sways into that direction. I have past experiences with understanding to help guide me now. I did not have that before. I think with age, and looking back over my life this past year I have gained a lot of understanding. I see how many of my meltdowns/shutdowns have been triggered by not understanding that people have different ways of communicating.

This is not always the case, sometimes it has been strictly things like too many social encounters, sensory overload, or being tired. When all of those things are at an all time high meltdowns seem to be uncontrollable. Still for years I had no idea that there was a social/verbal/human play rolling on and we are supposed to know when to change into character based on where, and who were are around.

It is constantly changing, and maneuvering through our everyday lives.

It is a breathing living entity that no one knows, but understands is there and you are supposed to follow the rules that have no clear definitive explanations or directives. It is all very confusing — I do not understand why this game has to be played. However, knowing that it is there now has helped me not be so stressed – it doesn’t take away the confusion. :-) I speak in past tense in this post, but I actively work through these things on a daily basis. I have learned much, but the meltdown I had a couple of weeks ago forced me to deal with what caused such an outburst on my part when I have not done something like that in years.

I have some answers and I am processing through them now. Simple answer I was tired, overloaded, emotionally drained, confused by David’s behavior, and my life is changing in some pretty dynamic ways. After thinking about it, it isn’t all that odd that I would need to decompress. I didn’t know how to express myself. I also had been holding on to many things for over eight years, unable to understand my feelings. The more I read about certain struggles from people who are Aspie’s the more these things are making sense. My mind is connecting emotions to words, and sometimes it can be confusing and overwhelming.

Trying to process those things, and daily life can be a bit much — I need to give myself some slack.


 

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04/22/12

Bubble Fan “Almost” Meltdown

I have been trying to work on my meltdown post, but it is too long and I am not able to articulate exactly what I want yet. I need to keep working on it. It is exposing as well so I may be having a problem feeling so open and not realize it. Instead, I have decided to share about Daniel’s amazing job at self-control/ self-help. When Daniel has gotten upset, or gone into meltdown mode he has used me as his source of aggression release. Sometimes it is the house, or toys that he loves which turns into another ordeal. The majority of the time it has been taken out on me. I take responsibility for this to some extent because that is what I taught him to do. In order to protect the house, toys, Ariel and Joshua, and himself I guided him to use me as a punching bag. I did not know what else to do. At the time I would rather him come after me than pound his head against the wall, or destroy the house.

However, now that he is seven this cannot go on.

We have been working on self-help strategies without aggressive behavior for years now. He has progressed a great deal in this area, but there are times when he still is aggressive. A great resource that I found was Managing Meltdowns, (this is a quick read) and on this post Making our Way: Autism Video I have several other links to resources about meltdowns and tantrums. Deborah Lipsky has several resources that help a great deal with meltdowns, I have her book Managing Meltdowns. It is normally when he is overstimulated, and/or unable to verbalize what he is feeling. With his verbal communication and comprehension developing much more, we have been able to stop full-blown meltdowns before they turn into tornadoes bursting through the house. Not always, but much more nowadays. Daniel tries not to be aggressive — he is such a soft-spoken sweetheart that it is always a shock when he erupts. When he was younger, it was all day long, and turned into an everyday part of our life. I was constantly in protection mode for everything, everyone, and for Daniel. Because of this, I have residual anxiety about doing new things, or meeting new people. I do not stop trying new things or meeting new people, I try to prepare for it. He had no other way to communicate until we started occupational and speech therapy.

It can keep me on edge because of my own anxieties.

It can enhance my social confusion, and stress. Our play dates recently have been very good for all of us. I have been doing very well at not trying to explain every single detail of Daniel’s behavior. I have let him play and do his quirks and be himself. This has released both of us from stress. It is good because I have had to focus a little more on Joshua. He has been having confusion, and feelings of being left out. No one is leaving him out, but when he gets tired or overstimulated he has a hard time discerning the other kids’ behaviors. Geez! Where was I? Ok, we went out to play in the front yard on Friday with the neighbors. They had a wonderful array of bubble selections. When I saw the bubble fan, I had a slight panic. I have not let Daniel have a fan in a very long time. I do not know what it does to his brain, but he gets out of control, obsessive, and then very aggressive if the slightest thing goes wrong when he has a fan. Additionally, he was having the anxiety, and excitement of new people and being social. He also tried a Popsicle so add texture, taste, temperature, new food in general to the mix.

I swallowed my anxiety and decided to see how it would go.

He took to the fan right away and did not want to share, but he did and that was impressive. However, he was fixated on it. The kids all had a blast making bubbles all through the yard. I loved watching them play and have so much fun. Impressive things for me was that I had to continue to go in and out of the house to get water, band-aids, put things away, and take little ones potty, whatever else popped up. I left the children in the care of our neighbors! Yes, it may have been for a couple of minutes — a couple of minutes is huge for me! I felt comfortable enough to let Daniel be outside without me for a few minutes. It is amazing that I was able to do that with no fear. Granted I was only a few feet away, but Daniel can get in a load of trouble or harm only a couple of inches from me. :-)   The neighbors are very observant, and keep a close watch on the kids. Everything was fine and dandy until the bubbles started to run out. Daniel was starting to get too possessive of the bubble fan and I said it was time for it to go away.

He started getting angry.

He came toward me asking “Why?” repeatedly. He buried his head into my lap trying to push me over. When I stayed direct, and in control he got upset. He started raising his voice, jumping up and down, and wanting to come after me. I will say that it made a huge difference during this whole situation that the neighbors stayed calm, quiet, and let Daniel and I do what we needed to. I have had people interrupt, say things about him just needing “a whipping”, or that I needed to “nip that in the bud.” Those things do not help at all and it is not beneficial for the parent, or the child — it causes needless additional stress. I stayed calm and told him that if he did not stop he was not going to be able to have the fan ever again. He said: “Ever?” Because the “ever” word is a hard one and is hard to define since it is used often in a generalized context. I said: “I mean ever, as in you will not see it again.” He stopped, I watched his eyes as he processed everything, and about a minute later, he said: “Ok, I need white medicine.”

White medicine is about a 1/4 teaspoon of children’s Tylenol. 

It is a long story how that happened, but it works and he believes it helps him to calm down. He does not get it every time he is like that only during extremely challenging times. However, this was the first time that he asked for it on his own. I usually suggest it at some point before he turns it into his idea. Not this time, it was all his. We went inside got a little white medicine, a cup of ice water, and went back out. He blew bubbles with bubble sticks, and played with the other kids. No meltdown the rest of the night, or the next day. Huge! Another thing I confess I was a little happy that he had a moment in front of them because he usually holds everything in until we get home. It is always frustrating for people to only see “good” behavior because then, they do not believe you when you talk about meltdowns. I do not want him to ever have meltdowns for his sake of course, but I also know that they are inevitable. Today has been a couple on the edge moments.

I think the weather is messing us all up.

I told him how proud I was of him. I gave him details of why I was proud and that he should be proud of himself too. I pointed out all of the positive things that he did, like keeping communication with me, asking me questions when he did not understand, walking away from me instead of coming after me, listening to what I was saying instead of screaming over me, things like that. I didn’t add things like “instead of screaming over me” when talking to him. I stated things simply and in encouraging word form. I showed him my enthusiasm, which helped him feel excited too.

Here are some things I said:

  • You kept talking to me that was great!
  • You asked me questions, wonderful job.
  • You walked away and took a break that was a really good idea.
  • You listened to what mommy was staying, high five!

Those are what he needed to hear.

Adding additional information can take away from the positive and make it feel like he is still being reprimanded even though what is being said is a positive. I know this from experience. People adding things like that negated many positives that were spoken to me. “Oh, Angel you did such a wonderful job on that project even though you took a little longer than needed.” What? Then, it wasn’t a good job, I failed because I took too long! He was very proud of himself and told David about the whole thing later that night. Daniel was all smiles when telling his story about the bubble fan. Of course, he has been thinking about it for days now, but we managed to fill the void of his fan love interest. He was surprised with the arrival of Bronzor a gear Pokémon! He laid with me in bed and told me how much he loved Bronzor. He also informed me that the lovely plushy gear he has devoted his love to has replaced me. It is a good thing I understand such deep object love. iPad where are you?? Oh, sorry I love you PC you are so faithful. :-)

The bubble fan “almost” meltdown was a big moment for Daniel. (And for me too, we had several big moments really.)


 

 

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04/18/12

You Down With EFD? (Executive Functioning Disorder)

Yeah, you know me… Ok, maybe a lame joke, song reference here. (Old school like “You down with O.P.P” Don’t ask me what it means — I don’t even know. Ha! I like dancing to it.) I love it when I am going through something and all kinds of resources, or other people share and it connects altogether. Last week my friend Lisa discovered resources (one of her other blogs) about Executive Function Disorder. If you would like a quickie visual before reading on I suggest this video (3:10) ADHD and Executive Function. I had been on a trail with seeking information about it, and I understood it to some degree. I had not applied it to a specific situation for myself until I started analyzing my behavior with my new social encounter recently. Let me say first, after my social outings with our neighbors I have not had any anxiety, or social/conversation looping with them. That is huge! I enjoyed myself, and genuinely like them. Bonus! Now comes the part for me to understand the degrees of friendship. :-)

As I read this article Executive functioning and the troubled brain this paragraph popped out.

“Executive functioning, put most simply, is the ability to plan and complete a task. It is a higher cognitive process that involves communication and organization across multiple  brain sites and pathways; it is the interconnecting virtual pathway that brings all aspects of brain functioning together. Executive functioning is involved in planning complex cognitive behaviors and expressing one’s personality. It allows individuals to differentiate among conflicting thoughts and filter out unimportant information; it also helps the individual anticipate future consequences of current activities and work toward a defined goal. And, most important from the judge’s perspective, executive functioning inhibits impulses that could lead to socially unacceptable outcomes.”

When I read this, I realized how much my brain is trying to process.

However, it gets all jumbled and unable to do any of it. This most assuredly happens with unexpected or non-scripted events. My brain does not know what to filter. It cannot determine what the most important thing is and categorize. Everything is important! All of the input matters, especially anything that is odd, or indeterminable. My brain does not know how to let those things go. It is not sure how to filter my surroundings, and/or people. The whole dynamic can trigger anxiety, which causes the executive function to be even more blurred. Then it can rise into faultfinding (normally blaming myself) or protection mode to try to stop the anxiety. In some cases, depending on other factors, I am able to pull out of this and get through the event. It does not stop the brain processing the event. It only delays it until my brain has enough time to catch up. From the 5 Executive Functions described in the video above I will try to explain what is happening in my brain.

I think others may be able to relate.

  1. Inhibit Your Behavior: Simply stated “hold in check, or discourage from spontaneous activity.”
  2. Visual Imagery: Non-verbal working memory. Mental maps to help guide/direct behavior. Hindsight, Foresight, Sense of time.
  3. Talk to Yourself: Verbal working memory that helps with goal setting/problem solving.
  4. Control Our Emotions: The ability to control/moderate strong emotions.
  5. Plan and Problem Solve: “Mental play- the ability to manipulate information in the mind to discover novel combinations that might serve to overcome obstacles.”

All of these things are going on in the mind of any person that we are interacting with. In short-term these actions are taking place in a matter of seconds for a mind that is not hindered by multiple factors. I am only using myself as an example let me share what my brain is also processing while it is trying to use its executive functions:

Anxiety
Sensory input/overload
Social confusion
Word confusion
Tone confusion
Non-verbal confusion
Environment confusion/unfamiliar surroundings
Unknown/unwanted people in safe environments
Lack of positive scripts
Inability to forget negative experiences
Distorted self-talk consuming my mind with trying not to be/do anything wrong
Looking/waiting for an attack (On guard)

These all can contribute to multiple forms of anxieties.

Those came to my mind while going back in time replaying my first conversation with my neighbor. (I am sure there are more.) I was able to suppress all of these things to function at a “normal” level. I have learned to hide most of this, unless I have already had too much stress/anxiety/confusion going on. If I am already stretched thin I can seem very quirky/odd/and speak out of intense emotions. My neurons feel like they are a bunch of bumper cars, hitting the walls of my brain and each other, causing the inability to think, problem solve, or discern very well “on the fly.” What I have learned to do is shutdown.

Stop talking, wait, and observe.

If I am with people where I feel the need to manage their emotions or behaviors it becomes impossible for me to even have my brain focused on myself. If I am with others who are not calm, or cause me high-stress in social situations I have to focus on other people, things, distractions anything that will help me not have a meltdown or explode with emotions. (good or bad) This explains many of my shutdowns in social settings, I have to in order to survive. Hello, conversation loops explained! There are not only conversation loops, but it is a movie that is playing over and over again. Apply full on sensory to the movie, reliving the encounter. This can be for a good experience or a bad experience. My past pattern has been to mostly loop on the negative because I was trying to trace what I did wrong, or try to figure out what a person meant (confusion). Those loops would be all-consuming and take away from positive loops causing me to forget good experiences that I have had.

I need positive scripts to be repeated.

I have plenty — I am talking plenty of negatives scripts that have caused it to be very difficult to trust the good ones. My brain does not allow me to stop what I am doing to let my other functions to guide me into goal directed problem solving. I think this is why I have to write everything down, keep lists, blog! For instance, my neighbor suggesting we do something, but not giving a clear direct day or time was an impossible task for me. I was only able to come up with a day last week because I had been pondering it for about a week already. I had been scripting it for a while, and semi planning for it. If I had been surprised by it I would have gone blank and felt confused, not able to respond…again.

My visuals get jumbled when I do not have a script.

My brain does not seem to have mental maps guiding me into the next direction for social situations. I have mental images, and I seem to get distracted by all of the images filling my mind while a person is talking. My energy goes into trying to discover similarities so I can have some sort of guide to have a conversation. I need connections and similarities because those are my (positive) scripts. I am not sure what to do next in a situation most of the time. I am usually looking to the other person as a guide and I use them to tell me what to do. I mirror unless I feel completely comfortable and safe. The threats of verbal attacks are always lingering. I am constantly waiting to be told that my words/actions were wrong/hurtful/mean/ or rude. It is not the only thing that I am thinking about, but it has been a large part of my self-talk. Although, I have come a long way at stopping this self-talk, it still lingers with each new encounter.

My hindsight can come years later.

My foresight is limited and my sense of time is virtually nonexistent. I need concrete time frames otherwise — I can be filled with anxiety, leading into fears because of anticipation and the unknown. It feeds right into my lack of self-awareness. Some of these fears have been enhanced because of my inability to know myself. The only guides that I had were jaded words, actions, and my own misinterpretations to tell me who I was. I have the ability to self-reflect. I do it throughout this blog. However, I am not attached. I go over it and over it again because I forget who I am! Not entirely, I am getting better with each cycle that I am going through. There are so many things to filter through when I self-reflect that it can take a long time to process. My emotions can take years, in certain situations. Many things play into that as well, detachment would be one that has caused the most hindrance in emotional processing. I have had to detach because emotions have been too confusing, too painful, too overwhelming, too disturbing, and too whatever else you want to add here.

It is hard enough to be consumed by other people’s emotions.

To “feel” people is overwhelming and draining, to try to add feeling, and understanding to my own emotions was devastating at times. I have been working through this, and I am happy with all of my progress. I have faced many of my fears, I still have more, but I am sharing them and working through them. The ginormous awesome difference this time around is that I am gaining so many positive scripts that they are starting to drown out the negative scripts that have been ingrained in my head for all of these years. They started as a child and continued to pile on top each other year after year. It did not help that I was manipulated, and controlled by others, and could be extremely gullible at times.

I gave my trust to people who abused it.

I still had walls and did not give away all of my trust to people, but it was enough to instill fear of being hurt again. As I have been pondering all of this, it occurred to me that Executive Functioning Disorder could tie into lack of self-awareness. Having a faulty system distorts the ability to problem solve and set goals. Many times, it is hard to even reflect inward and seek out self-awareness, how do you even start problem solving things like self-discovery? (Wiki reference self-awareness page) “Moreover, a series of recent studies showed that self-awareness about cognitive processes participates in general intelligence on a par with processing efficiency functions, such as working memory, processing speed, and reasoning.[12]”  I found a basic list of self-awareness (excerpt below) here:

Why is self-awareness important?

Self-awareness is important because when we have a better understanding of ourselves, we are empowered to make changes and to build on our areas of strength as well as identify areas where we would like to make improvements. Self-awareness is often a first step to goal setting.

Examples of self-awareness:

Preferred learning styles
Aptitude for specific career fields
Natural academic ability (athletics, mathematics, English, etc.)
Personality traits (introvert, extrovert, sensitive, judgmental, etc.)
Religious beliefs
Political viewpoints
Values (ethical, with integrity, scrupulous, etc.)

All of these examples in my life have been blurred.

I received no direction, or my natural abilities were not encouraged. If my parents did not understand them, they did not exist. I was left on my own to try to discover my own religious beliefs — I was guided by none or condemned by the other. I wasn’t able to discover on my own perspective or views, I became mixed and stayed away from certain things and obsessive about others. I later adopted the views of those around me because I did not know how to process on my own to find my thoughts. Whenever I stepped out to try I was corrected, ridiculed, or rejected. My natural abilities were misunderstood because I did not do things the way others did, and they were not encouraged. I had only one person in my life who spoke words of encouragement to me about my writing until recent years. It was my sophomore literature teacher, unfortunately, her words were taken from me and distorted by all of the other people who dismissed, or ignored my writings when I tried to share.

I still struggle with writing as being part of my identity.

I understand that I am a writer because I live, breathe, dream, ponder words and write them out, but I have creeping negative thoughts about my abilities at times. I do not let them stop me – I face them head on and tell them it does not matter. Every new sentence is a step at getting better, even if I make grammatical errors. Life is about practice, not perfection. (Easy for me to say in the moment. :-) ) This brings me to one issue that can cause my social confusion, and executive functions to go all awry when I encounter people I do not know how to keep my identity. I do not know how to stay me while interacting with others. I have gotten better with this, but what I have discovered is if we have things in common, my mind can drift into thinking we are the same. I do not hold my own identity because I have a tendency to think, “I am wrong” I can begin to adopt things about the other person without realizing it. I read this today as well “People with autism ‘have problem with self-awareness” and this popped out.

“Navigating social interactions with others requires keeping track of the relationship between oneself and others.”

I didn’t learn how to keep track of my identity I learned how to act. I have only become aware of my own identity in the last year. This is helping me to be more comfortable at being myself with others, still I have the jumbled words bashing with each other in my head. (Unless I feel safe.) I understand that everyone is doing some form of acting when in social dynamics. I am learning this stuff do not get me wrong. I have come a long way in my self-discovery, but I struggle with it. I think there are many components that Executive Function Disorder can play a role in with the issue of self-discovery. I am still pondering all of that. The Autism Discussion Page has helped me in so many ways and continues to do so. I gained so much from reading about Executive Functioning Skills. Also, The social and emotional growth through the 30’s and 40’s really helped me.

I was able to come to terms with my feelings about going through my teenage years at the age of 39!

I struggle with that so much because I am expected to understand certain things that I just don’t if it is not explained properly. The frustrations of others can make me feel so foolish for not understanding. I know that it shouldn’t, but it does. I will stop there and work on my meltdown post it will be addressing some cognitive issues. I think it is important to note that this list provided about Compensating for Cognitive Deficits can give great clarity to some of the reasons for shutdowns/meltdowns. The more I read the more I am understanding/accepting myself and feeling such relief that I can help guide and direct my children. Such a time as this to live in the days of information! Woot!

I linked to the full Google documents for EFS on the image below.

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04/16/12

Play Date…It Was Great!

Last week, no wait let me start from the beginning and try to tie it altogether. Several months ago, we had new neighbors move in next door. We are in a heavy house rental area, we rent, I want to always rent! I do not want to own a house for as long as possible! Houses are too committal I am not ready for that type of relationship bond. I believe I could only commit to a long-term relationship with a house that is the equivalent to an iPad. Oh! Imagine what that would look like. The possibilities…sorry I dosed into another world. It would take one magnificent house to tie me down that is for sure. Distracted much? The neighbors, yes they moved in. I peeked out the window, watched, studied, and HID! I freak out when new people move in. I never know how they are going to be, and I normally do not like talking to neighbors.

That is too committal too.

After they had moved in, and had been there a little while the lady came over and introduced herself. She suggested we get together. Well of course, I was already panicking because she had crossed over to our yard, so then the thought of meeting again was freaking me out. However, she seemed very nice, and I liked her vibe right away. Still I am always apprehensive with new people, especially those who live so close to me. It reminds me of the other neighbor next door. The first week we lived here I went out to the mailbox and there he was going to his mailbox in black satin boxers baring big red lips with the words “Kiss Me” (I am 98.6% sure they were the accurate words.) plastered on them AND no shirt! Oh, I forgot he did have black ankle socks to go with the attire, as he waved and said “Good morning” in a grumpy fashion. Believe me my imagination would never had made that scene up, those neighbors have proven to be not so pleasant on several occasions. They do not rent — we are stuck with them.

Focus Angel!

The nice neighbor lady (Most assuredly she is younger than me, but I use off words to describe people.) introduced herself, discovered that I home school, and wanted to get together sometime to talk about homeschooling. They have a four year old who is in preschool currently, and she is having a baby at the end of May I believe. (The mom, just clarifying.) She came over one day and knocked on the door. I am a freak about answering the door. I do not do it, and I do not care if the people on the other side hear me “Shh-ing” the kids or not. I hide behind the broken blinds (Thanks Mr. Nathaniel Cat), while the kids poke their heads right at the strangers. I don’t understand why they haven’t learned to hide properly. :-) I had to answer the door when I saw her, it isn’t that I do not want to talk to her I get thrown off and don’t know what to say. (I will try to shorten this story.) She came over to suggest us getting together again. I was confused with the open-ended invitation and did not know how to respond so I did not.

A few weeks go by — I see her outside and apologize for not getting back to her.

Oh, wait there was another time that she came, but I was sick, and having serious neck/shoulder pain so I could not go to the door. David did and talked to her for a little while, she gave him a paper with her name and number on it for me to call. At first, I thought she gave me an email, which I thought no problem I will contact her that way. Nope, it was a phone number. I could not call. It was too open ended. I didn’t want to call when she was busy, I didn’t want to disturb her, I don’t know her plans, when is the best time to call, how do I know she really wants to talk to me? (A good indicator for the last question is that she continued to try to talk to me.) I did not call or show up at her house because I did not know the right time, or I could not work up the courage to walk over there. I was constantly flooded with questions. Even though she told me several times that she is home all day, she gets her little girl at 1:00 pm and is home after that.

I just could not come to terms with a time.

Finally, last week she came by again. (Yea! For her because I would have given up by now.) I was all flustered because the morning had been a mess, and I had just gotten all of the kids settled into school about an hour prior. I looked a fright, and all buggy-eyed from anxiety of trying to gather thoughts to talk on the fly. She asked to get together and I could not think, I tried to stop my brain from running in circles and noticed that she really did want to do something. I combed over the days and said: “Wednesday, how about Wednesday we go to the park?”  Perfect, we set a date and a time. And began my social anxiety frenzy. (Part of the contributor to my meltdown the day before.) The kids did too. We were excited, and nervous. Remember I have had pretty much nothing, but negative experiences around here with other mothers. I did not have any good scripts — there are also the very fundamental views that play a major role in this area. I am too liberal for these parts. No offense, just the fact. (I am open to them; they are not open to me.)

She came knocking a little early.

It worked out, and we went to the park. It was fabulous! I had the best time. She was very open — I felt comfortable enough to share my views about homeschooling, and curriculum. I like to use “secular” home school materials mixed, with the Sonlight curriculum, STEM, Art & Music apprehension, unschooling type of methods, and multi-sensory as well. I am all over the place and I have encountered many people who believe it should only be one way. Each person has to find their own way to home school if they decide to do so, I respect their decisions — I wish those types of people would respect mine. I was also comfortable enough to share some about my religious views. Her daughter is wonderful, and a great playmate for the kids. Ariel had a blast being with another girl. She is younger, but I think that works well for Ariel. Joshua and Daniel like her very much too. Daniel did go off on his own and watched other kids on the playground. He was in observation mode most of the time.

He talked out loud about what kids were doing.

He did not talk to them, I asked him if he wanted to and he said: “No”. He was happy watching them, he was really happy. I can relate I think it’s the “people groupie” thing. We do not have to be involved or directly interactive to enjoy people. Make sense? We stayed at the park for a while. When we came home, all of us were super excited, and over-stimulated. We were all happy too. We plan to do it again, but I believe it was on Friday that they came knocking later in the afternoon. The kids and I had been snuggling in bed reading because for some reason I started to not feel well. The knock came and I was dreading who it was. When I opened the door and saw her I was feeling like I did not want to socialize, but then I thought about how much the kids needed it. The reality is, I need it too. The kids ran around our yards playing and having such a wonderful time. I sat with her and her husband and we talked and talked. I started feel much better instantly.

Come to find out we have a lot in common.

They are so pleasant, down to earth and have a great “take me or leave me” type of attitude. They had lived in CA for quite a while, even though they are not from there. I have found that many people from CA are very open and much more tolerant of differences. They had just moved from Washington though, which is another area that seems to be quite open. She went to school for her masters and is a teacher. (Not currently working) My first fears with our encounter were telling her about Daniel and autism. I cringe at the thought of telling people because I never know how they will respond. Again, I have many negative encounters that tend to drown out the few positive ones from around here (and family). She taught in a school with what sounds like an excellent program for special needs children.

She did not flinch when I told her that Daniel was autistic.

She and her husband both treated him so kindly and with his quirky behaviors, they had no problems. They let him touch them, get in their face, smile, and study them with no problems. They tried to engage with him, and he did several times. At one point, he came up to the three of us and said: “I like them” It was awesome. He has since shared with me that he thinks the “Mom and the girl are pretty.” He continued to pet the little girl’s hair, and it didn’t bother her at all. She doesn’t seem to notice anything different about Daniel. (Daniel does love the ladies.) He is very interested in the baby in the Mom’s belly too. :-)   I shared with her my home school blog, if she meanders over here I will feel a bit exposed, but it has been such a positive experience that I had to write it. I was filled with joy watching Ariel and Joshua enjoy themselves so much. They were so happy. I want that for them, I want them to have friends and be able to socialize. I wish it had happened sooner in this town, oh well.

Now our goal is to clean the house so we can invite them over to play.

The kids REALLY want the little girl to come over and play. Every time I have new (or uncertain) social interactions, I start to get anxiety. I get frustrated with myself, which adds to the stress. I want to be social, but then my anxiety kicks in and it causes me to feel like something is wrong with me. Thoughts pop in my head like “Why can’t I just have a conversation without freaking out, or getting too enthusiastic?” At one point she mentioned the Fibonacci number and I practicality jumped out of my seat, I may have clapped, I know I got overly excited and shared how I love the Fibonacci sequence. Then, I said: “If I begin to bore you, you have to tell me because I may go on and on.” I did control myself pretty well, but I was SO excited to hear someone mention it before me! Ariel found a snail shell that made her think of it. Yes! :-)

It has been a very positive and I am looking forward to our next play date.

I have a second half connecting to this post talking about Executive Function Disorder and how it plays into my social confusion/anxiety. I needed a specific situation to apply it to. I am also rounding that straight into my massive meltdown, and all of the things that contributed to it being triggered. I forget how all of these different components play into why I behave, or respond a certain way. Others do not have a clue — they only believe that I am responding out of immaturity or emotions. There is so much that goes into it, especially when someone else is responding out of their projected emotions.

I need clarity, I need direct communication.

Generalizations cause me to be thrown into a black-and-white thinking of dizziness when I am not specifically told it is a generalization. Mainly if it is a topic of emotion I have a problem, other things I have a better ability to discern what is a generalization. I have learned to reason through those — I have not learned to reason through emotions. I understand that others can get frustrated, or exhausted because of this, but I can’t change it. This is what happens with my kids, and it is another reason why I have been apprehensive with play dates. I talk very direct and literal with my kids. People have given me looks, or tried to cushion my words to my kids. They don’t get that. They get clear, direct, and literal. I was so happy to be able to talk to my children, be myself, and talk to another adult without all of these judgments and fears soaring through my mind.

That is what I call a great play date, all of us being ourselves! (Well as much as you can meeting new people. :-) )


 

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04/12/12

Inspired By…

Today I am sharing an inspiration collage. I am not creating an art piece in the customary sense for a collage to be made. I am creating this piece with people.

“A collage (From the French: à coller, to glue, French pronunciation: [kɔ.laːʒ]) is a work of formal art, primarily in the visual arts, made from an assemblage of different forms, thus creating a new whole.” (Already linked to above.)

This past month so many new people have inspired me that I cannot possibly share them all, but I mention them now creating a visual of all that they share on their blogs. I speak of all the poets, writers, artists, musicians, spiritual influencers, science impacters, techy wonderfulers, math/number guiders, all of the TED video people who have influenced me so much, AND all of the people who share their life stories who are on the autism spectrum and/or have children on the autism spectrum. I know I have left people out, I read many blogs! :-)   Every week I take time to sit down and catch up on blogs that I have subscribed to, while discovering new ones. I usually take about an hour, two days a week to focus on people’s blogs and respond with my “like” button and/or leave comments. I have been trying to comment more because I get so enthused by people sharing themselves through their craft, yes blogging can be considered a craft as well. :-)

I do not take it lightly — I think that it is important.

If I follow someone I put time into reading them, I know that a lot of people do not do that. It’s ok, this is who I am I invest in people as much as I can. I guess I am deemed a “fan of people” a “people groupie”. Today I was incredibly behind, I had almost 400 emails in my account, some of them were not to blogs, but the majority of them were. There are some that I am able to read on a daily basis and able to comment. Others I sometimes have to read come back later, reread, and comment. Unless I am unable to write a quick comment, then I only click “like”. As I sat down, I looked at all of the people floating in my inbox. I went through and read as much as I could. I spent about two hours off and on reading and commenting. Thinking and pondering, enjoying and delighting, my heartbreaking and feeling. I collected all of the people in my mind and my soul, then gathered up their words and  images/art forms wondering how I could connect them all. I decided to write these words as they all soar through my mind their words, and life are acknowledged and creating a beautiful collage. They all inspire me.

Yesterday we had a play date with a new friend.

Our new neighbor has come over several times to talk to me to schedule sometime to get together. I was going to write about my weirdness, and the whole story with that. I am not today. She is a wonderful woman, and her daughter is so cute and such a smart little girl. My guys loved playing with her, and I enjoyed myself very much talking to the mother. However, I have been off all day from a new social encounter, but I do not feel like talking about that. Daniel and Joshua have been off all day as well, there was no formal school today. They were playing so well and they did all day I did not want to ruin it. That is a rarity for them to play well all day, no meltdowns, freak-outs, arguing, social confusions, and/or someone getting hurt. Ariel wanted to be with me all day. Stay with me I will come full circle to inspiration. She sat on my lap as I read my emails, blogs, and left comments. Until…

I showed her the Kitty Blogger.

At that point, she asked if she could go look at it on their computer. She was in there for a few minutes, laughing then asking me to come look at kitty stuff. I showed her my gravatar on some of the posts under “like” after that, she asked if she could read my blog. I asked her which one? She has sat down read my poetry blog before, and told me which ones she liked. She loves all of the images I find. This time she wanted to read the one that I have not shared with many people because it has so much of me on it. I post poems on the fly, music, links (a lot) about pretty much anything. The blog is a Hodgepodge of my brain. I pulled it up for her and off she went reading my blog, watching my videos, and looking at my images. She came in and told me that her favorite video was Akasha Project – “The Quantum Music of Hydrogen” video by Vigor Calma. She said she saw a dragon face fading, flowers, and a tiger face. You would have to watch it to see why. We talked about the video for a while, then she told me that she wanted to paint what she “felt”.

She however, informed me that she did not want to yet.

Instead, she requested to listen to my iShuffle because she wanted to listen to more of my music. She did paint a beautiful picture that I will share below. I share all of this because Ariel inspired me very much today. She is open to learning, she loves life, she is a delight to be around, she asks hard questions, and everyday something is new with her. Don’t get me wrong it is the same with the boys only in a different way. They inspire me too, but today I was not all that inspired by rowdy “Pokémon play.” Here starts the rest of my people collage, I am not able to give all of the ways that they have inspired me so I will share as much as I can. (I apologize ahead of time for not telling all of you that I linked to you — I hope you don’t mind! I am not sure what the blog rules are for that.) Ariel wanted to paint with me, and I have been wanting to try to draw and paint “Goth girls”. I love them. Here are some of my inspirations Mike and Jamie Best. (Robots and Goth Art LOVE!) I was so excited to see such beautiful collages on Lori’s blog A Quiet Week. (Hence, where I was inspired for the word.) She shared with me an artist who inspires her Suzi Blu. I instantly loved her art. This triggered me thinking about my dear bloggy friend Bruce. In the beginning of April, he made a YouTube video that stirred my heart.

I was so excited for him, and he encouraged and inspired me so much.

He is such a wonderful person and so very talented. Here is his video and you can see how he was inspired by Nina. This video has been playing in my head all month. The words he shared moved me deeply, and got me thinking about things that I have not tried because of my perfectionism issues. Nina shared with Bruce to pursue his art “even if it looked like a Pre-K kid did it.” You must go watch to get the full inspiration. :-)   This video flooded me today as Ariel asked to draw and paint with me. I decided to give my Goth girls a try. I will share the pictures below of what Ariel and I made, Joshua joined in later, Daniel didn’t want to. I will show you what he was doing too. Thanks to my good friend Lisa aka. Alienhippy who encouraged me to “try to paint and allow yourself to stim in whatever way you need to”, I have dabbled in trying to paint. I did not try much of any form of art before for various reasons. I will stick to my physical reasons, but negative interactions caused me to feel like I could not. I also have such a hard time with my hand coordination, and tasks like writing, painting, drawing, using scissors, etc… It can hurt or cramp my hands. I also can get freaky about paint or any substance being on my hands.

However, I decided to give it a try over the summer.

I have found a new and very helpful stim that helps calm some of my anxiety, and uncontrollable loops. In recent months, I have also been inspired to allow my silly side out more. I tend to hold my silliness in because I can be WAY out there sometimes, or a complete goof. I was inspired by Sam at Everyday Asperger’s , her friend “Crazy Frog” suggested I let my silly side out more. And I have listened to Crazy Frog and have gained so much understanding about others, and myself. I have felt such peace and have had great laughter from reading her blog. However, letting my silly out and being more social can trigger some serious anxiety, sometimes I am not even aware that I am feeling excited energy from being social on the internet. I think it is because I do invest time into reading people’s blogs, and I give a piece of myself every time I share my words with them. I don’t mind, I love it — I forget how much it can take out of me though. This leads into some others who inspired me this month, Inner Aspie has helped me in many areas, but one specifically has been my issues with anorexia and dysmorphia. I have not found many other Aspie’s sharing about this.

There have been some days that are hard.

I do not want to diet, or try to lose weight. I do not want to think about it, but my mind goes directly into “image attack” if anxiety, or random fears pop up. It is not about being skinny, and just because you are thin does not mean there are no problems. I am not tackling that cultural thing right now. She has inspired me to accept things about anorexia and dysmorphia issues. I was not facing them — I have been beating myself up because I immediately go there when things start to fluster me. My body refuses food — I have to force down bland noodles or rice, and broccoli on good days if I am overcome with confusion and anxiety. I lost almost 20 pounds over the summer, I did not need to. I did my best at forcing me to eat, but it was a struggle with my mind. I have to fight it, and I have gotten a lot better, but I also have held on to shame and guilt about it. I am done talking about this. Now it’s out there I am inspired to move forward and heal. Thanks to Inner Aspie I was led to Carrie’s post about meltdowns at  Parenting with Asperger’s. Ironically, that very night after reading it I had the worst meltdown I have had in over 10 years. I may blog about it I don’t know yet.

I shared with Carrie in my comment that I still had guilt and shame after a meltdown.

That night I struggled so much. I was feeling social stress, and anxiety for various reasons. I was nervous, excited, and happy about our play date. There were many contributing factors, but what set me off in a rage was I thought David said I was acting like a seven year old. He did not, but that is what I heard and before I knew it my body was taken over facing all of my ex’s, my mom, and various other people in my life demeaning me telling me that what I felt or did was childish or juvenile. I had no control over myself, and thankfully, I had her blog to remind me what it is actually like when a meltdown happens. Of course, I apologized — he did too for his part in the whole episode. I will skip all of that for now. Then, today I was also inspired by Aspergirl Maybe, she has been inspiring me ever since I started reading her blog. Her strength, courage, honesty, and faith have inspired me in so many ways. As I read her post today, I was struck with how brave she has been to make the decisions she has, and the ability to follow through to take charge of her life. It inspires me to stay the course, and keep trying to stay focused on the directions I need to take in my own life.

Another person is Kirsten’s blog, quirky and laughing.

She shared the Autism Positivity Week post, and for the first time in my life I could actually write something positive about myself, share it with others on another blog  and not feel guilt or like someone was going to come along and tell me that what I said was not true. Or accuse me of bragging, or being prideful. Rachel was one of the first blogs I found of an adult autistic she has inspired me in many ways on her personal blog, but the Autism and Empathy site has inspired me beyond words. It is packed full of a wonderful collage of people, and very beneficial information. My Goodness there are so many people I wish I could add on here, but I have made this far longer than I expected.

I forced myself to limit it to the last couple of weeks.

Plus, I am now teary-eyed and I hate crying so I am going to stop before the flood starts. I hope this post has inspired others, reveals what an impact all of you who share and write make in our community. Our sharing leads to more sharing, which leads to more people stepping out and trying. Creating magnificent pieces of art whether with materials or in each of our hearts. This to me shows our vast spectrum, our individuality, and our hearts to want to share, make a difference in our world, and help others. We can shake mountains with our inspiration. Thank you all for inspiring me in so many ways and helping me to step out. Who is inspiring you? How are they? Be sure you tell them, you never know how your inspiration can lead into unfolding a bunch of others to be inspires too. Now for some pictures! Even if they look like a Pre-k kid did it, I made some Goth girls and I love them! (I now have the courage to practice.)

Added 4/13/2012 (AM): Bruce has on his bulletin “Please pray for Nina! She is in the ICU.”  Please keep her in your prayers, positive vibes, and /or happy thoughts!

You can click on the pictures for captions.


 


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04/7/12

About Lonely III (The Novella-I kid!)

Continued from About Lonely II…

I feel happy surrounded by my objects they do not replace people, but they sure are more accepting and less confusing. :-)   I want to interact and have more friendships. I am not sure how to keep long lasting relationships… maybe I can as long as they accept my ways and me. Honestly, I have not had very many people accept me. They have a preconceived idea about me. It is partly do to how I behave in situations with new people. I have had many people see me as a snob at first. It depends on the environment, but normally I try to stay out of sight, and quiet. One of the reasons for this is that people have misunderstood my personality for being an “attention seeker”. The truth is I am very animated; I get excited in good and bad ways. People have assumed that I am trying to be in the limelight when in reality I do not like being the star of the show. I like everyone to be seen, but many times, it does not work that way.

I like to share the stage — I admit the stage is fun, but not alone.

When I feel safe enough to let my guard down a bit people get to see that I am not a snob at all. I am a very accepting, and open person at times to my detriment. The good thing about me is that I never need much. I am always good with small gestures. Extravagance can make me feel awkward and uncomfortable. It is a lonely place to feel the need to stay on guard, know that people think you are stuck up, but do not know how to change it. It is a lonesome feeling to have to weed through social dynamics along with learning a new environment. I find it lonesome because others do not seem to have these same issues, so I have had to go through it alone.

I have observed others, and they know what a “look” means.

They understand a smile, or comment, someone’s tone does not confuse them. They laugh at things that can take me days to get. They remember to say “good morning” everyday. It can make me feel lonely when I do not understand what is going on. It makes me feel lonely when I am surrounded by people who seem to get everything that is going on and I haven’t clue. It seems many of my lonely feelings have to do with other people’s perceptions, their inability to read me, and/or my inability to read them. I am not alone; I do not feel lonely until it is brought to my attention how “different” I am. I find it interesting that my mom does not have the same feelings. She does not experience the same emotions that I do when confronted with being different.

If you have not guessed, I have been doing a parallel study.

Yes, I have been studying the differences between my mom and me. I have done this my whole life – the difference now is that my mom is answering my questions! She would not talk to me about this stuff before, now that she has an understanding of autism she is willing to discuss things she would not have in the past. She does not feel lonely when surrounded with a group of people who do not get her. She is aware of it, but it does not concern her. She has many rigid scripts though. They trump certain feelings — much like my “help trump” thing, my mom has mind trump cards that deal with social situations. I think hers is different because she is not as social as I am. She also does not put the same kind of importance on a relationship. I don’t know why I do this – I do have to accept it though.

 I have friends, but I do not talk to them often.

I do interact through facebook sometimes. In my defense, (Not that I need to defend myself.) I am rather busy, and my priorities go to my children. I have taken to giving myself time to write, and blog because without that time I am no good to anyone. I email one friend on a semi-regular basis she does not get upset with me thankfully she understands. I have not been with or talked to my friend here since the last Bible study at my mom’s house, but we could not talk much then anyway. I enjoy reading, and commenting on the blogs I do. I am trying to be more social online, but I also know my limits. I also have to feel safe. When I feel safe my silliness comes out.

I can be quite the goofy lizard!

I do want to take a moment and talk about how I get taken aback in friendships. I have times when I shut down. My shut downs (or meltdowns) have been known to come on unexpectedly. In the last few months I have learned to watch for my triggers, and either start my own shut down, or prepare myself for what is about to happen. In the past, they seemed to come on suddenly and I would cut myself off from people completely. When I returned, the relationship seemed to change. It would cause me to be filled with anxiety and confusion because I didn’t understand what had happened. I tend to think everything is fine even with limited contact. I expected everything to be the same as it was the last time we had contact. This is where I can get sideswiped with confusion and hurt. I have encountered this on several occasions when I thought everything was fine, but the person had moved on and replaced me, or had no interest in me.

I perceived them as being finished with me, but not telling me.

These types of interactions caused overwhelming bouts of loneliness. It led to major negative looping because it didn’t make any sense. It was a rejection that seemed without cause. I have experienced this type of thing my entire life with numerous types of relationships. The worst ones were when my two live-in boyfriends (Not at the same time!) both planned to leave me, but did not tell me until the last minute. One I actually discovered that he was moving to another country because his new employer called and talked to me. If I had not gotten that phone call I am not sure when he would have told me. We did end up staying together while he lived there, but trust had been broken. My father did the same type of thing when I was around 11 or 12 I cannot remember now when he moved to another state. He told me the weekend before he was moving.

He didn’t understand why I was so upset.

It was a huge change; I had been going to his house practically every weekend since I was little. He was leaving, and I did not know when I would see him. I also felt like he didn’t much care that he was leaving me. The feeling I always had was that I should be happy for him. It was the same way by boyfriend responded when I discovered that he was going to work in another country. The first boyfriend to spring this “side swipe break up” on me acted as if I should have known. However, he hid it from me for over a month. He put in a transfer and the people at work (We worked at the same place at the time.) knew before I did. When he continued to keep contact with me and shared his life again, it was an attitude of “You should be happy for me.” Every time I encountered this, I experienced the other traumas on top of it. I didn’t want to, my mind seemed to attack me, my thoughts were uncontrollable, and I felt the emotions over and over again. These experiences made me feel exceptionally lonely. I had no one to talk to, and since all of them acted as if it was ok, I thought I had no reason to be upset.

My mom was not much comfort in this area.

She does not have much sympathy when she considers people to be jerks. She had empathy, but her way of handling it was different. She felt badly for me, but to her they were replaceable. When I think of lonely those were lonely times. I was terribly alone in my feelings, and hurt. Still I entertained myself, I talked to trees, birds, bugs, animals, the sky, and I went on adventures during the wee hours of the night. (Not too smart – no sense of danger.) I spent many days at the pool, and many nights spent with the moon and stars on my balcony. I also poured myself into work. During those times, I had my cherished books, movies, and music. They were my best friends and the only ones who understood me. Some people thought I was so strange. They thought something was wrong with me because I enjoyed riding my bike by myself, or during breaks instead of talking about people I was busy examining lizards or I would change the subject to vampires!

I may have felt lonely, but I was never alone.

Lonely sounds like such an awful thing. Sometimes I think it is good to feel that deep lonely feeling. If we didn’t feel that, how could we find our self? How can we ever discover our true inner strength, if we do not see what it is like to have no one? I am not speaking of long periods of depressed isolation, which is definitely not a good thing. I have gone through that it normally does not bring about healing. I am referring to what I felt at the symposium. I sat surrounded by people who look at my kind as studies, enigmas, puzzles to figure out, preconceived ideas about how people like me think. I was an alien in a room full of medical professionals. It freaked me out for a moment, but then I realized nothing had changed.

I was alone, but I wasn’t truly lonely.

I understood that the only reason why I was feeling lonely was that they were saying how much I needed people. I needed to adapt in order to be in this world if I do not want to be lonely. All of it was based on their perception of what lonely means and as I have been thinking about it, here I am once again debunking someone else’s idea of whom I am. They had great resources and ideas to help integrate people on the autism spectrum. They could explain how my brain works in the area of social confusion in so much detail; they gave me great understanding and clarity that helped me. They had very positive things to say about people on the autism spectrum, but they also were generalizing and making assumptions based on their own personal feelings.

I want friends.

I want to experience people. I want to share with people, and enjoy people. I want to be able to share myself without fears of rejection. It is happening. I am very much a social Aspie, but I also cannot be too social. I have to have limits. I get over-stimulated. I can get obsessive if I am confused by a relationship. I do not feel like I am missing anything though because I do not have a bunch of people in my life, or because I do not go out all the time. Those things made me feel very lonely. It does not make me a lonely person. All of these years my feelings of loneliness have been stemmed from being misunderstood, and having people in my life who were constantly telling me how I needed to be. Discovering more about whom I am, and how I see and process my world takes away a lot of my loneliness.

The feelings of isolation and deep despair have dwindled.

I understand that I can have that type of negative loop, but my looping is not the same as actually feeling that way. My loops are usually my brain trying to help me understand something. I think the saying is true you have to love yourself before you can know how to love others. It never made sense to me until I started actually liking myself for the first time in my life. I have spent a large amount of time trying to love others with all of my heart because I did not know how to love myself. (I do not mean to sound all cheesy here, but I have to confess this stuff.) My coming to terms and accepting more of me has given me the ability to step out more and comment on other blogs.

It has given me the ability to share more of me with others.

It has revealed how there are people who know what I am talking about. They have felt similar things — we truly are not alone. Though we may feel lonely out in the “real” world, the internet world seems to bring me much comfort, even if I do not have “normal” relationships with people.  I am still very hard on myself, and question at times, why anyone would want anything to do with me. This is not out of insecurity it is out of the inability to see who I am. It is my “self mind-blindness.” My self-awareness has been lacking, and I have been looking to others to help me all of these years. I do not see what others see in me. I do not understand what attracts people to me. I do not know why anyone would want to be my friend, or love me. I am a little teary eyed at this point and I do not know why. I partially think it is because I am seeing some good things about myself. I am accepting that I am good at things. I believe that I am a person of worth, and I matter. I cannot tell you how incredibly painful it is for me to write those words. I felt like nothing for so long.

I felt invisible many times.

The feelings like no one would notice if I just left this world, feeling completely unlovable and rejected for so many years stripped me of self. My mom felt all of those things her entire life as well, but she never shared that until our weekend together. Again hers is in a different way, it has to do more so with talent than self. However, her self-image does stem her feelings, but I will not go into that. Discovering why we do things the way we do, and that there are others who share and understand has given us a new perspective on life. We have also had many things cleared up gaining the understanding that no two autistics are alike. We are not a simple label, you cannot fit us into a box, and we are our own unique vessel. I do not understand why people have to be categorized. That is a sure fire way to make someone feel lonely. I am wondering what others think about the word lonely. I wonder why people write so many things about it, but never really tackle the subject. Lonely…there is so much packed into that word.

If you are feeling lonely, remember you are not alone.

The end!


 

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04/6/12

About Lonely II

Continued from About Lonely I…

I didn’t understand why a person like me who wanted friends, and liked people had no friends, while my mom who seemed to care less always had people swarming. She says that it is just like cats, she is not a cat fan (WHAT?), yet they always want to be around her. Cats love her and she doesn’t want anything to do with them. It seems similar with people. She has always had people in her life who continue to keep up the relationship. She has had a “take me or leave me” attitude and she really is not affected much when someone leaves her life. She moves on rather quickly, and has something of a shoulder shrug response. (There is a lot more detail to her relationship stories that does not apply to the rest of this, maybe another post. :-) )

I am nothing like this.

This line of thinking that my mother was able to have people care about her so much started at an early age. It consumed me throughout my life, but I now understand that it was childhood perception that never transpired into an adult understanding. Apparently, at some point between ages 12-14, social understanding of degrees of relationships really kicks in, and the adult thinking is starting to pave its way. My brain did not transition with my peers, and I continually become unaware, or confused to the social dynamics going on around me. It is not that I cannot understand it; it is that I need someone to explain things to me in a rational, direct, and kind way. It hurts deeply when people talk to me as if I am a child, or get frustrated with me because they assume I should already know things.

In reality however, I had friends throughout my life.

I have had many friends. I have said it before though, I am good at making friends — I am not good at keeping them. When I lose friends that makes me feel lonely because I do not understand why I lose them. I know that sometimes it is my own doing many times in those cases I was trying to protect myself. I admit that being alone, and entertaining myself can be very fun and can lead me to drift away from a relationship. I have noticed that I do a much better job at keeping up relationships via internet. I am devastated when someone leaves my life that I have put energy into, and shared parts of myself into the relationship. Let me clarify I become devastated if I do not know the reason why. If they were to tell me clearly, such as telling me “I found a new friend who better suits my interests and we click far better”, I can handle that. It would hurt, sure, but at least I know and I can understand that. I would obviously have to work through the pain. If I am left to guess at what is happening I turn inward and attack myself, if it is made clear that I did nothing wrong I do not attack myself.

I may have questions — I always have questions.

Although, I do not know how to transition from good friend, to acquaintance I have always cut people off. I did not understand transitioning relationships. To be honest it still makes me confused, I am not sure how to handle any of that, and it seems too complicated. My feelings of devastation were even prevalent when I was in an abusive relationship, and I knew that I had to end it. I felt guilt, I felt sorry for him, and I ached for months at the separation. I know that part of that had to do with other factors that happen with abuse, but I still felt it. (I didn’t know I was being abused at the time.) It was an incredibly lonely time for me. My mom could not understand and continued to tell me to get over it. She could not understand why I would feel sad when it was such a horrible relationship.

I wondered why my mom would even have tried to have romantic relationships.

I asked her if she continued dating and getting into relationships because that was her script. She seemed favorable with that hypothesis. She made it clear that she liked having someone around to help her. She also made it clear that she does not have the same emotions and never has when someone describes love. It does not feel the same for her. It does not look the same, though she tried to make it like movies because she thought that is what it was supposed to be. At one time she did connect to one person in a deep way, and she described him as being the closest thing to “movie type” love she has ever encountered. She does not feel like she has missed anything, and she is perfectly happy being alone. She has very few friends, but a ton of acquaintances. If you asked her, her good friends could go under the acquaintance category. It does not mean she does not care deeply about them.

It does not mean she is hard and cold.

She is not, she is very loving, but it can look very different. Her expression of love is not an emotional type of love. She crochets blankets, gives flowers, (Blah! She said she learned to do that from church.) she cleans things as acts of love. We both are not sure if she is this way to protect herself because she does feel so deeply, or if she is just like this. She is able to cut people off and not think twice about it. Once someone hurts her, they get three strikes then, they are out. Not with her children obviously otherwise my sisters and I would have been cut off a long time ago. Hee hee

She and I differ in this area in some ways.

It takes a lot for me to cut someone out of my life. They have to devastate me beyond recovery, or I finally conclude they must want nothing to do with me. At that point, I cut myself off from them normally in a looping haste, and it will be some random act with me saying, “I’m gone. Good Bye”. I have done this several times in my life where I cut people off and devastated myself so I would not have to wait any longer for them to do it to me. Trying to read their signs, or figure out if they cared about me was too stressful and the anticipation killed me inside. Therefore, I ended it.

However, it never ends.

It always leaves me wondering, and feeling abandoned ultimately leaving me feeling lonely. I know that I am the one who did the final abandonment. I have been working through this, and trying to create healthier patterns in this area. I remember my mind racing with questions every time I have cut someone out of my life. Why not just do it themselves? Why would they continue to act as if I meant something when I did not? Why didn’t they consider me? Why didn’t they think about my feelings? Why wouldn’t they be honest? I realize that I made up scenarios in my head that may or may not be true because the not knowing was far worse. The people I have done this to have returned in my life at certain times and I am always surprised that they have fond memories of me.

They genuinely like me, but it confuses me.

The questions arise. If they cared about me, why did they treat me the way they did? I have one friend in my hometown that I am not sure I can have contact with her. She hurt me several times, and I cut her off several times. Amazingly, she always finds me. She thinks about me. She loves me, but it is so hard for me to reconcile this with her actions. I similarly have a hard time with family, and have removed myself from certain family members throughout my life. Sometimes these decisions have been good and healthy for me, sometimes not so much. I try so hard to keep my emotions in check. I have tried not to let me feel anything because the pain is too much. That is not who I am though. When I try to cap my emotions, or parts of me that are intense that makes me feel lonely. It stirs the emotions of being misunderstood, and not “normal”. I know that normal is a myth, but it is more the feeling of no one reaching out to me as I have seen people do for my mom. Maybe I miss the cues?? I feel lonely when I realize people have absolutely no clue what I am feeling. I feel lonely when someone tells me I have no emotions.

I feel lonely when someone tells me I have a poker face.

I feel lonely when people look at me and cannot tell my heart is broken. I feel lonely when I am overjoyed bouncing around, singing, and dancing and people look at me as if I am a freak. I feel lonely when my body cannot bear a hug, or my eyes cannot look at someone’s face, and people make me feel bad for it. I feel lonely when I have no one to share with my similar interests. I especially felt lonely the day I was told, “No one will ever understand you. You need to accept that you are all alone in the world, and no one will fully know, or understand you.” Yeah…that made me feel exceptionally lonely. It has been swimming through my mind since the day they said it. When the person said this to me they thought it would bring me comfort, and help me to see that I have no one, but myself to rely on and once I understood that I am all alone I could feel good about it. Um…no. That worked for them, it did not work for me.

I feel connections to everything — that statement made me feel connected to nothing.

I need to feel connected, not surrounded by tons of people, but connected otherwise I lose all hope. I become faithless in humanity and myself. I crumble at the thought that I am having no one to share things with, or link to. So a statement like that does not benefit me in any way. I am not lonely in the same way that people describe it. Lori from A Quiet Week In The House left this comment on my last post “I prefer being alone. I feel more connected to actual loneliness when I am with others.” That is it. I do enjoy people, and being social, (I will go into that a little more in the next post.), but being alone can be great fun for me. My issue is I do not like feeling ALL alone in the world. I do not like the feeling as if I am an alien dropped off here on planet earth, unless of course my alien beings gave me a clear and direct task while I was here! I want to be with people and have meaningful relationships.

BUT I am happy by myself too.

 

Up Next About Lonely III…


 

 

 

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04/5/12

About Lonely I

I have been thinking about the word lonely. What does it mean? Why do so many people feel lonely and hide it? Why do some people consider those who are perfectly fine alone as lonely? Why do people not believe it when someone says: “I like being alone.” What is lonely? What does it mean to me? What makes me feel lonely? What makes others feel lonely? How many times can I write the word lonely in a paragraph? Does the word lonely feel lonely? Ok, Ok I’ll stop. The word lonely got me thinking about alone, to me the word lonely and alone or two different things. They can coexist, but being alone for me is not a bad thing sometimes and it does not mean that I am lonely. I was perfectly fine with being alone (I still am), but the feeling of loneliness has overwhelmed me many times in my life.

As I have tried to write this post, it has spun into over 4000 words. (Currently.)

I have several posts that I am sharing on the topic. I have tried to capture and articulate what I am feeling on the topic, but I cannot. Instead, this has turned into ramblings of situations that have made me feel lonely. I can be consumed with the feeling of isolation. When I want to share my thoughts, or talk about things that make me happy, or sad. When I want to tell someone my pain without interruption, or analytical prose. When I look around and realize that no matter what I still have to keep up some form of mask in order to survive, or adapt. I feel lonely when I am faced with the reality of how different I am, or when I feel completely misunderstood. I read the wiki page on loneliness and thought that this statement was appropriate “the physical absence of meaningful people around a person”. It isn’t about large numbers of friends, or relationships it is about the physical absence of meaningful people. If we do not have one single person in our life that we feel understands us, or at least accepts everything about us that can lead to feeling lonely. I have been consumed with despair and loneliness at times when I am surrounded by people. I can be overwhelmed with this feeling the more people there are.

It’s the feeling of not understanding others, and them not understanding me.

The etymology dictionary had this to say about lonely: “dejected for want of company”. The dictionary shared words like lonesome, destitute of sympathetic or friendly companionship, desolate, and isolated. Yes, I have felt all of these things. I still do many times, but I also find comfort in being alone. The feelings of loneliness can rift through me suddenly and unexpectedly. It is usually triggered by an incident. When I sat in a room of over 300 hundred people and by their statistics there was only one other person…possibly two who may understand what I was feeling at that moment it flooded me with feeling all alone in the world. I mean seriously alone. They spoke about individuals like myself in ways that made me realize in a drastic way that indeed my thoughts are my own. I was unaware of how much I believed that others were thinking exactly what I was. It put it into perspective that I do this in a real tangible way. On the surface, I understand this, but on a daily basis, I am not thinking about it and I assume that others are reading my mind, or mean the same thing as I do on a subconscious level.

Logically I know this is not true…I do not know how to articulate it.

They did say at the time that the statistics for autism could be going to 1 in 100. Not because there was an epidemic, but because according to Ami Klin, PhD (I am paraphrasing because I did not bring a recorder and could not write fast enough, but I did get key words and statements.) it is not an epidemic the medical field is finally getting things right. They are gaining more understanding, perspective, and with new resources for early diagnosis, it changes the numbers to be more accurate. He did not dismiss the fact that environment and/or genetic factors can (do) play a role as well. However, he mentioned that if it truly were an epidemic, the statistics would not be the same between children and adults. The stats were 1 in 110 for both child diagnosis and adult diagnosis. Now we have the stats at 1 in 88 according to the CDC. This number should apply to adults as well. Personally, I have stayed away from reading any more about the new number release. I can’t do it right now. In a way, those numbers made me think quite a bit more about the meaning of lonely. It brought me back to a few weeks ago.

I sat in the conference room looking around wanting to find my kind.

Not because I was scared or insecure, but I felt outnumbered. I felt on guard, and as if I needed to protect myself. I do not know why. I felt like I had been thrown into a foreign country where I vaguely understood their language. They did not know my language because their words did not mean the same thing. When I said something was loud that meant it was hurting my body, it was stinging my flesh, it sent jolts into my ears, it made me dizzy and off balance. When they said something was loud, they only meant the volume was up. I know the differences between my brain and others. I do understand this, but to have it so clear, and directly spoken, shown, and explained — felt lonely. It felt isolating and real for the first time. I saw myself being described in clinical terms, these people understood me based on research, studies, interactions doing therapies with people like me, but they still did not “get” me. It made me see with clarity how confused I am a lot of the times. My confusion makes me feel lonely. It made me ponder on many other things as well. My mind has been soaring with events in my life. This experience made me doubt anything and everything I have known.

It made me question all kinds of social interactions.

I already do this — I have to be cautious with people because I have been hurt so deeply. Even when I have kept walls up, and defense mechanisms, I would still be hurt by confusing actions and words. The inability to discern what the relationship was about, how I was supposed to interact in the relationship, along with trusting the wrong people, being manipulated, and confused caused me to be hurt. I see now in my constant confusion I attacked myself and caused myself more harm than the other person did at times. When I rushed things through my head, I didn’t know how to process it. That led me to ask my mom “Are you lonely?” She said: “No, not at all. You know I like to be alone.” She then shared that my sister who moved back in with her has been connecting a lot of similarities between the three of us. Funny the other day the topic of being lonely came up with them as well.

My mom asked her:”Do you ever feel lonely?” 

She replied with: “Not really, only when I see couples together maybe.” I then asked my mom if she felt that she no longer feels lonely because she has gotten used to it. I wondered if she felt lonely when she was my age or my sister’s age. Her answer: “Well, maybe, but I don’t think so. You know I have always liked being alone. Even as a child, I preferred to be in my room. I didn’t really want to play with other kids.” She then went into how she was kind of like Liz Taylor, always having a man when she was our age. She is reading a biography on Liz right now. :-) I recalled my accounts of the men in her life. She seemed more annoyed and bothered when they were around. I did not much care for them either…some of them I liked, but they did not stay around very long.

Why?

Because my mom couldn’t do it. She couldn’t keep up a relationship. It was too much work. The only reason why she has long lasting friendships is because they contact her, they keep the relationship going, and they call and set up plans to do things. She has an ex-boyfriend who lives out of state (they dated when I was a teenager) we still have not figured out the relationship… friends? More than friends? We do not know, but he keeps regular contact with her. He and his kids stay at mom’s house for vacation every year. However, if he did not call or email her on a regular basis she would not think to contact him unless something new happens in her life. He continues to tell her that people are supposed to keep contact and call each other. Although, he has finally accepted that she will not remember to do so. I am different in this area, when I care about someone, they can consume my thoughts. I want to interact with them all the time. I want to share everything, and I want to know all they are doing, thinking, achieving, their likes, dislikes…I want to know them as much as I am sharing myself. I have discovered that people do not do this. It makes me feel rejected, and confused. I now know that it has nothing to do with me, but throughout the years, it has hurt me terribly.

When I was younger, my mom had a group of girlfriends.

They hung out at our home all the time. They would sit around talking, drinking Stroh’s beer, listening to music, smoking cigarettes, and eating chips or some sort of snacks. I sat watching them, observing their behaviors, cleaning up after them, entertaining them with my dances or silliness, and telling them “I am never going to smoke, or drink.” I wish I would have stuck to my little self rules, it could have saved me from some hard times. I recall in detail many similar nights, I am on the living room floor, I have my books laid out or some sort of game I am playing by myself — listening to every word they say, and I feel desperately alone. I did not understand anything they were talking about, and I felt invisible unless they wanted a beer, or I could make them laugh somehow. My mom confused me as well because she was different. She was acting different and I did not understand why. My mom has since shared with me that she was the one who held the parties, and drank to help with her social anxiety. She didn’t know what it was at the time. The one thing that confused me very much and was a contributing factor to a distorted self-image was seeing my mom surrounded by friends.

She always has people who surround her, yet she seeks to be alone.

Coming Soon About Lonely II…

 


 

 

 

 

 

 

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